AIRAN BERG@SUPERINTENSE
{ January 16, 2010 @ 11:40 am } { Comments (1) }
Morning! Seems like I got in just in time. And there’s a crowd of 30-40 people, too! And more coming!
AB: The actual cultural capital of the city is its people, so I wanted to make a T-shirt that said, "I am cultural capital".
Airan’s talking about his work in Linz when it was named the cultural capital of Europe last year. All contemporary stuff, no classical pieces: he actually commissioned an opera by Philip Glass about Kepler. And there was a huge refugee camp put up into public space as an installation to illustrate the fact that such concentration-like camps are being used for the purposes of handling migration today.
Whoa. Seems that Adolf Hitler was born in Linz. In fact, he wanted to make the city the cultural capital of the Third Reich. They had to deal with that.
And you’ve heard about Ong Keng Sen directing "The Good Person of Setzuan" in Landestheater Linz? It’s still playing. It’s still selling out.
AB: So you can see we were touching on very political subjects, very social subjects on the way. So now I’ll move to these more social project.
schule_sujetneu_800x600.jpg.419475
It’s called "I’d Like to Move It, Move It", the biggest artwork of the cultural capital year, focussed on giving kids self-esteem and work in teams and find their own creativity (not just buzzwords: the schools are really slow to change, when the demands of the workplace are changing so radically that we have no idea what we’re supposed to prepare kids for).
30 artistic teams from all walks of the performing arts worked with 100 schools from upper Austria to create small, process-oriented performance projects with students. All different styles, all different aspects of schools. Technical schools, elite schools, migrant children’s schools, special needs schools. Choreographers, puppeteers, filmmakers. Artmakers had to work in teams of three, assisted by trainee teachers or art students. No-one came to do plays; they were concentrating on development. Teachers kept complaining, "Today the artist doesn’t know what he’s doing." Animation films written by kids, Yugoslav and Turkish kids doing collaborative work, kids with muscular dystrophy doing dance.
AB: You cannot go in a change the school, you have to trick them. And with someone from outside, it’s like a very positive virus, you can infect them.
One project was a huge parade organised in one town where kids danced in the streets and convinced farmers to drive their tractors in the street. Small schools were the best; the elite schools created humongous problems because they demanded that they’d be damn well doing Schiller-style proscenium drama, thank you very much, and it was next to impossible for these artists to change their minds.
AB: We worked with 3,000 children and 700 teachers. And now 3,000 children are no longer afraid of contemporary art. The 700 teachers are also no longer afraid of contemporary art. And of course this project was a huge communciation project, because every child has uncles and aunts.
The other project he’s talking about is by the Electronica Arts Centre. First thing they did was to play the Buchner symphony and ask everyone to put their radios in the window. Somehow that ended up being too much of an everyday evening spectacle; meaningless and hollow.
So then he asked a South African puppetmaker called Roger to do some work, and he thought up the idea of flood myths, how every culture has them. So they convinced over 1,000 volunteers to create and build gargantuan animal puppets, an afternoon spectacle from 3pm to 11pm (not your conventional evening spectacle), made out of polyethylene glue and aluminium from the local car industries, rehearsals within the city, so we had animals wandering the city two to three months before the show, which just pulled in more volunteers and audiences. 500 animals of 40 different species. Giraffes, goats, fish, snails, giant frogs, octopi, dinosaurs. Professional divers working with swans and crocodiles in the rivers. A few painted with ultraviolet colours too, so they glowed in the dark at night. Instructions like IKEA: build your own animals.
https://youtu.be/zmFLT6BIJbU
Audience of 30,000 in the town square. They actually beat the 25,000-strong crowd that gathered 70 years before for Adult Hitler. Animals searching for ways to escape the flood. Street musicians, no amplification. Seven prophets running around, each with a different story about why the catastrophe was coming.
AB: There were no accidents, but at 6 o’clock I got a phone call that there were two drunk lions. They had stopped at every wine stall. But they made it to the end.
All in all, about 130,000 people, about the size of the city. Animals gathering on the banks of the Danube, waiting for the ark to save them. Fireworks as SOS signals. A cargo boat as the ark, since most refugees arrive on the ark. A female Noah and an anti-Noah, proscribing survival of the fittest. The ark attacked by pirates on speedboats, firing off rockets. The ark exploding. And a rainbow rising. The rain stopping. And the thunder coming again.
More info here[http://www.klangwolke.at/].
interview with AIRAN BERG, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel/Vienna and Linz, Austria
{ October 15, 2009 @ 6:14 pm }
{ Comments (1) }
YS: How would you describe your profession?
AB: Theatremaker and artistic director.
YS: Could you talk about one of the theatre pieces you’re proudest of?
AB: Well, I’ve done very different things. I’ve worked both in making theatre in big national theatre structures, but I’ve also worked very much with puppets and objects and videos and shadows, a very visual kind of theatre that mixes the forms of language, masks, puppetry, music, movement. So a kind of theatre that feeds from different visual artists as well, very strong visual theatre. But my main work in the last years has been as an artistic director, where I bring together theatremakers. Like I invited Keng Sen to do a show in Linz and Vienna for the Cultural Capital year. And currently I’m interested recently in the notion of how active can the public be in performance, how active is the role of the public.
YS: And why did you agree to be part of the FPC?
AB: Out of curiosity also. I’ve been working with KS for many years and it was nice to have him invite me back. I’ve been inviting him to Austria since 2002. We’ve had a continuous working relationship; and I’ve always liked the idea of the Flying Circus Project, I’ve heard about it for many years and I’m always eager to learn new things and meet new people. And I also know Tay Tong very well, so it’s really knowing Keng Seng and Tay Tong, and having a working relationship with them for a long time, almost ten years.
YS: And how have you found this year’s FCP?
AB: I… usually when I’ve learnt… I travel a lot and I’ve experienced different formats, coming out of a really really busy cultural capital year, I had no time, nor did I want to have any preconceived notions of what it was going to be like. I’m somebody who very much likes process, I don’t like to have an idea in mind when I start productions. So for me it was nice to see there are so many different options due to the number of people, but I think it really comes together nicely because we kind of, you have to react to what is there, which is what our professionalism is about. It’s good to make have concepts and have a lot of ideas, but in the end performing arts is about the people who come together in a certain space. And the fact that we didn’t have to create anything, we could just be with each other, that is a very important tool of the Flying Circus Project.
YS: And what about your impressions of the Cambodian participants?
AB: I think that we had very different… that the Cambodian participants themselves were not a homogenous body. I think we had people within the two different aspects of approach and training, and I found them all very hungry, very interested in absorbing all the very different things that were thrown at them. But for me it was also important to hear about them and understand the rigid training of the dancers and what a big jump it is for them to try new things and coming from a culture that has been almost wiped out and now is in the midst of reconstructing itself and at the same time trying to find a modern aspect. For the dancers it’s a very big step, that their training is very focused on one thing. But you can see that in the course of the time, they also move away from their body language, and they are different creatively using their body, because their dance is quite formed, there’s one certain body language in their dance. I feel there was great talent and great potential there. And that for me also it was important to learn how to deal that at the beginning it seems narrow, but that has to do with the training and culture and the history, and to find the hunger for the other types of process that… and of course there’s also the different thing about shyness. the dancers were obviously more shy than the Bhopana people. And how to deal with cultural codes. I’m interested in that, and how to find a way not to impose what you do as the only way.
YS: Tell me about your connection with Singapore.
AB: Deep. Deep. It started actually in 1991, I think. It was the first time in Singapore with Martina Winkel, and in that year we were actually on our way to Indonesia, and we were only going to spend 2 to 3 days here, but we kind of fell in love with the place, with the people, because the second day we were here we, by coincidence, met with Kuo Pao Kun, and meeting Kuo Pao Kun and Goh Lay Kuan was a very very important thing in our lives. And we kept coming back and Kuo Pao Kun and Lay Kuan visiting us also in Austria, then our theatre company then, which was called Theatre Without Boundaries, produced "The Silly Little Girl and the Funny Old Tree", so translated Pao Kun’s play into German and performed it. So it was the first time a play by Pao Kun, and probably first play by Singapore writer, that was done in German. That was in 1994, I think, or 5.
And also in 1994 we performed here at the Substation, a concert by a fantastic Austrian musician and a piece that Martina and I did on old age, so our puppet was on morning breakfast television shows, "Good Morning Singapore", or whatever it was. So the puppet was speaking on the television. It’s probably still in the archives somewhere. And then Martina was back here and she did "The Tempest" for Practice Theatre, which was at the Substation, and she also directed "Mama Looking for Her Cat" which was playing live also at the same time in Vienna at that theatre I was running, so the Turkish woman who was siniging the lullaby that you saw, she was doing it live, conference call at the time, at the Schauspielhaus. And of course every time I was here I visited performances of TheatreWorks and productions of Ong Keng Sen. And when i became ad of the Schauspielhaus in Vienna, I invited Keng Sen to be Artist in Residence on his first trip here, and that was also our connection with Cambodian, because part of it was to bring his piece with engtay [The Continuum], and continuously he created new work for the Schauspielhaus and also for the cultural capital, he we continued our conversation with Brecht. So Keng Sen did one for Schauspielhaus, and one for the regional theatre in Landestheater Linz, "Good Person of Setzuan". And also I forgot I’ve also given two workshops with TTRP. Sasi had invited me twice, and also Martina to do workshops for the visual theatre that we’re doing, these visual theatre techniques. So I have relationships with quite a few institutions in town.
JANEZ JANSA, Bergamo, Italy/Ljubljana, Slovenia.
YS: So would you say you’re an artist, a director, a conceptual artist…?
JJ: I would say yes, I’m a conceptual artist making use of different media, different languages to do my artistic research, my artistic investigation. So I’m saying, so because the concept is always mainly the focus in my investigation, not always but mainly, really – and media are basically the tool to, that accompany my trip to… I travel during this research, which is of course like most of the time a street that you don’t exactly know in advance where you’re going to lead you and any of the time has many ramifications.
YS: And why did you agree to come to FCP?
JJ: Well I have to say that I don’t know much before coming, besides what I received from Ong Keng Sen, and what I found online, meaning that I knew what you have been done in the past, but I didn’t know almost anything about what I’m supposed to expect here. In fact, like many other participants I only got to know the names of other participants when I arrived. And I took this as a very positive aspect actually, ‘cos you don’t really prefigure before coming with whom you’re going to work, what you’re going to do, and when you come to meet people from other places, people you’ve never met, and you start basically from scratch.
Basically I heard first about TheatreWorks and Fying Circus when Keng Sen via e-mail, because I met Keng Sen in another frame, in the frame of the ECF, European Cultural Foundation and so on. And if I remember correctly, back then he didn’t tell me much, and Tay Tong was also there. And by exchanging some mails, so on this idea of coming to Cambodia took more and more consistency, and I accepted it because I thought it was really great.
YS: And how has FCP been for you so far?
JJ: Ya, so far because it’s not ended I think, we still have few days in singapore, it’s generally positive. Because it’s been really rhizomatic, I would say. the exchange, the process, the interaction between people, it has been really rhizomatic. From talking and making deeper, to know deeper persons or other artists that you meet, that you have been met in other festivals, getting to know people from Europe, Northern Africa, Southern Africa and so on in other countries that you never met before, but you kind of share a language like that (quote fingers) right, and in a reality that is completely new to me. And here I’m talking about the Cambodian reality, and of course Singapore, but I think that Cambodia was really like, gives well the sense of the extremes. so basically yes, if you Want to say in a word it was really a kind of rhizomatic exchange.
YS: How was your Interaction with the Cambodian participants?
JJ: Then well, the interaction with them, we decided to, as you know present our work first and then to let them coming to us and we were also look for synapses, but we left the process very coming out by itself in a way because the work we intended to do was really on the personal level because it’s a work about name, so we wanted to you know, the whole aspect was about discussing around this issue. Which goes of course much further than the administrative issue of changing a name, it has to do with the perspection of identity and the link, affective and emotional link that you have or don’t have with your name. So we have been doing quite some conceptual work. But of course we got a lot also from them, so the exchange also happens by collecting interviews and talking and so on. We really got a really tiny facet of this diamond in a way. We really have been able to collect very precious stories, information, points of view and so on, meanings.
YS: What about your general impressions of Cambodia?
JJ: The impression of Cambodia is… I have to say first that of course it was so short, but it was a place of huge contradictions and social differences. And of course, long traditions and history and culture that’s simply amazing. Nothing that I didn’t know. Of course now I have a chance to see as well. Of course I knew that I was coming to a place that was so rich, so I let myself experience as much as possible in terms of everything: smells, culinary, cows… to the second half, which was more of a paradise kind of style: temples, spirituality of religion and so on. I really try to live every second of this experience by joining the group, going a little bit by myself, really discovering different areas of the city from the most touristic one to Phnom Penh, because I went only once, because I really didn’t want the touristic experience, to getting lost with tuk-tuk till I don’t know where we are.
But most interesting of all was the interaction with local people, not just Amrita or Bhopana students but really like workers on the street, at the hotel, wherever.
YS: Could you tell me about one of the works that you’re proud of?
JJ: Well, one of the artworks I’ve been working intensively at for the last three years is the platform "React". I show you later how to write it. That shows how reconstruction and re-reports of either relevant historical facts or relevant cultural events and it was a platform within which we, Aksioma, produced 10 different art projects – few were mine, but few were of invited artists. Once again I collaborated with the other Janez Jansa within this platform, and we did other Janez Jansa project within this project. But other artists were involved from other parts of the world, and this was resulting in the publication of a book. We collaborated with artists, philosophers and so on, and it was published, and it turned out to be a group exhibition that travelled to Buchrarest, Ljubljana and Rigeka. And this was a very very important and intense project to me, because I was acting in this project as on the level of being a presenter and producer and designing the exhibition and making this exhibition travel, and a level of publishing and so on so. It was a lot experience, as you can see. There’s quite some stuff online, you can paste there the URL which I’m going to give to you and the platform. Now it’s going to the presentation and also the production. We have on schedule a couple of exhibition and then a couple of exhibition of what we did still next year in 2010, and then we assemble a second part of React platform.
(Note: this interview actually took place in Jan 2010, and has been back-dated for the sake of tidiness on the blog)
Ng Yi-Sheng