Performance relay, oral transmission of poems
Alex Cecchetti, since 2012 (ongoing)
“Alex Cecchetti’s “relay performance” Summer Is Not the Prize of Winter, 2012, is a deeply satisfying meditation on the nature of existence and the capacity of language, image, and object to embody life’s most essential concerns. The Paris-based artist conducts this philosophical investigation through an interactive monologue with a group of participants in the gallery; one performance a day. Cecchetti began by conducting three performances, which established the work’s narrative arc, and then he handed the process over to local artists and writers. Each of the four successive performers shadows his or her predecessor to create continuity; all of them are entrusted with the task of remembering and transferring the same reflections and lines of inquiry.
The handmade and found objects lying around the room or propped against the walls accumulate as they are sited or created during each performance. These objects become anthropological artifacts of the temporary community catalyzed by Cecchetti’s engaging mind.
Cecchetti creates an environment of empathetic pathos and intimacy that values human connection.The arrangement of bodies in the room shifted constantly as Cecchetti’s poetic language enigmatically bound the participants and the objects together through ritualized forms of communication.”
— Stephanie Snyder on ARTFORUM Critics’ Picks
Here another beautiful article about what it means to experience the authentic oral transmission in “Summer Is Not The Prize Of Winter”
OREGON ARTSWATCH
TBA:12
(Time Based Art Portland 2012)
Multiple Cecchetti takes for multiple Cecchettis
By Graham W. Bell
Arnold Kemp turns away from the chalkboard, laughing: “Who the hell can tell this story?” Then turning back to the board, raising his chalk, he stops and shakes his head, chuckling again: “Who the hell can tell this story?”
It is a difficult for a writer to explain or describe Alex Cecchetti’s “Summer is Not the Prize of Winter” without becoming a performer, too. Each echo of the original performance by Cecchetti is changed slightly, is received differently, becomes as much about the person lecturing as it does the original script or score.
In each iteration, the performance changes yet adheres to the first set of movements, motions and object/narrative relationships set forth originally by the artist. A story unfolds in parts that may seem to be highly scripted or off-the-cuff. Breaks in the action afford the audience a time to start sussing out the situation, but then they’re back in the thick of it. Instead of the traditional audience/stage/performer relationship, an almost Brechtian realization of the space is at play.
You are aware of the stage because you are on the stage. But instead of a singular moment of connection, constant movement of the audience and storyteller make one continually aware of and engaged with the performance. There is no time to sit in one place and think about how your legs are going to sleep. Instead everyone migrates here and there, closer and farther, as the performer instructs and soliloquizes.
Entering the room, the performer places a box of objects on the ground. Then he or she personally greets each member of the audience. This initial connection is important. Drawing each person in and making an actual physical connection to them helps to initiate a mode of thought. One may think, “Here, they’ve taken the time to thank me for attending, the least I can do is give my full attention.” Following this, a series of actions and dialogues are carried out, each tangentially leading to the other. If one performance is witnessed, various associations are formed and an initial understanding is possible. It is only with a second (or third or fourth) viewing (even of the same performer) that you are made aware of discrepancies. Slight ripples in the narrative, mistakes, accidents, additions, subtractions: these all point to the time-based aspect of this piece. Cecchetti is not out to make a repeatable act. He wants each performer to consider the story, to act on the objects and directions, and to convey the performance through their own person to the gathered audience.
In the Visual Arts Salon, Cecchetti kept coming back to the idea of responsibility. It goes both ways. Asked about the audience interacting when they are not asked to, he brought up a portion of the piece where the performer lies down and talks about death. The artist explained that he had things to explain to the audience and their responsibility was to listen to these things and not be on the floor with him, pretending to be dead (because you can’t listen when you’re dead).
Asked what happens when someone changes an object (or if that is even allowed), he explained that things can change as long as the performers understands that they have a responsibility to tell the story in a way that makes sense to them. If they interpret it in one way and tell it as such (even if it is not in the way originally meant by the artist), they are being true to the score. Instead of memorizing exactly how to complete the piece, each actor/performer uses the objects as, in Cecchetti’s words, “elements of memory.” They are visual aids as much as they are the string tied around your finger to remind you to buy apples.
The objects are markers in time (“stop projecting yourself into the future!”). Without the story, they mean nothing. You can tell someone what happens, what the story is, but there needs to be the performative aspect to make each piece active. Going back to the room and looking at the things strewn about is a very different experience for someone who has seen the piece and someone who has read about it or has no idea. There is a moment in the performance (assuming you go after a couple have taken place) when you suddenly realize what all of the other objects represent. They are like chapter markers within a text. They establish a lineage that only makes sense when you see that lineage being added to.
“This is for later,” the performers say as they place a cup or saucer full of water on the floor, slightly spilling. You put it out of your mind, assuming it will be brought up again. It is not. Only upon further investigation of the space, after the story is over or on another iteration of the performance, do you realize that that ‘later’ is when you finally bring to bear the realization of what that cup of water represents. The ‘later’ is outside the performance, outside of the narrative, in your real life timeline, yet very much a part of the story.
The idea of a ‘relay performance’ is a novel one at first, but makes a lot of sense now that the piece has run its course. Each night’s acting was only a piece of the whole. One night alone is powerful, but not the complete work. The handing off of the responsibility from Cecchetti to Lisa Radon, Arnold Kemp, David Knowles and Sara Jaffe each time is an intangible but integral part of the puzzle. And the interstitial time between these handoffs and between the performances is integral, too. It is for reflection, for understanding, for connecting, for realizing.
There are apples, arrows, water dishes, people, imaginary lemons, rabbits, death, berries and rocks. Those are responsibilities.
NOTES
Remnants of Alex Cecchetti’s ‘Summer is Not the Prize of Winter’ are still on view at Washington High School through Saturday, September 29.
