by Julie Rodeyns
Review of 'or else nobody will know', Kaaitheaterstudios 19 October 2007
With her latest performance ‘or else nobody will know’ the Norwegian, Brussels-based choreographer Mette Edvardsen fires her artillery on the audience’s (lack of) involvement.
It is always easy to formulate your opinion on a performance you have just seen. If you think it was unsatisfactory, then it must be the choreographer’s fault, or the director’s or even the performers’, right? But love always requires commitment from both sides. And in theatre, it’s exactly the same. The appreciation of a theatre experience depends just as much on the spectator’s own watching behaviour, as Edvardsen smartly shows. She makes the spectator face the drag of his own vision.
It is a bromide that every art student is confronted with sooner or later: watching is something you have to learn. It is a bizarre statement, especially in today’s society, where everything is visual. Precisely to avoid drowning in visual saturation, watching is still and maybe in the first place a matter of organising all that visual information. Those things that are not important are not ‘seen’. In other words, blind spots.
In theatre the most commonly used system that steers (and obfuscates) our way of watching, is the narrative system. Characters, stage-props, the text, etc. are used in the story. This is how tradition has taught us.
A “work-out” for the eyes
Although the opening scene is slightly anecdotic, this kind of watching strategy doesn’t help you much in Edvardsen’s work. The actions of the man behind the desk and the four characters drawing a secure track with a concentrated look on their faces are too ‘meaningless’. The picture cannot really be called a story. Besides, Edvardsen is precisely interested in ‘presence per se’, in elements without a structure or narrative meaning. But how can you reach your audience this way?
In fact ‘or else nobody will know’ is like a work-out, training the audience’s eyes in flexibility and sensorial curiosity. Time after time the same, short sequence is consequently repeated. There is no room for coincidence. E.g. the glasses under the table did not fall from the performer’s nose, but instead he carefully laid them there. Although everything is clearly articulated and there are not that many things happening simultaneously, the spectator is painfully forced to admit that even after countless repetitions, he still does not get the picture. Where does that red ballpoint pen suddenly come from? Where did those bags go again? Didn’t the phone ring earlier the first time? The growing conscience of how little you actually perceive is the engine that sharpens your attention throughout ‘or else nobody will know’.
Edvardsen may present her conceptual exercise in a dry way, but it is a refreshing class. This is also the strength of her performance. But the performance also suffers a little from the “Ikea-syndrome”: depending on the spectator’s enthusiasm to put his back hand to the work, you will find the performance either ingenious in all its simplicity or cheap because it is too easy.
Published in <H>art magazine, 8 Nov 2007, http://www.kunsthart.org/. Translated from Dutch by Taaladvisie.