March 18th, 2008: Robyn Orlin – Dressed to kill… killed to dress…
@théatre de la ville
OK, third strike, I’m out. I give up on trying to get her work. I did like the first one I saw, but since then I have seen a wall rise higher each time. I could blame it on been stuck in the middle of the front row, but even though it didn’t help, I can only blame myself for being that dense. It was both too obvious and literal, and too familiar. She has a system in place and sticks to it. Even the most elaborate dance sequence — performed by a guy in a wife-beater during a parade of sharp dressed people — was painfully ironic; of course that was intentional, but it was so predictable. Each time I thought I could get in, through dance, music or the videos in the background, I was defeated by that heavy handedness. I don’t think there would be any point in writing down my memories of this show, knowing full well I just whiffed and completely missed the point.
March 17th, 2008: Rafael Anton Irisarri / Greg Haines
@instants chavirés
Greg Haines opened and I really liked his performance, which was comprised of two long pieces and a short encore. No surprise there, as his music features a lot of loops and layering of short phrases, and I’m a certified sucker for these. He used a cello most of the time, but there was also some small metallophone he put to great use at the start of his set by playing it with a bow. I liked the first part better than the others, not just because of this but also because there was some impressive progression in the overall depth of the sound without any letting down in the control of it all, while not preventing some more contemplative parts. The second piece was tamer in comparison, or rather less interesting, maybe because of a more conventional use of his instruments. The encore was a short one featuring some percussive use of the cello through some tapping and the use of mallets. Nice in an unpretentious and light-hearted way.
After that Rafael Anton Irisarri was a bit of a letdown. The blurry images didn’t help — way too obvious for this music. It was not bad, but so conventional after that opening performance, dreamy music with an overdose of reverb. But I think the real cause of my disappointment was that I failed to get what the live performance brought to this music. To me it’s much better suited to be a soundtrack to some long walk in cold weather. Maybe I would have found something in there had I known more about it before. But Greg Haines was a tough act to follow, he just set the bar too high.
March 17th, 2008: Angie Eng & David Linton – Longue durée
@maison populaire, Montreuil
That video I saw on Saturday had me looking for more information about the guilty parties, and I found out that they had another work on display in Montreuil until Friday. So I left work early and went to check it out. That proved a good move, I just loved that one and just sat there taking it all in for maybe 40′ or so.
It looked pretty simple: a couple of clear balls on a slowly rotating plate, one slightly bigger than the other at maybe a couple of inches wide. I guess the surface was not regular, as one ball would sometimes slide and oscillate. There seemed to be a few colored lights in the base of the rotating plate. A video camera was placed a few inches from the balls and the image was projected on the walls on three separate panes. One just displayed the moving balls, the other two featured a superimposed shooting of a round fountain with people walking around it, but in negative in yellow/green.
After a while I could make out what looked like clouds framed in a window as well, inside the balls, even on the pane where I had only seen the balls at first. I spent most on my time there sitting behind the camera, which put five images in my field of vision, with the camera’s control screen the final set. I think the panes with the fountain had a slight time lapse, but I could only tell when one ball accelerated; even then I could not really be sure I saw it right, as I was pretty much into it by then. I kept seeing more details, some probably imagined, but I think I could make out a faint loop in that the balls reflected the projected images back into the camera. Or maybe I just got that impression by having spent too much time in there.
The whole thing was mesmerizing and eerily soothing, even displayed in the lobby of a cultural center with people working and passing through. I eventually snapped out of it but I’ll probably keep those sphere within me for a while; I won’t be surprised if I see them again in my dreams.
