Critical Correspondence

MR Festival 2008: Transversality Lab: An Austrian/NYC Exchange by Lana Wilson

by Lana Wilson
MR Festival Spring 2008: Somewhere Out There

The three performances I saw yesterday as part of Transversality Lab (an arts exchange between five artists from Austria and five from New York) all had one thing in common—debris.

In yet another sign that the boundaries between contemporary dance and visual art are growing ever thinner, if there had been a live program accompanying The New Museum’s recent Unmonumental exhibition (which, unfortunately, there was not), all three of these pieces might have starred in it. Collages of found materials, sculptures made from garbage, and the reworking of modest, everyday objects into art were all defining characteristics of the work in Unmonumental. But while that show felt almost too clearly defined, resulting in a somewhat monotonous aesthetic experience for the viewer wandering through, some of the performances in Transversatility Lab put these same elements to much more interesting use.

In (%), by Austrian collective Eagle Ager, a swarm of dancers (some of them in homemade felt-and-foil animal costumes) played musical instruments on blankets, casually fiddled with bundles of sticks and other props, crawled under and on top of the audience’s seats, and performed group activities that were reminiscent of creative movement exercises for six-year-olds, yet oddly satisfying to watch. Hungarian choreographer Akos Hargitay presented Company 2 in 1, a monologue/performance that began with him taping cardboard signs reading, “Low Tech Body” to the back of the space, and then moved into a rambling talk—complete with hastily constructed, illustrative props –about his efforts to come to New York and his relationship to dance technique (which was mostly discussed with his pants around his ankles). His homage to Jerome Bel’s fabulous Shirtology (1997) didn’t quite work, but a closing tribute to Eiko & Koma (“Flowers are growing out of your chest…it is beautiful…enjoy”), complete with a slow stagger out the back exit, was more successful.

Best of all was the performance by New York group Lower Lights Collective. Arturo Vidich started performing while the three other group members were still setting up—or, looking at it another way, the group performance began with this careful preparation of objects. Wearing a hilarious, oversized stuffed dog head rigged with a video camera projecting the head’s point-of-view onto a small screen for the audience to see, Vidich rode a tiny tricycle around the space, repeating in a Bullwinkle-esque voice, “I wish I had a way to get away from you.” Meanwhile, sound artists Matt Bauder and Dan St. Clair sat in the back corner, both wearing elbow-length rubber gloves, producing noises by manipulating a saxophone and a laptop computer, respectively. As Vidich’s dog went through a series of actions wryly suggesting his canine insecurity (putting on a blond wig and then hopefully looking at himself in a gilded hand mirror, covertly flipping through a book about sexuality), Aki Sasamoto climbed onto a table and began using specially constructed sandals with knife blades on the bottom to turn peeled lemons into lemonade; she then flipped the tabletop sideways, transforming it into a chalkboard that she furiously scribbled on while delivering an off-kilter lecture on social stratification to the audience.

Strangely, all of these disparate actions balanced one another, creating an overall image of objects littered across the space while also constantly re-shifting the audience’s attention to focus on different pieces of it. In some way, each of the performers was dealing with physical devices for distancing—the musicians handling instruments with rubber gloves, Vidich’s dog revealing his perspective through an indirect video feed, Sasamoto attempting simple tasks like squeezing lemons using the most complicated means possible. This awkwardness and difficulty—itself the partial subject of Sasamoto’s lecture about “odds” versus “the norm”—built gradually, until Vidich collapsed after slowly choking himself against a video cable. Our attention was suddenly shifted to Sasamoto, standing vacantly, swinging a long string with wire whisk attached to the end around in circles, gradually whipping up speed. The only sounds remaining were the air passing through the whisk and St. Clair’s laptop, producing high-pitched electronic sounds resembling birds singing in the morning. It was deeply unsettling. Who ever knew objects could be so menacing?