Performance des Tanzstückes “Fields”, uraufgeführt im Brut Wien / Beursschouwburg Brüssel und gemeinsam mit Franziska Aigner und Sirah Foighel Brutmann im Rahmen von 5 artistic residencies in Antwerpen, Brüssel, Kortrijk, Malmö und Wien entwickelt. (Poster von Astrid K. Wagner)
Something approaches us.
by Carola Platzek
(translation of Critique from CORPUSWEB)
Together with dancer and performer Sirah Foighel Brutmann and visual artist Mathias Windelberg, Franziska Aigner dedicated herself to the similarities of geology and choreography.
The darkish, grey dancefloor doesn´t only rest heavily on the entire flatness of the stage, it also casts folds that collect in tiny mountains, collapse again but steadily proceed towards the audience´s tribune.
An approaching wave, creating undetermined uncanniness. First, with curious empathy, you try to neutralize one´s own shock: How, physically, without being a metaphor, can this work? Do people lie underneath, sweating, grasping for air, to make us perceive, or is all this achieved by a machine?
Well, three performers deliver this experience. And what is it you first think about? Since the evolvement of humanities, as a centered but fragmented subject, it is, of course, oneself. Even folds themselves take their respective freedom. Being unstoppable, their appearence can neither be estimated nor explained. Almost strange, how in philosophy, the gap, distorsion or deviation received it´s coordinates within a closed cartographic system of subjective troubles and incoherences.
All these thoughts make you drift away, but they don´t put any force back onto the process. The constantly changing thingmoves towards the audience. It affects us, like nature does. A short feeling of exposed helplessness sets in as you imagine the thing as natural force, and as you dwell within this fantasy, how thin the film of living on the surface of the earth is.
History of a landscape
Also human impatience, our again and again impressing ignorance, the mystery of mankind adapting to external conditions, we, swiftly bending the definitions of normality to be able to survive become topic of the piece. One sits there, watches the developing catastrophy and since it seems to take a pretty little while until it arrives, you could easily smoke a cigarette or hang the laundry. Who cares about that spectacle. Most likely one will be there when it´s about to happen.
The second part of the performance, announced by a brief clash of sound, reminds one of questioning session, a lesson, a childrens game. Aigner and Brutmann face the audience. Sitting on two chairs they recount and complete a story of a landscape. There is a meadow, green, a little wet, framed by dry bushes. On the right hand a river, on the other side a sand back, behind a forrest and so on. Wind blows, colours, smells and taste of the elements are being described. More and more qualities the narration in English language, again and again the new state is being repeated, like in a childrens game which receives its sentences by a new word added at each time, only that this time it is not a random process. The guided tale, refering to the power of imagination, feels utterly adjuring.
In fact, the entire hour was about: conception, and rememberance to this maybe greatest and most human form of imagination meaning accuracy and freedom at the same time.
