(DIS)REMEMBERING
art project by Fenia Kotsopoulou
Artistic residency at Performance Art Forum - St. Ermes (France)
25th of August- 10th of September.
(For more information about the PAF please visit this link: http://www.pa-f.net)
“Autobiography is the product of various factors- real experiences, together with things heard, seen, read, narrated, invented. Fact and fiction are inextricably woven together.”
(Barbara Steiner , Autobiography, 2004
Remembering or Disremembering?
Depiction of something that really happened or symbolic codification of spare parts of events?
Memories of a (recent) past or a distortion of a truth?
Looking back over time or living the present moment?
Desire for a truth?
A way to create stories about ourselves?
…
a sort of autobiography,
a sort of a self portrait in process,
a sort of conglomerated visual traces of a confrontation,
a sort of diary where fiction and reality, Real and Imaginary are blended
and a bunch of pixels as a digital letter to my father.
To read the BLOG of the process please click on the image
ANTEWORTA
104 Short questions - 104 Short answers (without second thought) before residency.
§1
What subjects are you really interested in?
Construction and deconstruction of Self -Identity
§2
Why is it interesting for you to occupy yourself with that?
Through the process of construction and deconstruction of an object you understand its architecture, its structure, its function, its compessity. It is a game of creation and distruction that can lead you to discover new things, new possibilities, new forms. A kind of game that I want to play in the realm of my Identity driven by the conscious illusion that I will undestand and find my real Self. It´s interesting because my Self is interesting. My Self is interesting
because it is (un)known.
“What he (D.Rumsfeld) forgot to add was the crucial fourth term: the “unknown knows”, things we don´t know that we know”. Zizek
§3
Why is it interesting for you to work with this medium?
Because it challenges my physical and psycological limits.
Because it´s about me and at the same time it´s not just about me.
§4
What have your performances to with you?
It´s about me.
It´s about me that is not me.
It´s not about me.
§5
Do you have an opinion or point of view on the subject
I start in agreement with the theory that our identity is basically constructed by an anonymous meccanism that governs and decides, the big Other. How can we rid of the big Other?The answer probably is
disappointing: We cannot.
However, I believe that we do need the “enemy”, we do need the big Other.
The big Other- without knowing- can nourish our creativity and fantasy, coltivate our revolution against ourselves lead us closer to our real selves.
Inspire our metamorphosis.
§6
What is your attitude towards your medium?
Not being satisfied.
Not being frustrated that I am not satisfied.
It is a game.
§7
What is your specific input in your performance?
The process becomes the most important thing.
The performance is already happening this moment while I am
writing.
The performance is the process of a constant transformation
During this process different tools and mediums are used, information are getting mixed and from that fusion something
else comes out. Is it going to be Me?
This excites me.
§8
Are you provocative in your work?
I believe that my work can have a strong emotional impact but is not provocative enough for myself.
Something to work on but with attention cause I donnot care to be
provocative just for the shake to be.
... and it´s easy to fall in this trap. Probably this is one of my fears: failing to provoke by being provocative.
Provocation has sense when it makes the other to think differently.
§9
Are you making a comment?
Up to now I haven´t seen my work as making a comment .
Maybe from outside the result could seem like a comment of the topic but
my intention is not to.
§10
Are you expressing feelings?
Yes.
§11
What is your position as an artist in your work?
Total Dedication.
§ 12
Do you think people can learn something from you?
We constantly have the chance to learn from each other.
§13
Why are you not a teacher?
Because w hat I Know is less than what I don't.
§14
Do you like to work with symbols and metaphors?
Yes, I do like symbols and metaphors.
They translate in an interesting, indirect, cryptic, mysterious, creative way your fantasy, your thoughts, your emotions and feelings.
§15
Are you interested in psychoanalysis?
Yes, I am interested in psychoanalysis as a source of questions,information,interpretation and inspiration
regarding the unknown and mysterious field of psyche.
It offers different points of view and open doors for a deeper understanding or...confusion.
§16
What makes you want to use it in your work?
More than useful tool it can be inspiring source of information. The nature of my recent work and its relation with the Self and the construction of identity requests the involvement with the field of psychoanalysis.
Also, the lacanian theory through Zizek´s analysis, often discussions with an artist friend about Jung, reading concerning Bionergetic of Alexander Lowen intrigued me and drawn my attention since long time. And what is interesting for me in theory I want to see it applied in my practice.
§17
Are you interested in politics and economics?
The last year it came up a kind of “need” to make work that it has a connection with politics and economics. Probably
because of the current political and economical situation of Greece as well of the famous “crisis” that influences (in)direct the life of everyone, several questions have emerged:
What am I doing for what is happening around me?
What can I do through my practice?
How can I do it?
What does mean to make art that is engaged with politics?
The frustration comes when I think that I don´t have the basis to give a voice to my work that is related to
politics without to be political. What do you need in order to achieve that?
§18
Why have you not become a journalist?
I am not good on writing. I have too much dispersive and chaotic way of thinking and expressing myself for being journalist.
§19
What is the relationship between your political interests and your interests in theatre?
When I started being more interested to politics, my theatrical pursuit was already
reduced.
§20
Is there a project that you have been eager to realize for a long time now?
There is much more than one project.
One that comes to mind first this moment is the experimental reconstruction of Rebetiko as a drag kings show.
§21
Where do you get your ideas?
Everything, as part of the daily life, is a potencial source that can generate an idea.
My body.
Human interrelations.
Past.
Present.
The neighbor.
The big Other.
Other artists.
Nature.
Accidents and mistakes.
Images...
And the list is big.
§22
How do you judge the viability of your ideas?
There are ideas that stays “there” inside me for longer time, they grow like babies and then they scream to come out.
There are the right moment, the right place, the right conditions and I am sure that it will be then that the idea will come into the light and will take a shape. I have just to be ready and open.
§23
Is your idea one that you would want to spend a year or more
There is an idea thatonI?would like to be a life project.
I had the experience to work in a project for more than one year. It was very difficult,
challenging and hard sometimes. But it was the most fruitful and richful experience I had the last years. An idea/project in which you spend long Time, gives you access in other pathways of creativity and can lead your research and exploration in more depth.
§24
What does this idea have to do with you?
Always has a relation to me or to my feelings/thoughts about something.
The idea comes out from my body and my mind.
How can be separated the idea from its generator?
§25
How does this idea become workable?
The available space, the right timing and the people involved are combined in such a
way that is created the right ground for the idea to become workable
§26
Who looks over your shoulder when you are at work?
The big Other.
Who is caring from the surrounding.
Collaborators. My “monkeys”
(the emotional one and the rational one)
§27
How do you start a new project – from a tabula rasa?
I improvise in front of a camera, usually without a specific score or a structure. I just elaborate the frame in which the action will occur and I put a “custum”.May I have some keyword in my mind some times but generally I prefere to be guided from the
moment. And then the play in front of the camera starts.
Or I discuss a lot with a friend about a topic that interests me in that moment and I start (alone or with him/her)creating images (still or moving) that in a second phase I will elaborate and analyse. Then the idea will become more clear and the real research will start.
§28
Do you create a space for thinking within the work process?
Yes..and sometimes more than it is necessary.
§29
How do you organize the elements of your work, your ideas, your media, your criteria, the technology?
There are times that I keep some notes (diary) regarding reflections, further thoughts, ideas and feedback.But mainly everything is on my computer in form of video and photography.
Althought in general I am more chaotic than organized. I would like to change it but not too much. I like also the fact that there is chaos and confusion. And somehow there is another kind of order in the chaos I create with ideas, media etc
§30
Imagine you are a painter: what is your attitude towards the canvas?
I look at the canvas I take the color and
SPLASHHHHHHHHHHHH......
§31
Imagine you are a painter: what do and don’t you want to have on the canvas?
YES: a lot of colors, photos, broken glasses No: perfect shapes and clear lines
§32
How can you realize what is in your head?
When I see it as an image.
When I speak about what there is this container called: my head.
§33
How do you construct a performance?
By doing it. The real performance is the process of making and it´s constructed
instant by instant based on the decisions I make.
§34
Do you choose one solution or do you explore several possibilities?
Sometimes I choose the solution
after exporing several
possibilities.
Except of the moment that I have to take a quick decision fo
action (like in a improvisation-based
performance).
The I choose one of the
possibilities.
§35
What part does the audience play in your performance?
Witnessing Partecipating Influencing Sharing
§36
Do you want something to happen between the audience and the performance?
Anyway I believe that always is happening something between the audience and the performance. It is
moment of exchange: a process of giving and receiving between the performer and the spectator/participator that influences the performance itself; also when it is not obvious.
§37
What do you expect of the audience?
Nothing=Everything
§38
How do you feel about communicating with your audience?
Like in a relationship.
The comunication can work or not.
Both we will feel it.
§39
What do you want to communicate with your audience?
The unknows and the knows
§40
Do you want to give something to the audience?
No.
The audience is responsible to take or not what it will be offered in the space and time we share during the performance. And it can be that it takes something that I never intented to give.
Therefore there is no need wanting to give something specific but more to create a situation where the audience has the opportunity to make a decision of taking or not and what is that.
§41
Do you think it important to know what the audience thinks about you?
About me as an artist? As a person?
Well... Of course the positive opinion of the audience nourishes my self confidence, satisfies my narcissistic aspect, and it can be
encouraging.
A negative opinion can cause moments of frustration or indifference but anyway you learn how to deal the rejection.
Is it important? I don`t think so.
If it happens the audience to express their opinion and critic, it is welcomed.
It changes is if in the audience are beloved people and friends. What they think has another weight compared to unknown people.
§42
And about your work?
Yes.
§43
Do you think it important that the audience believe you?
No.
I don´t see the artist as God, otherwise s/he wouldn`t exist.
They are responsible to decide if they are going to believe me, what they decide and want to believe, why and for how long.
§44
Does the audience have to exert itself with your work?
It`s not an exam.
It is a performance.
§45
Do you want them to?
If I want to be honest to myself, I would like them to.
§46
Is it important that the audience discovers the link between the performance and your idea that lie behind it?
No, because probably it would mean that the performance is too descriptive or a comment.
It would be more interesting for me the very different and multiple interpetations from audience´s site. This mean that the performance woke up the critical mind and the imagination of the viewer.
§47
Do you think your inner world is interesting for the audience?
I think that the viewer tends to “empathize” and identify itself with the performer. But this has nothing to do with the inner world of the performer. When the viewer finds interesting the inner world of the performer, it happens to project his own feelings/emotions/experiences/desires to the subject of the perfomance. In that way, through this identification occurs a certain annihilation of the performer.
The most of the times,we find interesting what can remind us ourselves and our emotional situation with the hope that we could find a solution or a catharsis through the other who act in our place on stage.
PHOTO DURING P.A.F RESIDENCY
§48
Do you want the audience to have an emotional experience
I want them to be aware of the experience they are doing and the emotions that are emerged from
this experience.
§49
Do you want the audience to start thinking about your subject or take a position on it? Why?
Yes , the aim of the performance is to make the audience think about the identity, how is constructed and how/of can be
transformed voluntary.
I believe that the question that arises is “Who am I? And who I would be if I was not me?”. I consider that is not only an individual and personal question but also a collective one.
I believe that through the self exploration and reflection is more possible to arrive to a deeper understanding of your
envirronment.
Start thinking opens the possibility of a dialogue and I think that art´s intention is also to create the ground for exhange and
dialogue.
§50
Is to “realize” something for the audience the same as to “experience” something?
I see the “experience” as the pressuposition that can lead to
the “realization”.
§51
Do you set out to let the audience identify with the people in your performance? Or with your problems?
I set out or not, I believe that, in a work where the autobiographical or personal element is present, usually the audience tends or is looking to identify with the performers or with the situation that the performance creates.
§52
What reaction from the audience would displease you?
The indiffence is a sign of failure.
§53
Is the audience informed about your subject before they enter the performance space?
No
§54
What is the aim of this piece?
To create a sharing ground and space for: Experimentation
Thoughts in personal and collective level Laughter
Crying Confusion
Doubts about personal ethics
§55
How do you propose to achieve that aim?
Daring Failing Changing Challenging
§56
When openness is your aim, how then do you measure whether your piece is open enough?
When it challenges enough the idea of Self and of phycho-physical limits. When it brings myself and the
audience in an unconfortable space where taboos, assumptions, preconceptions are falling apart and as a result doors for something new and different are opening.
§57
How many objectives can you achieve with one piece?
Within and through a piece you can achieve more than one objectives that you realize during and after the process of making. In
personal, collective and artistic level.
§58
Can you achieve your objectives with the media you have chosen to employ?
The media I have chosen are the Body, Video, Photography, Text, Sound. But you can never be completely sure about their efficacy and about the unpredictable surprises.You cannot rely completely to any media for the achievement
of your objectives (especially concernign technology). So it is necessary to find a way to adapt yourself and use the limitations of the media as an opportunity to be more creative, flexible and inventive.
§59
Do you use material that is close to you and that which is distant?
I want to use material that is close to me and from there to explore and find more and
more material that is distant to me or even very far away of what I think as familiar and knowing.
§60
How do you propose to achieve that aim?
Challenging Failing Accepting Experimenting Daring Risking
§61
Are you reconstructing a situation in order to underline something?
Might be a strategy during the process of observing, making and experimenting. But
aftewards it has to be destroyed and emerged a new situation.
§62
Are you looking for a framework?
A framework is building up slowly slowly during the process. I am looking for a
framework that afterwards I can change and overturn.
§63
Do you want to limit or define your ideas?
I want to limit my ideas in order to create more space for new things to come out otherwise there is a big risk to get lost.
Although I believe that whe you are lost, you are an unconfortable place where you have more possibilities to find yourself and new truths. In order to find the way/exit you need to get lost.
But this can happen even within only one idea.
§64
Is your work open or closed?
Doors will be opened Doors will be closed
§65
Is your performance a statement?
An ephemeral statement like the performance.
§66
At the level of content or form or both
Of both
§67
What was your last performance about?
One to one performance About intimacy exposure and manipulation of emotions.
§68
Is there a connection between you last piece and this new one?
The exposure of self.
Emotions.
And now there is the thought about the new piece to become one to one performance in
order to play with the intimacy between performer and audience (?)...hmmm
§69
What is your next project about?
Construction and deconstruction of Identity.
Self and Others.
Real and virtual transformation and “hybridization”.
Hetero-biography converted to Self-biography.
Intimacy and one to one performance(?)
§70
How does ‘content’ become theatre?
According to Badiou the theatre the act of naming and the body of the theatre is caught up in imitation, seized by the roles. I think that content becomes theatre when it takes the form of imitation and re-presentation of the “reality” with the aim to
educate or comment.
§71
Do content and form coincide in your work?
I think there is a link.
I see the content as the cause and the form as the
manifested effect.
§72
Can one separate content and form?
No.
Thus, it would be interesting to try separare them. Anyway it is a game.
§73
Can one separate the ‘what’ from the ‘how’?
I think that the “what” generates a “how” and the “how” generates a new “what”...it is
more about a circular than a linear relation where these two elements cannot really separate from each other.
§74
What comes first, content or form?
The egg or the chicken?
The question is important. The answer is irrelevant.
§75
Can form be presented as content.
The content can be presented as content.
The content can be presented as form.
The form can be presented as form.
The form can be presented as content.
Which the fifth approach?
§76
Do you want it to be?
Yes, if it leads to new possibilities of exploration and
interpretation.
§77
Can content direct you towards form?
Once the content it is externalized and defined simultaneously it takes a form.
§78
Is there a connection or a dissonance between the form and content of what you create?
There is a connection. The difference lies on how perceptible or not, superficial or deep, visible or
not, relevant or irrelevant it is.
$79
Do you think that aesthetics are a form of manipulation?
Yes. I believe that aesthetics is socially and culturally contstructed and has the power to
manipulate emotions and to influence the way of perceiving yourself and the others.
§80
Have you ever considered leaving out any and all suggestion, illusion and reference?
No.
I have considered to use them.
§81
What is specific about theatre for you?
Mimesis and representation.
§82
How specific is the medium of theatre used in your piece?
What do you mean by theatre and theatricality?
Probably there is the risk to fall in a theatrical attitude especially during the phase of the exploration and maybe there are going to be traces of that influence. Although I want to avoid to be theatrical.
At my opinion theater illudes a connection with the real and the reality.
Theatre is structured space where an action takes place.
Theatre wants to educate. I don´t. Theatre wants to convince. I don´t.
Theatre wants to propose a solution. I don´t.
Its closer to the symbolic order than to Imaginary
Theatricality is an attitude on stage used to hide the Real behind the mimesis, excessive expression and description.
§83
Do you accept certain principles specific to theatre such as beginning,end, time-line, and the shared space of performers and audience?
Accept that these principles can be found in different artistic expression, approaches, ramifications. However varies the
way that a piece deals with these elements. Space, Time, Relations are basic factors of eache action but they can be perceived and manifested differently.
§84
Is theatre the right medium, as far as credibility and identification are concerned?
Isn´t not because doesn´t exist a right or
wrong medium
§85
Where do you think illusion works best, in theatre or in film?
The illusion can work best in Television, the best capitalistic tool at the hands of the big Other.
Generally it dipends on the spectator and how easy or hard you can fool him.
§86
Is theatre a medium suitable for education people?
Dipends what we consider efficient education.
The theatre has an educative role defined through the
human history.
§87
Are you eager to do something new in the theatre?
No. Anyway, each time I create something is new by defenition in a process of recycling.
§88
Is this the only way for to make theatre or are there others?
There is only one.
But isn´t yet discovered.
§89
How do you translate a subject into a dance performance?
By distorting the information, using the limitations, mixing the stimuli that the subject offers to me
§ 90
According to you, what is dance?
Dance is an unspoken language
A language that you already speak.
Dance is something that stops to exist from the moment you try to define it, to give to it a shape, to determine its aesthetics and the meaning that has to transmit. The dance is what we don´t know to know.
§91
Does your choreography say what you want it to say?
In order to be succesful, it shouldn´t say what I want to say
§92
Why do you choose this art form to say what you have to say?
Because through this art I have more possibilities to discover which is the proper “art” for me in order
to say what I have to say.
§93
Do you use the medium in a way that is not possible with another medium?
The last year fortunately I don´t.
£94
How do you arrive at your selection of artistic media, such as video and music?
The most of the times by intuition, quick decision without deep thought.
And it seems to work better than calculating with precision the parametres of my choices.
§95
What is the performance about?
Everything we do is about us...and then in connection to..
It would be an hypocrisis to claim that is about others or about
something else out of me.
It s always first about me.
About me and...me Me and You
Me and the Other Me and space Me and time
Me and history Me and...
§96
What statement do you want to make with this performance?
I can be whoever I want to be but never who I really am.
§97
Where lies the essence of the piece for you?
In the risk of transformation
§98
Is it a conventional or unconventional piece?
The task is to be unconventional for my standards because it would indicate that I
have taken risks
§99
Is it a dance project, a theatre project or a plastic arts project?
Why?
It is a fusion project.
An hybrid project
A project with different faces.
Because Identity has more that one aspects.
§100
Is there a political aspect to the piece?
The personal Identity is in relation to the collective Identity. Therefore, I believe that
the piece will have an indirect political aspect.
§101
What is the story behind the piece?
Once upon a time a young woman decides to leave from her island because her husband is killed when a mine
blows up under his feet. She decides to go to the capital city and to work as a nurse. There, she meet another man and they get married. They bring in life two children: a boy and a girl.
End of the story. (The young woman was my grandmother)
The real story will start when the piece will be over.
§102
Why do you wish to this?
Because it´s the right moment to wish to this and the right place to start explore, investigate and experiment about it.
§103
And why exactly this way?
Because it is the only way.
§104
Why is this performance interesting to watch, to listen to, or experience?
Because it is about me and you
And I am such arrogant to believe that you find yourself interesting to watch, to listen to
and to experience