At se en forestilling flere gange er et privilegium. Særligt en forestilling som WOWOWOW, hvis fokus på kollektivet efter andet gennemsyn giver mig mulighed for at reflektere over min egen forestilling om, hvad et kollektiv i og udenfor scenerummet er. En mellemliggende samtale med kunstnerne bag WOWOWOW, udvider mine tankebaner og transformerer oplevelsen af værket til en oplevelse af et kollektiv.
Første møde med WOWOWOW
Det scenekunstneriske formsprog forleder mig til at fokusere på kollektivet på scenen. Det rumlige set up. Dansernes bevægelser. Den dramaturgiske opbygning. Altsammen lokker mig hen i en allerede formuleret tilskuerposition, der er baseret på distance – på øjnene og den kognitive forståelse. En bladring i en bog, vi får ved forestillingens start, antyder andre mulige tilskuerpositioner og andre mulige kollektiver, og det skaber en forventning i mit indre vanedyr om publikumsinteraktion, som en scenisk metode til at udvide kollektivet mellem performer og tilskuer.
Så da en tilskuer i slutningen af værket tager sine sko af og indfrier min forventning om interaktion, bliver jeg både glad og forvirret. Det er som om en del af mig tilfredsstilles af overensstemmelsen mellem forslag, forventning og handling. Samtidig placeres en anden del af mig i limbo, for er dette tidspunktet, hvor jeg, vi, os træder ind på scenen og slutter os til kollektivet i en forløsende dans og hængen ud med performerne? Er det nu kollektivet mellem os konsolideres?
Tilskueren som er trådt ind på scenen danser virkelig godt. Og tanken om han mon er en “undercover” performer, som har siddet hele forestillingen blandt publikum og ventet på sit cue, strejfer mig. Er han en plantet katalysator for fællesskabet og “afhierarkiseringen” af forholdet mellem performer og publikum – mellem menneskene på scenen og menneskene omkring den. Jeg forsøger at aflæse performernes reaktioner, men svaret er ikke at finde i deres ansigtsudtryk. Så slutter forestilligen uden at indfri min forventning om en fælles kollektiv handling og uden at afsløre hvorvidt denne forventning kun var min egen.
Samtale med Quim Bigas og Fanclub – fortolket af Naja
The collective is multi-layered. They say.
I don’t have an interest in collectives, but I am interested in how we practice collectivity. So my interest has been focused on how we make collectiveness happen, rather than how we define collectivity. He said. Collectiveness can unfold in many possible ways and include many different subjectivities. It is important to me that the individual subjectivities are accepted and become a part of the collective. There are a lot of roles in the collective and they are constantly shifting and drifting. This multiplicity of roles – sometimes you need to be with them, to grow from them, to relate to them, to acknowledge them, to resist them or just to hold back. There is something nice about including the subjective self in the collective, not denying neither the subjectiveness nor the collectiveness, but interconnecting them with each other. Though there is one aspect that make things harder. We always meet each other on the halfway between the individual sense of oneself and the individual’s projected idea of the other.
She continued. There are collective processes and there are collectives. They keep influencing you and you keep influencing them. Everything keeps changing and adjusting, and the more you get to know each other, the more space is created for the individual process inside the collective process. To me this kind of collectivism is needed in society today. A collectiveness with space that allows the individual to be with questions of One’s Own, but where a fundamental openness towards other peoples questions exists at the same time. A collectiveness with a flexibility for the individuals to change One’s position and One’s perspectives on the questions and situations posed. Not that society should be a collective society, but it is a collaboration to exist in the world together. But to invite people into the collective is sometimes very smooth and sometimes very difficult. These questions keep coming back: How do a collective open itself up to someone else and how does this someone enter the collective? How do we coexist? What is collaboration? Collectives are blurry. It can be understood in a negative way, but to me blurry is a positive thing because collectives exist in a place of void or confusion that is constantly redefining. This redefinition and constant change shows that the collective is not an irrelevant collective, but that it actually matters.
We nod and she carries on. I was looking for a context or a frame that opens the possibility of different kinds of practices of collectivity. How do people find a sense of place in the collective and what kind of place is it? In our artistic search we trigger something on our way. We do not know what this something is, and actually it does not matter because it is an aspect of collaboration that we are not able to understand, because it is not about understanding. It is about opening up to another kind of sensitivity of being together in a multi-dimensional way. As an artistic practice WOWOWOW does not want to control what kind of artistic work it is, but it wants to be something and that process of trying to become something, without wanting to control is a fine line. Because suddenly you find yourself in the middle of the work, and you notice the gaze of an audience that is consuming the work and is communicating “give it to me” and you think to yourself “but it is here, isn’t it?”. This is where the picture from the book of the tumbler comes in. You are tumbling and cannot see the whole picture because you are a part of it.
They finish. Audience is an entity that shapes the work we do, and it is important to keep the separate roles between the performer and the audience. Although the audience might ask themselves “Am I involved in the work? Am I not involved? Am I part of the work? Am I not?”. The evening where an audience started dancing was not arranged as far as we know, but it was interesting how the dancing audience changed the situation because the remaining audience started to wonder if they too were invited to dance. But to question is to be in relation to what is happening around you, and the questions give you a sense of self and a sense of the situation you are in. And vice versa the audience gives us a very strong sense of the situation we are in, which makes us even more aware of the responsibility we as performers have for what we are doing inside of the collective. So we do not want to take the roles of the audience and the performers away, but explore what kind of agency you have inside these roles. In the space our relation to the audience is a sense of hanging out together while we observe and acknowledge the space and the situation. In the end you might look at the wall and then look at yourself and then look at the audience and then look at the plant and everything has equal relevance. The work somehow wishes to make everything kind of flat in order to create a multiplicity of possibilities inside of the collective.
Andet møde med WOWOWOW
Da jeg sætter mig ind til WOWOWOW for anden gang, er det ikke længere muligt at se kollektivet på scenen. Scenen er opløst og tilbage står alt som er tilstede i rummet i færd med at udføre kollektive handlinger i et her og nu.
Rummet i dag indeholder modstand. Danserne på scenen forhandler med sig selv, kollektivet og forestillingen, mens de udfører de sceniske handlinger. Forhandler måske med deres egen forventning om at skulle udfylde forestillingen eller med publikums forventning om lette kalorier. Publikum sidder på bænkene og betragter det, som foregår i midten af rummet. De er måske ikke medvidende om deres egne forventninger og forhandler måske med sig selv om koncentrationsevne eller med forståelse af kollektivets format.
Men hos mig her til aften træder kollektivet og de kollektive handlinger tydeligt frem. Det er som om jeg ikke ser forestillingen, men kun ser forsøg på kollektivitet. Nogle gange er det et samlet kollektiv, som da en baby i publikum gentagende gange udbryder babylyde, som bliver til en del af de sceniske handlinger. Andre gange er det et fragmenteret kollektiv, hvor vi allesammen forsøger at udfylde vores roller som performere og publikum, så godt vi kan.
WOWOWOW er for mig som at træde ind i en kollektivitet snarer end en forestilling. Det er et komplekst kollektiv, der ikke peger i én retning, men som ligger i lag og taler i munden på hinanden. Mit skrevne bidrag er et forsøg på at indgå i de kollektive situationer, jeg har oplevet i forbindelse med værket. Situationer som i dette skrivende øjeblik ikke eksisterer som andet end en erindring, men som vil genopstå igen og igen hver gang danserne, værket og publikum mødes i scenerummet eller på en café. For så igen at opløses i tid og rum.
Mit bidrag føles som en tæmning af værket og samtalen, jeg havde med kunstnerne bag WOWOWOW. Som om jeg forsøger at skabe sammenhæng. Og det gør jeg nok også, men kun i forventning om, at nogen vil sprede kollektivets mange lag igen og komme med sine betragtninger, så kollektivets uhåndgribelighed og kakofoni kan bestå.
As time passes, the individual subjects create new forms of collectives with different modes of communication and different modes of being in the space, each time they meet.