Einträge von Matchpoint

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It’s such an enormous thing to listen, isn’t it? How often are we in sped-up, hyper-expectant dialogues post, pre, or even during performances? Artistic processes bent into production deadlines. Artistic ‘exchanges’ that sound more like a collection of rehearsed speeches. We know there can be more than that.

On the last night of the Matchpoint exchange, Cat Ruka proposed that we set up mattresses in one of the studios of HAU 3, and engage in a kind of artistic overnight Hui - or formal Maori assembly. Some of the reasons for doing this were wanting to give more time for questions that had come up, and the desire to go deeper - or somewhere special - in this particular artistic exchange.

At any moment in the night anyone of us could stand up, move to the microphone that had been set up to the side of the beds, and speak anything that was on our mind. The mattresses were pieced together like a puzzle forming one large shape in the center of the room. The lights were turned off. People spoke, slept, listened, dozed, and dreamt until the morning.

“I think in some way I've always been pissed off at Australia” - Noha Ramadan, around 3am.
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I’m back in Australia for the first time in 2 years. Shortly after Matchpoint, I traveled from my home in Amsterdam, to my home in Sydney, via Cairo where my family is from. Matchpoint was described as an artistic cultural exchange between artists from the Europe and the Asia-Pacific regions, so I guess we were somehow meant to be representatives of our respective cultures. We had the expected post/neo-post/retro-post identity-politics discussions; the impossibilities of and disinterest in cultural framing, the apparent impossibility of avoiding it.

I felt like a fake. What did I think I was doing there? If cultural exchange implies the promise of both excavating and sharing difference, what could I dig up and bring to the table/studio that was specific and in any way related to where… I … am… from? Um? Anyway, the real Australian representative is Jane McKernan, not me, right? (She’s true blue, and even wore a Kangaroo suit on stage). Being from Australia. Am I? I don’t really know what that means. Shit!

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I'm back in Sydney, catching up on the local news. After reading up on 2 court cases over ‘false’ claims to Aboriginal identity, I am red-eyed with the hum and drone of identity politics, anti-discriminatory legislation, political correctness, conservatism, bad journalism and the biggest problem of all: I can’t pretend I don’t understand!

I am in Australia in a way I never am in the Netherlands. Here I can practically smell the politics, the biases, and cultural complexities. To ignore them would be to choose a radical position as an ignorant aesthete, wear earplugs and jerk off. Being ‘back home’ means being unable to hide behind the experience of being a foreigner.

So now I am wondering – and I’ve been wondering about this for some time – how does proximity to cultural understanding affect my work? And what about the distance from it, the cultural confusion? Is there such a thing as culturally non-specific dance? If so, who can make it, or who (and where from) are the people who name it as such?

Maybe the kind of work I make is the work of someone engaged in cultural espionage. If I belong to the small group of artists in Matchpoint living somewhere different to where we grew up, is there something similar in our work that reflects the trans-national, Eurocentric homogenous bubble that is our geo-political identity?

I’ve become really interested in the degree to which people are in dialogue, or interdependency with their environments through their dance or performance making practices. I’m wondering what level of choice different people have about that. It seems that this is completely complicated by the necessary hyper-mobility of some artists. How much time do we spend circulating in dance-webs before we entirely abandon our locality? Sometimes I think it’s miraculous that our work is differentiated at all.

I want to know how to develop relationships with my environment(s) that are not cynical, antagonistic, or patriotic. I’m looking for something invested, something responsive, that can grow, something perhaps specific but not submissive to an idea of identity.

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https://picasaweb.google.com/106337606057843601931/28Septembre2011#5657493156798625282

https://picasaweb.google.com/106337606057843601931/28Septembre201102#5657495344415042450

https://picasaweb.google.com/106337606057843601931/28Septembre201103#5657505513712401778

Ayelen Parolin

You raise a question, I point out another. We avoid easy answers which would render our meeting pointless.

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Point1: the tapered sharp end of an object
Point2: a dot, a punctuation mark
Point3: a moment in time
Point4: a particular place
Point5: a mark on a surface
Point6: an item on a list
Point7: an idea or argument put forth by someone in a debate
Point8: the essential element of an intention
Point9: the purpose to be gained from doing something
Point10: the characteristics of a person
Point11: a unit of scoring, value, credit
Point12: to indicate direction
Point13: to take aim
Point14: to make a citation
Point15: to establish evidence
Point16: to indicate presence
Point17: to make something sharp
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Match1: contest... to be matched against
In what ways might we be involved in a competition with each other?
Most of us would like to think we are not.
But are there not factors external to our meeting - a marketplace of ideas perhaps - that require us to be pitted against each other despite our sincere desire to meet?
Or perhaps we are engaged in a collective fight against a structure that paradoxically sustains us?
Is this not a perennial struggle? That in a significant way our raison d'etre is hinged upon our abilities to raise questions, highlight doubts, resist being subsumed into an economy... while we operate at the same time, WITHIN this economy?
To contend against is to try and surmount a difficulty.
To contend for is to assert a position within a given space.
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Match2: equal... to meet one's match
You raise your arm from across the room, I respond my shaking my head.
You turn up the music, I try not to succumb to the demands of its rhythm.
How much should I allow you to push me?
How much will you push me?
Are we as strong as each other?
Is there surplus energy in our engagement and what do we do with it?
Or will I topple over... perhaps take you down together with me?
To equalise is to bring about the maximum transfer of power from one to the other.
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Match3: resemblance... to match up to
Yes, this sounds familiar. We recognise we might have heard this already before, even as we say the same things again... maybe this time in a different language... in a different order. A new turn of the same phrase might help us discover new territories, however small.
Something happens. Somebody speaks. Somebody moves.
Whatever does happen, somebody will speak and something will move.
It all adds up to an experience. Whatever happens, there will be an experience. But is this enough?
To correspond is to converse with the goal of achieving agreement, identification and/or congruity.
Can we challenge this?
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Match4: compatibility... to make a match
Is our coming together necessarily harmonious?
Like a shirt that goes well with a pair of shoes?
In our genuine desire to come together, in our ability to come together genuinely... what does it all look like from the outside? Whose and which agendas do we serve when we shake hands, share food, dance together and hug?
Don't get me wrong. I did want to shake your hands, I enjoyed sharing food, I felt less alone when we danced together, I also felt a tinge of regret when we hugged and said goodbye... there is so much we have yet to discover.
To marry is to fulfill a search.
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You raise a question, I point out another. We avoid easy answers which would render our meeting pointless.

Daniel Kok

Food is probably one of the earliest forms of cultural exchange. Matchpoint made a twist and asked the participating artists to reveal a bit of themselves through cooking. The task: food that you cook for yourself when you eat alone. More reflective than elaborate, the menu was a feast of lonesomeness, with boiled dumplings from supermarket, open face sandwich with salad, stir fried instant noodles, pan fried soya bean cake, rice with boiled vegetables and yoghurt, pumpkin soup and shakshuka. (Dick)