By Laura McLean-Ferris
Esther Ferrer's performance at 'Experienz #2 - Materializing the Social', WIELS, Brussles. Photo: Cici Olsson
The parlour, historically, was a place designated by monks for formal discussions outside of sanctified religious areas. It later became the name for a room in which to receive visitors apart from the intimacy of the home. In Britain, this space was at the front of the house, and it remains a distinguishing feature of Victorian and Edwardian domestic architecture – a quasi-public space in the private home. Parlour games – social games involving blindfolds or performative charades, say – were popular in these spaces during the 19th and early 20th century among the classes that were afforded increased leisure time, before the advent of media such as radio and television, whilst the upper classes occasionally hired parlour magicians or other entertainers.
I mention this because the concept of parlour games and parlour tricks still haunts art performances to some degree, and the spectre appeared once again for me, as I stood in the foyer space of WIELS in Brussels with many others, holding some kind of Absolut Vodka cocktail (not sure whether this was an art work or a message from the sponsor), and milling about. The weekend was timed to coincide with Art Brussels, so the event shared many of its visitors and the attendant atmosphere of art fair events and VIP circuses. Experienz was the name of the ‘performance and live art platform’ that I was here to attend. This second was the event’s second version, entitled ‘Materialising the Social’, which ostensibly is based on Michel Foucault’s notion of biopolitics, in a broad sense of the power exercised on the individual. The short introductory texts by the curators mentioned a gamut of figures including Foucault, Allan Kaprow, John Dewy, Lucy Lippard, Joseph Beuys and the Greek concept of parrhesia – a form of free, risky speech that was permitted in certain public spaces.
Ninar Esber, ‘The Good Seed’, 2012-ongoing. Photo: Cici Olsson
We trailed downstairs to see Ninar Esber’s performance The Good Seed (2012–ongoing), in which the artist sat silently in a space methodically sorting grains of corn into three categories of colour and quality. One supposes that this division indeed operates as a metaphor for social, legal, categorical divisions, and for the artist in particular, who hails from Lebanon, the social divisions based on religious belief in the Middle East. While Esber has formerly taken on this task for days on end, this was a one-night-only iteration of the performance. I was surprised at the way this seemed to take the Herculean task element out of the performance, and created the effect of displaying four hours of quite appealing, quiet labour. But perhaps these are the words of a weary art fair visitor.
Oliver Beer, ‘The Resonance Project’, 2013. Photo: Cici Olsson
Oliver Beer’s _The Resonance Project _(2013) took place in WIELS’s tall stairwell, in which members of a choir were singing humming, thrumming sounds into the walls in order to create a kind of sonic architecture, which created and inhabited the space in a decisive and uplifting way.
Antonio Contador, ‘Tu Te Tus’, 2013. Photo: Cici Olsson
Back in the foyer space, the Brussels Police Band assembled in full regalia, and proceeded to march slowly through the space, in Antonio Contador’s Tu Te Tus (2013). Though all carried their instruments, the only sound was from a lone snare drum, which kept time. I followed as they left the building and marched around the back of the art centre, the tuba player being a particular source of anticipation from my point of view, as each time he took a breath I thought he might play. They boarded a waiting bus in the car park and drove away.
Liz Magic Laser, ‘Stand Behind Me’, 2013. Photo: Cici Olsson
Of all the works on show here, however, the only time I actually felt as though I was watching a performance of real depth was during Liz Magic Laser’s performance Stand Behind Me (2013) (which I saw recently at London’s Lisson Gallery, though it was no less powerful on a second viewing). Laser worked with a dancer who learned the rhetorical gestures of international politicians as though they were a routine. As the words of certain speeches ticked by on an autocue, we saw the thumping hand motions of Angela Merkel embodying her choice of authoritative delivery, or David Milliband’s distinctive showings of his wide-open palms. It’s a work that so clearly and engagingly conveys the performativity of leadership and authority, the forced authenticity and authority learned by rote.
By comparison, I have to say that much of the other work here seemed like entertaining diversions – not bad, and yet unedifying. A low moment was Malena Beer’s work Endless (2013), which saw two dancers engaging with the crowd in the foyer, who were still milling about, now a few drinks down in the lobby, by leaning on them or touching them, or placing themselves in relation to the architecture. I feel unkind writing this, but as I saw a male audience member go rather slack-jawed over one of the female dancers who was playfully engaging with him, and encouraging him to lay on the floor, I just felt bad for everyone involved.
This was partly to do with the decision to use the foyer space as the central hub for the project, which, like a parlour, is a social space that is neither sanctified or intimate nor out in public. Most of the work here had to compete with the drinking and the chatting and the art fair air-kissing (and it’s an excessive three kisses in Belgium), and most lost out. Unfortunately, a couple of strong moments aside, this was less a case of materializing the social and more a case of the materialization of socializing.
Laura McLean-Ferris is a writer and curator based in London.