talk after the performance: Eleanor Bauer: 'Proto Talks'
I would rather concentrate on a Proto Talk than the performance itself. I have seen Samira's performance three times and I have heard her talking about it in one of the after talks in Brussels this year. To listen to Samira Elagoz and to see such a defensive mode, but precise speech in 'Proto Talk' is something valuable to mention. Just to start with a subject: rape as a motive for a research on relationships and life itself: it is responsible, brave, self-reflective, it needs kind of detachment to own self and constant observation of the self and the world. "Living the art (of life)".
The 'Proto Talk' has specificity to open up, something that we usually don't talk about in this sort of after-performative-spaces. I will quote the author: "...a replacement for the conventional after-talk. [...] Talks depart from what the artist doesn't know for sure, making public discourse and shared imagination out of nascent ideas that are usually reserved for notebooks, dreams, or conversation with cohorts."
The talk was after the performance. With the fact that it was just fifteen minutes - after very strong and emotionally filled performance, suggests again new openness of the author and audience. Eleanor Bauer is very cleverly doing this, but still, it caused us a lot of (emotional) struggle to listen (talking about myself).
The talks, after the talk after the performance, were still loaded with the bunch of opinions, many many different opinions. Great! I will come back to the Samira's posture and defensive mode (my apologies for interpretation), but I still think it needs a lot of courage to talk in this kind of over-open-mode, about already so loaded performance that opens not just research of the author, but her intimate experience, current life, her body, her presence... (fact that the boyfriend is in a backstage, also included in the project, in the movie, etc.) So, while Eleanor wanted to know much more about the Samira's ways of dealing with the life vs. project, it becomes too much to handle.
There was so interesting information that Samira shared in the talk (how much more?), like she has a father (present in a video material) being a 'bizarre person' (with a positive connotation) and she had to get used to his system of thinking and living, therefore she approaches to the life more open, with not condemning view. Beautiful...
"I have strangers sometimes having a comment like: oh they are weirdos" and I never experienced that! I think my father, I lived with my father and he is a very... bizarre person. i am not... everybody wants... don't want to be weird... but him... he is a person who is actually weird (in one breath) which means you have your own logic and you don't play with others people logic. and I lived with him for many years and I had to relearn how to cope with him and afterward, I lived with him I don't find anyone's way of living weird. and i never say..." (typed audio recording from Proto talk)
Autobiographical work that I am also as an artist interested in, or living it, makes a living kind of laboratory-like study. The reflective mode that this kind of artist is living can be exciting and at the same time distanced. The distance created as a work-process makes life-love-art so present, more present than 'presence' itself. (while talking about present in a buddistic approaches in the workshop of the festival placed in a modern museum:)
So, I am coming to the conclusion about Samiras' body posture of defense in a talk: it is appropriate, it is great, it is over-normal to finally say stop to interweaving that fragile space of the individual (an artist). I have to add to this: there was a guy in the audience, proposing EVEN more intimacy, not really caring for the process itself, nor the artist (wtf?). "I can shut up..." he said, then somebody next to me said: "yea, maybe!" - well... I will stop here. It is a display from now on...
My apologies for interpretation and loaded text (excuse goes above the fact that this is a blog - consciously or unconsciously, space of esthetically specific public share of thoughts). Thank you! the author.
#control - measured experiment
#rape as catalyst
#after talk
#art equal to life
#<3 (the second day of the performance): She made us leap to our feet! Standing ovation in the audience space: mostly dancers and performers stood up and clapped to Samira Elagoz.
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