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Janus (2006-2010) Anno 9 Numero 23 gennaio-giugno 2008



A question of time frame

Tobias Kokkelmans

The theatrical exhibitions of Saskia Boddeke and Peter Greenaway



anywhere, anytime, here, now


ARTICOLI DAGLI ALTRI NUMERI

Picturing Healing: Mitchell’s Autoimmunity
Nicola Setari
n. 25 giugno-dicembre 2010

Pedro Cabrita Reis, True Gardens
Giovanni Iovane
n. 24 giugno-dicembre 2008

The Biennale Syndrome
Carolyn-Christov Bakargiev
n. 22 giugno-dicembre 2007

Fotografie erotiche di fantasmi, fate e presenze invisibili
Alessandro Bertolotti
n. 21 gennaio 2007

20100, Milano, (I)
Francesca di Nardo
n. 20 giugno-dicembre 2006

Geografie immateriali
a cura di Giovanni Iovane
n. 20 giugno-dicembre 2006


Momenteel maakt de muziektheatervoorstelling Rembrandts Spiegel een tournee langs de Nederlandse theaters. Peter Greenaway tekent voor het libretto, de regie is in handen van Saskia Boddeke. Na een interactieve tentoonstelling rond de beroemde Nachtwacht in het Amsterdamse Rijksmuseum, de film Nightwatching en de documentaire J’Accuse is Rembrandts Spiegel voor het tweetal een volgende episode over - in Greenaways bewoording - “probably the most succesful painter since the Renaissance in the Western World. Despite a 400 year gap, we understand what he is on about. Rembrandt is extremely relevant to how we see the world today: socially, politically, in Europe maybe even spiritually and certainly philosophically. That makes him very important in contemporary terms and well-worth considering and considering and considering.”

Hoe organiseren wij de wereld? Hoe selecteren we? Hoe kijken we terug op ons verleden? In welke modellen gieten we verhalen? Langs welke richtlijnen worden tentoonstellingen gecureerd? Welke kunstbeleving hoort bij welk platform? Alles is afspraak. Maar afspraken kunnen veranderen. Pas één regel aan en het spel verloopt anders. Het onderwerp blijft weliswaar ongewijzigd, maar komt in een ander licht te staan. Deze vragen en gegevenheden staan mij voor de geest als ik aan de films en opera’s van Peter Greenaway en Saskia Boddeke denk. Ze hanteren bekende iconen, maar stellen een nieuwe gebruiksaanwijzing voor. Ze pareren en parodiëren de afspraken. Met het onderwerp Rembrandt is het niet anders. De schilder zit stevig verankerd in ons collectief geheugen en dient daarom als ideale spiegel van ons wereldbeeld. Maar bij elke nieuwe invalshoek treden nieuwe details naar voren en doemen nieuwe vragen op.

In het Rijksmuseum werd de Nachtwacht opnieuw tot leven gewekt met behulp van geavanceerde lichttechnologie. Het leek wel of Greenaway de hype rond Dan Browns The Da Vinci Code ironiseerde door Rembrandts doek voor te stellen als een crime scene, als zou de schilder aanwijzingen bij een moordmysterie achtergelaten hebben. Afgezien van puristische kunstcritici die de ironie niet helemaal begrepen, laat staan de genreflirt van een whodunnit die een stuk 17e-eeuwse geschiedenis een frisse aanblik bood, was de interactieve tentoonstelling zo’n succes dat Greenaway uitgenodigd werd om onder andere ook Las Meninas van Velasquez in het Prada onder handen te nemen, om later deze methode toe te passen bij Michelangelo’s Laatste Oordeel in de Sixtijnse kapel.

ARBITRAIRE CLASSIFICATIES

Saskia Boddeke en Peter Greenaway werken al jaren op het breukvlak van theater, cinema en tentoonstelling. Zo bevroeg de “prop-opera” 100 objects to represent the World op een even ludieke als serieuze toon de “golden records”: tijdscapsules aan boord van de twee Voyager-ruimtesondes met informatie over menselijk leven op aarde. Naast wiskundige diagrammen die de stellaire positie van onze planeet aangaven, konden buitenaardse wezens nu ook kennis nemen van Bachs tweede Brandenburgse Concerto en de rock ’n rollplaat Johnny B Goode van Jerry Lewis. Terecht sceptisch over deze selectie - het product van een Westerse witte mannencultuur - bood Greenaway in een theatervoorstelling een alternatieve keuze. Naast de Venus van Willendorf en een doodgewone paraplu kon het publiek evengoed enkele kledingstukken van Sigmund Freud bewonderen. Maria Esther Maciel omschreef de objecten uit deze theatrale tentoonstelling als “taken from diverse times and cultures and placed in the serial space of a multimedia catalogue, whose principal aim is no different from that of other taxonomic projects of the artist: to make evident that there is no classification of the world that is not arbitrary, subjective and provisional.” (1) 100 objects to represent the world is daarmee een variant op Greenaways motieven van selectie en kadrering, zoals we die ook in zijn schilderijen en films terugvinden. Zijn experimenten met diverse artistieke media en het tarten van hun organisatorische logica zijn daarmee een verdere stap in hetzelfde interessegebied.

Ik trof Peter Greenaway en Saskia Boddeke in het Amsterdamse café de Balie, een aantal weken voor de première van Rembrandts Spiegel. Openhartig spraken zij over de mogelijkheden van hun brede palet aan artistieke media.

Why did you choose these four different means of expression to cover the phenomenon of Rembrandt?
Boddeke: “I think this was not a matter of choice, it just happened. The film came first, based on that there was an exhibition event, logically using the Night Watch. Then the idea was born to make a documentary about it. After that, the Productiehuis Rotterdam heard about it and wanted to make a music theatre piece. There was no bigger plan on forehand. Right now it’s nice that everything really comes together. The film will premiere in January 2008 and the music theatre piece will premiere in december 2007, followed by a tour.”

Aren’t you getting tired of Rembrandt at some point?
Boddeke: “Not at all. He’s such an interesting man in such an interesting period. Each of the elements tells a different story. We even thought of using the virtual role playing game Second Life on the internet, where characters of the Night Watch would be walking around as avatars. This hasn’t happened yet, but we can still decide to do it.”

Looking at all these projects, it’s safe to say that you are trying to expand the visual arts experience. Why?
Greenaway: “My particular feeling is that cinema is dead now, it’s used up.”
Boddeke: “Stop it, you promised not to say that anymore.”
Greenaway: “Why not? If there is a future of cinema, it’s involved in multimedia and interactivity. And I think you have to bring those two factors together. We are very much concerned about the notion of multimedia. It’s perfectly legitimate to talk about a phenomenon in a lot of different ways nowadays. One is even expected to be able to spread the vocabulary. In the case of Rembrandts Spiegel, there will be projection of the film Nightwatching on stage. So there’s a deliberate attempt at borrowing, stealing, pimping and prostitution, however you want to play it. We are now capable of making the total art work which brings together all varied forms of communication. We are in a very privileged position because we are able to play this game now. We have access to all sorts of new technologies and an extraordinary amount of collaborators who are very keen to work with us. So we’re on a platform now to be able to use the whole range of communication, looking over our shoulder to the old forms of theatre and opera, but also looking very much forward to all the ways that we can now re-prepare, reconsider, re-contemplate all the visual ways we communicate with. We can then challenge those ways in order to say: hey, this is post-cinema world now. We still use cinema vocabulary, but you know, the screen of this mobile phone in my pocket here is just as important as the big screens that now exist or used to exist in the cinema high schools, which are changing and will be disappearing. You know, the Dutch are the worst people in the world to go to cinema. The statistic is that the average Dutch person only goes to cinema once in every two years! So, we have to find some way of changing the different means with which audiences and arts phenomena communicate.”

But then, even less people go to opera.
Boddeke: “I don’t agree. I think each project has its own experience. And it should not count how many people see it. A lot of people don’t know about modern music or won’t go and listen to modern music. So judged upon those statistics, modern music and the development of music ought to dissapear. But it doesn’t work like that. The value of something is not judged upon how many people see it.”
Greenaway: “No, never has been.”
Boddeke: “I thought you were saying that.”
Greenaway: “No. I mean that when we start pushing the envelope, it confuses people. We need to educate them. They need somehow to understand how valuable these new phenomena are. No, people are very cautious. John Cage says: if you introduce more than 20% of novelty in any art work, watch out, you’ll lose eighty percent of your audience. So we have to find ways and means to communicate with people in a transparant way.”

Pushing the envelope in terms of cinema is one thing. How does that work in the field of museums? One could maybe say that they are in a crisis as well.
Greenaway: “It is true that cultural tourism is falling. It’s curious that the Dutch are not visiting exhibitions as much as they used to. Even the italians are not visiting their own art, which is probably the big real cultural necklace in europe. So there’s a feeling in art galleries, exhibitions, the whole business of cultural entertainment, of falling off. That might be relative to the fact that we are in a big position of change. Cinema is changing very rapidly into a television medium rather than a celluloid phenomenon, so we have to find new parameters, new ways of getting to audiences. And I think nowadays people are typical post modernists, they’re not cutting ourselves off from the past, they’re still looking at what we can take from the general big media. Theatre will be with us forever and forever, like painting will be with us for ever and for ever. In the case of cinema it’s different. Cinema is dependent on a very sophisticated and particular notion of technology, and when technology changes, the aesthetics changes. But you always, always are going to have theatre. It’s never in danger of dissapearing. Sometimes it can be more popular, sometimes it can be less popular, but it’s always extremely valuable as a communication means.”

Is the notion of the museum changing? And does it need to change?
Greenaway: “There are ways I suppose. Cinema as exhibition, exhibition as cinema… The use of real objects, real artifacts in connection with a theatrical environment is something I’m very interested in. Take the example of 100 objects to represent the World. I think that, although Saskia is right about each individual medium having its own characteristics, there’s an extraordinary sort of confluence now. Art galleries are becoming museums, theatres are becoming art galleries. Have you been to an art gallery recently where you have to stop and look at a video? What do you think about that experience? Is that good, or bad? It is a question of time frame. A painter gives you the time frame, so you can sit in front of the Mona Lisa and look at it for three seconds or three minutes. But as a director, either of the theatre or the cinema, we take the time frame away from you. That’s a big difference.

Walter Benjamin already noted that difference back in 1936 by saying: “Let us compare the screen on which a film unfolds with the canvas of a painting. The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations. Before the movie frame he cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed. It cannot be arrested.” (2)
Greenaway: “It’s curious, we are talking in Amsterdam, 2007, so for seventy years there was a way that the clientèle, the commisioners, the artists, the painters, all understood one and another. A really amazing period. Before that, most of the exhibitions were organised by the aristocracy in the field. And after that, the artist wandered off on it’s own. So for this past seventy years, there has been an extraordinary understanding of all the different parts of the phenomenon.”

As you told me earlier, Van Gogh went to see the Night Watch and sat there for three days. Since you are making films and theatre about Rembrandt and the Night Watch, immediately there’s the restrictive time frame again. Isn’t that a pity?
Boddeke: “We are going to give the audience an enormous amount of freedom. You can choose to see the film, the documentary or the music theatre piece. And although the scope of the project wasn’t planned on forehand to be so big, it’s really nice that all these different ways of playing with the subject are now accessible.”
Greenaway: “The last film I made was seven hours long. We are always taking risks and trying to break open, achieve ways in which these works are commissioned and percieved.”

Nightwatching: release date January 2008
Rembrandts Spiegel (Productiehuis Rotterdam). On tour in january & february 2008, Holland and Budapest. www.rotterdamseschouwburg.nl


1.Maria Esther Maciel, ‘The inventory of the World: Peter Greenaway and Arthur Bispo do Rosário.’ Poetics of Diversity. Ed.: Marli Scarpelli & Eduardo Duarte. Belo Horizonte: FALE/UFMG, 2002
2.Walter Benjamin, “Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit”, 1936