The Inpex - Issue 5

THE

INPEX

Edition 1; Issue 5

Friday, August 14. 2009

Photo: Louise Höjer

Table of Contents p.2 EDITOR’S WHITEBOARD: Contributor’s Tribute COMMENT: Atlanta Eke: on Shuffle LETTERS TO THE EDITORS: p.3 REVIEW: 10 Writers: on Administrating Cu;lture ORGANIZATIONS: Gina Battistich and Embassy Of...

OPINION: Egle Obcarskaite: on Time Revisited p.4-5 CENTERFOLD:

Louise Höjer on Master Class Class Emma Kim Hagdahl interviews Christine De Smedt ADVERTISEMENT p.6 INTERVIEW Edit Rainsborough meets The Inpex BOOK REVIEW: Will Rawls: on Bullshit

p.7 INTERVIEW: Reykajavik Dance Festival: on Itself REVIEW: General Hawk: on Evil INTERVIEW:

Louise Höjer and Emma Kim Hagdahl meet Chris Haring COLUMN: Mårten Spångberg: on the Face of Time p.8 CLASSIFIEDS Constructed by Will Rawls MISCELLANEOUS: Kroot Juurak and Ralo Mayer: Script for Small Talk OVERHEARD IN VIENNA… CALENDAR CROSSWORD: Constructed by Jessyka WatsonGalbraith

Microphone Check. One, Two, Three. On Saturday August 8, Xavier Le Roy, Christine de Smedt and Phillip Gehmacher discussed the potential of collaborative, open-format choregraphic research. Above is an eye-witness account of what happened to their microphones. Drawing: Edit Rainsborough-

2 THE INPEX

Friday, August 14. 2009

EDITOR’S NOTE:

Contributor’s to The Inpex, We Salute You.

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

In order of appearance...

Kim Hiorthøy, Anne Juren, Xavier Le Roy, Krööt Juurak, Loïc Touzé, DD Dorvillier, David Dorfman, olive Bieringa, Otto Ramstadt, Time Etchells, Jennifer Monson, Kasper Vandenberghe, Jefta Van Dinther, Miguel Gutierriz, Jo Pollitt, David Zambrano, Simone Truong, Trajal Harell, Jan Fabre, Doris Steltzer, Christine De Smedt, Linda Adami, Keith Hennessy, Tino Sehgal, Gabriel Soland Schenner Carneiro Da Cunha, Philipp Gehmacher, Moriah Evans, Eszter Salamon, Siegmar Zacharias, Steve Heather, Antonija Livingstone, Chase Granoff, Diggapony, Tor Lindstrand, Ruth, Annika, Walter Kronkite, Mårten Spangberg, Hybris, Niklas Lundell, Maureen N. McLane, Nigel Tomm, Anders Jacobson, Johan Thelander, David Hernandez, Elana Rubinfeld, Trong Gia Nguyen, Helena Stenkvist, Josefine Larson Olin, Jessica Harris, Elizabeth Ward, Valentina Desideri, Amanda Piña, Jeroen Peeters, Asad raza, Alexander Nikolic, Josefine Wikström, Dick Van Dyke, Donna Faye Burchfield, Lindsay Clark, Diana Crum, Gina Kohler, Jesse Zarritt, Imre Hofmann, Woody Allen, Tahni Holt, Halla Olafsdottir, Atlanta Eke, benjamin Kamino, Gina Battistich.

COMMENT

SHUFFLE atlanta eke

I don’t know how to do the Melbourne Shuffle, but I will teach it to you. And this process of you learning from me that which I do not know myself will be the performance. Do you think they will come? The audience? Probably not on a Friday, the footy is on.

The Melbourne Shuffle is everywhere now. Its huge in the UK, gym memberships and studio space is too expensive in London, so everybody is just doing the Shuffle, mostly in the streets and on the tube.

It originated in Melbourne in the 80’s it consists of three component moves, “Moonwalk”, “Running man” and the “Shuffle”, as well as spins, arm pumps and jumps. But I have never seen a Melbournian do this dance, mostly just Malaysian

STATEMENT ON PERFORMANCE MAKING KRÖÖT JUURAK

1. We have to aim for impossible/ unimaginable 2. Success is our only mothafuckin option/failure’s not *(i.e no hoping for the best) 3. the prerformance must already do what it claims (i.e politcs only effective if effective on the micro-level of your immediate surroundings/ context) 4. movement is more than visual imagery 5. body is more than semiotics (i.e the study of signs, signification, communication) 6. audience is as smart/stupid as you are (i.e “we” against “I”) 7. creativity is not enough 8. professionalism is also not enough (i.e rely on nothing) 9. we are always working (i.e from the society of the spectacle - into the society of performers) *Eminem “Lose yourself”

THE

students on youtube Shuffling to some mean techno. Melbournians are doing a new kind of shuffle, the shuffling of paper, words on paper, formations of public opinions on printed publications. Melbournian dance makers and doers are starting to make some noise and demanding their voices be heard.

No, wait, umm, hang on, Melbournians? Australians? Oops, I mean the Swedish dance doers and makers, yeah, Inpex, they are the ones producing the newspaper publication. But then again, Swedes love Australians, they are basically one in the same., no? Have you been to the Australian Open? No, I bet you haven’t, because its SO far away.

Yes I have heard this many times. Not so many visitors down under. I guess that’s why there is this shifty bunch of Melbournians here at Impulstanz.

They have actually been inconspicuously assimilating into the spaces of the international dance scene for some years now.

Almost invisibly they have been existing in silent parasitizations and feeding off activities abroad. They leave no traces except for the likes of the Shuffle and in keeping with their parasitic tendencies what better way for them to achieve their mater plans of the internationalization of Melbourne and Australia at large than to copy the likes of Inpex. Copying, bastardizing, parasites, and proud of the incentive to echo experiences and happenings from the global dance community back home. But its not just the mimicking of innovative activities in the likes of Europe that motivates them, it’s something more, Melbournians are beginning to ask questions about their rights to produce work that doesn’t simply imitate influential choreographers from abroad but instead engages them in an ongoing dialogue of translation, transformation and augmentation of knowledge production and distribution within streamings of information around the world.

For these Melbournians geography is no longer an excuse. Australian dance communities in general have been busy dissolving the boarders dividing their own states and terri-

INPEX

The Inpex is a free, daily newspaper. Initiated by International Performance Exchange, INPEX, with its head quarter in Stockholm, NGO supported by the Swedish Arts Grants Committee. Vienna, August 10-14, 2009.

For more information: www.inpex.se PEOPLE Editorial team: Louise Höjer, Emma Kim Hagdahl, Egle Obcarskaite, Will Rawls and Jessyka Watson Gailbraith Editorial support: Kim Hiorthoy, Anders Jacobson, Tor Lindstrand, Mårten Spångberg and Johan Thelander Design: Kim Hiorthoy Layout: Jessyka Watson Gailbraith Print: Goldmann Druck, Vienna Circulation: 700 Thanks to all contributors.

www.inpex.se

Goodbye Vienna

DISTRIBUTION If you want to order copies, please contact: INPEX, Konstnärsnämnden, Stockholm everybody@inpex.se +46 (0)735 465638 An online pdf version will be avaliable at: www.issuu.com/inpex

tories to bleed information and generate open platforms of accessibility to strategies and processes of performing arts production. And now the Melbournians are pushing for a movement on a global scale.

There is talk of an expansion of their already massive island continent, so it swallows up the surrounding waters and begins to bounce around this global community of dance production, colliding with other countries and continents and letting the impacts reverberate across the landscapes through words, discussion, debates and questionings. They hope to create an affect that has the potential to produce an internationalization of thought and awareness of activity beyond that which is already known.

These Melbournians are not your typical Aussies, they know death exists because they have died themselves, they have passed through the life without speech and communication with there international like minded creatures, they now live in a life of conversation and they want to talk to you.

Their motives are constructed on the philosophy that everybody is richer within an economy of sharing. Their actions are to serve the Melbourne dance community, to contribute to its ongoing nourishment through internationalisation of knowledge, education, exchange of ideas and information to mobilise work through conversation. They realise a well nourished and flourishing community allows for growth and development, stimulation and activity. A healthy community is an attractive community with more potential to generate attention, and initiate curiosities and interests from the rest of the world.

For these emerging young dancers and choreographers from Melbourne the word Internationalization weighs a heavy importance and they want to take your name to Melbourne and get the city talking about you.

But I know what you are thinking….. how embarrassing for the Aussies, typical, always behind the times…

International artists have been working within open access and self-organizing environments for some time now with the facilitation of heterogeneous research experimentations, doesn’t Australia know about this approach to dance and performance related production? And also, the word ‘internationalization’ was so last Friday….Yes, well maybe this is so but tomorrow is today in Melbourne and Australians basically invented the notion of shamelessness, so these rules don’t apply, its not such a pity to exist in the future.

If you want a learning experience to dissolve the typical hierarchical relations between teacher and student, next time you meet a Melbournian insist that they teach you the famous Melbourne Shuffle and then tell them about your latest cutting edge concept for a performance and go on tour throughout the southern hemisphere through conversation.

It was with a hint of sadness, ‘tis true When we emailed the printer this last issue They enjoyed the chance to correspond with lo-fi writers on dance To some, the paper was a roaring success Sometimes produced under duress We ruffled some feathers, and perhaps did disappoint But a new future we did anoint Really being subjective was all you need The paper exists! (The content was on speed) Of The Inpex it’s not the end It’ll be back before oh 9 becomes oh 10 But not this incarnation, for this time it’s unique Of Will, Jessyka, Egle, Emma and Louise we speak Maybe you will see another document of this kind But not in Vienna this you will find So we say an au revoir and give you a kiss We must find our way onto another un-wanted list

Glossary for The Inpex EGLE OBCARSKAITE

embedded journalist a news reporter who is attached to a military unit involved in an armed conflict Theodor W. Adorno was a German-born international sociologist, philosopher, musicologist and composer. slavoj zizek is a Slovenian-born political philosopher and cultural critic. He was described by Terry Eagleton as the “most formidably brilliant” recent theorist to have emerged from Continental Europe. singularity the quality or condition of being singular; a trait making one as distinct from others, a peculiarity; something uncommon or unusual entropy a thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system’s thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work , often interpreted as a degree of disorder or randomness in the system. commodity In classical political economy and especially Karl Marx’s critique of political economy, a commodity is any good or service produced by human labour and offered a product for general sale on the market. contemporary in it’s generic sense, living, occurring, or existing, at the same time; often also used as a synonym for “modern” product something produced by human or mechanical effort or by a natural process\ mediocre of only moderate quality; not very good\ porous easily crossed or penetrated bullshit foolish, deceitful, or boastful language; something worthless, deceptive, or insincere; insolent talk or behavior notorious known widely and usually unfavorably; infamous excessive more than is necessary, normal, or desirable; immoderate

Corrections - The Inpex Issue 4 Table of contents should have read: Donna Faye Burchfield, Lindsay Clark, Diana Crum, Gina Kohler, Jesse Zarritt Yesterday’s centrefold was designed by will rawls

News

Administrating Culture

10 reviews - “Culture & Administration” by Jennifer Lacey & Antonija Livingstone. Schauspielhaus, 12 August, 2009.

I leave the theatre singing Lacey and Livingstone’s catchy tune: ”Space and Place, Citizens potential” elated by pastel colored balloon animals, sky-high butt cheeks and the resonance of a bell duet. The staged explosions were a violent delight.

Rarely does a show maintain such lightness, almost risking becoming decorative, without once loosing poignancy. This show kicks ass. louise höjer

The bureaucracy of it all.

Palm tree, Las Vegas or Bahamas or white stage with a tree on it. Fireworks or homemade bombs or magic tricks going off. Off and on and Off. Off Ballet into off showgirls into legs and more legs into crawling. Fine art class or visual artists or performers drawing on easels drawing audience or performance, audience as part of performance, rays of sight from each one of them. Shifting between us as performance space to stage as performance space or playing with perspective of point in space.

Balloon trickster man, bending, reshaping into animals and shapes, hovering above ground, amusement park. Bombs or Bells, chimes changing space through sound waves, ritual picnic, meditation moment into jokester into penis sword fight into rhythmical rhapsody for two. Togetherness, Family crest is revealed, hung, centaur women, displaying family pride into scheming together of airports and makings of explosions. Space is ever shifting into different possibilities, White box, high class, low-brow. Stagehands become performers become performance, while two badass women are amongst many to two badass women who are amongst two. Take bow to the back wall. Ending with ACDC or beginning the performance of strike-made visible. tahni holt References to commodified emotional/sexual practices were funny. Bodies on stage were moving beautifully.

The “backstage aesthetics” was seen many times before. Illustration of Adorno?

The show ended unexpectedly, and this was the strongest impression of all the night. The energy was there and some desire. Not desire for more, but rather for something, what you could finally dare to do yourself.

To write about it? egle obcarskaite The budget for this performance is hung like a horse, and then like a fool. Lacey and Livingstone handle expenditure with the lightest touch.

They flirt with an excess of props with an attention to detail that is ritualistic then nomadic. Their funds go up in a flash of smoke, in the atomic resonance of bells. They lead us on with tender ministrations, cock jokes and song; their affections are for the many, but not for the long. will rawls If that was culture and administration, Jennifer and Antonija, you can administrate my culture any time.

JESSYKA WATSON-GALBRAITH

After the rage of a forest fire the ground, the space that was once lush and full is left barren with fertility and potential. This space is referent in Culture and Administration by Antonija Livingstone and Jennifer Lacey. We enter to a tribute of Stevie Nicks, an Aphrodite of modern culture, immediately specifying a personal influence for Lacey and thereby erecting a frame of selection (Cache) for the work, culture is transcended through media. The act of cultural appropriation (yet another frame), one of the various motivational forces in the mutation and evolution of culture in our now global society, follows with a recited text. Florin Flueras, a Romanian man with a thick accent reads a manifesto for the work being corrected from offstage in only the most dire moments. The curtain opens the space begins empty, it is filled, exploded and manipulated.

The dynamism of culture (the tree on stage right) and the stasis that administration infers (the shrine of balloons on stage left), how these phenomenas interact is the locus of Culture and Administration. Lacy and Livingstone lead the way through a petri dish they have constructed specific to their own personal and cultural upbringings. Some Mel Torment and Boopsie (Baby) here, an old joke there, hand bells and gardening gloves are the historical antiquities that constitute this bacterial culture’s genetic code. The process itself is a frame to examine art making as a whole, art making as the administration of culture.

Benjamin Kamino All functions. Not empty actions.

Lacey and Livingstone do not build a circumstance within which to reveal but they construct their environment with the spectator. Two women with power that is not wielded but bestowed upon those who care to join their fun. Impeccable timing impeccable performers. Décor becomes a performer and those around them become the décor. Balloon animals float about of their own free will while the striking gentleman constructing these creatures supports the dancers as tenderly and unobtrusively as the incandescent bulb hovering inside the performance aquarium. So much happened, so much is always happening and so much will continue to happen. In their ballet instructor shoes, Lacey and Livingstone show us this is and will be OK. And in the end, you feel better than you did at the start.

LIZ SANTORO I like to be an active audience member. I enjoyed jumping out of my seat at the first explosion in last night’s “Culture and Administration” performance by Jennifer Lacy and Antonija Livingstone. For those of you who didn’t have the good fortune of being in attendance, the “explosion” was sound and light, not a metaphor.

Yes, perhaps it was a metaphor also (for keeping anarchy at bay as creators or embracing it?) – but its immediacy was powerful, delightful, dangerous and funny. When later in

Friday, August 14. 2009

ORGANIZATIONS

Self-government Tanz theater performance (ttp) WUK Festival GINA BATTISTICH Known to the Viennese for its fine selection of concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance performances Vienna’s Werkstätten- und Kulturhaus (WUK) is far more than that. Divided into 7 autonomous units, it is one of the biggest socio-cultural centers in Europe, a member of transeurope halles (www.teh.net) and a production center for art.

About 130 resident groups, initiatives and individuals work in this the evening, Jennifer and Antonija sang an infectious homemade song while putting finishing touches on another homemade bomb; the effect was disturbing, pleasantly and purposefully ambiguous, and naughtily intimate. The entire evening had an intimacy that was odd, palpable, poetic and skillfully manufactured.

From Jennifer’s cheeky “pre-show”, to the heckling/nurturing of Florin’s “welcome” text, to the well directed and executed sketching of the audience/resting by Eli, Florin, Fanni and Julianna, to Stephen Thompson’s balloon wrangling, to the palm tree and horsewomen coat of “arms”, to the “origaNi” – I loved being in the world they created. When Antonija bridged to the audience with a ladder and a joke/story – her quality and efficiency of movement, decisions of duration and presence both reached out and grabbed back in generous and generative ways. When Jennifer moved and clicked as in birdlike paradise, her embodiment was arresting, inhuman and wise. When bells came out of what looked like a first aid kit, the ensuing musical/physical duet was achingly beautiful, healing and one I will always remember. I like the way the two administered to each other and in turn to the audience, while making well designed art in the moment. My regret was that the manufactured bow came when it did. I wanted more – a rare request these days.

DAVID DORFMAN A North American DIY demi-punk swirling dance and chore-eography experience and art object installation presented with shiningly gem like crispness.

The tensegrity with which Lacey and Livingstone perform is utterly inspiring. They move from action to image to action with a fluid taughtness that pulls in your attention like a follow spot to picking them out amongst the onstage easel drawers, balloon sculptor and technicians who continually shape the space.

This review is not done. There are still thoughts and feelings connecting and I could keep writing (time permitting). I am happy to submit though as it parallels how I saw this show, I saw connections continuing to happen even as it ended and I could have kept watching them.

In closing, a quote from Elizabeth Ward as spoken to Jennifer Lacey, “Watching you is like looking at glitter.”

Chore-eography is an intentional word used in this context to describe the choreography of the movement of objects.

Check out the wiki on tensegrity http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensegrity OTTO ramstad

former factory building from the 19th century. Being a collective of 26 groups ttp WUK artists administrate three rehearsal spaces for training, research and independent, selfgoverned production. Starting small and from within, ttp WUK festival aims to provide a platform for those who work at WUK, to facilitate artistic exchange in order to question and redefine what started in 1981 as an autonomous, self-governed cultural center, a place for cultural workers of all kinds. Contact ttp: kuko.ttpwuk@gmail.com In spring 2010 it will open tunnels, doors, tents and other spaces for audiences. Among others, the collective, Embassy Of, will be invited as a guest to Kiosk 59 from the 8th -10th of April, 2010.

Summit Embassy Of is not defined Embassy Of is an open plain for new kind(s) of collective and individuality.

Embassy Of should be always defined again and immediately after redefined, always asking for awareness and active presence of her “members”. All definitions of Embassy Of should always stay poetry in order to keep our Love alive.

Embassy Of Mass emails!

Embassy Of Biographies Embassy Of Hit me like a ray of sun Embassy Of Sophisticated philosophers Embassy Of Searching together for the rights words, definitions, meanings, awareness, information, meeting points, poetry...finding new questions and someone to ask them to Embassy Of Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone

OPINION

Contemporary revisited EGLE OBCARSKAITE

Enough about MJ already. How can it be, that at this moment his name is more contemporary than it was couple of months ago? Apparently, the phenomenon of MJ wasn’t attached to the real living figure anymore, but to some artifacts and discourse it generated. Is it too much to say, that the MJ real man was holding the MJ figure back in the museum of the past? Now that the figure is gone, the contemporaneity of the phenomenon can flousrish. And vanish soon after So what is contemporary? As Will Rawls has put it once – contemporary is the work that extends from the context which is now. Well, he’s right – I checked the definition online. Contemporary is: happening, existing, living or coming into being during the same period of time.

When we talk about contemporary dance, is it only “being during the same period of time”, that we’re talking about? The term sounds obscure, and when someone asks, I’m always having hard time describing it. Amazing, eventually my explanation becomes not a matter of definition, but a matter of what questions can raise regarding contemporaneity.

So let’s play the game.

Where did the contemporary start?

– Wow, a tricky question. Following the common logic: the starting point of a process that has already begun is imediately left behind in the past. In this way it is not contemporary anymore. So what is it? Shall we say it starts over and over again?

Contemporary dancer cannot be taught.

– Follows from the question above.

Let’s say, that we can teach only what has already happened. Is the constantly re-inventing “contemporary”

THE INPEX

3

Embassy Of Shared information Embassy Of The WHOLE as body and mind are no longer apart but they are in one that does not have still a word or name in language. our collaboration is sg like that. Many many individuals, movements, changing structures, intentions- together as a whole Embassy Of Surrounded by your embrace Embassy Of Piece of me Embassy Of Unless Otherwise Instructed Caution Advised Embassy Of I just landed in Paris. On the plane I was having crazy telepathic movements across the hands and faces of people I know and love. Many of your faces were flying past so fast it was blurry but very very beautiful, like on merry go round.

Embassy Of Relocating differences!

Embassy Of SUMMER Embassy Of Addicted to your light Embassy Of is a group of people finding eachother in the same time and space, regenerating ideas and energy that brings an individual further than it could do by him or herself. in a way it is optmizing the potential of becoming…

Embassy Of generic statements (Do generic statements tend to be empty?)

Embassy Of nostalgia Embassy Of coming and going to embassy of meeting at...

Embassy Of Mutants Embassy Of Instability Embassy Of Many Questions Embassy Of Many Possibilities Embassy Of doo doo bird Embassy Of The Unicorn Was There Embassy Of Multiple Meanings Embassy Of Single Ladies Embassy Of Déjà Vue Embassy Of Boom Boom Pow Embassy Of it’s like I’ve been awaken Embassy Of the risk that I’m taking Embassy Of I can feel your Halo Embassy Of I swear I’ll never fall again, gravity can not forget, so pull me to the ground again Embassy Of Take Your Chances While the Light is Still Broken Embassy Of This very moment as we don’t know yet about tomorrow

something that’s happening but never reaches the end of this process?

It is a death to call a dance technique contemporary. But it is OK to call the practice contemporary.

– Yeah, now we’re getting closer. If we consider technique as some established and justified way of making dance, it implies a framework.

Practice, on the other hand, is open to negotiate, question, and overstep.

It gets to leave things behind.

Not whatever we do now is contemporary. – I’m putting it this way: repetition vs. practice. One can merely repeat techniques, ideas, or methods at the very moment “now”, but nevertheless have remains burried in the death-cold past. Isn’t the creator’s self-reflecting position, where he/ she stands now, what makes his/her practice contemporary?

It is contemporary to talk about the spectacle having chewing gum in your mouth.

– Here, definitely, we emphasize not the very action of putting some – a lot of – chewing gum in one’s mouth and then trying to articulate the trendy word “spectacle”. It’s rather about questioning and reconsidering conditions of the very moment “now”, about how certain notions can become more than merely empty signifiers of the past and instead generate justified and the new quality. Wow, thank you, Emma, for having that chewing gum, and Jess, for articulating it!!!

www.inpex.se

4 THE INPEX

Friday, August 14. 2009

ON THE SCENE

INTERVIEW

MASTER CLASS CLASS OF THE WHAT LOUise höjer

EMMA KIM HAGDAHL

Yesterday I spent the morning in Jennifer Lacey’s Class Class. I had spoken to Christine De Smedt the night before and was interested in the way she described it as an investigation primarily into form and that the content came from the form itself. Being the journalist that I am not, I was very curious what effect my or The Inpex’s presence in the workshop would have.

EKH: Ah, Krõõt is skyping me, -you know Krõõt right?

CDS: Yes yes, Is she in town now?

EKH: No but she is following us from skype all the time, she is also taking part of writing The Inpex. Well, so I asked her what she thought I should ask you, this is what she wrote; [8/13/09 3:09:10 PM] Krõõt Juurak: ask her what she thinks of you

Jennifer Lacey: “Let me just read the paper (i.e. The Inpex) and then we start.”

Josefine Larsson Olin: “I wrote an article, it’s on page 7.”

Discussion ensues around Josefine’s article and why Michael Jackson didn’t have an InPulsTanz poster.

Jennifer: “OK 5 more minutes of reading the newspaper.”

Jennifer breaks out: “But that’s not true!” as she reads Mårten Spångbergs column. And takes out a pen as if to correct her copy of the newspaper.

Otto Ramstad turns to me: ”I’ve almost finished my article.”

(Exert from Class Class 14.08.09) Jennifer explains the day’s activity of ’group leading’ where the leadership role is passed from one participant to the next. As soon as the first gesture is made we’re in business. Slowly the group, one by one, starts populating the dance matt with The Inpex in hand, on head or foot. They migrate from the chairs to the matt one by one, without clear instruction but by a follow-the-leader incentive. The Inpex dances.

One thing that has been preying on my mind lately when seeing visual art and dance performances is that frankly a lot of it is not great. Some stuff is good. But even out of that, most of it is not good enough!!!!

What constitutes this good enough?

For me it is exactly this insistence of the interplay between content and form - allowing one to become the other and vice versa. To take active responsibility for What one is producing. And engaging this What, producing the What through dealing with the hows, the whys and the whos. What is not a question, it’s a product.

Jennifer describes Class Class as “the class form as art object”. Even though her class morphs and transforms according to the information and people in the room at certain points in time, and even though The Inpex was embraced by the workshop and its format, Jennifer still sets up limits. She takes time to explain to me what is going on and what has been going on throughout the week.

This action, in all its generosity, also of course, sets up the parameters of outside and inside. The form has parameters. And for Class Class to be considered as an art object these limits need to be performed and thereby set.

So what is interesting here is that for all the shape shifting that is Class Class, Jennifer still performs in a way that gives Class Class limits, necessary limits. It is a product rather than a process – yet a product that is not static. It is a machine that produces itself, that reproduces itself into a look and feel that is constantly emerging from itself.

I can relate to this self-producing machine. Not just because I like it.

Not because I think this might just be good enough, but as an object. To me as an outsider it is an object and one on which I can pass judgment. Make my aesthetic judgment. Of course if Class Class reads the newspaper again today this relationship gets a little bit messy and the question of judgment a little bit confused. But it made a difference and that is good enough.

A Conversation with Christine De Smedt about The Inpex, ImPulsTanz and other things.

[8/13/09 3:09:21 PM] Krõõt Juurak: of The Inpex [8/13/09 3:09:34 PM] Krõõt Juurak: self-obsessed maybe CDS: What I think about you, if you are self-obssessed?

EKH: Yes, you can of course decide how you want to answer this question, us or The Inpex...

CDS: I don’t think you are... Yeah, in some way you have to be. Yes, you are self-obsessed. You have the necessity to be self obsessed in order to do what you are doing. So, you have to have a big power in order to believe in what you are doing, to be able to mangage all the ideas and the energy to realize it. And also I think you have the power to invade the space of ImPulsTanz with your proposal. When I see how The Inpex is created - it’s just a delight to create something in this way, this is the ideal, for me, collaborative work, and yes it’s very obsessed. It’s really good that suddenly now all the people are reading the newspaper who haven’t read newspapers for a month. Now, when people read The Inpex, it creates a pause, a cut in the normal activity of people. And what is nice with this newspaper is that since it is in a specific context, people read it really together.

And what is nice with this newspaper is that since it is in a specific context, people read it really together.

But one could say that you are selfobsessed in the aim of creating this format, and in the content of your format, you are not self-obsessed.

You have created a format to create something else.

EKH: Yes, indeed.

CDS: And you are obsessed in defining the format, and what you have been defining, but what comes in there is opening the space for other things to come in. In that, it is naturally a medium, it is really functioning as a medium. In that I think it is definitely an artistic thing.

on a critical level. I mean, the critical level should go through the mentoring, but the mentoring doesn’t have enough tools or time for 63 people (DanceWEB).

I offer individual talks with the danceWEBBers and there is one issue that seems to reccur: how different problems is creating obstacles. I propose that the problem is really an opportunity to do, to really do. Not to think that someone will come and solve your problem. How can you make an artistic idea of your problem? You have to insist on your own problems in an active way.

EKH: Some reflections on DanceWEB and the future...

CDS: Lately and probably also the year of you, (DanceWEB 08 – Embassy Of) people are not so much ‘movement shopping’ anymore,

You have the necessity to be self obsessed in order to do what you are doing.

people want to have a reason for doing, and a proposal for a larger structure. Still I think that it’s not enough time to deal with it, it’s an overload of information. I have already been thinking that next year I’m gonna organize an “after-ImPulsTanzworkshop”, and we can all come to Gent in the studio of Les Ballet and we have everyone who wants that comes and we have like a kind of digestive workshop or something.

It is really great, ImPulsTanz. I’m very happy to be here, although it is of my concern to integrate certain methodology that gives more time for reflection. In the Class Class workshop with Jennifer Lacey, it’s always about the negotiation of the position of what you are in, constantly questioning and make decisions. With a normal class the context is clear and you learn material.

EKH: What is recurring to you in your work and practice, like, have you noticed a “how to by Christine De Smedt”?

CDS: I realized now in the workshop with Jennifer, that also the project that I have created myself, or how ideas appear for me, is always coming out of a situation. I don’t have a fantasy about a certain piece. Never.

In that sense, you can say that I’m a little bit [of a] parasite of the situation. I use the situation for creating my problem and a question, and I create a proposal for that. This is always recurring.

You create yourself as a medium for a situation, and in that sense I think, yes it’s endless of course. Situations will always appear. So I will never stop working.

EKH: So what do you think about this way of working, in creating a format that in itself is generating content. What does this propose?

Reading The Inpex during the workshop Photos: Louise Höjer

CDS: I think that the format, or the medium, creates a vehicle to focus on other things that are around, and to recontextualize it. I mean, by bringing this in, from the outside to ImPulsTanz you filter the surplus of what it [ImPulsTanz] creates and you fill also the lack of ImPulsTanz, on which level ImPulsTanz or the workshops are only working on passing on content through a certain format, you don’t think on an artistic level or

Christine De Smedt

Friday, August 14. 2009

IMPULSTANZ 2010 15 July to 15 August. At least.

THE INPEX

5

6 THE INPEX

Friday, August 14. 2009

INTERVIEW

QUESTIONS POSED TO THE INPEX EDITORIAL TEAM

WHO IS THE INPEX? Edit Rainsborough speaking on behalf of The Inpex says... Globalization has changed the face of the world economy and we at The Inpex pride ourselves on our innovative and unique entrepreneurial culture. Our vision was specifically designed to provide the platform to execute our commitment to trust, safety and excellence. www.inpex.se How it started... I met Emma Kim Hagdahl and Will Rawls last year at DanceWeb and I must admit they (and the other 64 webbers) gave me hard times. Sometimes, but more than that they gave me the energy to carry on. This year they returned to Vienna with Louise Höjer, Egle Obcarskaite and Jessyka Watson-Galbraith with a mission and The Inpex. They became journalists. Dance journalists for a week.

EDIT RAINSBOROUGH

ER: What was the idea behind creating The Inpex?

LH: I don’t know exctly where the impetus came from. I mean I can somehow imagine but I wasn’t there that night when Jess and Emma started talking about it. After that I think it has changed, transformed everyday. In one way we have a very clear idea of what we want, which is this idea of doing - stopping to simply talk about it, think about it and rather go out there and do something. But if we are going to be true to that practice it has to continuously change and develop and in that way I think we are also learning everyday a bit more about why we wanted to do this in the first place.

EO: The idea was... Oh, it was great! Inpex organization developed it before the editorial team of The Inpex was formed. When I joined, in a way, it was about opening up the discourse on choreography and dance. But can I talk rather about what I personally found mostly exciting in it? It is questioning and performing. Working on The Inpex, I was given a chance, not to take the established discourse as such, as a given framework one has to fill in, but as an invitation for questioning it. To move to a certain meta-level of the discourse, to reserach how it works and why, and how would it react if being confronted?

I had experience in working for a newspaper full time, so it was exciting for me to address the issue of what a newspaper practice is. The Inpex is and is not a newspaper at the same time. It pretends, simulates, performs. And we were conscious about that. But at some point it says more about the reality we find ourselves in, that any “real” newspapers does. And then the moment of performativity – constituting yourself as an active agent, and being conscious about the fact that such identitification matters and is changing.

JWG: There were many but the main one for me was to show an unwillingness to be satisfied with what the opportunities for communication and writing that exist in the field. If we see a need and a place for a different type of activity we will simply do it, and not be constrained by existing hierarchies, traditions or permissions.

WR: I’ve come to understand the idea behind the The Inpex newspaper as the desire and commitment to be permissive with our creative selves. No one else will give us the opportunity to invent and interpret but ourselves. Inpex has provided the frawmework of a newspaper for the five of us (and an extended, highly supportive netowork of folks) to develop ideas about choreography.

Their trust in us intitiated trust in ourselves. What we have produced, and this was probably suspected by Inpex from the outset, is amateur, hotheaded, arch, subjective, insistent, scrappy, caring and above all, here in our hands. It could not survive as journalism under the current definitions of journalism, which should probably change, but it certianly counts as choreography, a distribution of information to, for and by bodies. I like knowing that The Inpex is in the hands of others who can use it as a reference point or, as they case may be, as emergency toilet paper.

EKH: To take part in the production of discourse and news, empowering the dance community through the dough of a festival. To think together and to challenge the notion of choreography. An ‘and’ to the situation as well as a greeting from INPEX. ER: How or rather why did you become a (dance-)journalist?

LH: I’m not. I was asked to take part in this project. I am someone who can think, write and perform. I’m just working within the given context.

EO: Those categories... I’d rather put it in the following way: how did I start to perform as a (dance-)journalist? I started to think about the strongest experiences I have, what changes me or the world around me puts in some different light. Or why some experiences don’t have this effect. At some point it became a necessity for me to express it, and constitute myself by doing that. I started writing. Journalistic practice followed naturally, as the way to become a part of the discourse generating process. Well, you know, this is one hell of a question – can take years and even decades to find the “right” answer. And it’s possible you will never find one, since it is constantly changing. But it’s not about journalism as such, it is about one’s self-expression and communication.

We have things we believe in, and that we are social beings, craving to put it out there in order to reach others.

JWG: I think journalist is stretching it a bit. I bought a book on journalism the other day, it’s called The Elements of Journalism: What People Should Know and the Public Should Expect I haven’t finished reading it yet. But I love writing, especially poetry.

WR: People. Places. Things. To learn. I’m fanatical, theoretical and micromanagerial in nature. Evidently, so are journalists and choreographers.

EKH: This engagement is very much part of my choreographic practice and engagement in choreography and dance.

ER: What were the difficulties you had to face day by day while writing?

LH: My own body smell, lack of sleep, the giggles, my own ambition, the fear of writing something down that I may not be commited to tomorrow.

EO: Believe it or not, but writing itself is difficult. Every single time it is putting yourself outthere, pretty helpless. Of course, one can take it as a simple tool: expressing a subject matter following a certain logic. But I believe it’s much more problematic. There is this novel by Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading. I’ve been thinking a great deal about this metaphor, especially in considering what writing is to me. I consider my writing as an invitation: first I invite myself, and then anyone, who would be interested to read it. It as a risk, of course. But never the end point.

JWG: The hardest part was the hour before the paper was sent to the printers.

Things get quite tense. But then you send it, and it’s a new news day. Lovely.

WR: Sincere mistakes and lack of vocabulary in every sense. Also, having my wallet stolen, not sleeping for over 60 hours and not taking a shower for several days were minor inconveniences. But maybe more so for my colleagues.

EKH: That the laziness of human kind - the ‘hoping for the best’ strategy that is so wide spread.

ER: Is ethics an issue for you? What do you think about investigative and/or embedded journalism?

LH: Ethics is always an issue for me and an inescapable aspect of existence at large. I think one should always take responsibility for one’s actions. And so I do even for whatever I write. www.inpex.se

EO: My background is philosophy. I don’t really believe that it is possible to depict or represent reality as such. It is always the matter of interpretation, and by that I mean also the interpretation by the reader. I don’t know how to talk about ethics at this point, because it is always present. Human beings are determined to follow certain normative imperatives, so maybe it is the question of what those imperatives are. I would say, my ethical standpoint is to be honest about the position I take, and not to pretend what I’m not.

JWG: Yes, totally.

WR: Ethics are always an issue. They change while in motion and I think the world is always in motion. I like being part of the world though, so ethics are a part of waking up every day and, when working as a journalist or choreographer, taking a position. And what are we doing here if not taking or maintaining a position?

EKH: Ethics can not not be an issue. This action is one that is focusing on format rather than content. That’s the starting point.

ER: Did making The Inpex change anything in your watching/thinking about dance?

LH: Well of course it opens up the possibilities of what one can see as dance and performance.

EO: Definitely. However, it wasn’t the case of experiencing a major shift in thinking about dance. But working together with The Inpex team brought in new perspectives on how the dance field can be approached and discussed. It also helped to re-identify my own position, where I stand in relation to the discourse about dance, how can I contribute, I and where can I go from there.

JWG: Yes, I want more more more. More production, more discussion, more dis-obedience.

WR: The Inpex just confirmed my belief that choreography and dance must be stated everywhere and in as many ways as possible.

ER: What or who impressed you most during your career as a journalist?

LH: The editorial team. I can’t believe we did it. And I guess if I see this

A rare lunch together on the floor of The Inpex Office Photo: Will Rawls

newspaper as a performance. Then for me it has been the most challenging.

EO: Can I say The Inpex? No, but really – it is amazing what can you create with these people! If this answer doesn’t count, all the others seem boring.

And I use all my abilities and knowledge in any topic I talk about, so I could not name one certain piece.

JWG: The people that were up for talking and stating an opinion and being ok with the consequences. That includes those on the editorial team.

WR: Our ability and willingness to say “Why not?!” to each other, whether at 9 in the evening or at 5 in the morning. This is a phrase we understood from the beginning, it was the corner stone of everything we did. Egle, Emma, Jess and Louise are amazing. We make a good team.

EKH: Bravery is beautiful and the dance community is getting smarter and sharper everyday. Hard work is great pleasure.

ER: Whats next? What will follow after The Inpex? Will you have time to relax?

LH: I’m making a movie. I’m filming the taking down of a music festival making it into a choreography. We start filming on Saturday. So I go there straight from here. I’m always in a mode alternating between production and relaxation.

EO: In couple of days I’m going to Innsbruck. Going there to write about an Early Music festival. One could say it’s totally different from what I was doing in Vienna. For me it’s not, as far as it is a part of the world we live in, and it forms our experiences. But I have to confess: I don’t want to consider The Inpex as beig over. The knowledge and experience we got here is priceless, and it will follow me wherever I go. As one of the members of Inpex has put it: we did this newspaper, so we can do anything now.

JWG: I am going on a cruise around South East Asia with my Grandparents.

I can’t wait. I am running a half marathon in September. That is my next project.

WR: Two weeks of vacation in New Hampshire, in the woods, with a lake to my left and a mountain to my right, my family around. I’ll do my best to relax, but I’ll be hard pressed not to obsess over these last ten days for the next one hundred days. Then back to work and facing New York City once again. It can be so hard to go back sometimes. But I’m nonetheless so excited for this next 10 months: a residency with Marina Abramovic to train for re-performing Imponderabilia during her retrospective. Some work with Dance Gang, my performance collaboration with Kennis Hawkins, a personal creative residency at Dance Theater Workshop, and performing in a new show by David Neumann / advanced beginner group.

EKH: Maybe a daily magazine? Documentary? The Inpex is not over, it has just started. Time to relax? Yes yes, I do sleep.

BOOK REVIEWS

On Bullshit, Literacy and Journalism WILL RAWLS

The extent to which news is actually newsworthy is up to the reader, on a case by case basis. If you are a reader of The Inpex then this point must be well proven by now. The newspaper’s page presents a reading of an event, which has already been compressed or expanded to fit the chosen topic. Reading, itself, is a porous experience, one that rambles through fields of meaning, collecting and replacing knowledge. You are, right now, filtering what has already been distilled. And only distilled via the chanciest methodology; I am running out of time to write this article, so I am rushing. The Inpex itself is running out of time.

As a journalist, translating experience into “copy” for another reader, or into speech for a listener, is a test of literacy and of rendering the literal. But more often the case, it is a bullshit performance. Explaining what you have just read or written to another becomes about what you are trying to remember about your reading and writing. This applies to journalists as much as readers.

There is never a point at which remembrance is guaranteed, only the point at which one or another detail stands up to be counted. Does quantity or quality matter more in this case? Remembrance and, by extension, retelling, reporting and discussion are creative acts. There is no computing, no digitized rendition of the event to distribute. No matter how many details are recalled, there is no ensured method of computing how much has been forgotten. The face of a newspaper should not conceal this process of creative remembrance, or bullshitting. It should instead embrace this and regale it, for creation, one can only hope, is newsworthy. Yesterday’s news is tomorrow’s history. At the moment of your reading, this page is neither; it is our current collaboration, dated or not. My hope is that once you have recycled this newspaper, you will recycle this story as well.

In How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read [Comment parler des livres que l’on n’a pas lus?, 2007], Pierre Bayard presses this leaky reporter-reader exchange by suggesting that one should read less, or rather, that reading is overrated, in quality and in quantity. Bayard reminds his readers that it is impossible to read every book that has been written. The act of reading must be abandoned to favor the wordof-mouth, the half-remembered; in other words, we should become bullshit artists. Bayard insists that pages that are read, words that are said or written, are all promptly forgotten. We must rely on memory’s technique, or lack of technique, as a way to improve, expand and maintain criticality. Since innumerable volumes of criticism devoted to “important books” have not necessarily confirmed Moby Dick’s chances of ever being read, we cannot favor the page over the word, the word-inhand over the overheard. This is not to say that Moby Dick is not noteCONT. PAGE 7

Friday, August 14. 2009

INTERVIEW

Self-Interview with Reykjavík Dance Festival

Sexiness, it turns out, is not something Reykjavík Dance Festival takes all that seriously. Dance? You bet. Relationships? Absolutely. Politics? Don’t get her started. But, she says, “I don’t normally think about being sexy. I think, Do I look presentable?

Do I look sane?” As if to make the point, she’s shown up to day — wearing glasses, an oversize button-down, and flats, her hair swept up into a demure ponytail. But the truth is, even dressed like a schoolteacher, Reykjavík Dance Festival has an innate and magnetic sensuality. That quality is on display at Hafnarfjarðarleikhúsið, Iceland, 3rd-6th of September.

by Reykjavík Dance Festival

We’re talking a few weeks before your festival really kicks up. Are you getting some final relaxation time in, or has the grind started already?

No, no, we’re in high alert mode. No fucking relaxing. It’s getting a little frustrating. We’re trying to cram everything together, and we’ve been rehearsing nonstop. We were supposed to have a month of rehearsal, then it got cut down to two weeks because we’re going over to Hafnarfjörður to do some stuff. You have to learn how to dance what you made on the choreography; it’s kind of like cramming for finals.

Some of the dances in the festival seem like they’d be pretty complicated to translate.

Yeah. I love having that problem. (laughs) It really makes the brain work.

How did you guys approach production?

We did the majority ourselves. Production has always been a strange thing for us, as far as “What does that mean?” We dance everything, we come up with all the parts and harmonies and dances. As far as putting it together and mixing it, that was done by Steinunn Ketilsdóttir, Lovísa Ósk Gunnarsdóttir, Katrín Gunnarsdóttir, Ásgerður G. Gunnarsdóttir and Ólöf Ingólfsdóttir.

So we really see it as anyone in the room who we’re bouncing ideas off is part of production. I guess in the business you hire a guy, and I hear sometimes he just sits there and goes “Yeah, cool,” and gets production credit for that. (laughs) For us, if you’re in the room, you get involved.

We’ve always been trying to do that.

We’ve always shied away from getting a producer—one, we’re afraid of getting a guy that wants to rewrite the dances. I don’t know that we’d handle that too well. (laughs) But it’s also part of the journey of this festival, where if you’re a fan of the festival, you’re a fan of how we grow and do our thing. If we bring somebody in, then you wonder “Did the festival do that? Did the festival think of that? Or is that some guy that’s a producer who knows how to get that feeling?

When we started the festival we just wanted to challenge what good taste was because we didn’t know ourselves.

You’re on an awful slippery intellectual slope saying that.

I’m not qualified to define it, because if I do, we will soon turn into good taste. And we aren’t that. And we’ve never behaved like an alternative festival. For us, it’s simple. In Iceland, we are only dancing to 240,000 people, not even that. That didn’t deter us from putting out dances in the UK and changing dance, to show we should dance. We just carry on with what we’re doing.

I think it’s about worshipping the next minute, what’s about to come.

As I said, the obsession with ‘future’.

But at the same time, it’s a quote from Wind In The Willows, from around 1930s, when Ratty gets a car and says, “here today ... tomor-

row next week!” and flies off! And for us, or at least for me, people have said, “Reykjavík Dance Festival are one-hit wonders, here today, gone tomorrow”, but we’re not. We are, and we’re going to be.

We are taking a hell of a risk with this festival. We spent a lot of money, the most expensive dance festival ever made in Iceland.

Why is Iceland more appealing to live than elsewhere?

Because we’re from here. I think we’ve seen enough– I’ve already lived four years abroad. It’s our natural habitat.

London is a brilliant city but it’s not a city to live in, just to visit, like New York. Iceland is the best place, not just because it’s our home, but you can’t understand the sort of luxury it is, just to be able to go to other places and just visit. If we become filthy stinking rich, we might be forced to move out. I am prepared to accept to move out. It’s just the fact that we were born there.

Thank you so much for your time Reykjavík Dance Festival No thank you Reykjavík Dance Festival, we were great especially me.

All the text is stolen from interviews with: Scarlett Johansson (By Rebecca Keegan), Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (Adam McKibbin), The Sugarcubes (Martin Aston). Copy/pasted and fiddled with by Halla Ólafsdóttir

REVIEW

Evil Has Never Looked So Good General hawk

The adaptation of the Hasbro toy franchise G.I. Joe, later Action Man, is brought to the screen by director Stephan Sommers, of the Mummy franchise fame. A secret elite military unit of the best soldiers from all over the world known as G.I. Joes reside in a sub-Saharan multi -level complex. A notorious arms dealer, later known as Destro, sells NATO some bad ass nano-mite warheads and then let his team, headed by the Baroness, Storm Shadow and Zartan steal them right back. The game is on. For the rest of the movie these two illegal and excessively overfunded organizations (think the Vienna State Opera and you get the idea) battle it out on the streets, in the sky and deep under the arctic ice.

Amazingly the Baroness is the brain washed ex-fiancée of Duke, the best G.I. Joe ever, and the brother of the presumed dead but very much alive disfigured evil genius Cobra Commander. It is indeed a contemporary study of existing politics with everyone sleeping with everybody and everything. This fast paced 3D effect fantasy says a big fat goodbye to both plot and acting. Instead it delivers action scenes that look like they have been choreographed by a baboon playing Gears of War while jacked up on crystal meth. Paramount released it without pre-screening it to the critics in order to save the opening weekend box office revenues.

So will the critics slash it? Does the Pope shit in the woods?

INTERVIEW CHRIS HARING OF LIQUID LOFT louise HÖJER and emma kim hagdahl

Our only question to you (and you can answer as long or as short as you want) is: LH& EKH: What are three aspects that make for a good performance?

CH: I’m always interested in tension and rhythm. As if working with musical parameters.

How do we receive it when it is loud or quiet, many or few people? Almost as if you do a piece of music, like you create a symphony.

With the content, it doesn’t matter how you tell it. If there is something that burns it will be there anyway.

Like here in the Liquid Loft we are working with the transgender topic or transformation. You tell it from heart. You try to reflect the world we are living in – contemporary time.

In Vienna you can do a sound work and still people accept you as a choreographer. It’s always in relation to something else.

So the three would be…

1. Rhythm and dynamics 2. The language that you are using 3. A mixture between objectivism and optimism, don’t give me the solution but give a feeling that there is a solution.

EKH: I know we said we only had one question, but now I just have one more. With this thing you said about reflecting the contemporary world, do you also propose something?

For me it’s about trying to enter a delirium. The delirium starts where the talking ends, through dance. It presents shifts of perspective so we rediscover ourselves. To show the people what they have.

Bullshit, Literacy and Journalism

FROM PAGE 6 worthy, but it is not more so than the dirty joke using Melville’s title as a punchline. Bayard emphasizes that we should remain readers, engaging and absorbing, but that the field of discourse is broader than the shelf.

Discourse is halted when one faces the dilemma of “quoting” a book in order to prove a point. This is no less than killing the creative act.

Specifically in the field of choreography, lack of publication has been a dangerous thing. Choreography must develop new techniques, new textual identities, that correspond with both the nature of the art form, one of disappearance and half-remembrance, and also with the discourse that encircles it. Choreography is placed in an advantageous position by Bayard’s argument, given choreography’s very potential to be bullshitted. In a review of Bayard’s Books, Tim Morris, suggests that the forgotten reemerges as technique, “like a forgotten scale exercise that translates into dexterity at the piano.” This dexterity is also a relationship with the moment of performance, where, in misquoting the score, a pianist can parlay this into something more or less than a mistake. It affords the pianist the space to bullshit. The scale has been sublimated to turn up as a skill of the present moment, a radically contemporaneous skill, one that may or may not rely on the original, educational context at all. It is a leap of technique, so to speak, both enabling and unpredictable, leaving behind

THE INPEX

7

COLUMN

Dare To Face It Who do you want to be? What’s your choice?

Coke, as in Coca Cola, is the real thing, or Diet Coke/ Coke Light? Don’t be shy, what’s your choice? mårten spångberg

Let’s start from the beginning.

Coke. What does it mean to be the real thing? What else than Coke is real, and not just inscribed in reality as a set of properties? God is real. What else?

Universe? Possibly. Anything real must be eternal, or exist beyond time, and furthermore be absolutely static. The real thing doesn’t change, nor does the secret formula for Coca Cola.

The real thing has no friends, has no relations but must exist as an unconditional singularity. Anything that produces relations is also subject to change.

The real thing don’t change, it is. The real thing is not just natural, but it exists as nature. The real thing cannot be constructed, it is! The real thing does not perform it simply exists.

Diet Coke is a totally different story. Obviously there cannot be two the real things, especially not two different of the same real thing. Thus if Coke is the real thing, then, as Slovoj Zizek tells us, Diet Coke must be “nothing disguised to something”. If Diet Coke isn’t the real thing, it implies that it is under constant change. Coke is, as in exists, whereas Diet Coke follows up identity politics and performs a subject without nucleus.

Remember, how Coke the real thing needed to compete with Pepsi, through blind tests and blind folded American customers. Diet Coke doesn’t need autonomy. On the contrary Diet Coke acquires potentiality through relations and differentiation. When Coke is an object, Diet Coke is the sum of its relations.

If Coke is nature, then Diet Coke, or Coke Light as we know it in Europe,

Diet Coke is a totally different story. Obviously there cannot be two the real things, especially not two different of the same real thing.

must be culture. It is construction and artifice, especially considering that there is absolutely no trace of conventional sugar. So if Coke, as everything of nature, strives towards entropy, i.e. a minimum levels of energy production ad waste, or simply rest, it’s light relative, which is purely artificial, is producing energy and tension. It is friction, conflict, heat.

Comparing beverages to dance would give the following result: Coke is a mixture between Deborah Hay (authentic movement) and release technique (entropy), whereas Coke Light, one would think, must be ballet (maximum artificiality). But, as Coke Light isn’t a thing but nothing disguised to something, i.e. pure expression (and combined with Mentos expressionist), it is no longer a matter of what it is but what it does: Coke Light is not an object, commodity or a technique, it is a devise for potential emancipation. If Coke is the sign of freedom understood as something produced and authorized by the state, Diet Coke is a device for a freedom that you produce yourself.

Now, what’s your choice? Are you a person standing with both feet on the ground? A soldier in the service of nature and somebody whose utter goal is absolute autonomy, although you know that well there, you won’t have no friends to have lunch with and brag about how totally static you are. Or are you a Diet Coke performer always out of balance because of your uncountable relations, full of energy due to artificial sugar and a spokes person for the inorganic.

There is ideology in the choice of soft drink. Signing up for Coke the real thing equals a belief in eternal values, of keeping it simple and ‘same procedure as last year’. And what Coke Light means we already know. Drink Coke Light and show your passion for contemporanuity.

But Diet Coke doesn’t taste good, somebody objects. That’s correct, but it doesn’t taste horrible either. In order for Diet Coke to be really contemporary and to maintain its contemporanuity it must not taste too good, or too bad.

Why? Compare it to ideas. A really good idea is good because we can identify it as good, or GOOD. Same thing with a really bad idea. Correct, ideas that are radically contemporary must be so so, a little bit half good. Mediocre. Remember if it tastes good it ain’t good enough. If it tastes like shit, just forget about it. But a half good taste, that can’t really be identified, carries in its immaturity a promise of contemporanuity.

Contemporanuity insists on a life that constantly undermines its own positions, it’s own qualities and that insists on the multitude, i.e. to not form communities but sustains singularities that has only one thing in common: revolution.

In a society devoid of ideology, there can be no revolution. As Che had it, “In order to be a revolutionary, I needed a revolution”. He was a lucky man, because he had ideology behind his back. Today we cannot strive for this or that revolution, there can be none. But there is one thing we can do, and that is the centre fold of contemporanuity: to insist on being a revolutionary. Only then can we reinvent ideology, as it has never showed its face before. And that face is the face of a radical contemporanuity. Do you dare to face it?

Btw, this was my last ever column for The Inpex. Thanks for reading me, this is the final high five. I love you. And an AC/DC to The Inpex editorial team cuz you really did it - you made this summer worth living, you put sunshine into our lives and you made us write things we didn’t know we knew. The Inpex in itself is the very definition of contemporanuity. For those about to rock we salute you. pedagogy and restating it with a new and current purpose. In this sense, choreography must also artfully forget the texts that it has already tried to historicize and write down. The oft-quoted only keeps choreography back from it’s true potential for expansion at every moment, within every moment.

The temporality of bullshitting is akin to that of journalism. It is an attempt to crystallize the truth that does not exist behind the word, but

using this fallibility to create new news and newsworthiness. Without having read Bayard’s book, I can only draw my thesis from the reviews I have read (today), and only by forgetting them since. In light of this, what I have written about Bayard may have nothing to do with choreography. Maybe this newspaper doesn’t either. One thing is for certain; this paper will be forgotten. At this moment, I hope for this above all things.

www.inpex.se

8 THE INPEX

Friday, August 14. 2009

CLASSIFIEDS Contretemps

Contretemps is the world’s leader in specialized temporary staffing. We provide exciting temporary, temporary-to-hire and project opportunities in the areas of accounting, bookkeeping, finance, administration and consultation. Through our parent company, kairos, we’ve been matching highly skilled finance and accounting professionals with creative campaign clients since august 6, 1969. Our relationships with top distributors in more than 360 locations worldwide ensure that you enjoy competitive pay, challenging careers and assignments with excellent opportunities for deployment. Don’t just take our word for it, see for yourself! In 2009, o! Fortuna® magazine ranked us #1 in our industry on the list of “world’s most admired companies”. Nine out of 10 of our clients and candidates would recommend our service to a colleague. The other one can be found peddling his wares in public space.

Apply now or contact your local contretemps office today! Contretemps is an equal opportunity deployer.

Junior Choreographer, Broadway Dance Center: Broadway Dance Center is New York’s premier dance studio, operating in NYC for 25 years. We are seeking a motivated and energetic individual to join our team as a Junior Choreographer with some Human Resource responsibilities. This highly professional individual will have a wide variety of responsibilities ranging from day-today dancing operations to anatomical reporting.

The ideal candidate will possess excellent interpersonal skills and proven ability to multi-task in a busy environment. Strong communication skills are essential. Candidate must be a team player who takes initiative and is detail-oriented with strong follow-through skills. You will work closely with the CEO and Controller. You need to be reliable and accurate.

Contractor ARC Federal is a wholly owned subsidiary of Anti Regional Corporation, an Atlantic Native Corporation formed under the Atlantic Native Claims Settlement Act. With over 4000 employees nationwide, ARC Federal supports multiple subsidiaries serving a broad range of federalized customers, including the Department of Defense and the intelligence community. We provide sup-

port services in engineering, aviation, transportation, satellite and radar systems, space and missile defense, operations and maintenance, IT/IM and security support to civil and military R&D centers and federal data centers. ARC Federal is recognized as one of the planet’s fastest-growing companies and has been named as one of the Top 100 Government Contractors in 2009 by Topographical Technology magazine. This dramatic success is built upon a commitment to excellence, customer satisfaction and our employees.

Build on our success for the career of a lifetime - with ARC Federal.

Doctrine Writer The contractor shall support tasks required for the spiral conceptual/doctrine development of Site Exploitation, Document and Media Exploitation, Intelligence Soldier/personnel guide, Geospatial Intelligence, Imagery Intelligence, Threat finance, Biometrics and Forensics.

•Write publications and develop products utilizing Microsoft Office Suite software.

•Ensure proper synchronization with Military Intelligence, Army and Joint doctrine • Ensure proper synchronization with intelligence publications with Army Regulations, Directives, Executive Orders, proponent, non-proponent and Joint doctrine Work Environment and Physical Demand: Some travel, mostly desk work Street Team Member Hello World. Major up-and-coming hip hop artist, Jesse Abraham, is looking to add a few more heads to his Street Team. Paid position. Details provided upon request. Get involved.

PERSONALS I am looking for a regular tennis partner. I can play day or night. I am male, 41, about a 3.5 player.

I Would like to meet someone who is a raw foodist, or a vegan. I’m trying to get into Raw food slowly. It’s a bit hard, at times, to do it by myself.

I have many questions.

I am a confident bi-curious girl with good hands who really wants to eat you out and maybe play with our toys too. If, you’re willing to be my first, if you’re clean/disease free, if you’re HOT- but not in a classified ad/porn star way, we can meet

THIS WEEKEND and its NSA. I can host if needed. Preferably you’re not too little, in fact the TALLER the better! Size 16 and under. I’m hot and fun and honest and uncomplicated, and you should be too! IF YOU HAVE A PENIS DO NOT REPLY TO THIS AD!!!!! YOU DO NOT QUALIFY!! NO MEN

Hey to all .........Who wants to hang out tonight.

Im 28 kinda fit and west indian . Im looking for an arabic, caucasian ,latina or a mixed women .

Please be willing to verify upon reply. If you like to watch movies , occasional drinks and have a sense of humor please send me a message and lets hang tonite or tomorrow. Please no bbws, 3sums and freakin spammers!!!!

MISSED CONNECTIONS Dream Dance I had a dream that we were walking in what seemed to be the library together, not talking, but walking together and we were both looking for something and kept getting lost. We seperated, but when we did, it felt as if you never left, like I could still feel your presence and then every time i would get lost and we would seperate I would then turn a corner. and there you were.

We were trying to find something and relied on each other to help but we kept losing each other in the process. And then, just when we began to realize that we failed at finding what we were looking for and were alone in the search ... we found each other again. The dream ended with me in the passenger seat of a car driving away from you to get somewhere to do something important that I had to do...but I was crying. You were in the middle of the street watching me and i remember still feeling your presence next to me, and a knowing that we would meet again. I think we were looking for love, and I think that in the end, I was trying to move on from you, and just got sick of the chase and never acheiving what I searched for and wanted all along.

I think I knew though that this was a temporary feeling. And I wish that in real life you would come running after me. You will always win.

But it’s only a dream, and of course I would never tell you the complete story but I wish I could.

Dreams aren’t what I wish they would be, they’re just thoughts and imagination combined in order to keep my mind busy while I sleep. However, I woke up knowing how I felt about you.

From an audition:

I was the one who looked like Hugh Grant on steroids. corporate banker type, or so I liked to think. You - very charmingly - congratulated me for having stolen the pen. You are gorgeous, although, a burgundy red tie on burgundy red shirt?! It’s a little excessive. That said… I’d do you. Big time. The crux is, would you do me?!?

I’ll never know, will I? Oh, and it was abundantly clear that you’ll get the part of Max. Good for you.

Walk on by: You Walked By My Job at 15 Lehargasse. You smelled like Hugo Boss, a real pretty boy, and you gave me a half smirk that made me almost burst. I wish I was not in the middle of my shift or I would have complimented you on a good choice for cologne but I know your secret. I have dirty blonde hair with blue eyes...eastern european boy looking for a friend in this big town.

You had on khaki Armani Exchange shorts with a Polo checkered blue short sleeve shirt. Your shoes looked expensive...Diesel?

DANCE WORKS FOR SALE Selected titles include YEP TWO BIRD TALK #1 -7 SPIN SOLO/SPIN DOUBLE TEACHING A NEW DOG OLD TRICKS OVERLAY THE PRODUCTION OF SUSPICIOUS BODIES Please contact - Paul Gazzola @ paul.Gazzola@gmail.Com for terms and conditions.

Discount rates apply to multiple purchases. All offers considered.

DOWN 1. TheRE is a lot of room for this in email correspondence. (17) 2. The end of ImPulsTanz and the beginning of Tanz Im August are ___________. (12) 3. Something is better than _____.

(7) 4. In my opinion you do not need to ________ your choreographic choices unless you want to. (7) 5. Rhymes with unless, starts with a part of the shark’s anatomy. (7) 6. Often at the beginning of a conference, a type of talk. (7) 7. Sweet home __________ .(7) 8. A Meg Stuart work that premiered in 2004. (5) 9. The theme for 2009 ImPulstanz Festival Lounge. (9) 10. The Lithuanian member of The Inpex editorial team. (4) www.inpex.se

14.08.09 danceWEB Party Kasino am Schwarzenbergplatz

(for performative reading out loud; 3 people) kRÖÖT JUURAK

“When Jennifer Lacey performs it’s like looking at glitter.”

a: whoop? whoop? b: grthrgrthrtrhrhdrrr a: whoop! whoop? c: hrrrrrrrrr d: rabbit rabbit rabbit c: whoop? whoop? a: rabbit rabbit rabbit c: rabbit rabbit b: iuuub?

ACROSS

CALENDAR

a: NOVOMATIC is a group of companies being active in gambling and the production of gambling b: machines. A walk through any part c: of Vienna easily reveals its ubiquitous presence through ADMIRAL SPORTWETTEN, ADMIRAL CASINOS, etc. b: Many of these venues play quite their part in, to say the least: INTERESTING urban socio-economic transformation processes. One a: might think it unnecessary to say that a gambling corporate is making money from the MISERY of addiction. b: A quick look in the German Wikipedia reveals quite c: a list of CRIMINAL BUSINESS activities in the past. A current Austrian minister has been on the board of a: Novomatic, only one example of the often criticized tight links between the gambling company and politicians. Ah, perhaps c: some SPONSORING at an established high cultural festival, to b: polish up the image. The dance scene is quite radical AND STUFF.

QUOTES

AT THE FESTIVAL LOUNGE

1. Mademoiselle + below + not sitting (16) 2. _______________ is better than nothing. (9) 3. If you are not in a relAtionship you are ______________. (9) 4.Bring back to zero. (7) 5. Feisty and opinionated. (13) 6. You have to walk before you can ___. (3) 7.Has the largest selection of colourful shirts at ImPulsTanz, an Austrian in Brazil.

(3, 9) 8.Often a costume in high school theatre productions. (4) 9. Everybody. (3) 10. Bread is the equivalent of this for Jesus Christ. (5)

RALO MAYER

SCRIPT FOR SMALL TALK

OVERHEARD IN VIENNA...

Jessyka watson-galbraith

(for performative reading out loud; 3 people; or whatever, because besides fancy people, fancy theory, fancy emptiness and fancy group sex there is also contemporaneity, aha, why not use the space for some basic info on what’s going on right outside the fancy bubble, like just a little impulse, so to say, in a manner of speaking, are performers able to act once in a while?

Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

GAME CROSSWORD

SCRIPT FOR SMALL TALK

“The files are ok and the guys at the platesetter are very happy about the content! “ EMAIL FROM THE PRINTHOUSE RE: THE INPEX ISSUE 4.

“You’re 30 seconds behind the discourse” At the inpex editorial office

The Inpex editorial team infiltrate the InPulsTanz Office

“Let me know if you want me to micromanage anything.”

At the inpex editorial office

“You have like a goat-tee under your arm pit.”

(pause) a: whoop? whoop? b: iuuiuub-iuuhb! a: whoop? whoop! wwwhooop? c: hrrrrrrrrrhrrrhrrrr d: rabbitrabbitrabbit a: rabbit rabbitrabbit c: rabbit rabbitrabbitrabbit b: iuuu iuu iuuu iuuuuiuub iuuub iuuub c: whoop whoopwhoop whhoooop a: iaak iaak iaak b: iaakjaakiaak d: haap haap jaap jaap c: iaäak iaäak haäak haäkkhaäak aäak b: hrrrgrrrhrgrrrrrrr a: rrrrrrrhgr Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

At the festival lounge

YESTERDAY’S WEATHER WILL RAWLS

Partly cloudy with rays of sunshine, bolts of lightning and a flood. Centaurs and faunes ran amok.

Bankers drowned. Citizens rode the tide in boats fashioned from paper.

“You just have to look at it on YouTube and you can do the dance too” JENNIFER LACEY