I had been told about a conference at the contemporary art museum in Brussels that spiked my interest and decided to pro-actively remember the date and time of the event and actually go. The lecture was held by a New York curator and examined the relationship between the renaissance approach of ‘intermezzo’ in the theatre and contemporary art. The conference was remarkable; I had a little Calarts nostalgia while listening to this precise yet chaotic geyser of information, the educational yet challenging language. The New York accent added to the general sense of: 'I might just get on a plane to JFK, go straight to Brooklyn and order myself a dirty martini, real dirty please’.
Anyway, point is, the lecture was amazing and following my fantastical ways, as time and words went by, I started finding this curator more and more good looking, and charming and wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a little something with an art theorist of this calibre… At the end of the lecture, he opened up to the expected Q&A and I couldn’t help but ask meticulous questions and play the devil’s advocate to test the guy. Disconcerted at first, he eventually started playing the game a little which satisfied me entirely. At the end of the event, I walked up to him to ask him the name of an unknown yet incredibly cutting edge piece at the time by artist Picabia. He admitted having forgotten the name but wrote down his email address for me to contact him, it would come back to him eventually. He then proceeded to get up and introduce himself to me. The unfortunate circumstance of this first physical connection resided in the fact that the man was over a foot smaller than me.
mardi 29 juin 2010
Flirtatious Intermezzo
lundi 28 juin 2010
Not so Desperate Living
The other weekend, I went to Paris to reunite with some childhood friends: Elinor and Alice. Elinor came all the way from Israel to tell us all about her newborn child. It also appears her husband bullied her to get a plane ticket to Europe when he found her sobbing one evening after having obsessively reorganized every single cupboard and drawer in her house. Smart man. Nonetheless, she needed air and always finds her inspiration in Paris.
We spent a short but wonderful 24 hrs, chatting like schoolgirls, which I suppose we are to a certain extent.That Sunday evening, Elinor’s sister, Tal, a sound designer who has recently ‘moved in’ with the company (Zingaro) she has been working with for the past six months, invited us to a ‘Spring Party’. Both Alice and I gathered along in an attempt to spend as much time as humanly possible with our Israeli cupcake.
Zingaro turned out to be one of the most improbable microcosm in the middle of a dodgy and plainly said ugly part of Paris: a little green haven surrounded by a large amount of dreadful social projects. Zingaro is a circus company that works solely with horses and secondarily a large team of riders, trainers, acrobats and grooms. All of these people live on the land in colourful trailers. When first told about Tal’s new living arrangements, I couldn’t help but think about John Waters ‘Desperate Living’ but I was very much impressed by the site. Clearly, a tour of a trailer stays somewhat of an anticlimactic experience especially when you are taller than 5ft, but there was a certain quaintness and happy eccentricity about it all that made it delightful. And this, even after a trip to the toilet where one is asked to pour a cup of sawdust over whatever one has produced.
dimanche 16 mai 2010
Kinky Techy
Two weeks ago, I shot a series of short videos in my childhood house that I plan to show in an installation within the next year. Since I seem incapable of staging anything that isn’t somewhat perverse and usually involving women, men working on the set end up having to train their sense of self-control. Was I slightly embarrassed when the (male) technical crew came into my house to find us rehearsing a lap dance scene involving close to no clothes for Yvain and an incredibly trashy yet overwhelmingly sexy outfit for Martha? Possibly. Let us underline that she was wearing a pink wig and has a natural pair of generous breasts. One may also want to comment on the soundscape at the time, composed of three female extras chatting and giggling in Swiss German. I felt like we were missing a well-hung polish TV repairman or something.
After the first shoot, we let most of the team go and recorded some sound with Martha and I was to replace Yvain, a man who appears briefly in the video. Since he undresses, the sound designer told me I needed to put on Yvain’s clothes and take them off in the same order than in the shoot. This seemed OK, until I realized that I hadn’t waxed for a while, which I of course made public within a second and tried to justify by a: “Well, I’m single, you know?”. The cinematographer frowned and replied: “C’est pas une excuse”. So, suddenly extremely self-conscious, I went to put on a pair of leggings.
The next day I was performing in one of the shoots. It involved a lot of acrobatic movements, splits, positions held for a long time, and mostly a lot of pressure on my abs and lower back. After shooting for close to two hours, I was sweating heavily and starting to shake a little while battling to keep my movements nice and smooth. After a while, the cinematographer (Romain), noticed my pain and offered to help stabilize me while in shoulder stand. The focus of the video was leg movements and we were trying to create an inverted air walk somehow defying gravity. The trick was complicated and had me crush Romain’s fingers a couple of times, but we got there eventually, although at some point, his head ended up sort of smashed between my inner thighs. This may be a good time to point out my costume: I was wearing dangerous looking black stilettos and electric blue tights. After the shoot and before setting up for the next one, I said to Romain: “See! I waxed for you”, to which he replied: “Yes, thank you, I noticed”.
dimanche 18 avril 2010
Venison or my industrial fridge?
About a week ago, I needed help moving an industrial fridge my father had bought me on ebay into my new studio space. I called my childhood friend Frederic, who happens to live right next to my superb ‘atelier’. Since he failed to answer his phone, I asked a couple of musician friends of mine to give me a hand. We were drinking beers at a screening and eventually got the job done a couple hours later. I suppose me being under the influence was what left Frederic’s insistent text messages unnoticed that evening. It can be hard to focus on a slight twinkle sound in the bottom of one’s handbag while discussing bad 70s French movies (starring the epic Louis de Funes) with a drunk casting agent. What I discovered the next day is that Frederic had invited me to join an impromptu dinner party involving venison from his hunting lease. Needless to say that reading such a text the next morning was highly frustrating, I texted him back immediately to express my deep sorrow. Yesterday, around 2am, I got a new text from Fred: “The venison’s brother is waiting for you in my fridge.”
samedi 17 avril 2010
Barbie Bargain
Some of my work consists in shopping for absurd objects at bottom line prices, that means walking around thrift stores and flea markets and shuffling through dusty boxes belonging to freshly dead people. The other day I was scouting for a large amount of barbies who are to be tortured over the course of a semi-read, semi-staged play written by an Argentinian transvestite playwright living in Paris in the 80s. I found some at ‘le jeu de balle’, a daily morning flea market in downtown Brussels. When inquiring about the price, a Maroccan dealer, told me: “4 euros” to which I argued: “Mais elle a meme pas d’habits!” (She doesn’t even have clothes!). After all, a naked Barbie is close to pointless, think about it, there really is nothing to play with. Sticking to his original price, the chap said: “Mais c’est l’ete non?” (Well it’s summer isn’t it?).
May the force be with you...
Waking up at 5am on a Sunday to go to work is quite painful. That is probably why Michel, our manager, suggested we take the time to share breakfast at 7:30 with Lio, the cook and Anne-Sophie, the new weekend student-slave. As we were sipping on hot coffee and nibbling on our respective croissants, pain au chocolat and/or brioche, Michel started telling the story of an ex co-worker (Tim) whom he had to fire for unusual reasons. Apparently, while leaving work one day, Tim handed a letter to Michel. The text said: ‘Retrouves-moi derriere la friterie de la place Dumont demain a 14h pour un combat avec la force du dragon’ ( Meet me behind the French fried stall - to be found on any local market place in Belgium - tomorrow at 2pm to combat the force of the dragon). What might’ve been a joke for most non-retarded people was Tim’s dead serious challenge to a duel with Michel, our unfortunate looking, adorable, anal-retentive manager. Lio added that in the letter, Tim had actually crossed out 1pm and replaced it by 2pm. Maybe he had a haircut appointment or something.
At the dinner table
The last dinner I hosted at my place was a blast and involved an eclectic group composed of a historian, a financial consultant, two international law students, two set designers, a circus performer and myself. We had a wonderful meal involving many Belgian treats from ‘carbonnades flamandes’ (beef marinated in dark lager) to ‘crème de mascarpone au speculoos’ (speculoos is a ginger biscuit usually served with tea or coffee in any given Belgian brasserie) and close to a bottle of wine each. After the meal, we all decided to retreat to the drawing room and make use of the fireplace. Since we had no logs left, I threw a coat on and went out to get us more wood. Quintijn (the circus dude) offered to help. So there we were, walking through a dark and muddy terrain with a rather dim flashlight. We eventually got to the creepy little shack at the bottom of the garden and started gathering a couple logs. When back in the house, I realized that while I had taken two, Quintijn was carrying about ten of them as naturally as one may carry a passive kitten. I suppose I wasn’t that surprised to see him a couple of days later performing in a show during which a full-grown man and a petite acrobat towered up on his shoulders.
mardi 30 mars 2010
Belgian 'Humour Noir'
Dinners at Nicole’s place tend to be pretty strange maybe because they usually involve neurologists, therapists, neuro-psychiatrists, a current boyfriend, an ex-husband, and a couple tortured young souls, me included. This time I came with a +1, my friend David visiting from Jerusalem. The placement around the table was organized in such a way that Nicole’s current companion, Kenneth, a Chilean architect who hardly speaks English and despises all that is American, was sitting at the far opposite of David, and American writer of Russian Jewish descent whom I studied with in LA. The conversation immediately fused around the theme of paedophilia within the church. Everyone was speaking simultaneously about the reasons why and how someone might be brought to have sexual relationships with children. Most of the conversation ended up being fairly absurd, some might say vulgar or maybe completely inappropriate. I noticed that even though we were surrounded by doctors and intellectually proficient human beings, no real conclusion was reached. I just remember the dialogue suddenly falling into the realm of homosexuality and Nicole announcing that: “Lesbians are women who still believe in fairies and witches”, which caused a general burst of laughter and served as a wonderful transition to the blackberry pie for dessert. We soon discovered the blackberry had stained all of our teeth and tongs and the entire group briefly transformed into a bunch of 8 years old giggling about their vampire-esque purple mouths.
Kenneth who had chosen to drink wine instead of socialising that evening eventually attempted to communicate by ways of the French language and uttered a comment which was received with a slight wave of disapprobation. Being fairly experienced in the ‘Nicole gatherings’ and the generally hectic nature of its conversations, I have an especially trained ear to eavesdrop while, in this case, violently discussing the ethical concept behind Europe with my sceptical American friend. Having missed the punch line of Kenneth’s blabber, I asked him to repeat himself. After a little hesitation he said in French: “The funny thing about David, is that if we decided to kill him tonight and bury him, let’s say in our yard, no one will ever know about it!” my left eyebrow reached for the sky while my right eye directed a refrigerated glance towards the man. I turned back to David and continued the conversation as if nothing had happened. In an effort of diplomacy, Nicole said something along the lines of: “L’humour noir tout a fait belge quoi!” which I chose to ignore as well.
A little later in the car, while debriefing on our evening and on our way to another party, I described the incident to David, who had been left unaware of the exchange due to Kenneth’s rather unintelligible French. David was slightly shocked for a second then the writer in him immediately took over and he said: ‘ The worse is that he is absolutely wrong, if he did kill me and buried me in his garden, people WOULD know about it and he would be arrested in no time. Think about it…’ then proceeded to describe to me how and whom and what would’ve ensued.
jeudi 25 mars 2010
Gluts & Cigarettes
There’s something absolutely charming about the turn a girls night can take. Yesterday, at Ananda’s apartment, after our ritualistic weekly chain-smoking action of the week and a particularly healthy meal, Nolwenn set up a ‘salon area’ right in the middle of the kitchen. It involved a large blue tarp, two chairs and a trashed up mirror. As Aline was cutting my hair, Ananda was filing her nails, and after adding an extra coat of bright red on hers, Nolwenn left the kitchen to come back with a mysterious little embroidered cushion. I soon discovered that this was her ‘exercise mat’ when she placed herself in a rather suggestive position, only a couple centimetres from me to do her ‘gluts work out’. After the haircuts, Nolwenn methodically gathered the remnant hair to give to a sculptor friend of hers who works essentially with skulls, nails and human hair.
mercredi 24 mars 2010
Rats & Mayo
We had some of our English family for lunch this Sunday. My aunt, who is particularly fond of telling shocking stories around uptight people, described her recent experience with rodents. A couple months ago, she started realizing that a large group of rats was using the roof of her kitchen as a freeway between two houses. She went to local authorities to find out how to get rid of them. Surprisingly enough, they handed her five huge bags of rat poison without asking too many questions and basically invited her to deal with it herself. In order to have a view on the scene she threw the bags on the neighbours roof and came back around dusk to observe the mass murder. She described a pretty horrifying vision involving over a hundred rats rushing to eat up the entire contents of the bags. A couple days later, the traffic on her kitchen roof had ceased. When going back to the local authorities to find out whether there was any next step involved, a chap told her the best test was to place a piece of bread smeared with mayonnaise on her roof. If the bread was left uneaten, the rats were officially gone. Seduced by the Belgian folklore of it all, Fiona placed a ladder against the wall and reached up to the roof to place her mayonnaise-covered slice of bread and waited. The delectable dish remained untouched.
Indigeste is back
This evening, at Antoine and Alice’s place, the table was littered with bottom line red wine and a couple bottles of Gordon’s Gin. While discussing ‘Indigeste’s future, it appeared that I had forgotten to underline the key detail of Antoine’s intervention in the next performance. The hood of the raincoat that is worn under the heat light over the course of an extended amount of time will have to be fastened tightly around Antoine’s face. The punch point resides in the untying of the hood which should create a sort of cascade of sweat on Antoine’s face. Rehearsals have officially started ten days ago. Antoine is currently composing a rather graphic song describing the encounter between a cock and a cunt. To the question: Is the song written from the point of view of the cock or the cunt? Antoine stayed vague which accentuated the thrilling suspense of it all.
Belgian Vandalism
I was memorising the slightly obnoxious sugary needs of a group of three stopping by for their ‘gouter’ when an elegantly dressed man came into the restaurant and asked me whether I knew that someone was stealing beer cases from our storage space. I couldn’t help but laugh, it seems natural yet completely counter productive to steal a number of heavy cases of beer from a Belgian restaurant. The man didn’t seem as entertained as I was and pointed urgently towards a homeless guy steadily yet fairly slowly pushing a shopping cart full of ‘Jupiler’ cases in the not-so-far distance. I eventually ran upstairs to ask Arian, a rather insecure Algerian with a very studied attitude, to save the day. Since he is rather cold and distant and I was feeling maternal that afternoon, I picked him to be the ‘hero of the day’. The elegantly dressed man and him didn’t have to run much to catch up with the poor dude. I had to swing by the kitchen and missed most of the action. When inquiring about the outcome of the situation, Arian answered: “Ben, j’ai juste tout recuperer, qu’est-ce tu veux faire?”. He was right, there’s something wrong about reprimanding a homeless man trying to get a couple euros against a bunch of empty bottles.
Baby Talk
I work with this chap, Lio, who’s a tall guy with a conceptually shaven head & beard and a couple piercings. He bets on football games and horse races. He’s adorable but if you don’t know him he looks like someone you wouldn’t want to provoke. During a downtime of the day, this other dude comes over, a fat guy with huge hands who appears to work in another restaurant nearby. I eavesdrop on their conversation, since sorting out dishes doesn’t ask for the deepest concentration. I hear them chat about their babies, both firsts for them. I was pretty astonished by the turn that took the exchange, soon enough they were talking about what his or his paediatrician advised nutrition wise and here they were, passionately claiming the merits of organic vegetables and specific oils to nurture their beloved offspring. Soon enough they were exchanging addresses of markets and shops and it was adorable, cause clearly they weren’t vegan hipsters, they had never eaten organic food in their lives, they were just deeply concerned daddies. I had a silent cute attack.
Zievereer Finance guys
‘Ca c’est vraiment des zievereer quoi!’ says Lio about three bankers sharing croissants and expressos this morning. ‘Zievereer’ is a Brussels expression that defines blabbermouths. Two of the chaps are flemish, the other one is francophone, they are chatting quite loudly in a mix of dutch and Americanized financial English. I catch glimpses of their obnoxious dialogue: “I don’t care WHAT you do with the money afterwards, HOW you want to share it, YOU figure it out’ followed by loud laughter and a couple sips on organic apple juice. ‘We need so&so from Goldman Sacks, get such&such from Barclays, 10 Mil I tell you!!’ more yelling and laughing ‘125 000! In the pocket, like THAT!’ more sniggering. In the meantime, I’m serving a 75 year old couple, starring at each other with large smiles. When apologizing for the wait, the woman looks at me with a sort of peaceful kindness and says: “Ne vous inquietez pas pour nous mademoiselle’. Both their faces are illuminated with love and I can’t help but think that they have something that the ‘Zievereer’ will never get to trade.
Traumatizing wigs
I went to meet my friend Aline in some sordid hairdresser school in a particularly non-descript industrial area of Brussels. Aline is a brilliant and talented scenographer who loves learning and has always cut hair so there she is, ‘studying’ with a friend of hers and mostly a large group of total losers. There was something sort of alarming about this particular student, a pregnant woman with crazy eyes and a terrible 70s short pageboy haircut practising on an auburn wig. She was struggling to recreate her blond dreadfulness of a haircut on this innocent wig, then proceeded to blow-dry the wig which soon resulted in a burnt smell. There were a couple of reactions in the room, most of which I imagined said things like: ’Man what’s that burnt smell, turn it down!’, I say I assume, because the classes were given in Dutch. Anyway, crazy preggars totally denied everything and just changed blowdryers. I felt sorry for the wig.