Launch of the LIFT Living Archive by Tim Etchells
Out there somewhere the show starts
And though sometimes it happens differently most likely it's a matter
of dimming the lights in one place and raising them up in another.
a shift of emphasis - one part of the room you are in losing focus so the other then
burns bright
and persons enter the stage, speak, move
and time passes
but
it burns bright also
in the afterwards
for example aftermath of a firework
scratched on a sky seen from London and persons cross the stage of re-memory
or else the audio
echoes long after a sound
for example the clang and clatter of metal on metal, heard down by the river,
Thames
in a Bow Gamelan boat (The Navigators, Lift 1990)
from which steam ghosts are rising always upwards or
voices singing
in a broken down waiting room of former East Germany (Murx den Europäer!, produced by the Volksbühne, directed by Christoph Marthaller, presented in LIFT ‘95)
there they sing old songs written already deep with contradictions of the present past – old ballads, hymns and Yididsh songs next to Hitler tunes, and the national anthem of GDR
they sing
From the ruins risen newly,
to the future turned, we stand.
And you can’t tell quite where they do stand
Their city and their time being just as complex as yours
Everything echoes, archivally or otherwise
Or
(another example) some tightrope walker spins, elegant and deathly,
high up above in the now of then
still burned on the retina
(Circus Oz 87)
Ten minutes for LIFT Living Archive
Ten minutes to LIFT
Off
And then on with the show
Me again how it works the archive
And LIFT off then up
and down
Stood here
Looking backwards / forwards
Looking up and down there
Feet criss cross and the city is
Cross crissing its streets with feets
And criss crossing raised stages with low speeches and murmurings
The meaning only later, sometimes only years later
falling into place
And down there the city folds around these events
continues its flow in time
its chase of money, footsteps, and the rest,
trafficking in traffic, and pedestrians pedestrianising its pavements
towerblocking its towerblocks
undergrounding it undergrounds
the various undergrounds and mainstreams of its heart, its river
Thames.
strong what people remember
delicate and strong what people remember
delicate and strong and strange what people remember
strong what they forget
the look of eyes and touch of hands
sweat of bodies on a stage
or in an auditorium with many persons watching waiting
a city needs a festival,
and the echoes that follow
and the ripples that spread
who you sat with
and spoke with
before or whispered during
and afterwards
what the whole thing brought to mind
what it changed in you and others
what it left behind
a fax conversation with Ramallah arranging performances – do you remember faxes?
A contact sheet bearing photographs of Red Pilot/ Neue Slowenische Kunst – do you remember contact sheets?
a list of props that are needed by guys coming from South Africa.
Letters back and forth also
typewritten letters
an unbelievable nostalgia
you know the ones I think
where the letters of certain words have been typed over to correct mistakes
and where accents for those Hungarian names have been added in, using pencil
back when writing was not pixels
when it had materiality
An archive makes the traces visible
Tangible
Even as it knows they are gone
Not just by any means the art works but somehow of all those hours of officeworks and finances and even interns or diverse drivers stood at the airport with signs declaring the names of people they are waiting for
in conversations
so many talking breakfasts
so many aftershows
so many talks
Remember Roy Faudree in a LIFT talk/conversation saying
The actor is a person that says look
Look
Look at me (Like me, now)
you can look at me from the top of my head to the bottom of my shoes.
and an archive at the same time makes clear
that the three sisters (Katona József Theatre, Hungary, presented LIFT 1989) needed
2 hand bells
1 statue
9 rugs
2 mirrors
1 globe
2 whirlygigs
1 medical bag
1 clock
1 artificial cake
3 suitcases
1 basket of artificial flowers
and
a dinner set for 13 persons
or
that
The Dragons Trilogy (Robert LePage/Théâtre Repère LIFT 87)
beneath the title Production Expenses needed things both general and super specific
From Fit Up, Get Out and Lighting to named items Sand, Curb Stones and Telegraph Pole.
There is a poetry in these practicalities.
Whilst elsewhere there, in another typewrited document
at the bottom
somewhere at the bottom of the long long list of tech and lighting needs (for the way of how - George Coates - LIFT1985)
it’s a shame to miss the detail of the request – itemized as ‘A Miscellaneous NEED’ - for 100 Cubic Feet of Helium per week.
I mean this is probably and by no means the strangest request in the archive, though hard to compare objectively since as yet there is no trail or index to the content by the quality or appearance of strangeness. Given time I’m sure there will be, though there may be too much of it (strangeness) there to keep track of, strangeness buried but emerging from the documents, a trace you cannot stop from rising.
Up
Above the streets
To look down on the way we walked and talked then
The routes we walked to get here to this place
‘Your London is not my London’.
That’s what the woman said, as you walked a crowded pavement in East London in You - The City, Fiona Templeton LIFT 1990
Audience passed from performer to performer, on a ninety minute journey barraged with text, caught up in a structure that only slowly lets you into its game, encountering performers who seem to be taxi drivers, shoppers and down and outs, performers who seem like spies, like lovers and like psychopaths. And all of them talking directly to you.
What you find in this work most of all, as in many other performances, are flashes of connection, where a weird synchronicity jumps between text, context and your own state of mind.
“You swear you haven't had an affair...” says the black guy on the steps of the church while you look out at the traffic and the dust swirling on Commercial Street. “.. She should leave him and live with you. You smile [he says] you smile so you know what you face is doing.”
Pure electric.
Elsewhere in the same performance a white woman sits on the bench next to you. Some movie-moment, only you’re in it. You’re lovers. Or were. She has to go. Or you have to. Or maybe you both do. Or one of you left already and only now comes back. It’s hard to tell, it all happened so down there and back then.
Anyhow. Somehow in the moments you spend together - sat together on the bench – the distance that is often called theatre collapses and you can’t see the edges of the frame. You want to tell her not to worry, it’s OK, it’s OK, but you don’t even know what ‘it’ is and when her eyes seem to need contact you give it to them, not quite as ‘a performer no longer in the theatre’ but rather as a person, simply present.
She says: "My London isn't your London. My words can be translated into yours, but they're not yours. You fear and yet long to cross that line."
Reading letters again.
back and forth for the human scale of ‘hope you are well’s and ‘nice to see you’s and ‘please let us know if you plan to be in London’s again
and at the same time, running side by side to all that the inhuman scale of visas, carnets, logistics health and safety fire officer checks on everything
are there any naked flames?
no
are there any flames in some way naked?
no
are there any flames at all?
well yes
but maybe not the kind you’re thinking of
the naked flames of an idea can start a fire in a city like this one
that's the true truth reality-ness of it all
that things spread out from an event
that starts at 8
and by nine, nineteen or twenty years later the ripples still spread.
Story whispers
Set loose in the city
and that city – London -
yes
goes on
down there
glows on down there walking its walkways
flying over its flyovers
community centering its communities that have no center really but you know what I mean
goes on gardening its gardens and kitchening its kitchens
a kitchen show here
a garden show there
an air show here
an earth fire and water show there
down the river
yes down by the river
and a sky show here
a high tech or blue sky thinking show there
a dark sky with thunder clouds show there
in Graeme Miller's The Desire Paths (LIFT ‘93)
and the city down there continues to grumble and crumble
weaving its citizens in its streets
year on year embroiling them deep
in conversations, about weather
or politics
acid rain and psychology
tangling its anglers for truth in wrangles and attempted disentangles
to get to the bottom of things
and meanwhile continues refugeeing its refugees
and on its bad days refusing them
populating its populations
surprising its surprises
walking its walks
and changing its demands
(Yes. London - changing its most reasonable and unreasonable demands. Not a static object, more a conversation partner)
needing sequins
needing a translator
needing a way to make this happen
or make that un-happen
like cities do
needing reflection
needing refraction - yes
needing relevance - yes
and needing art as a mirror
or needing art not as mirror
but as a hammer
like cities do, like times like these do sometimes
or needing art not as a hammer but
as a telescope aimed far at the future
or as a periscope
or maybe better a kaleidescope.
There in the archive you can see the pragmatism of the theatre too. Not just its will to magic.
Names on the cast list marked with an asterisk, are not coming and will be replaced.
And in some documents rather endless discussion of hotels and their quality or lack thereof
And in others letters - to British councils, cultural attaches, consulates and ministers - a rather constant return to the topic of money and if, by some chance, by any chance, and in light of circumstances that were not entirely predicted, someone might just possibly, have some more of it.
there are many pictures here too
some of them made out of photographs, some of them made using words
Comedianta, Spain (1985)
present Devils / Dimonis
street performance Battersea Park.. fire and strange faces
and somewhere in the archive a letter, describing how the company live and work together in a big house somewhere near the sea
there are so many pictures here
some made using words
even the titles are something to conjure with
(a random selection)
Oh, How Nobly We Lived More Than Just One Life
Phaedra
Sarajevo
The Unofficial Heavyweight & Entertainment Championship of the World
It is Not For Us To Fly To The Islands of Happiness
Lord Dynamite
Brace Up!
Bringing the Streets of Beijing to London
Ubu and The Truth Commission
Skeletons of Fish
the way of how
you drift back to something
perhaps to George Coates’ and the Miscellaneous NEED for 100 Cubic Feet per week of the second lightest and second most abundant element in the observable Universe, most of it formed during the Big Bang, although new supplies are created constantly by the nuclear fusion of hydrogen in stars.
Helium – He, atomic number 2. The colourless, odourless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert monatomic gas that heads the noble gas group in the periodic table, best known either for its comical effect on the human voice or it’s always borderline absurdist quality of being lighter than air.
The balloon, filled with Helium, floats.
It rises up.
Spins above London. Above LIFT as it continues its journey, forwards, making contact, starting new conversation here or there, and stopping here or there on a street corner to chat, setting up somewhere in a park or a theatre, or in high rise or in an underground station.
Balloon of helium looks down again.
Then continues
Upwards over buildings, treetops roads houses
And out.
Tim Etchells
June 2009
www.timetchells.com
