Bioinstallation

Wu Xing 

Text and photos by: Francesca Romana Rietti

 

 

Ringkøbing, Sunday, 18^th of August 2024 - Teatret OM

 

Today the itinerant “Art-Nature Lab” came to an end.

After 4 days spent out in nature, we came back to the starting point: the headquarters of Teatret OM, at Buen number 15. In this industrial area, not far from the city centre and the harbour of Ringkøbing’s Fjord, beside the entrance of the workshop of the theatre, there is an old petrol station. Closed many years ago, it has been abandoned and fenced with an iron grating. In the course of time, some roots cracked the concrete base: trees, brambles and bushes, literally, invaded the space. Uncultivated plants started to grow; a wild vegetation gained the upper hand. Ivy climbed everywhere: on the trunks, on the walls of an elevated brick structure and of a wooden-iron platform, around rusting bins and tubes. As defined by Leo Valentin Lindblom - who yesterday led a walking lecture in the forest of Hoverdal - this place is “The war of the Plants”. On the other side, just in front of the foyer door, there is a bunker used during the second world war, on top of which is the metal silhouette of a soldier ready to fire his rifle.

Today this has been the natural ‘stage’ where the five actress Hisako Miura (Japan), Iben Nagel Rasmussen (Denmark), Sandra Pasini (Italy/Denmark), Jori Snell (Denmark/Netherlands), Ana Woolf (Argentina) and the Italian bass player and composer Paolo Cozzolino presented the fifth version of the site-specific performance Wu Xing. Today there were also a special guest, Angela Digaetano who song a Neapolitan villanella from 1500, Sia maledetta l’acqua. During the previous four days of the “Art-Nature Lab” we watched them, for half an hour each time, as they re-adapted their physical and vocal scores in very different open-air and natural spaces. Therefore, we had the chance to participate to an open creative process, witnessing an unfinished work. Every day, at the end they sang and played the same Neapolitan song Quanno fernesce ‘a guerra (When the war is over) by Corrado Sfogli, which they have chosen and arranged together. Few sentences were translated and said in English, Japanese and Spanish:

When the war is over, I’d like to walk that way so dear to me…

War, you are a liar, you are a thief, you stole a piece of my heart…

Who wants…? Who wants this dream…?

¿Quién quiere soñar…? ¿Quién quiere soñar…? este sueño?

 Where have we been following their actions, music, words and songs?

In the woods by the sheep grazing fields around the farm of the shepherd Berit Kilerich in Ulforg. In the garden of Brogården, a residence for artists managed by the Municipality of Ringkøbing-Skjern, among the trees, a pond covered with birch leaves, a small wooden house with glazing on each wall, in a place designed for lighting fires. In the wasteland made of black earth which surrounds the Natur Kraft museum, they exposed themselves to the emptiness, interacting with the cries of birds and even with the surrealistic passage of a train. In the stations they chose in the forest of Hoverdal, we were surprised by the echo of one of their voices, we crossed a small stream and listened to the electric music of the bass while the rain kept falling.

Inspired by the interaction of the five agents of Chinese Taoist culture - water (Hisako), wood (Iben), earth (Sandra) metal (Jori) and fire (Ana) - they got from Antonella Diana the same task she gave to the musician. They all had to play reacting to nature and entering an inner dialogue with it. A difficult challenge and, only apparently, an abstract task which they managed to transform into a very concrete goal. This was possible thanks to their craft. Following their common theatrical roots - the training they practice to build a psychophysical quality of presence - and the laws of one of the hardest and most ancient performing techniques: improvisation.

As already foreseen by some academics of the Italian Renaissance, very committed to theatre practices, and then constantly experimented by all good jazz musicians, the main principle of improvisation is the ability to choose from a repertoire of fixed forms. Improvisation is a combinatory art. It is a way to create something new inside a frame. The living dialogue between steadiness and mutation was the red thread woven by the five actresses and the musician. It helped them to find a connection even when, very often, they could not see each other. It led us, the spectators, into five different site-specific narrations. They were evolving every day in accordance with the continuous transformation of the space.

Some of them had a theatre character, taken from previous performances, but only one was fixed: that of Iben, the ghost of Oedipus. For the others, it was just a dramaturgical suggestion or an object used to fix a form, or some fabrics to paint on, or something to get away from. At the same time, the absence of a previous character was the impulse to find a precise starting point, like sewing a costume. In any case, new materials, different every day, were created following the constraints imposed by nature, especially by the soil, always so unpredictable. Their research, into mythological and spiritual fields or historical and political (whose Greek etymology polis, it is worth recalling, contains the meaning and reveals the field to which the word belongs: the public and common sphere) themes, led them to discover new stories and roles. These were the means which allowed not only the dialogue between the performers, but also with nature and with us, the spectators.

Today the performance took place between “The war of the Plants”, a non-place besieged by a wild and uncontrolled nature, and an old bunker. Nothing of the intensity reached today, none of our visions would have been possible without the path we walked during the previous four days. Once again, through the change of the context and of the environment we came back to our present, to be called to take a position, hic et nunc. Here and now, among the ruins of an old petrol station and the traces of some old fights, the words of their song, Quanno fernesce ‘a guerra, produced a deeper echo.

It powerfully reminds us that, despite our Art and Lab, the war is not over.