The uncomfortable viewer
On how performative art can save us from our own complacency
We are used to being comfortable. Is it good? Is it desirable? Is it something we need to protect? The pandemic brought to the surface something that was already happening: the retreat from public places and shared experiences. Why going to the movies when you can have a similar experience at home? Why going to a workplace when you can work from remote (from home)? Why should you go to a school, or a university, a library or a workshop when you can have it all from your own private playground? Why should you go to a live action theatre and… oh boy, don’t even get me started about going to a museum.
A museum, in itself, it is a dead place. What makes it alive it’s the people visiting it. On its own, it is just a repository of inert matter. However the living bodies of the public can make it vibrant once again. The body what makes a difference in a museum. When you go to a museum you are the one choosing what to do with time and space within a set of boundaries: there are certain spaces you cannot cross (do not touch the artwork!) and you are bound to the opening hours of the place you are visiting. Apart from that, you are absolutely free. You can spend hours in front of a specific object (if you are so inclined) and you can even speed run the whole area as if you were in a hurry. You can do that. Really - you can, no one is going to judge you for that.
In the heart of Rome, near Piazza del Popolo you can found Villa Hélène, the former house-study of Norwegian american sculptor Hendrik Christian Andersen (Bergen, 1872 - Roma, 1940). At the core of this place, the Utopian idea of establishing a center of communication tasked with spreading of the products of mind and spirit, which are meant to be “free, like air, light and the sea”. The perfect place for a performance. The perfect place for being uncomfortable.
In this very bold performance, mixing acting, dance and singing, Armon knows how to make the viewer uncomfortable in an healthy way. To begin with, there is no seating: the viewer is forced to follow the performance in three different halls filled with statues. And I am talking about enormous statues - they do make you feel small! The inert sculpted human body, glorifying the immortality of matter, is here compared with the ephemeral qualities of the living body, glorifying the immortality of the spirit. Mind you, my photographic skills are even worse than my english skills, but I think this picture will give you a rough idea of what I am talking about.
At this point you might ask: where is this healthy discomfort you are talking about? And here we are, straight to the point. Let’s begin with live action theatre (for the sake of the argument, I am using performance and live action theatre interchangeably, I don’t think there are many differences nowadays). When the viewer is sitting in theatre, in a still position, with a fixed perspective, she might as well be in a bubble. The armchair is similar to a protective shell, where no one can touch or (possibly) speak to you. You don’t have to move around, you can - well - just sit. You can let the mind wonder and even fall asleep.
A performance in a museum challenges this perspective: there is no seating. Oh well, you might say, big deal: watching a performance while seated versus watching it while standing, there is no difference. Wrong. When you are standing, when you can walk or you have to to walk (because the performance was set in three different spaces), something happens, in it is actually a big deal. A standing viewer is an active viewer: she has to walk when prompted, she needs to find a proper place to see what is going on, she has to spatially relate with other viewers and she has to shift her weight. All these points require a choice, and a viewer who makes a choice cannot be passive.
In theatre often we talk about the fourth wall, this invisible barrier making the stage similar to an aquarium: the viewer can see what is going on, but the performer pretends not to see. In a performance set in a museum there is no wall, and this is deeply unsettling for the viewer and here we are to the point: the discomfort. In such setting everything the viewer does is awkward: “am I supposed to be here?” “where does the stage begin and where does it end?”. This kind of spacial incompetency of the viewer becomes the dialectic interaction with performers and audience. At some point there has to be a transformation: the discomfort becomes confidence and the alien space becomes a new home where everything is possible.
There is one point when the audience is prompted to walk the spaces on their own, before moving upstairs for the final part of the performance. This is a particularly valuable moment, when the audience can inhabit the space, make it their own and enter in a personal relation with the statues. The statues do not mimic the human body and the dance does not mimic the sculpted body: each has an autonomous life of its own, reaching its full potential with the viewer. The more the viewer is uncomfortable, the more the potential is achieved. Spoken word, dance, music and singing are the means to accomplish this task, to unlock this uneasy relationship between viewer and space. It might seem a bit more than we signed up for, but we desperately need this, even if we don’t know it yet.
In Rome (really - everywhere in Italy) there are many hidden gems such as Villa Hélène, waiting to be discovered. I firmly believe that performances like this can unearth these treasures and make them shine.
Armon Art ensemble is a multifaceted group of talented artists, whose multidimensional approach gives new life to our rich artistic heritage.
Choreography: Elisa Baldisseri, Federica Pedicini, Chiara Mercuri. Musical Composition, Piano: Federico Baldisseri. Thespian: Doriana Mercuri. Musical Composition, Singer: Maria Vittoria Feccia. Musical Composition, Producer: Mario Santanoceto