fluxENG

The Baroque Non Baroque series is a slowly emerging catalogue of items dealing with proportionism. It looks for instability and flipsides. Meaning: Is it too much or not. What is over the top and what is "acceptable"? A ball on the top of a hill. It is based on the research of making a blend between hard core art and elements of entertainment. By breaking down perceptive dogma's, not getting in clichés of both ends too much. It specifically doesn't avoid the aspect of entertainment but it is absolutely necessary to avoid any conception of cabaret. It is serious matter and from my point of view abstract, elitist art stuff operating in and pointing out especially the field of sound. Idea is to have remarks and raise questions. Not by taking the piss or being cynical as some believe. It is serious business for me because of my emotional affinity with the subject and the believe that thinking about sound and positioning it is of great influence of the intellectual approach of arts in general. Take this as a very personal point of view, but I believe in that also in a wider range. As speaking for the performance; it has to move the spectator between moods and positions against the work. It is meant as well for myself as for the spectator as a re-orientation.
It is sound poetry but not in the old style. It has not any real impro 'just go with the flow' thing in it. Can’t stand that. I'm pretty strict in what is allowed and what is not.
It is a search for the not seen which is been constructed out of elements after reconstructing. It is an attempt to make new esthetical architectural sound structures with a more 'multimedia' approach. This sounds pretty awful to myself, but when I say multimedia I mean the use of more elements than just sound. I have been working over the last 15 to 20 years within the crosspoint of visual arts, performance and experimental music and this is almost an almanac I am setting up out of a very personal experience. The idea is to position out of the centre, out of the mainstream or nowadays conventional set ups. As well as for example in noise as well as in text impro or pop, punk or opera, abstract minimalism or electronic club house. You name it.
My working method is embedded in an environment and mental state I create in my studio. All kind of materials, sketches, images, printwork, sound cuttings, sleeve cuttings, left overs etcetera, form a polymorph biotope with potential connections. Slowly things arise. Mostly I check things or ideas/concepts if they can stand in time. If so and if they can find their position in the bigger construction I'm working on at that time, they are ready to be confronted with an audience. Not to say then that they are completely produced matters at that state. From there they have to get shape and intention on stage. That is where things have to happen. Any latest second there is a decision to be made how to deal with this material. That is also the essence of performance for me. It is partly an open structure in which things have to be decided on the spot, right in face of yourself and the audience. Training is one thing, playing a game a different one.

-Is there any philosophical ideas or reflexions that you're trying to convey through your performances?
Is there a clear statement or is the intention more intuitive and somehow abstract?

It is not a oneliner as a message. It is much more ambiguous then that but has ambitions as mentioned here before. Personally it is an unorthodox direction in which I try to grasp things and are looking for the borders and counterpoints of sound, choreography and text.
The philosophical idea is to search for new possible ways of esthetics. To shake up the running ones and bit by bit create space for new generations. First of all in my self. But also to connect that with the audience. It is not meant to be offensive or shocking. It is serious business but it should be disturbing and puzzling. As a preparation for new connections. See it as a chemical experiment. Maybe one day somewhere in ones mind the formula will change a bit. I have had these moments and they are of importance. Teflon was discovered after an explosion in a chemical factory in France. After that they found a substance all over the destroyed area which covered the ruins and it had the character that you could clean it easily. It was something recognised as being interesting and of use in a broad consumptive application. After re-processng the explosion they were able to define things and produce it within a controlled proces. That made it possible to create all kind of new things, which gave things a new standard.
Don't think that I want to be a messiah. As said before it is mostly for myself, my own process. I quickly get bored by repeating things too long. Hopefully some crystallised results of my work which I present are of meaning for an audience.

-Do you consider yourself as a part of any performing / creative tradition?
Which influences were defining for your work?

I come from the theatre/performance as a happening as a noise fest, as a cult-I-media thing and a political coming together by exchanging the free and critical mind. No matter what, no consessions and mostly DIY. That has a long tradition already in arts and is to be recognised as such. If you take Hakim Bey his Temporary Autonomous Zone, you come close to the environment which I think is essential for society as a whole and experimental arts especially. Meeting points outside of official circuits are essential. You decide when to meet, who to meet and what is the subject. No big agenda’s. Besides dealing with my own work I also have a 'polymorphous production platform' called DE PLAYER. That is where we organise live events, invite artists to make new works and present it. It is a place where artist, organizer and audience are all responsible for the result. It is a real time production platform, not a consumptive one. New works are soundbased performative matters but alongside we also produce a representation of that as limited vinyl editions in combination with printwork. It makes it possible to communicate our theoretical and political part, integrate fully graphic design and artwork. It is an extension of our physical stage and makes it possible for people to encounter our stage in a private setting.

Influences are of course coming in constantly. Actual and delayed. Lately I heard Rotomotor by Anton Bruhin. Besides his really groovy maultrommel pieces also the textual piece is a pure beauty. 23 Minutes of words. Ritmical, unexpected. Slowly in time it starts to be completely autonomous. In its form, its color, its...... Also lately I watched a lot of Tommy Cooper performances. He plays a role but is there also real in his appearance, very accurate and slutty. These real time mixes of intentionally shaped and ‘occasionally happened’ are pretty core to me. Or let me mention of course Wim T Schippers who had pretty big influence in pointing out new realities in my youth. Watching Sjef van Oekel vomiting underneath the Christmas tree or clinging on Donna Summer when she performed live in his tv-show Van Oekels Discohoek, are those moments. Or my new neighbours when I was 12 who where as laywers involved in the RAF, read porn and drank cold coffe with ice and liquer. Meaning everyday life; that’s where the roots are. I don’t want to live in a film, don’t read newspapers.

-Could you define what the impulse and core concepts are for the Baroque Non Baroque series?

As said the main thing is to determine elements of ways sound is used mostly in more complex forms which is considered as music. To restrict myself to unambiguous not endelssly layered sounds, and not to approach it with compositionally constructed techniques, as a sound it comes pretty much to essences, to bricks out of which most musical constructions are build up. To work with these bricks it is the challenge to find bricks which can stand alone and have in its abstract qualities enough to be a piece. A piece in this way means something that triggers reflection, that shows patterns in its own structure and slightly moves. It is as abstract paintings. You need time to get in their structure. If you take the time slowly you get absorbed and you are able to redefine what you see. Mostly it is very simple and definable in its material. There is no suggestion, no mystification, it is what it is. Nevertheless it also stands for something completely different then how it appears in its first appearance. This is what interests me. No big things, but essentials to get aware.
All is presented in combination with choreography and presence. This of course ads direction, makes it possible, gives connotations. It is a very vulnerable medium, the performance, because it easily can break down or lift up. If not the right state of mind is involved especially these basic elements can easily stay where they are, then you miss the culmulative aspect which is of great importance for this material. Because of the fact that it absolutely does not deal with virtuosity and complex mystifications it is all about the fact too much or too less. That is the centre of Proportionism, were Baroque Non Baroque is all about.

-What particular feelings are you experiencing / looking for while performing?
Where comes the urge from?

For every performance I take some new stuff with me as a possibility to perform, together with elements I used before. On the spot the circumstances, the context, the feel of the moment asks the final line up and combination of elements. From that point it is pure digging completely into it without getting emotionally lost and try to feel the need of the moment. In the best way small things pop out of it and can inmediately be integrated. It has to be a proces of development. I never rehearse really the 'pieces'. for me that would not make sense. I just prepare my suitcase well and concentrate on the mindset. It is only possible to do it on the spot.

-How is working in Holland today as an artist that can be considered an outsider or at least a pretty experimental and unconventional one? Do you see some obvious changes in the way people receive your work over the years?

In general to work in the field of music, performative arts and visual arts is a complex thing. Not of course for those who create, but for those who percieve. Every product which has an unpredictable and not easy to label output is uncomfortable for large consumption. But even for example the arts or poetry ‘world’ mostly are pretty anal in their approach, meaning that a real understanding of the position and value of experimental sound, in relation with its several ways of output (live performance, artwork, audiographic releases, installations) is not really fully entangled. Experimental music I see at the same level as abstract experimental art, but it is not widely handled like that. Mike Kelley his Destroy All Monsters is mostly considered as just his band. A sideproject for someone who wants to stay young. Bullshit. It has the same necessity and value as his visual works. It is part of a complete package. Coöperation and interdisciplinarity are keywords.
Anyway that is what attracts me so much in these performances that they are sculptures, performances, experimental sound compositions, mental noise, choreografy, novels etc. in one. All these aspects play a keyrole at the same time and create a polymorphous construction. Right on stage. To be dissapeared also in a split second.
It could be seen as multi media, but absolutely not in the limited way of putting sound and video in an installation.
Maybe it has connections with nowadays development in Musik Theater, but it is as a performance more art based. Though I perform luckily in the experimental music scene as well as in the artscene. At institutionalised places as well as in the off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway places (the real peripherical sceneries, out of the centre of power). This mix makes it interesting for me. Context every time asks new approach or creates new defenitions of the things I do. To make this matters more materialized and to emphasize the interdisciplinarity I release vinyl and printwork. This gives the opportunity to communicate intellectual property with an audience which is not able to come to live acts.

I'm not afraid of any intellect, but I’m not a boy who strictly believes in the ‘academics’ that in many cases leads to Kulturkammer chatter and petty-bourgeois selfishness. As the underexposed German artist Stephan Bloth (1931 - 1987) said: "Hedonismus, Facismus und Kunst wohnen immer zusammen'. In line with this, I believe in the power of beauty, the primitive, the simple act, stubbornness and toughness in form, nonsense as the ultimate reflection, sublimated lust where the result does not avoid the smell of it.