(g)hosts

(g)hosts - a podcast

2008-03-22T09:26:00.001-07:00

the piece "(g)hosts" was build as a radio show. So we invite you to listen to it while you are at home doing a quiet action.
ENJOY!

Click here to get your own player.

video buda kortrijk

2008-01-29T00:08:00.001-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOm9tHCp4fw

Jeroen Peeters for corpus, Nov. 29, 2007

2008-01-28T14:45:00.000-08:00

Reverse ghost busting – prick up your ears!
Lilia Mestre premiers ‘(g)hosts’ at Budafest in Kortrijk

“How much myth do we build into our experience of time?” The words are Don DeLillo’s, they reverberate in the theatre when a white curtain is drawn down-stage. How much myth do we allow into our lives? How much myth are we aware off? And which myths? Referring to Avery Gordon’s sociological study of haunting, André Lepecki approaches the ghostly as a critical agent at the borders of society’s intelligibility, prompting a heightened awareness, an alternative sensorial mode: “Such capacity to experience what should not belong to experience proper should not be confused with any sort of hysteria or histrionics. It is just a mode of composing perception initiated by the ghostly.” It is a suitable line in the programme sheet of (g)hosts, yet the Portuguese, Brussels-based choreographer Lilia Mestre doesn’t shun from embracing ‘improper’ manifestations of the ghostly, that after all make up a major part of our cultural imagination. Not the pathological but the histrionic is what tempts her. (g)hosts is Mestre’s most complex and radical work to date, a compelling exercise in reverse ghost busting. We are in the theatre, after all. And indeed, what can actually be said or shown about that realm in which the ghostly is taken for what it is? Listen!

Tuning in

The theatre is pitch black, nothing happens, apart from thoughts coursing through one’s mind – will we ever stop hearing our own persistent voice? Yet, the stage is wrapped in silence. For a while, nothing happens. And then, we see a light flash probing the space and hear a voice calling out and getting ready for whatever will present itself. But still nothing happens. Or better: there is nothing to be seen, heard or revealed. For that, we will need more tuning in – to eventually realize that there is indeed nothing to be seen, heard or revealed, though on the way a great deal of illusions can be cherished, along with their deconstruction.
The prologue is not over yet. Some white presence is glowing in the dark. With the lights slowly raising, it becomes a set of lines, two figures, then two skeletons performing a mirror dance. It is a slow and contemplative dance, supported by a sound design that travels through time, evoking narratives of the ghostly, modernist music and science fiction. To end up front, lit and clear: we see two women (performers Lilia Mestre and Michel Yang) in black dresses, striped with white tape, which is taken off easily. Yes, we are in a theatre after all: what you see is nothing but histrionics – or? Still, the prologue has tuned us. It has invited us into a mirror dance with our own thoughts, travelling beyond the visual into an acoustic imaginary realm, guided by our ears.

Channelling

Michel Yang announces a weekly radio show, dropping out into a possessed state while continuing her speech as if she were untouched, all this just to warn us that “maybe, this is not really something for you.” She continues to list up the music used and the radio play that is to follow. All the ingredients are present, the construction is clear. But (g)hosts doesn’t thrive upon an alleged transparency: though obviously mock, this doesn’t prevent its histrionics from being profoundly weird and confusing. The performance keeps transforming, takes you on a trip through an effective sound dramaturgy (in collaboration with David Elchardus), that takes off as a fifties radio show with Orson Welles’ The Black Museum. But when and where the transformation actually happens – both on stage and in your perception – is never clear. The sound travels through the space, speech is mostly disconnected from the bodies enunciating it, granting the acoustic imaginary a central place.
We follow visited bodies, silent though their lips move. They are moved by energy fields, struck with tics and twitchings – merely as hints, the movement material is not central to (g)hosts, which never moves into a demonology reminiscent of Meg Stuart. These bodies are hosts, they have pricked up their antennas like radio-receivers. A small radio is being installed on stage, the radio show continues and is open for people to call in. More voices enter the theatre. The two performers now construct a deserted living room around the radio, to then deconstruct it in slow motion – not unlike a decaying memento mori still life. The scene is moving in its evocation and detailed delivery, absurd in its reverse ghost busting. When Mestre eventually unplugs the radio, the mock character of the scene becomes once again clear – although the sound has long travelled elsewhere and though we new from the start it was a pre-recorded radio programme anyway. But again, this deconstruction of the machinery isn’t exactly soothing, as the transformations one can track cover up myriad other events, experiences and memories one hosts. Tuned in and scanning an alternative sensorial realm, we’ll always be late to track down the ghostly, yet in a theatre with other people we are inevitably also ahead of ourselves. The sound reminds us of our heteronomous subjectivity.

Myths

“How much myth do we build into our experience of time?” A white curtain is quivering and shimmering – yes, spooky, why not! (g)hosts spirals into the grotesque and is ready to celebrate it, propelled by lights and music one would expect at a party. Two masked clowns move jerkily in front of the curtain, ripping to pieces some major newspapers (such as Le Monde and the Financial Times) – strongholds and stakeholders of our all too humanist desire to have an encompassing and transparent view upon the world we live in. Myths, clotted and cluttered with our own desires. Yang takes off her clown mask, reminding us that we are still on air, finishes the show and makes us listen for a concluding 1’37” to Charles Bukowski – who happened to know wonderfully well were not to find himself. And then the theatre is plunged in black again.

2007-11-30T15:48:00.000-08:00

SCENE 1

Hello ?
Hello ?

Are you already here? I know you can hear me.
I’m ready.
Can you really see me? Where are you?
What do you want me to do?

Are you saying yes?
Are you saying yes?

What?
What?

SCENE 2

There is nothing but black. There is nothing but silence. I am lying in a dark space. I close my eyes. My body wanting for rest. My mind wide awake. I feel my breathing in and out. Other sounds filter in, things I can’t identify. I see nothing. There is nothing. There is the sensation of space but there is no image. I feel solitude. Solitude comes in different varieties. I feel I can trace the shadows of the past. I imagine myself as a part of it. I don’t know how long I have been here. There is a path. I see a path. I see a path in the woods. My body moves to follow the path.

SCENE 5

Welcome to “(g)hosts”, our weekly program about the other side…
You’ll finish and that will be that, until a moment will come, maybe in a month, may be a year, maybe even several years.
You’ll be sick or feeling troubled or deeply in love or quietly uncertain or even content for the first time in your life. It won’t matter. Out of the bleu, beyond any cause you can trace, you’ll suddenly realize things are not how you perceive them to be at all…
Next on our program a piece by Orson Wells called “THE CHAIN”. This recording was first broadcasted in 1952.
Whether you are here or there just lay back and enjoy!

SCENE 7

Time seems to pass folks. The world happens, unrolling into moments, and you stop to glance at a spider pressed to its web.

The seventeenth century was the century of mathematics, the eighteenth, of physical sciences, and the nineteenth, of biology.
The twentieth century was the century of fear.
You’ll tell me that fear is not a science. But if fear in itself cannot be considered a science, it is without doubt a technique!
We are now in the twenty first century, striving to expect the unexpected.

Presently it is 8.42 pm. Tonight, as usual we would like to connect with the invisible: The dead, the undead and everybody in between.
Our telephone line is now open to find out what is going on in your mind. Your call is more than welcome. Here is our first caller on the air. Hello?

SCENE 9

We all, shall all, will all be left.
And they will go or not or never.
And you have seen what you will see.

How much myth do we build into our experience of time?

We are now reaching the limit of our program for tonight. I would like to thank you for being with us. I’ll be back with you next week, same time, same place, same life.
For the last 1 minute and 37 seconds, we’ll hear a poem by Charles Bukowski called “The Aliens”.

Good night…

SCENE 10

The aliens
you may not believe it
but there are people
who go through life with
very little
friction of distress.
they dress well, sleep well.
they are contented with
their family
life.
they are undisturbed
and often feel
very good.
and when they die
it is an easy death, usually in their
sleep.

you may not believe
it
but such people do
exist.

but i am not one of
them.
oh no, I am not one of them,
I am not even near
to being
one of
them.
but they
are there

and I am
here.