MAGNA CARTA
by
Club de la Faye
This is a text developed by SwimCats, SwimDogs, Sirens, Boris Production Cast, philosophers, Fiction Pimps, loved ones and activists of Club de la Faye. As a torch the text was passed on from person to person, creating a document influenced and cherished by everybody, a collage of words put together for you, our dear reader. A girl called Faye…
Club de la Faye is an artistic community rooted in the long tradition of interactive performance theatre and artistic strategies aiming towards breaking down the barriers built on habits of everyday life. In this process we promote a democratization of artistic expression, both in our approach to our own creative process and as a final goal in the inter-relations we create through our art.
Expansion of poetic life and aesthetic enrichment
We are political in the sense, that we wish to open the possibility of experimenting through play, and thereby calling on latent identities and situations to take form in new places and new areas of daily life - beyond art contexts.
We believe that the access to aesthetic space has been exclusive and exclusionary since the establishment of the modern art system, mainly due to the autonomy of the arts and glorification of the so called art genius. Furthermore, western society is primarily based on economical premises and motives such as: self-discipline, optimization, dutifulness and reason. In opposition to that, the aesthetic space is primarily based on the premises and motives of the aesthetic system such as sense, delight and emotion. We want everyone, not only ‘art-genius’, to receive the possibility of experiencing the aesthetic enrichment. Such experience also creates a feeling of liberation from the motives of the economical system in which - according to some theories (Nietzsche, Adorno/Horkheimer, Marcuse, Maffesoli) - we respond to work repressively. We want to reach a larger number than the relatively small number of people finding their way to more or less exclusive experiences of the art system, therefore we work on the stages of everyday life: the nightclub, the conference, the organization, the panel debate, the streets, the festival etc.
The heart of the art we pursue lies in the encounters that appear between the ordinary and the fiction frames we provide. There is a huge potential and immense power in each and every individual to be freed (from spirit-oppressing ideology). The fiction frame is a tool that help people find new creative depths within. We hope that more people will start playing and creating new worlds themselves.
We work with the new verbum ‘Fiction Pimping’, that we ourselves have developed – we do not simply perform, dance, act, install, design, storytell – we combine this under this new umbrella-verbum. As mentioned here we pimp fiction to liberate creative and sensory power in the people we meet in our manifestations. So, instead of opening the aesthetic dimension of emotional, sensory and lust-oriented being through for example drugs, alcohol or women, we do it through fiction. Fiction, though, we understand as another side of the real – Fiction can be just as real as reality and reality is just as fictious as fiction – We do experience, though, that the real is often more real in the fiction since people express and liberate themselves through the aesthetic enrichment (fiction pimping => pimping the real).
The marvels of social energy: Inclusion
For us the greatest potential in influencing audience lies in their inclusion into our fictional universe. We are not a bunch of artists with the ‘look at me’ attitude. It is intriguing to think how much more one can discover about oneself in relation to an issue/story art touches upon, if one gets a chance to be creatively involved on equal terms.It’s a meaningful exchange process that makes a difference for both us and audience: they are expected to co-create fiction by taking an active part. From the other side they are given an inspiring playground for expressing themselves as unique individuals. What performing gives us is interactive unpredictability. We enrich people by creating provocative framework, but we are also being challenged by them – in that way we get influenced by the audience during the whole process of improvised interactions , and not only during the final feedback they give by applauding or not. It is also important that interactions can be silent and indirect, merely based on sharing the same space. There is however no pressure on any of the interacting sides to be active, as both has freedom to stay “spectators”. In the meeting between our developed fiction and the situation we come to perform in, we create new situations, thereby showing the potential for breaking conventional structures of behavior. We provide and opportunity to experience a setting in a new light. This, we hope, will call for the imagination, lust and will to change, as well as acknowledging that it can be done.
Where we work, we collaborate with the situation, we come to perform in. The structure is never fixed, and it is also up to the participants to develop the rules of the game. For example at Jazzhouse – We come to their place, and interact with people on their terms. We enter the stage of everyday life – we boost and pimp this place and this situation, but we do not define it – it is not a closed art piece but an interaction with everyday life!
The Process
Behind the idea of working collectively as an artistic commune lies the vision to break with the position of ‘the art genius’. Therefore Club de la Faye as a name and a group is not bound to a specific individual – our organism is collective! That means being a performer in Club de la Faye, involves participating in an intuitive playful development of ideas and concepts for a given performance. We strive to create a "Filter-Free Zone" / "Feel Free Zone"(filter as in no inhabitations for the creative mind to grow and chaos to be allowed in). When a new project has been initiated and time and place have been decided, whoever initiated it, calls for the others to start a collective mind flow of ideas. We talk about intellectual ideas and ideologies; images of sets, situations and sounds are shared and commented on. We google pictures on the web, make research on myths, specific periods in time, stories, cultures, styles, thoughts and music. One person’s idea or image inspiring others visions to emerge, some times going into to heart felt discussion about aesthetics or ideologies. The process is chaotic and intuitive, as we feel certain this creates a free flow of imagination. A dancing organism* - Due to this, working in Club de la Faye includes going into a reflective and creative collective process for the individual performer. The performer doesn’t necessarily have to agree with all the ideas behind the performance, but will have had to reflect upon them. He or she will know what kind of picture of the world, phenomenon or utopia they contribute to portray and manifest. By breaking barriers & taking challenges in daily life, we push ourselves into the freedom of action. We strive to become an active voice. By doing so, we hope to encourage people to do likewise. By using fiction pimping tools we become more and more able to work on impulses by sensing and opening the basic knowledge of our ‘selves’, Exploring an individual as a whole by playing on the fictious-extended fragments. The Collective Schizophrenia – extending one’s personality by extending one’s fictious’ selves. To show how life can be a celebration, we act upon the illusion.Club de la Faye is an open group continuously taking in new members who share our visions and longings.
Inspiration
(aka feeling inspired)… by any means necessary and (luckily) possible in the moment…
We work with all different kinds of art expressions, without any misplaced respect for form or tradition. Music and image and movement and breathing and paint etc …The work by Club de la Faye finds great inspiration in the performance installations by SIGNA. Many of the Club de la Faye’s members have been part of her performances and all share admiration, respect and love for the universes SIGNA creates. Inspired by SIGNA, we work with a fictional frame and install performers in an installatoric universe. Also the fact that many of us have become friends while working together on fantastic SIGNA productions does make a certain imprint on the group. This is however not our only source of inspiration. In fact, our most apparent “homeland” is somewhere between the Cult of Dionysos of ancient Greece, the annual carnivals in medieval, European tradition, and, it goes without saying, Cabaret culture. Not at least because we work on the stages of everyday life. Our manifestations are not only art objects – but first and foremost situations of everyday life being poetry-boosted, fiction-pimped, magic-blown…
Other major inspirations are
The raging 20'ies, The great Gatsby, surrealism, the bizarre, the future, dadaism -the the randomly and absurd, situationism (the conscious naiveté), Hunger by Sigurd Hoel, cabaret voltaire, The cult around Sigmund Freud, Orientalism and the harem, charleston, louise brooks, fox-trot, the slaves emancipation dances, Jesus, the sufies (mysticism), The raw, Jung, sun ra, beat and dingy characters, pictures and atmospheres by Jim Jarmush. The dark reed rooms by David Lynch. Siddhartha and Der Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse, Dan Turéll, Pina Punsh, Cabaret, Lars von Trier, Emir kusturica, veit heimer, Goethe, Buhto, Buddhism, Jazz Music, Tom Waits, Alice in Wonderland, David Bowie, Dalí, B-movies, Quentin Tarantino, Hitchcock, Yes Men, Roadtrips, mask work, Chechov, syncronized swimming, syncronized dance, syncronized movement, Massumi, musicals, the devising method, rock'n roll, classical music, The Ocean, The city, The Wind, smell, Greek Mythology, Chet Baker and the beat culture. Hakim Bay and the Temporaty Autonomous Zone, poetic terrorism, creative activism, poetic Criticisms, Adorno & Horkheimer, Marcuse, Bakhtin, Antonin Artaud, Walter Benjamin, Guy Debord, Foucault, Bauman, Féral, Fisher-Lichte, The Birth of Tragedy by Nietzche, Durkheim, Suzi Gablik, Richard Schechner, Otto Muehl and the Viennese Actionism, Dusan Makavejev, Roman Polanski, No wave, DNA, Search and Destroy, activism, reclaim the streets, Nero, Heliogabalus, Frank Zappa, P.S Shelley, Lord Byron, Ken Kesey & the Merry Pranksters, William Blake, Aleister Crowley, Anais Nin, the mad monk Rasputin, Czar Peter the Great of Russia, Wild Animals, The beasts, Wild Nature, Thunder, Dead Poets Society (especially Charlie Nuwanda Dalton), Bennys Badekar, Einstuerzende Neubauten, Das Ich, Diamanda Galas, The Beatles, Serge Gainsbourg, the Michael Jackson early moves, Bob Dylan (in the 60s), Ornette Coleman, David Bowie (especially Z.Stardust), Nina Hagen, Pj harvey, Patti smith, The Residents, Snakefinger, Bessie smith, Skinny Puppy, Freddie Wadling, KLF, NSK, LPC International, Techno Rave Culture, Prince, Moondog, Shamanism, Balinese Hinduism, Shintoism, Zen Taoism, Capoeira, faith, hope, respect and of course love, Liza minelli, Michael Ende, Aldous Huxley, The Sky, Kenneth Anger, R.A.Wilson, Storyville/the District of New Orleans, Mauritz Stiller, Robert Duncan, Greta Garbo, Neil Gaiman, Max Ernst, Wilhelm Freddie, Egon schiele, Hundertwasser, Lars Vilks, Michail Bulgakov, Solvognen, Richard Wagner, Alexandria kvartetten, Film Noir, Barbarella, Horror, nature, magic. The swirling movies Solaris and the Mirror by Andrei Tarkovskij (da) Andrei Tarkovsky (en) Andrei Tarkowski (ger/esperanto) Андре́й Арсе́ньевич Тарко́вский (rus). Absinth and Ether. Jack kerovac, Naked Lunch by Burroughs. Hunter s Thompson, The Beat generation, Charles Bukowski, Andy Warhol, Ginsbergs Howl. Stanley Kubrick. Terry Gilliam. Bertolt Brecht. Hènry Dolpin; his whole contribution to the views upon postmodern individuality. Role playing games. Odin Teatret. Rudolf Steiner. Dolls. ‘Saw’. Stephen King. Fairy tales. Dreams. ‘El Laberinto del fauno’. 'Twin Peaks'. As well as Umberto Eco, Roland Barthes, Christianity, Alcohol and tobacco, Poste Restante, Institutet, Harry Belafonte and the whole exotica music genre, vintage erotica and the energy in the physical meeting between people, some post-colonial dream of Africa and Asia.)), Karen Blixen, Gypsy Rose Lee, Vaudeville, Circus, Pin-up, B-movies, Gypsy culture, Lydia Thomson, Mary Pickford, Edith Piaf, Betty Page, Gretha Garbo, Malene Dietrich,Tim Burton, Marilyn Monroe, Sandra Dee, Fairytalls, Audrey Hepburn, Dynasty, Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde …and what more to add to the juicy list? - The Ritual, post-war Eastern Europe, Laurie Anderson, The Different Other and each other…
Manifestations
We are not creating a written manifest of a fixed ideology. Nothing is fixed, everything is a process and open for improvisation and discussion.We are conscious of the contradiction inherent in life. The performances we make are contemporary manifestations of an idea or a phenomenon. What we make will never be fixed, but as all situations in life, is a flow of new input continuing to evoke new meanings and understandings. The poetry-boosted, fiction pimped, magic blown. Situations create a picture, in which the participators – both the performers and the people we meet in the places and situations we perform - can mirror their understanding, thoughts and feelings. This – we hope – will help to develop critical consciousness. And context in which people will experience aesthetic enrichment. This has a potential of opening the emotion-, lust- and sense-oriented way of being, as opposed to the premises of efficiency, rationality and discipline of everyday life. In fact, our true manifest was shaped with rotten fruit and paper-ships during a performance in Malmö in 2008. This text is more to be taken as a MAGNA CARTA, which means “the great letter”. One would wish that it’s meaning was “the great map”, because then it would be fitting to say: remember always that the Map is Not the Territory.
Magic in our manifestations
We work to create situations that call for magic. Magic is many things, and not easily described. We’ve experienced that magic is something that you can set the grounds for by being determined to make something happen in the gathering of other people, who devote themselves to the situation happening between them. Magic happen when we start playing and inspiring each other. A meeting like that can contribute to opening up new emotional and magical centers in people we meet while we perform. Our magic is simple. By showing to people we meet and to ourselves the mystics, the questions, the clues, the riddles, the beautiful story of being human. Call it truth- Call it poetry- Call it opening your eyes to something bigger. Let’s call it Magic. To constantly develop new worlds – “utopias” - and redefining them. Ways of interacting create certain intensity, energy, electricity during and throughout our manifestations. Playing along with life as it occurs - that is one true essence of the world we live in. If audience allow themselves to open up, be seduced by our universe’ magic, drawn towards the swamp, they might grow a tale. The silent observing audience can taste the magic through the ears and the eyes. (That’s the ones with nearly reappearing broken rabbit ears and discreet inverted snake eyes).
Let us invite you in to one our manifestations of magic - Club de la Faye & Swing Pigalle, Jazzhouse 2009: The Swamp is a tribe of Insomniacs walking the border. Taking physical form in shadow Colours. Swimming the Oceans, searching for the moment. Waiting for humankind to gather … IT – we work on establishing that special, jazzy feeling of ‘it’ - real nad fictious – two sides of the same coin. Waiting for humankind to drown and crawl back on the shore as new children of tomorrow. The Waters are getting muddy, something is starting to stir! The leeches are vehemently feeding. Time flies. Plunged between dreams of the future and the eagerness to learn from history, the SwimCats are boarding in on the waves of awareness and joy. And the boundaries are blurred, and the thin line drawn across our gaze expands, sets you into a vast field and blows your mind once more.
“Magic also as a sensation of a longing, nostalgic feelings or a sense of sentimentality connected to a time, place or person one never have lived, visited or met. Still being very real emotions. To fall in love with the sea, the stranger, the memories you never had etc..”
"Noticing a silent Truth in a blossoming Tree.The Wind & The Ocean singing their never ending duet… and noticing.Noticing what lies before the thought.The Vibe in my body, the beginning, The Base.The intuitive song.To sense completely, without being buried in old limitations."
"We are the Poets! We are the children of the wood and stream, of mist and mountain, of sun and wind! We are the Greeks! and to us the rites of Eleusis should open the doors of heaven, and we shall enter in and see God face to face. Under the stars will I go forth, my brothers, and drink of that lustral dew: I will return, my brothers, when I have seen God face to face and read within those eternal eyes the secret that shall make you free. Then will I choose you and test you and instruct you in the Mysteries of Eleusis, oh ye brave hearts, and cool eyes, and trembling lips! I will put a live coal upon your lips, and flowers upon your eyes, and a sword in your hearts, and ye also shall see God face to face. Thus shall we give back its youth to the world, for like tongues of triple flame we shall look upon the Great Deep - Hail unto the Lords of the groves of Eleusis!"
-Aleister crowley-
“Laughing, crying, tumbling, mumbling. Gotta do more. Gotta be more.Chaos screaming, chaos dreamingGotta be more! Gotta do more!”. -Dead Poets Society- "We are the playful & the obsessive compulsive.The Dangerous & the helpful.We are all the in between.Balancing "Ballerinas" using our creative visualizers---Casting poetic spells & daring the Swamp.Playing along with life as it occurs.The childish side of OneSelf, who has beencollecting different fragments of time, will now show and share……………………
.......………..Manifesting our beauty of being rare!"
Sirens & Deserters
Heard, seen, sensed, nearby Dr.Ordinaire, Institutet,
-Malmö, Sweden, summer 2008
Rotten perfumed scent in the room // musical boxes // samples of skin / hair / spit / nails, must be collected // duties are set to sea and taken by the water // revenge the man who got away
Myth & theory
Following Circe's advice, Odysseus plugs the ears of his crew with wax, so they cannot hear anything. The crew only knows 'the song's danger but nothing of its beauty'. So they can row 'with all their strength' moving the ship away from the Sirens. It was in fact the task of Odysseus' crew: 'The laborers must be fresh and concentrate as they look ahead, and must ignore whatever lies to one side' thereby fulfilling themselves through work, wrote Adorno and Horkheimer. Odysseus instead is able to listen to the song remaining 'bound impotently to the mast' of the ship. The bonds prevent him from being seduced and the danger presented by the Sirens is subsequently neutralized. As a result of this the song of the Sirens is completely perverted: it 'becomes a mere object of contemplation – becomes art.
Siren ('sïren)
Origin: Middle English (denoting an imaginary type of snake): from Old French sirene, from late Latin Sirena, feminine of Latin Siren, from Greek Seirën.
1. a device that makes a loud prolonged sound as a signal or warning.
2. Greek Mythology: each of a number of women or winged creatures whose singing lured unwary sailors onto rocks. A woman who is considered to be alluring or fascinating but also dangerous in some way.
Deserter
Dersertion derives from the french word dérserter, which means to make a place deserted, and the latin word dertio, which mean to abandon. A deserter is a person who has physically removed him- or herself from the control or direction of a military or naval unit with the intention of permanently leaving. It can cause great problems for the military unit, because it weakens the structure and above all the moral.
Live music..
Interaction and stories told...
"I’ve been imprisoned in Judicial Prison of Korinthos for the past three days. I’ve been accused for defection, because I refused – by written statement on 08/05/2003- to embark with frigate "Navarino", where I served as a professional soldier, for the Gulf War."
-Statement by Giorgos Monastiriotis
Starring
Madeleine Kate McGowan, Inga Gerner Nielsen, Sille Arendt, Gry Worre Hallberg, Mauricio Santana, Stig Eivind Vatne, Momir Subotic and Hans Peter Mattias.
