ESTHER FERRER.

An Event is Just an Event .
From an interview with Clara Gari in Barcelona, 1997,
translated and edited by Tom Johnson

People often speak of the euphoric explosion of performance art, but we could also speak of the crisis of performance art, because it is quite clear that performance art is going through a difficult period despite the fact that it is now an established part of the art world.

The main problem today with performance art is its theatricalization. Performance began as the work of a few crazy guys who wanted to transcend the limits of the visual arts, and who also wanted to transcend those typical theatrical situations, where there was no interaction with the public, and the audience received its spiritual food more or less like geese. These artists twanted to change this, and to do something that then did not even have a name, but which was capable of creating a different situation.

Since that time, performance art has become institutionalized, because institutions have begun to take a great interest in this type of actifity. Their interest helps the artists, of course, but it is also dangerous. Quite frequently now festivals of performance art are organized in spaces that, for security reasons, or because of the other uses of the space, are very limited,. Everything has to happen in a predictable and closed manner. Generally this all takes place in auditoriums, film showing spaces, or theaters, where the audience and the performer find themselves in a completely theatrical enviroment, even before the action begins. The performer is up on the stage and the audience is down below, in comfortable chairs, exactly as if they were watching Shakespeare. Performance art becomse totally institutionalized and totally transformed into a kind of theater - a transformation which is perhaps inevitable, but disgraceful!

Institutions have no interest in events that may have an unpredictable outcome, or in spaces where they can't control the reactions of the public. But when you abandon the unpredictability, you also abandon the tension between the people doing the action and the people watching the action, and when this tension disappears, performance art disappears, because this is what it is all about. All that remains is a sort of theatrical situation, which isn't a complete and satisfying staging, as one would have in a well equiped theater, and isn't at all the immediate kind of communication one is supposed to have in performance art. It's a situation that can perhaps best be described as innocuous, inoffensive, empty. Audiences today are more and more accustomed to being passive spectators, with no choice as to what they see. Television has a decisive influence, because it conditions people to confront the world circulating around them in a frontal manner, by looking into a screen, which of course neither sees nor hears the spectator. The situation in a traditional theater is not much different.

Another reason for the crisis in performance is this: From the decisive moment when young artists begin to arrive on the scene with theatrical or dance backgrounds, performance art becomes all the more codified. These young people, perhaps frustrated by the limitations of the theatrical language, are attracted to the freer form of expression they find in performance. But actors always act. Wherever they go, people who have studied acting are always acting, and wherever they walk, they generate a kind of performance that resembles theater. They use written texts, have rehearsals, are likely to use and costumes and props, all elements that are impediments for real performance art, destined for open spaces, unprepared space. The same thing happens when some musicians close to the world of performance, because they require lots of technical stuff to put on their actions. It is difficult to set up all this equipment and get it to function the way you want, and it is all very fragile besides. You can't just put computers and projectors and synthesizers anywhaere, and there are security problems too. Ever All of this requires lots of money, lots of set-up time, and must be and vilgilance. They create rigid situations that have nothing at all to do with the spirit of performance events, as I understand them. The performer is not an actor, is not a musician, is not a ballerina. An event is an event and nothing more than that.

But let's talk about what performance is. That is easier. A performance is whatever happens in the performance. In this sense a performance can be absolutely anything. I mean, a performance is not nothing, but it is something a bit vague, something that can be understood differently by everyone who sees it. That is rather my personal point of view. Others have to make their own decisions as to what they believe a performance is for them, hopefuly always respecting with great rigotr their own criteria. Performance is not a world where anything goes.

The actor follows a scenario - perhaps a rather open scenario, but a scenario nonetheless, and the actor plays a role, represents something. In performance there is no representation, only presentation. Performance events are the most democratic works of art in the world. All that is necessary is the will to make one. No technique is required. It is like paella, you can make it however you like, if you just remain faithful to yourself. In my case this means eliminating everything that attempts to manipulate meaning and everything that attempts to create a situation of power over the public that is watching. If lights are illuminating me, and not the audience, the I exist and the audience doesn't. That gives me a certain power, I don't like that, because everyone is making the performance, the spectators and the performer alike. Whatever happens happens, and whatever happens in one of my performances is part of the performance. If the spectators applaud, cry, laugh, don't laugh, walk out, don't walk out, this is all part of the performance. As the performer I provide the point of departure, but I never can be sure how things will come out in the end.

In my events time, space, and presence are the essential elements, and they are as real as chairs and tables, as real as my presence and yours. And of course, something can be present without being physically present. Space is also important. I work a lot with the space, and also with the absurd, almost as if they were tangible. As to elements that really are tangible, the less of them I use, the better it is. I think of the event, I imagine it, and later I eliminate everything that seems unnecessary. This does not mean, however, that the essence of the event is always minimal. An event can be accumulative, for example, adding more and more of something to the point of saturation, but the accumulation is not superfluous. I avoid the ornamental. Any thing that can be eliminated without losing the sense of the event is a decoration that I don't need.

I am aware that there are some types of performance art that can not be read according to what I am saying here, and of course, I am not trying to define "event" with a capital letter or to say that the events of some artists are more genuine than those of others. Performance has diversified a great deal, has opened up a great deal, and the definition of performance must remain open. Everything that is projected into this great empty performance art space is the performance art I am thinking about, wanting, hoping for.

But I want also to say something about technology and performance. A lot of artists are working with virtual reality, for example, and in general this work doesn't interest me enormously. It has to do with mystifying and making illusions, and in this sense it is rather far from what I understand as performance, and much closer to theater or to dance. I have the feeling that these artists are really doing technical demonstrations, sampling the possibilities of recent technology. All of this can be interesting, but not as performance. Events that require so many machines and so much preparation don't interest me as performance. Performance for me is a raw art, and when we begin to cook it, we lose something. It is anchored in the real, and it permits few stylistic elaborations. Of course, the public may be bored, because what they are seeing is so simple. But performance events are not shows, and we are not doing them for amusement. Today people need to be amused and stimulated. I don't mean to csay that this is bad, it is simply an observation by way of saying that I can not work in this spectacular way. What I want is the most possible with the least possible.

Let me conclude by returning to my central feeling and trying to say it better. What really distinguishes performance from the other arts is that in a performance event everything is real. There is no fiction, no role playing. The event is just an event. The time is real time, the time that I and the public are actually living at the moment, and the space is the actual space where we are, the actual particular performance space. We must be conscious of the fact that we are in this time and this place and no other. Then we are ready for a performance.