Intervention 5:
KOVČING
COACHING
COUCHING
The origins of the film date back to the late 19th Century. It evolved when Thomas Alva Edison combined several individual photographs on a perforated film
tape. The basis of film is photography: film is a sequence of many images, sequenced one after the other. Film is the art of movement. It allows us to
understand the development of events that are captured in photographs.
In the 21st Century, we have transformed life from a series of constantly changing moments into a static image. We have determined which moment is
the “right” one – the only one that suits us. On the editing track, we have extended the duration of that one prefered jpg: the time of that living moment
is now ‘eternally on hold’.
Like this, nothing can happen to us. Like this, we don’t need to respond, transform, wonder, question, grow. We are a safe and comfortable image.
A presentation of phantasm. A static personal character. A ready-made hand-out. Successful-since-ever, experts-for-ever. A childlike mimesis of a tree in
an amateur theater. Thus, an act of performing has deserted the performing arts. Theatres are emptying, artists’ technical skills are practically redundant.
Outside, in offices, streets, social media, performance flourishes, joyfully shows off and boosts its ‘looks-like-important’. That’s how you convince others.
That’s how you start believing your own lie. For, a static symbolic value can only be fixed to a static image that never challenges our conviction and
self-certainty by the reality of ever-changing life in motion.
We praise the absence of living cognition.
The absence of living judgement.
Paradoxically, the art of photography is dying.
We are numb creatures.
An exiled and displaced theater.
A pending life.
In the meantime, the technology of film has advanced enormously.
THE SCORE
The Intervention was initially not planned, yet I got greatly inspired when I received the Dropbox’s commercial for “becoming a creative genius”. The degree of dummyfying marketing rhetoric leaves me stunned each time. At first, I spent three days preparing the most important part of the Intervention: the “Power board” presentation. Then I called the photographer – to arrange the second most important part of “any professional action”: photo shooting, of course! When the time came to invite the performers, I still thought that we should first explore and practice how to make different poses, so to bring across the sense of the “twisted business dolls”. However, I quickly changed my mind, since I realized that such an approach would run against the point, for, in that case, our action would require and employ performing and movement skills. Therefore, we only met half an hour before the Intervention, to put on the costumes and fake smiles, quickly check 10 stereotypical images of businessmen, and go directly on the street with one instruction only: ‘hold a still position until you can, and when you cannot anymore, hold it anyway’. When they asked me about the composition between us, the answer was clear: ‘fake it, until you make it’. The only aim of our skill-less Intervention was therefore to represent ourselves as “the successful ones”, and to create the Expert’s Portfolio. A portfolio that truly speaks about … well, about how to make a portfolio.
I now believe we would have made a much more genius move, if, instead of photo shooting, we recorded a film: a sequence of images, running in vain on a timeline, since those who should be moving are stuck … a genius invention creatively robbed of it geniality.
Concept of the project & the Intervention: Radharani Pernarčič
Performers: Žigan Krajnčan, Ivan Mijačević, Radharani Pernarčič
Photos: Sunčan Stone
Thanks to: Cirkulacija2
The project was supported by the City of Ljubljana
