Mart Kangro

3|11|20

So, there’s always this unusual task of ‘summarising’ our time with the guest artists, which feels a little reductive in a way. Useful, but reductive. Like a nice demi-glace. 

In the case of Mart Kangro, I don’t really want to reduce his work. He threw so much at us over the two weeks, that spoke to many different areas of his practice and philosophy, that I think it might be better for my own archiving purposes to simply highlight a list of takeaways (also because I am about to write 2500 words on this term as a whole, and I want to save some juice for that).

Asking the questions of “why do we make like this?” and “why are things the way they are?”

This is such a tough one for me, as it seems to beget the idea that we need to challenge these ways of doing things. Maybe it doesn’t, but I do feel in the sphere of performance art, there’s a tendency to reject established forms for the sake of it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I’m still making my mind up about this, simply because the established forms are the norm because they work. I’m all for adaptation and change, but for me I want that to be driven by the work and what it needs, rather than the exterior desire for some ‘punk-rock’ fuck you to the status quo. 

At the same time, I am SO glad that I’ve been given such a wide range of historical and contemporary knowledge that has allowed me to understand how and why certain trends developed in theatre and performance making. It allows me switch-up the recipe when I need, and understand the implications of it.

Analogue. Mart brought this word up a few times, but we never went in depth into what it meant, so the following is me extrapolating. Analogue, to me, indicates function over form, clarity in action, and physical tangibility. These are all qualities I would also attribute to Mart’s work with us. Naturally, you can then ask what digital is in this context, and I would say its equivalent is the more intangible psychological and symbolic work. Transi-

-tion to the next topic. If you are clear, the poetry will come later.

This is one of my favourites, and you bet I have written it all over my STREAM project papers. You don’t need to construct the symbolic or psychological or deep and meaningful in your work. If you’re clear, and more analogue in your construction, the poetry will follow. This poetry is also created in translation to each and every audience member, and allowing them ambiguity to find their own way in is so important. Otherwise, you get a didactic work where the artist is so overtly trying to impart a specific message, and this can be such a turnoff sometimes (though, not always).

On this note, don’t go for beauty, go for the essence of what you’re doing. That’s where you find the actual beauty. 

This rings true, especially for myself. I’m such an image person, that I often go from a point of “ooh this is pretty” and then work backwards. In a lot of cases, it will be more rewarding to go from this essence. So right now, I’m finding the beauty of certain images, which I then try to find the essence of, which then reshapes the image. A fun feedback loop indeed.

A question: can exercises be performance? Mart would say yes. Fran once told us that the exercises we did would often never make it on stage, for various reasons. I took this to heart, but after working with Mart it’s clear that any of these exercises can be a performance with the right framing and attention. I guess it’s about not pretending that you’re doing an exercise, too.

For me, performance and art are a way for me to be taken out of the everyday. Therefore, I naturally gravitate towards works that would not exist in our non-performative world, images, senses of scale and awe, movement you would not find elsewhere. For Mart, he brings attention to the everyday, and finds the beauty there.

What is your function?

I think I’ll be saying this a lot from now on. Reminding yourself that for all the poetics and expression that comes in, at the core you are fulfilling a function. What is it? Do it. 

I guess this also relates a little back to my earlier words (or from another reflection somewhere) about asking yourself what you’re giving to the audience. What is the function of your work? What is it functionally doing in the world? If it’s entertainment, sure, but be clear (and be entertaining). If it’s something more nuanced, then be clear in that, too.

With all these artists that Mart has drawn our attention to, largely from the ‘performance art’ end of the spectrum, they operate quite singularly from a concept, rather than a journey per se. As in, once you get the concept, it often doesn’t develop or take you on a journey. The audience can sit in it, and find their own meaning and journey, but the actual work is quite singular. Not a critique, more an observation.

Failure is a progressive element. 

Yeah. This is good. Seems obvious, once again, but for some reason the way he framed this actually struck me. Likewise, the tendency we have to stop investigating things as soon as they show any semblance of failing - we don’t stick with things long enough. 

Failing is good, because it adds to our knowledge of what does/doesn’t work. 

18|10|20

So, we were given the task of creating an original structure that we could perform, and boy is it harder than it first seems.

I think it’s almost analogous to what the work is in itself: deceptively simplistic. All the structures Mart gives us are quite narrow and concise in what the task is, and what parameters we are playing with, but within that structure there’s a huge amount of potential to bring in depth.

Similar to what Sasha was saying about his structures, it’s best to keep the top layer quite simple, so you can build depth, rather than get stuck in the complicatedness of the insignificant.

This is the issue we keep getting stuck in when we’re working on our structure – it always becomes more about the ‘game’ of the structure, and how to do that, rather than what could lie underneath. We will inevitably try and create a number of parameters and rules in order to dictate a very specific result that we’re searching for, and this will often take us away from the core of the sort of work we’re aiming to make with Mart.

For instance, last night we were refining our structure (to do with responding to objects) and we ended up creating a rather complicated set of parameters that resembled more of a creative improv game than an open condition for engagement. The main ‘responder’ in the structure had to respond to an object, but with a specifically dictated verbal rule, and a physical rule, both which would change periodically – it was a lot to think about, and therefore this performer couldn’t actually move beyond these tasks because they were so heavy. 

This brings me to this idea of “parameters.” This word is relatively synonymous with ‘elements’ or even ‘viewpoints’ in other methodologies, but something about the word itself opens up a quality that really appeals to me. For me, the word parameter relates heavily to music composition – when I am making music electronically, the various knobs for the instrument manipulate certain parameters, for instance: the reverb; the tone frequency; the volume. It indicates a certain aspect of the instrument, but also indicates a spectrum of possibility, that can also be radically different when combined with certain other parameters. You could find an infinite amount of radically different sounds just by combining two parameters in different ways. 

The same goes for making these structures. We keep coming back to the simple fact that the less parameters you have, the more depth you can find in the combinations of them. This obviously then puts more responsibility on the performers to find this depth, but in this case it’s helpful to ask yourself the question: what is my function in this structure? 

I think we arrived at a much clearer structure that we will test out today with the others, with refining definitely needed. At the same time, it could be a mistake to keep tweaking the structure itself, rather than digging deeper in the structure we have to find the depth. We’ll find out. 

24|10|20

Compared to the other artists we’ve worked with, I think Mart would have to be the one who has been the most up-front and direct with what he holds as valuable in performance. With most other artists, you can see what they hold valuable through the work and how they operate, but they didn’t often point to it so blatantly. Mart is so clearly and openly interested in the particular quality of ‘real-ness’ (which is a loaded term in itself), that everything seems to orbit around it. This quality is often brought into performance work – as opposed to theatre – in order to not hide anything from the audience or put up that veil of illusion (we were encouraged heavily to move towards this in 99 Hours), but it is rarely the centre of the practice. 

I say all this as a simple observance, but also as a spurring on to myself to try and understand what I am interested in as an artist. I have a realm of interests in movement and technology, but that can be pretty broad. I’m also much younger than Mart and really shouldn’t be trying to see myself or my practice as clearly defined as his seems to be, but it does make me want to focus a bit more on what I am about as an artist. I run into this problem sometimes when I am asked to lead a workshop or teach – I actually don’t know what I want to impart from myself. I usually just run through a handful of exercises that I have resonated with throughout my practice, but it’s often not orbiting around a specific value or quality. This is something to keep in mind, I think, especially when I leave the course and need to find where I exist within my contemporaries and the wider artistic world.

A topic of conversation that has come up a lot within our workshops with Mart is that of ‘performing the real’. As in, how to keep a genuine engagement and interest in whatever activity you are doing, while also understanding the performance of what you’re doing, while ALSO not slipping into a performative mode. This really interests me for a number of reasons moving forward in my practice, but also because I can find it difficult to get this balance. For instance, when we did the manipulation activity – one person as physical material, the other as someone playing with this material – I found it quite difficult to be genuinely interested in what I was doing with Liisa’s body. I would fall into the trap of thinking too heavily on what image I was making, rather than focussing on what Liisa’s body was doing. I lost the quality of being interested in the activity, rather than the result – although I acknowledge it is a balancing act. In other exercises, like the huddle (which I am 100% stealing for my final project), I found it much easier to engage with this activity. I’ve pondered why this is, but I feel like it’s easier for me to engage with something when there’s a clearer objective, rather than just a role. In manipulation, there wasn’t really an objective per se, rather an activity to do. If we do it again, I think I may need to artificially determine my own objective in the work, in order to engage with it in the way that brings out this quality that we’re chasing in all these structures.

Speaking of, we were given the task of creating our own structure in a group that would bring out this quality, and BOY was it difficult. There were a number of difficulties and issues that kept coming up that included, but were not limited to:

- Oversaturation of rules, in order to try force some result

- Inventing “cool, artistic, interesting” responses while in the structure

- Overly simplistic tasks that were too easy to complete and therefore had no meaningful engagement from the performers

In saying this, I think we arrived at something that could have potential, with definite refining. It’s also quite enjoyable to work on this sort of task, for me, as it’s not a matter of how creative or interesting we can be, it’s about how can we create something that brings out a certain quality. It’s more tangible, and less wishy-washy. This is what I really enjoy.

21|10|20

Coming out of the very ragtag process of putting together performance material with Sasha, it’s a whole new world with Mart, going back to practicing fundamentals of his practice.

It’s very clear already the style of work Mart works with, and the values he holds highly in theatre and performance. The emphasis, oversimplified to a huge degree, is on presence. Not necessarily the performative presence of being grounded or exuding energy, but the subtle presence of being engaged in what you’re doing. He’s even used the same phrase Peader used in the 99 Hour process: “If you’re interested in what you’re doing, it’ll be interesting for us”, or something like that. It’s one of those simple truths that is often forgotten, and honestly was pushed far aside in Sasha’s work which prioritised images and bold characterisation. 

Coming back to this focus has already been very comforting, and helpful for me artistically, especially as someone who can often push a bit too far into performativity. 

There’s also already an interesting balancing act, that I hope we look further into as the two weeks continue, between this hyper-real presence and the performance of this presence. He’s been gently pushing us towards finding dynamic in the structure/games we’ve been playing, which is often difficult. I think I ran into this sort of issue in my show DAD in 2018. We wanted our stories to be seen as real and genuine, and at the same time we had to be hyper aware of the dynamic and flow of the work. It led to a lot of fun moments where we disrupt the audience expectations by cutting emotions sharply, or manipulating their perceptions of how we’re telling the stories. This ‘manipulation’ of the audience, which Mart pointed out yesterday as being an enjoyable part of his work (especially in the NO99 show), is also something I find a lot of delight in. I’m excited to see how all of these fundamentals can develop into performance material through his practice.

On a more simplistic observational note, it’s quite astounding how deeply knowledgeable Mart is on his contemporaries and the giants on whose shoulders we stand (though he also has pointed out that they were just people, too). Beginning each day, so far, with the hour or so of background artistic context and history is very interesting for understanding his influences and way of working. It also makes me wonder, who are my contemporaries that we will look back on one day like this? It’s always tricky to ponder this, because none of these artists ever see themselves this way until after their hey-day when the wider community acknowledges their huge influence on art practice. 

I’ve had a bunch of other thoughts directly related to, and also tangential to, the work so far – but this is better sat on for now.