| Learning form Artaud - Or Maybe Not
1980s. Berlin. There we were, studying architecture.
Classicism lay beyond the horizon.
A backwards perspective, obscured by the colossus of modernity. Another image: hidden by dense vegetation difficult to penetrate but with the most beautiful blossoms. Postmodernity surrounded us, promising freedom from the failures of modernity and an endless, ad-nauseum possibility of playful recombinations. Perhaps we would have preferred to struggle against the coercions of an authority?
Deconstruction appeared before us. This time with the promise of intellectual integrity and an absolutely irreducible complexity, taking us to a passionate and sometimes exhausting point of delirium.
Learning from Artaud
I sought my way in art through photography in western Berlin. An island surrounded by a wall. Populated by a petite bourgeoisie damaged by the war and its consequences as well as a petite elite fully convinced of its sophistication. Enriched by rejects and refugees, those fleeing more from the pretentions of the West than the ostensible republic. They concidered themselves the center of the earth, in Kreuzberg at the center of the city. The East interested us little to not at all. My shame in this regard still persists.
For that, Albert Camus’ “in spite of” has stayed with me.
Claudia took me to a performance of Theater Artaud, a Kreuzberg phenomenon. Self-assured, almost to the point of arrogance; in terms of its actors, fragile and distraught to the point of verging on collapse. Watching was pure intensity, which drew on uncertainty that was transformed into action. There was much to learn.
Artaud’s cruelty has an immediacy that impacts all the senses. This is the simulation of love and war, but, like all of art, it falls short of reality, except for the brief moments when reality itself makes an appearance.
In the way that Artaud gives equal consideration to light, smell, gesture, space, the form of speech, sound, and much more, so can experience be conveyed beyond a representative image and through the multiple elements of the photographic process: in the gray tones between white and black, in the grain of the negative, in the plastic medium of the negative, and through the use of technical tools, such as the enlarger or the paper forms used for dodging and burning. In the way that Artaud brings together the space of the viewers and that of the stage, it is similarly important for visual fragments from various negatives to be combined, for the resulting photograph to cover the full expanse of the paper; and for pictures to join other pictures. As Artaud causes us to encounter this stream of everything, so should clarity be avoided and chance welcomed.
One aspect of my experiments was the attempt to use the entire photographic process as a means of visual expression.
By choice, Theater Artaud’s possibilities were defined by its limited means. Kreuzberg construction sites and scaffolding made their contributions to the stage sets. Performances were carried out at poetic and symbolic locations. A willingness to take risks, curiosity, an openness to testing things out, intuition, a constant effort to understand what one had achieved, and the joy of improvisation defined the performance practice of Theater Artaud. No piece was ever finished. New aspects of a theme were constantly explored. What did I forget?: The strength of naïveté.
Viewers were to be touched in their most inner souls through all their bodily senses.
I watched the rehearsals, but I only took photographs during and in the midst of the performances, to be closer to their intensity, to increase the pressure on myself, and to be nearer to the perceptions of the viewers. The impressions I gathered were overwhelming and unclear at the same time. In comparison to the richness of my experience during the performance, the images I captured were flat.
However, I sought to distill the essence of my experience, and I tried to do this through images. This path led through long periods in the darkroom. What I had photographed, the negatives, were the mere material of a process of purifying memory down to the essence of what I had experienced. As I mentioned, there is strength in naïveté.
Another aspect of my experiments was the notion of the photographic process as the work of tracing and condensing remembered experience to generate images.
It has become the Artaud folders.
Or Maybe Not
In retrospect, I realize how there were many ideas of Artaud and Theater Artaud relevant to photography that I did not incorporate. Although my process of arriving at an image was open-ended, the visual results are fixed. They were not designed to change over time by still ongoing chemical process or in terms of sequence. I never left the boundaries of the readymade photo paper; I never expanded this realm of experience by papering the wall or the floor, or by using these elements as an image medium by applying liquid emulsion. Only in later works did I explore the materiality of photo paper, bending and tearing it, forcing it into a new relationship with the image it bore.
I would like to thank all the members of Theater Artaud and all those who were part of its family for the nonjudgmental, kind, and open acceptance to their community.
Also for the possibility of taking part in their work from my personal perspective and learning from them. In the images of the Artaud Portfolios, I hope that the intensity and corporeality of their performances are not only graspable as an intellectual process but are also immediately palpable.
And,
when you look at the images, don’t forget the sounds!
Amin El Dib, 2022
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