sarma

This text is part of the project Afterwords, curated by Jeroen Peeters for the festival ImPulsTanz Vienna in summer 2002. Every night, three critics in residence shared their impressions and thoughts on the performances immediately after having seen them, in an act of instantaneous writing. During the process of writing, these comments were projected in the theatre lobby and later that night made available on the websites http://www.impulstanz.com and http://derstandard.at.
A selection of the texts by Jeroen Peeters is available on Sarma, in a slightly edited version, sometimes with a postscript. Two essays elucidate the project Afterwords and reflect on its poetical and political implications. To retrieve the material, search under: ‘Afterwords’.

What should I write on the spot about three performances that burst with language? Simply read them, taking the risk of overlooking the event they contain, of overlooking looking itself? That is read them, doubling their words in writing, identifying them, appropriating them, overlooking the event of the words? Or keep on reading them, and writing them, doubling them, identifying them, appropriating them, to an extent which is redundant, until tautology takes over, until the event might appear in the words itself, make them unreadable, a nebula or a knot, not any longer to be untwined? Should I loose myself or try to loose myself in pronouncing an event that is probably not to be pronounced, if pronounceable? As one mysterious thing, dire l'indicible, pronouncing the unpronounceable, in an incessant and repeated way, recognizing its redundancy as superfluous, recognizing its impossibility, the impossibility of speaking it out and yet doing it, without achievement, being too slow in grasping it, being too fast in saying it, feeling its evanescence, suspecting it while aiming to feel it, in saying it differently, differently since you are said, being said? Oh dear I keep hearing voices in my head. Perhaps I should write first and think afterwards?