Unfolding the Critical: Conversation between Tang Fu Kuen and Arco Renz
Jeroen Peeters: For the next half an hour, I would like to invite Tang Fu Quen, a dramaturge from Singapore, with a specific interest for intercultural dramaturgy - and Arco Renz, choreographer and dancer who has a little theory about abstract dramaturgy.
TFQ: We are given a space for the artist and the critic to meet and I find this space not neutral at all. It is not an empty space, as Jeroen has cautioned us that we should have to perform a certain task, which is to address what is critical to you and me. And just today we had a problem with deciding how to position spatially the artist and the critic. It brings the trope – of the many tropes that we can raise around the issue of the critical - of distance. So how do I position myself to you? As a critic and also as a friend. So our position is problematised in that way. How can we speak as if we are professionals and yet not as strangers?
AR: Right now we are changing the roles because you are performing and I am watching.
TFQ: It is tough because I know you as a friend, by chance in a way. I will always remember when I first saw you perform, which was in a Robert Wilson show that premièred in Singapore. In that time I was organizing a forum and you turned up in Indian suit. That was beautiful.
AR: That was not an Indian suit. I bought it in Brussels.
TFQ: In that instance I was really surprised by your presence and also very skeptical.
AR: It is true, I was the only Western person. It was a colloquium on ecology: dance in relation to nature, for contemporary Asian choreographers. I was in Singapore for a couple of days and I saw that this was happening next to my hotel and I just went there. It was very interesting to see how the relation to nature was different for Asian choreographers than it is for us in Europe. But I suppose this has not much to do with what we should talk about.
TFQ: It is difficult. I saw your performance. But this performance should not turn into an interview. But at the same time we have to draw on some points of shared references.
AR: I think the last question of the audience in the discussion with Alexander Baervoets and Natasha Hassiotis was very interesting. Especially the problem of the critic being criticized. Last night, when I read the question of what we were going to talk about, I didn't know what I was going to answer. The most interesting fact that came to my mind, is that we both – you as a critic, me as a choreographer - have the same process of doing our work. That means: we look at something, or we experience something, we analyze it, we think about it and we position ourselves to it. I think it is the starting point for me to make a choreography. And that is maybe the question I would like to ask you: whether you go through this same process, if you have to write a review about a dance piece you have seen.
TFQ: I am not sure about the process you described.
AR: I was wondering 'what is the critical component in my work?'. So then I thought what is critical? I would rather speak of position taking and of critical than of criticism. Because criticism has somehow a notion of judgment.
TFQ: There is something I am going through right now, in terms of thinking what is the idea of opposition. To raise the idea of opposition is to suppose then that you have considered many positions and you have decided on one specific position. Increasingly I find that a very tight process. In these days I prefer shifting positions. Positionalities rather than positioning. It is also in my writings that I notice, that writing a piece of criticism is very limited because writing can be an end in itself. So what is critical in my work? To find different positions and shift between those positions. That of a dramaturge, that of a writer, that of a presenter/curator. I try to shift in between those positions, to understand the meanings that can be lost. And therefore recuperated in slipping positions.
AR: So these positions are your personal positions?
TFQ: Yes. As my identity. How do you decide in your work to pick a position?
AR: I don't think of a performance as a particular criticism to something. In general I can say that I look at the things I find interesting, the things that happen to me, the patterns in my life, the things that are happening around me … I try to find a connection between my personal experience and where this experience is shared with other people. So I think that other people can have a similar experience as I have. I hesitate to say 'universal' experience. It is too big. A 'recurrent' experience. The performance we did last night was based on the fascination I observed in myself - and in the world that's around me - of the obsession to advance, to go ahead and forward. With this activity as the end. So there is no real goal. It is the advancing that is convention. That is the important thing to do. If you don't advance, you're not good. That is one element of the performance and from that starting point I try to find a position to that. And that is where one could say I try to raise critic or a critical view on something. But for me it is more the question of what dress to give to the criticism. The criticism in the performance of yesterday is a very distant criticism, that gives a lot of space.
TFQ: Is that what you mean with the kind of abstract abstraction you are aiming for?
AR: Yes and with the process we are developing since two years, we are trying to do what maybe all dance performances do, but to really focus on that, that means to shape time and space in a dramatic way through the body and its different energies. Giving a theme without telling a story. And having a theme, you have to take a position and therefore be critical. You cannot escape from that.
TFQ: So you are giving me a description of what you are trying to present. But perhaps implicit in your process are some methods that are not brought into the surface of your work. Interestingly, this morning I was talking to Marit Strommen and she was struck by the collectiveness of your work.
AR: Collectiveness?
TFQ: We hesitated to use this word … I think I should dish it out. But she said how collective your work was in presenting a fascist force. How you use the bodies… I have seen two of your other works: Happy Zode and Think Me Thickness. For me there is a continuous development of a lexicon of certain movements. Hopping, jumping and embodying of states. Different kinds of states. There is a body language that is kind of hieratic sometimes, that derived from a certain kind of painting or sculpture. They are almost Hellenistic in some ways. So I am asking: further than what you are describing, is there a critical aspect towards why you have chosen this kind of bodily language to present the world you are interested in or to convey the experience that is going through you?
AR: When I had seen the first time a Kathakali performance from South India, I was very struck by the idea that I was fascinated by the performance and they were telling a story which I had no idea of. I didn't understand anything and yet for three hours I was magnetized, watching the performance, the music, the strong energy that the performers were projecting to the audience. And that was somehow the initial point for what I am doing now. I was wondering what are they doing in order to be able to create a connection with the audience without even the narrative element. And as I was looking around to what we are doing in Europe, I could never find this. And maybe in that way it is critical: to understand why we are doing it different here.
TFQ: Is it a kind of – maybe I am reading/interpreting it too much – but … it seems to me that you were intrigued by a visual anthropology.
AR: No, it was not visual at all. That's exactly the point. It was invisible. It was this terrible word 'energy' which we apply all the time. And nobody knows what it means. It is not visual. It is not the fascination about the exotic. It is the invisible. It is the force that comes from within.
TFQ: How do you seek to reconstruct/re-embody this energy?
AR: That's a whole process and that is where we start all performances. A lot has to do with very technical exercises in the beginning. … That leads to a certain strength of projecting your inside out. I never really deeply studied any of the Asian traditional arts myself. I observed, I studied a little bit. Never profoundly so that I could call myself an expert or a performer of that kind of dance. So what we are doing is that we are trying to develop our own way towards this aspect of performance, which is very under-developed in the West.
TFQ: It is good that you forestalled the discourse of the exotic. Because I was thinking – since both of us were paired up - is there a kind of expectation for us to go into some kind of discussion about the East and the West, the intercultural…? Watching Mirth yesterday, I was pleased to have spent time viewing a work that has obviously organically developed. A kind of world which has some logic working and I was just interested what it is going to develop into. Now that we have discussed the critical, what is the next position in your investigation?
AR: To go deeper in what we have started. Deeper into the exchange with Asian cultures. So the next creation we will do to a great extent in Indonesia. We will rehearse there and work with Indonesian dancers. We will go deeper into the language we are developing.
TFQ: Are you bringing any questions with you. Assuming that one has a question, one is in a way adopting a certain critical mind.
AR: I don't think of the critical in advance. Maybe I join Alexander when he was saying ‘I always wonder what is important to do, what can I do and what should I do'. Because we have so many things that are being said on stage, in the paper or on television. So I think that everybody should think before he talks, in whatever language. Because otherwise it gets much more difficult to filter what is …
TFQ: Essential?
AR: Maybe. But then of course you have to question what is 'essential'? For other people something else is essential. But still I think it is difficult to talk about it but you can feel the difference. Maybe criticism is a lot about feeling …
TFQ: Yes, I was going to go into that. … Any questions from you?
AR: Yes, you were talking about the positioning. What is the critical component in that? It sounds like a game.
TFQ: You can read it as a game, but as I say in shifting and playing different roles, I think one can start to see obviously from different perspectives. See what is lacking … And how you can –from another perspective - address these black holes that you experienced before. For example as a critic, there is a limit to what words can do. It is a regime in which I cannot perform any actions. Who is my reader? I will never really know. How much agency does a writer have? I question that. There are some changes I want to make happen. How do I do it through writing alone?
AR: Do you think writing a critic is also an artform?
TFQ: It is an art process. But I question its political function. Or maybe because I am an impatient person, I am questioning its immediate action? … I can't change politics. Ok, you can cite me a hundred examples of how writers have changed the world. But something in me doesn't believe that. In the face of media overload, my work alone couldn’t stand. And hence what else could I do if I want to effect a transformation of my own desire? I have to go out there to do it. I have been very privileged, I have traveled to east and west - like a ping pong ball – but there are many things I see here that I am so jealous of, that I like to see also over there. There are so many things over there that I see that doesn't quite happen here. So what can I do about this? Through writing alone? In a way, I am a mobile body, I can talk, I can make proposal, I can enact beyond the paper, beyond the computer, so what do I do…? I question what is imperative. If being critical is to be imperative upon the present, then what I see is missing in where I come from. There are not enough young choreographers, there is not enough coalition, not enough gathering of resources/databases within the region. Of course Asia is so big, I cannot do everything. So I look at South East Asia. What are the concrete things that I can do? I can magnify myself as a small island of Singapore.
AR: So in that sense criticism is making a constatation of the state of the situation. Is that right? You see what is and what is not. And by analyzing it, that is the form of criticism you make?
TFQ: I believe you can be the harshest critic but I don't believe that by words alone you could bring about a change.
AR: As a critic, do you think one can make a change with a performance?
TFQ: You are asking a moral question here. If I say that a performance cannot make a change, then Brecht would rise from his grave and kill me instantly. The utopian in all art makers is of course to believe that art can in some ways change. Unless of course you are of the category of artists who believe that there is no such thing as change.
AR: I was wondering … should criticism and performance go hand in hand to change something? Are they a couple working together or are they working against each other?
TFQ: That is how I moved into dramaturgy, which is for me an interface between being a critic and being an artist. I was trained in theatre and performance studies, but there came a point where being a creator was not enough. And what did I do? I went back to the academics. I thought, now that I have done so much on stage, I could turn to writing. And so I did that for a while until I realized there was a limitation. So how do I seek a continuum in my practice? Dramaturgy emerged as a position where I could address the lack thereof. Even then I was not happy. I found that that was not enough. So I had to take a step further. I have to work with cultural organizations. I have to make them understand the value between theory and practice. So I suppose I am hacking back to what you were asking earlier: what is the position? I don't really think of specific positions anymore. It is about positionalities, relationalities. Seeking meanings, contesting meanings and possibilities …
AR: Opening doors...
TFQ: I could put a theoretical spin to that, but let's not do that. This is what – in reality - what I try to understand.
Jeroen Peeters: Let's end with the open doors.