CARLOS PEZ

To be an artist you need to speek English by Carlos Pez

TO BE AN ARTIST YOU NEED TO SPEAK ENGLISH
Carlos Pez


PROLOGUE

In 2006 Carlos Pez received a grant from the VGC (Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie - Flemish Commission in Brussels) for To be an artist you need to speak English.
This grant, a support for an artistic parcours rather than a specific project is given by the VGC to artists with the intention to stimulate a development in their artistic parcours, to work out new ideas, make new contacts... Emphasis is on the evolution during the process, not on one specific result. At the end of his artistic parcours that lasted from 2006 till 2008 Carlos Pez wrote the following text.

LITO WALKEY

In 1998, Lito WaLkey, a greek-canadien choreographer, created a solo that I performed as part of the activities in our second year at the SNDO in Amsterdam. Last year she called me on the phone and told me that she wanted to revisit that project and create a new piece from it. Immediately, I accepted. The scholarship from the VGC allowed a first meeting for us in April. We spent a week together where we watched the videos, embodied the material, and talked a lot about those times. After that week, we confirmed our desired to do a full evening performance. Lito managed to find the production support in Germany and we spent all this summer in the creation of the piece. The contract between us was to transform into a duet, and to be both dancers and choreographers. The work called “like this, like that” was premiered in Potsdam Berlin in October, we just presented in Zagreb at the beginning of December and we will show it again in January at Kampnagel (Hamburg). The creation hasn’t concluded yet and we are still working on it with the aim to finish it during the Hamburg presentations. In a very literal lecture of the phrase “to be a artist you need to speak English”, this project proves it wrong. English is Lito’s mother language but that didn’t help the communication process. There are other elements as common artistic interests or not, the way we emotionally relate to the events in the process, inner sensibility, and the background we are coming with that can increase the fluidity of the communication. Sometimes the fact of speaking well the language we are using to communicate during a process can create some difficulties, as the speed of the communication rises and less elaborates thoughts arise.
For more information about this project, please check:
http://www.duchamps.org/artists/5/works/24

MUSTAFA KAPLAN

The last two weeks of September I participate at the annual Bafa meeting in Turkey. Since a few years the organization çati, which is an artist based organization in Istanbul, organizes a year meeting in Bafa, a small village by a lake in south turkey. Dancers, choreographers, theatre makers, film directors , in total a group of around 20 persons we went there for a week. The event is self organised, having the meals as a meeting point at the hostel, the mornings different persons will give a 2hours warming up class, that many times was prepared the day before between the "teachers" of the following day. The rest of the day was free, and I spent it working with the Turkish choreographer Mustafa Kaplan. In 2006, I participate in the blind date program of the Klapstuk together we him. This time we extended the blind date for a week. At the end of the week we had some open presentations where we invited also the people from the village (some of the participants gave a theatre workshop for the kids of the village and capoeira lessons too).
The name of the presentation Mustafa and me we did in Leuven was titled « to be an artist you have to speak English » an it dealt with the communication issues that arises from the attempt to communicate between artist that have different mother tongues, as well as artistic interest.
That experience was the one that propelled me to ask for the scholarship to VGC, and it has been under those main lines that I develop this research project.
The second experience with Mustafa was very fruitful. It is somehow important to give a second chance to these kinds of encounters since there are many "a priories" that are gone and a more personal approach appears. It was also fulfilling that we could dedicate one long week to us.
Nevertheless and although we had an offered to continue working and develop a piece together by the Turkish festival in Antwerp 0090 we decided not to continue. There was always a lot of preparation and lack of money and uncertainty about how to continue. Mustafa was busy with other projects and couldn’t have more space in his head and me somehow from the experiences in Southern Africa and Palestine it felt I was somewhere else and that sort of artistic encounter didn’t interest me no more.

SOUTH AFRICA AND MAPUTO

Last year I spent two months in South Africa, mainly between Soweto and Johannesburg working with Sello Pesa, a Soweto-based choreographer. Sello together with George Khumalo and Jasper Walgrave had the vision to create a dance art centre in the township. With the decease of George Khumalo in the previous winter, the project enter in a difficult phase, since George was the person with the vision and had Sello in the artistic side and Jasper in the production side, without having a clear relation between the last two.
The time of my arrival coincided with a time of huge transformations in that constellation. Sello took George’ dancers/students with his and was struggling to re-adapt to the new group. Nyakasa, the organisation behind the vision, was now in Jasper hands, he not knowing very well how to handle it since he was missing the input from George.
There was no money at that time for the dancers, they were all going through a lot of pressure with the new situation, there was a clear lack of motivation and some of them didn’t got along well.
This was, somehow, the situation I entered in although I was not aware of it. For me on the contrary it seemed a field full of possibilities. It took sometime to acknowledge this, and it is probably due to my second trip there a few weeks ago that this situation became clear. But about that we will talk later.

I was invited by Jasper and Sello to take part in Sello’s new creation. This one never happened. Every week there was a new plan, Sello had a new idea or something will come up as the negative answer from the institutions to support the project. Somehow that didn’t matter, we were busy enough trying to think about the idea of a centre, the idea of creating a dance program, how to approach potential producers, teaching to the new Sello’s company, making an audience for new members, re-working his old pieces for the ones there, etc. Somehow I was involved in all these activities, while making a bridge between Jasper and Sello communication issues but to replace George was impossible for too many obvious reasons.

3 times a week, I was teaching the company, the other two they had ballet. The company/students was a group of 7 persons, who some of them will not speak with each other, many will not eat in the morning and I will realise that because when I would ask them to close their eyes, those who didn’t eat will get dizzy. In South Africa, there is unspoken law that, at least, you have to provide food and transport for the dancers. Those 7 where only getting that, they were asked to work from 9-14, sometimes later, from Monday to Saturday. They had bread for lunch, just bread, and sometimes also bananas.
The rest of the morning time, I was assisting Sello with his repertory, since at that time he had the idea of creating a repertory of his work. First it was a piece I can’t remember and I had somehow to stop with it, the piece was done with quite experienced Laban centre dancers (that’s where Sello got his education) and for me it was aimless to try to adapt it for dancers that were just beginning and had a completely different kind of education.
For the second work « extract’s of X 2 », Sello gave me « carte blanche » to work with the dancers and the structure of the piece. Although I couldn’t relate artistically with the work, there was more space for the dancers to explore and I took it as an exciting challenge. By that time, I started to feel more accepted by Sello and by the group.
When I left, they continued working in the piece, and since then they have been performing it in several places in South Africa and last spring in Holland. I went to see it there and also did the light design and was quite satisfied with the result they achieved.
For my last week in South Africa, we proposed a week workshop of my own work but the company members didn’t accepted. They said they were very tired and emotionally exhausted and they asked for a break. Then, I decided to go on holidays before Maputo.

In the meantime I was helping Jasper to conduct production workshops in 4 different cultural centres in South Africa (Cape Town, Pretoria, Soweto and Durban), as part of the first phase of a project from the Flemish government and these centres. The idea of the Flemish government is to support during three years, around the areas of youth, sports and culture these 4 centres with 100.000€ per year, while creating and interchange programs with and specially from some amateur organisations in Flanders, in the case of dance is danspunt (need to verify this). This project is a very good example of how not to create an artistic collaboration, a good example of how colonialism continues and a good example of how to waste big amount of money.
It’s not only the fact that the people from that Flemish organisation couldn’t meet us because they were busy buying stuff or that they didn’t went to the cultural centres except to present their project, it is not only the question of how they choose those cultural centres when in one of them the direction was not even present, it is the whole idea of the project and how this project is propose to those communities in South Africa that is so wrong that one ask himself if it is worthy to spend time and energy in this report to talk about.
Nevertheless, I might say, that mainly for the same motives this was an extremely reach experience for me. Those weekends in those cultural centres were exceptional as the people I met and the time we spend together and if something, it taught me a bit from South African culture. The work that Jasper Walgrave prepared for those workshops, which at the beginning were not even considered by the Flemish government was excellent and of a high human and professional quality, amongst other things because he was the person who had the experience and the knowledge of the region.

In the meantime, while being in South Africa I contacted Panaibra Gabriel, he is a choreographer and the artistic director of the dance organisation « culturarte ». Already from before we spoke together with Mark de Putter from « alkantara » (Lisbon) about the possibility to organise an event in august since Mark was also collaborating with them.
At that time the support « culturarte » was receiving from different European organisations and Africalia ceased to exist and Panaibra couldn’t even pay the studio for the past three months. Jasper and me went for a couple of days to meet him in Maputo where we planned the activities for august, since there was another choreographer (Miguel Pereira) and a theatre maker (Jorge Andrade) coming to Maputo, as well. We decided to do a conference, or the preparation of the conference for the November platform (a biannual dance festival in Maputo) with Sello Pesa, Boyzie Czewana, Ariri –from Madagascar- and others to discuss different artistic and structural issues around the region, southern Africa.
The morning after Jasper and me presented the project to the director of the French institute who accepted to host the preparation of the conference, and provide the accommodation for the artists; the cultural responsible of the Belgian consulate who offered 10.000€ to support the project, and the Spanish embassy from where we've got a phone contact. Just like that, in one morning. The same morning that we drank a natural fruit juice at Maputo’s beach in the morning and in the evening we arrive to Johannesburg where was snowing for the first time in 20 years.

The Belgian consulate supported the project in Maputo and I didn’t spend much from the VGC scholarship. We had a 3 days preparation of the conference, although Ariri and Boyzie couldn’t come, there was other two artists from Reunion Island and Nigeria. We went through the many difficulties existing in the region to produce art, the lack of governmental support and the lack of communication with other artists within the region. They attempt to gradually create a network where artists can share knowledge and information and that propose different artistic exchange projects. The idea in the future will be to have a real working space for such network (as it could be the Danse Balsamique Mediterranée, for example). In this preparation I did participate pretty much as an observer, taking notes, and sometimes giving examples of other networks mainly from Europe.

Then I taught a two weeks improvisation workshop to the company (in) dependençîa, a dance of company of mix abilities (physical and not physical challenged dancers), and a composition workshop together with Jorge Andrade. It was a pity that it overlapped with Miguel Pereira’s audition and the amount of participants was poor. To work with Jorge was a very good experience. The fact that he had a more theatrical background it only added to enrich it. Pedagogically speaking that workshop was a turning point for me. It was something new, at that time and since then I always try to teach with someone else. It is amazing the artistic input that generates for both teachers but also in the relation to the students, diminishing the father figure and opening for more dialogue amongst the participants.

Few months later via Koen Kwanten (workspacebrussels) who is part of the A.P.A.P (European network) as Ludger Orlok (Tanzfabrik Berlin) who heard about my experiences in Southern Africa. He contacted me, and invited me to talk about these experiences in Berlin. At the same time Tanzfabrik wanted to do an artistic exchange project with artists in South Africa and they have decided to support my collaboration with Sello Pesa. Between 2008-2009 Sello and me are having three encounters of three weeks each, being the last one in June in Berlin. The first one was in November in Johannesburg where we gave a workshop together and choose 6 persons to create a laboratory group. During that time we also got the support of the Goethe institute for the project. The second encounter will be in march were we will develop some artistic ideas to research on and confront ourselves with different spaces in the city and in the rural areas. After June, this project might develop in a dance production to be premiered in dance umbrella 2010 (contemporary dance festival in Johannesburg).

In June 2008, Panaibra Gabriel called me and proposes me to teach another workshop for the month of November. Although at that point there was not clear if he would have the financial support to invite me, he wanted to know my availability.
That phone call, somehow, made real all my experience during the last year.

There is a very strong form of artistic collaboration in Africa where, simplifying, a European artist come with money, chooses a few dancers and/or musicians and creates a work. People now that and the most common reaction is to wait for the next artist. Long term contacts are poor and attempts as mine where the idea was first of all to go to a new place observe, talk, participate in the activities in the community and from there bring an artistic proposition are rare. I felt I was constantly under exam where I was and I needed to gain the trust of the people and sometimes that wasn’t easy.
When I left, I felt I might have done the same: I had money, spent it, did a few projects but I wasn’t sure if something of what happened did really happened, as if we were really planting seeds or only pretending to, as if that will stop where it started or will have a continuation, as if there was a real encounter. I wanted to have a continuation but I didn’t wanted to force it, somehow it had to come from their side, if not I couldn’t see the value of my work. And then, that contact made everything valuable.
In November I was invited by Panaibra to coach with him the process of the dancers of the company « (in) dependençîa ». They had workshops with him, Domingos Bies and Boyzie Czewana where the dancers began to develop their own ideas, in the last phase we were there to help them to finalise them and presenting them to the public. At the same time I made a small piece with all of them. The project was supported by the Spanish embassy and the Spanish cooperation. All this was premiered on Saturday 30th of November, unfortunately I wasn’t there, but I received very positive echoes and seems the project has been a great success and that it’ll become the second production of the company. http://www.culturartemz.org/newsletter/008/

The regional project continues to develop, some of the dancers Sello and me chose and some other from (in)depençîa and some other dancers from the region have an encounter in December. The aim of this encounter is to share ideas and to create an environment where the participant could discuss and find out common interests. The attempt if by the end of the week is to receive artistic proposals from the participants to be developing during 2009, and presented in the Maputo dance platform next November. I’ve been invited in this project together with Sello, Panaibra and Boyzie to follow and coach the different processes.

PARALELLEL ACTIVITIES

Once I’ve received the scholarship from the VGC, I presented my project to different persons that are artistically close to my work. From the responses I’ve got several invitations to participate in different projects, and although I didn’t do all of them and they had they own production, I will enumerate them here. The projects were an invitation to participate in the group research & reflexion at the Kunsten Festival 2007, a research project about the new space Alkantara (Lisbon) received from the city hall, a coaching project in China –invitation by Kathleen … from Asian European foundation (?)That I couldn’t do because it overlapped with the project of Alkantara, and in a more indirect manner participate in one of the encounters of the Danse Balsamique Mediterranée representing WorkSpaceBrussels. During the summer 2007, Jereon Peeters and me began a writing project. We wanted to present the results at the Sarma web page and although I was very enthusiastic about the project and the development, after two months we didn’t find the time to continue with it.

- Research & Reflexion group, KunstenFestivaldesArts 2007.
Every year the direction of the Kunsten invites a few artists –international and Belgian based- to attend to the programme of the festival and discuss about it. Barbara Van Lindt invited me. That year I attended to many theatre performances that had a strong impression for me. I don’t know if it is due to my lack of knowledge in theatre issues but I was fascinated about almost everything I saw. (Works from The Riga Theatre, Enrique Diaz, Richard Maxwell and Toshiki Okada) Those work sensibly in more social issues and less about identity, which seemed mostly the concerns of the dance productions of that year.

- “it will be what we make it”, Alkantara (Lisbon), November 2007.
I will be what we make it was an ambitious, light and very generous project created by Mark de Putter and Bojana Cveviç with the support of European Cultural Foundations. A group of architectures, theatre makers, musicians, film makers, choreographers together with the technical crew and the administration office of Alkantara worked for 3 weeks together in the new space that Alkantara received from the city hall of Santos in Lisbon. We were all implied in the organization, production budget, activities, preparations, presentations, and public relations of the event having equal rights to discuss about all the deferent parameters. The central issue was to think and propose different ways for the organization, Alkantara, to communicate with artist, to define a visibility of the space for the community where was placed, to try different approach of attracting the audiences.
It is possible to follow some of the activities we did during those 3 weeks in:

http://www.alkantara.pt/arquivo.php?lang=2

http://www.almostreal.org/2007/07/06/it-will-be-what-we-make-it/

The project was very nice and productive, there was a relaxing working atmosphere and we try many different things everyday, some of them were actually pretty interesting. It is difficult to say what is the continuation of the project since the space had to close for the coming 6 months due to the renovation. The building it was in a poor stage. The renovation, after the Alkantara Festival, still continues and it will be only in the fall of next year where it will gat active. We will have to wait. As for me, I had a good time, no connections with anybody from the project after, as it usually happens in these kind of projects, and I had always had the strange sensation that the concept was exactly the same thing we were going in Southern Africa, only here everybody was paid (I was not since they invited me because I had the scholarship) and there was any responsibilities or repercussions in our personal work. Still I find it a very interesting experience that produced good food for thought.

- Koen Kwanten from WorkSpaceBrussels invited me to take part at the D.B.M. encounter in Beirut, November 2007.
Hereby part of the report I wrote about that meeting:

Beirut was a very interesting experience. DBM seems a much more open organization that it use to be. There was a mixture of programmers, artists, producers, and critics that made the whole event quite rich. On the second day of the meeting the was this topic discussions that although they were very large topic the fact that we could discuss openly the different parts involved was a very constructive moment of the agenda. At the end everybody have to resume their own conclusions and bring them back to their own realities and possibilities which many of them are not easy (talking here about dance organizations in Cyprus or Palestine, etc. but it was very interesting to know about them specially for the same reasons and you could feel that it was very important for them to take part of the project.
At the beginning I took part of a dance and criticism workshop. The Lebanese dance critic step out in the last moment and there were a Portuguese and a Spanish dance critics showing videos of Jerome Bel and Xavier Le Roy to the assistants. Another bad example of collaboration that falls into “colonization”. I was very impressed about the level of articulation of the participants. They were all women who went to the French or USA university in Beirut, that red all about gender and post modern issues. Didn’t have much experience in dance, they were more film oriented but anyhow very clever brains.

Conclusion:
This was a very productive experience. Sometimes it gave me some troubles to know how to deal with representing myself and representing workspace Brussels but for this time things went smoothly. Couldn’t assist to the last day presentations although have of them I knew it, so not a big loss.
It will be interesting for both workspace Brussels and myself to continue assisting to DBM meetings, especially since the fact of not coming from a Mediterranean country does not represent a problem for the organization. And the fact that I’m born in one of those countries gives me an extra-motivation to participate. It is not clear to me, which are the possibilities to follow, but it has been only one meeting and it became more as a first encounter. The next one is in Barcelona and organized by Rui Silveira. This can be tricky for me for the reasons spoken above. It would be good to discuss it further with you.
Last but not least: it would be good to keep an eye or two in Brahim Sourny, Moroccan artist based in Paris.
Best regards,

OBSERVATION:
Now that a year has passed, I feel that I have lost track with this line of work. Still interests me and I had different contact during the year with Ann Olaerts from the VTI and we have been brainstorming about new ways of working between artists and organization, discussing some of the most social project she is involved with and the possibility to collaborate together in the activities VTI is preparing for the next KunstenFestival. At the end of the day, it seems there is only 24h and unconsciously there has been a natural selection. This might change but doesn’t seem it will happen next year since I’m already overbooked but there will always be the experience acquired.

WEST BANK AND FILIPA FRANCISCO

About the elaboration and the outcome of this project I’m most proud of. There was a sense that I was learning something from the previous experiences. In 2004, I performed in Tel Aviv and by that time, we wanted to do something with the Palestinian community, which was not possible. It was important to finish that task.
During the previous months I contacted the D.B.M for information about the dance community in Palestine. They gave me the contact of Noora Baker, member of El-Funoun Dance Theatre Company. A dance company based in Ram Allah that exists for the past 20 years. It is a folklore-based company, but some of the young members like Noora and Khaled are interesting in finding new forms and are very open minded. Together with Noora Baker I prepared the organisation of the project. Once the project was confirmed I contacted Filipa Francisco.
Filipa Francisco is a Portuguese choreographer that I met for the first time in 2001, and with
whom I have since participated in various projects (with Danças na Cidade (now Alkantara)
and with DBM). Filipa and I have developed a mutual understanding of and interest for each other’s work. I admire the line of work she has developed over the last years as well as her activities in the socio-artistic field (work with communities in the margin : prisoners, handicapped people or children from so called difficult neighbourhoods).

My idea was to prepare a first encounter for all the participants involved, since was also the first time for Filipa and me working directly together. Following the same process that I underwent I Southern Africa but this time together with Filipa, we spend the first 5 days of the two weeks meeting people participating in the activities of EL-Funoun, and helping them when they performed in Naples and also in a rural area. We were staying at Al-Qatan Foundation that supported the project with accommodation. This foundation helps Palestinian students to study aboard and has its main focus in visual arts and filmmaking. During the time we were there we could follow one exhibition and get to know the filmmaking department and watch the documentary work that is happening at the moment in the country.
During our visiting, we discovered there is also another contemporary dance company, directed by Khaled Alayyan and that started a couple of years ago. The second week we gave a master class to the company, and during the two weeks we had several meetings we Khaled. He is also the director of Kasbah theatre (the only theatre in town beside the new municipal theatre) and the director of the Contemporary Dance Festival I Palestine, that this year had its third edition and collaborates with the festivals of Beirut (Lebanon) and Amman (Jordanian). Although the encounters were intense and there was a very positive reaction from his side, he wanted to invite our work for the next Festival, at the end nothing has followed.

The fact of being two persons I the same place for the first time multiplies the understandings, the ideas, the “a priories” , and the perception of the surroundings. After the three months, somehow alone, in southern Africa it was a relieve and a pleasure to be able to share my concerns with somebody under the same conditions. Not only concerns about the reality of that place but also artistic issues.

After 5 days and many conversations, Filipa and me began the workshop for the company, which was mainly for the young members. Beside the morning class, we attempted to do a workshop-creation although for this there was not enough time, we still work in that mode.
For the workshop-creation we asked them to write letters about : “ a place of peacefulness”. They had to describe that place, write what they do there and when they use it. I still have the material of those letters with me. From that we elaborate different improvisation/ composition exercise where Khaled and Noora did also participate as makers.

As I say before, we were too ambitious according with the time and the level of the participants but I was very happy that we didn’t artistically compromise with the idea and we kept working on it until the very last day. This was an every-day learning experience, every evening Filipa and me will discuss about the day and what to do for the coming one. The whole process, although it lacked of clear results was very fruitful and artistically nurturing.

There was a good connection between all the group and we could reach some personal intimacy with some of the participants. One of the young members, Shariff Meshar, inspired me to propose to El-Funoun to do a version of “already played tomorrow” with him (please go to http://www.duchamps.org/artists/5/works/8 for more information about this project).

The next few months the conversation was very fluid, we were all very enthusiastic to continue the project but then somehow it has fade out. At this moment I have no connection whatsoever with Noora or Khaled, neither with Khaled Alayyan.
My perception about the dance community in West Bank is that is a very close one and they have clear and strong reasons to be like that. I can hardly see how to enter in it. Filipa Francisco on the contrary wants to go again for a project regarding some of the issues we found in the Palestinian documentaries. She asked me if I would like to join and I accepted.

And now to end, I will explain the reason why we asked them to write a letter about “a place of peacefulness”: John Berger , the writer and art-critic has recently published a book titled “holding everything dear”, some of the articles refers about the Palestinian situation. John Berger has been a guest in Al-Qatan foundation twice, and he was the last one at the guesthouse before us. In the little book of dedicatory, he wrote that he and his family had a wonderful time at the guesthouse and he recalled the sense of peace while staying there. I couldn’t agree less.

EPILOGUE

As one can follow from the different projects, specially the ones from southern Africa and Palestine, there has been a constant methodological approach, which we could relate with a certain anthropological approach where there is a first phase of adaptation. At the beginning of every encounters I will meet the people, observe what they are doing, participate in their activities, and for that I mean literally, take part in a ballet class or in a Palestinian folk class, etc., talk with them, questioning, in definitive spending time with the artists and their surroundings. Depending on the place and the working period, this could take from 3 days until 2 weeks, after that by processing the different experiences I will articulate an artistic proposal back to them. The project in Palestine is probably the one that shows better this procedure.

In all the different projects, there is a common line, or at least one that I can identify now and that is that there are artist-to-artist base projects. The parallel project with Alkantara might be a good example for it but almost all the others have the same roots. Artist that we work, we think, we prepare, we organize, we produce, we talk with the politicians, we explain, we present directly to the public.
There is a lack of this number of activities in North Europe where artists are more dependants in producers, programmers, managers, and the so-called market and where the communication with the political/economical sphere is pretty much filtered as the relation with the audience.
There might be no necessity to change things, neither for the community, nor for me. It might be as two different leagues, two different ways of working and they might keep running parallel or not. Time will most definitely speak.

Following the idea of research&reflexion group from the Kunsten, I will sat that in this projects, or better, in these projects, there has been more of research than "reflexion", or the reflexion has been a very active one, almost on the spot. Therefore, I repeat my wish to open some conversations with the members that could be interested of the jury.
There is also one more thing that I can recall, all these projects have been definitive listened, followed and in some case even supported by many organisations, few of them, not to say only one were Belgian. I might not have the strength to connect more with organizations in this country. It is sad.
On the other hand, I ask myself why should I if, doing the same work, it gets the interest of others. Might this kind of project not be fitting in the culture or mentality of this country? Will be this the next encounter?

Carlos Pez