SCULPTING FEAR: HETZEL'S APOCALYPTIC VISION

Sculpting Fear: Julian Hetzel - at The Old Market, Hove, Produced by SPRING Performing Arts Festival Utrecht & Co-produced by South East Dance and Quadrennial Prague, 11th November 2015.

The Forecast:

There are dark days ahead. The black-and-white chequerboard certainties of life will be reduced to monochrome Grey. The workplace will become yet another arena where we 'live together apart' under the familiar, yet more pervasive, poisonous cloud of 'office politics': still pushed around by others; going round in circles; competing; 'wheeling-and-dealing', yet never really relating to each other. Speech will become obsolete: screen-based lives mean words can be created at arm's length on any device (why talk?). Chairs will be extensions of ourselves: we'll have closer relationships with them than with others. 

 

 

Roomba for Development

 

Witness a curious evolutionary twist: while we humans cease to relate to others, being unable to weather the storms and passions of normal relationships, having been  dehumanised by the apparent safety of anonymity, becoming evermore remote, yet controlled by bosses; schedules, and the need to emotionally shut-down; the remote-controlled devices we create will learn to speak; to dialogue with one another, and care for each other's welfare under the guidance of The Over-Voice (God? The outer manifestation of our 'inner voice?).

Roomba with a View

I was struck throughout the performance by the enactment of certain English idioms. I was able to ask Julian whether he'd ever heard the phrase I wouldn't touch him with a barge pole? No, and yet this had been powerfully demonstrated by the human cleaner who employed a screen, and long metal pole when 'handling' fellow workers, in contrast to the kindly, solicitous cleaning-machines. Daily grind; being blown away; and relationships that are stormy, and tumultuous were also unknown to him, and yet intuitively accessed.
 

 

Climate of Change

 

Practiced detachment wreaks havoc. Lack of warm connection with ourselves, each other, and our environment can only end in disaster. Computers and economies crash. A yoga pose in the midst of catastrophe is too little, too late; and woefully inadequate. A digital network is not a support network. We will undertake necessary repair work, after the inevitable impending disaster, alone - remote from each other. We live the mess we create.

 

 

Taken by Storm

 

Hetzel's latest work is a tour de force. A grim tale told with illuminating flashes of humour: the Roombas talking: 'breathe in; breathe out; inhale, exhale; email, Excel'. The great plume of smoke as though God Himself was taking a cigarette break, where the machines listen to The Voice and heed it's advice, while the humans create a world of destruction. A lot can be achieved with little: 3 performers; 3 office chairs; polystyrene floor tiles; a wall of electric fans, and many more in the audience. Bravo!