Fast-forward flashback
A grey haze hovers above the seats in the auditorium. A beautiful audience sits in the misty mist. A star on the horizon, white fabric in the darkness on a black, velvety soft floor. Downbeat bass and mini mountains. The star is a will-o’-the-wisp. Trap beat. A pole. A solo dancer as red, laser-like matter heaving in a body-hugging-full-body-jumpsuit-long-sleeved-all-over-bodysuit-modern-dance catsuit, breathable for sports, exercise and fitness. Special-edition sneakers. The dancer holds the end of the very long pole. He sings into the gleaming metal. He sings into the hollow bar, and begins an experimental pop-hunter pole dance. According to The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K. le Guin, before devising tools that push energy outward – sticks, swords and the long, hard, deadly tools of the hero – our ancestors invented tools that brought energy home. The carrier bag theory postulates that containers such as bags, nets, bundles or bags are the most important inventions in human history. Back to the pole dance: a mill is grinding, a boat is being rowed. The dancer acts out different forms of labour and hierarchies in his role as ‘lord of the pole’. Caught up in history and recollection, the hero moves mechanically in a loop of depressing images; computed moves, concentric circles, followed by a one-man orgy and an imitation of a predator on all fours. If the audience were a body with a single brain, I would probably be experiencing a collective flashback right now, a sensory overload with memories flooding back, intruding as a result of insufficient processing by the brain. I watch the dancer’s innumerable attempts at leaving something behind while in a nightmarish state of being bogged down. Without respite there is no escape. Absent pleasure and minimal club basses, slow-motion dances. The costume becomes a straitjacket-like skin. One image superimposed on another, booming sounds, continuous tones, constant noise. The dancer gets tangled up in the white stage fabric. He is caught in the stage set, hanging there motionless; the white fabric becomes a martyr’s loincloth. Stage eats dancer. No way out. Prostrate in the white fabric, in a dragging hammock on a soft, black carpet, this person untangles himself only to walk on the spot again as a slow-motion running man. In the velvety black box he sings ‘I love you all’ and slowly walks around a mountain as a walkeresque silhouette. I breathe and think: Dear Mountain, I am far from done with this earth.
Astrid Wagner, born in 1982, is an artist living in Vienna. Her work comprises performative sculpture, painting, text and scenography. She teaches at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. astridwagner.net