TQW Magazin
Susanne Fernandes Silva on I’m Thinking of You by Franko B

Swinging makes men happy

 

Swinging makes men happy

“I’m thinking of you and the things you do to me; That makes me love you, now I’m living in ecstasy; Hey, it’s you and the things you do to me; That makes me love you, now I’m living in ecstasy” – that’s the refrain of “Thinking Of You”, a 1970s hit by the American soul-funk girl group Sister Sledge. Like that, or in an entirely different way, London-based Performer Franko B, sitting on a golden swing, could mentally welcome the audience, referred to as “You” in the title, as they enter one of the rooms at TQW Studios. But it isn’t lively soul music that fills the atmospherically charged space but piano music by Helen Ottaway. “I’ve known Helen Ottaway’s piano pieces for a long time, so I asked her if she would write a piece for my performance”, Franko B remarks. He has designed a surreal dream setting in collaboration with the composer and installation artist. According to him, the performance consists of two parts or two pieces: one with piano music and one without, when Ottaway ends her piano playing and only a soft sound is heard from the evenly moving swing. “The piece evolved after the first time and, strangely, the performance becomes interesting for me once the music has stopped”, Franko B explains. That is the point when the attention shifts to the performer’s confrontation with his audience, which he gets into solely in his thoughts and which may last for hours.

Performed Imaginaries

Franko B, born in 1960 in Italy, has been living in London since the 1990s. He has garnered international attention on account of his radical performances involving self-injury. His highly autobiographical oeuvre is situated somewhere between isolation and seduction, benevolence and confrontation, suffering and eroticism, punk and poetry. The source of inspiration for I’m Thinking of You was an altalena (Italian for swing), an object that is mainly associated with childhood memories. It served the artist as a model to develop swings that would guarantee safe use by adults. His idea was to provide adults with an opportunity to play, “to forget their problems, to let go or simply have fun – just as children are allowed to”. As in all his productions, the naked body plays a central role. It creates an ephemeral sculpture in conjunction with the staging of the object and the music: an eerie and at the same time carefree scene in which a portly, male, naked body covered in tattoos swings evenly, his smoothly shaved head moving to and fro, whereby he takes the audience along to a fantastic utopia.

Sentimental Identifications

When, after about twenty minutes, the music stops in the TQW Studio, Franko B continues to swing unperturbedly on his gilded swing, completely secure in his presence and his belonging. He smiles cheerfully at the audience, revealing his golden set of teeth. “Gold is artificial and superficial. An illusion of success … a kind of optimism to get out of the ghetto and make something of your life and to share this”, Franko B explains, referring to his own childhood in Italy.

Eventually, a young man sits down at the grand piano and begins to play while a woman starts to do yoga exercises in front of the swing and later crawls under the piano, crying. The performance I’m Thinking of You brings back memories of a carefree and romantic childhood and whisks the audience away from the real world for a little while. Franko B succeeds in creating a convincing illusion that the audience can perceive as real. I’m Thinking of You brings moments from one’s own childhood to life, leaving behind a sweet sadness in the spectators’ hearts at the end.

 

Susanne Fernandes Silva is a cultural manager and author. She studied theatre, film and media studies, gender studies and Russian in Vienna. She was dramaturge at Schauspielhaus Hamburg, Werk X, Schauspielhaus Graz, Wiener Festwochen etc. as well as curator of Goethe-Institute São Paulo/ Brazil. At the moment, she is head of press and public relations at Kunsthalle Wien. Since 2009, she has been a freelance contributor to Theater der Zeit, among others.

 

 

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