Kunstverein co-presents IGLU by Guy de Cointet and Robert Wilhite as part of Paying A Visit To Mary Part 2

9 November: 20.00
Location: Frascati WG, M.v.B. Bastiaansestraat 54, Amsterdam
Tickets: 10 Euro
Reservations: +31 (0) 20 626 68 66 / www.theaterfrascati.nl

Paying A Visit To Mary Part 1 and Part 2 take as their cerebral anchor the 1977 play Iglu by Guy de Cointet and Robert Wilhite. Iglu contains invented languages, where sounds become words, gestures are sentences; where the actors (sometimes even switching gender) mostly understand one another not because they use words as we do, but because it seems they have agreed to agree. Agreed to agree on meaning; thereby shifting conventions and signs to a different communicative plain.

Iglu premiered in Los Angeles in 1977, after which the videotapes of this first and only performance mysteriously disappeared. For years Iglu lived on through the recollection of the artists, the actors at the time, and the audience that evening—until now.

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IGLU

Two young and intelligent women are on a brief vacation in West Los Angeles, their hotel room, with windows overlooking the hills and Southern California.

The furniture is quite simple but…

They are overwhelmed by some unexpected
situations. Events without rhyme or reason. Their reactions were the only possible solutions.
–Guy de Cointet & Robert Wilhite, 1977
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Iglu premiered at The Vanguarde Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles in 1977. Its first restaging took place over 30 years later at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut as part of the exhibition Paying A Visit To Mary (January-June 2010). The play’s European premier is initiated by Stuk Kunstencentrum (Leuven) and If I Can’t Dance, I don’t want to be part of your Revolution (Amsterdam). The Amsterdam performance is co-produced by If I Can’t Dance, I don’t want to be part of your Revolution, Kunstverein and the Stedelijk Museum. The performance will be accompanied by a lecture by Marie de Brugerolle (November 11, Stedelijk Museum).

About Paying A Visit To Mary Part 2:

The American visionary, designer, architect, author, and inventor, Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983), stopped speaking for two years at the age of 32 because he said he didn’t want to go on simply repeating what he was taught. Instead of communicating by rote, depending on automatic responses, he stripped himself of his inherited ‘sign equipment’ or ‘fixed props’ and re-booted his system to say what was needed, when it was needed.

The exhibition Paying A Visit To Mary Part 2 stages the question of how individual relations can be perceived and interpreted. How do we communicate? What forms can communication take? Do we understand one another, really? Is your blue mine? And if it is, or if it isn’t: how does this affect how we understand one another? The artists in Paying A Visit To Mary Part 2 contend with ‘sign equipment’ or ‘fixed props,’ with the shiftiness of communication, social conventions and visual representation. Paying A Visit To Mary Part 2 is an abstract conversation, amongst the participants and between them and the audience.

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Paying A Visit to Mary Part 2
10/12/2010 – 30/01/2011
with a.o., Guy de Cointet, Sarah Crowner, Elad Lassry, Willem Oorebeek, Alexandre Singh, Robert Wilhite.