#nick steur

Nick Steur – FREEZE, reflections (2018)

Beat goes on In A Piece of Time, by Nick Steur, the audience sit around the edges of a square, lined with old-fashioned mechanical metronomes. Above the square, a frame - lined with strip bulbs - forms a pyramid, and from the centre of that hangs a large metal pendulum. Everything is either matte black or mirror-shine; an installation as much as a performance space. The pendulum has been used in hypnosis since the 19th century. Although it has no inherently magical properties of its own, Michel Eugene Chevreul found that they could be used as a method of ‘reading’ the unconscious mind. A pendulum gives what is known as an ‘ideodynamic’ response to its operator. The tiny muscular twitches that come from stress, or tension, or our in-built guardedness manifest themselves in the swing of the pendulum which, in turn, provides a point of focus for an anxious mind. A pendulum is a natural relaxant. You know what isn’t a natural relaxant? The metronome, that’s what. 32 metronomes, even less so. It’s like every single one has got a mini-version of the bald dude from Whiplash crouched inside, sporadically slapping your face and yelling ARE YOU RUSHING OR ARE YOU DRAGGING as you try not to cry. Steur instructs his audience to set the metronomes going together in an attempt to synchronise them into a single rhythm, which they find only fleetingly. There are only brief moments of “we did it!” before some tick will tock out of place and the little sweaty Whiplash dude will throw another cymbal at you. Throughout this first half of the show, the big silver pendulum hangs there, still. Let me tell you, I was willing it to start moving. My 'ideodynamic' muscle reflexes were basically screaming for metronome respite. I was finding it genuinely tense and frustrating, like a distant car alarm that makes you hunch your shoulders, except changing so often that you can’t even find a way to block it out. In all that, the pendulum hung like the anticipation before the first touch of a massage. When it finally arrives, the swing is circular, which is probably for the best as I’d hate to be the poor buggers with 60 kilos of metal flying repeatedly at their faces. Steur looks a bit like Gandalf as he sets it going, standing in the centre and moving it around his fingers in ever-increasing revolutions. Then he releases a flue at the bottom, which starts to throw red gravel into a circle on the floor. At this point the metronomes are still going, but the gravel makes a nice consistent whooshing noise so it’s already a lot calmer. As the pendulum gradually loses momentum, Steur crouches in the centre of the floor, and the lights go out. I love sitting in the dark listening to stuff. Love it. I saw a mostly-terrible immersive thing at Vaults festival recently, but as soon as I was given a blindfold I was like “aaaaaand… relax”. They might’ve been about to club me round the head for all I knew, but those few minutes of unstimulated chill were wonderful. In A Piece of Time it was the same. When the lights on the pendulum frame are turned off, one by one, the metronomes slowly follow (thank fuck), and the reducing tick tock, the revolving whoosh, the respite from concentration… it was lovely. Meanwhile, Nick Steur turns into an actual fucking WIZARD. Dude completely disappears. No idea how. (Wizard, I tell you.) He couldn’t have walked over the red gravel because he would’ve left footprints, scuff marks at the very least, and that circular pattern was perfect. There was no trapdoor, because it would have all drained away. He couldn’t have leapt to one side and out of the space without vaulting metronomes and string and two rows of audience. I can only assume that he clung to the pendulum in night vision goggles, swinging round to turn off the metronomes like God reaching out to Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine fucking Chapel.

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Today and tomorrow are the last two days to visit Uovo performing arts festival in Milan. Unfortunately, I haven't had any time in those days to go over there, so I would appreciate if you can give me any news and opinion about it. Especially, I would like to know about Nick Steur's performance on Wednesday night, is he so cool as I think??