#vipaw2016

Text by Jasmin Schaitl

All images © Alexander Harbaugh | Marcel Sparmann, Das Brot der Luft... eine leicht-sinnige Annäherung. Performance in occasion of the III Venice International Performance Art Week 2016

Das Brot der Luft... eine leicht-sinnige Annäherung (2016) Performance by Marcel Sparmann

Reflecting and interpreting Marcel Sparmann’s performance Das Brot der Luft... eine leicht-sinnige Annäherung (2016), forced me to rethink again and again where to begin and how to write this text. It is particularly difficult, as the performance itself deals with the opening and breaking of established norms and structures of performance. Hence in my opinion, common patterns and structures of analysis and writing about performance art can hardly be applied here, at least compared to the other texts that I wrote for the Venice International Performance Art Week 2016.

This occasion unexpectedly provides me with the possibility to work with text as a structure. Text that also consists of established norms and patterns, which are expected to exist for the proper understanding of the text’s content. I am trying to experiment here with this. Just as the performance was an experiment to break up its inherent structure during and through the performance itself, this text is an experiment to work within a structure, which un-structures established patterns.

Imagine a book, a physical book, containing an essay or novel. At the very beginning of this book there is the preface. This preface or foreword gives an introduction into what the further content will be about, a first glimpse.

Now imagine a performance space in the huge hallway of a Venetian Palazzo, with high ceilings and a crystal chandelier. The "stage" is still in the process of being set. A person connects strings from a clothes hanger to a wooden door, another person precisely positions a shirt on the ground, another (or the same?) person positions and re-positions a table with wine glasses on top of it. People are talking with each other, and someone is giving instructions.

As the preface of the book gives the introduction into what will happen in the novel, in the same way these three people set up the stage for the performance to follow.

During the set-up, the artist Marcel Sparmann speaks to the seated and waiting audience: "This is not yet part of the performance, we are still preparing. We thought we’ll have twenty more minutes to prepare." How does this statement let us observe what is going to happen next? Are the sentences maybe already part of the performance, or is it an honest expression of the artist? In how far does this statement question the role of preparation, and the necessity of a structure of or frame for the performance?

Looking at the preface of the above-mentioned novel, as well as at the described action of preparing the space for the performance, it seems that both imply the same role: both facilitate that which will follow. At the same time, it is not essential to read a preface to understand a story (in the case of a novel), nor is it necessary to witness a set-up to understand a performance.

By exposing the audience to this ongoing process of setting up, Sparmann undoes the structure of the performance itself. He presents parts, which are usually not visible but are the base for all that follows. Making this part visible means to break the structure from within.

In an interview after the performance, Marcel Sparmann explained his intention of the piece by comparing it with the action of throwing a book onto a table and observing on which page it would fall open. His performance does not start on the first page, but the audience enters during the preface, somewhere in the middle of the introduction.

When the preface is finished, or in other terms: when the set-up is finished, the "actual" performance starts with the artist positioning himself on a specific spot on the set space, coming to stillness.

The final set-up of the space consists of four main areas: first and most prominent is a simple, wooden table with a number of wine glasses on it. The glasses are individually prepared with matches and a transparent cover. The next area consists of thin, white threads attached individually on a wooden door and leading to two wooden clothes hangers on the floor. The third area is composed of a small electric stove plate with a pot of water. Sparmann begins in the fourth area on the wall, lying on the back with his head resting on a shirt on the ground. His neck is bent backwards to face the audience, his feet are up against the wall.

      - Each of these sections may tell their own story. And the narration of these stories is realised automatically in the audience's heads, without the performer even having to "do" anything. -

        Marcel Sparmann starts with a choreographed movement, in which he gradually and in slow motion transitions from lying on the floor next to the wall to standing up straight in front of the table. This slow pace continues while he picks up the wine glasses, lifting them all up at the same time by embracing them. First gently and slowly, and then increasingly with pressure until some glasses break and finally fall on the ground.

As the first glass drops, something essential is changing: within the piece, the artist, and the audience. After more broken and fallen glasses, Sparmann drops all remaining glasses down with the gesture of opening his arms. This choreographed movement is again stopped abruptly by addressing the audience: Sparmann says that he doesn’t know how to continue, and asks how "we" should continue. He proposes two possibilities from which to choose: "…To continue in this 'pathetic' way, or to change to something else."

The artist resigns from being the person in charge of decision, and the relation between artist and audience as well as the unpredictable connection between objects and artist become the actual focus of the performance.

In Das Brot der Luft... eine leicht-sinnige Annäherung, there is a correlation between the degree of involvement of the audience and the visibility of the structure of the performance. While the observers are being forced out of their comfort zone of being passive witnesses, they are being pushed into a situation where they are asked to be in control of the course of things.

This situation lays open the structure of control, on which a performance is normally built on, it breaks it and makes this breaking the actual content of the performance.

After establishing a rhythm, which is commonly expected to be continued, the frame and the structure of the performance are being unclosed. By interrupting the established rhythm through dropping the glasses and addressing the audience, Sparmann un-frames the actual performance and provides a glimpse onto the structure of the performance itself.

The paradox here is that to break something means to have it constructed before. In the case of this performance it means that to lay open and break with its own structure, we have to see its construction before. Witnessing the set-up envisions the existence of the constructional structure. The finalisation of the construction is the starting point for its own deconstruction.

The question "How should we continue this performance?" is being repeatedly asked by Sparmann during the performance. No one answers, nor takes control over the next steps. Maybe it is for this reason that the artist insists: leaving the space in a confused manner, coming back, asking again while executing actions with the available objects and materials, never leading towards or resolving into something, leaving again, and addressing the audience again.

His continuously repeated questions as well as his undefined decision-making provide for space to reflect about the question of what had to happen to even arrive at a point of asking such questions?

And thinking a step further, we might even ask whether the question "How to continue?" doesn’t actually lead to the question "How did we end up here in first place?"

Das Brot der Luft... eine leicht-sinnige Annäherung might therewith raise an awareness for the necessity of critical reflection with/towards/about the world we are living in. Does this world facilitate the questioning of ourselves, of how we arrived where we are now? And where are we then/now? In which structure are we at the current moment? And rather than asking about how to continue, shouldn’t we first ask ourselves what made us become who we are, and where we are?