Jennie Klein on Welcome to the lunchtime event from 10 to 4 am

Behind the scenes in ieke Trinks’s home live streaming Finale Flow Lunchtime event.

On Sunday, May 9th, the Flow Festival concluded with four performances of approximately 30 minutes each taking place in different parts of the world. Curated by ieke Trinks, the finale included work by the following artists:

Midnight Trio, comprised of Yamaoka Sakiko, Shimizu Megumi, and Takahashi Riko in Japan
Kamila Wolszczak, performing in Poland
Fernando Ribeiro, performing in Brazil
Leila Ghasempor, performing in the USA

The Lunchtime event was kicked off by ieke Trinks at approximately 12 p.m. Chicago time. As Trinks noted in both the introduction and the blog post written for Out of Site, experiencing live performance through Twitch (used for these performances) or other digital platforms is not the same thing as being there in person. In truth, we miss the conviviality of being present for live performance: a group of like-minded people crowded into a small space and sitting on the floor or leaning against the wall in order to experience a work of art happening in front of us. As audience members we are sometimes splashed, forced to retreat or move, or asked to participate in the piece. That is not possible with a digital performance. Nevertheless, Trinks did a wonderful job in setting up an atmosphere that was intimate and inviting, curating a program that was a good length for digital delivery and monitoring the chat in order to engage the audience. I think that Trink’s was correct when writing that:

In this time of reduced freedom of movement and travel (which for some people already has been part of their daily reality because of political or economic reasons), the online site has become an opportunity to grasp. This is the time to explore how live actions can survive through the internet. Even though I personally favor the analog experience above the digital, it is worth looking for human contact, and other vital entities, in the digital realm.

It is to the credit of Trinks, Carron Little, and Out of Site that the opportunity to make human contact and new friends was made through online festivals and performances. 

Curating a performance program with the performers in different countries isn’t an easy task, especially a program themed around the midday meal. In Chicago, where Out of Site is based, it was lunchtime when the program started. For the host, ieke Trinks, based in Rotterdam, it was 19:00, many hours after lunch. For Midnight Trio, it was 2:00am--and the middle of the night. Kamila Wolszczak performed in Wroclaw, Poland at 19:30. Fernando Ribeiro performed 3 hours after lunch at 15:00 in Curitiba, Brazil, and Leila Ghasempor performed at 11:30,  just before lunch in Seattle, Washington. In spite of the fact that lunch was either in the past or the future for all of the performers as well as Trinks, all were requested to share images of their most recent lunches. Trinks started the lunch sharing with an image of a rather lonely looking sandwich on a plate from a lunch that happened ten years prior on the same date. Trinks thought that it might be peanut butter, but didn’t know, and left the audience guessing as to the reason for this odd choice and why a lunch of two slices of bread that might or might not be peanut butter had been carefully documented on such an attractive plate. The rest of the lunches, all documented as beautifully as that of Trinks, reflected the cultural, gastronomical, and, in the case of Ribeiro, familial conditions. Midnight Trio’s lunches included a carefully curated bento box and a rice ball in a plastic wrapper, Kamila Wolszczak’s and Leila Ghasempor’s beautifully plated lunches reflected their cultural heritage (Polish and Iranian/Kurdistan), while Fernando Ribeiro’s lunch, a meal that he had made for his daughter and himself, riffed on his surname by including ribs along with a generous salad. 

Midnight Trio,
comprised of Yamaoka Sakiko, Shimizu Megumi, and Takahashi Riko
Tokyo, Japan

May 10, 2021 @2am

The theme of lunch continued in the performances, which either riffed on the idea of lunch or referenced it in some way. Midnight Trio, who stayed awake until the wee hours of their morning, was the first performance. In homage to the idea of lunch and conviviality, the three performers--Yamaoka Sakiko, Shimizu Megumi, and Takahashi Riko--performed in the kitchen of Shimizu. The performance, which took place in the dark on May 10, included an impromptu concert of boiling kettle noises, percussive vocalizations of dada-esque syllables, the sound of sizzling water on a hotplate, the noises of feet hitting the floor, and the hand of one performer drumming on the back of a second performer. At one point the third artist emerged from under a piece of cloth and threw a plastic container lid, which made a sound as it hit the floor. Yamaoka started a metronome, referencing an earlier performance where she used metronomes to mark the heartbeat of audience members. There were improvised actions that included carefully frying a notebook or book on small hotplate, donning a fishnet shopping bag, and an elegant ballet of objects that moved across the screen including a pan, an orange, and an almond. There were two jars of an unidentifiable liquid on the floor that caused some trepidation. The kitchen was small--were the artists going to empty those jars in Shimizu’s living space? That did not happen. Instead the performance ended with everyone gathering around the table while Yamaoka made tea from the water that had boiled in the kettle. A basket was passed around with food wrapped in banana leaves. At 2:30, the artists enjoyed their lunch. 

Kamila Wolszczak
performed at Infopunkt Nadodrze
Wroclaw, Poland

May 9, 2021 @7:30pm

The second performance, Welcome to Wroclaw, by Kamila Wolszczak took place in Wroclaw, Poland at 19:30 in the bookstore/coffee shop of Infopunkt Nadodrze, a space in Wroclaw, Poland that appears to be a culture center/artist space that promotes local talent. The performance begins with Wolszczak standing in the center of the space behind what appeared to be a hanging sheet of plastic, but was actually a sheet comprised of strips of clear plastic packing tape. As the performance unfolded, it became apparent why Wolszczak had chosen this space and this city. At one time, Wroclaw had been a German city. The building where Infopunkt is currently sited was built when the city was still German, but now, as Wolszczak told her audience, “we are in Poland.” Wolszczak’s performance was about archiving this building, while giving the audience information at Wroclaw (a quiet city) and the significance of the material that she was archiving. In a performance that was reminiscent of Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen, Wolszczak pulled off a strand of tape and placed it on objects and people in the room. Each time, she calmly announced in English what she was recording. “This is a pillar.” “This is a coffee urn.” “This is a desk.” When her hair or clothing was caught in the tape, she announced that as well. After place the tape against the various surfaces, she carried it over to the hanging sheet of tape, and added it. In the end, the particular circumstances of the performance were carefully documented--two friends, one of whom had her shoe included in the plastic tape curtain, two photographers, and a mostly empty cultural space sited in a building that had a complicated and binational history. The performance ended with Woszczak standing behind the expanded sheet of plastic packing tape, once again welcoming the virtual audience to Wroclaw. 

Wolszczak’s performance took place in a space where the audience could easily place themselves having lunch. In fact, based on the photographs posted on the website for Infopunkt Nadodrze, it is clear that prior to the pandemic people often met to have lunch or a coffee break, taking advantage of the comfortable chairs, one of which was archived by Wolszczak. What was interesting about this performance was the way in which Covid 19 was and was not acknowledged. One of the spectators was wearing a mask, but the artist and the friend whose shoe was archived were not. The space was missing an audience. The performance begin with the artist standing behind a rather substantial curtain of clear plastic packing tape. Had we, the audience, entered this performance in the middle, rather than the beginning? What had previously been archived? The audience will never know. 

Fernando Ribeiro
Curitiba, Brazil

May 9, 2021 @3pm

Fernando Ribeiro’s performance was a lot like his meal--a generous homemade serving of a derring-do live action that included five cameras and impeccable timing. Just prior to beginning his performance, Ribeiro was participating on the Twitch feed with the audience and with Trinks, joking about being Mr. Ribs. Moments later, Ribeiro appeared in his studio, welcoming the audience to Curitiba, on a day that was not so good. Ribeiro then proceeded to fill a glass with water and another fluid (one audience member questioned what it might be in the feed but never received an answer) half way to the top, after which he ceremoniously presented a box of matches to the audience, shaking the matches to produce a clicking sound. He proceeded to create a continuous fire, lighting one match from another and discarding the burnt out match into the glass of fluid. As he worked, he placed several matches in his mouth so that he did not have to grope for a match each time he needed a new one. Gradually the matches filled up the glass and topped off the fluid, allowing the fire to burn continuously. On several occasions he was unsuccessful in lighting the next match before the previous match burned out. Each time, he dipped the new match into the burning glass in order to maintain the fire chain. Eventually the fire exceeded the fluid, and flames shot up past the lip of the glass. Ribeiro spit the matches that remained in his mouth into the glass, and the performance was finished. 

A performance as subtle as this would have been difficult to see even if the audience was in the same room as the artist. Ribeiro had anticipated that, setting up at least five cameras. Throughout the performance, he switched from one view to two views, and two views to five views. The glass holding the burning matches was clearly visible. What was particularly interesting was the manner in which Ribeiro demonstrated the labor, or work, of the performance. This wasn’t simply about pyrotechnics, it was also about producing affect. The fire was fascinating but also scary. As Ribeiro dipped his hand into the glass in order to light the next match, one could not help but wonder whether or not he had burned himself. Also concerning were the matches that Ribeiro held in his mouth. As the performance progressed, the audience could hear Ribeiro’s labored breathing, a result of those matches, which could potentially catch fire while still in Ribeiro’s mouth. At the finale, there was a moment when it seemed as though Ribeiro would catch on fire as he lifted the flaming glass towards his face. It was a relief when he spit out the matches rather than lighting them with the fire in the glass. 

Following the performance, a calm and tech-savvy Ribeiro returned to the chat to reassure his nonplussed audience that he was fine. Ribeiro’s assurance turned out to be the calm before the storm. The final performance by Leila Ghasempor made clear that nothing was fine.

Leila Ghasempor
The Smell of Apple,
Seattle USA

May 9, 2021 @11:30am

Ghasempor’s performance was entitled The Smell of Apple, an ostensibly innocuous title. Who doesn’t like the smell of apples, a smell associated with comfort, fresh fruit, and a fall harvest? As it turns out, the smell of apples can be something other than actual apples, and Ghasempor’s performance, which took place just before 12:00pm her time, addressed the other meaning of apples. Apples smell a lot like mustard gas, which was used by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds in 1998. Mustard gas can smell like garlic, onions, or apples. It can cause second or third degree burns, along with coughing, bronchitis, or long term respiratory disease. It can even cause death. Mustard gas was deployed against the vulnerable Kurdish people, who had no homeland. Ghasempor’s performance addressed both the continuing hostilities between Iran and Iraq and the vulnerable position of the Kurds, who have no land that they can call their own.

Ghasempor’s performance, staged in her Seattle home, took place in the dark while a slideshow of atrocities that resulted from the war between Iran and Iraq played on her body and behind her on the screen. Clad in red pants and shirt, Ghasempor did a tortuous dance in front of the screen which involved balancing an apple on her eye while she moved slowly and awkwardly around the shallow space, her neck bent at an unusual angle, her arms outstretched, her body disappearing and reappearing as it merged with the horrific images that were projected on the screen. Periodically, “apples” were rolled or thrown across the floor, causing Ghasempor to stumble and lose her balance. The apples, that were real apples, made a menacing ping as they hit the floor, intended, no doubt, to bring grenades to mind. Ghasempor’s performance eerily foreshadowed the current conflict between Israel and Palestine on the Gaza Strip which erupted one week after Ghasempor’s performance. It harked back to the Black Lives Matter protests in Seattle during the summer of 2020, when the federal government under President Donald Trump deployed mustard gas and tear gas on BLM protestors in Seattle and other cities. Ghasempor’s The Smell of Apple demonstrated the real toll of government suppression, where the language of that suppression--mustard, tears, and apples--falls short.

#jennieklein #LeilaGhasempor #FernandoRibeiro #KamilaWolszczak #midnighttrio #ieketrinks #flowsymposium

Endnotes from Leila Ghasempor:

The fruity smell could be from Tabun and Sarin, two nerve agents that were used along with mustard gas in 1988 in Halabja, a Kurdish city in Iraq, where over 5000 people died instantly and 10,000 were injured many of whom died gradually or still are suffering. Saddam Hussein used those chemicals against Kurds in Iraq. Later, some survivors recalled that they smelled fresh apple when bombardment happened and in my research I have discovered the fresh fruity smell of tabun and sarin. Upon exposure, people die in 10 minutes; its affects are constricted pupils, watery eyes, drooling and running nose. It greatly affects breathing and body loses control of functioning. People and new generation that still live in Halabja are struggling to have medical care and are suffering from cancer, especially high rate among children, respiratory problems, and eye blindness and birth defect. 

The Kurds are one of the indigenous peoples of the Mesopotamian in the Middle East and they have no land, and they were scattered from Kurdistan after WWI and are now divided in south-eastern Turkey, north-eastern Syria, northern Iraq, north-western Iran and south-western Armenia.

The slideshow consisted of archived photographic materials of innocent Kurdish victims citizens from mothers, fathers, to children in Halabja.