Words by Adam Moore.
Moritz Tibes looks like he’s reading unselfconsciously at the edge of the room. I think he’s reading the programme note for the last exhibition. His durational performance begins the first live operformancef programme. A conceptual, minimalist performance playing with no less than three or maybe four essential conceits, Moritz does neither too little nor too much. Just enough.
Preserving a delicate state in a space where various performances take place, his work doesn’t charge up over time in any conventional sense or flirt with anything else happening around it but retains, endures, sustains its own rhythm. Before the room filled up there was space to contemplate Moritz a little, their presence, gap t, jeans, flip flops, stapled handout. Casual, easy. Easy to forget that they were there and pleasant to notice them again.
William Joys gave a sharp, satirical performance playing on the fun edge of being obnoxious always coming away from the edge with humour. There were a few unsuspecting cameos from an apprehensive audience. One stood out, ending with a good gag of her own after playfully being goaded for a bit. I’d have struggled not to feel self-conscious while attempting my most regal delivery of ‘You will never govern Mary!!’ in a room of art people in furs, leather, pleather and a lot of black on the warmest spring evening we’ve had so far. She hands him back the mic, ‘I think it’s your turn now’.
A smart scripted stand-up performance musing on the masks we wear, the need for a bit of shameless self-importance to make us feel human, hierarchies, tops and bottoms, leaders and followers, class and our anxieties about how we might appear from the outside. There’s lots of words but a well-executed delivery that leads you to some poignant and insightful observations about what it can mean to perform.
Cowboy boots, crickets, singing, smoking. Jaya Twill and their collaborator on the guitar play and sing us a song before Jaya recounts the origins of the Big gulp as the guitarist stands in the corner smoking. It’s hard to follow the story; Jaya’s voice is maybe too mellifluous for straight-up reading. I get lost in the sounds of their voice and not the words. Imagination fills in the blanks, carries me off into my own Americana experiences. 7-Elevens in Salt Lake City in autumn, Circle K in Joshua Tree in spring. It feels bittersweet being transported to scenes like these when you’re arguably closer than ever to the violence happening around you, but I think it’s important to allow yourself to go there. The song, the softness, the feminine, the quietly spoken words are all welcome. The performance strikes the right chords and hits the right notes to evoke a hazy Americana dream state for everyone to float in for a little while.
Kieron Coffee and their collaborator wake us up to bury us deep in noise – it’s like we’ve swiped from cute cat memes into scenes of explosions and destruction. A familiar oxymoronic sign of our digitally time-less times, maybe the visceral sound created by these artists is what everything everywhere all at once sounds like? Crouched on the floor, one repeatedly bashes something that looks like a brick on the ground, the other stands stroking the strings of their violin – set between a long-range view finder and rifle rest – with a bow that has a torch attached at one end, sending ominous shadows across the wall.
The mix of military, noise and classical aesthetics is punchy; two figures in stark strobe lighting with swamp-thing silhouettes brandishing instruments made to look like weapons. Scrambling on the ground, lurching back and forth, the sound they create is excruciating for some, but nobody moves. The costumes seem a bit flamboyant in this context, absurd, perhaps a little comedic. Except the brief respite at a couple of moments when the sound accidentally cuts out the abrasive unrelenting aural assault hits hard from beginning to end. Maybe the ability to sit with sustained, dissonant noise is reflective of the capacity to sit unflinchingly with the abundance of dystopian events and the accumulation of uncomfortable feelings they provoke?
David Varhegi performs last (or second to last – Moritz is still here somewhere). An animated movie projected on the wall expands and shrinks between split and single-screen first person and aerial footage of a soldier figure roaming through marshes and forests. Eventually a soldier in uniform appears in the room shouting above the sound of drones and the brush with the landscape coming from the film. It’s hard to make out everything that’s being said but one thing I catch is ‘DRONES CANNOT BE TRIED FOR WARCRIMES’. I think about how warfare has evolved technologies to create distance between militaries and their targets. I’m reminded of another time in the desert when a huge drone carrier hovered past in near silence, carrying out tests in Wonder Valley close to one of the High Desert Test Sites works. A drone with flashing lights hovers and glides in the air following the soldier in front of us. Sometimes the drone’s shadow syncs with the film following the onscreen soldier, a little meta, an interplay connecting the performance with the film.
Operformancef magazine issue 00 – April 2025, London, is out now.