music theatre by Paul Koek + Dick Raaijmakers

I am taking a course in "electric music theatre" which consists of Paul Koek showing and discussing some of his many impressive productions.
The first was Hermans Hand, which premiered 19 October, 1995 in the Spui theatre as part of the in Festival in de Branding in the Hague.

The theatre piece is a hommage-critic-farce of the Dutch novelist, W.F. Hermans, played by Hans Dagelet (the man with glasses). It begins with slow motion performance of two men walking in the rain. The only real water is that splashed dramatically by a passing motorized car wheel. Each time of the 4 times, the two men were soaked and they responded with slow motion shock and horror. Behind them street lamps moved very slowly, suggesting a progressive movement the two men did not make along the platform. It reminded me of Raaijmaker's performance I'd seen in January where motion is so slow normal vision doesn't register this as movement.

Next the two are in a cafe, being served microphones as well as drinks and what you hear (via playback and excellent acting) is the exact text of an interview with the novelist recently (in 1995) aired on Belgium television.
The interview focussed on Herman's hand which was in a bandage and Herman's claim that he hurt it picking up a typewriter at a second-hand market, but the text was dominated by Herman's ranting and vicious comments about a theatre-maker (clearly a reference to Raaijmakers) who made nonsense out of mechanics.

However the main theme of this theatre seemed to centre on the fall (failure), a recurring theme in Raaijmakers' work, where in the 3rd act Hermans' literally falls in very slow motion, as he stretches his arm out, here aided by being attached to a support, powered by a steam engine (you see pumping away), which gradually lowered his body towards the typewriter on the ground.

More about Paul Koek + Dick Raaijmakers' theatre is here

Our world MAGNETica

is coming along. Eric Kuijl and I have been working on this for the Hague Conservatory ArtScience Research group, "Virtual Communities" for the past month.

Basically we have been learning Cinema 4d and then it was a 3 day crash course in the game engine Unity. It seems quite amazing programme, with just one major drawback. You can only use it on an Apple operating system.


Now all 4 or 5 worlds in our group are to shown on the final night of the
Heiner Goebbels Festival in 5 days. A bit tough, when we can only work on the project at the art school because we do not have Apple computers. But it'll probably work out. Mainly because Wim is so helpful and the class is so small.
In being asked to relate our work to the contemporary German composer, Heiner Goebbels, in some way, I've used images of his head in the forms I've made. So if you look closely you'll see his head repeated on the 'spikey' rods of the spidery flower form. Likewise on the animated cone.

Our idea was to create a world of "attractions" hence the title "Magnetica" for our planet. We have also used sound clips from his composition "Surrogate Cities" for sounds in our world.