Office Spacetime
Imbued in 1999, Office-Space-like aesthetics and vibes, Dana Michel’s durational performance MIKE displaces significance, temporality and bodies with the same, caricatural flick of the wrist, repurposing objects and power dynamics in a continuous negotiation of relational structures that ebb and flow along with our existential vagrancies through this choreography of semantic crossroads.
Picture this: a multistorey, white-on-white museum landscape, unashamedly bare except for a jumble of material technicalities – a bunch of cables here, some spotlights there, a few orderly queues of window blinds further down, towards the corner, and dull office paraphernalia galore. As the audience tentatively takes up space in MAD Brussels’ Centre for Fashion & Design, diligently identifying with its fly-on-the-wall role (made all the more cosy by the bounty of blankets offered at the entrance so as to make the three-hour-long durational performance slightly more tolerable – at least physically), a ground-crew-looking Dana Michel loiters in the lower area, apparently waiting for people to settle down. And when they do, she goes upstairs – and we dither.
Lost in these uncharted performative territories, bystanders exchange awkward looks, unbalanced by the unannounced, monstrous agency they’ve just been bestowed with (“Is she coming back? Should I stay or should I go? Where should I direct my attention to? What if I miss something?”), and in the aftermath of this realisation, suddenly any intrepid jaywalker turns into a remarkable spectacle worthy of careful scrutiny – and eventually imitation. Indeed, as the performer’s displacements grow in number and length, the audience goes through a tangible transformation in which some never miss a breath, some budge only when curiosity gets the better of them and some just can’t be bothered, apparently foreign to that desperate attempt at anchoring ourselves to some sort of shared, measurable meaning we call “understanding”.
Premiering at Kunstenfestivaldesarts this May 19, MIKE «is a performative reflection on “work” culture. […] If we cannot be ourselves at work, where we spend most of our lives – what kind of lives are we living? To find an answer, (Michel) creates a meditation on the work environment, transforming daily actions into choreographic experiments. Yet every action is interrupted, seemingly losing its fluidity, as if her body has become imprisoned by routine repetition». By favouring absurdity over provocation and humour over gravitas, the live artist from Ottawa, Canada (also Silver Lion for Innovation in Dance awardee at 2017 Venice Biennale, amongst other things), takes her sweet time to deconstruct normative behaviour, creating pockets of conceptual mishaps that onlookers inhabit with nervous laughter, proxemic malaise or simply highbrow sanctimoniousness. Through studiously pedestrian movements and jerky, elusive intents, Michel mulishly creates an opportunity «for a diversity of perspectives and ways of being and living» that challenges neoliberal, efficiency-based social behaviours in an attempt to open up less necrotic horizons.
Imbued in 1999, Office-Space-like aesthetics and vibes, MIKE displaces significance, temporality and bodies with the same, caricatural flick of the wrist, repurposing objects and power dynamics in a continuous negotiation of relational structures that ebb and flow along with our existential vagrancies through this choreography of semantic crossroads.
And when the clock strikes the third hour and the eight clothes rack on wheels find their way… somewhere else, the few spectators that are still there (most left after the umpteenth zip tie has been fastened onto unreasonableness, while some just still cannot for the life of them give up their seats overlooking in-betweenness) seem to resist the idea of having to leave, apparently preferring this suspended state of subjectification over the administrative, ticktocky spacetime patiently waiting just outside.
The show was played at Kunstenfestivaldesarts 2023
MAD Brussels
place du Nouveau Marché aux Grains 10 Nieuwe Graanmarkt – 1000, Brussels
from Friday 19 to Monday 22 of May
18:00Kunstenfestivaldesarts presents
MIKE
created and performed by Dana Michelartistic activators Viva Delorme, Ellen Furey, Peter James, Heidi Louis, Tracy Maurice, Roscoe Michel, Karlyn Percil, Yoan Sorin
scenographic consultant and technical direction Romain Guillet
sound consultant David Drury
production SCORP CORPS/Viva Delorme, Dana Michel
distribution Key Performance/Anna Skonecka, Koen Vanhove
coproduction Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Arsenic – Centre d’art scénique contemporain, Centre national des Arts, Festival TransAmériques, Julidans, MDT, Montpellier Danse, Moving in November, Wexner Center for the Arts of the Ohio State University in Colombus
residencies Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Alkantara, ANTI Festival, Centre national des Arts, Kinosaki International Arts Center and Kyoto Experiment, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Montpellier Danse creative residency at L’Agora – cité internationale de la danse with the support of BNP Paribas Foundation, RIMI/IMIR SceneKunst, Shedhalle with the support of Tanzhaus Zürich and the Embassy of Canada to Switzerland, The Chocolate Factory
with the financial support of Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, Ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie, Conseil des Arts de Montréal
performances in Brussels with the support of the Québec Government Office in Brusselsph. Carla Schleiffer
