Frictions - First Sketch of a Summary

Roi Vaaras works embraced the Friction Festival. His conceptually based Spiral, beeing the first performance of the festival, and his Showel, the concluding work, as far as it comes to the public part of it.

SU-EN was of course the coordinator of the opening ceremony with her Performance with rollators, as well as the Concluding Lunch, which brought the Festival to its end, but these works were, either before the opening, or a part of the closing ceremony.

An embraced embracing, Vaaras works played out different aspects of reference in performance. In the first work the core consisted of conceptual pairs, words painted on the court yard of the Uppsala Castle. One concept with a darker timbre was crossed out and replaced with another concept in a happier mood. These pairs, as it occurred to me, were pairs of surrealistic twins. Clearly related, they were opposites, but leaving us in a suspense characteristic of surrealist Art. The inner logic of these twins eludes reason and emerges in a slow process of fulfilment in the aftermath of the experience.

Vaaras second work, through its striking likeness with Seiji Shimodas perfomance On the table, became much like a repetition in another media. Think on the separation again and again, of the upper and lower parts of the body, of the body from earth. Shimoda san played out his statement in the salon of the theatre, in the air, on top of, or underneath a table, exposing his naked body to the audience. Vaara on the other hand, made a performance in the open air calling the birds who gave response in an exalted choir. He was on the ground and dug his head down in the earth. As in a slow dance, with his head buried he exposed his dark suit towards the spectators in a circular movement.
This was not the ass of an artist it was the End of Art.

In the end, what ought to be left, after the art work is performed and gone, is the intention of the artist whose efforts to fulfil its purpose only can come to completion through Grace. And grace ther was, and bliss for a moment took a hold of a blind folded group of stake holders consuming a Last Supper, waited on by a like wise blind folded staff of servants.

Thank You SU-EN and Helen Karlsson, and all others contributing to this extra ordinary celebration of Performance Art.