The performance was a duo with Tamara Ben-Artzi, and it was the first presentation Diego Chamy did without his instrument, at that time a concert bass drum.
Yiftah Kadan[1]: How different is it from the show you make when you have the drum?
Diego Chamy: I guess it’s not so different for me. The instrument is not something so important. At least it had not been so important during this past year since I started with the movements that you’ve seen today. I was playing less and less and less and today I decided not to play, I mean, not to bring the instrument - because I played concerts before without playing but with the instrument on stage, which is huge and impressive and... I thought that maybe sometimes it’s too much, sometimes the people care too much about the instrument and for me it is not something important, it was never something important. I was working with sounds, with very specific sounds of the instruments, but now I can say that in a way I know how to do it, how to work with the instrument, and now I’m more interested in doing things that I don’t know how to do. And all these movements are for me... I’m not sure about them and that’s what I like; to do things that I don’t know how to do.
Efrat Zafran[2]: What are your questions? What is interesting for you in movement? What are you looking for?
Diego Chamy: Well, I think... it was not that I suddenly said: “now I want to dance, I want to make movements”. It happened without me seeing it in advance. Maybe the questions will come, and they are coming, but... I worked a lot with dancers, with different kinds of dancers, and seems to me that dance is not enough contemporary[3]. I’ve seen thousand of things. Maybe it’s related with the fact that when I started to move I realized that many things were going on, with the people. I had very good comments and at the same time extremely bad ones. So I thought: ok, maybe what’s going on is something important. I don’t decide what is what I’m doing. It’s something that happens... I’m not responsible. But if I feel that something good is going on, then ok, I think that maybe that’s the way. It’s difficult for me to speak about this, maybe because it’s me speaking about me doing it, but at the same time it’s not me, it’s something that was here before. I’m just showing it. I’m not responsible for this and at the same time, I must be responsible for it: to expand it, to take care of it, to show it, to do something with it. So if I have to speak about this I must say that I enjoy this much more than most of the things I’ve seen in dance. This doesn’t mean that I’m speaking good about myself (although I wouldn’t mind doing that), because again: it’s not me, I can speak about Tami[4] if you prefer. It’s the same. For me what she’s doing is great. She has some kind of potential. It’s something that I’ve never seen in dance before. And she is starting. I’m also starting. I only spent one year doing this, but it’s her second or third time and what she is doing is great.
Yael Parker[5]: Do you get different reactions from people in different places that you go to? Like for instance with the Israelis. You said yesterday[6] that you go through the year to a lot of different places. How do the Israelis react to you?
Diego Chamy: I don’t think in terms of countries or cultures. Each audience is different, yes, but it’s not a matter of countries. This audience is something and last week’s audience was something else (even two concerts with exactly the same people in the audience won’t end up having the same audience[7]). And what I’m doing is not something that I do individually. It was something that all the people here made. It’s not myself here showing something to you. It’s what we can do together tonight. So each day it’s completely different because the audience is different and the energy is different. The conditions are others.
Yael Parker: No, but you put an energy out there. You have... you’re on the stage, so you definitely do put energy out...
Tamara Ben-Artzi: Yes, but the energy has a connection to the crowd, to the place, to... so it’s not Diego with his energy.
Yael Parker: Yes, I know, I’m asking if you go to different places whether you get different reactions.
Diego Chamy: Yes, it’s different. And it’s also different from one person to another. You laughed a lot tonight for example. And maybe you laugh because of one thing and someone else also laughs but for a completely different reason. Many people laugh because they feel nervous about what is going on or because they just don’t know what is going on; sometimes because they feel that I’m trying to make them laugh. I’m not trying to do that. But some people think that and laugh. Some others do it because they are so happy with what they are seeing that they need to laugh. And it’s another laugh, very different. This kind of laugh happens to me a lot when I’m on stage and I find something that I really like; in those moments it’s hard for me not to laugh, but I try not to do it because if I do laugh I put something personal in a place where there is no space for personal things. It’s the same with the different kinds of silences. There is an example that Wade Matthews uses to give: you go to play in north Argentina and the people there are very shy, so you perform and you have absolute silence. No one is speaking. Everyone is paying attention to what you are doing the whole time. Then you go to perform in north Europe and you have exactly the same silence, but it is only because the people there are formal, not because they are shy. They are formal and polite people. So, you have the same silence in both places, but what’s going on is not the same. You can feel being on stage that it’s not the same. So I cannot do the same things, because it’s not about what I decide to do. It’s about what is going on between everybody.
A journalist asked me a question like that two days ago because I was performing in the street and I suddenly played with the instrument a very loud sound. I was in the middle of a bar in Rothschild Street and most of the people got afraid of the sound I made because they thought it was a bomb. He kept asking me this question all the time (I guess because we like to listen to other people speaking about us): if I could get the same reaction here or somewhere else. Of course there’s something here with all this paranoia you have, but it’s something very specific. Most of the things I care about do not belong to general behaviors. It is not there where it is relevant for me to put the cuts, the lines to differentiate. And because of that, maybe the example of the silence is not a good example. What I notice is that every audience is very different, even in the same town, even if it is formed by the same people from one day to the other.
Yafit Bavati[8]: Diego, what’s that? (She puts her hands in the back of her head and shakes them up and down, imitating a movement Diego made during the performance) Where did it come from, do you know?
Diego Chamy: This one? (He puts his hands on his ears)
Yafit Bavati: This one (she makes the other movement again), yes.
Diego Chamy: This one?! (Making the movement she made first)
Yafit Bavati: Yeah!
Diego Chamy: Ok, everyone asks me this, I don’t know why. It’s becoming very funny, because... you know when you go to a pop music concert and after it finishes you go out singing one of the songs the band played? Well, every time I finish a concert I have people repeating this movement. (He makes the movement again. The people laugh) I don’t understand, for me it’s a movement like any other, but I guess something is happening with it... I cannot explain what.
Yafit Bavati: Maybe it has some kind of background. It has a background this movement.
Diego Chamy: Yes, I don’t know. There are many movements that I take from people in the street, or from quotidian situations... That one I don’t know.
Yafit Bavati: You want to say that you don’t know where it comes from?
(Tamara Ben-Artzi says something to Diego Chamy)
Diego Chamy: Yeah, Tamara was with me the night when I found that movement.
Tamara Ben-Artzi: He came a Friday evening –we had dinner in the house– and he came and said: “ah, I have new movement”. (She makes the movement, the people laugh).
Guy from Eastern Europe: I might be a formal guy from East Europe, not North Europe, and well, I must admit that it was a bit surprising not to see a percussion set in a percussion show, so... will you keep this element, surprise, in...?
Diego Chamy: Well, first of all it’s not a percussion show...
Guy from Eastern Europe: It was a performance yeah.
Diego Chamy: It’s not because of that word. It’s because most of the people put too much attention in the instrument. Even if you go to listen to music, the instrument is not something important. The important thing is the music. So if you go to see music just listen to what is going on. The instrument, if it’s a drum, a piano... it’s the same. The important thing is the intensity, what is going on, if something is going on or not[9]. I can’t find any difference between a drum, a piano... it’s a different pitch, a different kind of sound of course, but it is the same as with the audiences. I don’t put the cut there, in the instruments. Maybe this trumpet player has more in common with this pianist than with this other trumpet player.
Guy from Eastern Europe: I get the point about using things to do things, but I mean... a surprise starts outside the concert place; somewhere else... on the street, when you read the flyer... Does the show already start there, when you read the ad?
Diego Chamy: Can you repeat the question? Do you mean to ask if I’m working with surprise?
Guy from Eastern Europe: No, no. There are already some people that make surprises when the show starts, but your show starts when people read the ad about the performance.
Diego Chamy: Oh, yeah, ok, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. When I come up here the thing is already in the middle; it has already started before. I don’t know when, but it’s like catching something in the middle. It’s not that I’m coming up here and I say: “Ok, I have to start”. I never think like this. I walk up here and something is going on from before. But it’s not that I say that I will play percussion and then I don’t play percussion to surprise people. This is the first time that I didn’t bring my instrument. I was in a process in which I was playing every time less and less and less and dancing more and more and more, and today I thought “ok, I don’t want to carry it anymore”. Why do I have to? I’m not playing it. And it’s quite big. It’s like this. (He makes a gesture with his arms) And I thought: “there is a great piano in this place...” So I thought about the piano. If there wouldn’t have been a piano here perhaps I would have brought the drum, I don’t know.
Yiftah Kadan: There is some kind of tension between... I have a different point of view about this entire situation because we talked before and we booked this show so... So I was very tense from the beginning, when you didn’t bring the drum (people laugh)... because I didn’t know what to expect. I was asking questions to myself during the show, and criticizing myself: “maybe I want to be entertained, maybe I have some kind of wishes that want the crowd to be entertained”, so, do you feel this kind of tension between people expecting you to entertain and you just feeling that...
Diego Chamy: Sometimes it is very clear that some people are waiting for you to entertain them. For example the guy who was sitting here in the corner. He was not comfortable at all with the situation; he wanted to go home. And he finally did it. So, I do, I can feel that tension, but I cannot do too much about it. Sometimes it is worse with the people who are organizing. I felt many times that they are very upset with me because I’m not doing something to entertain the people or because I’m doing things that they consider stupid. And the things I do certainly are in a way stupid, but ok, it’s what I do. Sometimes I feel that tension at the beginning, I can feel that the people are upset and suddenly they... they make a change in the middle and they start to accept what is going on. They begin to understand that it is something, that there is something happening, and then it’s ok, they understand that it’s not anything. There is a difference between... What I’m doing - it’s not anything. It can be any-thing, but it’s not anything.
Yiftah Kadan: It’s what you do.
Diego Chamy: Yeah. So when you realize that something is going on, then ok, you accept it. Not always, anyway. Sometimes I finish and the organizer doesn’t speak to me any more (people laugh). It happened to me a lot of times. Even with musicians. You meet someone in a concert, everything is ok, they are very friendly and they ask you when will you perform, and “of course I will go to see you”. But then, after they see your performance they don’t call you anymore, they don’t even say goodbye. It’s like that. And what I like about it is that you can realize who is who; so ok, that’s already something.
Yiftah Kadan: What you do, what you do it’s not something with... it’s being totally yourself.
Diego Chamy: I’m not myself. I cannot say that I am myself at all. It’s something that is going on. Sometimes it is very bad, because sometimes I try to do, to push something that is not happening, something that is only inside me. When I imagine things or I speculate then nothing happens; I fail. Then it’s my fault because I was opening the wrong door. And when it’s like this I understand if the people are upset, I understand (people laugh). Fortunately this happens less and less as I’m getting older. But sometimes it is not my fault but people’s fault; sometimes they are the ones who fail. That happens when the audience doesn’t disserve a good performance. Each audience receives what it disserves.
Yiftah Kadan: Could it happen also with the instrument? Is it the same with or without the instrument?
Diego Chamy: In the last times when I performed with the instrument it was easy for me to pretend that I was doing something when nothing was going on. It’s like when you play a song: sometimes you are not into it but the song is there, so you can play it anyway. So let’s say that with my instrument I was able to... to play the song, even if I was not into the thing. That’s not good; if you have this chance -to pretend- you better change something to find some place where you cannot play the song, where you cannot pretend, where you don’t have any chance to feel safe. It’s better not to feel safe in arts... or always, in your life (“art” it’s not a good concept).
Yafit Bavati: Do you think the communication during the show is based on the embarrassment?
Diego Chamy: No... What I feel many times after a show, after a very good show, is that it is hard for me to look in the faces of people; because it was like to show something very intimate; but intimate not mine, strangely. So sometimes, in special occasions, right after finishing I have to go home because I can’t face the people because I feel embarrassed. Maybe it touches something in me that makes me feel that. But I don’t feel that the show is based on that.
Yafit Bavati: You have the urge to give, to give something.
Diego Chamy: I’m just making movements.
Yafit Bavati: Yes, but, being part of the audience... I feel that you need to provide something, to give us something. Do you feel yourself giving?
Diego Chamy: It’s giving, but not giving something that is inside me.
Yafit Bavati: Ok.
Diego Chamy: And people are also giving something... everyone is giving. (People laugh)
Yafit Bavati: Another question: do you make movements? Do you move or do you dance?
Diego Chamy: Well, that’s not a big... It was the same when I was playing music; people were asking: “ok but what do you do, music or sounds?” You can call it as you want. I like to say that it’s dance because, why not? But also dance is a matter of movements. I think the problem in dance appears when you are so inside a technique that you only make an imitation of movements.
Yafit Bavati: There are different definitions... but if you are speaking, do you use the word “dance” or “movement”?
Diego Chamy: It depends on who I’m speaking with. If I’m speaking with you I might say something and if I’m speaking... you know. I’m pragmatic with the concepts. I try not to use the words as if they have a definition before the use I’ll give them in the moment. But it’s also like these people that when you ask them “do you have a girlfriend?” they give a different answer depending who is asking. Sometimes it’s a little like this. When someone “serious” asks me if I’m a dancer then ok, I might say that I’m making movements; otherwise they will probably get upset I don’t know... It’s a strategy. Serious people are the most uncivilized. But in my daily life I would say “dance”, because that is how I dance. If you play a CD you will see that I dance like this.
Efrat Zafran: That’s why it’s so interesting, because you use another self of yourself?
Diego Chamy: No no, it’s not another self of me, at all.
Efrat Zafran: So, it’s like it comes from you but...
Diego Chamy: It comes from outer space...
Efrat Zafran: This in the one hand; and in the other hand you use movements of our daily life, of our society life, so it’s...
Tamara Ben-Artzi: This is exactly the idea about the dancer that has a technique that he can dance it and not forget what he is doing; or he can dance the technique and you won’t feel anything or understand anything... it won’t touch you.
Efrat Zafran: So you need these movements to prove the audience that there is vitality in daily movements?
Tamara Ben-Artzi: Are you talking about the fact that he is using these movements?
Tamara Ben-Artzi & Yafit Bavati together: These are just his movements.
Efrat Zafran: But these are movements that are also automatic.
Tamara Ben-Artzi: Yes, it’s true, interesting.
Yafit Bavati: I don’t think that these movements were daily movements.
Tamara Ben-Artzi: Yes, I don’t think so either.
Efrat Zafran: There were both kinds. You use movements from inside, that are not connected to anything, and you use other movements that are from your daily life. Or Tamara moves more from movements from the daily life, or with movements she knows and uses them in a deeper way.
Diego Chamy: I’m using a lot of movements that I see in the street and movements that I do in my daily life. I’m using them, but not... what I’m interested in, for example, if I do like this (he pointes with his right arm), this has a meaning that is to point. But I’m interested in making this (he pointes again) just as a movement. Why couldn’t this be a movement and must be “to point”? I’m trying to recover something from these “normal” movements. I’m trying to take out the significance, to show them as movements. And also estrange them, because the way I point is not exactly the right way to do it, it can be confusing.
Efrat Zafran: So, why do you need a movement from daily life?
Diego Chamy: I don’t need it. There is a moment when I realize that I like this or that as a movement. (He stands up and points again) This is something that for me is very nice. It’s really very nice (people laugh). I didn’t do it today, but to do this for me is amazing (he does it again). Maybe there are a lot of movements that I don’t like, but this one I like (he points again, people laugh). So I try, and if it’s something that I like I will probably use it as a movement. Sometimes I do like this (he points again) and everyone is looking where I’m pointing to. Once during a performance I was playing the instrument and I started to look there (he looks to a corner). And there was a woman that was all the time worried trying to see what I was looking for. She even stood up and... She was really looking for something. And it was just a movement; I was not looking at anything special, I was only moving my head in a strange direction. But, ok, I guess most of the people understand that this (he points) becomes just a movement.
Efrat Zafran: Have you seen butoh dance?
Diego Chamy: Yes.
Efrat Zafran: So what do you think about it?
Diego Chamy: I worked with butoh dancers, I saw butoh dancers, and I can say that when you see real butoh dancers, I mean some Japanese people, or some old people, or maybe very well trained dancers, then you are able to understand that butoh is not butoh.
Efrat Zafran: Today?
Diego Chamy: When they dance. They are only dancing. There is a sentence that says: do not follow the steps of the great men; look what they where looking for. So in butoh, what I feel is that most of the dancers are imitating some Japanese dancers. And the problem is that those Japanese dancers are not imitating Japanese dancers. They just are Japanese dancers. That’s a big difference. And I’m not trying to say that to make butoh you must be Japanese. It’s the same with many things. It can be the same with jazz. There is a great trumpet player in our days that imitates Louis Armstrong. But Louis Armstrong was not imitating Louis Armstrong. So it’s funny, because in music to do this is well considered. This guy is earning a lot of money imitating this or that trumpet player, and everyone agrees that he’s a great artist. But today if you are an artist and you imitate Picasso you are a stupid person; it makes no sense. So it’s curious to see how different that works in the different arts. And in dance it is tricky. When something becomes a strict language with strict rules, then you are trapped. You must escape.
Efrat Zafran: That’s why I saw butoh in you doing it, because you do something out of yourself.
Diego Chamy: Ok, I have to say thank you about this but it’s not... ok.
Efrat Zafran: This is the amazing thing in butoh for me, and I admire your courage to show us yourself.
Diego Chamy: Ok, anyway I was not trying to do butoh.
Efrat Zafran: To be yourself, or... thank you, thank you.
Yiftah Kadan: So do you think that maybe butoh or Louis Armstrong or whatever, if there is some kind of frame in that, can you really express yourself in this frame or being a medium for the art you need to express? I mean, within the frame.
Diego Chamy: The people who make something for the first time don’t have this frame. Only then a frame is built. So then you say: “ok, this is Louis Armstrong style, so I can play it”. But Louis Armstrong did not have a frame, he was inventing things, he was creating something. Or maybe he had one, but he escaped from it, or he makes the music escape. And that’s why what he did is great. It’s the same with Picasso, the same with any great artist. They were out of the frames, at least during certain moments in their lives. So ok, then frames are made out of this and you can jovially go into these frames. Actually it’s not interesting for me to do that, but there are some people that can do it in a very interesting way. I never found in me a frame that works bringing me more freedom than restrictions. In classical music, for example, it’s difficult to say that there is not a frame; because you have a very strict technique and a very tough tradition that says how a piece should be played. But even inside these frames, you can find some musicians that are finding new ways to interpret the music. Maybe they use an unusual technique; maybe they have a different approach to the pieces, or maybe both things. But even if you play using a traditional technique and you don’t have such an innovative approach to a piece, even then you can escape from these frames, and it’s difficult to explain exactly how or why. It’s a matter of making each note going crazy, it’s putting certain madness inside what you do, it’s making every second different from the rest, making the time stop, introducing the difference inside what you do. And of course it’s not easy to find examples for that because most of the people who make some of those things are at the same time innovating. An example could be Rosalyn Tureck, or maybe some old folk dancers (for example flamenco dancers[10]) who are doing something completely traditional, not pretending to make any kind of innovation, but at the same time you could never say that what they do is conservative, because in each movement they question the whole order of things, they make time pass in a different way than we presume it.
But beside what artists do there are a lot of other instances, external instances that will try to translate what you do into something “normal” again. They will use different strategies to catch you, to decrease your power. In popular music this can be done by the PA[11] system. PA does not work only to make the music louder, but to clean out the internal differences inside the music. Tone, pitch, projection, etc., everything is reconverted and becomes innocuous and the same when it is going out through the PA. There is not an important difference between two musicians that play the same instrument anymore or a difference between two notes played by the same musician. The PA kills folk music (folk music is based in all these internal differences). But of course music has enough power to be born again and again; you can never capture a force completely. So then you have great things coming out from PA systems, because the music takes it and does something with it: a new way of making music appears. In popular music rock was that new thing, viewed at the beginning as young people going out of control. And then again, the PA capture method is redefined and becomes even stronger. Now you can put a concert in a big stadium, and recording technique standards become a rule to follow in order to sell the music, and then again you have a new capture. This is going on all the time: something is captured and something escapes.
Nowadays if you play folk music and you don’t use PA you cannot be part of the system, you have to play in the street. But of course PA is only one way to capture traditional music. You can have other ones, but there is something common about them, and it is the fact that all of them try to put the music inside an economy of exchange (when music by definition belongs to an economy of desire). This is very clear when you find a restaurant with live folk music: there are two different economies going on at the same time, fighting each other. In a restaurant people can’t stand a not normalized sound, they feel nervous and afraid: too much difference for bodies that were excessively regulated and educated, they are only there being part of the economy of exchange: money flow versus food flow. The music is always amplified and normalized; the owner will only allow exchange transactions, anything related with desire will be prevented, it will be even taken as enemy. And in fact it is. It’s the same in folk dances: when you are doing something that escapes from normalization, then you can’t “work” so much, you can’t earn money with what you do. Even if what you are doing is very traditional it won’t fit for most of the places. They will only expect you to represent a traditional dance.
Money goes only to where there is something that is able to be controlled, captured. If you don’t accept to be captured you are invisible for money. That could be hard, but it is always a good sign. When money is able to see you then you better start worrying; you will become a worker. No more free actions for you anymore. If you eventually get some money you will feel that you are stealing it, taking it from a system, and not that it is given to you in exchange for your actions.
Yiftah Kadan: It’s probably really difficult for you also to move, to do it in your way, that it’s not in any... you can’t categorize it in any way. The thing you do is really abstract, the way I see it. So... it’s also difficult.
Diego Chamy: Ok, but not because it’s abstract. Because abstraction is also something that, after all the artists that worked in it, has now a certain frame. In what I’m doing, the abstraction is the problem; it’s the place where I need to escape from. Maybe I’m taking all these quotidian movements to make what I’m doing less abstract. Because in the abstraction there is certain limit which if you pass it, what you do might become nothing, nothing qualified, zero intensity, inconsistence. That’s my limit. I was outside this limit too much, with music, making it so abstract that for moments it could have been something with no sense. And asignificance does not mean no-sense. I’m not signifying with what I’m doing now, but in it it’s possible to find a lot of senses, it can be very strong and intense. Of course it’s not a matter of the “abstraction amount” you use, but about how much intensity your body is able to stand. If you keep insisting with your material, even if it’s too abstract, you will reach a point where abstraction won’t longer work as abstraction anymore. There you have Morton Feldman. But if you confuse abstraction with intensity=0 then you have no effects. And for having no effects you better stay at home.
Of course it is very easy not to be abstract. But to escape does not mean going back again, but it means escaping drawing a creative line into the future. It’s hard to find consistence when you are running; that’s the challenge. So for me it’s interesting to bring some no-abstract things. So, if I do this (he points), I think of it as something no-abstract. It’s in the border between abstraction and no abstraction. It is pushing a no-abstract material into an abstract direction. So what you have then is only an abstract direction, but not an abstract material and not an abstract result completely. I like to stay in this border where abstraction itself is not clear enough, and becomes, maybe, abstract. I find abstract abstraction very concrete. Someone said that the state repression (or the revolutionary act, for me it’s connected) starts when someone asks – when a policeman asks –: “What are those guys doing there?”... “What are they doing?” That’s the beginning of something important, of a revolution, if you want to call it like that. “What are they doing?” It’s something the police can’t understand.
Yafit Bavati: Is this sentence from Argentina? (People laugh)
Diego Chamy: No no no, it’s from Gilles Deleuze, a French philosopher. So, that is for me really interesting; to reach that point. I really enjoy it. If I can hear that during a performance from the people –“What is he doing? ... What is he doing?”–, then I say to myself: “ok, maybe it’s ok”. Suddenly everything becomes thought; the audience and me, all together. But when it’s completely abstract the people don’t ask anything. Most of the times they turn on their abstract decoder and they become capable of “understanding”; some other times the action becomes inconsistent and no one gets anything, everything stays the same. But if you have to look twice, if you have to stop and ask: “What is he doing?”, “What’s going on here?”, then I tend to think that I reached something that for me is interesting.
Yiftah Kadan: So you think from this border using motives or structures, certain elements that come out from... is this movement for example (he points) a motive that remains when you use it several times or in certain structure during the show? Do you think this is what keeps... I mean, do you use certain artistic language to... I don’t know how to...
Diego Chamy: I don’t think I’m using a language. Maybe a language comes behind what I’m doing.
Yiftah Kadan: But using the structure and really giving motives...
Diego Chamy: Some motives can appear. But I think they are dangerous places. If something becomes a motive and only a motive, then I leave it. Maybe that’s why I didn’t do this today (he points), because sometimes, for me, it has a character that makes it only a motive: “ok, I know how to do it” (he points), and it’s so nice... because it’s really nice. I can do it so nicely (people laugh). So then for me it becomes a motive. So then I prefer to take a step back; under these conditions I won’t do it. On the other hand, I really like the moments when I find something that will be able to become a motive. It’s like “wow, I’m going into something, I’m finding something here, wow, it’s great, it’s great, wow, what’s going on?” But then, if it becomes a safe place, then it’s not good enough. And you can feel it when I’m doing it. It’s not something that I only imagine.
Yiftah Kadan: This reminds me a lot about how I feel about abstract music, that, I mean, that I listen also the... when I play, looking for this abstract place, I’m always looking for this kind of border between finding things that catch my ear and not using them, not abusing them. So it’s still a kind of an abstract thing.
Diego Chamy: Yeah, in a way.
Efrat Zafran: Thank you.
***
On the 8th of January 2007 Yafit Bavati sent by email more questions.
Yafit Bavati: What is the importance of performing for you? What are you seeking for performing?
Diego Chamy: To perform is something political for me, even if there are no “political contents” in my performance (as you could see there is no “message” – explicit or implicit – in it). When I say “politics” I am speaking about the manners in which we think about how we live together. We have a very specific and limited logic to think politics. And we can find this same logic in completely opposed political positions. My desire would be to let a different logic be shown and felt.
But the performance is not a metaphor of a political thought. It is the expression of a political thought; but not the expression of the explicit or implicit message of a political thought. The expression of a message would be first of all a communication act – and art has nothing to do with a communication act – and second propaganda. The expression of a political thought is politics in act and the act of making politics. That’s what I’m looking for: to make politics. I don’t care about art or being an artist. The only art that I care is the art of transformation. I would like to be a “transformist”, to be able to mutate. It happened that I ended up performing, but you can find this in any other place. A baker, a dressmaker, a mentally perturbed... it is not important what you do, but what political thought you are an expression of. Of course it has nothing to do with left or right or nothing related to the political logic of the representation. That political logic starts from what is given, and I’m speaking about the new. What I look for, in terms of Spinoza, would be to increase the capacity of everyone in the room of affecting and being affected.
Yafit Bavati: Does it matters the quantity of the viewers?
Diego Chamy: It does, but in an audience the number is pure difference. An audience of ten people is different than one of one hundred. It’s not less –or the important thing is not that, in a way of understanding, the number 10 is less than 100. In another way, 10 is different that 100. There are certain things that are not able to be divided without making a change in the nature of them. An audience is one of those. You cannot reach a temperature of 30 degrees summing up 10 times the experience of what you feel in 3 degrees. That’s because you cannot divide 30 degrees without operating a change in the nature of them. Temperature is not like a segment that you can divide and sum up without having a change on its nature. The same happens with an audience. An audience formed by 10 people has its own characteristics; these are different from the ones that an audience formed by 100 has. You have to work with those characteristics when you perform. If you think of them as a segment (10 is less than 100), then your changes will be also segmentaries and your actions will be the expression of a segmentary logic (related with a political thought: the politics of the representation).
But if you are asking me if I don’t mind playing for small audiences, I say that once the audience is formed, I perform trying to make the best thing happen, it does not matter if there are three persons or three thousands. But anyway I always prefer to see as much people in the audience as possible: it is a matter of expansion. The material which I am working with is asking for expansion. It is not about propaganda, it is not about being known, it is not about selling tickets. That is related to personal interest. I have a lot of interests, but no personal ones.
[1] Yiftah Kadan is the organizer of the venue at Hagada Hasmalit.
[2] Bezalel University student.
[3] Martín Rejtman: “I had the impression that Argentinean cinema was not contemporary”.
[4] Tamara Ben-Artzi
[5] Bezalel University student.
[6] She’s speaking about the concert in Bezalel Univeristy in the 23rd November 2006, in Jerusalem. It was a duo concert with Olivier Germain-Noureux, who traveled from France to Jerusalem by foot.
[7] And even more: one same concert doesn’t have the same audience in itself. The audience changes in every instant. The audience lasts and because of that it is never the same (see Bergson).
[8] Yafit Bavati is an outstanding belly dancer.
[9] What is “something happens”? When something seems good to us we say that something happened. Can nothing happen? Someone could oppose that something is always happening. When we see that something happens, it’s because a change has been operated in the world. From this moment on things changed; they cannot continue being the same. When nothing happens what happens is a desire for things not to change, for everything to remain as it is. But, what’s wrong if everything remains as it is? It’s a matter of belief. It’s a matter of believing either in the world as something constituted by the past or in the world as constituted by the future, a future in present time. What is equal to itself, for itself, perseveres in its identity and blocks everything that is not compatible and that can represent a risk to this aim. To believe in change is not a matter of moving from one status quo to another, but a matter of affirming a world in which you can let the flux of the becoming, the future things, the vital power of each body - pass.
[10] But when you see some old flamenco dancers, it’s difficult to understand that that’s flamenco, because it does not fit with your idea about flamenco. So then, again, we say: “What is going on?”... “What are they doing?” (See next answer).
[11] Power Amplification