OS ETHMOIDALE: 2017

Niepokój / Disquiet
Improwizacja inspirowana Księgą Niepokoju Fernando Pessoi
Improvised act inspired by The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa

Dźwięk/Sound:
Michał Rupniewski– skrzypce/ violin
Michał Sember – gitara elektryczna, obiekty/ electric guitar, objects
Ryszard Lubieniecki - głośnice akordeonowe, taśmy / accordion reed ranks, tapes

Rysunek/Drawing:
Lena Czerniawska

Ruch/ Movement:
Dariusz Małojło
Anna Bogdanowicz

Klub PROZA, Przejście Garncarskie 2
11.03. godz.19:00

„Wszystko, co człowiek stwierdza lub wyraża jest notatką na marginesie całkowicie wymazanego tekstu. Możemy na podstawie notatki zgadywać, jaka była mniej więcej istota tekstu, ale zawsze pozostaje pewna wątpliwość, a możliwych znaczeń jest wiele".

Niespójność, notoryczne i celowe kwestionowanie , podważanie przed chwilą postawionego znaku, gestu, dźwięku – jako struktura; wątpliwość jako narzędzie; hybryda jako postać; tekst jako partytura; wprawiona w ruch kolekcja fragmentów jako jedyna możliwa całość.

“Everything stated or expressed by man is a note in the margin of a completely erased text. From what's in the note we can extract the gist of what must have been in the text, but there's always a doubt, and the possible meanings are many.”

Inconsistency, notorious and deliberate questioning, undoing the already placed sign, gesture or sound – as a structure; doubt as a tool; hybrid as a charachter; text as notation; collection of fragments set in motion - as the only possible whole.

The Book of Disquiet by Bernardo Soares by Fernando Pessoa is a dubious and uncertain whole, found after his death in a trunk with several dozen thousands of pages, among which was an envelope with 350 fragments signed with the initials B.S.. Bernardo Soares, a bookkeeper from Lisbon, is one of Pessoa's 'heteronyms', i.e. one of around eighty fictional characters, endowed with history, physiognomy, specific literary style, set of beliefs and preferences. Pessoa would give away the authorship of his writings to them, or he wrote on their behalf. In the words of Richard Zenith (the editor of the most reliable Portugese version and translator into English) „The Book of Disquiet (…) never existed, strictly speaking, and can never exist. What we have here isn't a book but its subversion and negation: the ingredients for a book whose recipe is to keep sifting, (…) the rooms and windows to build a book but no floor plan, and no floor”.

The word 'disquiet' refers to the acute awareness of constant change, restlessness and uncertainty present everywhere. Soares (or Pessoa as Soares?) is looking at pedestrians, co-workers, the seasons, the times of day, unsure of the reality of his own experience, his own identity and even his existence. Adam Phillips (British psychotherapist and author) puts it that way: "Because he did not find his voice, but his voices, Pessoa never fell into the trap of knowing what he was doing; he didn't need to imitate himself to keep writing."

The structure of, and the history behind, The Book has become, for us, an invitation to reassemble the pieces of this mosaic, using our own tools and points of reference. Improvisation is a natural and common way for this group of performers, and improvisation, understood as a deliberate reveling in / unraveling / revealing of the „making-of”, and shifting the emphasis from the effect onto the process, seems an appropriate interpretational key for responding to Pessoa's bits and pieces of texts, to his history and that of The Book. Depending on the shifting of emphasis, the result of our work can be seen as a performance, a concert or performative reading.