Performance “Rising Matter” at Kanuti Gildi SAAL.
Performance, concept: Hendrik Kaljujärv.
Sound design: Hendrik Kaljujärv.
Light design: Revo Koplus.
Video: Emer Värk.
Premiere: 17.11.2014, Tallinn.
“La nature est un temple [..]
L’homme y passe à travers des fôrets de symboles
qui l’observent avec des regards familiers.
Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent
dans une ténébrose et profonde unité,
vaste comme une nuit et comme la clarté,
les parfums, les couleurs et le sons se répondent.”
(C. Baudelaire, “Correspondances”)
When I saw the performance of Hendrik Kaljujärv at Kanuti Gildi SAAL on 27th of November 2014, I felt some similarities with the aesthetics of the French poet Charles Baudelaire in creating metaphoric correspondences between different senses as sounds and colors, music and painting.
The theatre was quite dark at the beginning and slowly a sum of different sounds and colors – drops and brushes that reminded me of action painting – started to trace the outlines and the dark shadow of a standing man. Gradually, in the decreasing gloom, it was possible to see how the stage was arranged: and empty space in front of the audience with a big backlit canvas full of brushes in the background. Suddenly, all of the disorienting sounds and interactive drawings stopped and a strong light illuminated the actor in the middle of the stage. He was holding a guitar and he started to play it, plucking the strings and then distorting the sounds with the instrument’s headstock. Finally, the overloud and thunderous noises broke the quiet atmosphere and strong, quite upsetting, brushes appeared on the canvas. All those visual changes, made with different mediums and devices, seemed to create a strong link between the sounds and the images staged, showing how music can create, transform or destroy matter. This is what the performance wanted to demonstrate. “Rising Matter”, in fact, is a dynamic performance, where feelings and images constantly change. The actor created different situations, playing instruments, acting in the space or interacting with the canvas painting directly on it.
Every part of the performance could be felt as a different chapter of life, where every person could feel their own feelings or the inner feelings of the universe. If one instrument was spreading something worrying or disturbing, the brushes on the canvas answered with something quiet and pure, or vice versa. In this way, every single echo and color sketch reminded me of fôrets de symboles described by Baudelaire, the forest as the metaphor of human feelings and human beings. However, every moment of the performance seemed to be at the threshold of the abyss, but never totally swallowed. The images and sounds were flowing, appearing and disappearing, giving their essence in the right moment of hic et nunc. Every situation was happening and already finishing at the same time. The images were temporary, lingering just on the other side of definition, giving power to the whole performance to create and dissolve meanings at the same time.
I believe that most of the time it is not necessary to understand the rational reason for everything around us. Most of the time, the senses speak more than the words. All of the gestures, visuals, voices and sounds can tell us a story or just give us some inputs to feel something really deep. It’s pleasant to let ourselves be carried on to a path totally forsaken into the voices of the soul and this is what I felt in the theatre that evening.
