Repetition Island

LW: I wanted to ask you how you come up with the stories that you tell everyday at Repetition Island.

BS: The stories change a bit everyday. At first it was improvised and I did know exactly what I was doing. I decided after the first day. I planned to change the story, but I thought it would be interesting if it had the same structure everyday but with different works. But it is always about searching for something, finding something. But after the first day I noticed that this discothèque thing was really funny for the audience so I decided that just a few details would change everyday. So everyday when I arrive at the discothèque I am obliged to have a costume but the costume changes and that changes how the story ends. If you see the performance a few times you get the feeling that your memory is repeating or that you are mis-remember. I am not used to this kind of format. Usually I do not repeat the same piece. So I wanted to have a way to change the piece everyday. I have a few pieces that I have done twice but I find that when I already know what the jokes are going to be it is bad. I know where the audience will laugh

LW: and you start to expect it?

BS: Yes and I always like to surprise myself with the jokes. I really like this moment, in all of my work, where it is not really like having an audience but being with the audience. Like we are all together watching the same person. When I laugh the audience is also laughing and that way we are all thinking together. So for me not repeating is a way to achieve this.

LW: I get the impression you really like New Wave.

BS: I find it very interesting. I spent one whole year researching New Wave for a project. I really like to work as an art historian, or a historian. I like working with things that exists – being a teacher, or something that implies making a show. I like this idea of being a teacher but I don’t say, “Okay, today the subject is …” I like to say, “Today we are not talking about the subject. We are playing with the subject.” My performance on Repetition Island is a bit different because it is a kind of tale. It is not really a serious thing. But New Wave music has a romantic idea of drama – the idea of being lost, thinking the world is going nowhere. They look at the world around them – the everyday – in a really metaphysical way. The world is not as we perceive it. It is full of really strange and dramatic things. Like the paintings of Leon Spilliaert. There is self-portrait he did where he is looking at himself in the mirror like he is a stranger. It is really scary and weird. I like this kind of thing: how we perceive the different levels of reality and I think it is linked to memory and myth. How myths are a part of everyday life and they help you to think but they are not real – they are in memories. Gertrude Stein wrote in Tender Buttons that she arrived at a point where it was no longer useful or even possible to separate fiction and reality. Telling a story creates a memory – so it exists.

[Image: Benjamin Seror with a painting of the entrance to the discothèque Le George.]