JONGENS DIE PROBEREN TE WENEN

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JONGENS DIE PROBEREN TE WENEN

ELIAS DRIESEN

LUCY, PEAKS
RUE BORDIAU 15
18 OCTOBER,  2024

At number 15 in a street on the edge of the European Quarter. A Friday evening. Tired footsteps gather, lighten up and head towards a market. The weather is mild. 

Lucy, peaks opens the pigeon-blue door of a bourgeois house. I bend down to go through the service entrance. It's dark. Three rooms in a row. The first with bikes, the second, a kitchen, the third with a table and a view of a city garden. The position, on the entresol, means that my gaze is at the  level of the grass. I look up to see two young men sitting on a bench on the left-hand side. One bald with a suit and tie (the artist), the other in black with high lace-up shoes (his brother). 

Silence except for a BOSE loudspeaker placed on the table. From it I hear the sounds of the outside world. Very distinctly, including the quiet of the indoor island. The rectangular window frames the stage and separates the darkness inside, where I'm standing, from the fading light of the garden. The two individuals are rubbing and scratching painted wooden objects. These objects, previously laid out on the grass, remind me of Ola's Racket ice-creams, which the artist has already painted. Others saw them as baby bottles or condoms. These variations lead to different interpretations of the nature of the relationship between the two men. There are few clues. Interaction is minimal. The man in black is absorbed in his telephone and the bald man seems lost in his world of princes, swans and unshed tears. 

The performance,  in a loop, includes a sequence:

- In the kitchen. The man in the suit enters first and leans against the sink. Illuminated by his mobile phone, he listens to a recording of what seems to be him crying. Not loud sobs, but delicate, liquid moans. Why is he listening to himself? Is it a way of helping himself to cry again? It’s not working. The man in black enters and also leans against the edge of the kitchen, but on the other side. He turns on the cooker hood light and plunges back into his phone. Does he lack empathy? Or is he used to the presence of this melancholic person in his kitchen?

- In the garden. The man in the suit is kneeling, pressing his mobile phone against the window. On the screen, a video of his silhouette behind the fogged-up glass of a shower. Naked, he removes the mist. The sound of rubbing against the glass can be seen through two other windows, that of the telephone and that of the window;

- In the garden. The artist is lying down with his head raised. At various intervals he stammers out the phrase ‘boys who try to cry’, and each time the loudspeaker emits pre-recorded 80s-style laughter;

- In the garden. The two men hug. The only moment of contact. A succession of embraces, with the microphones transmitting the shock of the chests. Tender and virile at the same time. Especially that hand that gently caresses the back of one of the companions;

Restrained. Words and tears have a hard time coming out. I am drawn to the artist's stammering over his swan, which changes from ‘the swan’ to ‘the one’ and is both ‘with no fears and no tears’ and ‘with fears and tears’. The vulnerability of a man in a crumpled suit. The insouciance of the young man who moves effortlessly from his screen to a tender embrace and then picks up the wooden objects. No questions asked.

The interplay of screens, windows, microphones and recordings seems just right. An intimate peformance but at a respectful distance from us and the artist. And then there's the warm beauty of the outside sound that comes through so clearly in the darkness of the house. An aerial soundtrack of birdsong, nightfall and planes taking off. We stay on earth with the kitchen’s extractor hood, the recorded laughter and the omnipresence of the telephone screens. 

The young man in black with his high shoes and his German-Slavic name, Anton,  takes me back to the last century. To when this house must have been built, in the rural hills north-east of Brussels. I'm reminded of Hermann Hesse's book ‘The Steppe Wolf’, and the story of Harry Haller, torn between his melancholic, solitary personality and his desire to belong to bourgeois society. Elias Driesen's duet is a reference to the double, but more as the expression of a brotherly friendship where the ‘weaknesses’ of the other - addiction to mobile phones or tears - are accepted without drama. Anton and Elias, Elias and Anton. The plural of the title indicates that both are trying to cry. If it's obvious for one of them, for the other it's harder to imagine what's behind his silence and casualness. Who needs to cry more? 

Post Scritum I

The performance took place in my house, but this evening I felt like a spectator like any other. I was welcomed into a place that was no longer entirely familiar, with the artist's own energy and unusual sounds. I attended all the rehearsals (of which there were many!) but I plunged back into the basement, feeling that delicious sense of strangeness all over again.

Post Scritum II

Lucy, peaks. What a fine group of people. Pampering the creative energy of a friend while providing invaluable logistical/material/human support (lighting, sound, visitor reception, communication, documentation). Their choice of unusual locations awakens something in me that's different from the usual exhibition venues. Curiosity and the joy of occupying public and private spaces. Especially when a crowd gather on a peripheric pavement that's usually so calm.  

Roshan Di Puppo

text written by Roshan Di Puppo for EACHBXL

Pictures jongens die proberen te wenen by Amel Omar