D’you remember last summer when I went to see Electric Hotel by Fuel? It toured to a few different places, including Mayfest in Bristol, but I saw it at King’s Cross. The thing that was like a massive cross-section of a hotel, with lights and dancing and binaural sound through headphones, but no dialogue…
The Cleansing Of Constance Brown was a bit like that last night, except we were looking down a corridor instead of up at a great big fuck off doll’s house. And they just had music instead of headphones, including Two Tribes by Frankie Goes To Hollywood ON THE LOUDEST VOLUME SETTING I’VE EVER COME ACROSS. I didn’t have a clue what was going on for most of it, but there were some brilliant visual moments: an office party turning into a wartime hostage situation, Queen Elizabeth I walking towards us while the wall closed in behind her, shredded paper being blown around by fans, a massive orange parachute balloon engulfing everything and then disappearing through a doorway at top speed. At the end we got to tour the backstage area with the actors, and it reminded me of that God Squad show with the Andy Warhol films, Kitchen, where everything happens behind a screen and all we see are the final recorded images.
My friend Tim wasn’t convinced it was that entertaining without dialogue, but I was quite happy. The set and direction and little special effects were stimulating enough that I didn’t really mind not knowing what the fuck was going on.
This wasn’t the video that I wanted to stick up for you this evening, but the video I did want to share has only got proper sound on the Gob Squad website, and I didn’t think a silent clip of people dancing on tables would really communicate the eccentricity of tonight’s performance of Kitchen, by Gob Squad.
I quite liked this clip, of them talking about performance and what it means and what attracts them to it, because it reminds me of the Radiohead video for Jigsaws Falling Into Place, except better, because you know these guys had to wander around in public with cameras strapped to them FOR THE GREATER GOOD OF THE PERFORMANCE, MAN.
Kitchen is a surreal comedy about the making of Andy Warhol’s films, Sleep and Eat and Kiss and, indeed, Kitchen. It asks questions about reality and experience and identity, by giving the audience a tour of the set prior to the show, exchanging the cast with unwitting audience members, and including scenes of cunnilingus and coffee-snorting. You watch it like a real film, except over three screens, while the live action is going on behind a wall, acted to camera. I think that they were trying to make a point about how Warhol’s original films were really important to the evolving cultural mindset of 1965. (I think…) But then it was also a blatant parody of the whole idea that pimps and drug dealers and transsexuals are somehow more interesting or glamorous than the rest of us. It was just really really bizarre. I have no idea how they convinced one audience member to act out Kiss, sitting there being tenderly embraced by a woman she’d never met before while her husband watched on from the auditorium and three other complete strangers stood in for the other cast in another part of the set and on another screen. I think that was probably part of the point actually. Something about the 1960s’ deterioration of inhibition or about the all-eyes-on-me idea of fame or something. I don’t really know.
All I know for sure is that parts of it were hilarious and parts of it were seriously uncomfortable and one woman went topless for a whole scene. I imagine Andy Warhol would have LOVED it.
Oh yeah, and if you’re interested, make sure you do click that link to the video I really wanted to show you. It’s a proper bit of the play with proper kissing and everything.
