Machteld Rullens

Duende (What, How & Why)

What = 'Jobs' is a 9 minute video that consist of telephone conversations with employment agencies, documentation of attempts to speak and film these agencies, phone conversation with career coaches and an interview with former director of the Willem De Kooning Academy. The footage shows the attempts of the artist, who is behind the camera. As a viewer you see images of the ground while overhearing the artist asking the employees behind the desks for a job. The interview with the former director of the WdKA was shot on a square in Rotterdam and opens up the conversation about possible job options for artist. Next to that images of people walking through the city with Mondiaan printed shoppingbags are used as backdrops for the telephone conversations with the agencies. The video is an ongoing loop of refusals.

How = Sometimes after staring at my computer screen or looking at the high office buildings opposite the studio for too long, I have the feeling I should get a 'real' job. Calling up and going into employment agencies to ask for a job, but at the same time making a work is how I tried to understand the paradoxes in this system. With the devision in jobs and systems (getting access or not) I want to talk about the value of jobs artist can do within the societal order system.

Why = I wanted to test how far I intervene within the logic of an ambiguous society such as an employment agency. I made 'Jobs' because whatever job an artist might be doing it could potentially show the eras of the main system.

Written after Liz’s writing machine: TEXT, SPEECH, ACTION – PLACE, CHARACTER, EVENT

Dialogue between a Brain (B) and a Liver (L)

B: Hi, What are you looking for?

L: I’m trying to get me some cornflakes for my boss 50 Cent…

B: Oh, I see. He’s been pretty hungry with all the writing and performing lately... hasn’t he?

L: I assume his hunger for Cornflakes might have something to do with Keplers’ theory of light. All the bodies and brains of his fans waiting for him. I imagine it is not an easy job being a performer.

B: Ah. Your boss is a real poet, I'm a big fan of his work you know.

Writing machines # 4

Popsong by Perri MacKenzie

There are three elements to Popsong: two screen prints, a performance, and a PDF. The screen prints: two, A2 in size, two colours - dark royal blue and dark ochre. The prints were graphic, containing hand-written text (blue) and a drawing (ochre). The first text read “popsong”, the second “ritournelle”. Each drawing appeared to be scrawly renderings of a single foot. The performance was of me, talking and singing, descending a staircase - lasting approximately 15 minutes. I read from a script, which had painted elements on the backs of the pages, and deposited each page as I descended the stairs. I sang in French and spoke in English. I sang La Javanaise by Serge Gainsbourg, and spoke about zig zags, translation, hexagonal chess boards, and the letters A, V, and Z. The script from the performance was scanned in double-sided as a PDF, and it exists on my website.

5 Questions from the Cut-up Writing Machine Box; Answered by Machteld about Perri’s Popsong

What support does it require?

To describe a performance, something that happened in the past, is always tricky. In my head I hear Perri singing and reading while she walks down the stairs. I try to re-live the moment of her performing and try to recall the colours she uses in her prints. You could say that what is needed for this performance to function, after it has been performed by her, is the PDF that is available on Perri’s website. After seeing the PDF that ‘supports’ the performance, I’m able to recreate the situation described above.

Does it rely on an exterior reference?

Popsong refers to a lot of different exterior sources. Serge Gainsbourg, Gilles Deleuze, Douglas Hoftstadter, TV. Even French-Kissing is mentioned. So, you could definitely conclude that Popsong relies on ‘historical’ happening and on the makers experiences with reading/using these sources.

What does it believe in?

This piece believes in magic. It creates possibilities for telling something original by using found footage and bases its theory on strange but funny artifacts.

Why was it made?

The performance was made because the artist wanted to blend different forms of information and take the audience on a 15 minute trip through her brain by singing and reading to them.

What followed it?

Writing, drawing and reading essays. Dissecting existing essays and constructing new ones. The latest one has taking the form of a website.

Constructed Reality (Performance) by Machteld Rullens

An audience is invited to a café. The windows of the café overlook an intersection. Right in front of the biggest window two men are sitting around a little table on the terrace. Three others accompany them. The audience doesn’t realize a sound recording in the café has started playing, when suddenly a male voice describes very specific situations happening on the street. While the audio file is playing over the speakers of the café, the five people in front of the window get up and start to follow the descriptions that are playing over the speakers (they were all assigned a specific action). For example; go into the building opposite the cafe and wave from behind the window of the 4th floor. Someone else was following and imitating people crossing the street. The coffee-customers / viewers, whom were clueless of this performance happening, became quiet. While looking outside, a game of trying to figure out who was acting and who was not, had started inside. When the actors were again all seated around the table on the terrace the 15-minute performance came to an end and so did the audio recording. On the tables inside handmade postcards with the spoken texts were distributed.

5 Questions from the Cut-up Writing Machine Box; Answered by Machteld about my own writing

What support does it require?

The action of being in that cafe drinking your coffee, looking onto the street. The remains are the audio piece, several cards and a memory.

Does it rely on an exterior reference?

It relies literally on the exterior. The people passing by. The use of the real by inserting ‘unreal’ situations. It had some sort of reference to a few happenings performed in the ‘60 and I was reading a lot about Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle and the use of everyday life as a ‘prop’ for my artworks.

What does it believe in?

To me it believes in the beauty of the everyday. How to appreciate and laugh about how we sometimes behave. How things became ‘normal’. How an artist can make with using what she is surrounded with.By asking people, the most interessting objects in society, to perform and explain there dayly routines to me. This is my logic. My way of seeing and understanding. I hope these slightly bestranging created situations open some sort of dialog about routines and the obvious.

Why was it made?

Because I was drinking coffee in a cafe while staring outside and I was writing what was happening before my eyes. Later I used some of the writings as a script.

What followed it?

Various performances and video’s where I ask people certain favors or questions about places, routines, and daily life.

[1] [THE VISUAL REGIME FOR THE ABCDESTROY OF THE DATABASE ]

Remixing and Remixability By Lev Manovich. Terms as 'collaborative remixability' and ABCDESTROY (Add,Browse,Change,Destroy) are both researching ways in which information between people find new paths to create other forms, concepts, ideas, mashups and services. The movement of information flows no longer in one direction, from source to receiver, but the receiver has become a temporary station on the path of the information. This is how blogs get referenced by other blogs, movies by other movies, music is being sampled by other music, photo's are shared on facebook and flickr. Will the separation between libraries of samples and 'authentic' cultural works blur in the future? If pre-computer modularity leads to repetition and reduction, can post-computer modularity produce unlimited diversity? Do we live in the ultimate modularity of the (re)mixability or have we never been modular in the first place?

Digital Material Tracing New Media in Everyday Life an Technology by Jos de Mul. In this paper Jos de Mul analyzes the way the computer interface constitutes and structures aesthetic experiences in the age of digital recombination. He states that a transformation of value is taking place. The cult value of an artwork (it's einmaligkeit, uniqueness and aura) is undergoing a radical change in the age of mechanical reproduction (such as photography, film and internet). Uniqueness and permanence of the auratic object are replaced by transitoriness and reproducibility. The enormous database creates a situation in which all elements are constantly combined, recombined and recombined. Nature and culture become an object for this manipulation. Art will regain its ritual dimension and the return of the aura will take place because of the new elements that are inserted into this database. Everything that has been made will get new 'futur possibilities'. We might start to reflect on the non-human and inhuman characters of this new medium and we might even become the ultimate object of digital manipulation. Nevertheless humans will never be alienated by mechanical reproduction.

'What' assignment.

1) Constructed Reality (Performance)

An audience is invited to a café. The windows of the café overlook an intersection. Right in front of the biggest window two men are sitting around a little table on the terrace. Three others accompany them. The audience doesn’t realize a sound recording in the café has started playing, when suddenly a male voice describes very specific situations happening on the street. While the audio file is playing over the speakers of the café, the five people in front of the window get up and start to follow the descriptions that are playing over the speakers (they were all assigned a specific action). For example; go into the building opposite the cafe and wave from behind the window of the 4th floor. Someone else was following and imitating people crossing the street. The coffee-customers / viewers, whom were clueless of this performance happening, became quiet. While looking outside, a game of trying to figure out who was acting and who was not, had started inside. When the actors were again all seated around the table on the terrace the 15-minute performance came to an end and so did the audio recording. On the tables inside handmade postcards with the spoken texts were distributed.

2) Follow / Lines (Description of a video still)

On an almost empty square two people, whom we see from the back, are walking. One is a passerby, the other is performing. One of the figures, who is walking in the middle of this video still, chooses to cross the square in a diagonal. The second person seems to follow her. The ‘follower’ is holding a wooden stick, which functions as an extension to her legs. The stick touches the ground and leaves behind a white stripe; there is chalk on the bottom. Three other white lines that we can see on this image were drawn upon the square. This implies the same action is and has been repeated. During the video criss-cross lines start to appear on the square, this happens during the interaction with the public that walks or cycles across it.

3) Soldier (Photograph)

A photograph. Leaves and ivy surround a person wearing a military suit. The arms of the person are stiffly hanging beside the body. The model is looking to the upper left of the picture into the light source. This causes a big contrast with the dark background and the deep blue army suit. In ‘Napoleon Crossing the Alps’ by Jacques-Louise David, in which Napoleon is seated on his prancing horse while pointing his right hand towards something ahead of him, Napoleon is wearing a hat in the shape of a semi circular form. His hat looks similar to the one used for this photograph. Fine soldiers are usually male, at least in most stories and myths, but when you have a closer look at this photograph the soldier turns out to be a woman.

Write a synopsis of a text of your choice. No more than 200 words

([2])

Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography. Guy Debord Les Lèvres Nues #6 (September 1955) Translated by Ken Knabb

In the first edition of Internationale Situationniste from a group of revolutionaries, called the Situationist International, the goal was to unify art and life. As a rule, the bulletin was edited collectively. The various articles written and signed individually had to be of interest to all of the comrades, and be seen as particular points of their common research. The magazine pursues: 1. Experimentation in the détournement of photo-romances. 2. The promotion of guerrilla tactics in the mass media. 3. The development of situationist comics. 4. The production of situationist films. The Situationist International experimented a lot with the ‘construction of situations’, using a method known as dérive (drift). In which an unplanned journey through a landscape, usually urban, on which the subtle aesthetic contours of the surrounding architecture and geography subconsciously direct the travellers, with the ultimate goal of encountering a new experience. According to situationist theorist Guy Debord, in performing a dérive, the individual in question must first set aside all work and other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there. I am very much inspired by this way of working and publishing.