Fuga 2021
Fuga
3-channel video installation, 7 digitized 16mm b/w films in loop (9:36”) 969cm x 220cm
Fuga is a choreography of falling bodies. Seven people of different ages, look directly at the viewer. One by one they fall, in surrender, straight forward, and get up again. Sometimes in sync, then alone.
The work came from my own desire to surrender, but also from a recurring wish to sometimes disappear, both physically and mentally. During the artistic process I explored how this desire was stored in my body and how it could be translated into an action. In the movement of falling straight forward, these two seemingly opposite desires come together. With performers I rehearsed the act of falling for six weeks: how to convey the feeling of full surrender, how to fall, how to look, how to get up. Each performer has their own falling sequence, filmed individually on one uncut 16mm film (in vertical position). This limitation captured the tension and intensity of the live performance. The seven separate films are combined into one film. In the editing process I focused on rhythm and dramatic structure to strengthen the underlying meaning. Fuga is projected slightly larger than life size, inviting the viewer to relate to it physically.
The title refers to the musical form fugue, known for polyphony and repetition. Bach used a seven voice fugue in his Mass, in which resurrection is an important theme. In psychology, fuga refers to a sudden disappearance.
Performers: Nathalie Smoor, Diego Olieveira, Iris Wiegers, Barbara Klee, Bakir Shawky
Devika Chotoe, Dirk Versluis
Camera and post production: Onno Petersen
Assistant Camera: Walt van der Aar
Made possible by: Cultuurmakersfonds (Prince Bernhard Cultuurfonds). Kickstart Fund, Mondriaan Fund and Museum Tot Zover
Thanks to: Nathalie Smoor and Elmer Leupen
Shown at the exhibition Surrender in Museum Tot Zover in Amsterdam until August 22nd 2021
REVIEW PAROOL AUGUST 19th 2021
This artwork by Roos van Geffen
would not look out of place in the Stedelijk
Maarten Moll, August 19th 2021
Only a few days left to see: seven falling figures.
Three men, three women and a girl.
They fall forward.
Get up again.
Fall again.
Eternal, it seems.
It is a work of art by Roos van Geffen and can be seen until Sunday in the large hall of the Tot Zover Museum (Museum So Far) in De Nieuwe Ooster cemetery.
I was reminded of that iconic photo Saut dans le vide (‘Jump into nothing’) in which artist Yves Klein falls from a building on October 23, 1960 in Fontenay-aux-Roses, just south of Paris. And to the gravity performances of Bas Jan Ader.
Fuga is the name of Roos van Geffen’s work.
They just keep falling, those seven figures. When will it stop?
It doesn’t stop, but if you look closely, if you keep watching for about ten minutes, you notice the schnitts, you know it’s loops.
(Subtitle of Fuga: ‘2021. 3-channel video installation, 7 digitized 16mm black and white films on loop (9:36’’).’)
On the entire back wall you see seven times the image of a person who is facing you frontally. They just stand there until they start to fall. Forward.
And then they get up again.
And fall again.
Etc. Etc.
The people are just a bit more than life size, so you are drawn into the images.
Breathtaking. And an almost hallucinatory experience that also brings a lot of peace.
Perhaps because of the idea behind this work.
Fuga, according to Van Dale: ‘Multi-part music in which the theme, introduced by one voice, is successively taken over by the other voices.’ Here, in this museum that deals with life and death, the eternal ups and downs of course stand for that eternal cycle . (Van Geffen also refers to Nietzsche’s Ewige Wiederkunft.)
One does not fall at the command of the artist, but one falls when one wants to fall. Arbitrary. Just as death does not come to order.
Sometimes two fall at once, sometimes three or four. Then again one falls and the rest remains standing.
There is an older man, my favorite, neatly in a suit, whose tie is crooked from the fall. He falls with abandon. From which you may conclude that he has accepted that life is finite.
But even without the thought of the life cycle it is a beautiful work of art. Which you can also just look at and just let your own thoughts loose.
Director Guus Sluiter would like to purchase the work for the museum, but then he would have to give up the main hall, which would in turn be at the expense of all those other beautiful exhibitions that he wants to show (next year there will be one by herman de vries!).
Fuga would not look out of place in the Stedelijk Museum, or any other large museum in the Netherlands.
Last chance, go quickly!
