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 Another Monika Gundega Laiviņa, Culture Theorist Book Monika by Margarita Zieda (Riga, 2010) | |
| The ‘Studija Library’ has recently added ‘Monika’ to its collection – a monograph on the artist Monika Inese Pormale by theatre critic Margarita Zieda. I love square-shaped books. This book, too, is almost square, and upon opening it dozens or even hundreds of pictures pour out like jewels from a treasure chest. Leafing through its pages, it becomes clear that the pictorial content of ‘Monika’ is an enormously dense and rich hoard of information. The story about the artist begins to take shape through the photos alone, both black and white and in colour, and they are a wonderful visual testimony to Pormale’s time in Riga and also her creative collaboration outside Latvia with Alvis Hermanis. I read the book quickly and with pleasure. I read it and studied it once, and then perused it again a while later. Everything that is described there is highly interesting and emotionally charged, leaving the kind of feeling as if you had spent an evening reminiscing with old friends. The story of Monika skilfully mixes fragments from the artist’s own recollections and thoughts with the author’s text as well as comments from associates and creative partners. The only hindrance to the flow of the story is that occasionally chunks of text have been placed in columns of small print on the left hand side (for example, on pages 13 and 25). I searched, but failed to find any consistency or reason for this, because elsewhere references and background information of similar importance is integrated into the text. My preference would be for a more uniform treatment. A couple of days after reading the book, I went through the things that had stayed in my mind most vividly. In my im¬agination the scene covering the early days of Pormale’s life in Riga almost came alive: “A rented corner in a Mežaparks house with a communal kitchen and wood-burning stove” (page 13), because it has a flavour of bygone days, like an artist’s journey to the big city at the dawn of the 20th century. The chapter Casablanca 2000/Open left an especially powerful impression, probably because these processes also have a significant place in my memories of Riga at the start of the millennium. These are tales about things and feelings which in Pormale’s stage designs have moved on from irretrievable days gone past to start a second life. The way in which Zieda has written the book leaves an odd feeling. It seems like Pormale the artist has lived for at least a century and witnessed sharply contrasting eras. In truth, two decades have not yet gone by, but through one person’s experience we discover how concentrated our time is. Thanks to the author for a nuanced examination of Pormale’s experience at the Ruhr Triennale, where she created the stunning visual code for the production of ‘Ice. A collective book reading with the help of the imagination in Gladbeck.’ This chapter makes you feel as if you were there and saw it all with your own eyes. But right next to it we find quite an extensive commentary by Zieda on the German playwright Matthias Lilienthal, the Berlin theatre complex HAU (Hebel am Ufer) and the trio of directors Rimini Protokoll (pages 37-41), which does not fit in with the book at all. This is because I believe that it has little to do with Pormale’s work in Hermanis’ productions at the New Riga Theatre or elsewhere. There are definitely powerful, more relevant parallels to be drawn in contemporary European theatre (such as the creative duet between Christof Marthaler and Anna Fibrok). And at this moment, after reflecting on what I have read and the impression it has left, I understand that I have read a book with a great deal of emotion and poetry, much about daily life (and intimate because of this), a lot about the artist’s fascinating off-stage work including visual art, photography, exhibition and site-specific projects and other spheres, and plenty from Monika herself (quotes from the artist, the concluding conversation), but I haven’t found what I had looked forward to reading. In short, there isn’t a deep analysis of what, to my mind, is one of the artist’s defining experiences: her outstanding cooperation with Hermanis and co-authorship of the New Riga Theatre’s ‘Project Latvia’ (‘Further’, ‘Long Life’, ‘Latvian Love’, ‘The Sound of Silence’), which is unique in the context of both Latvia and world theatre. A close creative partnership between a director and a stage designer is not uncommon. There are a number of other couples like that in Latvia – Viesturs Kairišs and Ieva Jurjāne, Viesturs Meikšāns and Reinis Suhanovs. However I suspect that the collaboration between Hermanis, Pormale and others involved in producing the shows is unique both at the creative phase and in terms of the result, as well as that special dialogue which the artists are able to develop amongst themselves and with the audience. That is exactly why I had hoped that Zieda would undertake to ‘unmask’ and comment on this phenomenon from the perspective of an experienced critic with an wide-ranging knowledge of world theatre. Unlike painting or photography, stage design is a collective art form produced through close and multi-layered cooperation between the director, the actors, the space and materials. I don’t think that a stage set can be thoroughly examined or described outside this complex context. Stage design is not an empty canvas. The moment it becomes populated by a director and actors, it becomes alive and changeable, it begins to be collaborative. This, to my mind an important aspect, is something the book lacks. With all due respect to the author of the idea of Casablanca 2000 Mārtiņš Ķibers, but I would have preferred to read the reflections of the actors in ‘A Long Life’ or ‘The Sound of Silence’ on the acting space created by Pormale, or a dialogue between Hermanis and Pormale about catching and maturing ideas. I can only guess as to whether Margarita Zieda made a conscious decision to have a discussion about Monika Inese Pormale as a major installation artist, exhibition arranger, photographer, video artist and stage designer, who – among other things – works on productions in the New Riga Theatre. The book does mention other less known or forgotten aspects of Monika, but there is some proportion missing. /Translator into English: Filips Birzulis/ | |
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