Guus Vreeburg on Toine Horvers on Tamar de Kemp on Tim Etchells - on theatre
commissioned by visual artist Toine Horvers as an introduction to his project
'Tim Etchells' self portrait' for the 'Beeldspoor' of the Rotterdam Municipal Theatre; April 2008/July 2008
published in the folder accompanying the project in the 'Beeldspoor'-series. Rotterdam Municipal Theatre, June 2008
original Dutch version of this text here
Toine Horvers. Tim Etchells' self portrait. 2008
Guus Vreeburg on Toine Horvers on Tamar de Kemp on Tim Etchells – on theatre
Tim Etchells writes: observing himself in a mirror he describes, as accurately as he possibly can, the effects of light and shade that he sees on his head and shoulders – a classic bust. His description of himself results into readable text. It seems that we can’t approach the ‘real’ Tim closer than here, where Reality describes itself through Tim…
Tim observes the realities of the world and describes what he sees, plus his interpretation of it. That is what a man of the theatre does: he produces a script, a libretto – an extract of reality observed, an abstraction of it. It’s up to others to interpret it into a new reality – that of a stage play – over and over again. Ever so many Hamlets, and not even one of them is the true one, not even one the truth, let alone Reality itself.
Tamar de Kemp writes as well: observing Tim’s head and shoulders (his bust) through a lens, she records the effects of light and shade through her camera in light and shade – ‘photography’ being ‘writing with light’… Tamar’s description of the ‘real’ Tim results into a visible, visual image.
The photographic image had a reputation of being ‘real’ – but just how much the photographer/light-writer manipulates the light he works with in order to make the light he describes look different from ‘normal’, in order to make that light present us with a reality the photographer chooses to show us?
Toine Horvers, too, writes: he writes Tim’s text on Tim on top of Tamar’s image of Tim. Toine often works that way. His ‘writing on top’ results into a sort of drawing, a ‘textual image’. It may both be read and viewed.
This ‘textual image’ is true to Tim’s description of himself and to Tamar’s image, yet at the same time eroding both of them. Toine’s ‘drawing’ makes Tim’s words less clearly readable, and Tamar’s image behind it is affected as well.
We might use this reality, this script to sparkle our own imagination… and shall we, in our turn, present the result of that to an audience? See: ‘theatre’!
