Hugo Roelandt

"The interplay of three realities, all non-material: the performer on FILM, the preparations on a SLIDESHOW, and the performance on VIDEOTAPE, all run synchronously to present one post-performance that tells the public how it came about."  - Hugo Roelandt

< Kaaitheater, April 1981, Nieuwe Workshop, Brussels

< De Vleeshal, Middelburg (Holland)

In Post Performance 3 three realities interact. There is, first of all, a past reality made present by the film. In this past reality Roelandt acts as if he is in the same reality as the audience watching the film: he welcomes viewers, tells them what is going to happen, etc. But occasionally he disrupts the illusion of this enactment, accentuating the reality of the time frame in which the film was made, for example by talking to the members of the film crew. By means of the film medium Roelandt announces yet another reality which is established by means of two video screens. From within his film reality, Roelandt watches the videos together with the audience. On the video we see two different tapes of a performance (done especially for this project) of the occupation (by peaceful means) of a small Antwerp shopping street, the Groendalstraat. We see how a lot of individuals ‘occupy’ the street by standing in it at regular distances. The camera records the reactions, ranging from neutral to dismissive and even irritation, of the passers-by. The video-based reality is augmented with a slide series on the making of the video tape, thus again disrupting that reality by bringing it back to the moment of its creation. The slides are projected on the film screen so that they seem to become part of the first film-based reality. The project is thus about itself, and about the interaction of realities and media. The video introduces the only narrative element. It focuses on a theme that Roelandt has been concerned with since his early performances: the social behaviour of individuals and groups of individuals. Post Performance 3 is the third in a series of performances started in Antwerp in early 1980. they all have themselves as subject matter and evoke different realities using a variety of media.

(Abstracts from Hugo Roelandt: Let's Expand The Sky, red. Mark Holthof, Occasional Papers, London, 2016)