Jerome Bel is a Clown.
A clown is a performer that acknowledges his/her audience, creating a bridge to the stage (it might be in a theater or a circus or a street corner or the frozen foods aisle). Generally clowns use humor and physicality to do this, and universally the clowns job is to get the attention of their audience and raise questions about taboos or assumptions in society.
I took a workshop from Pierre Byland, a well known Swiss clown that taught the Jeune Lune co-foudners, this summer, and he said that the job of the clown is to raise doubt in the audience.
The clown also wants to be loved. Being liked doesn’t matter, love is essential.
Jerome Bel is a clown:
Last night Jerome Bel said that his job as a contemporary artist working in the theater is to do research and “reflect what is happening in our society now” through his performances. That is why it is contemporary art. It is contemporary to now. That’s like a clown. With all the laughter, it looks like he’s using humor to do this. He is also “identified as a choreographer” and uses very specific physicality in his performances. That is also like a clown.
Pichet Klunchun and myself is all about doubt of our assumptions, our values, and essentially what we are doing in the theater.
Jerome Bel also needs love. Without love we would not survive as an artist. He explains the structure of contemporary art as 3 tiered: Artist, Producer/Sponsor, Audience. For the artist to survive the producers and audience support the artist’s research, blindly. They buy nothing, they “make a bet”. The faith in this bet looks a lot like love to me.
Finally, Jerome Bel wears a mask like a clown. The Red Nose of the clown is “the smallest mask in the world”. It allows the clown to do his job and take risks. Jerome Bel has created a mask that is called “Jerome Bel” that allows him to take risks and do his job. It makes me think of Stephen Colbert’s character Stephen Colbert, star of the Colbert Report.
Just one more connection: Jean Baudrillard, the French “philosopher clown” who died last spring argued that modern society creates representation that is more “real” than the original. Isn’t Jerome Bel’s work about representation and the real?
What do you think?
Okay Galen, I am not a trained clown. But I do hold a liability insurance policy from a company called Clowns of the U.S. (required by the Walker when I performed aerial work this summer). And I do know a thing or two about the art of clowning, seeing as I have children and I am just naturally dorky.
I couldn’t agree LESS with your musings of Jerome Bel and furthermore, of clowning!
I just don’t see the point of defining him that way. He acts funny, yes, he has a good sense of timing. He seems to appreciate life, freedom, irony. He has somehow innovated dry endurance into a comedic art form, and I love it.
But I won’t be pulled any further into the clown talk, though I am interested in the art form and I certainly believe there’s much more to clowning than being funny.
There was so much more there for me than the humor. In fact, when he was doing his slow-to-get-it act with Pichet Klunchun, I was not amused at all. (Later, when he said he felt the show might be too long, I came very close to suggesting he drop the stubbornly dumb act but then thought better of it). The ideas presented about live theater, trying to achieve maybe equality between the audience and the performer, going beyond defeating the audience with virtuosity (High legs! Jumps!); the risk funders and ticket buyer take– this held me.
Watching a master (Pichet) do something with unapologetic reverance is so satisfying to me. His mission to renew this reverance for classical Thai dance in his homeland, to marry contemporary dance with the classical style is a noble quest I very much identify with (as a ballet/contemporary dancer). I think once he completes touring this show with Jerome Bel, Pichet will be received more openly in his homeland. It reminds me of how Butoh has evolved in Japan: the battles, the feuds, dispelling tradition, incorporating it.
I wondered about the appearance of spontaneity. Bel told me they never wrote down any text; didn’t video rehearsals to pick out the best parts; there was no director (well, Bel). But the show is essentially working the same material. So Jerome Bel is really an actor. (As a child, he wanted to be an actor but couldn’t remember his lines so he went across the hall where there was dance. Dance! And that was that. But there is alot of acting in dance, even if you are trying to act normal or like yourself or not act at all.)
How is it possible for Pichet to feign self righteousnous each performance about Bel’s domestic situation (he lives unmarried to the mother of his child) while staing his own desire to have a baby though not wanting to marry? I think he is actually pretty okay with the idea of having a child out of wedlock or as a homosexual, but he now has to keep up the act so Jerome can say “I think you should come to the West. You’ll find many women who will give you a baby!”
Pichet is the straight man to Jerome’s clown.
Shit! You got me Galen! But listen, everbody wants love, baby, not just clowns, and I don’t think Jerome Bel cares if anyone loves him or his work so long as he gets to continue. Or maybe he just acts that way.
Comment by Sally Rousse — November 15, 2007 @ 11:29 pm
Norman Mailer said that the novel is more real than non-fiction because facts distort the way we understand reality. A novel can bring to light more ways for someone to understand their world, and is a truer representation of life. I wonder how this relates to Jerome Bell and Jean Baudrillard.
Comment by Sarah Russ — November 26, 2007 @ 2:33 pm
I completely agree . . . Bel is a clown. A way he could really fulfill it further, would be to make eye contact with the audience more often. The clown needs to “check in” with the audience to make sure they are loving him. However, Bel seemed to purposefully try to ignore us, and the few moments he did look at us – usually when “performing” samples from previous work – he was as a clown; simple, honest, vulnerable, present. Yes, these are qualities of any good performer, but combined with all the other things Galen and Sally already mentioned, I think it’s unmistakable. I am inspired to push my clowning further toward Bel’s style of ‘dance’ as I bet others are inspired to push their dancing toward his style of ‘clown’. I look forward to see how contemporary dance will be influenced by Jerome Bel, and how classical dance will be influenced by Pichet Klunchun.
Comment by Noah Bremer — December 5, 2007 @ 11:38 pm
The way you are talking about clowns it sounds like everyone is a clown. George W. Bush is a clown. Aren’t you just talking about “the performance of ‘being interesting to watch’ and ‘present on stage’ ” ? That is such a widely defined concept taken and claimed by many schools of thought on performance from Business Presentations to Royal Shakespeare company . Isn’t the way you are applying clowning to Jerome Bel destroying the context and history of the concept of clowning ?
Comment by Ms Somebody — December 7, 2007 @ 8:41 pm