Michael Caldwell: A Factory of Humanity
Last week I had a great conversation with Michael Caldwell, a conversation that encompassed photo-bombing others' selfies to the mouldy memories that remain in dance studios connected to our student years, sci fi to American politics. But most importantly we talked about his upcoming show Factory, happening September 20-23rd at the Citadel (details at the end).
Michael Caldwell
LR: So…I don’t really know anything about your upcoming show
other than it’s happening. That’s kind of a fun place to start….
MC: Like most pieces we do, it started years ago. The trip I
took in 2010 to Vietnam was the start. I made a choice to really document the
experience through writing, photography, video. That turned into my solo at
dance:made in Canada in 2011. But I had so much more stuff. I was alone in this
country, I could’ve got sick, I could’ve died. I wanted to investigate that
isolation and loneliness.
At face level Factory is about the complexities of
human interaction. Beyond that
it’s about well, how you and I could get into an argument about the
quality of this recording for example. But that argument is influenced by so
many other factors: our commutes, what we ate this morning, something that
happened when I was five that reminds me of this. And we’re not aware of it while
the situation gets intense and out of control very quickly.
On a personal level we understand how that can happen, but
on the macro level people with power make big decisions…
LR: Coming to it with those same influences, they may not be
aware of as they make decisions.
MC: Exactly. The title Factory references an assembly line.
And in our interactions are like an assembly line; we keep understanding and
learning but at the same time these patterns keep recurring, in slightly
different ways but the same thing.
LR: Evolution takes millions of years.
MC: In order to move forward together we have to figure out
our shit.
LR: I just listened to an interview with Glen Beck [former
Fox news super right-wing political commentator] who is now apologizing for how
8-10 years ago he stoked some of the fires and caused some of the polarization
of American people. He was saying how those who feared Obama should be
empathetic to those who fear Trump now. It’s the same fear in a different form.
The only way to move through this is to work together. We don’t have to agree
but we have to work together.
MC: In the piece what you see is the microcosm, but the
bigger idea has grown from it. I overlaid an arbitrary idea onto how we created
the movement: you dancer 1 do this to dancer 2 and dancer 2 do something to
dancer 3 all the way around back to dancer 1. What you do will get back to you.
LR: Ah, a sort of assembly line.
MC: And Factory is also now turning into the idea of factory
as your community and then the question is what do we want to pump out of it? What
do we want to make in response to climate change? What do we as Toronto want to
do about Black Lives Matter? It’s a collective movement of acting together and
by doing it together we can sort things out. In opposition to a leader like
Trump who is functions in isolation.
LR: The word factory could have a slightly negative
connotation to it: automation and remove from humanity….but I like the
expression you used “what do we want to pump out of it”. The word pump makes me
think of the heart, a mini-factory
in each of us. Human beings are the factories and you are pumping something
that is directly human.
MC: I’ve been talking about a lot about technology and
humans with a friend of mine who works at a high level in a technology company.
He said there is no doubt that humans and technology will be totally
integrated. That fact has created two camps. There are a lot of people who say
let’s return to nature and the body and the environment and the other option is
let’s innovate and go go go. And he says if we don’t look at this integration
as a positive now and start thinking
about what this will be and making solutions together, then when we get there [to the total integration]
it’ll be a gong show.
LR: Technology and innovation are not inherently evil. It’s
how it gets used, it’s the corporate ownership that calls ethics into question.
I’ve been reading a lot of sci fi lately and I understand
the social function of it – to criticize society and warn “if we don’t get our
shit together, this is going to happen!” But I long for a sci fi story in which
something goes wrong and we fix it.
MC: Have you seen the movie “Contact” with Jodie Foster? Carl
Sagan wrote the novel it was based on.
LR: Yeah I went to see it right after my dad died. I
actually saw it in that theatre across the street there!
MC: That would’ve been intense….But it had a more positive
view on the future.
LR: Yes. Carl Sagan was pretty special. In kids’ sci fi they
put the hope in the hands of children, characters who run with the positive
idea towards the next horizon. We should put it in the 40 year-olds’ hands too.
There’s a lot of vital energy in 50, 60, 70 year old now, energy they could put
into the problems. Cross-generational work. We’ve got to work together, like
you’re saying.
MC: It’s all
about how we relate and live together. We live together everyday but we just
don’t think about the systems that support us. The streetcar tracks, the bike
lane, the pipes that carry water to wash my hands. They all connect us to each
other so we can function. They are there everyday and all the time, connecting us.
LR: Back to
Factory more specifically….What about the design elements?
MC: When I went to Vietnam back in 2010, people thought I was from every Asian country
possible and then some people just knew I was from Canada. There were subtle clues in how I was
dressed.
The costuming for Factory is like that too. All neutral colours
with hints at character: “Oh that guy is kind of hip, she’s edgy and she’s
conservative.” I wanted to have some element of an era or style.
LR: Not explicit.
MC: No, to hint at another layer of the relationship when
the dancers are together. It’s subtle enough that it’s not the total reading of
the work, but a layer.
LR: It’s great that you are doing something with this big a team. Have you done
anything this big before?
MC: No. It’s great to have a group. But really five is as
much as the Citadel can hold.
LR: It’s funny
how five can still seem like a small group but six becomes a big group.
And what about Phil Strong, the composer?
MC: He is live mixing in sound and space.
LR: What’s it like? What are Phil’s parameters?
MC: His play is
how he rides the performers differences from day to day. Maybe one day a dancer
is a little slower or a little more agitated in their interpretation. He makes
choices to adapt his sound structure.
LR: He must love that. Making the sound based on set ideas
but integrated with the energy of any given moment.
MC: He does
LR: What he does creates another creature. All these creatures
coming together, working together to pump something out of the factory.
MC: The audience is on two sides so the audience is IN
something. The risers are just a little higher than the performers space. To
offer that point of view that we’re in it and we’re watching it together, but
we are separate, watching it from afar but very close.
LR: Just those few inches difference in level.
MC: Seeing each other across the performance….
LR: I love the multiple physical perspectives on performance.
It reinforces that there’s no one right way to see the work.
MC: The proscenium theatre is great because we can abandon
the idea that it’s about us at all, as an audience. The energy is focused
forward, we know we’re not being watched….but then this [audience on two sides]
is a good experience too, that you are part of it. Everyone is part of the
complication and the complexity. You’re being watched, you can’t check out.
Well you can, but someone will see you checking out. You are part of the image.
LR: Part of what someone else is seeing.
MC: Yes and
part of that is seeing someone not taking action when something violent might
be happening. Or someone might be moving in response to the action.
I call it a dioramic view. You’re not in the action.
I want that to be clear. There’s enough separation that you can just watch. You
are close but just that little bit of elevation for the audience creates space.
LR: I think that’s an interesting delicacy to find. How thin can that fourth wall, that separation
be and still keep the magic? The otherworld-ness, even when it is very
recognizable whispers “that’s not me out there but it’s a reflection of me”.
MC: A lot of what I’m doing artistically now -- my
performative, choreographic, presenting, curatorial work -- are working in
tandem and are related. They are merging into one overarching idea: site
responsiveness.
How we respond to the physical make-up and structure of
where we are making our work, the history of the site, the community around it.
Curatorially, I’m interested in programming the works of artists and companies
who think about site. My interests are going towards companies and artists who
are looking at all the things going into the space in order to create the whole
vision.
LR: That’s something I’m very interested in too, it kind of
grew organically over my last few pieces but I’d like to learn how to see
and cultivate that more consciously. While creating my last work Animal
Vegetable Mineral and because of it’s content, I started to feel theatrical spaces of all sorts are like
ecosystems.
There’s always so much to talk about, I am infinitely
curious about how people make stuff. People are doing fascinating things, always. Like this, like
Factory. I am sorry I am out of town for it, but I hope it is a great success. Give
my best to all your dancers and collaborators.
September 20-23, 2018 at 8pm
The Citadel; Ross Centre for Dance
304 Parliament Street
Toronto ON M5A 2Z6
TICKETS:
photos by Zhenya Cerneacov
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