ANTARCTICA FOR 2 (OR MORE, UNTIL IT’S 1 TOO MANY…) by Vito Acconci/Acconci Studio
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Vito Acconci/Acconci Studio ANTARCTICA FOR 2 (OR MORE, UNTIL IT’S 1 TOO MANY…) Theater-Piece In Words Only, For 2 Actors At A Podium + Lights Whitechapel Gallery, London, Feb 2011
(House lights go off, podium lights out) (W:) Come into the dark…
(M:) Yes…Yes, we can’t see anything, we’ve never been to Antarctica, there’s nothing to remember…
(W:) So…Slip inside an Antarctica of the mind: in the dark, let’s lie back and sleep, let’s dream of Antarctica…
(M:) But then we pinch ourselves and we know we’re not dreaming; we are seeing something after all, we’re seeing all there is to see. It’s dark here, one-sixth of the year, it’s almost dark another third of the year…
(Podium lights fade in) (W:) So let’s build a building of light: it could be a bundle of light, loops of light — or it could be points of light, the ends of extending tubes of light, like periscopes of light. When a plane comes in, these lights guide the landing…
(M:) But nobody comes here much; those lights won’t be necessary most of the time…
(Podium lights fade out) (W:) Think of the building as a landing field: not for planes really, but for information – information from the skies comes down to land here, information can be pulled down from the stars…
(Podium lights fade in – out – in – out) (M:) But we don’t need light to watch the skies; let’s build a building that turns on and off – the lights turn off, and we disappear into nothingness as we watch the lights of the sky…
(Podium lights fade in) (W:) But your eyes get used to the dark after a while, and the land here is white: the world here is a sheet of ice — it’s too white, too bright, to sleep…
(M:) So think of this world as a white sheet of paper, a blank page. Get past dreaming and doodling: let’s use this page to make fictions on, for one thing, and to make calculations on, for another…
(Podium lights fade out) (W:) So let’s start again. Come out into the snow, come out and play in the snow…not snow really, but snow-after-the-snowfall, snow as the hard implacable fact of ice…
(M:) Let’s surf the ice — slide and glide over the ice…
(W:) The building-on-stilts is dead: there’s no need for telescoping supports, no need for the building to rise over the ice as the ice accumulates — long live the building that rides the ice, long live the building that floats…
(M:) Let’s build a building that’s a balloon, a balloon that’s a building…
(W:) Let’s build a building that rolls with the punches. It’s a balloon-within-a-balloon, a sphere-within-a-sphere: as the outer sphere turns and shifts while rolling over the ice, the inner sphere remains stable, horizontal…
(M:) Now that we’ve gotten our building rolling, there’s no stopping it: the building splits like an atom, the building floats out of itself, the building separates into a complex of buildings…
(W:) Let’s build a city of balloons…
(M:) Sometimes the balloons roll apart from each other, like space-capsules, like personal space-bubbles; for passage between them, a tubular bridge can telescope, stretch, from one to the other…
(W:) Let’s build a city of molecules…
(M:) Sometimes the balloons come together, bump into each other like ships in the night: each balloon is a shape-shifter — one swells while the other shrinks…When the breaking point is reached, each balloon breaks to make passage between them…
(W:) Let’s build a city that lives like a virus. Long live the virus that combats the health of the ice…
(Podium lights fade in) (M:) Wait: stop – look – listen…Step back for a moment and survey what we have from afar: in the dark, on the snow, we’re building balloon-buildings lit from within – when one balloon-building melds, for the time being, with the other, the colored lights of one swirl through the colored lights of the other, and vice versa…
(W:) Questions rise to the surface, like tiny flies: what level of impact is required…how much energy will be spent…Think, analyze, diagram, calculate…
(M:) But we’re getting woozy; our skin is numb, our muscles and joints are numb, our minds are numb – it’s too cold to think here…
(W:) So let’s begin again…
(Podium lights fade out) (M:) Brave the cold, come outside into the cold…
(W:) Let’s build a complex of buildings that have skin like an animal… Since these skins will be manufactured, and made of plastic or carbon fiber, there can be a fur that’s braided and knotted, to stop the wind…
(M:) Or a sealskin that’s pleated, folded, corrugated, to divert the wind…
(W:) Or a reptile skin that’s flexible, pliable enough to be pushed in and pulled out to trap the wind, repel the wind…
(M:) Let’s build a building that wraps around itself…a building that swallows itself…a building that turns inside out of itself…
(W:) Fixed within frost, in the face of the wind, we go into the building and live as if, in the middle of a raging ocean, we’re inside the belly of a whale…
(Podium lights fade in – out – in – out – in) (M/W together:) The building is like a glow inside a mountain, a secret world inside the mountain, undetected from the outside. Each room is a different kind of light, a different color of light; it’s the light that makes the room, shapes the room – the room doesn’t need walls to separate itself, it’s the light that separates the room. We walk from room to room, from hard light to soft light, from still light to variable light, from one color into another. Once our work is done for the day, we have some time to relax. The light is composed of images; just as, with audio-speakers surrounding us, we can be in the middle of music, we can be here in the middle of a movie, a movie that’s as palpable as the air we breathe, a movie that is the air we breathe. Instead of being entertained, we have entertainment slipped under our skin, instilled into our bones. The air here is heated in such a way that we can float in the air, like the floating building we’re inside of. In the middle of Antarctica, Antarctica floats out of itself for a while, away from us, and leaves us in a world-in-itself, that becomes a world of our own… (M goes off the podium, leaving W alone.)
(Podium lights fade out) (W:) I’m alone now, this is what I wanted all the time…I’m outside. I’m out in the cold. I have to move to keep warm. I can’t let my face freeze, I can’t let my face freeze. So I’m spreading my mouth out into a grin. I’m wrinkling my nose. Now I’m stretching my lips down over my mouth. Now I’m puffing out my cheeks. Now I’m pressing my eyes closed. Now I’m cupping my hands over my face. Now I’m pulling at my lips, my eyes, my nose…I.ve settled down. I’ve built a cave out of the snow. I’ve built a cave around me. My realization is: I’ve been trapped by a roof-fall. I’m buried alive, I have to stay where I am, I have to stay where I am. I can’t risk any movement. I mustn’t shake the house down, I mustn’t shake the house down. My thoughts are: I hear ghosts. But no, no, it’s only the reflection from a passing plane – a plane does come here now & then, after all. The ghosts can’t get me. It can’t happen here. See: I’ve tied black cotton across the doorway – it hasn’t been broken. I’ve shaken powder over the floor – it hasn’t been moved. No, there isn’t a trace of you. I have proof: I’ve proven you aren’t here. Soon I’ll signal. I’ll signal for help. Soon I’ll send my message. I’ll fly a kite. I’ll wave a flag. Soon I’ll whistle. Then I’ll keep quiet again, to see if there’s any response… (All the while W has been talking, she’s been working herself up into tears: she’s crying now.)
(Podium lights fade in) (M comes back to the podium, he looks as if he’s about to touch W) (M:) There…There…This isn’t real, it’s only a rehearsal, we’re only playing, this isn’t real… (Podium lights fade out, house lights go on)
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