Life is but great

Ralf Ziervogel’s residency sets out to explore man’s revolution with self and meaning. LIFE IS BUT GREAT draws inspiration and content from the spirit of the Watermill Center, through its architecture, collection, and Robert Wilson’s vision. Mystical and iconic symbols are created from the objects of our reality and placed within a theatrical environment. The audience is tempered by the black evening surroundings set outside an urban context of constant leaking light. Focused on vehicle headlamps and thumping club music from car stereos, the audience is directed towards the grey, cement black tower space of Wilson’s “Knee” entrance. Drawn in by candlelight placed on ceremonial platforms, the audience hears the trance-like music of the choir-like song, “Spiderpig.” Wilson’s “Knee” is a place where individuals are momentarily disoriented: forced to change their pace due to the uneven riverbed rocks underfoot, a floating roof open to the sky, a metal gangplank cutting across or joining the two side of the building. And here, the audience encounters a strung-up slaughtered pig; as if frozen in the motion of being propelled forward; a swatiska of candles, the warm glow against the cold grey concrete. Once there, it is hard to determine whether the music is from a mass or satirical mass-consumerism? Outside the “Knee,” the cars’ light spills onto a great funeral post from Borneo, meant to hold the bones of ancestors, but now, holding bunches of black balloons clustered like grapes. Inside and below, in the basement of the “Knee,” the shadows and remnants of past Ziervogel works are arranged both static and pathologically on one side and flippantly on the other. Light is scarce; shadows reflect a distorted and disorienting environment. What happens to our definition of value and worth when the mystical and real perform in these juxtapositions? Our performance in Wilson’s theater produces what reaction and subsequent actions? Life is but great? Or, life is but great.