uit een fax van Guus Vreeburg in Rotterdam
aan Jo McCambridge in Melbourne
21 februari 1998

Dear Jo,

Thanks for your fax. I hope this one arrives before you're off to Tas[mania; GV].

I think this morning's show went well. I had (we all had) an immediate liking to Andrew, whose self portrait seemed to present a 'tough one' but who in reality was very friendly and 'warm': a guy you'd like to meet. I think Agaath was pleased, too. We had quite an audience here, with also two women from Muenster (the American lady that you know also, plus her assistant), some neighbours, a secretary from the Academy, and a sister of Alma Brevé; Matthijs was here, too.

What I like about the sessions is the surprise of the slide-couples: sometimes they very nearly match, sometimes they offer wild contrasts.

We had quite an interesting 'post-conversation' conversation here yesterday, starting off from the fact of Angus' quite willfully composed slideshow: where Toine was quite unhappy with them, I found them very pretty and nice and a distinct touch of personality as an extra feature apart from what was asked in the slides (you write that Angus might have been a bit ashamed of what he did, but at least from my point of view he need'nt have been); this difference of opinion between Toine and me led us to a discussion on the nature of the rules and instructions that go with many of his latest works, where the artist acts as a sort of director of others, in stead of doing the actual piece him/herself: to what extent can/may the artist 'direct' his/her 'actors'? When you take John Cage's pieces, for instance, his instructions are general guidelines, 'frames' so to speak, from which the performing musicians might depart and do mostly their own thing, without Cage knowing beforehand what the result is going to be: he just sets the parameters, the points of departure; his stance has always been that he, the composer, wants to 'de-compose', to 'compose away' his own person as far as possible; the instructions he sets are therefor never limitative, always opening and stimulative. I think Angus has been operating as though he expected to be acting within Cage-an instructions. But the situation in your Portraits is different, I think. You might think that I'm now implying that I consider Toine's and yours limitative, but that's not exactly what I mean. Isn't it so that, unlike Cage, both of you have a quite definite idea on the nature of the final works, and that therefore you instructions are meant to me directive to that specific 'end product': you want to come as close as is possible to it. During yesterdays conversation also a comparison was made to musical scores, say of a Mozart symphony. There are 'basically' two ways to deal with them, given the assumption that a score is a transcription/a transposition, as close as is possible, to the thing/the music the composer originally 'heard' in his head: so how do we now approach the score: either we try to reconstruct as closely as possible the sound that we presume to have been inside the composer's head (the 'authentic' approach), or we take the score as a point of departure for our own interpretation of the music: it then becomes much more our own music in stead of Mozart's (as was and is done by many so called Romantic musicians). I think that in Toine being confronted with Angus' interpretation of the instructions regarding the sides, Angus took the Romantic approach, where both of you would have liked him to have taken the 'authentic' approach. The same problematics are apparent in the theatre: when you do a Shakespeare play, are you expected to do a reconsrtuction of the 16th century, or are you allowed or even expected to do it 'your own way', like the version we saw three weeks ago: Shakespeare might hardly have recognized it as his own... And another aspect: when actors cooperate with a director, is the final product 'his' or 'their' thing: in other words: are we watching so called 'directors theatre' or rather 'actors theatre'?
 
To cut short: Angus' thing led us here to a very interesting and fundamental discussion, one that has relevance for art in general, but also specifically relates to Toine's work, and my understanding of it. It has been on my mind for a long time, mostly unconsciously (cfr. the title of the press-release I made for his sound-installation for Het Plafond: 'Niet zingen, Niet zingen!) - implicitly that text deals with the problem that was made explicit by yesterday's Portrait.
 
By the way, all of us (Toine included) agreed, that Angus' approach, idiosyncratic though it was, led to some very beautiful images (eg. the living room, the view from it, the beach scene). Thank him for it, at least on my behalf!
 
It's strange to meet those people, that then, after the half hour has dwindled away, once more are lost for us here: there are many people that I'd like to get to know much better, but then this project hardly gives you that chance: after a small introduction, everybody goes back into his/her own anonimity;  it's like chance-meetings with people on trains or planes. Or like 'zapping' into other people's lives.

I think that, apart from the 'planned' results of your installation, it also offers these illuminating thoughts as a side-effect. They show the richness of the concept behind the whole thing: it produces offspring that was not expected...

To come back to pragmatics: it is advisable to instruct our 'talkers' that they really don't hesitate to pose questions to one another concerning the things that are visible on the slides, rather than just explaining their own slide to the other party. I guess Andrew today really did a good thing, by constantly asking and asking; the talkers also should realise that when they talk about their own situation, which of course is quite 'vanzelfsprekend' (don't know the English equivalent to this word) to them, it may not be to the other party - in such cases 'meaning' and 'content' get lost... it then also takes for the other party to ask about things they don't understand - I can now observe (after 6 conversations took place) that many people are hesitant to ask 'into the deep' ('dóórvragen') - may be they're afraid of becoming too personal (Andrew's delicately posed question to Agaath how long she'd been married was, of course, also a way of discreetly informing about the lady's approximate age...), may be they fear the 'running of time', may be the language difference poses a barrier, too. All of this is not to say that I don't like what has come out of the talks so far, but I think the results could be more profound... On the other hand, Toine might (rightly) say that remarks and ambitions like this bring out the teacher-character that's so typical of me... always wanting to optimalize, to direct and instruct (in that respect, too, the above-mentioned conversation hit home with me myself!). Also: do instruct people that they speak into the microphone, and that they take the trouble to consciously articulate well -  being able to speak in their own language the Australians tend to mumble away, which makes it extra difficult for the Rotterdammers to properly hear + understand...

We have the two projectors situated on top of your two bedside-tables, which are placed on either end of my drawing table, which has been shifted a bit so that the projectors are exectly in front of the two white screens, which hang from 'your' concrete wall - it is therefore not quite barren and naked during the day, as it might have been after your beautyful installation was taken down. The two telephones are placed on my PasToe side-table, which is put halfway under the drawing table; two folding chairs of Miriam are placed on both sides of the PasToe-table for the Rotterdam speaker and myself - this geography creates maximum free floor space, so that the visitors may take their own folding chairs and sit down on either side of the room. The curtain in the front window, and the wooden panel in the side window really darken the room. Every morning I make a big pot of coffee which, together with cups and sugar etc, makes a nice still-life on the corner of the drawing-table. The situation looks quite monumental and serene. The projected slides are like transient pictures: very clear and 'present': beautiful! We're still considering installing a 'lichtbak' in the front window, so that during the day passers-by might see the slides - we're a bit anxious though that the slides might be ruined by exposing them to too much (sun)light... The tape-recordings come out pretty well!

I have the impression, that both the 'talkers' and the visitors enormously enjoy what's going on! The same thing you wrote about people in Melbourne. I'm still very curious to know/see what the Melbourne space/building looks like. Now we're just talking into the telephone, whithout being able to imagine to what space we're talking into: it is really a bit like talking into a black hole: there's really no way to decide wether the black hole ends up in Amsterdam, Brussels or Melbourne... That to a certain degree kills some of the sensation that we're now talking to our antipodes! Could some sort of image be faxed or e-mailed ([...])? It would greatly please me!
 
Yesterday, Toine was interviewed on national Radio 5's programme 'Schuim & Asch'; they also played (I didn't hear it because I had to teach class at that moment) part of the tape with the conversation between Marcelle and Chris. When I got back home, a fax and a message on the machine were awaiting me, from two people (one from Eindhoven, one from Amsterdam) who had heard the programme, and wanted more info.

As you're off to Tas[mania; gv], I shall be off to Berlin on Monday, only to be back late Friday. I will therefore miss Marianne and Ton... I'm well into having some relaxation since I'm very tired (not only physically but also mentally... There's far too many things going on in my life right now, I really need to cut down my activity-programme! I hope that after all the initial stress you shall be able to relax while in Tasmania [...].

Saturdaymorning, 12.15; you're probably sleeping now. I hope this fax will reach you before you're off to Tasmania. [...] The weather has turned gray and bleak, after days of beautifull weather (was this 'early spring of 98', or 'late summer of 97'?) with temps of 15 and even up - it's much colder today, I've turned up the heating. In my kitchen, Dirk (remember him?)is putting some finishing touches to the new kitchen cabinet over the stove, which I've been constructing, and which really is a great asset to the place - you'll see when you get back; also he's repaired the Koolhaasian bump in the floor. Things are going for the better here: I hope for you, too! I give you a big bear's hug,

Guus