Instructions for Forgetting
Created 2001
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“I ask my friends to send stories and videotapes. For the stories I ask for things that are true. The topics can be anything. I ask for short reports on things that have happened in the world. For the tapes I say: Don’t make me anything special—send what you have.”
Using home movies, letters and videotapes from friends alongside recordings of world events, Instructions for Forgetting explores video as an artefact, as a container of image and memory and as an occasion for speculation, storytelling, fiction, interpretation.
A solo performer (Tim Etchells) and a video operator (Richard Lowdon) sit at their tables in a space strewn with video monitors, VCRs, cables, untidy stacks of videotapes. The performer speaks, relaying stories, speculations, letters from friends in different parts of the world. Images are continuously rewound, narratives fast-forwarded, slivers of the past caught in freeze frame, fiction drawn out in an agony of slow motion. Part intimate essay, part fragmentary narrative, Instructions for Forgetting is a surprising and comical documentary performance, at the centre of which is the process of mapping the links between personal history and the broader histories called culture and politics.
Images
credits
Written and performed by Tim Etchells in collaboration with Hugo Glendinning (video) and Richard Lowdon (design).
Commissioned by Wiener Festwochen 2001 (Vienna).
Instructions for Forgetting - PREVIOUS SHOWS
P-House, Tokyo, Japan
24 Feb 2006 - 26 Feb 2006
Beijing NLGX International Performing Arts Festival, Beijing, China
6 May 2005 - 8 May 2005
25 Oct 2004
4 Mar 2004
Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis, USA
29 Jan 2004 - 1 Feb 2004
Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, USA
17 Jan 2004
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club NYC, USA
8 Jan 2004 - 25 Jan 2004
Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster, UK
11 Nov 2003
SPIELART Festival, Munich, Germany
4 Nov 2003 - 5 Nov 2003
Kunstencentrum STUK, Leuven, Belgium
5 Oct 2003
Rotterdamse Schouwburg Rotterdam, The Netherlands
15 Sep 2003 - 16 Sep 2003
Bonington Gallery, Nottingham, UK
27 Feb 2003
National Review of Live Art, Glasgow, UK
22 Feb 2003
Theater im Pumpenhaus, Munster, Germany
8 Feb 2003 - 9 Feb 2003
Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
30 Jan 2003 - 31 Jan 2003
Volksbühne-Prater, Berlin, Germany
16 Jan 2003 - 18 Jan 2003
Festival Nouvelles Scènes at Le Consortium, Dijon, France
19 Oct 2002 - 20 Oct 2002
Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Kaaitheater, Brussels, Belgium
15 May 2002 - 16 May 2002
Studio Theatre, Leeds, UK
6 Mar 2002 - 7 Mar 2002
BIT teatergarasjen, Bergen, Norway
15 Feb 2002
Black Box teater, Oslo, Norway
9 Feb 2002 - 10 Feb 2002
Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt, Germany
24 Jan 2002 - 25 Jan 2002
Nieuwpoorttheater, Gent, Belgium
14 Dec 2001 - 15 Dec 2001
Podewil, Berlin, Germany
27 Nov 2001 - 29 Nov 2001
Wiener Festwochen, Vienna, Austria
31 May 2001 - 4 Jun 2001