Glimpses of stolen reality

-Booty Looting, Wim Wandekeybus-

When writing about this show I have to keep it clear in my mind that it is absolutely necessary
to talk about the references. Because booty Looting!, the latest show of Wim Wandekeybus is about
e"plicit references and it would be a pity not to mention them. I confess that I had probably missed
some and perhaps my lecture of the show will not be complete.
#nyway, I will start by saying that there are $ performers %& actors and ' dancers(, a
photographer and a musician who provides live music on stage. )he storyline is simple* the
reconstruction of Brigit Walter+s life, knowing that Brigit Walter is the name of the actress that is
playing herself and all the performers keep their real name on stage.
)he beginning is an ironical homage to ,oseph Beuys+s performance I like America and
America likes me where the actor ,erry -illick plays ,oseph Beuys and the four dancers are the coyotes
attacking him, while .anny Willems, the photographer, is taking as much pictures as possible e"posing
himself to the risk of being attacked. )his is a first reference in order to make a very essentialised
passage through performance history and ,erry aka ,oseph Beuys is pushing the moment even further
by proposing an even more dangerous game, allowing the four coyotes! to tear up his clothes and eat
him alive.
Well, we+re in a theater, actually there is no coyote on stage and the difference between the real
performance %with all the word+s real! connotations( and this fake remake is strongly related to the
title. Booty Looting! means stealing what has already been stolen and in a first phase/ Wandekeybus
steals ,oseph Beuys+ art that Beuys himself had stolen from the reality. 0ou steal from me, I steal from
you. #rt is a bit like that!, says Wandekeybus in an interview.
1ow it+s the moment for Brigit Walter to enter the stage being presented as an anthropologist
interested in ,oseph Beuys+ activity in order to give her opinion about the remake. But everything gets
confusing, she drops dead and all of a sudden she comes back to life as a famous actress.
2or those who know Wandekeybus for his dance perfomances, the right thing to say is that this
show has a bit of everything, as you can see from the cast/ the accent goes on the mi"ture of these
elements %photography, dance, theater, music( and it+s difficult to label it. But, as Wandekeybus
declared in the same interview, his ma3or concern was the photography and its impact on stage. )he
connection between photography and the study that 4oland Barthes wrote about it plays an important
part for a better understanding of Wandekeybus intention. It+s said that people were afraid of being
photographed because they thought their souls were being stolen. 5hotography has a lot to do with
death because it immortali6es something that is gone7dead and Barthes talks also about a special
function of photography, confirming that something happened, something real.
In this performance, there are pictures taken every minute and pro3ected immediately on a big
screen, the photographer gives us pieces7photos of Brigit Walter.+s past. # past that is part true, part
fiction. In this case, photography has a double power* of the past and of the present and it works in the
same way as the theater does* showing something that perhaps it doesn+t e"ist but is present on stage.
)he frame of the photos confronts the frame that the spectators have from their seats, so the
photographer is there for giving another vision, another reality or a made-up one %see the photo session
for reconstructing Brigit Walter+s relationship with her sons having some fake views behind them(.
Who is Brigit Walter8 ,erry -illick is a post-dramatic story-teller, he gives fragmented details
intentionally confusing the listener, the pictures could say a different story and the stage becomes a
mess where everybody can be anyone7anything. Brigit Walter is an anthropologist, an actress, a bad
mother, a desired woman. 9he is 4omy 9chneider playing in L'Infer of :enri Georges ;lou6ot, she
becomes <edea killing her children by putting them on the photocopier and printing images of their
tormented faces. )here is no Brigit Walter, there is a performance playing tricks on memory.