Luca Büchler in conversation with KUNSTVEREIN GARTENHAUS 

As an artist you work mainly with performance decontextualising everyday movements to think about how we – consciously or unconsciously – perform various identities. How did you start?

As a queer person at some point in my live I found myself partly excluded from the applicable norm and asking myself who I am and why. Which is a challenge — because of a constant questioning — and gift at the same time. Identity is not something that is formed within one day, it’s a fluid thing that can change. But with that comes an examination of what my ​„reality“ is. And I think that is where this constant observation mode comes from. It’s a privilege to then let this approach finding an output within my artistic practice.

The Way I are, premiering at KUNSTVEREIN GARTENHAUS, uses the practice of cruising as a starting point to reflect on body movements. Can you tell us more about it?

Cruising originated in the early 20th century from gay men which where looking for sexual intercourses. As same sex intercourse was not legal, it was pushed into public and semi-public spaces defined by sublime gestures and gazes. My interest in cruising gathers different aspects of this practice but leaves out the sex. I use it as a tool to analyse this thread of connections between body and person – the interpersonal – and its resemblance to dance. A body moves through a space in constant state of readiness, observing another body. Interestingly this also happens at a bar or at a bathhouse but this is already facing an excluding moment for people who can’t afford it or who could not been seen there. Public space can be used by anybody and with that there is no hierarchy . So you have a lot of different people coming together where you analyse the gestures as well as outfits to question their identity. As Leo Bersani so beautiful writes: ​„you’re also learning something about the other’s identity“. I tried to apply this to my own movement and how it can be performed in multiple forms to open up a specific moment to the watching stranger. As I like to say, questioning identities suspended between fact and fiction.

The piece opens a broader reflection on visibility and invisibility through the rhythmic use of stadium lamps switching on and off, employed also sculpturally. Do you see the lamps as active tools or as an element to accompany the action?

The lamps are not only a tool for me, but also an autonomous artistic work. They go on/​off independently and perform independently.. Through their specific characteristics, the slow switching on and the different light colouring, they transform the space and the perception of it.
In the performance, however, I see them as an element of support. They show this dialogue, which I have with myself when it comes to my inscribed movements and how they come out. Taking inspiration from the language of advertising the lights are positioned in the space so they are directly facing the walls, rather than the performer. Through the indirect projection of my body over these empty walls, the lights make visible how things can morph and be received differently through movements.

For the sound you collaborated with Paul Ebhart, how this collaboration unfolded and what is the role of sound in this piece?

It was clear to me that I wanted to work with pop songs, because they strongly influenced my movements since early childhood. Together we selected a series of songs based on their content, which questions the I‑state / the self, and decontextualised them so that they are no longer really recognisable. In addition, Paul produced samples that create a soundscape in which the different layers flow into each other. The collaboration was incredibly good, because he totally understood what I was imagining and he was able to implement this repetition, which is also found in the movements. It was my goal to create a field of tension, which moves between spherical and darker moments.

Using tools such as repetition and long duration the work questions the unstable relationship between audience and performer.

I think repetition and duration are two tools that go hand in hand. If we think about repetition out of cruising Roland Barthes captures it quite well when he writes, that it ​“implies a temporality that accentuates the meeting, ​„the first time“.” So it has this moment of repeating itself but is every time absolutely fresh as it changes with every person. And by sharing the same desire you somehow create a community. As I briefly explained within cruising, I think performance deals with similar aspects of being physically present at a certain time and space. There are different forms of participating, the passive form where it’s more about observing and witnessing or the active physical part. Both can equally mean pleasure. And with pleasure, I’m thinking further than just penetration. In a performance, there is a similar situation where there is this shared experience of little epiphanies, micro-intimacies, and the constant possibility for a viewer to decide in which way they want to participate or leave the space at all. This is why I decided to work with long duration and looping, to embrace this infinite decision-making on a personal and collective level.