Goodiepal
Posted by Aeron Bergman
The Goodiepal has been developing his lecture/performance/concert to new levels of subtle complexity. I saw him tonight in Oslo´s Blå. He uses footage from his lecture on “The 11th Hour“, a Danish TV show, in the background while moving around his objects on a desk on stage. He comes in and out of sync with the video, playing a duet with himself. Since the lecture seems to be about time, and all recorded media shows the melancholy progress of the aging process, the older and younger Goodiepal doing harmonies with mouthed creature noises is funny and sober at the same time. Some people laugh and shake their heads because there is something touched and far away from a normal concert going on here. But many other people, rock and rollers, club people, bartenders, jazz guys, and college students stand there quietly wondering if the next sentence will make sense of it all.
I wonder where he should be performing these works. I dont like clubs, and I have a feeling that he plays in too many crappy places. Art spaces may suit him better, give him the platform where people wouldn´t cat call or spill beer on his drawings. But I think he likes the bad atmosphere of a club. Perhaps he thinks clubs are real, utilitarian spaces filled with upfront emotions. He told us earlier tonight that he recently played some shows in the Virgin Islands where the audiences were mostly racist pot heads. That sounds real… real crappy.
In fact, he seemed strangely comfortable and in sync on that Danish TV show. It allowed the same sort of general public a chance to judge his wandering arguments without it being arty. He misses out on direct feedback (which he obviously enjoys), and on traveling (another passion), but TV laid out his work in a straightforward, unaffected way. TV protected him from the elements that beat him up and stabbed him on the street in London a few weeks ago because he looked strange.
Here is a short movie from Blå.
