Before Inez mentions Santa Claus for the first time, she presents facts about Rotterdam as well as its sites and buildings. It soon becomes obvious that Inez is fascinated by movement: she shows pictures of the port and refers to the ship which historically connected Rotterdam with the United States. Moreover, she is strongly attracted by the Erasmus bridge, which connects North- and South-Rotterdam, and she gives positive attention to tourists, who are willing to explore the city. Inez’s presentation of her hometown implements a sphere of something which one can call her/his “own”. Her talk overflows with cultural stereotypes about the Netherlands, which function for Inez as identification markers of her “own” culture: “Now Rotterdam has become the city of ambitious new architecture. My favourite architectural highlight is the Erasmusbridge, named after the famous dutch filosofer [sic] Desiderius Erasmus.”4
The mention of Paul McCarthy’s Santa Claus interrupts these naïve images of someone’s “home” and “own culture”:
These are my parents, they are still together, and they also live in Rotterdam. And every Sunday they have a coffee at my house. And since 28 november 2008 this is my view. It’s an artwork of the American artist Paul McCarthy He is living in LA It pictures a black Santa Claus with a butt-plug in his hand.5
The sculpture is staged as an alien element not only on the textual, but also on the visual level: as distinctly as Santa Claus changes Inez’s narrative of Rotterdam and its rich culture, it distracts from the photo-presentation the audience is following. The audience’s view of a happy Inez surrounded by family and her cat is interrupted Santa Claus, which becomes the focal point of the presentation. This makes it impossible to create a positive image of “one’s own.”
Looking for Paul (2010), © Wunderbaum
Looking for Paul (2010), © Wunderbaum
Whereas “travelling” in the first minutes of her presentation was discussed in the context of Inez’s “own” culture, stressing the “origin” of Paul McCarthy and his sculpture adds an “outside” element to the performance.
Cultural transfer is mostly connected to “failed transfer” in this performance: the art of an U.S.-based artist can’t be well received in Europe (“I read Mr McCarthy saying that he doesnt [sic] know anything about European culture. That his work comes out of the kids television in Los Angeles. That he dididn’t [sic] go through Catolicism [sic] and World War two, that his ketchup is ketchup and not blood. So why does he want to throw this uberamerican work in my european katholic [sic] face then??.”6). At the same time people in L.A. can’t understand the work of Wunderbaum. This is discussed during the reading of the e-mail-correspondence. On the other hand, failed transfer is the starting point of Looking for Paul. It is the irony of the performance that Inez is willing to join Wunderbaum on their travel to L.A. and in this way reenact the travel of Santa Claus (which she perceives as an aggressive occupation of Rotterdam), only this time in the different direction. Inez’s dislike of McCarthy’s sculpture Santa Claus, which—following her narrative—was installed in 2008 across from her Rotterdam house and bookstore, sparks another conflict, which turns out to be central to the performance. Inez accompanies the group to L.A. because she wants to get back at McCarthy.
The second and longest part of the performance is spent reading out the e-mails. As mentioned above, the reading starts with Wunderbaum’s invitation to the renowned REDCAT theatre in Los Angeles (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theatre) in fall 2010. The invitation sparks controversies among the group regarding the material and form of the new production. The entire group feels insecure about working in the United States. The first e-mail from Walter, where he announces that they will go to L.A., emphasizes these difficulties: “But always when you work in another country, in another culture, it is difficult to find some sort of way to understand one another …”7 The e-mail-correspondence registers contrasting ways of dealing with this lack of confidence. They therefore discuss different solutions, all related to cultural transfer between the U.S. and Europe: The group considers staging existing U.S. plays like Tennessee William’s A streetcar named desire or doing a non-text-related performance (“[…], I don’t think we should do an existing theatre play. We have never done that. I think we have to do something special in LA. A bit more European. That is what they like.”8) The L.A. sponsors instead try to encourage them to do something “European”: “I think Californians would rather see something ‘raw’ and ‘edgy’ and not just hear about you guys stalking someone. Sadly enough celebrities are getting stalked here all the time. […] The LA audience would really appreciate it if you did something more abstract, for example along the lines of Pina Bausch.”9 Wunderbaum finally agrees on one idea: following Inez van Dam’s journey from Rotterdam to L.A. and helping her get back at McCarthy. The crucial point is that they found something supposedly “other” in the sculpture of McCarthy, which actually concerns their “own” culture and identity. If the sculpture of McCarthy seemed overwhelming in the first part of the performance, in the second section McCarthy gradually diminishes and is ultimately replaced by Wunderbaum’s own involvement. Although the audience could expect that Looking for Paul will finally lead to a meeting of Wunderbaum and McCarthy, this never happens in L.A..
The performance is centered on the search for McCarthy, and taking a stance on his work. In the course of the production process, the former outsider Inez van Dam gets involved with the collective, and eventually takes part in the McCarthy reenactment during the third section of the performance. The production charts the transformation of Inez from a decisive critic of the “butt plug gnome” to a performer of lesbian S/M scenes during the McCarthy reenactment, which concludes with her uttering the words “I love you.” Due to the e-mail-exchange, the text has a fairly classical dramatic form, which contains a lot of dialogue and speeches. These revolve around the idea, the conception, the performative negotiation and finally the realization (hence, the actual dramaturgy) of the performance.
Looking for Paul is motivated and driven by the search by an artistic community for artistic predecessors. The motive of the search, not the actual find, is central. When Wunderbaum actually meets Paul McCarthy at the opening of an exposition in Los Angeles, they do not even talk. The relational dramaturgy of the search for the other generation cannot be fulfilled. As with a deferred signification or movement, the search ends with the occupancy of the other generation by means of the embodiment of the predecessors in the performance. Looking for Paul is a reenactment within the fine arts, mirroring traces of the sexual liberation movements of 1968 and the revolution of dramaturgical conventions. Though at first sight postdramatic, Looking for Paul actually contains conventional dramatic elements like the fictional protagonist, conflict, and the creation of tension, which ultimately is released. The third part even has a cathartic function. The five performers seem to assault and penetrate each other with food as they spatter ketchup, mayonnaise and chocolate sauce on the stage and on each other. They fill their orifices with fluids and snacks, the smells of which permeate the audience space. All of this appears less aggressive, twisted and forced than McCarthy himself, and rather emphasizes