Despite being one of the most talked-about artists working today, Tino Sehgal does very little talking about what he does. Interviews with him are a rarity, and I was not granted one, but I can say I sang with him during the opening performance of his work, This Variation, awarded the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Biennale, now in performance at the Manchester International Festival. Having contributed to 11 Rooms at the last MIF in 2011, when he presented visitors with a series of mysterious children all claiming to be called Ann Lee, Sehgal now takes us to a darker place, with surprisingly uplifting results.
Walking into one of the many archways underneath the Mayfield Depot, a disused railway station adjacent to Manchester Piccadilly, you are directed into a lightless space. At first, not being able to see anything, visitors start bumping into one other. But simultaneously, you’re aware of human voices and noises all around, clicking, hissing, whooping, and rapping.
To avoid jamming up the entrance, I decided I would keep moving forwards even though I couldn’t see where I was going, and could only guess at the shape of the space we were in. Some sounds are close – voices are next to your face. Evidently performers, of which there are perhaps ten, sometimes cluster around visitors, soon as they’re inside. To let others know I was there, I started joining in with the voices, trying to make a harmony. The brickwork space reverberates well.
Vocal variations develop, often generated by men providing a boom-box rhythm and women singing a melodic line, but sometimes it’s the other way round. As one variation ends, there may be a gap, and performers sometimes start talking – I heard testimonies about menial work, sexuality, and race. More hissing and clicking ensues, and the space seems charmed, as I imagine it filled with glittering alien insects of some sort. In the dark, the mind paints vivid pictures when stimulated by sound.
In fact, you get used to the dark. But also, very occasionally, there’s subtle lighting from high up, allowing you to make out the shapes of the group in the space. Initiating an up-tempo rap, the performers start to dance. Moments like this have been tightly rehearsed, but during four to five hours of performance, they’re triggered by a trust in the power to invent by improvisation.
Suddenly, light brightens. Voices rise in intensity. It’s joyful. There’s enough light for me to see the face of the performer standing next to me. I am singing away, quite unembarrassed, and he is looking at me, singing and grinning from ear to ear. It is unmistakably the face of Tino Sehgal. Then we lose the light. And the song morphs into something familiar and appropriate: The Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations.
This Variation feels very simple when you’re experiencing it, but the way it comes to life within the imagination is fascinating, leaving the impression that you have been somewhere timeless, doing something almost ancestral but modern.
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