This third project was born out of Joan Schertenleib’s wish to share a particular experience with DIPS and Alvin Schwaar.
Joan felt the strong urge to express himself through an artistic project, not knowing yet in which shape. The good thing about Brudaism is that it centres on the raw impulse of an individual and is less interested in the result. It speaks from the gut, without filters, and puts people in situation.
When individuals meet, it is not by chance, it is an offered possibility.
Joan thought that creating was necessarily a planned-out process, organised in order to attain a fixed objective, as it is in many professions. However, creation has no rules nor master, it is moved only by the perpetual wish to redefine the world. It is to be distinguished from culture, which is normative from a societal point of view and defines our attitudes. Brudaïsm, on the other hand, aspires to nothing but to live.
Staging an Impulse
Joan wants to destroy a big rock with the strength of his arms, using a sledgehammer. The idea came to him like an illumination. A deep drive which grew in him without his knowing where it came from. We all have impulses, but then there is the wish to transpose them into ideas and put them into practice. In Brudaïsm, putting into action is linked to Kairos, meaning the act of seizing an opportunity and acting on it as sole exhaustive temporal notion. Joan will later admit that his physical performance was a way to hide behind his strength and a strong stage impression, but that in the end he felt vulnerable staging this form of virility.
The Earth of our Ancestors
We set up in Chaumont (CH) for a week. We stretch huge canvasses on the floor and on the walls in the stable of the farm where Joan grew up. The landscape that surrounds us is sumptuous. The family domain is located on the north-west side of Neuchâtel lake. From there, a beautiful view on the three lakes of Morat, Bienne and Neuchâtel. Afar, as if from a miracle, the Alps emerge from the depths to dominate the plateau. There were zones of convergence and tectonic tension at the origin of these angular summits which sometimes look like teeth. Our privileged gaze on this natural jewel reminds us that our time on earth is but dust. We are in the den of the Schertenleib family. We are body with its past and that of its ancestors. It is here, with his forefathers, that Joan learnt to handle tools. For our project, his brother tears off an enormous calciferous bloc from the side of the neighbouring mountain and sets it on three large rocks at the centre of our creation space. The boys master agricultural machinery and various construction-site vehicles, mechanical shovels and such. They work with disconcerting ease. They plan mentally and progress by objectives. The energy we feel in Chaumont is particular. People here have worked hard to create their corner of paradise and, paradoxically, some aspire to leave it.
In the Fire
Wednesday morning, the 6th of July 2022, the painter is hit by stones on the scapula and the torso which open his skin and cause bone pain. After these impacts, he takes refuge behind a big canvas stapled to two wooden slats and set against the wall. The painter feels Joan is not himself anymore. At the beginning of this third day of creation Alvin plays progressive rhythms which created a state of trance. DIPS feels the energy and the anger rise from the earth and fill the space. A macabre heat he translates into throwing red paint on the rock. This reduces the visual field of the sculptor and maintains him focused on his initial objective : destroying the rock. In twenty minutes, Joan inflicts a burst of hits reducing the rock of a third. Then, a long silence sets despite Alvin’s musical compositions which continue. Between the violent metallic sounds against the rock and the soft melodies of the musician, their emotions are reduced to silence. A soothing and harmonious silence. DIPS reappears from his hiding place and goes to the rock. Halfway, he sees a splinter of stone resembling a heart. He takes it and decides to build an altar on the big rock with the debris on the floor. He paints the altar white and sets the heart-shaped stone on it, which he also paints white. Joan is exhausted and observes, speechless. He jumps to his feet, takes black paints he mixes with water in a canister. He turns his spalter clockwise to obtain a perfectly homogenous liquid. Then, with a light movement, spills the black paint on the altar. The paint flows down the structure now erected as a symbol. On the white background, black roots appear ; a heart of stone amid the stone and the picture becomes black. Joan takes the largest of his sledgehammers and aims : right at the heart. He shatters the altar in a few seconds and reduces it to small rubble, until he’s breathless.
Skin
This Wednesday morning, tears fell on the canvas and tremors oscillated to the rhythm of moulting skin. Painting absorbs woes. It replaces fights with silence. Three beings sorting rocks and shaping their thoughts, each alone and trembling on the calciferous debris. Efforts in vain, and comfort. Time eludes us all. Let’s transform it into opportunities to seize. A gigantic circle of sediment sits on a wet canvas. Everywhere on the floor are huge piles of rocks. The rocks are parsimoniously coloured following the folds they present. Later, the three together will bury these coloured debris at the foot of the mountain asking themselves this question : is it possible to dismantle a rock ?
Heritage
We are closely linked to stone. It has shaped our civilisations, transformed our landscapes and modified our societal behaviours. It is sculpture, it is cathedral. It is appearance when we wear it as jewellery and defines us as social class. It is object of desire for wealth. Our houses are of stone. It anchors us and makes us proud of our lineage. It makes us believe that the space can belong to us: our privatised properties define us of rights and obligations of protection. It is jealousy, vile and venal. There is no war without it. It pushed individuals to climb the highest peaks to quench fantasies of nationalism. It opened the way to the new world and territorial discoveries through the myth of the Eldorado. Sisyphus himself is nothing without stone, nor are the brutalists. It is courage and beauty. It orients our choices and erases our uncertainties. It is bed for the torrential current. It is the yellow and precious stone of dealers and the addictive substance of the excluded of the underworld. It regenerates after fusion. It is porous and gritty, marked by time. It is torn off glaciers and constitutes our valleys and fjords. It becomes canyons and calanques when it dances with the water. Per instant, our heart can be of stone and we can stand as rock through adversity. But nothing remains through eternity and like stone, we are destined to undergo transformations.
Matter
There will be layers of sediment transformed by contact with flesh. There will be hurt feet and hands. There will be paint for long still on our bodies. We will smell metal and the iron of blood. We will listen to electronic music to the rhythm of club hits against stone. We will pick up thousands of little stones which will constitute piles we will move with time. We will have played with our own limits without worrying about what others may think. Then one day, we will wake up light-hearted to have had the possibility to face our fears and seize an instant of life which modifies a whole.
Action
From our cathedrals come the weight of words. From our words the weight of inequalities. With our hands we believe in revolt. Breaking stone is an ode to deconstructing the social machinery we grew up in. It’s being aware of our limits and accepting beauty for what it offers. It’s emitting possibility where there is no reason to do so, or where on the contrary there is. It’s being closely linked to what has shaped humanity, i.e. transforming matter into symbolic objects. Let’s not be afraid of showing our virility and our strength in a world that dreams of total justice. For that is where our vulnerability transpires. Let us not forget the Greeks had understood equity supposes limits, and that all who overcome them are chastised by Nemesis the goddess of measure. They gave to will the limits of reason, whereas we have placed will at the centre of reason, making it murderous.