New Dirty Enterprises: The First Annual Report, Dialogue is Not Possible, an opera non-opera performed on December 12th 2014, Garage MU, Paris
Jerszy Seymour arrived from Germany in a red VW van in November 2014. In front of the Lafayette Anticipations’s temporary space, he was seen with three acolytes unloading crates of material whose purpose neither he nor anyone else could have known. Over the weeks that followed, the gallery at 46 rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie really became his studio, or more precisely his enterprise. The main space, whose depths are usually visible from the street, was now obstructed by spotlights facing directly outside, dazzling passers-by. At the back, Seymour had to get his joyful gang of artists and designers working on a field study for the propagation of New Dirty Enterprises.
Presented for the first time at ABC Contemporary in Berlin, New Dirty Entreprises explore new models of economic, aesthetic and social exchange dominated by the disenchanted search for a happy ending. It employs design beyond objects, in a poetical relationship with urban or natural people and places. Thus the value of New Dirty Entreprises is that of an unfinished total work, constantly augmented by its instigator and those who wish to claim it. Like his pizza delivery service, his “Council for the Progenesis of the Archaic Festival”, his “Committee for Happy Endings” and his “Creative Death Services”, the vision developed by Jerszy Seymour and his community infuses reality with humour, employing the most demanding philosophical research logic.
From the production space at 46 rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie through which philosophers, publishers, curators, colleagues and friends have passed, Jerszy Seymour has investigated the margins or our everyday life, explored the gates to Paris and its surrounding area. Travelling by cycle or by van with his studio collaborators, he drew the map of New Dirty Entreprises’ new territory.
After having considered developing new, fantastic NDE activities in the shadow of Paris’s outer ring road, the team ultimately opted to draft a manifesto. The walls of the Lafayette Anticipations’s temporary space quickly became covered with notes, drawings, photographs and texts to the point of transforming the production area into an encyclopaedic playground. Knowledge accumulated there printed, taped and scrawled from floor to ceiling. As swiftly as the world bursts forth in Seymour’s imagination, it became clear that this mass could not find expression in expected forms. So amid the enterprise’s jumble there appeared a guitar, a synthesiser, a drum kit and a microphone so the gang, transformed into a band, could make its profession of faith through music.
All of this gave rise after days of private rehearsal to NEW DIRTY ENTERPRISES: THE FIRST ANNUAL REPORT, DIALOGUE IS NOT POSSIBLE, a non-opera opera presented at Garage MU in Paris. On the occasion of this unique performance, a Paris audience was able to see Jerszy Seymour and his team wearing serious faces of a strangely childish kind, with fuchsia make-up respectively representing rabbits, mice, bears. Decked in black, impassive beneath their care-bear pouts, the six performers spent a long time mixing with the crowd before finally reaching the centre of the concert hall (also delimited by a black circle), where they performed fifteen programmatic songs by New Dirty Enterprises. Extreme, comical and somewhat incantatory, the concert exploited all of the genre’s stereotypes precisely in order to demolish the standardisation of culture as industry.
With Yanik Balzer, Veronika Bjarsch, Travis Broussard, Victor Delestre, David Kaltenbach, Olivier Lellouche, Kerwin Rolland and Jerszy Seymour
Special thanks to Garage MU and its staff.
New Dirty Enterprises: The First Annual Report, Dialogue is Not Possible, an opera non-opera performed on December 12th 2014, Garage MU, Paris
New Dirty Enterprises: The First Annual Report, Dialogue is Not Possible, an opera non-opera performed on December 12th 2014, Garage MU, Paris
New Dirty Enterprises: The First Annual Report, Dialogue is Not Possible, an opera non-opera performed on December 12th 2014, Garage MU, Paris
New Dirty Enterprises: The First Annual Report, Dialogue is Not Possible, an opera non-opera performed on December 12th 2014, Garage MU, Paris
New Dirty Enterprises: The First Annual Report, Dialogue is Not Possible, an opera non-opera performed on December 12th 2014, Garage MU, Paris
New Dirty Enterprises: The First Annual Report, Dialogue is Not Possible, an opera non-opera performed on December 12th 2014, Garage MU, Paris