We decided to offer a response to each other’s work. “To respond to”.

But as soon as I start think about it…a response to whom, to what? A response to belief, to a video image, to the absent live presence of the performer, to the spectator, to Ivana Muller, to her work, to her questions? I cannot but to experiment a delay in responding and an anxiety of finding my response captured with a quick interpretation. Haste takes over…I’m heading for failure. I’m headed for disaster, I see it clearly…and I’m not able to do anything about it.

An event is only possible when it comes from the impossible. So yes, indeed…ok… I “perhaps” will respond to all at the same time - “Perhaps”, “as it may happen”, “yes”…

So, I say “yes” instead of “I will”, what I promise you is to do something that is called “responding” and to do it as I think, for the moment, a response should be done: by speaking, by doing something with words “for once and for a while”. “For a while”, “a while” this means “for a moment”, a rather brief moment, and sometimes, “for a rather long time” or even “for a very long time”, perhaps forever, but not necessarily for once and for all of you.

I may now be responding to who is listening though, addressing somebody, but without answering your questions, Ivana’s questions, or the expectations that may have been created. So, as you can hear, I’m just giving “pre-texts”, and excuses. “Excuse me”…but there is a reason for that: I cannot anticipate what my response is. Would I still be responding, if I will “have a response”? Would I still follow the rule, play the theater game, if I would fit the questions, the expectations or follow the program? Would anything happen then? Would an event arrive then?

… These are the questions, in which I decided to hold my-self “still” here,

now…let me tell you…

I’m making myself an occasion to think of you. But this thinking only takes place not on what I can do for you, but on what I cannot do. This is what I’m saying yes to and this is perhaps the responsive side of all this: Saying “yes”, engages you as well. So what’s next?

…Don’t know…If I reply to Ivana’s words, or the video image, I want to first make them/my/self available: for instance, I assume you are already negotiating with an image right now, with thoughts related or unrelated to this, although I must confess that I hope your thoughts are still here with me co-responding with each other. Aren’t they?

Now, if I say “I believe you”. I say nothing anyway. My promise of belief, does nothing, it’s always vain. My promise does not anticipate or assure our future in this situation. Let’s be clear about this: it is possible that one day you will no longer believe me (perhaps you already did), and this possibility cannot be taken away from belief- it belongs to it. But it is also against this possibility that my promise is made. A promise that must be able not to be kept.

Let’s hold on in our minds the word belief. What are your beliefs?…
I tell you mine: I belief on the questions my body asks, I belief on my doubts, I belief in what we don’t say to each other… Did you come up with any of your own beliefs? Let’s think in what we are sharing now: do you belief on the person that is standing in front of you? Do you belief it belongs to this voice, that is me? Do you think is the same person?…yes belief me…”it’s me”.

…Whatever belief you are keeping of my words and voice, it cuts across my identity and my property. And this is the terrible paradox of all this: I offer you the poverty of my substance (my delay in responding, my excuses, my questions, my doubts, my failure. So, we came back to the beginning: belief (yours and mine) does not define this situation, but obliges us to imagine it and maybe to anticipate it.

This is the challenge in all this.

The challenge that one never believes in anything actually, especially in theater. All we do is to experience dis/belief (imagine the word please DIS/BELIEF: D-I-S-SLASH- AND THEN BELIEF). So we may think: “I don’t belief on your image”, “I don’t belief on your words”; but we rather challenge it by way of faithfulness to the fictitious image we could be, to what we could imagine we could do with what we don’t have and don’t know of each other. We play with it, right… we replay it and it plays with us.

As a witness (no less imaginative) of your belief, I confess myself as an unreliable voice of this testimony. But I have faith in this moment: A moment that appears to be just a series of questions and fantasies about you and me…

I’m not there with you (that’s obvious), but I’m here more proximate than you could imagine. I’m listening now…how you seduce my presence with your silence, how do I correspond with the interval in between word and saying, telling and breathing…

If you want to know it all about me:
- ask my lovers and ex lovers
- pay my enemies
- seduce my friends
- meet me..

or better yet:
say the rest of the story yourself

I tell you something: we could believe each other if we could doubt about that each other we may want to be. Ok…again: we could believe each other if we could doubt about that each other we may want to be.

Shall we believe in this hypothesis? Is this possible? A possible “you”, a possible me, a possible “we”…“yes” I know… IMpossible. The –I’M- that disjoins, divides and therefore shares and holds the word “possible” (and so us) is radical but not simply negative. It seduces the possibility of the already 10 minutes we have spent together. The impossibility, the I’M possible, of a response, an image, an arrival, a meeting. It comes. It makes it come. In faith to it… ensuring my rhythm…my faith in this interval and in the belief of a promise…

Yes…“I’m listening to you, believe me”. “I imagine you will”.

Text written for the intervention response to Ivana Muller’s video lecture “On Belief”
More information in gesture 3 this is fidelity