You've never seen this before

The inspiration for Barbara Matijevic and Giuseppe Chico’s lively performances comes from the Internet. For their brand new I’ve Never Done This Before, given its world premiere this week at the Kaaistudio’s, the Croatian-Italian artistic duo has based itself on YouTube. “For the first time, we are working with objects and psychology onstage,” they told us. The show is based on the trend towards producing (electronic) equipment and inventive objects, using everyday stuff. As Barbara Matijevic explains it, “The wildly popular do-it-yourself hype on YouTube is a great source of inspiration. There is experimentation involved in that approach – hence the show’s title: over thousands of videos, we could often see that people had never actually done anything like that before. Customising on YouTube is actually like an artistic practice. The videos are often every bit as unique as a work of art, although the people themselves don’t usually realise that at all. Neither I nor Giuseppe had ever worked with objects onstage before, so the title also refers to us.”

I’ve Never Done This Before doesn’t include any footage from YouTube itself, unlike Matijevic & Chico’s earlier performances Forecasting and I AM 1984. Says Matijevic, “We base ourselves completely on the concept of do-it-yourself. On the basis of texts, instructions, and situations we found on YouTube, we developed objects of our own. Ranging from hacked connected cameras – zero DIY, you could say – to complicated equipment we concocted ourselves. Some inventors showed themselves to be really ingenious. For example, we stumbled across a homemade gas mask that protects the eyes, the nose, and the ears and has an inbuilt loudspeaker: ideal for public protests.”

For the first time, your performance incorporates a psychological dimension.
Barbara Matijevic: We were amazed at the extent to which these inventors designed their objects out of fascination, obsession, remorse, hate, or pent-up rage. Even though that aspect repeatedly looms large in the stories, humour remains of crucial importance. That leaves scope for a number of interpretations and exonerates us of any suspicion of propagating an opinion of our own. We don’t want to take any stand for or against customising.

How do the separate stories add up to a show?
Matijevic: Each object, each story, and each scene is an installation in its own right. Onstage, they seem to come out of nowhere. We are now working intensively on the rhythm of the show. After Brussels, it may well change a good bit, as we never regard our performances as finished – they are in a constant state of flux.

There is a somewhat painful reality lurking in I’ve Never Done This Before.
Matijevic: In 1982 – 23 years before YouTube! – JG Ballard declared that the future would mainly take place in the living room. Instead of travelling, we would create our own adventures at home, with the help of the equivalent of a modern television studio. In 2015, that is a reality. People broadcast the intimacy of their own living room or bedroom to the whole world, often without fully realising what they’re doing.

BARBARA MATIJEVIC & GIUSEPPE CHICO: I’VE NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE 29 & 30/1, 20.30, €8/10/12, EN, Kaaistudio’s, Onze-Lieve-Vrouw van Vaakstraat 81 rue Notre-Dame du Sommeil, Brussel/Bruxelles, 02-201.59.59, www.kaaitheater.be