schutting on "nantzn"

christian ide hintze: nantzn. dvd. asemantic performative poetry.
72 tracks. total duration: 73 minutes
modena / [a:o]. isbn 978-3-9502923-0-5. vienna 2010
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julian schutting:
on christian ide hintze’s rather transformations than performances – beware of shifts over multiple media, rather transformations:

in his important essay "the birth of tragedy from the spirit of music" as is generally known friedrich nietzsche extracts the art of acting from the dionysus’ cult, from inebriation and exhilaration, and this also is the title i have chosen with reference to christian ide:
the birth of poetry from a burp,
              the first of mankind
the birth of poetic language        
             from signs and slurs           
             in a time defying speech and thinking
the birth of the art of poetry from remembrance
             on sounds produced with splutter, spitting, burbling, and slurring
             in early infant days
the birth of poetry from practising inhaling and exhaling
the rebirth of linguistic consciousness through a
             dream dancer silently conducting what is existing inside him into
             something audible
the rebirth of early human languages from a dialogue
             with the hand just as with a punch puppet or a child, enticing thoughts
             not yet turned words to come forward by listening to what his hand
             wishes to convey in a language of dumbness and buts as yet unknown

in the name of artistic plurality i now dare present interpretation of some of the scenes you are going to witness -

a guy, just below the timber line, having climbed up like a mountaineer or lumberjack, challenging the world’s creator about god and the world in a language understandable to neither as still being born, seems to blow off steam with this eruption of speech and language for not being able to kick over trees (by the way: it is true that noises, whether spat out or articulated cautiously, are virgin, just as they are when merging into word-like units – the thus created pseudo word of  "nantzn" for instance, cannot be found in any dictionary as it is an invention of a moment disconnected from any language, which, however, does not prevent me from forcing contents upon it – as a noun i declare "nantzn" for a gardening tool, for a hoe to unroot weeds, but also – as many words have multiple meanings – for a mountain pinnacle, a chine, as a verb, however, neither for “moaning” nor for “grouching”, but instead rather for “packing a satchel” or “smelling rancid” – something christian ide cannot prevent!)  

or again the scene where hintze apropriates himself of the vowels "a" and "o" as exclamations of surprise, as if they had never existed previously, as if they originated only from him produced by him – also shapes the „a“ with gestures, makes it appear on screen as a conjecture of the alphabet not yet invented.

or the scene where, again found in a speechless state of contemplative dissolution of the self, he seems to conjure the earth spirit in a dancing ritual – would it have been possible in archaic times to quote the language of poetry from the volcanic embers of the earth’s interiors? also see the conjectures of ariel, the airy spirit through breathing exercises effecting changes in awareness until sounds are born, quite different from speech bubbles (and thus, particularly in the a and o scene, alpha et omega, we can perceive a glimmer of what the esoterics refer to as „primal scream“).  

or the scene where in an empty room, void of memory rather as the cell of a prisoner locked into a fool’s tower rather than that of a monk, he sings the first nänie of pre-antiquity times, an elegy therefore reading "null-null-dsche"

also all the scenes where as a trance dancer he conducts early human languages in the form of his word compositions following a strict score so that they become audible, under the pressure of the recording camera reverting back into our ancestors in ancient forests term, where through the body language of scything, mowing, cutting the sugar canes he provides the rhythm that might have been the basis of early poetry, as a binding past form of art, as a canon for harvesting songs.

so therefore also the scene, where in danced balancing acts he borrows from the philosophically profound tai chi of the chinese, something quite different from our banal gym exercises – he seems to sketch out one of the poems waiting inside him, to find harmony on a sheet of paper which would result for him from the balance of the words and the balance of the lines, wherever he would not stop under the spell of their archetypes, disinterested in their concretization!  

is the origin of christian ide hintze’s  p e r f o r m a n c e s  to be found with the dadaists? as little as with gerhard rühm or ernst jandl! gerhard rühm, a genial virtuoso, who thanks to his universal gifts as a poet, composer, but also as a painter, singer, and art theoretician, similarly to franz liszt also as transcriptor, reunites the arts so long divided – a poeta doctus.who with intellectual pleasure develops all sorts of artistic systems just like with experimental schemes in a laboratory, always truly himself following his designs to control his own ideas.   
a similar "academic" distance from the poetic process could also be felt in ernst jandl who might have let himself be inspired by one or the other of the gugging artists: some of his recitations may have been nightmarish, also because his eyes were bulging out from his face red with strain as if he were hit by a stroke the very next moment – but that at the same time also was the theatrical self-enactment of a melancholic intellectual to laughter, who perhaps was happy just infront of his audience.

christian ide hintze, however, even though one art should not be played off against another, gives us a glimpse of what „shock and awe“ the tragedies of antiquity were able to produce: in his per- (or more appropriately) transformances he shows in disconcerting and frightening manner how thin the skin of civilisation that we have been given through enlightenment really is, for the betterment of the human race: our souls and/or instincts have remained those of immature children, as lunatics and criminals a mishap of the creator or creation and how can he succeed in that?

thanks to his specific gift of contemplation, similar to that of the mystics, he succeeds in shaking off his self-awareness and to emerge himself into the self, without ever losing the ground of the stage underneath his feet, necessarily split into two, but not as a schizophrenic, so deep down that he has arrived down there in fruitful immersion in the strata of early periods of humanity and, untouched by the light of enlightenment, unearthing what has been banned into collective oblivion.

he is not an actor, rather a showman, rather a showman a trifle exhibitionist, but rather comparable to a shaman, sending messages to a peer far away across the mountains and waiting for the answer – which he then produces from out of himself!