TINE VAN AERSCHOT - WHEN IN DOUBT, DUCK
An interview with Tine Van Aerschot by Eva Decaesstecker
When in doubt, ‘water bird of the family Anatidae’. Tine Van Aerschot doesn’t believe in
absolute truth. Everything depends on time, place and language. And each translation
adds to this complexity. Especially when Google Translate is used. “There is so much
playfulness in translating. Small gifts emerge with each translation, and that’s great!”
Subtitles
Tine Van Aerschot is not sure what she should call herself. Author, director, visual artist. In
her most recent project, she’s all three. The project, Between this and that, is a combination
of different approaches to one large topic: language and all its rephrasings and translations.
It is also within this project that the production When in doubt, duck arose. Tine: “I started
the project Between this and that about three years ago. The occasion for the project was
the idea of surtitles and subtitles during theatre performances. When I first saw surtitles in a
performance, I had a completely different feeling than with subtitles or surtitles in a film or
TV programme. And I immediately thought, “Wow, much more could be happening here!”
That was actually also a following step in the development of my productions. Because
subtitles are often translations, I really wanted to work with translations, rephrasings,
reinterpretations and the whole range of shifts in meaning that often accompany such. And
that’s what Between this and that is about.”
A first result of this project is the book A Partial Exposure of a Half Decent Elephant. It plays
with a single concept’s shift in meaning through time, and from place to place. “My starting
point here was one small element - even if an elephant is not really that small,” Tine admits.
“What I found very exciting and encouraging, is that you see how a concept not only changes
over time, but that in a very different and more playful manner, history itself also surfaces.
By concentrating on this elephant, I encountered people, nations and religions. I found that a
very interesting starting point.”
From language to language
In addition to a different context, a different use of language can also result in a shift in
meaning. Tine: “Another thing that I researched in the beginning is how language reacts
when you convert it into codes. We tried this with Morse code, with binary codes, with the
NATO Phonetic Alphabet (Aplha, Papa, Charlie, Kilo,…). We tried to reconvert the codes into
language in order to get back to the original text from which we started. We of course also
looked at the translation from one language to another. Which becomes extremely
convoluted! It seems to me that Between this and that is still too small a project to really do
justice to this aspect.” But it did reveal some interesting details: for example, presently there
are about 5,000 living languages. There are some one thousand people whose mother
tongue is Esperanto. There are also some 700 invented languages, ranging from purely
theoretical to secret languages. Tine cites an example: “Someone has developed a language,
based on an enormous language study, with which you can say in one or two words: “I went
to the store today and bought cheese that smells like jasmine.” The language is so incredibly
condensed that it is almost cryptic. There is also a language with very limited counting
possibilities: one, two and many. For its users, it is not important whether it is 5, 6 or 7. It is
simply a lot. And thus there are variations in languages that are wonderful and extremely
interesting.”
Elephant represented
To complement the book, a cabinet of curiosities was created with twenty boxes. Each box
contains a piece of a story of one elephant in particular and the elephant in general. “All
twenty elements together represent the elephant,” Tine explains. “There is a bullet in one of
the boxes with which an elephant was shot dead in the U.S. because the elephant’s owner
claimed that the skin of the beast was so thick that no bullet could penetrate it. The
neighbour then tested this proposition, with fatal consequences. There is also a piece of
elephant’s tutu from Circus Polka, a ballet with music by Tchaikovsky with 60 elephants and
60 ballet dancers. There’s a bit of elephant brains, a piece of skin, a piece of tail,…
But why always the elephant? “The elephant quite simply is very iconic. In addition, almost
every culture throughout history has written about it. The elephant has also played a sacred
role in many cultures. It is one of those animals that leaves no one unmoved. So many
extremely different things have been written about it. No other subject has generated such a
variety of stories as the elephant,” explains Tine.
when in doubt, duck
“When the book and the cabinet of curiosities were completed, the next logical step for me
was to make a production more or less based on the same principles. Here again it’s about
language, rephrasing and translating. But this time I didn’t want to focus on a specific topic
but rather work more broadly, actually the same way I’m used to working in all my
productions: to create an image or world that in one way or another is a mirror of the world
in which we live. I chose nine different topics in order to allow the language and translation
element to be handled more clearly. You have much more variety, there are many more
different perspectives. The only constant is that these translations are incredibly surprising
and remain unpredictable. There is so much playfulness, and so much comes to the surface.
During the work process, each translation proved to be a small gift.”
From duck to internet
The topics covered in the production are quite diverse. Birds, prostitutes from 17 th century
England, or medicine and its evolution. The main source of information and also the subject
of the production is the internet. “I think the internet is great”, admits Tine. “You have
access to a wealth of information, from your kitchen table. By simply searching the internet,
you can find texts from the 15th, 16th, 17th … centuries until today. In different languages, in
different forms, in different phrasings. It is fascinating to see what is said in two translations
of the same book. The difference between them can be huge. For example, a book by Pliny
the Elder - to return briefly to elephants - contains a story in which an elephant is slain by a
snake. It is a complicated affair. The snake falls out of a tree onto the elephant, wraps itself
around the legs of the elephant, and bites him in the neck, sucking all his blood. The
elephant dies and falls. But when falling, it lands on the snake, which then also dies. The
oldest translation, by Philemon Holland from the 16th century, speaks of a dragon. In a
translation from the 18th century, it is a serpent, and in the most recent translation that I
read, it was a snake. Thus the elephant remains, the action remains the same, the blood and
death remain the same, only the attacking animal changes. For me, a snake is quite different
from a dragon. Anyway ... All of this is available on the internet, and I find that fascinating. “
Language, translation, phrasing. The nuance of the story prevails: “What is most important
to me, throughout all of these stories,” Tine reflects, “is that presently it is impossible for me
to believe in a single absolute truth or in absolute correctness, about any topic. Truth only
exists within the correct parameters or in the right reality. Because in my reality, and within
this context, something can indeed be true; but it is quite different in yours or someone
else’s reality, where it’s not true at all. If you combine this with the aspect of time and time
difference, it becomes really interesting and you obtain something fantastic: the infinity of
the world in which we live, of the knowledge that is present, that ever existed and that is yet
to come. Only then do you realise that everything we think we know, we will no longer know
tomorrow!
Orchestral score and free play
When talking about the structure of the production, Tine prefers to describe it as an
orchestral score. A score in which the adagios, allegros and crescendos have been crossed
out, and may be freely applied by the performers. Nine poems woven together by text
material that varies with respect to type and style, and that builds on the previous poem. At
each performance, three performers - Mira Helmer, Nick Lloyd and Noha Ramadan - search
for a new dynamism in the text. They recite the text together, but don’t know in advance
who will recite which part. “Thus the intent is that all three know the entire text,” Tine
explains, “and the logic of the evening dictates who handles what part on that evening, who
refuses to do what part, or in what way he or she will present the part. The only thing that is
certain is that the full text, from A to Z, must be recited. At least once. The performers may
not make any spoken arrangements during the performance: thus they may not say “now
you and now you”. They also may not comment on one another except by using the text
itself. So if someone says something that is not entirely clear, the following may say the
same thing, but then in an asking tone, and the third person may confirm this by repeating it,
or proceed with the following text. But saying ‘What did you say’ is not allowed.”
Thus the performers are in direct communication: only the dialogue differs from
performance to performance. “It is exciting to see how, in the moment itself and in the
interplay, they must maintain a sort of presence, and at the same time take account of one
another. Sometimes it is very playful, sometimes serious”.