#thekitchensessions

Dialog mit Jörg Müller

kitchensession #3: Jörg Müller – Improvisation in seiner Küche

anschliessendes Feedbackgespräch ab 14:33

Ergänzend zu dem Austausch in Gesprächsform war es auch dezidiertes Ziel, eine freie performative Session in der jeweiligen Küche allen am Projekt Beteiligten zu teilen.

– “sharing of an object situation“ with you and an object / objects of your choice.
– you are totally free in what you do as long as we can follow it on camera
– It can be a first time encounter with an object, a sharing of something that you have spent a lot of time with previously, a spontaneous idea that you don’t even decide about before you start
– it is up to you

Es gab hierfür bewusst keine weiteren Einschränkungen/Vorgaben. Die kitchensession sollte Werkstatt- bzw. Küchencharakter haben, Raum für (gewagte) Experimente lassen oder auch für Improvisationen, die durchaus auch scheitern konnten…

mehr über Jörg Müllers Arbeit: www.mullerj.org

Transkript des Dialogs mit Jörg Müller

FELIX (QUESTION 1): What led you to Juggling?

JÖRG: What led me to juggling? I started juggling totally autodidact. I don’t know exactly. I saw someone juggle, maybe, I don’t know, maybe even not. I took two tennis balls and I juggled them like this (he demonstrates two balls in one hand in circles that go towards him). So I juggled first two balls in one hand, I could do this towards me like this and then I just exchanged. (he demonstrates a 3 ball cascade pattern). A little later I found out that actually in the town where I lived, close by there was like a juggling group, in Erlangen. So they were four older jugglers. They had a cool book about passing from the States and they had all like fancy clubs.I bought like wooden gymnastic clubs and stuff like this. The only clubs, you could buy them in Berlin, Henrys was not yet in business, and they got their clubs from Dubé in New York. So to repair a club, also if you break a club you had to send them to Berlin and sometimes they even sent it to New York to get it repaired so it was kind of crazy. Today you go just to a supermarket and you buy a set of clubs, kind of, almost, for children, you know.

These four guys they were really cool. They did all lots of club passing. There was one professional comedian juggler guy. Where I come from there is like a big climbing community and all these climbers at one point they started to wire walk, juggle to improve their climbing skills. Then we created a little juggling groups with three friends, so we were four people and we did like little juggling fairy tales. (he laughs out). It was really funny. We did lots of funny juggling stuff. It was kind of cool.

FELIX: Those fairy tales, did you do them for yourselves? Or how did perform them?

JÖRG: We had a first gig in a church fair party thing, so the protestant church said, we make this little “Fest“ (event/party) and they said: “You juggle and you come with your friends and you do some juggling things.“ Actually we showed all the tricks we knew, you know. Like one trick, the next trick, this trick, and they gave us like 20 DM to do this. An we were like 16 years old when we started this. And then, at our Gymnasium, the High school, we did the same. Then we got invited for a marriage party and then a street Fest somewhere. Like lots of little things. And one day with the Kaskade journal (European juggling magazine) they had an article about the Circus school in Châlons (www.cnac.fr.) and I said “Aaaah, cool, I want to go. I didn`t even know that there was Die Etage and other stuff, you know? So I said I go to France and I go to this school. And then my parents said “Eeeh, may be you should first finish High School and then you go to Châlons. If ever you still want to go.“ So I said:“OK“ But when I was 17 I already went to Châlons to see the school. But I went there in the summer months where actually they are all in vacation. (he laughs) And so. Yeah it was not very organized. And then I did two selections in Châlons. They took me and I think everything started to get more serious when I started the Circus school in France.

There was also something I liked about juggling was that you can just do it wherever, in a park, alone, the time you want. Like I started to play a little bit basketball or stuff like this. You can also train alone, but it’s… I thought like juggling… There were not so many jugglers. Like the first juggling convention I went there were two people with five clubs, from 1000 jugglers. And everybody stopped juggling when they started to juggle five clubs in this big gymnasium. So today this is like the banal very common thing that everybody can juggle lots of objects. And they start three years old… So when I started there were not so many jugglers around, yet. Like also the development of finding new tricks, to have a different approach was very very new. Ah, there was already Michael Moschen going on. I can remember we saw Michael Moschen’s videos. I think like in late ‘88 / ’89, like in the beginning of the nineties. In Châlons for sure. There were videos in Châlons of Michael Moschen. It is also the beginning of Jêrome Thomas. Two people who really pushed juggling in a very different direction. For me, I think it’s like a big inspiration to see these different approaches with different object. Like Michael Moschen he did like a ball juggling routine but then he explored all the different (objects), like little sticks and a circle and this weird wave object. Creating different tool like the triangle and stuff like this.

FELIX: He is la really creative American juggler. He worked a lot, like Jörg he said, with different objects but he also had this triangle which was with bouncing balls, they bounced in different angles, because he can throw them in the triangle and then they can do stuff like this (showing it with his hands).

22:30
JÖRG: There was like a this large (showing it with his hands) wood and he could stand in a big triangle. So he could throw balls inside the triangel like this (showing it with his hands) and they bounced on all kind of surfaces back in very cool shapes and making sounds. I think nobody copied this ever. i know one person copied it but just to do it at home, just to try it out, a friend of mine. But I never saw a copy. Because this was a really cool idea this triangle thing.

FELIX: I didn’t see a copy but I saw an act which was strongly inspired by it. A French juggler from Dijon, Franck was his name. He had like a stone plate and two glass surfaces in a 45 degree angle, one here and one here (showing it with his hands) and he was standing in the middle. So he could drop a ball here, it would cross horizontally and go up here again. If this was the surface (showing it with a sheet of paper), this was the other one, he would drop it here, it would go parallel to the floor and then go up again on the other side. So he could change working with this u-shape bounce and normal bouncing on the floor. It was a bit like a lotto machine because he had some kind of dropping bar. He had a foot pedal where he could release a ball that would go like this (showing a u-shape with his hands). It felt a bit like in TV when you have this lottery, the selection machine with the balls. This was in 1992. I am pretty sure that he was very inspired by Michael Moschen at this time. I assume that he had see some video of Michael Moschen.

FELIX: Later on on your path… Why did juggling CATCH you?

JÖRG: [laughing] Why did juggling catch me? I think in the beginning for this period of time I got really good very fast. So this gave me a lot of motivation to continue. And then I started – even before going to Châlons I started to take contemporary dance classes in Erlangen. In Châlons when I left the school almost they started this again that you could really try out every other circus discipline. But at the time when I went to Châlons if you went there as a juggler, when you made your selection as a juggler, you stayed a juggler. So you could not just try everything out for two weeks. On your schedule you just say juggler. 27:53

I think that one of the juggling things that I really like is to play around. Like playing games, making up rules to play is something I really like . In juggling but I also like it in dance or in improvisation or in music: that you play a little game. And juggling is really good to play games I think. You have lots of possibilities to play different games.
I like this exploring gravity and so for me juggling is all kind of… I can also juggle myself. I can juggle the air around me. The most I practised in my life is juggling. And so it gives me a kind of idea, like a basic island from where I can go and explore dance or theatre or music or art in general.

So I stay a juggler.