New Work Network

International Pool

4/9/2008 12:30:29

I received a call when I was just stepping out for last orders at my local pub ‘The golden Lion’ in Bristol. It was my friend Paul Hurley asking if I could get over to Switzerland in the next couple of days. Paul was at the Festival of Gay Male Performance Artists and there was a slot free, for me! The money was good, the location picturesque. It all seemed too good to be true, and I had only just been bemoaning that I had nothing to do that weekend! So you can imagine I had no hesitation about jumping onto the next available flight. The festival was in full swing when I arrived and here I met the festival’s curator Norbert Klassen, who took me under his wing. Norbert is an impressive character in stature and intellect, described as the grand seigneur of the Swiss performance scene. There were ten artists performing in all. Together we ate, drunk, danced and watched each other’s performances, it was truly special. On the last night we went out to dinner and I had a heart to heart with Norbert. I talked about how I feel guilty if I travel too far from home. I sometimes worry when I’m away for too long. Norbert listened and he understood. I can’t tell you what he said to me that night. I had drunk too much wine, and I can’t quite remember how exactly he phrased it, but I came away form that dinner table feeling like I’d been given absolute permission to swim in the international pool. That night I opened up to Norbert in this way, perhaps behind his grandness, his impressiveness I could see he, like me, was just another mummy’s boy! As I left for England he called out to me from the hotel lobby ‘give my regards to your mother’. What was so curios about the festival was it was partly programmed on what Norbert had seen and liked in his visits to various cities across Europe. But more significantly, the programme was also put together on the trust of the artists that he had met. I remember sitting, talking to him on the phone in my flat before I left for Switzerland saying that ‘you can see some images of my work online’ to which he responded that he doesn’t have a computer and never uses the internet. It struck me that some networks extend much further than the word wide web and they exist through word of mouth over glasses of wine and cups of coffee. Somehow its’ comforting to me to know that there are kindred spirits that won’t be reading this text as it only exists in the corner of the new work network website.