ruminations on performance

In the 1530’s the word performance referred to “the carrying out of a promise, duty, etc.,” Between 1590-1610s the word shifted to become “a thing performed” or “the action of performing a play”. In 1709 the word came to mean “a public entertainment”. The term Performance Art came into usage in the 1970’s.

But this is history.

The following are comments made by the artists during the salon, held in the writer’s boardroom. In reference to the previous open rehearsal in the city square during 19 October 2011, artists Adeline Bourret, Sam Belinfante and Lore Lixenburg gave their following perspectives. (Transcribed in chronological order)

“I actually did something in the square when people were not around. I was going to do some movement… with all the drumming… but when I actually saw it I thought it was part of artistic decisions. I thought actually… it is all about sound. And then I turned around and there was this empty square and I thought… It would be really great if I were standing in the middle doing some movement. Some shapes. So that is what happened for me this afternoon.” - Adeline Bourret

“For me I thought it was one of the least successful things that we have partaken in so far. I think the main reason for that, is that we contradicted stuff that we have been talking about all week –in terms of the fact that we made a performance. We were lined up a bit like a kind of a Goya painting where they are all lined up against a wall or with the guns…and then we were all there to do a performance and I properly made this all worse making the drummers (stand) in a line like that."

We were talking a lot about margins and liminati. It was really interesting that we were going to do a performance in the square but we weren’t allowed in the square. So we had to have this peripheral position and by actually straddling this position a lot of the problematics of what we were doing came to the fore and the fact of who were we actually doing this for… Were we doing this for us? For the development of the project? Or were we doing this to pander to a certain requirement or to a certain widening participation element or for/from a certain city or gallery position? We were on an uneasy position on this periphery, which was made successful by Adeline puncturing that and then going in, into the space which wasn’t the space of the performance.” – Sam Belinfante

“I think that maybe the mistake today is that we wanted to generate images to be used afterwards for the gallery. I think that is how we saw this day and tomorrow but because of how we were positioned it was very much like - this is the stage – although there were maybe invisible boundaries, they were there. That is why I was like hmm this is interesting there… I am going to do something there." (the square) – Adeline Bourret

See its funny I almost didn’t see it as performance. That is how I work a lot… - Adeline Bourret

“I think it’s about ownership of that performance and asking who are you performing for? I think tomorrow when we got to the botanic gardens I think we just got to do the same thing we would do in an empty gallery and with the kind of supplementary interest of having public engagement. That’s the kind of tension.” - Sam Belinfante

“So to make it a real rehearsal. More of a rehearsal” – Lore Lixenberg

How much of this undertaking of rehearsals operates as an attempt to initially obfuscate the notion of a rehearsal and performance yet all the while, is building a progression towards that which is familiar? That which we might be tempted to call a success? We will know more when we compare the rehearsal in the city centre to the rehearsal in the botanical gardens and in particular when we have watched the cumulative performance.

fifth discursion

the world is comfortable with the rhetoric of collaboration, but not with its actual concrete practice. in an arts education setting, the typical studio will be full of drawing easels, made for one eye and one hand. the size of the paper sheet, made to fit the scale of the upright easel, is suited to the single gaze. most rooms and buildings only have chairs designed for single occupants and nearly all doorways are only capable of admitting one person at a time, the very architecture pushes us apart, its fixtures and fittings split us into solitudes. a piece of furniture to accomodate collaboration is rare, usually the only space designed for a group of people, supposedly working on a common agenda is the meeting or board room, but even here the single expansive table is so large that individuals are physically out of reach when they sit on opposite sides. in this atmosphere how is it possible to foster an air of collaboration or collective agency, when even the physical fabric itself is an obstacle.

Rehearsal in the city square 19 October 2011

This was recorded in the city square during the open rehearsal of A Cut A Scratch A Score on 19 October 2011.

Punctuation marks

Last night, the Exhibitions team, the artists and us writers had an evening meal and the first chance to let our hair down as a group. Discussions, strategy and planning continued this morning over breakfast and it was decided that neither we nor the artists were interested in leading this afternoon’s 17:00 Salon; we would both rather continue with our work. The performance is due to open to the public at 19:00 tomorrow, perhaps the session could be led by the MFA students and their impressions of the week thus far?

An interesting element to arise from last night’s Salon was how the artists were entirely unaware of what our intended were to be. David asked about the nature of our process, Sam was concerned about whether and how our work would impact the performance, Bruce welcomed the fact that it could. Fundamentally, and this also arose from the fact that the artists were disappointed in yesterday’s rehearsal, it seemed that the notion of their authorship being undermined by factors including expectation, the audience and ourselves could have an adverse effect on the unintentional intentionality of their working process.

I’m very aware that the above text makes a clear distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’, which is the case to an extent but we are now coming to a point where our paths will converge further, and it would help if we could use the time apportioned for the Salon to make this happen.

fourth discursion

"the notion of strategic critique where the criteria for making judgements are discovered or invented through the course of criticism". P18 site-writing, Jane Rendell.

Interpretation and criticism as a slow, patient and gradual realisation of an idea, a plotting out, a playing out, and extended bringing to being of something. This something could be an 'idea', a set of social relations or a methodology to be worked out in another situation. But how does this process of bringing to being, "bringing to word or appearances" work, is there a methodology that could be placed in words and applied across different situations? Is there a method to bringing an idea to light? Or is the calling forth of an intuition a theatre of chance and happy accident? Vilem Flusser in his "Into the Universe of Technical Images" talks about how programmable media are designed to make the improbable happen, to hasten the movement from intuition to embodiment. For Flusser the realisation of ideas becomes an almost designed process, rooted in the black box of the camera, the computer, the network society. But perhaps the finding, the dragging out, the digging up, of an idea is more like taking soundings, a plumbing of depths, discovering how deep the water is, a marking out of the maximum dimensions of the invisible by touch, of charting the volume and mass of the idea.

discursion three

During an act, or process, of interpretation its relation to what is being interpreted changes. As noted earlier the space of interpretation can gain its own agency and volition. The space of writing, or of reflection assumes its own peculiar and specific gravity, it becomes a 'body' in its own right, and it can assume a position of phantom authorship in relation to the material or matter under interpretation.

Mid-Salon Update: Document

Hmm...it seems they didn't quite like it as much as I thought they would have. Really so.