- text by Bojana Kunst
- First published in Maska, Magazine for Contemporary Performing Arts, January, 2003.
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Introduction
In the last decade, performing arts have been returning to a reflection and requestioning of the dance and theatre mediums; with their methods in doing so –with their strategies – they continuously place themselves on the edge of their own medium, transgressing and connecting various artistic ways, rethinking various dramaturgical approaches. First, I would like to outline the field that we will deal with. Abroad, these are authors like Jerome Bel, Xavier Le Roy, Martin Spangberg, Vera Mantero, Meg Stuart, Forced Entertainment, Guillermo Gomez Pena etc. Slovenian authors would be Iztok Kovac (especially with his latest performance, Hu Die, where he thoroughly deconstructs principles of choreographic authorship as well as those of constructing a dance event / situation), or Emil Hrvatin with his ways of including the spectator. This context, while dealing with strategies of performing and subjectivity, can also cover the front of contemporary performance and visual art; like performance artists Kira O'Reilly and Oreet Ashery, each with her own specific transformation of physicality and identity, as well as slovenian artist like Igor Stromajer with theatrical interruptions of the electronic medium, opening it to flesh and emotion, etc.), Marko Peljhan with his construction of specific strategic situations, etc,.
The aforementioned authors were brought up as an aid to illustrate the field I wish to reflect on, and by no means as an attempt to set up a frame. The authors in question differ to a considerable extent; there is no connection, parallel or similarity that would group them under the same heading. What they all have in common, however, is a certain (if we aid ourselves with Delauze's terms), fairly accidental – constant elusive neighbouring. And because every good contemporary neighbouring always results from migration, the neighbouring of contemporary authors can reveal itself to us as a kind of migration between artistic ways and strategies. To begin with, this migration can be defined as a process of constant disclosure of artistic (artist's) position; as a process of establishing artistic tactics and strategies; as a process of developing the awareness of the place of statement / performing; as a way of playing with situations and production ways, which encroach on the very process of theatrical, dance, or visual spectacle.
I.
This process, which, along with its particularities, is part of many performing arts of the last decade, has reopened the debate about the possibilities to articulate the critical (and the political) in contemporary theatre. It also revived the discussion on the role of the spectator and the characteristics of artistic situations which include both spectators and performers in immediate events. [1] The debate about the possibilities of critical discourse is fairly specific, though; within contemporary social and artistic realities, contemporary performing arts have found themselves in a very special situation. It seems nowadays that the specific privilege (of performing / presenting) has actually become an omnipresent and everyday feature of contemporary media and market culture. Or, as Guy Debord wrote as early as in 1967: "In societies governed by modern production relations, the whole life shows as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything once directly experienced has distanced itself into the performance." [2]
Not only does a big percent of today's theatre consider itself a part of the entertainment industry; contemporary performing arts, too, have become, according to André Lepecki, so-called 'spectacular commodities". [3] This all-encompassing commodity container swallows and "refines" (in the manner of supreme laundry softener, of course), literally everything. As a consequence, everything viewed as "other" (the ethnic, the new, the radical, the political even) comes across as a commodity nowadays. Paradoxically this "other" can not even gain its visibility and (not even political) recognizability if not displayed as a spectacular commodity. Theatre, dance and visual arts can naturally not escape the vicious circle, with another problem, duly noted by some authors of the nineties, being at present as well: how can one perform in a time when more or less everything has turned into a 'spectacular commodity"? Is it at all possible to escape the spectacle, this mirage quest for the illusion of reality, which entirely dominates the culture of today? And what, in this mirage of contemporary spectacle reality, is the function of peforming arts and their performances, in whose topos the spectacle plays an essential part?
Thus, a topical question would be the following: What kind of possibility of critical statement does the contemporary performance have, what kind of possibilities are there for reflective statements and performing within the production of the all-encompassing spectacle? When (in Debord's words), everything has distanced itself into the performance, and we (in Baudrillard's terms) are living in the third phase of the simulacrum - what is the existence of our performance like? We constantly witness a warping of the lines between fantasy and reality, with things showing (existing) not only as reproduced, but also as represented and entirely simulated. How can the criticalness of contemporary performance be articulated within this scope? How can the contemporary performance – unable to avoid the fact that itself, too, is a spectacular commodity – critically refer to its own production, and how can it develop different, parallel, digressive ways of performing? Is it at all possible anymore to find a way to reveal the specific privilege of theatre to realize a "politics of perception" (H.T. Lehmann), if everything in the society has become a "performance"?
II.
In my opinion, it would be incorrect to say that these questions are only typical of the theatre of the nineties; in slightly different articulations, we can follow them throughout the history of 20th century performing arts. [4] We need to ask ourselves the following: What is the particularity of today's reflection and strategic awareness of one's own medium, present in the "artistic neighbouring" over the last ten years? How can we define this reflection as opposed to modernist as well as avant-garde theatre and dance praxes, which were marked by a similar tendency to constantly encroach on the principles of their own medium?
The answer to this question is quite complex, and we will not be able to fully answer it in the course of this lecture; we can, however, attempt to articulate, or at least allude to, a certain digression that has come about. In doing so, we will try to help ourselves with the role of the spectator in contemporary performing arts, the role that was either bestowed on or taken from him through the history of 20th century theatre.
We can say that, in the history of contemporary 20th century theatre, the spectator was often confronted with problems, and continues to be in the last decade. These problems can be physical (as in the avant-garde performance art of the early 20th century, or in the urban hedonist ritual of the sixties – if you do not participate you"re a voyeur); perceptual or mental (as in abstract structures by O. Schlemmer, in the repetition and logic of Bob Wilson, in the theatre of the absurd); political or social (in Brechtian distance, and contrastingly, in the closeness of performance art). Incessantly, and almost as a rule, this problem demolishes the spectator's expectation horizon, and opens as a process of inability to understand. The theatre process thus calls new ways of perception, new relationships between the stage and the spectator, and new ways of interpretation, quite distant from the traditional theatrical framings and understandings. The history of 20th century theatre is thus also that of "bringing up" a new spectator's body. Similarly, we can talk of specific athletics of the eye, necessary for grasping visual art. [5] This inability to understand can disclose an interesting, nearly utopian feature in this modern upbringing of the spectator's body: the athletics of the spectator's eye / body open a possibility of and a belief in the autonomy of theatrical and dance art, a belief into a primordial democracy, even authenticity and originality, a belief into the power of destroying rules of form and contents into new perceptual, in modernism often nearly mystic principles. Fragmenting the distance between the spectator and the stage, these principles give rise to an autonomous power of theatrical elements, space and time.
To put it differently: the performing art of the 20th century is marked by a primordial utopia which has its roots already in the avant-garde praxes, reaching as far as the "everydaynes" of the dance experiments by Lucinda Childs [6] and the visual repetitive structure of the eighties. Theatre establishes itself as the fundamental situation, the communication medium bent on incessantly disclosing, problematizing and overturning its own autonomy. It does that in a specific way, however: through its own deconstructions, it constantly talks to us about its own specific privilege of being a situation in space and time. It thus encroaches on very the feature of post-dramatic theatre which H.T. Lehmann defines in the following way: "What is the specific quality of the theatrical perception, which is foregrounded by post-dramatic theatre, while being more or less concealed by dramatic theatre? It is not only aesthetic, but the ethical implication of the spectator. In the reality of theatre itself the co-presence of actors and audience can make us aware that communication always means responsibility. The act of communication in itself, the fact that I am addressed by someone, makes me responsible even for what the other communicates to me. (...) It can realize a politics of perception." [7] It is a situation boasting a special privilege disclosed and overturned by 20th century theatre praxes: this responsibility, this politics of perception inevitably makes us aware that meaning is actually acquired within an immediate situation.
There is a position of awareness of the anti-spectacular that represents an important trait of 20th century theatre history, and of way of searching for new strategies of critical speech, for a recognizable place of declaration, and for establishing the specificity of theatrical situation. This task is not easy at all, it "has to" "fight" both its captivity in a society where everything has turned into a performance, and its own transformation into a spectacular commodity. Thus, Lehmann talks about the way in which post-dramatic theatre brings an interruptions into the very law of spectacle. Theatre can become political by attempting to create an interruption in the spectacle; in this manner, space is opened within theatre, and the possibility of intervention can be felt. There can be quite a variety of such disturbances – relating to time spans, introduction of violence, introduction of situations allowing decisions on the part of the spectator (frequent throughout the history of 20th century performing art), all through to ways of author's and spectator's requestioning of the nineties. In the performance Product of Circumstances (1999) Xavier Le Roy performed a lecture in which his position of scientist and dancer was analysed, in the performance Distanzlos (2000) Thomas Lehmen combines fragments of his choreographic notes and states, subjecting them to interpretation, overturning, deconstruction. In their performance TODAYulysses, Bojana Cvejic and Jan Ritsema communicate without an intention of communicating something, but communicate the communicability itself; with their paraphrasing of the inner flow of thought (with the title of the performance not coincidental), they disclose the situation between the audience and the stage. Igor Stromajer danced and trasmited balet with the illegal entering in the Bolshoj Theatre (Ballettikka Internettikka, part two, 2002), Marko Peljhan constructs an observatory (Macrolab) for strategic eavesdropping, Gomèz-Peña puts up an exhibition of Chicano identities, Oreet Ashery exists as a Jewish man Robert Fischer etc.
The disturbances found in performances of the nineties, too, placed the spectator before a problem; the problem was articulated differently, however, and aimed to take us elsewhere. First and foremost they unfold as a process and production of performing. This performing no longer forms a caesura between a theatrical situation and other social and everyday situations; at the same time, this production is far from the utopian belief in the demolition of the border between the stage and the spectator, which once characterised many modernist performing praxes. With contemporary society and media taking the privilege of performing away from performing arts, performing arts no longer function in a utopian and oppositional way, but search for authentic traces of that privilege (the privilege of reality, too, has long been in the media domain). Instead, performing arts mercilessly transgress not only boarders between various arts, but also various realities. They do not hesitate to make use of numerous and contradictory strategies in order to establish a "politics of perception" within this palimpsest and multilayered contemporaneity. The theatrical situation becomes an open process, but not to release the power of the proximity of the theatrical event, its autonomous power, but to establish itself before us as a fragile network of relations, a fragile entanglement of various statements, a new fragile, yet conceptually pure dramaturgy of the act which shows as a process of constitution and potentiality.
Despite the power of contemporary spectacle, I find it too narrow to reduce contemporary performing arts and their power of critical performing upon the anti-spectacular field; this is but one of the features they exhibit. Contemporary theatrical practices react to the spectacle, to the fatal belief that there is nothing anymore out there - to this vicious circle of simulations and simulacra. They use the structure of spectacle and exploit it for making statements, disclosing ways of performing, tactics, strategies and acting. We could also state that, in a paradoxical (weak) manner, contemporary performing practices testify to the power of acting. The theatrical structure has an important trait: with its acts, it incessantly undermines the simulacra. This is the way in which we should view the interruptions introduced by contemporary performances. As to their articulations of the critical, they are not but a simple play with simulations, puns, destruction, deconstruction, a play pertaining solely to the vicious circle of politically correct multiplicity, elusive games and painless simulacra. Quite the contrary, it is all about a critical awareness, employing and taking advantage of spectacle strategies (ways of performing) in order to reveal the action and power of performing. This kind of performing does not so much result in an inability to understand, nor in the demolition of the expectation horizon. It is sooner a play with the imaginary – i.e. a thing expected by the spectator in every spectacle. In turn, performances are now banally, strikingly clear, sometimes even embarrassing and uncomfortable due to the "authenticity" that they convey. They incessantly postpone both the spectator's pleasure and his distanced identification; the spectator as performer are always dwelling in a kind of "delay", they are placed before a puzzle of true masquerade.
Interestingly, all this overturning and occupation, along with the alternative, tactical, sometimes nearly guerrilla usage of spectacle structures, finds deep inspiration in the performance art and theatrical experiments of the sixties and seventies. Nevertheless, a fundamental digression has taken place since then, and neither of formal nor aesthetic nature. It reveals itself as a changed possibility for the articulation of the critical and the political; it is an already mutated strategy of contemporary action. This new "politics of perception" no longer reveals itself as a returning / disclosing of a privilege, as this was the case with several theatrical practices of the past decades. The last decade has seen a big break-up in this utopian feature – in this foggy veil of authenticity, almost always present behind 20th century performing arts – in their (almost innocent) belief into the "performance". We could say that, with the contemporary disappearance of the privilege of performing, the utopian power of theatre (and art in general) gets weakened as well. Performing arts became primarily a disclosure of contemporary strategies and tactics that open a performing space located in-between. This in-between space of performing is always a process of activity and embodiment (enactment). Performing strategies allude to subjectivity as a producing and produced factor, to the subjectivity as a notion that performs itself and is always constituted from within. These strategies open the contemporary subjectivity as a proces of performing, always condemned to a complex network of potentiality and relations. "They thus open the question of performing operation as a continuous process of negotiations and dealing with social reactions (…) and this is what makes them an important way of addressing the audience." [8] It would be a misinterpretation to view all this as a mere play with contemporary identities, as playfulness and elusive transgression; every such action produces real effects. It is about the contemporary strategic subjectivity generated by performing strategies, alluding to subjectivity as a notion framed into relationality and performing.
III.
As a conclusion, I will embark upon a slightly daring parallel, but it was this inspiration that gave rise to my lecture today. I would like to employ this parallel to explain my views on strategicness, which does not only stand for an active conquering of a field in a military sense (although it does entail some of that combat tactics), but also a way of contemporary activity, of addressing the spectator by never offering what he has expected – also when this very thing is offered without constraints.
These strategic subjectivities are a true contemporary masquerade, in the sense of the notion developed by Joan Riviere in her essay Womanlinnes as a masquerade in 1929. [9] Analysing homosexual women, Riviere develops the concept of womanliness as that of masquerade, relying on her thesis that homosexual women use the mask of womanliness to cover up the imaginary intervention of manliness, in order to avoid anxiety as well as the revenge they fear from men. One of the most interesting parts of Riviere's psychoanalytical analysis is the part in which she establishes a parallel between masquerade, and womanliness in general: "The reader may now ask how I define womanliness, or where I draw the line between true womanliness and masquerade. In my opinion, however, this kind of difference does not exist at all; radical or superficial, they are both the same." [10] Dealing with performing arts at this seminar, we are naturally interested in the "performative consequences" of this statement. There is namely an equivalence drawn between performing (which takes place in the form of masquerade) and womanliness. In other words, performing functions in a way that can also be found in contemporary theatre (performing is a way of enactment, it is always a process, always an in-between, and a construction of identity). Judith Butler excellently points out this aspect of Joan Riviere's statement. The interesting part of the masquerade problem, she says, is the problematics of demonstrating, announciating, performativity - we could say, the performing itself. She asks "wheter masquerade conceals femininty that might be understood as genuine and authentic or wheter masquerade is the means by which femininity is produced." [11] So it is a question whether masquerade covers up femininity (which we could otherwise consider genuine or authentic), or is it a means that generates it, along with the controversy over its authenticity. This sentence can be usefully paraphrased for our discussion on performing arts as well: it is a question whether contemporary performing strategies cover up the privilege of theatrical situation, which we could otherwise understand as authentic / genuine, or are they but a means that generates this privilege, along with the controversy over its authenticity?
There are many parallels between femininity, masquerade, performing arts, and strategies of subjectivity / performing. We can say that, precisely in the generating and overemphasising of femmininity in terms of closeness, presence and imaginary, masquerade will come across as subversive. It is due to the production of this closeness that femininity itself will paradoxically be kept at distance. The representation is doubled constantly, and thus, the very structure of the gaze is shattered. The identity of the original, its authenticity, and its shattered norm, are continuously put under the question mark – in such a way, though, that the traces of its authenticity paradoxically multiply: the identity of the first is constantly undermined with the forgery of the other. [12] Femininity as masquerade can thus be read as a specific strategicness which establishes identity as complex potentiality and relationality. The strategicness of contemporary performing arts can be viewed in a similar fashion: the 'autenticity' of the situatin is constantly undermined by the falseness of the performer, and vice versa: this is all quite evident from the procedures of Jerome Bel and Xavier Le Roy.
To put it differently: we are bound to stray in our dealing with contemporary performing praxes and their events if we ask ourselves questions such as: What is a woman before she changes her clothes? Setting this question, we will inevitably end up in a deadlock: in every performing, every costume, we presuppose an authenticity that has been veiled. It is much more important for us to think about on the ways of how our masquerade masks. It is thus that we can gain the insight into the process, the connections, the manner of relationality - and maybe learn to think in another, not just binary way. Here, we can gain the insight into how contemporary strategic subjectivities get constructed, and to what degree their potentiality is already that of performing. More precisely, there might arise a possibility of positively answering the question asked by Jan Ritsema and Bojana Cvejic in TODAYulisses: can someone watch, be watched and return the gaze at the same time? Because 'in the returning of the gaze' - this is precisely how contemporary strategic subjectivities could be disclosed to us.
Endnotes:
- "I have never ceased to see theatre as a scene for critical discourse," said Xavier Le Roy in: Capitals, Catalogue of the festival, Encontros Acarte 2003, Lisbon 2002, p. 12.
- Guy Debord: The Society of Spectacle, Zone Books, 1994.
- André Lepecki: "The Body In Difference", FAMA, No. 1., Vol. I, 2000, p. 14 - 18.
- In this context the choreographers of the last decade are presented in the book No Wind, No Word, written by Helmut Ploebst. In: Helmust Ploebst: No Wind, No Word, Kieser, München, 2002. Even if the book is broad and very diverse in the way how it reads the new choreographies, the theoretical description of the antispectacular position is a slightly problematic one, because it does not take into account the history of contemporary dance which is somehow always a fight with its own spectacle.
- I thereby refer to Eda Cufer's article: "Athletics of the Eye", Maska, No. 74 - 75, Vol. XVII, 2002, p. 81 - 88.
- Her Calico Mingling for four dancers (1973), is based entirely on patterns of walking back and forth - on six-step phrases following circular and semicircular paths. A famous early example of such analytical dance is Trio A, choreographed by Iyvonne Rainer in 1966.
- Hans-Ties Lehmann: "The Political in the Post-dramatic", Maska, No. 74- 75, Vol. XVII, 2002, p. 76.
- Xavier Le Roy: Interview with Xavier Le Roy in Capitals, Catalogue Encontros Acarte 2003, Lisbon, 2002, p. 13.
- J. Riviere: "Womanliness as a masquerade", In: M. Athol Hughes (ed): The Inner World of Joan Riviere, Collected Papers 1920 – 1958.
- J. Riviere: "Womanliness as a masquerade", In: M. Athol Hughes (ed): The Inner World of Joan Riviere, Collected Papers 1920 – 1958.
- Butler Judith: "Lacan, Riviere and the strategies of masquerade", in: Judith Butler: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York, London, Routledge, 1999.
- About this complex relationality writes Ursa Jurman, where she with the help of the masquerade concept analyses the work of Cindy Sherman. In: Ursa Jerman: "Cindy Sherman in zenskost kot maskarada", Delta, No. 1/2, 2000, p. 29 - 63.