Archaeologies of Presence
Archaeologies of Presence is a compelling exploration of how the
performance of presence can be understood through the relationships between performance theory and archaeological thinking.
Drawing together carefully commissioned contributions from
leading international scholars and artists, this radical new work
poses a number of essential questions:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
What are the principal signiiers of theatrical presence?
How is presence achieved through theatrical performance?
What makes a memory come alive and live again?
How is presence connected with identity?
Is presence synonymous with ‘being in the moment’?
What is the nature of the ‘co-presence’ of audience and
performer?
Where does performance practice end and its documentation
begin?
Co-edited by performance specialists Gabriella Giannachi and Nick
Kaye, and archaeologist Michael Shanks, Archaeologies of Presence
represents an innovative and rewarding feat of interdisciplinary
scholarship.
Gabriella Giannachi is Professor in Performance and New
Media, and Director of the Centre for Intermedia at the University
of Exeter, UK. Her book publications include: Virtual Theatres:
an Introduction (2004), Performing Nature: Explorations in
Ecology and the Arts, ed. with Nigel Stewart (2005), The
Politics of New Media Theatre (2007), Performing Presence:
Between the Live and the Simulated, co-authored with Nick
Kaye (2011), and Performing Mixed Reality, with Steve Benford
(2011).
Nick Kaye is Dean of the College of Humanities and Professor of
Performance Studies, at the University of Exeter, UK. His books
include: Postmodernism and Performance (1994), Art into Theatre:
Performance Interviews and Documents (1996), Site-Speciic Art:
Performance, Place and Documentation (2000), Staging the PostAvant-Garde: Italian Performance After 1970, with Gabriella
Giannachi (2002), Multi-media: video – installation – performance
(2007) and Performing Presence: Between the Live and the
Simulated, with Gabriella Giannachi (2011). He is co-director of
REACT, an AHRC Knowledge Exchange Hub that will invest over
£4 million in creating collaborations between academic researchers
and the creative industries during 2012–16.
Michael Shanks is the Omar and Althea Hoskins Professor of
Classics and Director of Stanford Archaeology Center’s Metamedia
Lab. His major book publications include: ReConstructing
Archaeology (1987), Social Theory and Archaeology (1987), Art
and the Greek City State (1999), Classical Archaeology: Experiences
of the Discipline (1996), Experiencing the Past: On the Character
of Archaeology (1992) and Theatre/Archaeology, with Mike
Pearson (2001).
Archaeologies of
Presence
Art, performance and the
persistence of being
Edited by Gabriella Giannachi,
Nick Kaye and
Michael Shanks
Archaeologies of Presence
is supported by
First published 2012
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2012 Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye and Michael Shanks
The right of Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye and Michael Shanks to be
identiied as the editors of the text and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identiication and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Archaeologies of presence : art, performance and the persistence of being
/ edited by Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye and Michael Shanks.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Performance art. I. Giannachi, Gabriella. II. Kaye, Nick. III. Shanks, Michael.
NX456.5.P38A73 2012
709.04’0755–dc23
2011041611
ISBN: 978-0-415-55766-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-55767-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-12673-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby
Contents
List of igures
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
1
Introduction: Archaeologies of presence
vii
ix
xv
1
GABRIELLA GIANNACHI, NICK KAYE AND MICHAEL SHANKS
PART I
Being here: Place and time
2
How to deine presence effects: the work of
Janet Cardiff
27
29
JOSETTE FÉRAL
3
Environmental presence
50
GABRIELLA GIANNACHI
4
Performance remains again
64
REBECCA SCHNEIDER
5
Tension/release and the production of time
in performance
JON ERICKSON
82
vi
Contents
PART II
Being before: Stage and gaze
6
Appearing as embodied mind – deining a weak,
a strong and a radical concept of presence
101
103
ERIKA FISCHER-LICHTE
7
‘… presence …’ as a question and emergent
possibility: a case study from the performer’s
perspective
119
PHILLIP ZARRILLI
8
Out-standing standing-within: being alone
together in the work of Bodies in Flight
153
SIMON JONES
9
Mis-spectatorship, or, ‘redistributing the sensible’
172
NICHOLAS RIDOUT
10 Looking back: a conversation about presence, 2006
183
TIM ETCHELLS, GABRIELLA GIANNACHI AND NICK KAYE
PART III
Traces: After presence
195
11 Temporal anxiety/‘Presence’ in Absentia:
experiencing performance as documentation
197
AMELIA JONES
12 Here and now
222
LYNN HERSHMAN LEESON AND MICHAEL SHANKS
13 Photographic presence: time and the image
235
NICK KAYE
14 Neither here nor there … : let’s talk about
adult matters …
257
MIKE PEARSON
Index
273
Figures
1.1
1.2
2.1
2.2
2.3
7.1
7.2
7.3
7.4
8.1
8.2
8.3
10.1
10.2
10.3
11.1
11.2
11.3
Martin Creed, Work No. 850, Tate Britain (2008)
Marina Abramović, The Artist is Present (2010)
Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, The Paradise
Institute (2001)
Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, The Paradise
Institute (2001)
Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, The Paradise
Institute (2001)
The Llanarth Group, Told by the Wind,
Structure 5 (2010)
The Llanarth Group, Told by the Wind,
Structure 5 (2010)
The Llanarth Group, Told by the Wind,
Structure 7 (2010)
The Llanarth Group, Told by the Wind,
Structure 10 (2010)
Bodies in Flight, skinworks (2002)
Bodies in Flight, Dream→work,
Nottingham (2009)
Bodies in Flight, Dream→work, Singapore (2009)
Forced Entertainment, Bloody Mess (2004)
Forced Entertainment, Exquisite Pain (2005)
Tim Etchells, Hugo Glendinning and Forced
Entertainment, Nightwalks (1998)
Marina Abramovic/Ulay, Relation in Space (1976)
Carolee Schneemann, Interior Scroll (1975)
Yayoi Kusama, Untitled. Photo Collage
with photograph by Hal Reiff of Kusama
reclining on Accumulation No.2
4
6
36
38
40
128
129
133
134
155
166
168
183
187
192
202
205
210
viii
Figures
11.4
12.1
12.2
12.3
12.4
13.1
13.2
13.3
13.4
13.5
13.6
13.7
14.1
14.2
Annie Sprinkle, ‘The Public Cervix
Announcement,’ from Post Post Porn
Modernist (1990–93)
Lynn Hershman signing in at The Dante Hotel,
San Francisco, November 1973
Lynn Hershman, The Dante Hotel (1973–74)
The regenerated Dante Hotel in construction
within Second Life for Life Squared
Visitors in Second Life occupy room 47 of
the regenerated Dante Hotel in Life Squared
Chris Burden, White Light/White Heat (1975)
Chris Burden, White Light/White Heat (1975)
Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still (1977)
Doug Hall, Teatro Dell’Opera, Rome (2002)
Tim Etchells and Hugo Glendinning,
from Empty Stages (2003)
Chris Burden, La Chiaraicazione (1975)
Chris Burden, La Chiaraicazione (1975)
Me and her, Hibaldstow, January 1950
Me and her, Hibaldstow, April 2000.
During Bubbling Tom (2000)
214
222
224
228
233
236
237
245
247
249
252
254
257
262
Notes on contributors
Jon Erickson is Associate Professor in English at Ohio State
University, USA. He is the author of The Fate of the Object:
From Modern Object to Postmodern Sign (1995) and many
essays on performance, including ‘“Presence,” in Staging
Philosophy, edited by David Saltz and David Krasner (2006),
and “Deining Political Performance,” in Theatricality, edited by
Tracy Davis and Thomas Postlewait (2003). He is currently
working on the ideal construction of the spectator by theorists
and the resistance to textual authority in performance and
performance theory.
Tim Etchells is best known for his work as artistic director and
writer of Forced Entertainment, one of the UK’s leading and
inluential performance and media ensembles who have been
working together since 1984. He also creates diverse projects of
his own in a variety of media, including SMS, video and
installation. He has also collaborated with other artists in many
disciplines, including the photographer Hugo Glendinning, the
choreographer Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods and visual artists
Vlatka Horvat, Franko B and Asta Groting. Under his direction,
Forced Entertainment have toured widely in mainland Europe
and beyond and have made projects that span theatre, durational
performance, and other media. He has written widely about
performance and contemporary culture, and has published three
books: The Dream Dictionary (2001), Endland Stories (1999);
and Certain Fragments – a collection of theoretical writing and
performance texts (1999).
Josette Féral is full professor at the Drama Department of the
Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada, where she has taught
x
Notes on contributors
since 1981. She is presently teaching at Paris-Sorbonne Nouvelle.
She has published several books including Mise en scène et jeu
de l’acteur, volumes I, II and III (1997, 1999, 2007), Teatro,
Teoria y practica: mas alla de las fronteras (2004), Rencontres
avec Ariane Mnouchkine (1995) and Trajectoires du Soleil
(1999), La culture contre l’art: essai d’économie politique du
théâtre (1990). She has edited several books on the theory of the
theatre, the most recent being Pratiques performatives – Body
Remix (2011). Her publications in journals include ‘Genetics of
Performance’ (Theatre Research International, 2008), ‘The
transparency of the text: Contemporary Writing for the Stage’
(Yale French Studies, 2007) and ‘Theatricality’ (Substance,
2002). She has written extensively on the theory of theatre in
Canada, the United States and Europe. Her most recent book,
Théorie et pratique, au-delà des limites, will appear in France à
L’Entretemps in 2011.
Erika Fischer-Lichte is Professor of Theatre Studies at Freie
Universität Berlin. From 1995 to 1999 she was President of the
International Federation for Theatre Research. She is a member
of the Academia Europaea, the Academy of Sciences at
Goettingen, and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences.
Since 2008 she has served as director of the Institute for Advanced
Studies on ‘Interweaving Cultures in Performance’ and since
2006 as Spokesperson of the International Research Training
Group on „InterArt“. She has published widely in the ields of
aesthetics, theory of literature, art, and theatre, in particular on
semiotics and performativity, theatre history, and contemporary
theatre. Among her recent publications are Theatre, Sacriice,
Ritual: Exploring Forms of Political Theatre (2005), The
Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics (2008)
and Global Ibsen. Performing Multiple Modernities (2010).
Gabriella Giannachi is Professor in Performance and New Media,
and Director of the Centre for Intermedia at the University of
Exeter, UK. Her book publications include: Virtual Theatres: an
Introduction (2004), Performing Nature: Explorations in
Ecology and the Arts, ed. with Nigel Stewart (2005), The Politics
of New Media Theatre (2007), Performing Presence: Between
the Live and the Simulated, co-authored with Nick Kaye (2011),
and Performing Mixed Reality, with Steve Benford (2011). From
2005–09 she was a principal investigator for Performing
Notes on contributors
xi
Presence: from the live to the simulated, a large-scale collaborative
research project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research
Council, which she led in collaboration with Nick Kaye and
Michael Shanks. She is an expert in performance documentation
and is an investigator in the Research Councils UK (RCUK)
funded Horizon Digital Economy Research Hub (2009–14) for
which she developed a novel archiving tool, CloudPad.
Lynn Hershman Leeson has been called ‘the most inluential female
in new media’. She works across platforms of photography, ilm,
performance and computer-based installations. She is a recipient
of many awards, including D.Digital, Sloan Foundation for
Directing and Writing, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial
Foundation Fellowship, amongst many others. Over the last
three decades, artist and ilmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson has
been internationally acclaimed for her pioneering use of new
technologies and her investigations of issues that are now
recognized as key to the working of our society: identity in a
time of consumerism, privacy in a era of surveillance, interfacing
of humans and machines, and the relationship between real and
virtual worlds. In 2004 Stanford University Libraries acquired
Hershman Leeson’s working archive. Hershman Leeson is Chair
of the Film Department at the San Francisco Art Institute and
Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Davis, USA.
Amelia Jones is Professor and Grierson Chair in Visual Culture at
McGill University in Montréal, Canada. Her recent publications
include major essays on Marina Abramović (in The Drama
Review), on feminist art and curating, and on performance art
histories, as well as the edited volume Feminism and Visual
Culture Reader (2003; new edition 2010). Her most recent book,
Self Image: Technology, Representation, and the Contemporary
Subject (2006), will be followed in 2012 by Seeing Differently: A
History and Theory of Identiication in the Visual Arts and her
major volume, Perform Repeat Record: Live Art in History, coedited with Adrian Heathield, is also due out in 2012.
Simon Jones, Professor of Performance, University of Bristol, UK, is
a writer and scholar, founder and co-director of Bodies in Flight,
which has to date produced 16 works and numerous documents
of performance that have at their heart the encounter between
lesh and text, where words move and lesh utters. He has been
xii
Notes on contributors
visiting scholar at Amsterdam University (2001), a visiting artist
at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2002) and Banff
Arts Centre (2008). He has published in Contemporary Theatre
Review, Entropy Magazine, Liveartmagazine, Shattered
Anatomies, The Cambridge History of British Theatre,
Performance Research: on Beckett, co-edited Practice as Research
in Performance and Screen (2009) and his work with Bodies in
Flight features in Josephine Machon’s (Syn)aesthetics? Towards
a Deinition of Visceral Performance (2009).
Nick Kaye is Dean of the College of Humanities and Professor of
Performance Studies, at the University of Exeter, UK. His books
include: Postmodernism and Performance (1994), Art into
Theatre: Performance Interviews and Documents (1996), SiteSpeciic Art: Performance, Place and Documentation (2000),
Staging the Post-Avant-Garde: Italian Performance After 1970,
with Gabriella Giannachi
(2002), Multi-media: video –
installation – performance (2007) and Performing Presence:
Between the Live and the Simulated, with Gabriella Giannachi,
(2011). Other publications include ‘Acts of Presence,’ an article,
DVD-ROM and online publication, with Gabriella Giannachi,
The Drama Review Winter 2011. From 2005–09 he was a
principal investigator for Performing Presence: from the live to
the simulated, a large-scale collaborative research project funded
by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, which he led
in collaboration with Gabriella Giannachi and Michael Shanks.
From 2011–14, he is an investigator on another large-scale
AHRC project, Performing Documents: modelling creative and
curatorial engagements with live art and performance archives.
He is co-director of REACT, an AHRC Knowledge Exchange
Hub that will invest over £4 million in creating collaborations
between academic researchers and the creative industries during
2012–16.
Mike Pearson trained as an archaeologist. He was a member of
R.A.T. Theatre (1972–73) and an artistic director of Cardiff
Laboratory Theatre (1973–80) and Brith Gof (1981–97). He
continues to make performances as a solo artist and in
collaboration with artist/designer Mike Brookes as Pearson/
Brookes (1997–). In August 2010, he directed a site-speciic
production of Aeschylus’s The Persians on the military training
ranges in mid-Wales for the newly founded National Theatre
Notes on contributors
xiii
Wales. He is co-author with Michael Shanks of Theatre/
Archaeology (2001) and author of ‘In Comes I’: Performance,
Memory and Landscape (2006), Site-Speciic Performance
(2010) and Mickery Theater: An Imperfect Archaeology (2011).
He is currently Professor of Performance Studies, Department of
Theatre, Film and Television Studies, Aberystwyth University.
Nicholas Ridout teaches in the Department of Drama at Queen
Mary, University of London. He is the author of Stage Fright,
Animals and Other Theatrical Problems (2006), Theatre &
Ethics (2009) and co-editor, with Joe Kelleher, of Contemporary
Theatres in Europe (2006). He is the co-author, with Claudia
Castellucci, Romeo Castellucci, Chiara Guidi and Joe Kelleher of
The Theatre of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio (2007).
Rebecca Schneider is the author of Performing Remains: Art and
War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment (2011) and The Explicit
Body in Performance (1997). She is co-editor of the anthology
Re:Direction (2001) and of numerous essays, including ‘Solo
Solo Solo’ in After Criticism: New Responses to Art and
Performance (2004) and ‘Hello Dolly Well Hello Dolly’ in
Psychoanalysis and Performance (2001). She is Chair of the
Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown
University, consortium editor for TDR: The Drama Review, and
co-editor of the book series ‘Theatre: Theory/Text/Performance’
with University of Michigan Press.
Michael Shanks is the Omar and Althea Hoskins Professor of
Classics and Director of Stanford Archaeology Center’s
Metamedia Lab. Two questions have driven his research into
prehistoric Europe: Design – from Classical antiquity to the
contemporary ine arts – How are we to understand people and
societies through the things they make and leave behind? And,
how are we to write the archaeological past on the basis of what
is left behind? – a question of the documentation of event. His
major book publications include: ReConstructing Archaeology
(1987), Social Theory and Archaeology (1987), Art and the
Greek City State (1999), Classical Archaeology: Experiences of
the Discipline (1996), Experiencing the Past: On the Character
of Archaeology (1992) and Theatre/Archaeology, with Mike
Pearson (Routledge 2001). From 2005–09 he was a principal
investigator for Performing Presence: from the live to the
xiv Notes on contributors
simulated, a large-scale collaborative research project funded by
the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, which he led in
collaboration with Gabriella Giannachi and Nick Kaye.
Phillip Zarrilli works internationally as a director, actor, and
training actor/performers in psychophysical processes through
Asian martial arts and yoga. As Artistic Director of THE
LLANARTH GROUP, his most recent productions are Told by
the Wind, co-created with Kaite O’Reilly and Jo Shapland,
(2010/2011) and The Echo Chamber, co-created with Kaite
O’Reilly, Peader Kirk and Ian Morgan (2012). Other recent
productions include “ … sweet … dry …bitter … plaintive … for
SANKALPAM, part of Corpo-realities (2010); Play by Samuel
Beckett with Gaitkrash and National Sculpture Factory (Cork,
Ireland, 2011); and the world première of Kaite O’Reilly’s The
Almond and the Seahorse for Sherman Cymru (2008). In
additional to running his private studio in West Wales, recent
international residencies/workshops include the Grotowski
Centre (Wroclaw), IMALIS project (Epidavros), Toronto, Taipei,
and Seoul. His most recent book, Psychophysical Acting: an
intercultural approach after Stanislavski (2009) received the
2010 ATHE Outstanding Book of the Year Award. He is Professor
of Performance Practice at Exeter University, UK.
Acknowledgements
A book such as this rests on the interest and support of many
individuals and organizations. We would like to extend our thanks
first of all to our principal colleagues and collaborators in the
Performing Presence project: Mel Slater, Professor of Virtual
Environments, Department of Computer Science, University College
London; and Dr David Swapp, Immersive VR Laboratory Manager
at University College London. It has also been a particular privilege
for us to develop the book in relation to the generous contributions
of time, interest and assistance by the contributors to this volume. Of
the contributors, Jon Erickson, Tim Etchells, Josette Féral, Lynn
Hershman Leeson, Simon Jones, Mike Pearson and Phillip Zarrilli
also played direct and important parts in the Performing Presence
project itself, either by way of workshops, conversations and
interviews, or contributions to the culminating conference in 2008.
We would also like to thank Marco Gillies, Department of
Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London, and Peter Hulton,
Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Drama, University of
Exeter, for their continual help and support throughout the project.
During the development of the project we also benefited from the
invaluable assistance of Henry Lowood, Curator for History of
Science and Technology Collections and Film and Media Collections
at Stanford University Libraries; Henrik Bennetsen, Associate
Director at Stanford University’s Stanford Humanities Lab; and Jeff
Aldrich, Technology Director, Stanford Humanities Lab.
As a principal outcome of the Performing Presence project, this
book has also received extensive institutional support. We are
indebted in particular to the UK Arts and Humanities Research
Council for a large research grant award to facilitate the research
that underpins the volume. This award to Performing Presence:
xvi Acknowledgements
from the live to the simulated provided for a large-scale
interdisciplinary collaboration between the University of Exeter,
Stanford University and University College London from 2005 to
2009. The University of Exeter also provided extensive inancial
and technical support to the project.
We would also like to acknowledge the invaluable support of the
staff and resources of the following libraries and institutions: the
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center;
the Jerome Robbins Archive of the Recorded Moving Image at
Lincoln Center; Electronic Arts Intermix. We would also like to
thank the staff at the Stanford Libraries Special Collections unit.
With regard to the igures reproduced in the book, we are pleased
to acknowledge the following credits: Figures 1.1, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3,
13.5 and 14.2 courtesy of Hugo Glendinning; Figure 1.2 courtesy
of Marina Abramović Archives; Figures 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 courtesy of
Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Luhring Augustine, New
York and Barbara Weiss Gallery, Berlin; Figures 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 and
7.4 courtesy of Phillip Zarrilli and photographers as credited;
Figures 8.1, 8.2 and 8.3 courtesy of Bodies in Flight and
photographers as credited; Figure 11.1 courtesy of Marina
Abramovic and Sean Kelly Gallery, New York and DACS; Figure
11.2 courtesy of Carolee Schneemann; Figure 11.3 courtesy of
Yayoi Kusama; Figure 11.4 courtesy of Annie Sprinkle; Figures
12.1, 12.2 courtesy of Lynn Hershman Leeson; Figures 12.3 and
12.4 courtesy of Gabriella Giannachi; Figures 13.1, 13.2, 13.6 and
13.7 are © Chris Burden: courtesy of Gagosian Gallery; Figure 13.3
courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures; Figure 13.4 courtesy of
Doug Hall; Figure 14.1 courtesy of Mike Pearson.
We are happy to acknowledge that Chapter 4, ‘Performance
remains again’ is altered and developed from Rebecca Schneider’s
2001 essay ‘Performance Remains’ in Performance Research, 6:2,
100–08. Chapter 10, ‘Looking Back: a conversation about presence,
2006’ is developed from ‘Tim Etchells Interviewed by The Presence
Project’, recorded and published online in 2006 by the authors in
the Presence Project Collaboratory, at: http://spa.exeter.ac.uk/
drama/presence/presence.stanford.edu_3455/Collaboratory/646.
htm. Chapter 11, ‘Temporal anxiety/“Presence” in absentia:
experiencing performance as documentation’ incorporates Amelia
Jones’ earlier essay, ‘Presence’ in absentia: experiencing performance
as documentation’ published in Art Journal, 56:4 (1997), 11–18.
Chapter 12, ‘Here and now’, was originally published in Seed
Acknowledgements
xvii
Magazine as a streamed videocast, Seed Salon: Lynn Hershman
Leeson + Michael Shanks in 2007, at http://salon.seedmagazine.
com/salon_shanks_leeson.html, and as a text at http://seedmagazine.
com/content/article/michael_shanks_lynn_hershman_leeson/ on 27
August 2007. The text is reproduced here courtesy of Seed Media
Group.
Finally, we would like to thank Talia Rodgers for her interest and
belief in this volume, as well as Niall Slater and Sam Kinchin-Smith
for their patient and invaluable editorial support.
G.G.
N.K.
M.S.
Chapter 1
Introduction
Archaeologies of presence
Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye and
Michael Shanks
This book is concerned with the location and speculation toward
experiences and performances of presence. Posing the question of
how, when and by which processes phenomena of presence are
produced and received, this volume presents key analyses of the
conditions, dynamics and dialectics that shape presence in – or in
relation to – acts of performance. In so doing, this book approaches
the theatrical performance of presence as both subject and
framework. Addressing experiences of being there – and being
before – the critical analyses of presence framed here engage i rstly
with dynamics fundamental to theatre, relecting on relationships
between actor and witness, as well as practices and concepts of
ephemerality, liveness, mediation, and documentation. In turn,
these theatrical practices offer lenses to approach and analyze acts
of presence in which phenomena of self, other and place are
dei ned.
Here, too, the critical examination of presence is approached in
the convergence of performance theory and archaeological
thinking. Occurring in relation to situated acts, ‘presence’ not
only invites consideration of individual experience, perception
and consciousness, but also directs attention outside the self into
the social and the spatial, toward the enactment of ‘co-presence’
as well as perceptions and habitations of place. Presence implies
temporality, too – a fulcrum of presence is tense and the
relationship between past and present. In this context, the
examination of presence and its performance is linked to
inscriptions of the past into the present, even as performance
theory may consider the cues and prompts in which a future sense
of presence may come to be enacted. Here, then, speculations over
a presence once performed (theatrically or socially), are confronted
2
Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye and Michael Shanks
with questions over how we create relationships with that which
remains. In this process, performance theory and archaeological
thinking may productively converge in engagements with
uncertainty, in documentation, and in the analyses of signs,
remains and traces of dynamic and processual phenomena that
once occurred in the consequences of an act, in recognition of
otherness, or in the performance of speciic conigurations and
ecologies of position, relation and place.
In turn, while relationships between performance theory and
archaeology provide lenses to examine notions and processes of
presence, so the concept of presence has also come to assert itself
as a signiicant igure and question within these different ields.
In performance theory and practice, presence is both
fundamental and highly contested. In theatre, drama and
performance, debates over the nature of the actor’s presence have
been at the heart of key aspects of practice and theory since the late
1950s and are a vital part of the discourses surrounding avantgarde and postmodern performance. These discourses concerning
the performance of presence have frequently hinged on the
relationship between the live and mediated, on notions and effects
of immediacy, authenticity and originality. More widely, presence
prompts questions of the character of self-awareness, of the
performance and presentation of self and role. Presence also implies
witnessing and interaction – a being before or being in the presence
of another. Such dynamics are deeply inlected in theatrical process
and practice, and lend themselves toward analysis through
frameworks of performance and performativity. In theatre,
performance and visual art, the experience of presence has often
been linked to practices of encounter and to perceptions of
difference and relation with something or somebody, as well as the
uncanny encounter with one’s own sense of self.
At the same time, questions of presence have also gained ground
in archaeological thinking, just as relationships between
archaeology and performance have emerged as inluential on
performance theory and practice (Pearson and Shanks 2001).
Archaeology is increasingly understood less as the discovery of the
past and more in terms of different relationships with what is left
of the past. This has foregrounded anthropological questions of
the performance and construction of the past in memory, narrative,
collections (of textual and material sources), archives and systems
of documentation, in the experience of place. Concepts of
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3
‘presence’, ‘aura’ and the ‘uncanny’ return of the past accompany
an emphasis upon encounters with the cues or prompts of ‘site’ –
with the sign or trace. Such thinking has led to radically new forms
of archaeological investigation and documentation that draw on
and advance theatre theory and practice.
In these contexts, recent theatre practice and theory has also
come to re-emphasize the performance and experience of presence
over its deconstruction and the associated tropes of postmodern
theatrical practice (Kaye 1994). Within experimental theatre, such
work can be conigured as part of a broader response through ‘live’
performance to the growing ubiquity of technologies of presence,
including virtual, augmented and mixed reality computing, as well
as the increasingly common braiding of the live with the simulated,
and the performance of personal and social presence, through
network media. Coming to prominence from the mid-1990s in the
work of theatre companies such as Forced Entertainment, The
Builders Association, Blast Theory, 3-Legged Dog and Elevator
Repair Service, among others, these generations of artists and
theatre-makers have invested in the performance of presence as an
integral part of their aesthetic. Thus Marianne Weems, artistic
director of The Builders Association, for example, stresses that the
company’s blending of live, mediated and recorded performance in
increasingly complex ways supports ‘[t]he pleasure of staging the
idea of presence […] how [the performers’] presence is either […]
extended in some ways and ampliied or compromised and
endangered’ (Weems in Kaye 2007: 576). In this context, The
Builders Association work explicitly to articulate the performance
of presence across their multi-media theatre productions, as the
signs of ‘performer-presence’ are overtly orchestrated through
shifts across media and modes of representation (Kaye 2007). In
this work, ‘presence’ is not associated with the uniied occupation
of a place or unmediated encounter, but is foregrounded in the selfrelexive construction of experiences of presence through multiple
media, representational frameworks and performative lenses.
An analogous focus on ‘presence’ is evident also in recent live
art installations, as well as events and performances in museum
and gallery contexts. It is a tendency aligned, too, with a move
toward the ephemeral that Adrian Heathield identiies with the
‘live’ in art. Observing in 2004 that ‘many of the “troubling”
currents in visual art practice’ are ‘more about the presentation of
some phenomena rather than the representation of some thing,’
4
Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye and Michael Shanks
Figure 1.1 Martin Creed, Work No. 850, Tate Britain (2008).
Photo: Hugo Glendinning
Heathield observes and anatomizes a ‘drive to the live’ in ‘a hard
to categorize space between sculpture, installation and Live Art’
(Heathield 2004: 7). Exempliied for Heathield in Damien Hirst’s
installations combining objects, organic matter and living animals,
such work confronts the viewer with their own presence before the
‘live’ phenomena of the work, so entwining their response and
consciousness with that of the ‘object’ of their attention. In
encountering Hirst’s The Pursuit of Oblivion (2004) Heathield
recalls: ‘A shiver runs through me. Facing this artwork time slides
and I am gripped by an uncanny feeling. The sculpture is
performing: the object is alive.’ (Heathield 2004: 7)
More recent work has extended this installation of ‘live’
presence within the museum. For Martin Creed’s Work No. 850
(2008), every thirty seconds during the opening hours of Tate
Britain a person ran ‘as if their life depended on it’ through the
86-metre length of the neo-classical Deveen sculpture gallery. It
is a run that continually repeats in alternation with caesura of
equal time in which nothing is present. On this work, Creed
comments that:
Introduction
5
I like running. I like seeing people run and I like running
myself … running is the opposite of being still. If you think
about death as being completely still and movement as a sign
of life, then the fastest movement possible is the biggest sign of
life. So then running fast is like the exact opposite of death: it’s
an example of aliveness.
(Creed 2008)
Work No. 850 exhibits the paradox and desirability of ‘presence’
– as ‘aliveness,’ as the ephemeral act and so that which continually
absents itself. In the event, the work l ickers between presence and
absence, resting on the rhythmic pause between runners in order to
amplify and articulate the calculated intrusion and shock of the
runner as an inappropriate performer within the gallery. In this
context, too, the further dissemination of Work No. 850 in video
and photographic documentation complicates its assertion of the
presence. Hugo Glendinning’s image of Creed’s work at once
departs from its ‘liveness,’ yet participates in this work’s energy
and will to ‘presence,’ catching the run in a frame and moment
unavailable to the gallery visitor. Indeed, in Creed’s work neither
the act nor the image can ‘claim’ the phenomena ‘presence,’ which
is shaped palimpsestually in repetition, and so in absence; in the
anticipation of the act, in its memory, and so also in its absence
from the record and image of the ‘live’. The experiential and
ideological implications for the visitor of such stagings and
re-staging of ‘presence’ in the museum is a topic of Amelia Jones’
contribution to this volume, which engages with Marina
Abramović’s 2010 work The Artist Is Present, a new elaboration of
her landmark durational work with Ulay, Nightsea Crossing
(1985–89) and which rested on Abramović’s continuous attendance
in the work each day at MoMA New York over a four month
period. This act and re-staging, which is related to Abramović’s
earlier Seven Easy Pieces (2005), in which she re-performed iconic
and ephemeral performance art works by Vito Acconci, Joseph
Beuys, Valie Export, Gina Pane and others at the Guggenheim
Museum, New York, offer performances that play with the return
or persistence of earlier acts, events and repetitions, as well as the
economy of images and documentations by which they are known,
and which become part of the fabric and claim to their ‘being
present’ ‘now’.
6
Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye and Michael Shanks
Figure 1.2 Marina Abramović, The Artist Is Present (2010).
Courtesy of Marina Abramović Archives. Photo: Marco Anelli.
This focus on the staging and modulation of presence in
performance is in marked contrast to the emphasis of overtly
postmodern critical narratives directed toward media-based
theatrical performance in the late 1980s and 1990s, where presence
was conigured in relation to the deconstructive turn in critical
practice and so as a locus of authority operating in elisions of
social, cultural and historical contingencies to be challenged and
displaced (Auslander 1994). Indeed, Phillip Auslander has identiied
a valorization of ‘presence’ as that which ‘performance’ rejected in
favour of its deconstruction in the historical move from modern to
postmodern, and which he reiterates explicitly in From Acting to
Performance: Essays in Modernism and Postmodernism (1998). It
is a skepticism toward presence also relected in Peggy Phelan’s
location of the ontology of performance in its ‘disappearance’ and
so in an eventhood and ephemerality that evades reproduction
(Phelan 1993: 146–66). Yet in this very emphasis on processes of
disappearance Phelan’s celebrated formulation also relects the
processual nature of both performance and presence, where the
experience of theatre becomes dei ned in the falling away of
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7
performance from its material traces, its remainder, the
documentary image, and memory itself. Where Auslander thus
identiies the mediatized theatre and performance of the 1980s and
early 1990s with an overturning of the 1960s and 1970s
valorization of the ‘live’ body in performance, more recent media
art, theatre and performance has re-focused on processual
understandings and practices of presence, in assertions,
explorations and simulations of the experiences of presence.
Correspondingly, more recent critical engagements with the
performance, experience and trace of presence in theatre,
performance and media-based and visual art have also marked a
resurgence of interest in the return, persistence or the production
of experiences of presence. It is in turn signalled in the inluence of
Rebecca Schneider’s implicit retort to Phelan that ‘Performance
Remains’ (Schneider 2001a), as well as the function of
documentation with regard to the ephemerality and persistence of
performance (Auslander 2006; Kaye 2006). Similarly, the ‘value’
and transformative effect of ‘live’ theatrical and performed
presence has been restaged in Erika Fischer-Lichte’s The
Transformational Power of Performance (Fischer-Lichte 2008).
Such perspectives are also elaborated in a range of other monographs
exploring Presence in Play (Power 2008), which re-examines the
theatrical literature on presence, Stage Presence (Goodall 2008),
and Joseph Roach’s examination of charisma in It (Roach 2007). It
is this new engagement with presence in theatre theory and
practice, too, which Archaeologies of Presence works to relect and
capture, and to bring to this debate the processual character of
presence, both in performance and its critical recovery.
In this re-focusing on presence in theatre theory and practice,
questions over the tense of presence – and of the temporal ground,
or low, in which presence occurs have also come further to the
fore. Indeed, throughout this volume, ‘the present’ is approached
as always already subject to difference from itself, as the subject’s
occupation of the ‘here and now’ is imbricated with phenomena of
memory and anticipation. This complicating of the present tense
and the present moment of experience is consonant with the
broadly post-structuralist perspective which underpinned the
approach to presence within performance theory in the 1980s and
1990s, and in which ‘presence’ was approached i rstly as an
ideological and performative claim rather than a state, quality or
experience. Yet the performance theory and practice encompassed
8
Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye and Michael Shanks
here tends to emphasize ways in which ‘presence effects’ or
‘performer-presence’ may gain ground in the performance of the
present moment, or in the very ‘multipleness’ this understanding of
‘the present’ implies. This tendency is also relected in the broader
archaeological turn in contemporary performance practice evident
in the growing ubiquity of site-speciic and site-sensitive theatre
and performance which invariably produce experiences of
‘presence’ by addressing the absences of place (Kaye 2000; Pearson
2010). It is an afinity between performance and archaeology also
directly evidenced in new strategies for documentation which have
increasingly come to emphasize the reader or viewer’s relationship
with that which remains over the reconstruction of past events or
the transparency of one medium, context and time to another
(Auslander 2006).
This address to ‘presence’ through an engagement with
‘multipleness’ of time, place and performance is consonant also
with radical earlier avant-garde practice, which frequently sought
to interrogate and shape experiences of presence in the relationship
between differing representational schemes and the ostensibly
‘real’ circumstances of their performance. Such theatre frequently
approached the performance of presence through structures that
were explicitly multiple, aligning the performance of presence with
the articulation and crossing of thresholds and the doubling of the
ictive with the real. Thus, Richard Schechner, in recalling his
work with The Performance Group from 1967, remarks that:
[a] performance can run according to several schemes at once.
It can tell a narrative, but part of that narrative can be gamebound. So you can use game structure some of the time or in
part of the space, and narrative structure at other times and in
other parts of the space […] The Tooth of Crime dealt with
narrative structure, but also with performance in everyday
life. That’s what Spalding [Gray] meant, that some of his ‘real
self’ was engaged directly, not used as in character-actor
training as a way to invest the character, but side by side with
the character.
(Schechner in Kaye 1996: 165)
In one of The Performance Group’s most celebrated performances,
Dionysus in 69 (1970), the principal performers thus negotiated
relationships between the canonical text, their own text and
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9
improvised activity and choices, performing across differentiated,
representational schemes (Schechner 1970). While the question of
the revelation of the ‘real self’ of the performer may now be read as
another layer of ‘iction’ – or performance – it is nevertheless an
effect of ‘the real’ orchestrated in steps between and across
performative schemes – in moves from the theatrical to the ‘social,’
from the construction of the public to the ‘private’ act. Schechner’s
emphasis here, and elsewhere in relation to presence (Schechner
1988: 35–67), falls on the traversal of the ‘ictional’ toward the
theatrical, social, and personal circumstances in which the act of
performance and spectatorship occur, and so in a perceived excess
or implication that the theatrical sign cannot easily contain.
Analogous strategies for the performance of presence are evident
in both avant-garde and postmodern performance strategies. Thus,
in Robert Wilson’s early work, and in particular Deafman Glance
(1970), the extreme slow motion executed by performers such as
Sheryl Sutton served, Stefan Brecht recounts, to make ‘our
experience […] pervasively dual: we are watching images and
performers creating images’ (Brecht 1982: 115) to create a
heightened perception of performer presence simultaneously in
and in excess of the image. Indeed, the modulation of perceptions
and experiences of presence by operating across or between
representational schemes is evident in a wide range of conventionally
postmodern performance-related works. The Wooster Group’s
recent multi-media performance can be read as amplifying the
performance of presence in conjugations of the live and mediated
performance and a concomitant ‘uni xing of the performer’s place’
(Kaye 2007a: 181) in a multiplying of media. For the Italian
performance company, Societas Raffaello Sanzio, the use of
animals onstage has served in part to articulate a presence that is
disruptive of the representational apparatus of the theatre, such
that the experience of ‘being before’ the performers is ampliied
and troubled (Giannachi and Kaye 2002: 150–64).
In these various strategies, phenomena of presence are advanced
in the articulation of the performer’s presence across ostensibly
differing and differentiated schemes – or more recently, across
differing media or representational frameworks. Such descriptions
and effects of presence are also echoed in aspects of phenomenology,
which support the mechanisms for the performance of presence
outlined here. Thus, Martin Heidegger arrives at a description of
‘being’ and ‘being present’ inlected through notions of emergence
10
Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye and Michael Shanks
and relation, and in which ‘presence’ to and of the other is
articulated as process: as an act of persistence. He proposes that:
[t]he word ‘being’ now no longer means what something is. We
hear ‘being’ as a verb, as in ‘being present’ and ‘being absent.’
‘To be’ means to perdure and persist. But this says more than
just ‘last and abide.’ ‘It is in being’ means ‘it persists in its
presence,’ and in its persistence concerns and moves us.
(Heidegger 1971: 95)
Here, ‘presence’ is implicitly conigured as in movement, as that
which perceptibly exceeds the object and is more ittingly associated
with dynamic and changing perceptions, and so the structures of
consciousness. In ‘The Nature of Language’ (1959), Heidegger
captures this relationship and movement of the self to the other in
the concept of ‘neighboring nearness,’ which serves to describe the
experience of investment, of ‘dwelling in nearness’ (Heidegger
1971: 93) to ‘the other’. It is an act and experience that dei nes the
co-performance of self and other, identity and presence. Heidegger
notes that:
Neighborhood, then, is a relation resulting from the fact that
the one settles face-to-face with the other. Accordingly, the
phrase of the neighborhood of poetry and thinking means that
the two dwell face-to-face with each other, that the one has
settled facing the other, has drawn into the other’s nearness.
(Heidegger 1971: 82)
It is a concept too that Heidegger derives from the relationship of
language to poetry, and thereby reaches beyond the expression,
limits and inter-relationship of identities and towards form,
medium and practice. Here, if ‘presence,’ that which persists – and
so is produced in movement and emergence – may be effected in
the ‘neighboring nearness’ of poetry to language, so it may occur
in the traversal of the live to the mediated, of the simulated to the
real, each of which ‘settles face-to-face with the other’. This notion
of persistence also describes the processual characteristic of
‘presence’: that presence occurs as persistence between ‘self’ and
‘other,’ and so in a traversal of difference. In this context, division,
separation, and differentiation form one condition for the
performance and reception of phenomena of presence, which are
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11
provoked and shaped in acts of relation, in the performance of the
network, in ecologies of differences. Presence, here, then, is not a
function of unity and synthesis; not the untroubled occupation of
place, or a dei nitive being here or being there; but is performed in
the persistence of ‘being’ across division and differentiation.
The structure of Archaeologies of Presence relects this emphasis
on the processual and temporal. Thus this volume unfolds implicitly
through steps into and out of conditions and terms of presence and
performance. In turn, these steps align to terms fundamental to the
theatrical event: to being here, to the performer’s, or ‘performing’
viewer’s, negotiation of the tenses of place and time; to being
before, to the performer’s subjection to the gaze, to the activity of
witnessing, and to the reading of the body’s signs of performance;
and to ephemerality, to a presence encountered in the traces of
performance. In each of these contexts, presence is approached as
provoked and shaped within an ecology of relationships; in the
realization of an environment; in the layered experience of
temporality, ‘presentness’ or the present moment; in the tensions
and investments implied by being seen; and in the persistence of
performance through its representation and archival remains.
Within this framework, Archaeologies of Presence brings
together essays that approach the object of performance and the
processual nature of presence in radically differing ways and from
different disciplinary perspectives, referencing performance theory,
semiotics and philosophy, visual art, reception theory, and intercultural practice as well as new media practice and theory.
Relecting on this book’s archaeological turn toward performance,
each of its three sections is prefaced with a brief contextualizing
essay that sets out the core issues and debate around which
contributions cluster. In turn, each of these three sections begins
with an essay emphasizing the theatrical, cultural, philosophical or
environmental frameworks in which practices of presence are
produced and received and is followed by detailed examinations of
performance or performative practice. In their different perspectives
and engagements with principle and practice, these essays
nevertheless converge on the analysis of presence as an ephemeral,
emergent phenomenon provoked and shaped in dynamic networks
of action, response, perception and witnessing. It is here, too, that
the speciicity of this book’s interrogation of performances of
presence is dei ned, and in which the detailed narrative of this
volume unfolds.
12
Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye and Michael Shanks
Section one, ‘Being Here,’ then, approaches the conditions – the
networks, layers and ecologies – that form the various nexus of
relations in which experiences of presence may be enacted.
Beginning with questions of place, Josette Féral sets out taxonomies
of ‘presence effects,’ while Gabriella Giannachi deines the
performance of presence as and in environment. Both Féral and
Giannachi write against the background of discourses of presence
in virtual reality, and speciically the capacity of immersive virtual
reality environments and contemporary media to simulate
experiences of place and provoke the ‘effect’ of the ‘present’ body
in its absence.
Setting out a taxonomy of presence and ‘presence’ and ‘reality’
‘effects,’ Féral goes on to examine in detail experiences of presence
in the work of Janet Cardiff. In Cardiff’s sound works created,
variously, for immersive installations and peripatetic walks through
found sites, Féral attributes experiences of presence to the blurring
of ‘the ictitious and the real’. It is an analysis that draws Féral
implicitly toward a reading of the experience of presence in relation
to the functioning of virtual reality and immersive media. Arguing
that the ‘presence effects’ in Cardiff’s work operates in ‘a carnal
coeficient,’ expressed in the sensation of the real body’s place in
this ‘ictional’ sound world. In the viewer’s subsequent engagement
with the resulting ‘friction point between the self and the world,’
the experience of Cardiff’s practice might best be captured in
Féral’s account of ‘[p]resence as an intermittent state,’ in which it is
‘alternating moments of presence and absence that create the state
of presence’. It is an analysis and performance of presence that
emphasizes the spectator’s mobility of position, of the importance
of ‘rupture’ and ‘absence,’ even of ‘frustration,’ to the evocation
and modulation of phenomena of presence.
In contrast to Féral, Giannachi explores the experience of
‘environmental presence’ in ecologies of inter-linked effects and
qualities of presence, with reference to environmental and
ecological art practices. Citing presence research in computer
science, Giannachi approaches ‘presence’ in ‘real’ environments,
whilst ‘not synonymous,’ as nevertheless entailing ‘a shift in
perspective over the same territory’. Where Féral identiies Cardiff’s
provocation of alternating and shifting positions as a key to effect
of presence within her sound environments, Giannachi identiies
‘environmental presence’ as ‘the continuous unfolding of the
subject into what is other to it,’ while locating ‘the environment’ as
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13
that which occurs or is experienced as in excess or persistently
‘other’ to this process. It follows, Giannachi concludes, that
‘presence’ is ‘an ecological process that marks a moment of
awareness of the exchanges between the subject and the living
environment of which they are a part’. As phenomena, ‘presence,’
here, arises in the individual’s sense of doubling or division in
relationship to their context and place, while the perception of
‘environment’ at once participates in and is experienced as other to
this emergent sense of one’s own sense of being. It follows,
Giannachi notes, that ‘it is through the operation of presence that
environments are generated,’ and thus, as phenomena,
‘environments are always in ieri, pending, changing, evolving’. It
is a process and dynamic that Giannachi goes on to elaborate
through analyses of environmental work by John Cage, Allan
Kaprow, Robert Smithson, Gilberto Zorio, and others, while
ranging across music, performance, sculpture and new media.
Where Féral and Giannachi focus on the complexities and layers
of place or site, Rebecca Schneider and Jon Erickson elaborate loci
for presence in relation to temporality, and in doing so return
implicitly to the question of the archaeological as a fulcrum
between past and present. Schneider, in ‘Performance Remains
Again,’ further elaborates her signal essay of 2001 (Schneider
2001a), which challenges and qualiies Peggy Phelan’s inluential
claims over the ontology of performance. Emphasizing the
processual nature of disappearance, and resisting the construction
of performance as the ‘vanished’ object or as ‘of’ disappearance,
Schneider thus emphasizes the multiple and dispersed encounters
with the signs of disappearance and preservation, between the
‘absence’ of the live performance and valorization in contemporary
‘archive culture’ of the ‘presence’ of the document. Here Schneider
observes the remains in which the ‘performance’ is constituted,
persists and may be performed again. Challenging the binary
between absence and presence in which the complexity of Phelan’s
position is sometimes elided, Schneider considers the archive as the
locus of the presence of performance’s remainder and, in this, the
performance of presence itself.
In the context of Schneider’s argument, the link between the
ontology of performance and its ‘disappearance’ might be better
understood as processual; as the ebb and low between absence
and presence analogous to Féral ’s ‘alternating moments of presence
and absence.’ Crucially, here, ‘performance’ is not a stable state or
14
Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye and Michael Shanks
position, nor does the act of performance succumb to a simple
state of ‘being present’ or being ‘in absence’: presence is an emergent
and processual phenomena, while the act of performance is never
simply in the present moment. Thus Schneider’s interrogation of
performance’s relationship to absence or presence arrives at a
position where ‘performance challenges loss,’ for: ‘performance
becomes itself through messy and eruptive re-appearance. It
challenges, via the performative trace, any neat antinomy between
appearance and disappearance, or presence and absence through
the basic repetitions that mark performance as indiscreet, nonoriginal, relentlessly citational, and remaining’.
Performance, it follows, presents itself perpetually in acts of
construction and reconstruction. Unable to fall back on an essential
absence, as the ‘vanished’ antithesis of what remains, the space,
time and tense of performance becomes more complex, subject to
– and inseparable from – the relationship(s) we make with it. In
memory, too, just as in its ‘material’ or archival presence persists,
performance has not ‘disappeared,’ but remains, as Schneider
suggests, ‘differently,’ within a play of acts, signs, views and
understandings to which performance was always already subject.
Where the material remainder invites relection on the persistence
of presence, Jon Erickson pays attention to the performance of
temporality itself as a locus for experiences of presence. Here,
Erickson shares Schneider’s implicit sense that the time of
performance is encountered in a low of tenses, as past, present and
future; or in memory, attention and expectation. Indeed, Erickson’s
account of the performance of time draws on phenomenological
approaches to presence, relecting Husserl’s concepts of ‘retention’
and ‘protention’ (Husserl 1964), in which the ‘now’ point of
experience is dei ned as a temporal low invested in that which
belongs to the past and future. It follows that performance, and the
realisation of presence in the act of performance, is formed in a
layering of the times and tenses operating in or as the present.
Erickson thus proposes that ‘time is actually produced in the
theatre for the spectators by the performance’ and that ‘the
experience of time arises out of the creation of instances of tension
and release, at multiple levels, which produces rhythms that either
carry along the spectator, or produces resistances’. This analysis of
the multiple times and tenses of performance is in accord with
analyses of time in music. Thus, Jonathon Kramer argues in The
Time of Music, where music should be understood as ‘a series of
Introduction
15
events, events that not only contain time, but also shape it’ (Kramer
1988: 5), so, he proposes, the experience of music arises in a
phenomenological distinction ‘between the time a piece takes and
the time which a piece presents or evokes’ (Kramer 1988: 7,
original emphasis). In this regard, Kramer concludes, the timestructure characteristic of all music is dei ned by:
at least two temporal continua, determined by order of
succession and by conventionalized meanings of gestures. This
duality makes musical time quite special: The past-presentfuture qualities of events are determined by their gestural
shapes as well as their placement within the absolute-time
succession of a performance.
(Kramer 1988: 161)
Where performance, as Erickson argues, ‘actually produces time,’
and where this production of time is itself subject to ‘the time
differential between performer and audience,’ then phenomena of
presence in performance cannot simply be resolved into the
occupation of a ‘now,’ of a ‘liveness’ that uniquely confronts the
viewer with the occupation of the ‘present’. Instead, acts of
performance engage in constructing and in constructed ecologies
of time; in the production, layering and negotiation of interconnected temporal experiences, which might be captured as acts
of ‘presencing’ – as acts that modulate and engage with experiences
of ‘being (in the) present’ in the performance of temporal rhythms
that engage with and shape the experience of memory, attention
and expectation. Indeed, elsewhere, Erickson has articulated the
effect of ‘performer-presence’ as arising precisely in the disjunction
of these tenses and experiences, arguing in The Fate of the Object
(1998) that:
‘Presence’ in the theater is physicality in the present that at the
same time is grounded in a form of absence. It is something
that has unfolded, is read against what has been seen, and
presently observed in expectation as to what will be seen. It
means that the performer is presenting herself to the audience,
but at the same time holding something back, creating
expectation […]. In other words, not only does the notion of
presence in performance imply an absence, but that absence
itself is the possibility of future movement; so paradoxically,
16
Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye and Michael Shanks
presence is based not only in the present, but in our expectation
of the future.
(Erickson 1998: 62)
It follows that the articulation of ‘presence’ in performance is an
enactment of this layering, while the capacity to ‘be present’ in the
act is itself subject to the ecology of times and tenses in which the
experience of the ‘present moment’ is constituted; that is, enacted,
experienced and read.
Where these interrogations of ‘Being Here’ articulate the
complexities of the ‘present tense’ performance of place and time,
the second part of this volume, ‘Being Before,’ explores the divisions
within the theatrical relationship itself as productive of experiences
of presence. These essays focus on the negotiation of spectator and
audience gaze in the theatrical construction of presence; on the
body-mind as an instrument and catalyst of experiences of
presence; on presence as the fulcrum of the relationship between
watcher and watched; on the commodiication of performance and
the construction of charisma, and ‘stage presence’; as well as the
articulation of presence in the exposure of mechanisms of
representation and illusion in theatre, performance and media.
Here, then, Erika Fischer-Lichte’s opening essay dei nes a weak,
strong and radical concept presence. In doing so, however, FischerLichte divides the performing body into phenomenal and semiotic
aspects. Analyzing the dialectic in which these dimensions of the
performing body dei ne each other, Fischer-Lichte goes on to
account for the effects of a presence performed in an emphasis on
the quality of the phenomenal body, in its becoming and on the act
of embodiment, even as ‘the body is ultimately elusive’. In contrast,
the ‘radical concept of presence’ – PRESENCE – sees a merging of
the phenomenal and semiotic body, as ‘the mind is embodied and
the body is “en-minded” ’. In turn, this assertion of the body ‘as
embodied mind’ confronts the spectator’s own bodily presence and
act, such that ‘the spectator experiences the performer and himself
as embodied mind in a constant process of becoming’. Here,
evidently, in achieving this act of ‘radical presence,’ Fischer-Lichte
presents a vision of the persistence of the actor’s presence (and
embodied being) across this dialectical relationship between the
phenomenal and the semiotic, a traversal to which, she concludes,
‘spectators might become addicted’ in its revelation of ‘human
beings as embodied minds’.
Introduction
17
Referring directly to Fischer-Lichte’s elaboration of presence,
Phillip Zarrilli ‘interrogates “presence” from the performer’s
perspective inside a performance event’ – Told by the Wind, which
Zarrilli co-created for première in 2010. Identifying ‘presence’ as
an emergent possibility, a ‘perception shared between the
performer(s), the performance score and its dramaturgy, and the
audience,’ Zarrilli emphasizes the processual effect of presence,
where it ‘should only exist for the actor as a question’ (original
emphasis). Here, Zarilli explicitly directs the question of presence
from the act, or intention, of the performer, and toward the ecology
of acts and perceptions in performance into which his or her
awareness of its ‘emergent possibility’ is displaced. Locating this
proposition within the principal literatures on a theatrical presence,
Zarrilli focuses on the phenomenological co-presence of audience
and performers, to provide an anatomy of the practice of presence,
where this possibility is realized in the actor’s commitment to
detail, to process and technique, and, simultaneously, to uncertainty
‘in the moment of each enactment’.
Where Zarrilli focuses on the act and attitude in performance,
Simon Jones extends this focus toward the question of the
‘preservation’ of the aesthetic construction and so identity and
presence of the artwork, ‘within the co-presence of that work and
its participants’. Here, Jones questions the growing emphasis on
interactivity in art and performance, and its link to experiences of
presence, with reference, among others, to Claire Bishop’s critique
of Nicholas Bourriaud’s ‘relational aesthetics’ and the concomitant
dissolution of aesthetic construct into participatory acts and
‘staged personal experiences’ (Bishop 2004: 52). Drawing on the
phenomenology of Emmanuel Levinas, Martin Heidegger and
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jones relects on his collaborations
through the performance company Bodies in Flight, to examine
and advance performance strategies that while challenging
conventional audience/performer relationships, work to ‘resensitize each individual audience–spectator to their own embodied
experience of the performance-event’ and so to experiences of
presence within their occupation of the performance work. To this
end, Jones emphasizes the phenomenological encounter with
difference, whereby, in the immediacy of being ‘face-to-face‘ within
the work, or within an interaction with another, experiences of
presence are provoked and shaped in a sense of otherness or
separation from oneself. Here, after Levinas, Jones argues that:
18
Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye and Michael Shanks
In inter-‘acting,’ one is fully occupied in this to-and-fro of
exchanging: in effect, one acts or plays the part of being
inbetween – ‘inter’. One is not dwelling in the space-time of the
event as oneself, but explicitly as not-oneself, as an-other (anyother) who only appears to the extent that their qualities can
be interactive, that is, expressed as turns taken in the exchange,
moves made explicitly in order to sustain that exchange, the
commun(e)-icating … .
The engagement with presence, by contrast, is provoked in
performance’s complexity rather than this mechanism toward
consensus, and so, after Levinas, in the performance of ‘outstanding standing-within’: in acts that implicate the self in the
other, and in which the self is dei ned ‘face-to-face’ with the other.
With regard to presence, it is also precisely this relationship and
dynamic of otherness that performance complicates. Thus
performance, Jones notes, ‘puts an individual before another before
a host of others’ which, he argues, opens the potential of actualizing
Levinas’ proposition that ‘The individual and the personal are
necessary for Ininity to be able to be produced as ininite’ (Levinas
1969: 218, original emphasis). The ‘participatory aesthetics’ of
performance, Jones concludes, ‘must be by way of and about
presence,’ while presence, by implication, is a function of these
ecologies of implication and difference: of the recognition of the
other in the self, of the experience of difference from oneself.
Where, by implication, Jones’ reads the divisions implicit in the
act of performance before and toward others as a dynamic and
mechanism by which a ‘presencing’ of the self may occur, Nicholas
Ridout considers the presence of the ‘mis-spectator,’ setting out a
questioning of the study of the ‘presence’ of the theatrical audience.
In doing so, Ridout calls on Jacques Ranciere’s critique of consensus
– of ‘the distribution of the sensible’ – with regard to the imagined
spectator, whose position and subjectivity this consensus, in its
implicit assumption of audience expertise and conformity, serves
to centre, in its effort to answer the question of what the
performance ‘is’. In contrast, Ridout takes Proust’s portrait of
Marcel as ‘mis-spectator’ in Remembrance of Things Past, Volume
One to demonstrate a redistribution of the position and sensibility
of the audience, with a view to interrupting ‘the machinery of the
theatre’. Proposing that, ‘there is nothing whatsoever wrong with
the mis-spectator,’ such that the performance formed in his or her
Introduction
19
view, is continually subject to radical and unpredictable recomposition and to conl icting and unstable presences. Thus, the
mis-spectator’s view unpacks the performance of presence in
uncertain apprehensions of the rules and operations of the
theatrical apparatus. Here, then, where ‘the thousand strong
audience looks on and listens in silence’ as ‘[t]wo angry men appear
on stage, arguing,’ for the mis-spectator ‘two “insolent fellows”
invade the stage and appropriate the space and attention of the
public’. Ridout’s analysis proceeds to unpack, through the misspectator’s eyes, the various presences in performance: ‘the presence
of the star presence’; the ‘barely present’ star; the ‘confusion over
who is real and who just has someone else’s face and voice’. Made
aware of the gaps and modes of presence, becoming witness to
their shifts and changes according to his assumptions, or changing
understandings, the mis-spectator’s own position is correspondingly
rendered unstable. In these dynamics, ‘presence’ becomes a radical
variable in performance, and, regardless of the suppositions of the
performer, is modulated by the uncertainties of spectating itself:
the mis-spectator, then, is witness to and stands in for the lack of
any single subjectivity or position by the ‘audience’. In these
operations, Ridout departs from the security of the audience’s
perception or collusion in the actor’s performance of presence,
while opening a view of the spectator to the very uncertainties and
variable phenomena the performance theorist may wish to
stabalize: thus, here, the mis-spectator joins the economy of views,
perceptions and mis-perceptions in which presence is emergent.
Finally, in this section, Tim Etchells of the UK-based media and
performance company Forced Entertainment discusses with
Gabriella Giannachi and Nick Kaye the play of these very
uncertainties in the work of Forced Entertainment and the
company’s sustained address to performer-presence. For Etchells,
this begins in a paring down of performance to a looking back, or
a return of the view of the audience, which seeks to foreground,
examine and operate in the uncertainties implied in Jones’ and
Ridout’s analysis of the theatrical relation. Etchells suggests that
for Forced Entertainment: ‘a dei nition of theatre – of performance
– we often invoke – that as performers we are people at one end of
a room, who are paid to do something for a bunch of other people
in the same room’. In turn, Etchells identiies a base line of
performance – and performer-presence – from which the company’s
work frequently emanates, ‘simplicity’ whereby ‘a lot of the live
20
Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye and Michael Shanks
work that we have done – a sort of peeling away of things to the
point where we are often stood in a line at the front looking back
at the audience – and very much measuring this body on the stage
and this bunch of people watching; measuring the distance between
the two’. It is from this essential uncertainty, in the relation of
witnessed and witnessing, and in the promise or potential of the
act that, for Etchells, the performance of presence begins. Etchells
concludes:
Being present is always a kind of construction. Perhaps we
could think of presence as something that happens when one
attempts to do something, and whilst attempting to do that
thing you become visible; visible in not quite succeeding in
doing it, visible through the cracks or the gaps.
The i nal cluster of essays in this volume returns to overtly
archaeological readings of the performance of presence in analyses
of the trace, the recollection, record, or document. Here the
question of presence is approached as a fulcrum of relationships
between present and past: as a means of interrogating the
persistence of ephemeral and performative acts in memory, trace
and remains; and as a conceptual framework for understanding
performance and its documentation. Yet these approaches to the
document are informed, also, by the complexities and uncertainties
of the performance processes in which ‘presence’ is both emergent
and uncertain.
Fittingly, this section begins in Amelia Jones’ revisiting – and
reintroduction, in 2010 – of her 1996 essay ‘Presence in Absentia,’
which re-examines her earlier proposition that in addressing
critically performances she did not attend ‘the problems raised by
my absence (my not having been there) are largely logistical rather
than ethical or hermeneutic’. Here, Jones presents a critical point,
which in her re-contextualisation in 2010 she considers in relation
to Marina Abramović’s retrospective exhibition at MoMA New
York, January to April 2010, The Artist Is Present; that
‘documentation,’ far from establishing an absolute difference from
the embodied act of performance, provides one point within an
economy or mutual exchange and interdependence between act
and artefact within which the event, remainder and identity of
performance is conigured. Thus, Jones proposes in her original
essay, ‘[t]he body art event needs the photograph to coni rm its
Introduction
21
having happened: the photograph needs the body art event as an
ontological ‘anchor’ of its indexicality’. It is a proposition that
lows from Jones’ core assertion, that:
there is no possibility of an unmediated relationship to any
kind of cultural product, including body art. Although I am
respectful of the speciicity of knowledges gained from
participating in a live performance situation, I will argue here
that this speciicity should not be privileged over the speciicity
of knowledges that develop in relation to the documentary
traces of such an event.
Jones’ approach to documentation complicates the question of
presence further. Locating the photographic image within
‘reciprocity’ between the act and its recollection and representation,
Jones elides the opposition between the fullness of the ‘presence’ of
the performed act, and its ‘elision’ in the image. Thus, in her reframing of this essay, Jones states unequivocally that ‘performance,
as a time-based act, points to the impossibility of ever fully knowing
embodied experience, and thus of ever fully encompassing past
events in the present’. It is a position in accord, also, with the
archaeological perspectives and discussion of ephemerality
subsequently offered by Lynn Hershman Leeson and Michael
Shanks in the exploration of the re-animation of Hershman’s
archive. Indeed, if the ‘embodied act’ is constructed in reciprocal
relationships between performance and image, in differentiations
between ‘present’ and future spectators or readers, then
documentation ‘itself’ becomes part of the dynamic in which
‘presence’ is performed. Such a position calls into question the
possibility of ever ‘fully encompassing’ the present embodied act,
which, it follows, operates in and out of the time of its performance
and reception: the ‘embodied act’ is never complete, ‘self-present’
or ‘fully present’ or manifest. Indeed, it is constructed in
reciprocities: in processes of exchange and difference over time. It
is a view and construction of embodied ‘presence’ that complicates
not only documentation, but the museological memory, recovery
and, increasingly, re-performance of ‘past’ works and acts.
Focusing on Lynn Hershman Leeson’s 1972 site-speciic and
durational work, Dante Hotel, staged i rstly within the real Hotel
Dante in North Beach, San Francisco, then re-animated in Second
Life as Life Squared in a collaboration with the Presence Project
22
Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye and Michael Shanks
and Stanford Humanities in 2006, Michael Shanks and Lynn
Hershman extend this discussion of this reworking of ‘what
remains’. Centred on the question of ‘how to reanimate the
archive’ (Shanks), this debate considers not only the ‘forensic
sensibility’ (Shanks) enacted in archaeological turns in thinking
that, rather than ‘discover the past,’ ‘work on what remains […]
to bring it forward, i rst into the present, through our
interpretation of it’. It is a paradigm, too, that not only counters
the assumption that archaeology ‘discovers the past’ (Shanks) but
that implicitly questions the assumption of ‘the present’ and so
the experience of ‘presence’ as singular, available and therefore to
be recovered or reconstructed. It is a sensibility resonant also in
Hershman’s practice, exempliied in the temporal layers and play
of memory and interpretation in the re-animation of the
documentary traces of Dante Hotel. Thus, where, in this
conversation, Shanks questions the capacity of any documentation
– or remembering – to access an event uninlected by interpretation
and selection – and so of ‘the politics of presence. What is made
present and what is kept absent and invisible,’ Hershman
questions the self-identity of the event and the onlooker. Noting
that, in reproduction or simulation, ‘[t]he closer you get to what
you think something is, the more evident it becomes that it’s also
an illusion,’ Hershman turns this thinking toward that of the
agent or subject, whose identity and unity of experience, even if
only in a speciic time, forms a ground of a ‘sense of being there’.
In a digital world, of luid identities, or in the multiple performance
of identities, Hershman states:
[n]ow we’re spawning a different kind of mutation, because
we’re able to reconceive ourselves virally and instantly put that
morphed and evolving regeneration into the world speciically
so that it can be adapted and changed. So, where does that
mutation leave us? Is our sense of presence, and who we are,
an appendage to how we are perceived?
Here, where the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of the subject seems indeinite,
where experience of the ‘past’ is performed and realized only in a
present temporal low, then the difference between identities and
lives forms the ecology in which we make and perform our own
presence: where the archaeological traces of others become, for
Hershman, ‘the relics of ourselves’.
Introduction
23
Turning such perspectives toward performance installation and
‘performed photography,’ Nick Kaye then considers the capacity of
performance and the image to provoke experiences of presence
through engagements with the interval or delay, and in anticipation
and expectation. Focusing on problematizing of time in the
photographic image’s use of delay and interval in relation to
performance documentation, Kaye draws attention to performance
artist Chris Burden’s capture of processual and performative
presence, analyzing the performance frame that is operational in
marking the viewer’s entry into a ‘situation’ set up by the artist, the
artist’s use of anticipation and delay in establishing presence, and
the potential co-location, co-presence, of viewer and artist.
Drawing from Maurice Blanchot, Kaye then shows how Burden’s
White Light/White Heat (1975) offers the visitor ‘an encounter
dei ned in displacements of the image in favour of the viewer’s
agency and emergent presence that anticipates and so precedes the
spectacle of “performance”,’ suggesting that where presence is
processual, occurring over time, presence is generated by these
mechanisms of refusal and delay. In turn, Kaye outlines analogous
photographic strategies that amplify a sense of the recovery and
representation of ‘presence,’ where the photograph, or image,
‘provokes experiences of presence in the very lack in which it
obtains its relationship to its object’. Discussing images by Cindy
Sherman, Doug Hall, as well as Hugo Glendinning and Tim
Etchells’ Empty Stages (2003–), he concludes that it is in these
images’ refusal to bring performance to appearance that the
persistence of presence is felt and in which the potential of the
performance event is most powerfully recalled and reproduced.
Finally, Mike Pearson writes ‘for performance’ and ‘about
performance’ in ‘Neither Here Nor There…’ in a critical recollection
and documentation of his 2008 performance, something
happening, something happening nearby in which he remembers
his mother’s passing: ‘On sitting with the dying’; ‘On sitting with
the dead’. The last in a series of works, begun in 1992 with From
Memory, ‘that have addressed and involved interpenetrating
themes of dwelling, place, memory and landscape,’ through these
events Pearson has worked to situate himself, as ‘agent’ and
‘subject’, at distance from himself, as ‘performer’. In this gap and
dialogue, Pearson peforms toward his own ‘presence,’ i ltering and
creating, in his present act, the interpretation of ‘what remains’ –
in relation to ‘his’ memory, past emotion and places. The outcome
24
Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye and Michael Shanks
is a series of displacements in the act of performance, whereby
Pearson works toward being neither here nor there. It is an act
evoking the constellation of tenses, of the present reworking of
memories and constructions of lost subjectivities. Here presence is
evoked in speculations and connections over self and other; where
the performance of that which is lost doubles and brings forward
the presence of the performer, enacting an archaeological turn,
embodying an animation and interpretation of the trace, relic and
sign, ‘to bring it forward, i rst into the present, through our
interpretation of it’ (Shanks), thereby to enact the presence of that
which cannot be recovered.
It is i nally this notion of a processual, enacted presence around
which the essays in this volume cluster. Presence, here, is a
phenomenon always in the process of being enacted and
remembered, an experience never resolved but always a persistent,
relational effect. Phenomena of presence thus occur in these acts of
investment of one time, place and position in another – and so in
temporary, performed acts of reciprocity. It is in this igure and
process of reciprocity, too, that the essays here i nd common
ground, in their various moves toward a dei nition of the
performance – and recovery – of presence.
Works cited
Auslander, P. (1994) Presence and Resistance: Postmodernism and Cultural
Politics in Contemporary American Performance, Ann Arbor MI:
University of Michigan Press.
——(1998) From Acting to Performance: Essays in Modernism and
Postmodernism, London: Routledge.
——(2006) ‘The Performativity of Performance Documentation’, PAJ: A
Journal of Performance and Art, 28:3, 1–10.
Bishop, C. (2004) ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’, October, 110,
51–79.
Brecht, S. (1982) The Theatre of Visions: Robert Wilson, London: Methuen.
Creed, Martin (2008) ‘Tate Britain Duveens Commission 2008: Work No.
850’ (Press Release). Online. Available: www.tate.org.uk/about/
pressofice/pressreleases/2008/15818.htm (accessed 22 July 2011).
Erickson, J. (1998) The Fate of the Object: From Modern Object to
Postmodern Sign in Performance, Art, Poetry, Ann Arbor MI: The
University of Michigan Press.
Fischer-Lichte, E. (2008) The Transformative Power of Performance: A
New Aesthetics, translated by S. I. Jain, London: Routledge.
Introduction
25
Giannachi, G. and Kaye, N. (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde: Italian
Experimental Performance After 1970, Oxford: Peter Lang.
Goodall, J. (2008) Stage Presence: The Actor as Mesmerist, London:
Routlege.
Heathield, A. (2004) Live: Art and Performance, London: Tate Publishing.
Heidegger, M. (1971) On The Way to Language, New York: Harper and
Row.
Husserl, E. (1964) The Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal
Time, Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.
Kaye, N. (1994) Postmodernism and Performance, Basingstoke: Palgrave
MacMillan.
——(1996) Art into Theatre: Performance Interviews and Documents,
London: Routledge.
——(2000) Site-Speciic Art: Performance, Place and Documentation,
London: Routledge.
——(2006) ‘Displaced Events: Photographic Memory and Performance
Art’ in A. Kuhn and K.E. McAllister (eds) Locating Memory:
Photographic Acts, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 173–200.
——(2007) ‘The Builders Association and dbox, SUPER VISION (2005)’
Contemporary Theatre Review, 17:4, 557–77.
——(2007a) Multi-Media: Video – Installation – Performance, London:
Routledge.
Kramer, J. D. (1988) The Time of Music: New Meanings, New Temporalities,
New Listening Strategies, New York: Schirmer Books.
Pearson, M. and Shanks, M. (2001) Theatre/Archaeology, London:
Routledge.
Levinas, E. (1969) Totality and Ininity: An Essay on Exteriority, translated
by A. Lingis, Pittsburgh PA: Duquesne University Press.
Pearson, M. (2010) Site-Speciic Performance, Basingstoke: Palgrave
MacMillan.
Phelan, P. (1993) Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, London:
Routledge.
Power, C. (2008) Presence in Play: A Critique of Theories of Presence,
Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Roach, J. (2007) It, Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press.
Schechner, R. (1970) Dionysus in 69: The Performance Group, New York:
Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, Inc.
——(1988) Performance Theory, revised edn, London: Routledge.
Schneider, R. (2001a) ‘Performance Remains’, Performance Research 6:2,
100–08.
Part I
Being here
Place and time
Written by researchers in theatre and performance studies engaging with
phenomenology, philosophy, performance and documentation,
anthropology, neuroscience and environmental studies, ‘Being here’
interrogates presence in its spatio-temporal constitution, addressing it hic
et nunc in its emergence. In this section presence is seen as presentness
and presencing. Temporally, it is discussed as tense, in its temporality,
availability, immediatedness, both in terms of retention and protention.
Spatially, it is discussed as occurrence, place, area, site, environment and
ecology. Epistemologically and phenomenologically presence is discussed
as effect and legacy. Presence here is seen not only a state or appearance
but also a mapping tool. More specifically, ‘Being here’ interrogates
presence ‘in itself,’ as liveness, as a phenomenon that is able to affect the
subject in terms of their own spatio-temporal perception and impression
of themselves and others in the present moment between past and future
points in time. In this sense presence becomes an affective fictional and
rhythmic tool that is able to generate its own legacies and that is crucial
to human orientation. At the same time, in each of these contributions,
the experience of the ‘present tense’ occupation of a place and time is
revealed as layered, so at once complicating the idea of ‘presence’ while
deflecting attention toward the individual’s enactment and performance
of place and time. The experience of ‘Being here,’ it follows, is subject to
the spatial dislocations and anachronisms of any specific place or location,
for the occupations of a site are always in process, always being defined
by others, always subject to other histories, times and narratives that
cannot be fully recovered. In these contexts, these essays come together
in accounts of acts of occupation of ‘real’ and ‘fictional’ sites, of the
individual’s sense of the occupation of place within an ecology and
environment, and within temporal structures, that explicitly defer the
sense of presence toward processual acts.
Chapter 2
How to define presence
effects
The work of Janet Cardiff 1
Josette Féral
To speak about presence effects is, paradoxically, to think right
away about absence, since there can be no presence (effects) unless
there are bodies present. This is obvious. By ‘presence effects,’ one
means the feeling of a body’s (or an object’s) presence – that these
bodies or objects create the impression of really being there, even if
the audience rationally knows that they are not. What constitutes
this presence or presence effect? Consequently, I would like to try
to disentangle the different meanings of the concept through the
various disciplines: from the performing arts (theatre and dance) to
the media and digital arts, including avatars.
To begin with, we must distinguish between the various
epistemic ields of envisioning the concept of presence:
1
An existential ield refers to a person’s ‘being there’. I, you, we are
present. We must discover the characteristics of this vast concept.
How can we classify and analyze this presence? What distinguishes
it? Is it palpable? What does is signify to ‘be there,’ and what of the
expressions ‘be present,’ or ‘be in the moment,’ that are frequently
used by directors addressing actors?
2
This slight deviation in syntax indicates a second level of meaning,
a level which touches on the quality of my being: a way of being
present that not only afi rms my presence but underlines the
particular aspect that I am not only present, but that I also have
presence, which is not the same thing. We have moved from the
30
Josette Féral
verb ‘to be’ (‘to be present’) to the verb ‘to have’ (‘to have presence’).
This analysis of the quality of presence aims to seek out that which,
in the case of an actor (or a performer), can give the spectator the
impression that certain actors, more than others, have presence. It
is this quality of presence that researchers such as Eugenio Barba
attempt to recreate in the actor (Barba 2005), and that colloquiums,
such as that which resulted in the publication of the book Crever
les Planches, Brûler l’Écran. La Présence de l’Acteur (Farcy and
Prédal 2001), attempt to discern. This preoccupation has also been
at the root of certain questions addressed to directors in my
published series of interviews titled Mise en Scène et Jeu de l’Acteur
(Féral 1997, 1998 and 2006).
3
A third meaning is derived from these two precedents and yet is
distinct from them. It is that which touches on the impression of
presence, or one might say, on an ‘effect of presence,’ which is not
the same thing (see Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon’s Norman or
La Tempête and Janet Cardiff’s The Paradise Institute), or even
daydreams (see the studies at the Sha Xin Wei laboratory at
Concordia which create immersive environments aimed at
recreating the same type of presence that exists in daydreams …)2 .
These are experiences that give the impression that someone is
there, when in truth, no one is there3. In this third case, the
impression of presence is due to the fact that the same sensations
and perceptions that occur in the real presence of another person
(or object) are invoked. To investigate this meaning is to attempt to
analyze the conditions under which this effect of presence emerges,
to analyze what makes it possible. What is it? How does it manifest
itself? What techniques do artists use to establish it? What
parameters regulate the spectators’ perception of it?
The junction point of these three different manifestations of
presence is that, in one case as in the others, ‘presence’ means the
feeling that a body is present – generally a living body (often a
person, but this can also be applied to objects) that the subject has
the impression is really there. I will not treat here further the ield
of presence analysis, although this would be worth doing, since it
clearly underlies presence effects. In what follows, it is not a
question of analyzing a presence’s quality by investigating what in
a performer’s bearing may convey to the audience the impression
How to deine presence effects 31
that some actors have more ‘presence’ than others4. Here, it is
rather a matter of analyzing the conditions that make possible this
presence effect. Therefore, as a starting point, I will assert that a
presence effect is the feeling the audience has that the bodies or
objects they perceive are really there within the same space and
timeframe that the spectators i nd themselves in, when the
spectators patently know that they are not there. It is a question of
the perception of a physical presence that puts the subject’s
perceptions and their representations into play. This temporality
and common space shared by the spectator and the presence being
evoked (a character, an avatar, or an object) is fundamental.
Perception of presence
Of course, the question that immediately arises is that of the
perception of this presence, its manifestation. Should presence
therefore be afi rmed and analyzed in terms of corporeal presence
(the simple fact of being there)? Perception (with respect to the
individual spectator)? Or rather in terms of mental state (being
intellectually present, not merely physically present)?
All of this plays out between the assertive (I am there) and the
qualitative (a given quality or modality of being there). The notion
is both obvious and hazy, as relections by Maurice Merleau-Ponty
and others (Weissberg 1999; Noël 1988) have shown.
Physically present but intellectually absent
The i rst stance is to dei ne presence in comparison with absence.
Presence would be what is here, what is not absent. That is to say,
present within the subject’s space and time. This relation with
respect to space and time is fundamental. This has to do with a
physical presence, or better still, with a physical presence effect.
The question of mental presence – that of bodies that are present
but whose minds are wandering elsewhere – is put aside. Indeed, if
physical presence is relatively easy to grasp, ‘mental spaces,’ as
Jean-Louis Weissberg says, ‘are multiple. Their topo-chronologies
cannot be described. One is never where and when one believes he
is. One is continually expatriating oneself […] particularly when in
a state of immobility, of rest’ (Weissberg 1999: 19-20). Much could
be said on this point, but this question, however fascinating, does
not seem relevant to the presence effects that I wish to discuss here.
32
Josette Féral
I will leave this question in abeyance, simply echoing Richard
Schechner’s observation that the spectator practises a ‘selective
inattention,’ which we could, of course, describe as mental absence.
Peter Sloterdijk has also written on this question, revaloring
unwakedness5.
Presence as an intermittent state
We often conceive of presence as the uninterrupted state of a
subject or object, which the audience would apprehend as a
continuum, a linear phenomenon, but it could also be dei ned,
following Weissberg, as an intermittent state that is strongest at the
moments of its apparitions and disparitions. Weissberg speaks of
‘multiple suggestions of apparitions and disparitions of the ini nite
layers which made up the State of Being Present’ (Weissberg 1999:
52). It is these alternating moments of presence and absence that
create the state of presence.
In support of his approach, Weissberg offers Edmond Couchot
and Michel Bret’s i lms La Plume (1988) [The Feather] and Le
Pissenlit (1990) [The Dandelion]6 as examples during which the
viewer blows on the screen in order to cause the digital feather or
the downy seeds of the dandelions to ly away. The presence effect
comes from the apparent effect of this blowing on the lying
dandelion seeds. It is in the process the i lms establish, in the
medium made visible between the spectators’ breath and the digital
effect on the screen (the l ight of the dandelion luff and the feather),
that the distance that separates them becomes visible through their
interaction. Paradoxically, it is this division, this gulf, the makebelieve, the ‘as-if,’ the play of the illusion, that creates presence.
Absence of presence
A third view states, on the contrary, that presence is more strongly
felt when there is a rupture, a straying away or a failing of presence,
an absence of presence, a ‘défaut de présence’. This point is made
by Gregory Chatonsky7 in his work. He shows that the feeling of a
presence is stronger when accompanied by frustration (the invisible
interlocutor in Cocteau’s La Voix Humaine [The Human Voice],
the interlocutors on the phone in Robert Lepage’s one man shows:
Needles and Opium, The Far Side of the Moon, The Andersen
Project.
How to deine presence effects 33
Presence at a distance and telepresence
Mention should also be made of presence at a distance, an idea
developed by Weissberg according to Deleuze’s concept: the
‘crystal presence’ (see Deleuze 1985: 92–128), and perhaps of
telepresence as well (for example, Paul Sermon’s Rêve Télématique
[1992]).
Presence as representation: thought and
memory
Resonance
Experimentation with a presence effect situates mankind in the
midst of his own representations. Through it, the subject
experiences his being in the world (to speak in phenomenological
terms). His experience relies on both thought and memory. On the
one hand, experience arouses a resonance within our being; on the
other hand, there is a resonance of our being upon the world (so to
speak). There is the object we are seeing (the object’s apparition),
and the idea of this object in our thought. On the one hand, the
mind absorbs the real, thereby becoming sensitive to it; on the
other hand, the subject locates within himself the remembered
objects or beings, recognizes them, and associates them with other
features, other ‘mental images’.
In his book Le lieu des signes, Bernard Noël has attempted to
describe what experiencing the presence of objects might be. He
has experimented with the impression of an object’s presence from
the very apparition of the object to the internal of the object in
one’s thought. This process entails all the paradox of representing
an object (as image and mental action) as well as the taking over of
reality. This interaction calls upon the body (and the memory).
This is how Noël describes a glass ashtray:
It is radically whole and alien. It has no innerness. It is what it
appears to be, and yet it could pass for a form without
appearance. Its volume is not impervious to the space
surrounding it, or at least: we can see through it. Although it
is a spread out body, yet it is stealing away – to the extent that
it drags the eye farther away within time wherein it dissolves.
[…] Nothing organic, nothing for relationship: it is there and
34
Josette Féral
nothing more. It leaves me to my own luctuations, my own
mobility, which will only cease with life.
(Noël 1998: 21)
Yet this involvement of the body is twofold: it is connected to
thought which is activated by the sensory organs, but also with the
ield of awareness and with the reactions, sensations and perceptions
connected to the physical body. In effect, by recognizing a presence
(of a being or an object), the intellect is focused, and thus becomes
sensitive to reality, a reality that inhabits it even as it inhabits
reality. In this process, the body and the intellect see the beings and
objects that surround them in unison.
In order to grasp this presence, the intellect seeks the object or
being within themselves, in memory, recognizes it, and associates
it with other qualities, other ‘mental images,’ so to speak. This
analysis of presence should be completed with an analysis of the
returning memories or daydreams, where the individual has the
impression of a genuine presence in the room8.
Perception
This brings a second point. Presence effect has to do with
perception. It is sensation more than representation. Indeed,
man’s very being is dei ned by his presence, by the sensation of his
presence. In this quest, the world stands as perception rather than
as representation. It is an experimentation of this effect. Presence
effect no longer resides in the act of apparition, but rather in the
perception of this apparition. It is perception itself that creates
the synthesis of this multiplicity of beings constituting a being.
Prior to analyzing any relation with other people, the body itself
realizes all the paradoxical situation that belongs to perception.
The body is both obstacle and necessary element for this
perception.
It is a perception which, according to Henri Bergson, is no
longer centripetal (from perception to idea) but centrifugal (idea
determines perception). Perception operates by ‘the external
projection of an actively conceived image, analogous to the object
that its its form. Perception is a prediction mobilizing memory, a
prediction that seeks in a real test its adjustment to the object: to
see is to see again and to foresee’ (Weissberg 1999: 210). So, for
Bergson, perceptive recognition could be compared to a membrane
How to deine presence effects 35
that is sensible on its two faces: the front one imprinting the image
of a real object, while the inner one proposes ‘the inluence of a
virtual object’ (Bergson 2007: 167).
Sensations are on the alert, are ‘solicited’. Among solicited
senses, the most important is vision, whether ‘effective’
(coni rming the impression), or ‘by default,’ when seeing or
knowing that there is nothing may amplify the state of being
present. As Merleau-Ponty notes in his study on the visible and
invisible, sight allows the subject to think of himself thinking, to
picture himself thinking. In perceiving, in seeing, the subject not
only sees things and creates them for himself, but at the same
time he creates himself. Sight makes up being, the subject’s
presence and presence effect creates through him, for him; in him
it becomes both revelation of the surrounding world and
realization of his own universe. It then becomes the very condition
of the being’s presence in the midst of reality. And art stands
exactly there; it realizes more exactly this interspace (see MerleauPonty 1985). Then sight becomes parallel, if not similar, to
illusion and dream.
We will deal again with this importance of vision when we
analyze Janet Cardiff’s work, since it is this vision that demarcates
the divide between effective presence and presence effect; indeed,
the characters are present for the ear alone, and it is only because
sight clearly indicates their absence that the presence effect takes
place.
With the presence effect, the image grows more and more
autonomous as it is revealed as an apparatus and no longer as a
product. The visibility of the imagination process creates a presence
effect since it reveals the apparatus of perception. In fact, all
contemporary art uses the realization of this presence effect to
question us. It uses troubles, effects, and ruptures, and works upon
all these confused zones that show our perception in action,
whether the artist is asking us to try new forms of perception, or is
deceiving us with some simulation. In all cases, the spectator must
question himself about the process. He is caught in the game of his
own deluding senses. The hiatus between reality and imagination
has been abolished. The presence effect has therefore to do with a
‘reality effect’9.
36
Josette Féral
Figure 2.1 Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, The Paradise Institute (2001).
Wood, theater seats, video projection, headphones and mixed
media Edition of 4. 118 x 698 x 210 inches (299.72 x 1772.92 x
533.4 cm). Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York
and Barbara Weiss Gallery, Berlin. Photo by Markus Tretter
A case study. Janet Cardiff: between memory
and iction
Known for her work in creating audio walks, Cardiff is an Ontarian
artist, who chanced upon the concept that was to become the basis
of her art form. ‘While walking through a cemetery in Banff,
Cardiff used a portable tape recorder to log the names engraved on
headstones. She hit the rewind button by accident, and found
herself listening to the ambient sounds produced by her walking
and her voice. This recording formed the basis of Cardiff’s i rst
“audio walk,” entitled Forest Walk’. From this sprang her ‘audio
and video walks,’ during which the spectators (who are both
visitors and actors), ‘while listening to a portable CD player or
watching the screen of a camcorder, follow her directions through
How to deine presence effects 37
a chosen site, and become “participants” in her stories.’ Cardiff’s
recorded voice guides them along a pre-determined path. ‘Her
spoken and whispered words are intercut with bits of ambient
sound or sound effects recorded in a binaural technique. These
recordings appear to be three-dimensional and create [on the part
of the visitor] a dislocating uncertainty concerning what is recorded
“iction” and what is “reality.” ’ Her stories ‘lay the ground for an
active course that combines map and memory.’ During the audio
walk, the visitor/participant ‘is guided through a sonic “virtual”
journey,’ using recorded voices and sounds delivered via a headset.
‘Cardiff, in effect, creates virtual spaces anchored in reality. She
takes her participants to the crossroads of iction and reality, the
actual and the virtual, things remembered and newly experienced’10.
On the www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com website, Marnie
Fleming writes:
Cardiff, in effect, creates virtual spaces anchored in reality.
She takes her participants to the crossroads of iction and
reality, the actual and the virtual, things remembered and
those newly experienced. […] Participants listen to what is
spoken, as she reinvents a location charged with mythical and
symbolic forces (her walks often take place in gardens, around
a few clusters of homes, or inside museums). She does not offer
merely a simple geographic tour, but also the discovery of an
interior space. […] The sounds associated with treading the
textured surfaces of the walk (cement, grass, cobblestones,
bridges, woodchips, stairs, and steep slopes) stage the
interrelation between the interior self and the exterior self, and
make physical and mental actions ‘apparent’.
(Fleming 2011)
Piece by piece, Cardiff has added visual elements to her works
(natural panoramas, ilms, sculptures, and installations). She
currently chooses to work with a variety of methods of expression
(videos, installations, and recorded sound) and shows her work
throughout North America and Europe in museums and other
appropriate spaces. But two of her more signiicant pieces – and
doubtless those that are better known – are: Forty Part Motet
(awarded the Millennium Prize from the National Gallery of
Canada) and The Paradise Institute, both created in 2001. Forty
Part Motet is an entirely musical installation that is a reworking of
38
Josette Féral
Figure 2.2 Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, The Paradise Institute (2001).
Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York and Barbara
Weiss Gallery, Berlin. Photo by Markus Tretter
a particularly complex 16th century polyphonic choral piece (Spem
in Alium by the English composer Thomas Tallis) recorded by the
Salisbury Festival Choir. Cardiff arranges forty audio speakers
within a space (most often a chapel) and the spectator moves
through this space experiencing a perfect illusion of a singing
choir. The singers are in harmony but attentive spectators who
approach the separate audio speakers one at a time can also hear
each individual voice quite distinctly.
More complex is The Paradise Institute, presented at the 49th
Venice Biennale and for which Cardiff won the Special Award,
together with her partner George Bures Miller11. This installation is
set up in the hall of a museum. It is a rather small, soundproofed
space enclosed with plywood, inside a museum. Access to the room
is by a stair, and the doors are shut once the visitor has entered.
Within this closed space, sixteen red seats arranged in two rows, are
How to deine presence effects 39
set as in a theatre. Screenings take place every seventeen minutes.
Each spectator (having been provided with a headset), sits in front of
a small miniature stage and theatre (en trompe l’oeil), separated by
a railing. Before him is a stilllife of scenery and a complete theatre.
He then watches a ten-minute video, while hearing ambient noises
from his headset (narration connected to the ilm, dialogue,
characters, sirens, cries … but also ambient noise whisperings from
neighbours, unwrapped candies, comments from spectators behind
and all the other stray noises usual in theatres). Cardiff creates sound
effects that give the spectator the impression that he or she is
elsewhere, in a real space surrounded by others, though the spectator
knows that he or she is in reality alone12.
Besides the aesthetic pleasure these installations afford, the
interesting feature of this work lies in that:
1
Cardiff plays on the relations between iction and reality by using
techniques that restore the feelings the spectator may have had in
facing real surroundings, thereby causing him to no longer know
how to distinguish between the ictitious and the real. She therefore
blurs the boundary between illusion and reality, compelling the
spectator to seesaw between the two. At times he is completely
within reality (when the installation is outdoors, he witnesses the
other spectators, the streets, houses, ields in the case of walks –
when they take place outside of more traditional exposition spaces)
at other times he stands in iction. He knows it: the entire
installation proclaims it, displays it, underlines it. Although he
perceives the illusion of those sounds and images he recognizes as
ictitious, he is simultaneously calculating their proximity to those
same sounds and images in real surroundings.
In the case of Forty Part Motet, one could question the difference
between this reworking of a Renaissance choral piece, and the
same piece presented in concert form.
•
Beside the almost perfect quality of the sound, which eliminates
noises and places the audience closest to the source (arousing
concert-like attention), the difference comes from the spectator’s
knowing that what he listens to is an artiice. Or more exactly,
not what he is ‘listening’ to, but what he is thinking is the source
of this music.
40
Josette Féral
Figure 2.3 Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, The Paradise Institute (2001).
Selected ilm still. Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New
York and Barbara Weiss Gallery, Berlin.
•
•
There is in this case a dissociation between eye and ear, vision
and hearing.
The ‘presence effect’ is grounded on this dissociation.
It seems that the presence effect is produced by these situations
that make the spectator feel that he is where he knows very well
he is not, and that he hears or sees things ‘as if’ they were there,
while knowing they are not present. In this manner, Cardiff’s
installations make the spectator feel that the words he hears
behind him are really uttered by his neighbour, which is impossible
since his headset prevents him from hearing all these ambient
noises usual during a show. Whence this ‘presence effect’ that we
are trying to grasp.
2
This presence effect therefore comes from a reconstitution process
of the (auditory and visual) presence: the ‘binaural effect,’ for
Cardiff. This allows an almost perfect game of illusion for the
spectator. We do not stand within the ‘as if’ of Stanislavski, but
within the ‘just as’.
How to deine presence effects 41
In order to create this presence effect, Cardiff uses a technique
that she did not discover, but that she uses in an entirely original
way. It is the binaural effect. This effect was i rst identiied in 1973
by Doctor Gerald Oster at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in
New York. The principle is simple.
In order to create a binaural effect, Cardiff employs a technique
that places miniature microphones in the ears of a person or
mannequin, which allows her to record and then reconstitute a
given sound in a spatial environment with stunning accuracy, thus
making the sound three-dimensional. Cardiff also notes that all
her recordings superimpose multiple layers of sound, sometimes
including as many as eighteen layers, which results in a more
complex environment for voices and helps to spatialize them13. The
sounds are offered to the listener cut off from their source, and this
source is the result of a purely technical apparatus that reconstitutes
a reality that is more real than reality itself.
3
Yet at the same time, the artist is foregrounding and illuminating
the process that ‘deludes’ the spectator. Spectators are aware that
their senses are deceiving them (everything in the artist’s installation
emphasizes this fact) and that where they have the impression there
is being, there is only illusion. The sounds offered are cut from
their source. And this source is the result of a purely technical
montage that restores a reality more real than reality itself.
4
Thus the habitual functioning of the spectator’s perceptions, which
usually proceeds from sensation to representation, is held in check.
Indeed, phenomenology has taught us that perception has as its
basis an obvious link between sensation and representation. In
order to perceive, one has to i nd in one’s memory a concordance
between the sounds one hears and an image, a representation. This
representation proceeds through thought.
Now with Cardiff, there is a dissociation between a given
perception and the thought of the thing that this perception is
usually connected with, as if Cardiff were unfolding thought –
separating perception from representation – and were inscribing
a rupture, a hiatus, at the heart of that unfolding. Sight and
42
Josette Féral
hearing are thus made autonomous; the installation creates this
dissociation, which confounds the spectator and gives him a
playful pleasure.
In order to create this dissociation:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Cardiff cheats (swindles) the spectators’ perceptions by
disorganizing the information received by their senses. ‘We
hope to invoke basic philosophical questions by playing with
our perceptual tools. We try to fool people about which reality
they are actually in by screwing up the information reaching
their senses’… ‘We’re trying to fool people’s perceptions. You
hear someone walk up to you and then someone is very close to
you, you can almost feel them’ she observes14.
She appeals to the senses of the participants (to their ‘sensorial
body,’ one might say). As Daniela Zyman notes, she uses them
separately, not only to create quasi extensions of the body, but
also to intensify the spectators’ self-consciousness. For the
spectator, this evokes an intense feeling of being alive15. In
fact, he is subject to a powerful interplay of relationships
between exterior surroundings and his inner universe16. A
tension operates between his visual, auditory and
proprioceptive senses.
Cardiff allows one to see by means of one’s hearing (and not
only through the eye). The ear guides perception, permits
identiication, provides the presence effect and magniies the
perception of reality. Cardiff demonstrates how we not only
hear through our ears but with our whole body, and proves
that the power of hearing activates an invisible world that
becomes more real than reality. As she describes it:
Because the sound is recorded in binaural audio we can push
people’s perception of the reality around them. Sometimes the
characters from the movie are close to you; sometimes the
audience is laughing or clapping around you. Someone beside
you offers you popcorn. (Kölle in Baerwaldt 2001: 11)
Her collaborator and life partner, George Bures Miller, adds: ‘I
like the idea that we are building a simulated experience in the
attempt to make people feel more connected to real life’ (Kölle
in Baerwaldt 2001: 11).
She creates surroundings in which the spectator can immerse
himself (Baerwaldt 2001: 3). As George Bures Miller notes,
technically: ‘Everyone listening to the headphones is at the
How to deine presence effects 43
centre of the recording, where the binaural head was placed
originally. Everyone feels like the action is happening around
them’ (Kölle in Baerwald 2001: 15). For example, ‘In The
Paradise Institute, the viewers move into and through
enveloping, sequenced stages of illusion, and a series of
experiences that the artist have edited like a ilm’ (Kölle in
Baerwald 2001: 4) .
CONCLUSIONS
What conclusions about presence effects can be drawn from
Cardiff’s works?
1
Cardiff helps us better understand presence effects because she
places us in ideal conditions in which to experiment with and
analyze these effects. She is working at this friction point between
the self and the world. She ictionalizes sensations of space and
time.
2
Presence effects originate in the friction point between the self and
the world outside, in a place where the sense of space and time is
ictionalized. In unfolding reality and making the soundscape and
sound itself palpable, Cardiff makes spectators aware of the
different layers that typically make up reality. She extends (and
modiies) their state of consciousness. Reality is absorbed, rendered,
in a hyper-personalized space that intensiies self-consciousness to
an even greater degree than the awareness of outward reality. What
emerges is an other, hybrid reality, simultaneously constructed of
the virtual and the real. She makes space sonorous and sound
concrete.
3
It becomes equally clear that presence effects call upon memory
and are connected to the different modalities of representation that
authorize the operation of ‘recognition’ in the absence of the object.
Thus, there is a superposition of the idea and the sound.
44
Josette Féral
4
Lastly, while they appeal to all of the senses and engage the body,
Cardiff’s works paradoxically render the body transparent, as if its
opacity disappears, allowing everything to pass through the sole
conduit of the ear (belied by sight). This unique relationship to the
body in this context merits further examination.
I would say that the presence effect seems more and more to be
the result of experimentation that:
•
•
•
•
puts man, at the very core of his own representations, into play.
Through him, the subject experiences his existence in the world.
This experience engages thought and memory at the same time.
On one hand, it calls on a resonance within our being, and on
the other, on a resonance of our being upon the world (to speak
in phenomenological terms). A rapt attention becomes sensitive
to reality, but at the same time the intellect seeks the object or
being within himself, in memory, recognizes it, and associates it
with other qualities, other ‘mental images’ 17.
calls upon a carnal coeficient. In every ‘presence effect’ on the
spectator, there is a carnal coeficient brought into play. The
body is interpellated by way of the sensory organs (eye, ear),
and also by the spectators’ sensations, a body which is
simultaneously an essential element and an obstacle because it
has some opacity. It is the body that perceives, but it is equally
the body that ilters. Through the body’s mediation, the act of
recognizing ‘presence’ achieves the same experience as the
subject within the world. Thus, at the same time, the body is an
obstacle, but an essential element of this perception.
evokes the feeling that there is a genuine sharing of a common
space and time. It takes place in the present. One can imagine a
presence effect with igures that are inscribed within the past,
but in this case it is the spectator who is transported into that
distant reality. In his ‘literary iction,’ Guillaume Apollinaire
spoke of long-distance touch leading to a ‘disruption of the
spatial situation’ (Apollinaire in Weissberg 1999: 38).
demonstrates that presence effects have to do with perception.
It is sensation rather than representation. One might say
that the presence effect is not in the advent of the object,
but in the perception of this advent. It is this primary relation
to perception that gives the spectator the feeling that there is
How to deine presence effects 45
•
•
•
a real sharing of a common space and time (that of the
present).
allows the senses to be awake, to be ‘on call’ (en appel). Among
the sensory organs involved, the most important are the eyes,
whether vision is ‘effective’ and serves as a caution to the
impression received18, or whether it is a vision ‘by default,’
serving to remind the spectator of a gap, an absence, a play of
illusion. For example, such a play of illusion might make a
voice heard by the spectator – a voice endowed with a striking
realism and proximity, such as those in The Paradise Institute
– the voice of someone absent that is also utterly present. By
this I mean to say that seeing (knowing) that nothing is there
can amplify the state of presence. The importance of vision
should be emphasized because it is what allows one to mark the
dividing line between effective presence and a presence effect
(in effect, the characters are present only to the ear; the presence
effect can only occur because vision clearly indicates their
absence)19.
demonstrates that with the presence effect, there is an escalating
process of automation of the image by showing it as the focus,
not the product. This is the visibility of the imaginative process
in its truest sense; the image’s revelation creates the presence
effect because it makes the focus of perception palpable.
allows spectators to ind themselves at the heart of a
‘performative’ experiment where, irst and foremost, they
understand that there is a gap between their perceptions and
the reality the installation offers their senses, hence a powerful
presence effect. The importance of vision allows one to draw
the dividing line between effective presence and presence
effects.
In fact, all contemporary art plays on this phenomenon, calling this
presence an artistic value, particularly where interdisciplinary forms
play on the duality of presence/presence effects, with the achievement
of a presence effect as a type of questioning. Contemporary art
plays on the disturbances, the effects, the ruptures, and uses all of
these areas of disorder which show our perception in action,
whether the artist calls upon us to experiment with speciic forms of
perception, or whether the artist subjects us to trickery. In either
case, spectators are called upon to question the process. They are
caught in the interplay of their own senses deceiving them.
46
Josette Féral
Cardiff helps us to better understand presence effects. She is
working at this friction point between the self and the world.
Works cited
Baerwaldt, W. (ed.) (2001) The Paradise Institute – Janet Cardiff and
George Bures Miller, Winnipeg: Plug In.
Barba, E. and Savarese, N. (eds) (2005) A Dictionary of Theatre
Anthropology: The Secret Art of the Performer, London and New York:
Routledge.
Bergson, H. (2007) Matter and Memory, New York: Cosimo.
Deleuze, G. (1985) L’image-temps: Cinéma 2, Paris : Éditions de Minuit.
Farcy, G.-D. and Prédal, R. (eds) (2001) Crever les Planches, Brûler l’Écran.
La Présence de l’Acteur, Vic-la-Gardiole: L’Entretemps.
Féral, J. (ed.) (1997) Mise en Scène et Jeu de l’Acteur, vol. 1 (L’Espace du
Texte), Carnières & Montréal: Lansman and Éditions Jeu.
——(ed.) (1998) Mise en Scène et Jeu de l’Acteur, vol. 2 (Le Corps en Scène)
and 3 (Voix de Femmes), Carnières & Montréal: Lansman and Éditions
Jeu.
——(ed.) (2006) Mise en Scène et Jeu de l’Acteur, vol. 3 (Voix de Femmes),
Montréal: Québec-Amérique.
Fleming, M. (2011) ‘Janet Cardiff’ in The Canadian Encyclopedia Online.
Online. Available: www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgN
m=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0009772 (accessed 25 July 2011).
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1985) L’œil et l’esprit, Paris: Gallimard.
Noël, B. (1988) Le lieu des signes, Périgueux: Editions Unes.
Schaub, M. (ed.) (2005), Janet Cardiff – The Walk Book, New York: D.A.P./
Distributed Art Publishers.
Sloterdijk, P. (1993) Weltfremdheit (Unwordliness), Frankfurt/Main:
Suhrkamp Verlag.
Weissberg, J.L. (1999) Présences à distance, déplacement virtuel et réseaux
numériques, pourquoi nous ne croyons plus à la télévision, Paris:
L’Harmattan.
Notes
1 This work originates from a Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council (SSHRC) research group made up of six professors and i fteen
students and concerned with the notions of presence effects. Born
from previous research on notions of theatricality and performativity,
the research group endeavours to bring to light the several forms of
interpenetration between virtual and real, and to measure the reality
effects produced. It studies, more particularly, productions where
virtual characters must interact with real actors according to several
How to deine presence effects 47
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
modalities or techniques (projections, telepresence, morph,
interpolation, incrustation, chroma key, etc.) and according to given
scenarios and desired effects. The notion of ‘presence,’ as treated in
several theoretical works, whether in its relation to voice, bodily
bearing, breathing, or movement, lies therefore at the centre of this
research. What is it that creates a feeling of presence when we are face
to face with some virtual character or with no character at all? The
following text is a step in this relection. A shorter version of this text
was read at the forum of the CRI (Centre de recherche sur
l’intermédialité, Université de Montréal) in May 2007. I would like to
thank Edwige Perrot for having helped with this research.
See http://topologicalmedialab.net (accessed 5 May 2011).
The observation that ‘no one is there’ requires further thought. The
person who has the impression that someone is there may either
know that no one is there – as, for example, in Janet Cardiff’s
immersive environment – it is a case of technological or numerical
effects and the spectators’ enjoyment stems precisely from the fact
that they see the deception being practiced on them; or be unaware
no one is there and yet have the impression of a presence – as in a
daydream or in the experiments of certain researchers like Sha Xin
Wei, who attempts to induce a sense of presence in the ‘visitors’ to
his laboratory.
Regarding this, see the works by Eugenio Barba and other stage
theoreticians and practitioners, especially the interviews I conducted
with several contemporary stage directors where this question is
analysed (Féral 1997).
‘One punchline of post-metaphysical thinking is that subjects today,
after thousands of years of experiments with the phantasms of eternal
wakefulness, can return in active resignation to a positive theory of
the impossibility-of-staying-awake-all-the-time’ (Sloterdijk 1993:
294–325).
See www.numeriscausa.com/pages/artistes.html Accessed 5 May 2011.
In a lecture entitled ‘Flußgeist: En présence des l ux’ held at the
Performativité Effets de présence research group on 7 February 2007.
See Sha Xin Wei’s research again at http://topologicalmedialab.net
(accessed 5 May 2011).
One question remains: how to evaluate presence? Can we ascribe
different degrees to presence? Or different intensities? Can we say that
a given person has more or less presence, and if so, what does that
mean in concrete terms? This question seems to make more sense in
the context of the theatrical arts, a domain which draws upon actors
and dancers whose training is often centered on the idea of presence.
Yet it becomes less clear when applied to a virtual presence. Can it be
said that the presence resulting from an effect of Pepper’s Ghost effect
has a greater density (La Tempête) than another on-screen or otherwise
projected presence (Gladyszewsky)? I will not attempt to answer the
question here but from this brief typology and the questions that
accompany it, it is apparent that as soon as one begins to examine the
notion of presence in depth, it becomes progressively more complex.
48
Josette Féral
10 Summary based on, and quotations drawn from, www.collectionscanada.
ca/women/002026-505-f.html and www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/
index.cfm?PgNm=HomePage&Params=A1 (accessed 5 May 2011).
11 In an interesting way, Forty-Part Motet and The Paradise Institute,
both created the same year, are two works standing in counterpoint.
While Motet suppresses all stray noises in order to restore pure sound,
The Paradise Institute makes use of the background noises preceding
a show as well as of stray noises accompanying it (unwrapped candies,
whisperings from a spectator to his neighbour…).
12 In fact, they are surrounded by other silent spectators like themselves.
13 ‘All of my walks are recorded in binaural audio with multi-layers of
sound effects, music, and voices (sometimes as many as 18 tracks)
added to the main walking track to create a 3D sphere of sound.
Binaural audio is a technique that uses miniature microphones
placed in the ears of a person or dummy head. The result is an
incredibly lifelike 3D reproduction of sound.’ (Cardiff in Schaub
2005: 15). Also ‘I use different methods to record the voices not only
to suggest other characters but also to give a more complex and
spatial relationship to the voices. A voice recorded normally with my
binaural head will sound very clear, intimate, and real. It reads as
though it is on the same physical level as your own head. A voice
recorded on a small dictaphone playing back from a tiny speaker
recorded again by the binaural head about two feet away will give
the physical illusion of being that far away. So then you have the
strange situation of the recorded main voice listening to her own
voice on a different machine from a different time period. Because
the one voice is clear and the other is scratchy and grainy, it creates
the illusion of two different characters’ (Cardiff in Schaub: 172). ‘On
a technical level, when a sound wave of one frequency enters one ear,
and a soundwave of a very different frequency enters the other ear,
the brain tends to compensate by attempting to synchronize its two
hemispheres. It reacts by creating a very characteristic type of sound,
called binaural beats, whose frequency corresponds to the difference
between the frequencies of the two initial sound waves. […] For
example of an initial soundwave of 400 Hz directed at one ear, and
a second soundwave of 404 Hz directed at the other. The brain will
progressively adjust the frequency until it registers a sound at 4 Hz.
However, the lower limit of human hearing is approximately 20 Hz.
Thus this process allows one to “hear” very low sounds in the
frequency range of beta, alpha, delta or theta states of consciousness.
It is important to note that, in order to be effective, the listening
experience must occur through a headset, and the difference in
sound frequency between right and left must not exceed 30 Hz.’ (The
Monroe Institute. Brain Wave Generator, www.ledepot.info/archives/
index.php?2006/04/18/46-binaural-beats veriied 5 May 2011).
Cardiff reminds us that the i rst binaural experiment occurred in 1881
at the Paris Opera. ‘There is a community that is obsessed with
creating three-dimensional sounds. You’ll i nd out that the i rst
binaural experience took place at the Paris Opera in 1881. They used
How to deine presence effects 49
14
15
16
17
18
19
microphones installed along the front edge of the stage.’ (Cardiff in
Schaub: 4).
‘I Wanted to Get Inside the Painting: Brigitte Kölle in conversation
with Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’ (Kölle in Baerwaldt
2001: 15–17).
‘She also exploits the ability to trigger our ive senses separately and
uses them not only to create an extension of our own body but also to
intensify our self-awareness and, ultimately, to make us feel alive’
(Zyman in Schaub 2005: 11).
‘A Cardiff site is not static; instead, it is a net of possible references and
relationships between the inner space of the walker and their external
environment. The body moving through space is not guided by the
controlling discipline of the eye (as de Certeau has argued). The walker
uses his ‘blind eye,’ a corporeal and visceral form of knowledge. […] It
is a dualistic experience that takes place on two intertwined levels of
the body’s movement in space and the continuity of the narrative
form’ (Zyman in Schaub 2005: 11).
In his book, Le Lieu des Signes [The Place of Signs], as we have
mentioned earlier, Bernard Noël attempts to describe experiments on
the presence of objects. He has experimented with the impression of
an object’s presence from the advent of the object to the internal idea
of the object in thought. This process encapsulates the paradox of
representing an object (as an image and as a mental action) as well as
the predominance of reality.
The spectator is, in effect, seeing an avatar. For example there are
certain characters in Michel Lemieux’s La Tempête [The Tempest],
staged at the TNM which the spectator knows to be avatars, but their
stage presence ultimately gives the impression of a real presence.
As Merleau-Ponty notes in his research on the visible and the invisible,
vision allows the subject to think of themselves as thinking, to
represent themselves as thinking (L’Œil et l’Esprit).
Chapter 3
Environmental presence
Gabriella Giannachi
Presence is constituted in the complex network of relationships the
subject establishes with the physical and/or digital world they
inhabit. Integral to presence, as Nick Kaye and I discussed in our
monograph Performing Presence: between the Live and the
Simulated, is what is before or in front of the subject, both spatially
and temporally (Giannachi and Kaye 2011: 4–9). Also integral is
the performance the subject undergoes as part of this process.
Discourse on environment and ecology should therefore play a
crucial role in the analysis of presence. As we know, environment
indicates the surroundings or conditions in which a person, animal,
or plant lives or operates. On the other hand, ecology indicates a
branch of biology that is concerned with the relations of organisms
to each other and to their surroundings. So, an environmental
interpretation of presence foregrounds the set of circumstances
that surround the occurrence of presence, while an ecological
reading of presence foregrounds how presence may operate
as a relational tool between organisms. In this chapter I will present
an analysis of presence from environmental and ecological
perspectives, propose a framework for the interpretation of
presence within this context, and offer an interdisciplinary reading
of a number of artworks that can be broadly categorized as
environmental and/or ecological, and that are signiicant in terms
of presence research.
I will start by revisiting the notion of environment. Anthropologist Tim Ingold points out that environment is a ‘relative’ term
and that just as one cannot conceive of an organism without an
environment, one should not conceive of an environment without
an organism (Ingold 2000: 20). It follows for Ingold that an
environment is never complete because it is forged by living things
Environmental presence 51
(Ingold 2000: 20) and that the relationship between organisms and
their environments cannot be other than a process. This of course
suggests that one is never simply ‘present,’ but rather that one is
present in a given environment and ecology. In fact presence could
be read as the network formed by the subject and the environment
they are in through a set of ecological exchanges. We know from
Giorgio Agamben that the term environment indicates something
highly subjective, so much so that, for example, a forest is not ‘an
objectively determined environment’ but rather it is constructed in
the dweller’s experience of it, so that the environment of a given
forest is different for the hunter, the botanist, the carpenter, etc.
who encounter it (Agamben 2002: 46). For Agamben each
environment should therefore be considered as ‘a closed unity,’
although, inluenced by Jakob von Uexküll, he describes these
unities as being in ‘musical’ dialogue with each other (Agamben
2002: 46). As an example of his hypothesis, Agamben cites the
relationship between the spider and the ly. The spider, he states,
whilst being unaware of the environment of the ly, is able to build
a cobweb that is ‘proportionate’ to the ly’s light-speed in such a
way that the ly cannot see the cobweb and so inexorably lies
towards its death (Agamben 2002: 46). This suggests that there is
not an identity between the subject and an environment within
which it is located, but rather that the subject is simultaneously
part of a number of environments (including those generated by
others) and may be ‘present’ within multiple environments. This
indicates a subject who does not have one identity, but rather,
paying tribute to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, exists in
rhizomatic multiplicity (Deleuze and Guattari 1999).
Yet whilst environments may be closed entities, in the sense that
they are subjective, they are nevertheless open to change, or, in
Ingold’s words, they are ‘alive’ (Ingold 2000: 66). Incidentally,
Ingold notes a difference between what he calls environmental
conservation, practiced by hunter-gatherers and scientiic
conservation advocated by Western wildlife protection agencies.
Whereas the latter presumes a homocentric view, in which humans
change an environment by inhabiting it, and thus presuming a kind
of ur-nature, the former sees the human as an integral part of
nature. Ingold cites societies’ understanding of wilderness to
explain this difference. We know from Roderick Nash’s study of
wilderness that wilderness is not a ‘speciic material object’ (Nash
1967: 1) and cultures have very different understandings of what
52
Gabriella Giannachi
constitutes wilderness. Thus Nash reports his conversation with a
Malaysian hunter-gatherer in which he was trying to identify what
wilderness meant to him by asking him to comment on the
expression ‘I am lost in the jungle’ to which the hunter-gatherer
replied that the question made little sense to him ‘as would asking
an American city dweller how he said “I am lost in my apartment”.
Lacking a concept of controlled and uncontrolled nature, the
Malaysian had no conception of wilderness’ (Nash 1967: xiv). So
whereas, for hunters and gatherers ‘there is no contradiction
between conservation and participation’ (Ingold 2000: 68), for the
Western conservationist participation implies the modiication of a
wilderness that precedes human presence within it.
These considerations are crucial if one is to analyse presence in
an environmental and ecological context. Presence, as we discussed
elsewhere (Giannachi and Kaye 2011), is the medium through
which the subject engages with an environment. I do not by this
mean to say that presence, indicating that which is in front of or
before the subject, coincides with the environment, rather that it is
the inter-relational tool through which the subject networks (and is
networked by) the external world. We have seen how some societies
may have utilized presence and dwelling as a means to separate the
subject from the environment they inhabit. The majority of studies
in presence research published so far focus on virtual environments
and whilst they provide us with a wealth of information about how
humans construct the digital world around them as present to
them, they rarely offer insight into how presence is used as a
relational tool rather than a sign demonstrating that a given subject
is treating a digital world as if it was ‘real’ (Sanchez-Vives and
Slater 2005). Here I argue that presence and environment, whilst
not synonymous, entail a shift in perspective over the same
territory: where presence indicates what is in front of the ‘I am’
(Giannachi and Kaye 2011), environment indicates what is around
(‘environ’). In this context, we can see that presence includes the
position of the subject, whereas environment does not. This
suggests that while presence is about the continuous unfolding of
the subject into what is other to it, environment deines the
surroundings, that is, what remains other to it, that is however
necessary for presence to occur. The environment, in this sense,
hosts the archaeological traces left by the remains of what was
excluded in the construction of presence. In other words, the
environment does not exist prior to the subject, it is what remains
Environmental presence 53
from its construction. This indicates that the environment entails
traces of the operation of presence. This also implies that the
environment is a condition for presence to occur since it is the
environment that presence draws from. Crucially, this does not
exclude relationships with the other-than-human. In other words,
presence is also an ecological process that marks a moment of
awareness of the exchanges between the subject and the living
environment of which they are part. I will now introduce the
operation of presence in a number of environmental and/or
ecological artworks spanning from John Cage, the Italian
movement arte povera and land art to locative media.
A number of early environmental works utilized recorded sound
as a tool to draw the audience’s attention to their environment and
to the operation of presence necessary to engage with it. John
Cage’s alla ricerca del silenzio perduto (1977 [Researching Lost
Silence]), a happening consisting of the broadcasting of
environmental sounds recorded on a train journey through Italy,
and Five Hanau Silence (1991), where ambient sound was recorded
in ive different parts of the German town of Hanau as indicated by
the I Ching, as well as his well-known ‘silent’ composition, 4’33”
(1952), in which a pianist is on stage for four minutes and thirtythree seconds, opening and closing the piano’s lid for the three
movements of the piece, without, however, playing the instrument,
relect Cage’s interest in silence as a form of performance of
environmental sound within a musical frame. All three pieces play
with the complex relationships between place, space/time,
environment and presence. This is crucial to understand the
operation of presence in this context. Before analysing the works,
we must, however, devote attention to some of the salient
characteristics of environmental art. Kathan Brown notes that
whereas ‘environmental art is made for a particular space,’
situationist art is made for a particular place (cultural or social)
and usually involves action instead of, or as well as, installation’
(Brown in White 1980, original emphasis). This points to a
distinction between environmental art and other forms of art
invested in site, place, or nature. For Brown, environmental art is
not so much invested in a place as it is made for or out of a particular
space. To explain this further, it is important to consider Allan
Kaprow’s thesis that environmental works make no attempt
towards unity of representation: ‘the ield […] is created as one goes
along, rather than being there a priori, as in the case of a canvas of
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Gabriella Giannachi
certain dimensions. It is a process, and one that works from the
inside-out, though this should be considered merely metaphorical,
rather than descriptive, since there actually exists no inside, a
bounded area being necessary to describe a ield’ (Kaprow 1966:
159, original emphasis). Environmental works are not merely a
snapshot or representation of an existing site, as landscape paintings
might be, but rather constitute an engagement with, or itinerary
through space (rather than place), often foregrounding the
operation of presence that occurs within it with respect to another
site (or place) within which the work was constructed. Arguably
then, it is through the operation of presence that environments are
generated, not vice versa, as is suggested by computer scientists,
such as Jonathan Steuer, who states that presence indicates ‘the
sensation of being in an environment,’ rather than its generation
(Steuer 1992: 75), or by Mel Slater who suggests that presence is ‘a
perceptual mechanism for selection between alternative hypotheses:
“I am in this place” and “I am in that place” (“I am confused”)’
(Slater 2002: 435), again presupposing the existence of a number of
environments a priori from the subject.
Five Hanau Silence consists of ive ambient recordings. In a
correspondence about the piece, Cage describes the instructions
for its realisation as follows: ‘(send me a map of the city; I will
mark the points speciied by chance operations) I will also specify
the “times” of day or night when the recordings are to be made.
They should then be superimposed (made into a single record), or
even better, played separately from separate points in space’ (Cage
1991). The instructions reveal that Cage recommended the creation
of a space within which the ive environmental sound recordings
were to cohabit. This was also the space of the listener. Similar
processes occurred in 4’33”, though here the listener became the
subject and the object, as well as the medium, of the broadcast. As
Nick Kaye has suggested, in 4’33” Cage ‘strips the musical work of
everything but a context and the listener’s experience of her own
presence’ (Kaye 1994: 93). While Five Hanau Silence excluded the
listener from the original recording, in 4’33” the listener ‘audits’
themselves. The operation of presence in 4’33”, therefore, is not
only one that facilitated the encounter with another environment,
as in Five Hanau Silence, but one that drew attention to the
listener’s own presence precisely by staging the very process of the
creation of an environment, and so the operation of presence. For
Cage it was crucial to devote attention to this process:
Environmental presence 55
You say: the real, the world as it is. But it is not, it becomes! It
doesn’t wait for us to change… It is more mobile than you can
imagine. You are getting closer to reality when you say that it
‘presents itself’; that means it is not there, existing as an object.
The world, the real, is not an object. It is a process.
(Cage in Cage and Charles 1981: 80)
Similarly, alla ricerca del silenzio perduto, also known as il treno
[the train], had the structure of a musical composition (it had a
timetable and stops) which coincided with a section of the timetable
and stops of a train. Here, the listener was on a journey in which,
again, their search of the ‘lost silence,’ a pun on Marcel Proust’s
masterpiece In Search of Lost Time, occurred in the discontinuities
produced by the overlay of environmental sound with music played
on and off the train. As in the previous two works, environmental
sound prompted listeners to reposition, that is ‘re-present,’
themselves between the various spaces, places and environments
generated by the work.
Another important environmental work is Robert Smithson’s
Enantiomorphic Chambers (1965), which consisted of two
chambers cancelling out the viewers’ relected image via the use of
two mirrors. The term, ‘enantiomorphic’ refers to ‘a pair of
crystalline chemical compounds whose molecular structures have
a mirror-image relationship to each other’ (Hobbs 1981: 61). When
the viewers stood in front of the mirrors they saw nothing but
relections of relections. The mirrors in fact relected mirror
images dispersing the viewers’ vision so that ‘one’s sight is relected
but one is not’ (Hobbs 1981: 61). According to Smithson:
The two separate ‘pictures’ that are usually placed in a
stereoscope have been replaced by two separate mirrors […]
thus excluding any fused image. This negates any central
vanishing point, and takes one physically to the other side of
the double mirrors. It is as though one were being imprisoned
by the actual structure of two alien eyes. It is an illusion
without an illusion.
(Smithson in Flam 1996: 359).
Like Cage, who drew attention to the operation of presence
through the use of environmental sound, whether broadcast in situ
or in a separate space, here the occurrence of presence was turned
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Gabriella Giannachi
into a non-referential process. As pointed out by Robert Hobbs,
‘sight in his sculpture becomes the nonreferential act of seeing
instead of the usual unconscious looking at something’ (Hobbs
1981: 61). This points to an important difference between the
works considered so far. Whereas for Cage art is the medium that
re-introduces ‘life’ (Cage and Charles 1981: 52), for Smithson, in
his own words, art ‘becomes a tautology, a relexive statement of
its supposed function’ (Smithson in Hobbs: 1981: 13). In both
cases, however, it is the operation of presence that is scrutinized to
make a statement about the role of art in relation to the subject.
We have seen how the above-cited works play with the uncanny
environmental shifts that occur during the operation of presence.
To explain the complexity of these terms it is worth looking at
Kaye’s dei nition of the relationship of space and place. While Kaye
draws on de Certeau to propose a linguistic model of the relationship
between space and place whereby space ‘is like the word when it is
spoken’ and thus unable to ‘manifest the order and stability of its
place’ (Kaye 2000: 5), environment is the cacophony or entropy
that is excluded by the operation of presence. Environment thus
entails, as we have said, the surroundings and conditions under
which the subject operates and presence occurs. This explains why
the concepts of environment and organism are interdependent.
This also shows why environments are always in ieri, pending,
changing, evolving. We have seen that silence in Cage is where the
operation of presence should occur, that is where the listener is
made to encounter what is in front of or before them, so that they
may become alert to what is around them, meaning their
environment. This is also where the subject re-locates, or represents, in space and time in order to re-encounter themselves in
the other or as an other. In Smithson, there is a questioning of the
subject’s ability to exert control over this process. Here, through
an interrogation of sight, and the collapse of its ability to generate
a perspectival view, with the two chambers standing for the
subject’s own eyes (Shapiro 1995: 67), unable to synthesize
the image, Smithson reminds us that in the operation of presence
the subject is not in control of the environment, nor at the centre of
it, but rather caught in a truncated, non-referential presencing
process.
Trace and shadow have also been used by a number of
environmental artists in work that is relevant to presence research.
A well-known example of arte povera engaging with trace is
Environmental presence 57
Claudio Parmiggiani’s Delocations (1970–71), which consisted of
the imprints of removed canvasses left by shadows of dust and
smoke. Another example of environmental art that adopted trace
is Robert Irwin’s Fractured Light – Partial Scrim Ceiling – EyeLevel Wire (1970–71), an installation shown at the Museum of
Modern Art in New York, which focussed on light, space and
ambiance. Irwin described the work as follows:
[the gallery’s personnel] never announced [the piece]; they
never acknowledged it. But they wanted to put up a label so
people wouldn’t think it was an empty room. Jenny would go
in each day and she would take the label down … One of the
things that [the room] did was challenge you at every level. You
would walk in there, and the i rst question [you had] was: ‘Is
this intended?’ Then ‘Is it i nished?’ – even before you got to
the question of whether it was Art or not. The question was
whether or not it was even there, and on what grounds it was
there. […] People would go in there, see nothing, leave and go
into the next gallery.
(Irwin in Butterield 1993: 24, original emphases).
Both works utilize shadows to visualize traces left by events that
either, as in Parmiggiani’s case, mark the passing of time, or, as in
Irwin’s case, note the effects of the passing of time on space. To
better understand the role of shadows in these works I need to
open a parenthesis on the use of shadow in two of the most famous
paintings in the history of art. In his study of shadows, Ernst
Gombrich points out that whilst shadows belong to landscapes,
they constitute an ephemeral and changing aspect of it (Gombrich
1996: 14). The inclusion of shadows in painting, therefore, draws
attention to the environment’s mutability but also to the effect of
the human presence within it. Gombrich cites Masaccio’s La
guarigione dello storpio (1425 [Healing of the Cripple]), showing
an episode in the life of St Peter, in which the shadow of the saint
heals the cripple. On the other hand in Caravaggio’s Cena in
Emmaus (1601 [Supper at Emmaus]) Jesus’ gesticulation, probably
an act of blessing the supper, reveals him as mortal, covered in
shadows, about to disappear into darkness. In both these paintings,
shadow is used to mark the operation of someone’s presence, in the
sense that in the former it denotes the effect of Jesus’ presence over
the cripple and in the latter his imminent death. Similarly, in the
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Gabriella Giannachi
two environmental works by Parmiggiani and Irwin, shadows
were used to draw attention to a ‘delocation,’ or displacement, of
presence in the environment, visualizing the remains of the
unfolding of place into space, and thus drawing attention to the
processes that the subject is invested in when being confronted
with what is in front of or before them. Shadow here is used to
create another space, and time, which has not yet occurred in the
world of the painting but that we know is imminently present, that
is, before or in front of the subject. As in Caravaggio’s Cena in
Emmaus and Adalbert von Chamisso’s well-known Peter Schlemils
wundersame Geschichte ([Peter Schlemil’s Remarkable Story]
1814), a novel about a man who sold his shadow to the devil only
to i nd out that shadowless humans are shunned by society, shadow
is used here as a form of spatio-temporal augmentation, to visualize
the implications of its operation on the environment.
Arte povera engaged, in Kaye’s words, ‘with exchanges between
material, body and action that revealed an ecological logic, a logic
of interdependency and transformation between “object”, environment and organism’ (Kaye 2005: 270). For him, a work that
exempliies these processes is Gilbero Zorio’s Rosa – Blu – Rosa
(Pink – Blue – Pink) (1967), consisting of an eternit semi-cylinder
of cobalt chloride whose reaction to changes of humidity in the
environment in which it is located caused gradual changes in its
colour. Kaye notes that the work ‘articulates a material exchange,
as the viewer’s bodily presence affects the ambient environment,
precipitating an event and sculptural operation in which the form
of the work evolves, so expressing, as Zorio proposes, a “concept
of transition or identiication between body and sculpture” (Celant
1991: 43)’ (Kaye 2005: 271). Here, we witness the ecological
processes that the viewer’s presence induces over a contained
environment. For Nehama Guralnik, ‘this is, therefore, a timesystem responding to changes that affect it. It is outside intervention
which changes its formal balance, there being no optimal state, or
state of rest; to experience the work the viewer needs to be present,
his presence perforce changing the appearance of the work’
(Guralnik in Eccher and Ferrari 1996: 208). As Gregory Bateson
proposed in Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972), an organism is
always an ‘organism-in-its-environment’ (Bateson 1972: 451). In
Rosa-Blu-Rosa, breath causes humidity, which in turn causes the
work of art to change colour. Presence here is not just an operation
of self-identiication but one of biological change. In facing what is
Environmental presence 59
before or in front of them, the subject not only sees himself or
herself as an other, but undergoes and generates biological change
in this other. In this sense the operation of presence is always also
biological, chemical and even genetic. Thus trace, in this context,
becomes both what occurred in the past and what is likely to occur
in the future since we know that, medically, a trace is a symptom,
and a symptom can be the sign of a transformational condition.
To explain the relationship between presence and ecology, I will
open a parenthesis on the biological operation of cells. I have
discussed elsewhere that cells do not just perform in isolation, they
also respond to their context (Giannachi 2007). In fact, cells act on
the information they receive from their neighbouring cells (Johnson
2002: 86). Moreover:
the extracellular matrix (ECM), once thought to be merely
‘stuff between the cells’ and a structural support for tissues,
induces embryonic changes in tissues and plays a role in
directing gene expression. Cellular interactions with ECM
affect the way cells proliferate, adhere to surfaces, and migrate
to other areas, which means that these signals affect the threedimensional organisation and form of various tissues and
organs. Without the right clues from other cells and from the
material between cells, cells may not differentiate, perform
specialized functions, or organize into larger structures. Thus
the microarchitecture and spatial conigurations of cells, as
much as their cellular mechanisms, seem to be responsible for
organ function.
(Hogle in Franklin and Lock, 2003: 73–4).
Hence each cell is not just individually responsible for its behaviour
and function, it also depends on the in-between-cells. In other
words, a cell’s environment is just as responsible for its behaviour
and function as its own content and architecture. In this sense, a
cell is a network, storing, transmitting, receiving and elaborating
information. While we still know little about the neurological
operation of presence, it is established that agency plays a signiicant
role in the acquisition of a sense of presence in childhood
development and for some this inextricably ties the two, so much
so that Gerardo Herrera et al suggest that presence is in part rooted
into agency (Herrera et al 2006), and Giuseppe Riva states:
‘humans develop intentionality and Self by evaluating prerelexively
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Gabriella Giannachi
their agency in relation to the constraints imposed by the
environment: they are “present” if they are able to enact their
intentions.’ Likewise, others are present to us ‘if we are able to
recognize them as enacting beings (Riva 2008: 103), leading Riva
to conclude that presence is the mechanism by which the subject
‘prerelexively’ controls his/her action through a forward-inverse
model: the prediction of the action if compared with perceptual
inputs to verify its enaction’ (Riva 2008: 111). Other research in
the neurological foundation of presence has hypothesized that
what are known as place cells, which are located in the hippocampus
and parahippocampal formation, create a cognitive map of our
environment that ‘integrates information about location, multisensory inputs and internal information’. These neurons constitute
‘the roots of spatial presence,’ although other areas of the brain are
also involved (Brotons et al 2005: 499). Unquestionably more
research is needed in these areas to explain the function of presence
within an ecological context, but it is clear even at this early stage
of research that presence is also a mechanism for mapping and
orientation that allows the subjects to reposition themselves both
environmentally and ecologically.
We have hypothesized that presence is the operation through
which the subject witnesses itself as other and then recycles this
‘other’ so that it may become part of itself. Not only does this
uncanny operation occur at the level of consciousness, but also
biologically, chemically and genetically. In this context trace, as we
have seen, is both a footprint left by that which has already
occurred (as in Parmiggiani’s Delocations), and a symptom leading
to fundamental change (as in Zorio’s Rosa-Blu-Rosa). This
relationship between presence and ecology is crucial here. As
Alphonso Lingis suggests, ‘there is perhaps no species of life that
does not live in symbiosis with another species’ (Lingis in Wolfe
2003: 166). Presence then becomes a key concept in understanding
the operations through which the subject experiences this symbiosis
between species.
To conclude, a few more words need to be devoted to the way
that ubiquitous computing is facilitating the creation of
environmental and ecological works that inluence our reading of
presence. One of these works was developed by Ryoko Ueoka,
Hiroki Kobayashi and Michitaka Hirose from the University of
Tokyo. Wearable Forest (2008) is a work consisting of a ‘clothing
system that bioacoustically interacts with distant wildlife in a
Environmental presence 61
remote forest through a networked remote-controlled speaker and
microphone’ (Kobayashi et al 2009: 300). This work, according to
the authors, was based on the concept of a human-computer
biosphere interaction (HCBI) aiming to express ‘the unique
bioacoustic beauty of nature’ and allowing ‘users to interact with a
forest in real time through a network and acoustically experience a
distant forest soundscape, thus merging human beings and nature
without great environmental impact’ (Kobayashi et al 2009: 304).
The piece, which was inspired by Zen Buddhism’s view of deep
meditation ‘to achieve a sense of being at one with nature,’ allowed
for the creation of a hybrid human-computer that was networked
with a subtropical forest of the southern Ryukyu Islands of Japan.
Equipped with embedded speakers, LEDs, an embedded CPU
system and a wireless internet connection, the dress played the
soundscape of the forest through the speakers and used the LEDs
to create patterns relecting the activity level of forest life. Sensors
also let the user transmit pre-recorded acoustic data back to the
forest installation, creating what has been described as ‘a bioacoustic
loop’ (Kobayashi et al 2009: 301). Wearable Forest allows for the
creation of human-computer environment, which facilitates new
forms of communication between humans and plants and allows
for the direct personal experience of a particular ecology. Here,
presence is also telepresence and the subject is no longer just
experiencing the environment in which they are physically located
but also one that is remote to them. Here the subject is not so much
choosing between different hypotheses (Slater 2002) as utilizing
their tool to relate to the external world (presence) to perceive
different environments simultaneously. In this context it will not
only be traces, footsteps, shadows, and soundscapes, but also
digital, contextual footprints that will mark the remains of the
operation of presence between digital and physical worlds.
Works cited
Agamben, G. (2002) L’aperto: L’uomo e l’animale, Torino: Bollati e
Boringhieri.
Bateson, G. (1972) Steps to an Ecology of Mind, New York: Ballantine.
Brotons, J., O’Mara, S., Sanchez-Vives, M. (2005) ‘Neural processing of
Spatial Information: What We Know About Place Cells And What They
Can Tell Us About Presence’, Presence, 15:5, 485–99.
Butterield, J. (1993) The Art of Light + Space, New York: Abbeville.
62
Gabriella Giannachi
Cage, J. (1991) Five Hanau Silence. Online. Available: www.sterneck.net/
john-cage/hanau-silence/index.php (accessed 30 June 2010).
Cage, J. and Charles, D. (1981) For the Birds, London: Marion Boyars.
Celan, G. (1991) Gilberto Zorio, Florence: Hopeful Monster.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1999; [1980]) A Thousand Plateaus:
Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translated by B. Massumi, London: the
Athlone Press.
Eccher, D. and Ferrari, R. (eds) (1996) Gilberto Zorio, Torino:
Hopefulmonster.
‘environ’ The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. Ed. T. F.
Hoad. Oxford University Press, 1996. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford
University Press. Online. Available at: http://www.oxfordreference.com.
lib.exeter.ac.uk/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t27.e5122
(subscription-only; accessed 28 June 2010).
Flam, J. (ed.) (1996) Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, Berkeley
CA: The University of California Press.
Franklin, S. and Lock, M. (eds) (2003) Remaking Life & Death: Towards
an Anthropology of the Biosciences, Santa Fe NM: School of American
Research Press.
Giannachi, G. (2007) The Politics of New Media Theatre: Life®™, London
and New York: Routledge.
Giannachi, G. and Kaye, N. (2011) Performing Presence: Between the Live
and the Simulated, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Gombrich, E.H. (1996) Ombre, Torino: Einaudi.
Herrera, G., Jordan, R., Vera, L. (2006) ‘Agency and Presence: a Common
Dependence on Subjectivity?’, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual
Environments, 15:5, 539–52.
Hobbs, R. (1981) Robert Smithson: Sculpture, London: Cornell University
Press.
Ingold, Y. (2000) The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood,
Dwelling and Skill, London: Routledge.
Johnson, S. (2002) Emergence: the Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities
and Software, London: Penguin.
Kaye, N. (1994) Postmodernism and Performance, Basingstoke: Palgrave
MacMillan.
——(2000) Site Speciic Art: Performance, Place and Documentation,
London: Routledge.
——(2005) ‘Performed Ecologies: Body, Material, Architecture’, in
G. Giannachi and N. Stewart (eds) Performing Nature: Explorations in
Ecology and the Arts, Oxford: Peter Lang, 269–84.
Lingis, A. (2003) ‘Animal Body, Inhuman Face’, in C. Wolfe (ed.)
Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal, Minneapolis MN: University
of Minnesota Press, 165–82.
Environmental presence 63
Kaprow, A. (1966) Assemblages, Environments and Happenings, New
York: H. N. Abrams.
Kobayashi, H. et al (2009) ‘Wearable Forest Clothing System: Beyond
Human-Computer Interaction’, Leonardo, 42:4, 300–06.
Nash, R. (1967) Wilderness and the American Mind, New Haven and
London: Yale University Press.
Riva, G. (2008) ‘Enacting Interactivity: The Role of Presence’, in Morganti,
F., Carassa, A., Riva, G. (eds) (2008) Enacting Intersubjectivity: A
Cognitive and Social Perspective on the Study of Interactions,
Amsterdam: IOS Press, 97–114.
Sanchez-Vives, M. V. and Slater, M. (2005) ‘From Presence to Consciousness
through Virtual Reality’, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6:4, 332–9.
Shapiro, G. (1995) Earthwards: Robert Smithson and Art After Babel,
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Slater, M. (2002) ‘Presence and the Sixth Sense’, Presence: Teleoperators
and Virtual Environments, 11:4, 435–9.
Steuer, J. (1992) ‘Deining virtual reality: Dimensions determining
telepresence’, Journal of Communications, 42, 73–93.
White, R. (1980) Music, Sound, Language, Theater, Santa Cruz NM:
Crown Point Press.
Chapter 4
Performance remains
again
Rebecca Schneider
The peculiar burden and problem of the theatre is that there is
no original artwork at all. Unless one maintains that the text is
the artwork (which repudiates the entire history of the theatre),
there seems no way of avoiding this dificult fact. Every other art
has its original and its copies. Only music approximates the
theatrical dilemma, but notation insures that each musical
performance will at least come close to the composer’s intention.
(Schechner 1965: 22, 24, original emphasis)
Dance exists at a perpetual vanishing point. […] It is an event
that disappears in the very act of materializing.
(Siegel 1968: 1)
In theatre, as in love, the subject is disappearance.
(Blau 1982: 94)
Performance originals disappear as fast as they are made. No
notation, no reconstruction, no ilm or videotape recording can
keep them. […] One of the chief jobs challenging performance
scholars is the making of a vocabulary and methodology that
deal with performance in its immediacy and evanescence.
(Schechner 1985: 50)
Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented, or
otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of
representations: once it does so it becomes something other
than performance. […] Performance […] becomes itself
through disappearance.
(Phelan l993: 146)
Performance remains again 65
We need a history that does not save in any sense of the word;
we need a history that performs.
(Blocker l999: 134)
This essay is about performance and the archive, or the positioning
of performance in archival culture.1 It takes up the long-standing
invitations of many in performance studies to consider performance ‘always at the vanishing point’ (Blau 1982: 28)2 . Taking up
these invitations, I’ve set myself the following question: If we
consider performance as ‘of’ disappearance, if we think of the
ephemeral as that which ‘vanishes,’ and if we think of performance
as the antithesis of preservation3, do we limit ourselves to an
understanding of performance predetermined by a cultural
habituation to the patrilineal, West-identiied (arguably whitecultural) logic of the archive?
Troubling disappearance
The archive has long been habitual to Western culture. We
understand ourselves relative to the remains we accumulate as
indices of vanishment, the tracks we house, mark, and cite, the
material traces we acknowledge as remaining. Jacques Le Goff
stated the Western truism quite simply, noting that history,
requiring remains, has been composed of documents because ‘the
document is what remains.’ Even as the domain of the document
has expanded to include ‘the spoken word, the image, and gesture,’
the fundamental relationship of remain to documentability
remains intact (Le Goff 1992: xvii). But the ‘we’ of this mode of
history as material remains is not necessarily universal. Rather,
‘archive culture’ is appropriate to those who align historical
knowledge with European traditions, or, even more precisely, those
who chart a (mythic) descent from Greek antiquity4. As Derrida
reminds us in Archive Fever, the word archive stems from the
Greek and is linked at the root to the prerogatives of the archon,
the head of state. Tucked inside the word itself is the house of he
who was ‘considered to possess the right to make or to represent
the law,’ and to uphold, as Michel Foucault has written, the ‘system
of its enunciability’ (Derrida 1995: 2)5.
In the theatre the issue of remains as material document, and
the issue of performance as documentable, becomes complicated
– necessarily imbricated, chiasmically, with the live body. The
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Rebecca Schneider
theatre, to the degree that it is composed in live performance,
seems to resist remains. And yet, if live theatre in the West is
approached as that which refuses to remain, as performance studies
scholars have quite fulsomely insisted, it is precisely in live art and
live theatre that scores of late twentieth-century and early twentyi rst-century artists explore history – the recomposition of remains
in and as the live6. If we consider performance as of disappearance,
of an ephemerality read as vanishment and loss, are we
perhaps limiting ourselves to an understanding of performance
predetermined by our cultural habituation to the logic of the
archive?
According to the logic of the archive, what is given to the archive
is that which is recognized as constituting a remain, that which can
have been documented or has become document. To the degree
that performance is not its own document (as Schechner, Blau, and
Phelan have argued), it is, constitutively, that which does not
remain. As the logic goes, performance is so radically ‘in time’
(with time considered linear) that it cannot reside in its material
traces and therefore ‘disappears.’
The dei nition of performance as that which disappears, which
is continually lost in time, is a dei nition well suited to the concerns
of art history and the curatorial pressure to understand performance
in the museal context where performance appeared to challenge
object status and seemed to refuse the archive its privileged ‘savable’
original. Arguably even more than in the theatre, it is in the context
of the museum, gallery, and art market that performance appears
to primarily offer disappearance. Particularly in the context of
visual art, performance suggests a challenge to the ‘ocular
hegemony’ that, to quote Kobena Mercer, ‘assumes that the visual
world can be rendered knowable before the omnipotent gaze of the
eye and the ‘I’ of the Western cogito’ (1996: 165). Thus there is a
political promise in this equation of performance with disappearance: if performance can be understood as disappearing,
perhaps performance can rupture the ocular hegemony Mercer
cites. And yet, in privileging an understanding of performance as a
refusal to remain, do we ignore other ways of knowing, other
modes of remembering, that might be situated precisely in the ways
in which performance remains, but remains differently? The ways,
that is, that performance resists a cultural habituation to the ocular
– a thrall that would delimit performance as that which cannot
remain to be seen.
Performance remains again 67
The predominant performance-studies-meets-art-history attitude
toward performance as disappearance might overlook different
ways of accessing history offered by performance. Too often, the
equation of performance with disappearance reiterates performance
as necessarily a matter of loss, even annihilation. Curator Paul
Schimmel made this perspective clear in his essay ‘Leap into the
Void,’ writing that the orientation toward ‘the act,’ which he
historicizes as a post-World War II preoccupation, is an orientation
toward destruction. ‘Although there are instances of lighthearted
irreverence, joy, and laughter in this work, there is always an
underlying darkness, informed by the recognition of humanity’s
seemingly relentless drive toward self-annihilation’ (Schimmel 1998:
17). In his analysis, performance becomes itself as void. It may be a
medium of creation, but a creation subservient to a disappearance
understood as loss, ‘destruction,’ and ‘darkness.’
If we adopt the equation that performance does not save, does
not remain, and apply it to performance generally, to what degree
can performance interrogate archival thinking? Is it not the case
that it is precisely the logic of the archive that approaches
performance as of disappearance? Asked another way, does an
equation of performance with impermanence, destruction, and
loss follow rather than disrupt a cultural habituation to the
imperialism inherent in archival logic? A simple example may serve
us well: on a panel at a Columbia University conference in 1997 on
documentation, archivists Mary Edsall and Catherine Johnson
bemoaned the problems of preserving performance, declaring that
the practices of ‘body-to-body transmission,’ such as dance and
gesture, mean that ‘you lose a lot of history’7. Such statements
assume that memory cannot be housed in a body and remain, and
thus that oral storytelling, live recitation, repeated gesture, and
ritual enactment are not practices of telling or writing history.
Such practices disappear. By this logic, being housed always in the
live, ‘body-to-body transmission’ disappears, is lost, and thus is no
transmission at all. Obviously, the language of disappearance here
is hugely culturally myopic. Here, performance is given to be as
antithetical to memory as it is to the archive.
Should we not think of the ways in which the archive depends
upon performance, indeed ways in which the archive performs the
equation of performance with disappearance, even as it performs
the service of ‘saving’? It is in accord with archival logic that
performance is given to disappear, and mimesis (always in a tangled
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Rebecca Schneider
and complicated relationship to the performative) is, in line with a
long history of antitheatricality, debased if not downright feared as
destructive of the pristine ideality of all things marked ‘original’8.
Performing the archive
It is thus in […] domiciliation, in […] house arrest, that
archives take place.
(Derrida 1995: 2)
If the twentieth century was famous for, among other things,
criticizing the concept of historical facticity, such criticism has not
resulted in the end of our particular investments in the logic of the
archive. Rather, we have broadened our range of documents to
include that which we might have overlooked and now practice the
stockpiling of recorded speech, image, gesture in the establishment
of ‘oral archives’ and the collection of ‘ethnotexts.’ The important
recuperation of ‘lost histories’ has gone on in the name of feminism,
minoritarianism, and its compatriots. In light of this, what does it
serve to remind ourselves that this privileging of site-able remains
in the archive is linked, as is the root of the word archive, to the
prerogatives of the archon, the head of state? In what way does the
housing of memory in strictly material, quantiiable, domicilable
remains lead both backward and forward to the principle of the
archon, the patriarch? The Greek root of the word archive refers to
the archon’s house and, by extension, the architecture of a social
memory linked to the law. The demand for a visible remain, at i rst
a mnemonic mode of mapping for monument, would eventually
become the architecture of a particular social power over memory9.
Even if the earliest Greek archive housed mnemonics for performance rather than material originals themselves, archive logic
in modernity came to value the document over event. That is, if
ancient archives housed back-ups in case of the failure of localized
knowledge, colonial archives participated in the failure of localized
knowledge – that failure had become a given. The document, as an
arm of empire, could arrest and disable local knowledges while
simultaneously scripting memory as necessarily failed, as Ann
Laura Stoller has amply illustrated. The archive became a mode of
governance against memory10. The question becomes: Does the
logic of the archive, as that logic came to be central to modernity,
in fact demand that performance disappear in favor of discrete
Performance remains again 69
remains – material presented as preserved, as non-theatrical, as
‘authentic,’ as ‘itself,’ as somehow non-mimetic?
In the archive, lesh is given to be that which slips away.
According to archive logic, lesh can house no memory of bone. In
the archive, only bone speaks memory of lesh. Flesh is blind spot11.
Dissimulating and disappearing. Of course, this is a cultural
equation, arguably foreign to those who claim orature, storytelling,
visitation, improvisation, or embodied ritual practice as history. It
is arguably foreign to practices in popular culture, such as the
practices of US Civil War reenactors who consider performance as
precisely a way of keeping memory alive, of making sure it does
not disappear. In such practices – coded (like the body) primitive,
popular, folk, naïve – performance does remain, does leave
‘residue’12 . Indeed the place of residue is arguably lesh in a network
of body-to-body transmission of affect and enactment – evidence,
across generations, of impact.
In scholarly treatments, the question of the performance
remains of history, or more speciically history that remains in
performance practice (versus written or object remains) generally
falls under the rubric of memory versus history, and as such it is
often labeled ‘mythic.’ Oral history also often falls under the rubric
of ritual. In turn, ‘ritual’ generally (or historically) has fallen under
the rubric of ‘ethnic’ – a term which generally means race- or classmarked people but which Le Goff cites as ‘primitive’ or ‘peoples
without writing’ (Le Goff 1992: 55)13. Clearly, concatenations of
primitivism and attendant racisms attach, in turn, to attempts to
acknowledge performance as an appropriate means of remaining,
of remembering. Is this perhaps because performance threatens
the terms of captive or discrete remains dictated by the archive? Is
this in part why the logic of the archive – that utopic ‘operational
ield of projected total knowledge’ – scripts performance as
disappearing? (Thomas 1993: 11) Because oral history and its
performance practices are always decidedly repeated, oral
historical practices are always reconstructive, always incomplete,
never in thrall to the singular or self-same origin that buttresses
archontic lineage. In performance as memory, the pristine selfsameness of an ‘original,’ an artifact so valued by the archive, is
rendered impossible – or, if you will, mythic.
Performance practice has been routinely disavowed as historical
practice14. Though historiographers such as Pierre Nora claim that
this attitude has shifted in favor of a ‘new’ history that incorporates
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Rebecca Schneider
collective memory and performative practices, nevertheless that
‘new’ history is manifested in the constitution of ‘radically new
kinds of archives, of which the most characteristic are oral
archives’ (Le Goff 1992: 95–6). The oral is not here approached as
already an archive, a performance-based archive. Rather, oral
histories are constituted anew, recorded and ‘saved’ through
technology in the name of identicality and materiality. Though
this ‘new’ archiving is supposedly against loss, doesn’t it institute
more profoundly than anything the loss of a different approach to
saving that is not invested in identicality? Doesn’t it further undo
an understanding of performance as remaining? Do not such
practices buttress the phallocentric insistence of the ocularcentric
assumption that if it is not visible, or given to documentation or
sonic recording, or otherwise ‘houseable’ within an archive, it is
lost, disappeared?
It is interesting to take the example of battle reenactment into
account and look at the particular case of Robert Lee Hodge – an
avid Civil War enthusiast who participates in reenactments. As
Marvin Carlson described him in an essay on theatre and historical
reenactment, Hodge has attained signiicant notoriety among
reenactment communities for his ‘ability to fall to the ground and
contort his body to simulate convincingly a bloated corpse’
(Carlson 2000: 237–48)15. The question is obvious: under what
imaginable framework could we cite Hodge’s actions as a viable
mode of historical knowledge, or of remaining? Is Hodge’s bloat
not deeply problematic mimetic representation, and wildly bogus
and indiscreet at that? Does Hodge, lying prone and fake-bloating
in the sun, attempt to offer index of – as well as reference to – both
the material photograph and the photographed material of Civil
War corpses? Is the live bloater only offering a mimetic and perhaps
even ludicrous copy of something only vaguely imagined as a
bloated corpse? Yet, within the growing ‘living history’ and
reenactment movement, Hodge’s bloating body is, for many
enthusiasts, evidence of something that can touch the more distant
historical record, if not evidence of something authentic itself16. In
the often-ridiculed ‘popular’ arena of reenactment, Hodge’s bloat
is a kind of affective remain – itself, in its performative repetition,
a queer kind of evidence. If the living corpse is a remain of history,
it is certainly revisited across a body that cannot pass as the corpse
it re-calls. If it cannot pass, what kind of claim to authenticity can
such a faulty corpse demand?
Performance remains again 71
I am reminded of Charles Ludlam’s queer Theatre of the
Ridiculous in which the replaying of classics or the ‘camp’
reenactment of the folk art of ‘vulgar’ commercial entertainment
(such as B-movies) offers a different though perhaps related kind of
‘living history.’ Ludlam’s parodic evenings offered a fractured
re-entry of remainders – a history of identiications, of role-playing
and its discontents. In Ludlam’s theatre, as Stefan Brecht described
it in 1968, ‘Removal of cadavers, necessitated by the high onstage
death-rate, is done with exaggerated clumsiness, the corpse does
not cooperate – but mostly the dead just sit up after a while, walk
off, reparticipate in the action’ (Brecht 1968: 120).
When we approach performance not as that which disappears
(as the archive expects), but as both the act of remaining and a
means of re-appearance and ‘reparticipation’ (though not a
metaphysic of presence) we are almost immediately forced to admit
that remains do not have to be isolated to the document, to the
object, to bone versus lesh. Here the body – Hodge’s bloated one
– becomes a kind of archive and host to a collective memory that
we might situate with Freud as symptomatic, with Cathy Caruth
with Freud as the compulsory repetitions of a collective trauma,
with Foucault with Nietzsche as ‘counter-memory,’ or with Fred
Moten with Baraka, Minh-ha, and Derrida as transmutation17.
The bodily, read through genealogies of impact and ricochet, is
arguably always interactive. This body, given to performance,
is here engaged with disappearance chiasmically – not only
disappearing but resiliently eruptive, remaining through performance like so many ghosts at the door marked ‘disappeared.’ In this
sense performance becomes itself through messy and eruptive reappearance. It challenges, via the performative trace, any neat
antimony between appearance and disappearance, or presence and
absence through the basic repetitions that mark performance as
indiscreet, non-original, relentlessly citational, and remaining.
Indeed, approached in this way, performance challenges loss.
Still, we must be careful to avoid the habit of approaching
performance remains as a metaphysic of presence that fetishizes a
singular ‘present’ moment. As theories of trauma and repetition
might instruct us, it is not presence that appears in the syncopated
time of citational performance but precisely (again) the missed
encounter – the reverberations of the overlooked, the missed, the
repressed, the seemingly forgotten. Performance does not disappear
when approached from this perspective, though its remains are the
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Rebecca Schneider
immaterial of live, embodied acts. Rather, performance plays the
‘sedimented acts’ and spectral meanings that haunt material in
constant collective interaction, in constellation, in transmutation.
Death and living remains
Let us not too rapidly dispose of the issue of disappearance. If
Schechner, Blau, Phelan, and others are correct and performance is
given to become itself through disappearance – to resist document
and record, to deny remains – we i nd ourselves in a bit of an
awkward bind regarding the argument so far. In fact, Blau’s work
on this bind, particularly his Take Up the Bodies: Theatre at the
Vanishing Point, has been particularly trenchant:
Whatever the style, hieratic or realistic, texted or untexted –
box it, mask it, deconstruct it as you will – the theatre
disappears under any circumstances; but with all the ubiquity
of the adhesive dead, from Antigone’s brother to Strindberg’s
Mummy to the burgeoning corpse of Ionesco’s Amedée, it’s
there when we look again.
(Blau 1982: 137)
Upon any second look, disappearance is not antithetical to remains.
And indeed, it is one of the primary insights of poststructuralism
that disappearance is that which marks all documents, all records,
and all material remains. Indeed, remains become themselves
through disappearance as well.
We might think of it this way: death appears to result in the
paradoxical production of both disappearance and remains.
Disappearance, that citational practice, that after-the-factness,
clings to remains – absent lesh does ghost bones. We have
already noted that the habit of the West is to privilege bones as
index of a lesh that was once, being ‘once’ (as in both time and
singularity) only after the fact. Flesh itself, in our ongoing cultural
habituation to sight-able remains, supposedly cannot remain to
signify ‘once’ (upon a time). Even twice won’t it the constancy of
cell replacing cell that is our everyday. Flesh, that slippery
feminine subcutaneousness, is the tyrannical and oily, invisibleinked signature of the living. Flesh of my lesh of my lesh
repeats, even as lesh is that which the archive presumes does not
remain.
Performance remains again 73
As Derrida notes, the archive is built on the domiciliation of this
lesh with its feminine capacity to reproduce. The archive is built
on ‘house arrest’ – the solidiication of value in ontology as
retroactively secured in document, object, record. This retroaction
is nevertheless a valorization of regular, necessary loss on
(performative) display – with the document, the object, and the
record being situated as survivor of time. Thus we have become
increasingly comfortable in saying that the archivable object also
becomes itself through disappearance – as it becomes the trace of
that which remains when performance (the artist’s action)
disappears. This is trace-logic emphasizing loss – a loss that the
archive can regulate, maintain, institutionalize – while forgetting
that it is a loss that the archive produces. In the archive, bones are
given not only to speak the disappearance of lesh, but to script
that lesh as disappearing by disavowing recurrence or by marking
the body always already ‘scandal’ (Schneider 2006).
An instituted loss that spells the failure of the bodily to remain
is rife with a ‘patriarchal principle.’ No one, Derrida notes, has
shown more ably than Freud how the archival drive, which he
labels as a ‘paternal and patriarchic principle,’ is both patriarchal
and parricidic.
The archival drive posited itself to repeat itself and returned to
reposit itself only in parricide. It amounts to repressed or
suppressed parricide, in the name of the father as dead father.
The archontic is at best the takeover of the archive by the
brothers. The equality and liberty of brothers. A certain, still
vivacious idea of democracy.
(Derrida 1995: 95)
Ann Pellegrini has stated this Freudian schema succinctly: ‘son
fathers parent(s); pre- is heir to post-; and “proper” gender
identiication and “appropriate” object choices are secured
backward’ – a ‘retroaction of objects lost and subjects founded’
(Pellegrini 1997: 69). Elsewhere, I have discussed this parricidal
impulse as productive of death in order to ensure remains
(Schneider 2001). I have suggested that the increasing domain of
remains in the West, the increased technologies of archiving, may
be why the late twentieth century was both so enamored of
performance and so replete with deaths: death of author, death of
science, death of history, death of literature, death of character,
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death of the avant-garde, death of modernism, and even, in SuzanLori Parks’s brilliant and ironic rendition, Death of the Last Black
Man in the Whole Entire World (1995). Within a culture that
privileges object remains as indices of and survivors of death, to
produce such a panoply of deaths may be the only way to insure
remains in the wake of modernity’s crises of authority, identity,
and object. Killing the author, or sacriicing his station, may be,
ironically, the means of ensuring that he remains.
For the moment let me simply suggest that when we read this
‘securing backward’ Pellegrini discusses, this ‘retroaction’ of
objects, we are reading the archive as act – as an architecture
housing rituals of ‘domiciliation’ or ‘house arrest’ – continually, as
ritual, performed. The archive itself becomes a social performance
space, a theatre of retroaction. The archive performs the institution
of disappearance, with object remains as indices of disappearance
and with performance as given to disappear. If, in Derrida’s
formation, it is in domiciliation, in ‘house arrest’ that ‘archives take
place’ we are invited to think of this ‘taking place’ as continual, of
house arrest as performative – a performative, like a promise, that
casts the retroaction of objects solidly into a future in which the
patriarchic principle Derrida cites will have (retroactively) remained.
To read ‘history,’ then, as a set of sedimented acts that are not
the historical acts themselves but the act of securing any incident
backward – the repeated act of securing memory – is to rethink the
site of history in ritual repetition. This is not to say that we have
reached the ‘end of history,’ neither is it to say that past events
didn’t happen, nor that to access the past is impossible. It is rather
to re-situate the site of any knowing of history as body-to-body
transmission. Whether that ritual repetition is the attendance to
documents in the library (the physical acts of acquisition, the
physical acts of reading, writing, educating), or the oral tales of
family lineage (think of the African-American descendents of
Thomas Jefferson who didn’t need the DNA test to tell them what
they remembered through oral transmission), or the myriad
traumatic reenactments engaged in both consciously and
unconsciously, we reigure ‘history’ onto bodies, the affective
transmissions of showing and telling18. Architectures of access (the
physical aspect of books, bookcases, glass display cases, or even
the request desk at an archive) place us in particular experiential
relations to knowledge. Those architectures also impact the
knowledge imparted. Think of it this way: the same detail of
Performance remains again 75
information can sound, feel, look, smell, or taste radically different
when accessed in radically different venues or via disparate media
(or when not told in some venues but told in others). In line with
this coniguration, performance is the mode of any architecture or
environment of access (one performs a mode of access in the
archive; one performs a mode of access at a theatre; one performs
a mode of access on the dance loor; one performs a mode of access
on a battleield). In this sense, too, performance does not disappear.
In the archive, the performance of access is a ritual act that, by
occlusion and inclusion, scripts the depreciation of (and registers as
disappeared) other modes of access.
Remaining on the stage
Artists such as Suzan-Lori Parks attempt to unpack a way in which
performance (or actions, or acts) remain – but remain differently.
Such works are interested in the ways in which history is not
limited to the imperial domain of the document, or in which
history is not ‘lost’ through body-to-body transmission. Is this less
an investigation of disappearance than an interest in the politics of
dislocation and relocation? The idea that lesh memory might
remain challenges conventional notions of the archive. By this
reading, the scandal of performance relative to the archive is not
that it disappears (this is what the archive expects, this is the
archive’s requirement), but that it remains in ways that resist
archontic ‘house arrest’ and ‘domiciliation.’
To the degree that it remains, but remains differently or in
difference, the past performed and made explicit as (live)
performance can function as the kind of bodily transmission
conventional archivists dread, a counter-memory – almost in the
sense of an echo (as Parks’s character Lucy in The America Play
might call it). If echoes, or in the performance troupe Spiderwoman’s words ‘rever-ber-berations,’ resound off of lived
experience produced in performance, then we are challenged to
think beyond the ways in which performance seems, according to
our habituation to the archive, to disappear19. We are also and
simultaneously encouraged to articulate the ways in which
performance, less bound to the ocular, ‘sounds’ (or begins again
and again, as Stein would have it), differently, via itself as repetition
– like a copy or perhaps more like a ritual – like an echo in the ears
of a conidence keeper, an audience member, a witness.
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Rebecca Schneider
Arguably, this sense of performance is imbricated in Phelan’s
phrasing – that performance ‘becomes itself through’ disappearance.
This phrasing is arguably different from an ontological claim of
being (despite Phelan’s stated drive to ontology), even different
from an ontology of being under erasure. This phrasing rather
invites us to think of performance as a medium in which
disappearance negotiates, perhaps becomes, materiality. That is,
disappearance is passed through. As is materiality.
Works in which the political manipulations of ‘disappearance’
demand a material criticism – works such as Diana Taylor’s
Disappearing Acts or José Esteban Muñoz’s ‘Ephemera as Evidence’
– thus create a productive tension within performance studies
orientations to (and sometime celebrations of) ephemerality. It is in
the midst of this tension (or this ‘pickle’ as Parks might put it) that
the notion of performance as disappearance crosses chiasmically
with ritual – ritual, in which, through performance, we are asked,
again, to (re)found ourselves – to ind ourselves in repetition.
Pickling
[performance] iz trying to i nd an equation
for time saved/saving time
but theatre/experience/performing/
being/living etc. is all about
spending time. No equation or …?
(Parks 1995: 13, original emphasis)
Works cited
Agnew, V. (2004) ‘Introduction: What is Reenactment?’, Criticism 46: 3,
327–39.
Barish, J. (1981) The Antitheatrical Prejudice, Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Bernal, M. (1989) Black Athena, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press.
Blau, H. (1982) Take Up the Bodies: Theater at the Vanishing Point,
Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Blocker, J. (1999) Where Is Ana Mendieta: Identity, Performativity, and
Exile, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
——(2004) What the Body Cost, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
Brecht, S. (1968) ‘Family of the f.p.: Notes on the Theatre of the Ridiculous’,
The Drama Review, 13:1, 117–41.
Performance remains again 77
Carlson, M. (2000) ‘Performing the Past: Living History and Cultural
Memory’, Paragrana, 9:2, 237–48.
Connerton, P. (1989) How Societies Remember, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Derrida, J. (1995) Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, translated by
E. Prenowitz, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Elam, H. and Rayner, A. (1994) ‘Uninished Business: Reconiguring
History in Suzan-Lori Parks’s The Death of the Last Black Man in the
Whole Entire World’, Theatre Journal, 46:4, 447–61.
Foucault, M. (1972) The Archaeology of Knowledge, translated by
A. Sheridan, London: Tavistock.
Halbwachs, M. (1992) On Collective Memory, Chicago, translated by
L. A. Coser, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Horwitz, T. (1999) Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the
Uninished Civil War, New York: Vintage.
Jarman, N. (1997) Material Conlicts: Parades and Visual Displays in
Northern Ireland, Oxford: Berg Publishers.
Kammen, M. (1993) Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of
Tradition in American Culture, New York: Vintage Books.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B. (1998) Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums,
and Heritage, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Le Goff, J. (1992) History and Memory, New York: Columbia University
Press.
Mercer, K. (1996) ‘To Unbury the Disremembered Past: Keith Piper’, in M.
Kalinovska (ed.) New Histories, Boston, MA: Institute of Contemporary
Art, 161–6.
Moten, F. and Rowell, C. H. (2004) ‘‘Words Don’t Go There’: An Interview
with Fred Moten’, Callaloo 27, 4, 954–66.
Muñoz, J. E. (1996) ‘Ephemera as Evidence: Introductory Notes to Queer
Acts’, Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, 8:2, 5–18.
Nyong’o, T. (2009) The Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance, and the
Ruses of Memory, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Ong, W. (1982) Orality and Literacy, New York: Methuen.
Parks, S-L. (1995) Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire
World, in The America Play and Other Works, New York: Theatre
Communications Group.
Pellegrini, A. (1997) Performance Anxieties: Staging Psychoanalysis,
Staging Race, New York: Routledge.
Phelan, P. (1993) Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, New York:
Routledge.
Schechner, R. (1965) ‘Theatre Criticism’, The Tulane Drama Review, 9: 3,
13–24.
——(1985) Between Theatre and Anthropology, Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago University Press.
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Siegel, M. B. (1968) At the Vanishing Point. A Critic Looks at Dance,
New York: Saturday Review Press.
Schneider, R. (1997) The Explicit Body in Performance, New York:
Routledge.
——(2001) ‘Hello Dolly Well Hello Dolly: The Double and Its Theatre’, in
P. Campbell and A. Kear (eds) Psychoanalysis and Performance, New
York: Routledge, 94–114.
——(2001a) ‘Performance Remains’, Performance Research, 6:2, 100–108.
——(2006) ‘Judith Butler in My Hands’, in E. Armour and S. St Ville (eds)
Bodily Citations: Religion and Judith Butler, New York: Columbia
University Press, 225–52.
——(2011) Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical
Reenactment, New York: Routledge.
Schimmel, P. (1998) ‘Leap Into the Void: Performance and the Object’,
P. Schimmel (ed.) Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object,
Los Angeles, CA: Museum of Contemporary Art, 17–120.
Sickinger, J. P. (1999) Public Records and Archives in Classical Athens,
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Stoller, A. L. (2002) ‘Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance’,
Archival Science, 2:1-2, 87–109.
——(2009) Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial
Common Sense, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Taylor, D. (1997) Disappearing Acts, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
——(2003) The Archive and the Repertoire, Durham: Duke University
Press.
Thomas, R. (1992) Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
——(1993) The Imperial Archive: Knowledge and the Fantasy of Empire,
New York: Verso.
Weber, S. (2004) Theatricality as Medium, New York: Fordham University
Press.
Yates, F. (1966) The Art of Memory, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 1966.
Notes
1 The essay is here altered somewhat from the original 2001 publication
– modiications that bear the marks of the essay’s promiscuous
afterlife, including references to texts that post-date 2001. The
original appeared as Schneider 2001a. For commentary on that
afterlife, and another ‘re-do’ of the essay, see Schneider 2011.
2 The approach to performance as ‘an ephemeral event’ has been a
cornerstone to Performance Studies and has been evident as basic to
performance theory since the 1960s. Interestingly, ephemerality
remains. Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett, another longstanding mem-
Performance remains again 79
ber of and inluential thinker in the ield, employed the term ‘ephemeral’
in l998 claiming that: ‘The ephemeral encompasses all forms of behavior
— everyday activities, storytelling, ritual, dance, speech, performance
of all kinds.’ (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998: 30). In l993, Peggy Phelan,
building on Herbert Blau and Richard Schechner, read ephemeral as
disappearance. In an excellent l996 essay, ‘Ephemera as Evidence:
Introductory Notes to Queer Acts,’ Jose Esteban Muñoz turned the
table on ephemerality to suggest that ephemera do not disappear, but
are distinctly material. Munoz relies on Raymond William’s ‘structures
of feeling’ to argue that the ephemeral —‘traces, glimmers, residues,
and specks of things’ — is a ‘mode’ of ‘prooing’ employed by necessity
(and sometimes preference) by minoritarian culture and criticism
makers (Muñoz 1996: 10).
3 Building explicitly on Phelan, Jane Blocker’s Where Is Ana Mendieta
provides an example of art history’s application of the ephemerality of
performance as informed through performance studies. Blocker
employed the equation of performance with disappearance to suggest
that performance is the antithesis of ‘saving.’ See Blocker’s own
important complication of this position in her subsequent book, What
the Body Cost (Blocker 2004: 105–7).
4 See Thomas 1993. The articulation of Greek antiquity as forefathering history itself is mythic. The ‘disremembering’ of other
lineages ultimately served Eurocentric, geopolitical, racializing
agendas. See Bernal 1989.
5 In the late 1960s, reaching English readers in the early 1970s, Michel
Foucault had expanded the notion of ‘the archive’ beyond a material,
architectural housing of documents and objects to include, more
broadly, structures of enunciability at all. Foucault articulated ‘the
archive’ as essentially discursive – invested of an investment in
preservation – determining not only the ‘system of enunciability’
(what can be said) but also the duration of any enunciation (what is
given to remain becomes what can have been said). An excerpt from
Foucault’s The Archaeology of Knowledge bears repeating:
The archive is i rst the law of what can be said, the system that
governs the appearance of statements as unique events. But the
archive is also that which determines that all these things said do
not accumulate endlessly in an amorphous mass, nor are they
inscribed in an unbroken linearity, nor do they disappear at the
mercy of chance external accidents; but they are grouped together
in distinct igures […]. The archive is not that which, despite its
immediate escape, safeguards the event of the statement, and
preserves, for future memories, its status as an escapee; it is that
which, at the very root of the statement-event, and in that which
embodies it, dei nes at the outset the system of its enunciability.
Nor is the archive that which collects the dust of statements that
have become inert once more, and which may make possible the
miracle of their resurrection; it is that which dei nes the mode of
occurrence of the statement-thing; it is the system of its
functioning (Foucault 1972: 129, original emphasis).
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Rebecca Schneider
6 See Keith Piper’s installation, Relocating the Remains (1997). The
work of Suzan-Lori Parks is also exemplary. See also Elam and Rayner
1994: 447–61.
7 Comments made at the panel ‘Documentation in the Absence of Text,’
during the conference ‘Performance and Text: Thinking and Doing,’
sponsored by the Department of Theatre Arts, Columbia University,
New York, 2–4 May 1997.
8 See Barish 1981 and Weber 2004. That a distrust of mimesis should
develop simultaneously with the development of archives in ancient
Greece deserves greater analysis, especially given the fact that the i rst
Greek archives did not house originals but seconds. The irst archives
were used to store legal documents that were not originals but oficial
copies of text inscribed on stone monuments placed around the city.
The documents were copies of stone markers that were themselves
‘mnemonic aids’ – not, that is, the ‘thing’ preserved. See Thomas 1992:
86–7. Thus the irst archived documents backed up a performanceoriented memory that was intended to be encountered live in the form
of monuments, art, and architecture. On the classical art of memory as
performance-oriented, see Yates 1966: 1–49.
9 On social power over memory, Derrida writes: ‘The meaning of
“archive,” its only meaning, comes to it from the Greek arkheion:
initially a house, a domicile, an address, the residence of the superior
magistrates, the archons, those who commanded. The citizens who
thus held and signiied political power were considered to possess the
right to make or to represent the law. On account of their publicly
recognized authority, it is at their home, in that place which is their
house (private house, family house, or employees’ house), that oficial
documents are i led’ (Derrida 1995: 2). But ancient archival practice is
more complicated than Derrida lets on. In ancient Greece the word
‘archive’ was not used to refer to the housing of original documents.
See Sickinger 1999: 6. I have alluded to this briely in fn 8, but to
complicate matters, the i rst oficial (though not the only) storeroom
for documents in Ancient Greece was the Metroon – the sanctuary of
the Mother of the Gods. The Metroon was established in part to bring
some order to oficial documents that had been scattered in the
keeping of the archons.
10 See Stoller 2002: 87–109 and Stoller 2009. See also Thomas 1993.
11 Psychoanalysis certainly posits lesh as archive, but an inchoate and
unknowing archive. Is it a given in all circumstances that body
memory is ‘unknowing’ and ‘blind’? See Schneider 2006.
12 In his inluential book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of
the Word, Walter Ong makes the claim that because they are
performance-based, oral traditions do not leave ‘residue,’ make no
‘deposit,’ do not remain. Arguably, this claim is debunked by his own
insistence that many habits from oral culture persist (Ong 1982: 11).
On the issue of body memory in general see Connerton 1989.
Connerton surprisingly situates bodily memory as extremely i xed
and unchanging. This aspect is critiqued by Neil Jarman in Material
Conlicts: Parades and Visual Displays in Northern Ireland (Jarman
Performance remains again 81
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
1997: 11). See also the work of Susan Leigh Foster, Mark Franko, Fred
Moten.
Le Goff’s work provides an example of the troubled leap from oral
history to ritual to ethnicity and from ethnicity to ‘peoples without
writing’ (Le Goff 1991: 55).
Cultural historians now accept popular and aesthetic representation
generally as social modes of historicization, often under Maurice
Halbwachs’s rubric ‘collective memory.’ See Halbwachs 1992. Still,
the process of approaching aesthetic production as valid historiography
involves careful (and debated) delineation between ‘memory,’ ‘myth,’
‘ritual,’ and ‘tradition’ on the one hand and the implicitly more
legitimate (or supposedly non-mythic) ‘history’ on the other. See
Kammen 1993: 25–32.
See also Horwitz 1999: 7–8.
See Vanessa Agnew on the myriad problems that arise for historians
who attempt to credit live reenactment as any kind of access to history
or any kind of complement to the historical record. Agnew accuses
reenactment of ‘theatre.’ She rather reductively associates theatre with
one of its historical modes – romantic sentimentalism – rather than,
say, associating theatre with Brechtian alienated historicization.
Agnew’s primary critique of living history and reenactment is that the
focus on reenactors’ experiences sentimentalizes and subjectivizes
history. See Agnew 2004: 335. But the case of the corpse is problematic.
For, at least as described by Horwitz (1999: 7–8), Hodge is not naïve
enough to think that he fully experiences what it means to be a corpse,
even if it is true that his (mock) fallen body may (mock) alarm other
(mock) soldiers who come upon it on the (mock) battleield.
See Moten and Rowell 2004: 954–66.
See Nyong’o 2009: 152–3, for engagement with oral history and
‘oficial’ history in the example of Jefferson’s descendents and the
‘hidden in plain sight’ theory of quilting patterns. Nyong’o, reminding
us fulsomely throughout his book of the race politics always
sedimented in debates about history and memory, writes that ‘at issue
was less a choice between the archive and memory and more a context
over black representative space in memory […] less a competition
between ‘élite’ and ‘folk’ knowledge and more of a competition
between academic and mass culture over the pedagogic stakes of
remembrance’ (Nyong’o 2009 153). Nyong’o’s comments of the
generative aspects of ‘myth,’ ‘error,’ and ‘mistake,’ and the palimpsest
of racial politics that inform the stakes in mistake, are extremely
useful as well.
See the chapter on Spiderwoman in Schneider 1997.
Chapter 5
Tension/release and the
production of time in
performance
Jon Erickson
In the i rst volume of Time and Narrative Paul Ricoeur draws
upon a theory of time proposed by Augustine in Chapter XI of his
Confessions. It is the idea that our only possible relation to time is
a psychological one attached to temporality’s three domains. Thus
the past is constituted by our memory, the present is constituted by
our attention, and the future is constituted by our expectation
(Ricoeur 1984: 5–30)1. This tripartite form that our consciousness
takes is our sole relation to time. But Ricoeur points out a paradox
about the tripartite division: while each psychological element
relates to past, present, or future, they are all only experienced in
the present – but as the past, present, or future. In a comparable
sense, Edmund Husserl refers to the fundamental intentionality of
consciousness, with ‘protention’ and ‘retention’ as the immediately
past and future components. Maurice Merleau-Ponty also speaks
to this in a more radical sense when he says, ‘We must understand
time as the subject and the subject as time. What is perfectly clear
is that this primordial temporality is not a juxtaposition of external
events, since it is the power which holds them together while
keeping them apart’ (Merleau-Ponty 1962: 422). Making our
relation to time solely related to our psychological state doesn’t
mean that the development of ‘clock time’ as a form of measurement
cannot refer to something outside that state. That is, atomic clocks
can be accurate down to nanoseconds in relation to the division of
equal segments of the temporal framework of the completed
rotation of the earth and the completed revolution of the earth
around the sun. It is just that this exactitude has little to do with
the actual experience of time by human beings. Kant made clear
his position on this: ‘Time is therefore merely a subjective condition
of our (human) intuition (which is always sensuous, that is, so far
Tension/release and the production of time in performance
83
as we are affected by objects), and in itself, independently of the
mind or subject, is nothing,’ and ‘Time is nothing but the form of
our internal intuition. If we take away from it the special condition
of our sensibility, the conception of time also vanishes; and it
inheres not in the objects themselves, but solely in the subject (or
mind) which intuits them’ (Kant 1990: 31–2).
There are times when we ind ourselves in situations when time
seems to drag on, or other times when it lies by, and we don’t know
where it went. At those moments we ind ourselves saying things
like: ‘that seemed to have lasted a lot longer than the actual amount
of time that passed,’ or ‘the time seemed to go by much faster than
it really did.’ I showed Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend in a ilm class,
and after watching the excruciatingly extended tracking shot of a
trafic jam on a country road, illed from beginning to end with the
sound of honking horns, my students were all convinced the scene
lasted between ten and ifteen minutes, and were surprised when I
said it was only six minutes. While we take our standard clocktime, and recognize its passing, as the objective measure of
everything else, what we fail to realize is that even our experiential
relation to clock-time is not itself objective. That is, when we say
that time passed slower than it actually did, we are really saying
time passed more slowly than it usually does for us. While our
bodies contain circadian rhythms that help us to wake up at regular
times, for instance, even without clocks, they are also related to
other natural cycles, such as sunlight, and so are not simply internal,
with their accuracy depending upon that. But what our bodies
experience and what our conscious minds experience in terms of
the passing of time may not be exactly the same thing.
It is possible to get a sense of what a certain passage of time
‘feels like,’ but it is usually in relation to something else that
constitutes an activity, even an apparently passive activity like
thinking. Making three-minute eggs for myself every other
morning for breakfast gave me an indication, for instance, of how
much text of a book I could read while waiting, but even that
depends on the type or dificulty of the book being read. We have
no objective sense of what a ‘real’ ive minutes by clock time means
to measure against what seems in certain situations as a ‘slow’ or
‘fast’ ive minutes. Our measures of time are that which we share
with others who lead the same kinds of lives as we do. The lives of
farmers or country folk (at least in the not too distant past) who
have no problem sitting on porches for hours, making small talk or
84
Jon Erickson
no talk at all has a quite different sense of ‘objective’ time than
urban teenagers who feel themselves going crazy with boredom if
they don’t have something to constantly distract them. Buddhist
monks who can sit for hours just breathing do not have the same
sense of time as businessmen perpetually trying to close deals
before different clients change their minds or go somewhere else.
Even academics that teach in quarter systems do not have the
same sense of time as academics teaching in semester systems.
Nonetheless there are forces that work to homogenize separate
senses of time: television is one of them. First in terms of the
scheduled times in which shows come on that people watch;
secondly, how many shows people watch; and thirdly, in the nature
of the pace of editing of segments, of both commercials and shows
alike. The gradually increasing speed of such things over the years
must to some extent affect all that watch, no matter where they are
in the scheme of things.
There have been experiments in the theater and in i lm with
producing the action in real time. One thinks of the i lm High
Noon, for instance, or Marsha Norman’s play set in a laundromat,
Third and Oak. Unlike the clock in High Noon, which the i lm
occasionally refers back to in order to indicate Gary Cooper’s time
running out, the clock in Norman’s play is on the wall for the
audience to constantly refer to as the play progresses. But again, as
I’ve indicated in what I’ve said about the relativity of the experience
of time, what is our sense of ‘real time’ anyway? We think we
should know what ive minutes feels like, but if we were to actually
sit and attentively watch a clock’s minute-hand move over ive
minutes, would we know what that space felt like, would we be
able to retain it objectively against all other event situations
presumably lasting ive minutes? One need only remember time
spent in classrooms where a clock is clearly visible on the front
wall, or I can recall my former wife going through labor in a
hospital room while a clock is staring at her from the opposite
wall. It’s always interesting when a script calls for a minute of
silence between utterances, and someone always says ‘a minute is a
long time in the theater.’ How long? Compared to what? Compared
to my desire to keep moving and to keep talking? Compared to
what an audience can bear? Which audience?
It is my contention that time is actually produced in the theater
for the spectators by the performance; it is produced for (and by)
the performers as well, but that is a slightly different story, which I
Tension/release and the production of time in performance
85
will come to later. Throughout, the experience of time arises out of
the creation of instances of tension and release, at multiple levels,
which produces rhythms that either carry along the spectator, or
produces resistances. There is something basically coercive about
this, but the coercion is typically felt only when one is resistant to
what is presented, as opposed to being caught up within its force.
The Russian ilmmaker Andrey Tarkovsky put it this way:
the director’s sense of time always amounts to a kind of
coercion of the audience, as does his imposition of his inner
world. The person watching either falls into your rhythm (your
world), and becomes your ally, or else he does not, in which
case no contact is made. And so some people become your
‘own,’ and others remain strangers; and I think this is not only
perfectly natural, but, alas, inevitable.
(Tarkovsky 1987: 120)
Tarkovsky further notes that the individuality of the ilmmaker is
to be found in his or her sense of time: ‘It is above all through sense
of time, through rhythm, that the director reveals his individuality.
[…]. Feeling the rhythmicality of a shot is rather like feeling a
truthful word in literature. An inexact word in writing, like an
inexact rhythm in ilm, destroys the veracity of the work’
(Tarkovsky 1987: 120).
There is, in effect, an implicit contract in which the spectator
agrees to give herself over to the temporality created by the theater
artist or ilm director. The time created will nonetheless be
experienced differently by those who are engaged or those who
i nd themselves resisting, signifying the emergence of what
Tarkovsky calls the ‘allies’ and ‘strangers’ of the artist’s work. The
development of tension in long slow takes (as in Tarkovsky’s i lms),
or in slowly emerging actions on stage may produce a kind of
fascination with the beauty of its unfolding, or when inelegantly
done produce what ilm critics call longeurs, which are more or less
put up with for the beneit of the pay off of release. And while
tension-release can involve, for the spectator at the simplest level, a
wondering at where a particular movement, gesture, is going,
creating a vision of bodily transformation, it is also inextricably
tied in with a larger narrative desire, where the signs of the
movement may also be read within the unfolding of meanings
through dialogue.
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Tension/release and the will to know
For the audience member, actions on stage that one attempts to
recognize as elements of a particular narrative, or elements of a
sequence of a larger narrative that nonetheless has a telos – which
includes an intention (or cause) and carrying-out (or effect) to
produce an end (meaning) – play a large role in establishing a sense
of tension out of a desire to understand the ‘point’ of the actions.
The tension is a pleasurable one when the process of behavior
begins explaining itself, given that the real initial tension is
incomprehensibility. But a different kind of tension can take place
when the action is patently obvious but its consequence delayed.
What happens, then, when the consequence is unexpected? What
effect does the nature of this kind of release portend or relect?
Dance may be a form that makes us question the requirement of
a relation of narrative to tension and release. We may be interested
in seeing how long someone can sustain a movement or what
preparatory movement is going to lead us to expect a fantastic leap
(the same in ice-skating). And in music the same is true in terms of
crescendo, diminuendo, or bolero-like structures of modulation
(every Roy Orbison song: will he make those high notes?). The idea
of dance or music that develops in certain ways, but doesn’t create
a narrative can get us to ask about the relation of narrative to cause
and effect. Narrative is necessarily causal in its structure, but
causality is not necessarily narrative. And yet, do we not feel a
compulsion to translate all causal experience into a meaningful
narrative for ourselves, even if only at the level of reasoning about
our shift of mood?
Min Tanaka
In August 1997, I witnessed a performance that struck me as being
the closest I’ve seen to a realization of Artaud’s ideal theatre of
cruelty. It was at Jacob’s Pillow, in the Berkshires, where I witnessed
a work by the Butoh dancer Min Tanaka, working with a company
of young American dancers. Called The Poe Project (Stormy
Membrane), it was billed as having a ‘libretto’ by Susan Sontag – a
strange designation, as there was not one word uttered in the entire
piece. What was rendered as ‘libretto,’ was in fact a sequence of
themes that Sontag had extracted from the stories of Edgar Allan
Poe: shipwreck, premature burial, guilt, the double, the plague,
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necrophilia, and so on. Min Tanaka either wore a raincoat with a
beat-up fedora, or else a large white diaper. The attitudes displayed
by the dancers seemed to be those of the inmates of an insane
asylum, their movements tending toward obsessive-compulsive and
hysterical behavior. There were cries that rent the air, coming from
various inmates, male and female, with uncanny and contagious
reproductions of behavior along with a strange rhythmic music of
screams. There were moments of great beauty and strangeness, as
when Tanaka appeared to ascend a ladder of light, and backlit
igures partially obscured by scrims combined tiny igures with
monstrous giants. But the grotesque and obsessive nature of the
behavior was extremely dificult to tolerate: at points it seemed to
me we really were watching the mad inlicting pain on themselves.
One young woman kept audibly slapping her left forearm with her
right hand for what seemed an extremely long period of time, so
that I thought for sure a welt would be raised by the performance’s
end. Mad pawings and screamings went on for what seemed like an
unbearable length of time (perhaps an hour), and about half the
audience left before it was over. I felt my hands start to tensely grip
the armrests of my seat. But the last scene created an incredible
shift from everything that went on before. Suddenly all was calm,
the lighting was soft, and we saw a tableau of several couples in
various poses of sitting, lying, and standing, reaching longingly
and lovingly toward each other. Music swelled: the adagio from
Mahler’s Fifth Symphony (notably the theme music from Visconti’s
ilm Death in Venice). Suddenly I was perplexed and a bit dismayed
because it all seemed to become very saccharine and sentimental,
almost parodically so, the looks exchanged rendering the lovers
utterly ridiculous and camp. Tanaka suddenly stumbled onto the
stage in his diaper, moving among them, but then as the lovers
froze into their i nal tableau, turning and walking that peculiar
Butoh pigeon-toed walk toward the back of the stage, his arms
outstretched. As he approached the back wall, it opened, revealing
another wall. When he got to that wall it too opened for him. As he
walked through these walls it became progressively dark around
him, until a wall opened and it was completely black, but with
bright spotlights backlighting him. As he walked it appeared that
smoke was rising from his body, but then I realized that the last
wall had actually opened into the woods behind the theater and the
smoke was really steam. He disappeared between the lights and
into the dark woods as the music faded.
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After, I felt as if this performance was an amazing lesson in
performative behaviorism, in its elicitation through almost purely
formal means, of a tremendous emotional reaction. I can only
speak to my own reaction, and not to those of others, and I would
have to say that those who left early unfortunately had no
experience of this reaction, of this release. That is, while the
tension kept building for what seemed an eternity, accompanied
by a sense of strong aversion mingled with a riveted fascination,
in fact a kind of real fear for the performers’ safety or sanity, and
an embarrassed self-consciousness about watching this process of
self-inl icted wounding, the release, the sheer contrast of the last
scene that I couldn’t intellectually connect with what had gone
before and which reeked of a garish sweetness, suddenly produced
in me a violent and uncontrollable sobbing and shedding of tears.
This was happening at the very same moment I was critically and
intellectually repulsed by the overly campy nature of the last
scene. I was split in two, an emotional reacting body and an
utterly perplexed and skeptical mind. But then suddenly it
occurred to me that it didn’t matter how this last scene was
constructed, as long as it presented the greatest possible contrast
to all that had come before. In this sense I had the strange
sensation of no longer caring about the nature of the scene, but
caring only for the release it brought me. It was true, nonetheless,
that the image of Min Tanaka walking into the spotlights in the
midst of the dark woods was truly stunning.
I was reminded of the principle of tension and release a few
years later when I saw the Butoh group Dai Rakudakan at the
Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio. It is a very large ensemble and
I was somewhat disappointed by the showiness and presentational
aspect which seemed uncharacteristic of the more intensely inward
forms of Butoh I had seen before, like Min Tanaka, Sankai Juku,
or Eiko and Koma. Nonetheless the characteristic of maintaining
one kind of repetitive action and sound for an almost unbearable
length of time was always followed by a sudden shift into its
seeming opposite; a deeply primeval scene of yogically centered
animal nature that resonated rhythmically over and over in a
mantric trance until one was almost falling asleep suddenly
reversed itself into utterly silly and ridiculous kewpie-doll igures
doing cutesy dances, breaking the audience into peals of laughter.
It seemed to me that for Butoh this principle of repetitively
winding up tension as far as it can go until the audience is nearly in
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a trance and then suddenly shifting into its extreme opposite
stylistically was just the most overt exempliication of what
performance’s material employment of time is in any kind of work
performed before an audience, whether it is music, dance, or
theater. It occurred to me that to refer to theater as a ‘time-based
art’ seems a misnomer, simply because it is not the case that
performance is somehow based or grounded ‘in’ time: rather
performance actually produces time (or, if you will, a sense of time
– but what’s the difference?) for the audience through the principle
of tension and release. If Ricoeur is right, and time for human
beings is only to be understood or experienced as a psychological
formation produced by varying relations of memory, attention,
and expectation toward the world, then any performative structure
that inluences those relations in a particular way actually produces
a particular experience of time for the spectator. But if what
Ricoeur says is true, then one can ask if producing an experience
of time for the spectator and producing time for the spectator
aren’t in fact the same thing.
Dance performance and boredom
We should take note here that ‘Butoh’ is generally not included in
theories or histories of theater, but of dance, even though it can
represent that hybrid called ‘dance-theatre.’ This may be partially
why I think dance and music can offer us almost purely formal
examples of the experience of tension and release that produce a
distinctly clear sense of time and timing. The repetition of
particular movements, with all their variations, a dance’s vocabulary combining and recombining in different syntactical senses,
but building from simplicity to complexity whose release culminates
in our recognition of the relation of the two at once: in Trisha
Brown’s ‘Accumulations,’ for instance. In music, clearly, there are
myriad ways to produce the effects of tension and release, found
both in crescendos and in modulations, in development and return.
Consider the time differential between performer and audience.
Again, I think in some ways the test in terms of tension and release,
between expectation and boredom can be more acutely read
through dance. That is, instead of a conventional storyline or plot,
we may be given sequences that work into a particular development
or culmination based upon theme and variations. That is, we are
given a sequence of movements in dance designated as a particular
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vocabulary of movements that are then varied and combined and
extended in complicated ways over the course of the performance,
generally moving (although not always) from simple introduction
to complicated construction. Now the question for the audience is
recognizing difference in these combinations so that it doesn’t end
up seeming to them as merely monotonous repetition. Here it could
be the case that what the dancer is experiencing is a large variety
of subtle variations while what the audience member – especially
one not experienced in watching dance – may see is simply
repetitiveness. But it nonetheless may be the case that what even a
seasoned dance audience may see as a piece that is ‘too long’ may
not seem too long for the dancer who loses herself to enjoying
subtleties lost to the onlooker (this may also raise the question of
‘self-indulgence,’ which is always relative even to audience
members). Thus I could designate a spectrum of response from an
audience member not attuned to dance to one more attuned to
reading it to a connoisseur of dance (including dancers, of course)
– all the ‘in’ audience – to the dancer herself onstage engaged in the
performance. (What is left out here is the relation of dancers to
each other, whose sense of the dance as a whole may vary). In each
case the degree of psychic investment, or relation of expectation to
boredom, alters the temporal experience of the work. It also
changes for the audience member who sees it more than once:
knowing what is coming can improve attention to detail that can
in fact make shorter what seemed long to begin with. It may be
possible that it could work the other way, especially if there are
sections that are not pleasing to the expectations of the audience.
Knowing a work in fact increases the tension in attention paid to
its realization, making critical narrative or formal shifts the points
of distinction between what the audience desires to see and how
the performer disappoints, meets, or surpasses that desire crucial
for the quality of the release from the tension. So the way in which
that realization of the ‘already known’ releases the tension can
nonetheless provide a surprise of interpretation.
Levels of tension/release
Tension and release operates on a variety of levels starting with the
microlevel: in dance it is found in every movement, in the muscles
contracting and releasing; in theater it is in each gesture and
speech-act. The power of the performer can be found in the quality
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of the tension in his or her body. In fact this power is most evident
when it is held back, or in reserve. Zeami advises the Noh actor to
only give at most 7/10ths of the energy of what could be expended.
Eugenio Barba suggests that the power of the performer can be
enhanced by creating oppositions of movement, or negating the
intended movement by moving back, retracting the gesture slightly
(Barba and Savarese, 1991: 176–85).
At a higher level, tension and release operate in the rhythm of
scenes, established in the tempo and timing of response in dialogue,
or the juxtaposition of pauses and speech, faster and slower
rhythms in monologue. I think here of Strindberg’s directions for
the rhythm of Miss Julie’s monologue about escape to Lake Como:
its initial speed that seems a false enthusiasm designed to delay
relection about her reality, and when that relection comes, slowing
to a despairing end. (In this sense, ‘release’ is not necessarily to be
read as the attainment of a satisfaction).
At an even higher level is the relation between scenes, where one
scene may increase tension to a manic level, while another release
it to some extent, only perhaps to prepare a greater tension for the
next scene, gradually building step-wise toward the climactic end.
One play where this rhythm seems most signiicant is Albee’s
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? What’s more, the degree of
tension and degree of release is located in the number of characters
interacting. The most manic tensions are created when all four
characters – George, Martha, Nick and Honey – are present and
acting out for one another, while the momentary respites that are
both a release of tension and a preparation for further tension are
found in scenes between only two characters: George and Nick,
Nick and Martha, George and Honey, and sometimes even George
and Martha.
The most crucial moments in a performance are the ones that
require the greatest focus, and the tension that directs that focus
occurs both in the shrinking of the space of attention to small areas
between characters and also in slowing down the tempo of the
action. One need only think of the expected kiss that may happen
or may be interrupted or averted at the last moment. An example
for me that indicates this issue is my response to Angels in America,
after having seen two different productions of it. While reading it
somewhat allowed the pathos of the individual relationships to
sink in, seeing a production didn’t allow this to happen. The sheer
speed with which the play has to be performed in order to it all the
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information into the allotted performance time undermined any
possibility of my empathy for the characters, since they weren’t
given any time to actually slow down and feel anything, or allow
me to feel anything for them 2 .
The temporality of acting
There is a curious problem involved in the traditional acting of a
role that depends on both the completeness of a foresight that
determines all action in the present, a foresight that knows the
i nal outcome of such action – which in Stanislavskyan terms is
the ‘through-line’ – and the impression that must be given to the
audience that one’s character is operating completely in the moment
with no such knowledge. Or at least that the knowledge is one
that any of us have, a speculative possibility that emerges from
an understanding of past circumstances. Thus a convincing
performance that has presence to it has to be able, in its own
actions, to disavow the complete knowledge of its outcome in order
to demonstrate the i xed position of the character’s consciousness
in the present – which is everyone’s condition. Of course one could
make the case for the greater or less speculative ability of characters,
which at the most extreme end would be the supernatural capability
of the prophet (for example, Cassandra, Tiresias). But within any
‘realist’ scenario this is tempered by the idea that even prophets
tend not to know or understand all the details of the outcome they
foresee (unlike the actor who knows the full outcome of the script).
But how often are we confronted by a cast of prophets, all who
foresee the same outcome?
The problem, then, is fairly clear: the actor, to invest the most in
the believability of his role, has to know the outcome, in the sense
conveyed by the basic hermeneutical proposition that the meaning
of any part of a text (or event) depends upon its relation to the
whole (and vice versa) and so the fullest meaning given to any
action in the present depends upon this sense of the whole. At the
same time one should not allow this foreknowledge to distance one
from the full exigencies of the present situation whose pressures
are no sure basis for future knowledge for the character. And it is,
of course, this lack of knowledge that determines the character’s
actions as much as any speculative possibility – it is uncertainty
that igures in the focusing of the spectator’s attention on the
character’s actions and endows these actions, through the
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mediation of the actor’s skill, with presence. This uncertainty may
be linked in some ways with that other uncertainty always possible
in the theater – the actor will forget his lines or make mistakes in
speech. But there’s also the other uncertainty that is related to the
disavowed future by both the spectator and the actor – the
possibility that the actor may anticipate in reaction what hasn’t
happened yet: the timing involved at being startled at a gunshot,
for instance, but also in pre-reacting to another’s words.
So what is the audience’s relation to this problem of foreknowledge
and its disavowal for the sake of presence? On the one hand, it
would appear to be less of a problem if the audience had never read
or seen the play before, or having had it summarized to them (that
is, having no foreknowledge of it themselves). At the same time, it
is clear to any audience, whatever their own expectations, that the
actors will have the entirety of this information, and so the
concentration is on the unfolding of the content by the action,
pretending, in a way, along with the actors, that the characters do
not have this knowledge of their future. And such pretense seems
easier if the audience doesn’t have any foreknowledge.
On the other hand, if the audience knows a play, it puts them in
a similar, if not the same, position as the actors themselves in terms
of the dependency upon, yet disavowal of, any foreknowledge of
the outcome of actions in the present. And any evaluation of an
actor’s performance becomes more critically focused the more a
spectator knows a play or can compare one actor’s performance of
a role with another’s. In such a case the disavowal of foreknowledge
is weaker than in a play one is not familiar with or in the i rst
experience of a play being performed that one knows. (All of this
brings up the alternative conceptions of the results of greater or
lesser experience in play-going: does it result in a greater power of
discrimination in enjoyment or a kind of blasé attitude or jadedness
that emerges with the loss of an ‘innocent eye’?)
Now the nature of attention in the present is such that the
danger of the presence of the performance at any moment being
evacuated by the actor’s (or the spectator’s) foreknowledge is less
likely than we think, given that the performance is the outcome of
a practice that has become quasi-automatic in speech and act (the
‘quasi’ is what leaves a space for necessary or possible improvisation).
Thus the entirety of outcomes is not conscious to the actor, which
would make performing in the present impossible, but each
outcome is played out sequentially through this practice.
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The future becomes unconsciously embedded through practice
in the body and on the tongue, emerging only when necessary, so
that the acting operates in a semi-unconscious state. It is, for
instance, akin to the relation between thinking and speaking in
general – if I thought completely about everything I said before I
said it, it is unlikely I would ever speak. And yet we do often think
before we speak, but seldom – unless we prepare remarks in
writing, have a full script to follow when we do speak. At the same
time we do think as we speak, improvising and often clarifying our
thoughts in the process – even as this thinking/speaking is in some
sense ‘emotively pre-shaped’ by a general conceptual intention
(which in dialogue is continually reconigured through testing and
feedback). The actor’s job is to make this kind of act appear
naturally out of a foreknowledge that is completely and already
linguistically, if not also gesturally, predetermined.
Incomplete knowledge, memory and pain
The relations between Ricoeur’s Augustinian tripartite division
(memory, attention, expectation) clearly function in relation to
cognition and objects of knowledge, between the already known
and what is perceived in the present, the tension between the
already given and new information that produces speculation
about past reality or future possibility. One time-producing rhythm
of tension that exists between the stage and the audience concerns
what characters know or could know and what the audience knows
or could know given the narrative evidence allowed so far.
Hitchcock tells us that suspense is based on the knowledge audience
members have that the characters in the i lm don’t have, producing
the desire in us to inform them and so save them from possible
disaster or grief. In this our knowledge might be shared with none
of the characters, or it could be with one for whom such knowledge
is a source of pain and fear insofar as it isn’t or can’t be shared. In
fact, Aristotle’s identiicatory acts of pity and fear rely upon this
difference in knowledge, or at least fear for the character does.
This is most evident in the tension inherent in the revelation of a
secret, whether gradually or suddenly at the most propitious (or
disastrous) moment, after possible delays, for instance. A traumatic
memory is itself a secret of past pain, and to be effective its
utilization requires a rate of revelation, or remembering, that seems
plausible for the affected character’s nature and circumstance.
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This is obvious, for instance, in Oedipus Rex, even while we might
also be saying to ourselves, why can’t he see the truth, for god’s
sake, it seems so obvious! While the nature of the secret may be
clear to us and less so to the affected character or characters, it
may also be clearer to them than to us, but nonetheless provides a
source of suspense insofar as we seem privy to the desire of
characters to maintain a secret; then our desire to i nd the reason
for this secrecy focuses our attention and piques our speculative
imagination. Again, in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? we are
informed straight off about ‘the kid,’ who is supposed to be kept a
secret from the guests. We don’t know why. But gradually, of
course, we come to realize that there is no kid. But here again,
presumably we begin to realize this before the guests do so that we
can savor their reactions.
For Aristotle the release of catharsis from the building tension
of dread comes with recognition, with remembering. This is why
some commentators refer to ‘catharsis’ as ‘clariication of incident,’
giving it a secure cognitive basis. The question may vary, however,
as to whether the recognition that produces catharsis is recognition
only for the character, one that brings the character’s knowledge
and the audience’s knowledge to the same level, or whether it might
be the case that the catharsis could result from recognition for the
audience, and not the character. In any case, the tension between
what is known and what is not known must be maintained at every
moment in order to maintain the spectator’s attention. What is not
known must not be so predominant as to lose the spectator’s
attention in confusion, where what is given needs an extended
amount of time to compare its relation to what has transpired
before (although a space may be given to allow for this). But what
is known should not swamp the mystery of what is as yet unknown
as well.
To stay with Aristotle for a moment, ‘pity and fear’ obviously
refer to the spectator’s identiication with, or dread of, a character’s
pain. Following Ricoeur’s tripartite psychology of time, pain
relates to trauma in the past, inliction or afliction in the present,
and fear or anxiety about either inliction or worsening of afliction
in the future. And yet either the threat of, or actual inliction of,
pain produces greater tension than the mere expression of afliction,
especially if it is primarily physical. Thus, in contrast to The Poe
Project, which was a case of ongoing inl iction, was a production I
saw of Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy, his version of Sophocles’
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Philoctetes. The title character is aflicted with a wounded foot
that is painfully infected and refuses to heal. Philoctetes accents
the course of the play with his painful cries and complaints about
his foot. I don’t know whether it was the acting, Heaney’s version,
or Sophocles’s play itself, but this kind of expressed pain elicited no
sense of pity or fear from me, but rather a strange kind of
bemusement at a case of overacting. But can I say the same about
the ongoing psychic pain experienced and expressed by Beckett’s
characters? It is sometimes less in what they say than how they say
it, in the fact that there is nothing else for them to say.
We might also inquire about the temporal structure of pleasure,
rather than pain. Here it can be read as nostalgia (past) –
enjoyment/fulillment (present) – and desire (future – which in
terms of expectation can be read not only in terms of possible
fulillment or hope for continuation of pleasure, but fear of
disappointment or cessation). The tension/release in comedy is well
known in terms of blocking agents and happy endings, for instance.
But the tension can be maintained in serial romances often by the
question of whether a man and woman will go beyond being
friends to being lovers, for instance.
Everything on stage carries with it, to begin with, an aura of
futurity, and the action of a performance can either sustain the
tension of this futurity founded in the well-tended curiosity of the
audience or it can dissipate it in irrelevance. All such rhythms that
produce a satisfying temporal experience for the audience work in
relation to a continuing tension and release between the known
and the unknown, the already recognized and new discoveries.
This is locatable within the pragmatic semiotics of sequential
gestures and acts as well as in verbal expression. With speech,
rhythms can vary according to: (1) relatively transparent words
that rush forward looking toward or for a conclusion; (2) words
that constitute conclusions, however momentary, and that we
contemplate as keys to the nature of prior events; and (3) words
that present the tension of a puzzle, a mystery, posing an unclear
relation of past knowledge to an unknown possible future or past
that could signiicantly affect the present.
Our relation to futurity is founded in our understanding of
causality. But in terms of our knowledge base, tension is diffused
for the spectator once the action becomes predictable, and therefore
boring. And yet something of what happens must be at least partly
predictable in terms of causation for suspense and retention of
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attention to occur. But what is the relation between predictability
and inevitability? What is inevitable is not necessarily predictable:
in this sense inevitability is found only in retrospect, while
predictability is based in foreseeing obvious outcomes, usually
predicated on the speciic formula of a genre. And yet I’m not
satisied that there is no connection between them at all. Inevitability
may sometimes be what in retrospect strikes us as what we should
have been able to predict, but for some reason didn’t. For instance,
to be plausible in terms of their actions, characters have to be to
some degree predictable, and if they change, the reasons must be
compelling ones. But change of heart must be plausible in terms of
the character’s makeup, but must also be plausible in relation to the
timing of events being brought to bear on the character. Thus for
instance, Creon’s change of heart in Antigone must bear with it the
tragic irony of its belatedness; in many ways tragedies are cases of
bad timing – but the timing is not merely arbitrary, but contingent
upon the nature of a person’s character in general for whom such
bad-timing makes sense.
Attempts at the subversion of the
tension/release model
In certain forms of modern performance, there is an attempt to
either transcend the tension/release production of temporal
experience, usually in order to draw the audience member more
fully into the space of the present, and alternative forms of
perception that may be available there. In the early minimalist
music of Philip Glass and Steve Reich (for instance, Reich’s Music
for 18 Musicians), a completely even and repetitive music seemed
designed to produce trances in its listeners. In such pieces, release
from a sense of perpetual accumulation comes with the last note.
(Much more can be said about the music than this, but it relates
more to formal innovations that speaks more to musicians’
knowledge than to the layperson). But we can go back further, to
John Cage’s silent piece for piano, 4’33” performed in Woodstock,
New York in 1951, which was later rationalized by Cage as
providing the means for the audience to shift their attention from
their expectation of sound from a silent piano and still pianist to
the ambient sounds around them as constituting the music.
Whether this shift actually took place, however, is unknown,
especially since many at the original concert, still focused on David
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Tudor’s ritualized actions at the piano, associated the piece with a
‘Dada provocation.’ The dance couple of Eiko and Koma, whose
hour-long performances consist of incredibly slow shifting
movements of their naked bodies, together or apart, slows down
time for the audience, and make us more aware of extremely subtle
shifts in formation in ways that can often result in visual surprises
when the strain of attention draws the spectator back into himself
and then back to the scene. Robert Wilson’s celebrated Deafman
Glance, where it takes Sheryl Sutton half-an-hour to cross a stage
before striking a child with a knife also seems an attempt to focus
on a continuous present, even while drawn toward in inevitable
future act. But are these all cases of a continuous present free of
tension, or an even more heightened and sustained state of tension
that effects a release of a kind of perceptual ‘surrender’ in the
spectator after a time, without any actual shift toward release on
stage? Or as Cage wanted to have it, suddenly the audience’s ears
would open. This is also perhaps related to the jouissance Barthes
speciies as the reward of tackling great but boring texts. (Dificult
not in the sense of comprehensibility, as in Joyce or Faulkner, but
in sheer repetitive accretion, as in Robbe-Grillet).
Samuel Beckett raises another issue: that of endless tension
without any apparent release, relecting what I call the ‘ongoingness’
of modern tragedy, caught in the vicious circle of an eternal return.
One can, of course, conceive of humor as relative release, but one
that makes the ongoing tension worse. But can the endless repetitive
behavior of Beckett’s characters be considered a development of a
state of tension? While dread may constitute tension, does ennui?
Again, a knowledge differential comes into play between stage and
house, for while we recognize a certain relective intelligence at
work in Beckett’s characters, there is also a signiicant deicit of
memory involved, which in a sense makes the endless repetition
bearable. And if we consider that the tripartite psychological
division of time – memory, attention, expectation – requires
cooperation between the three states (attention requires memory
as well as expectation, memory requires attention, expectation
requires memory), a deicit in any one area affects all three: lack of
memory, lack of interest, lack of hope of anything different, most
apparent in Beckett’s work. This affects the nature of temporal
experience as we’ve always considered it in terms of tension and
release, and seems to homogenize it, and every moment of spectator
attention to the present seems to represent the nature of the whole
Tension/release and the production of time in performance
99
in microcosm, in its repetitive endlessness, even if coupled with the
most gradual degradation. The source of dread isn’t death but
endlessness. But oddly enough what comes with such amnesiac
repetitiveness is the arbitrary nature of events, lacking the usual
sense of plausible causality. One day Pozzo goes blind and Lucky
goes dumb. Perhaps one can reverse the sense of causality and ask
if it isn’t the sheer repetitiveness of our lives that makes us forgetful
of our state in time. But we can only come to recognize this through
performance’s shaping of time for us in the promise of its meaning.
Works cited
Barba, E. and Savarese, N. (eds) (1991) A Dictionary of Theatre
Anthropology: The Secret Art of the Performer, London: Routledge.
Kant, I. (1990) Critique of Pure Reason, trans. J. M. d. Meiklejohn, Buffalo
NY: Prometheus Books.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962) Phenomenology of Perception, translated by
C. Smith, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Ricoeur, P. (1984) Time and Narrative, Volume 1, translated by
K. McLaughlin and D. Pellauer, Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press,
Tarkovsky, A. (1987) Sculpting in Time: Relections on the Cinema,
translated by K. Hunter-Blair, Austin TX: University of Texas Press.
Notes
1 Expectation is a neutral term that encompasses even contrasting
emotions such as desire and dread.
2 It is well known that Kushner considers himself a Brechtian, so
presumably my remarks about empathy would be inappropriate. And
yet Brecht’s alienation devices, his gestus, wouldn’t work without the
initial elicitation of empathy on some level.
Part II
Being before
Stage and gaze
Engaging with semiotics, philosophy, performance theory and performer
training, the essays forming ‘Being before’ introduce processes of
division and multiplication that occur in the encounter between the
observer and the other. More specifically, ‘Being before’ scrutinizes
how these processes become manifest in the spectator/audience
performer relationship; analyses the training techniques and framing
processes that define them; and speculates about the key theoretical
standpoints that are produced through them. Whilst the previous
section focussed on presence in terms of ‘Being here,’ hic et nunc, this
section looks at how in the encounter with presence in and through
relationship with the ‘other’ needs to operate as networks of relational
signs that are critical to understand the relationship(s) between
performers, the roles they inhabit, and their spectators. ‘Being before’
thus questions the different terms and methodologies involved in these
processes, starting from what ‘Being before’ involves hermeneutically,
ethically and phenomenologically; then analysing presencing through
acts of appearing and disappearing, being here and before, or on the
edge; and showing, finally, how presence represents a conditio sine qua
non for such encounters to occur. In these various processes, the
fundamental divisions and encounters that define the theatrical
relationship – the sense of ‘being before’; of being seen in the act of
performance and witnessing – are interrogated as principle mechanisms
for experiences of presence. In doing so, these essays associate presence
with an opening to the other and with the politics of the performed
encounter, with witnessing, and open the question of being present
within theatrical discourse itself. Here, too ‘presence’ remains and
persists in ephemerality, in change and modulation, to be realized or
revealed in negotiations, readings, and in ‘mis-readings,’ of acts of
performance.
Chapter 6
Appearing as embodied
mind – defining a weak,
a strong and a radical
concept of presence
Erika Fischer-Lichte
In June 1995, Heiner Müller’s last production premiered at the
Berliner Ensemble – Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.
Fifteen years later, it continues to be part of the repertoire, selling
out each and every evening. Having been performed worldwide
more than three hundred times, the production is still celebrated
by audiences and critics alike wherever it is shown. What makes it
so successful? And this not only in Berlin and Germany, but on all
ive continents? Although the Berliner Zeitung critic could not
have foreseen such unprecedented success, he gave a plausible
answer after perusing the i fty most important reviews published
in the wake of the première: ‘When, the morning after, the critics
wrote their reviews for Berlin and the world, his name blazed in
iery letters: Wuttke! Wuttke! Wuttke!’ (Heine 1995). And in fact,
there was no critic who, full of admiration and amazement, did not
speculate on the extraordinary PRESENCE1 displayed by actor
Martin Wuttke, starring as Arturo Ui, which kept spectators
spellbound throughout the performance.
The performance, as well as the fascination of the spectators
and the spell Wuttke cast on them, reached its climax with
Scene VI – Arturo Ui taking lessons from an actor in order to
learn how to walk, stand, sit and speak in public. In all three
performances I attended, the very moment Wuttke appeared on
stage for the scene, spectators stopped talking, coughing or
idgeting and directed their undivided attention toward him. All
of a sudden, a seemingly absolute silence i lled the space. Standing
front stage right, Ui/Wuttke addressed the actor, played by
Bernhard Minetti, already 90 years old at the time of the première2 .
Minetti sat in a wheelchair front stage centre, unable to
demonstrate how to walk and to stand. Mumbling and stammering,
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Erika Fischer-Lichte
yet well to be understood, Ui/Wuttke said: ‘Okay. Here’s the
problem. I’ve been given to understand that my pronunciation
leaves something to be desired’3. Some spectators started laughing
– maybe because the obvious discrepancy between Wuttke’s
professional skills as an actor and Ui’s lack thereof seemed funny.
Their laughter thus revealed that they were well aware of the
difference between Wuttke the actor and Arturo Ui the dramatic
igure. Wuttke, who over the course of the performance had visibly
responded to any perceptible change in the audience’s behaviour,
turned around abruptly and stared straight at the audience. His
face wore a puzzled look, as if he were surprised by the laughter
or even by the very presence of spectators. This, in turn, provoked
widespread laughter in the audience.
In the performance, Wuttke not only played with his fellowactors. He also played with the spectators, inviting them to join in.
The performance thus developed out of Wuttke’s acting, the effects
it triggered in the spectators, Wuttke’s response to these effects and
so on4. He established a special relationship with the spectators, a
particular bond sensed physically as a kind of energy lowing back
and forth between actor and spectators. This bond, in particular in
this scene, proved so strong that the spectators were quite obviously
unable to turn their attention away from Wuttke. One quick glance
back at the auditorium assured me that the spectators sat bent
forward, their eyes i xed upon Wuttke. They looked absolutely
spellbound – obviously experiencing the intense presence of the
actor as well as themselves as being intensely present.
In the further course of the scene, Ui/Wuttke, following the
suggestions of the actor as laid down in Brecht’s text, acquired a
particular vocabulary of the art of acting – walking by touching
the ground with his toes i rst, head bent back, hands held together
over the genitals; standing, arms folded so that the back of the
hands remained visible and the hands rested on the upper arms;
sitting hands on thighs, parallel to the belly, elbows sticking out
from the body. He learnt how to speak in public by declaiming
Antony’s speech over Caesar’s corpse from Shakespeare’s Julius
Caesar, imitating and, at the same time, transforming the actor’s/
Minetti’s special declamation technique.
During the process by which Ui acquired these new techniques,
Wuttke exhibited two different kinds of corporeality. On the one
hand, he continued to reproduce the posture characteristic of Ui so
far – slightly bowed body, knees bent, idgeting gestures. On the
Appearing as embodied mind 105
other hand, he employed new techniques. Alternating between the
two, he gradually developed the posture, movements, gestures and
speech typical of Hitler. The spectators followed this process of
transformation with great fascination: while they responded with
laughter to Ui’s/Wuttke’s initial attempts to follow the actor’s
suggestions – in particular when the actor/Minetti asked Ui/
Wuttke to check his new standing technique in the mirror, and he
looked into the audience with a searching glance – the very moment
Hitler suddenly seemed to appear in Ui/Wuttke, the laughter
stopped abruptly. The audience, so far completely gripped by
Wuttke’s acting and his extraordinary PRESENCE, suddenly
seemed to realize that somehow this might mean that they were
also under the spell of the dramatic igure Ui=Hitler and its
presence. Here, the aesthetic and the political merged in an uncanny
way.
In the scene itself, the question of Ui’s presence is raised when Ui
says: ‘When I walk I want people to know I’m walking’5. This is
reafi rmed when Ui, contradicting Givola, who tells him with
reference to an impressive way of standing: ‘Have two big bruisers
right behind you and you’ll be standing pretty,’ replies: ‘That’s
bunk. When I stand I don’t want people looking at the two bozos
behind me. I want them looking at me’6. At that time, however,
most of the spectators more or less clearly distinguished between
Wuttke the actor, to whose spell they submitted, and Ui the
dramatic igure, who was laughable and funny. Yet at the end of
the scene, Wuttke, Ui and Hitler seemed to merge, so that being
seduced by Wuttke’s PRESENCE, in a way, meant submitting to
Hitler’s presence, too. It seemed that here, spectators became
ashamed of their laughter.
In order to emphasize this merging, that very moment the music
set in: a particular theme from Liszt’s Les Préludes – not only
Hitler’s favourite piece, but also the melody announcing the radio
reports of the Wehrmacht, or a so-called ‘Reichssondermeldung’.
The curtain came down and Wuttke/Ui/Hitler found themselves in
front of it, facing the audience. To the sound of the music, the
merging, at least partly, was undone: Wuttke’s play now oscillated
between representations of Chaplin’s dictator and of Hitler, to
which the audience responded with frenetic applause – not only
obviously relieved by such an acknowledgement of the different
igures being portrayed, but i rst of all in order to spend the energy
which had accumulated over the course of the scene.
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In the above description, as given from my perspective as a
spectator, two aspects are highlighted that are fundamental for the
following relections on presence.
First, the very moment Wuttke appeared on stage, he was
perceived by the spectators as present in a very intense way. The
stronger the bond between actor and spectators became over the
further course of the scene, the more intensiied the PRESENCE of
the actor was as sensed by the spectators, as if energy was
circulating around the space. Therefore, in the following, the
phenomenon of presence will be discussed as appearing in the
bodily co-presence of actors7 and spectators. The presence of ilm
actors or any other kind of mediatized presence effects will
accordingly not be considered, for they are due to different
conditions.
Secondly, the scene itself posed the question of whether presence
is to be ascribed to the actor, to his phenomenal body, his bodily
being in the world, or to the dramatic igure he is representing, and
thus to his semiotic body8. As the philosopher Helmuth Plessner
explained, the one cannot exist without the other. In his view, the
tension between both marks the de-centered position of human
beings, i.e. their capacity to distance themselves to themselves; that
is to say, the actor symbolizes the very conditio humana. Humans
have bodies, which they can manipulate, instrumentalize and
employ as signs, just as any other object. At the same time, if not
in the i rst place, they are their bodies, they are body-subjects9.
That is to say that the body-subject, i.e. the phenomenal body,
and the body-object, i.e. the semiotic body, the actor and the
dramatic igure represented, are inextricably bound up with each
other. Which of these two bodies, then, appears and is perceived as
present?
In the following, by reconsidering these two aspects, I shall
distinguish and dei ne three different concepts of presence – the
weak, the strong and the radical concept of presence.
Weak concept of presence
The weak concept of presence is dei ned as ‘being here,’ before the
gaze of an other. That is to say, the concept describes the conditio
sine qua non for a performance to happen – the bodily co-presence
of actor(s) and spectators. Even here, the question arises as to who
is present and perceived by others –the actor or the dramatic igure?
Appearing as embodied mind 107
This is a question the Church Fathers in late antiquity and the
warring parties of the Querelle de la moralité du théâtre fought in
seventeenth century France10 had already struggled with. Both
parties of the Querelle acknowledged theatre’s ability to exercise
an immediate sensual effect on the spectator and to trigger strong,
even overwhelming affects based on the bodily presence of the
actors. The atmosphere inside a theatre has been described as
highly infectious11. The actors perform passionate actions on stage,
the spectators perceive and are infected by them: they, too, begin
to feel passionate. Through the act of perception, the infection is
transmitted from the actor’s present body to the spectators’ present
bodies. Both enthusiasts and opponents of the theatre agree that
this transmission is possible only through the presentness of actors
and spectators.
However, they differ in their assessment of the infection made
possible by it: they either see the excitement of passion as a healing
catharsis or as a profoundly harmful, destructive and estranging
(from oneself and from God) disturbance, as Rousseau still argued
in the second half of the eighteenth century. In his Letter to
Monsieur d’Alembert (1758) he writes: ‘The constant outburst of
different emotions to which we are subjected in the theatre disturb
and weaken us, making us even less able to control our own
passions […]’ (Rousseau 1987: 210). Defenders and opponents
emphasize that it is the bodily presence of the actor that leads to a
transformation of the spectator: it ‘heals’ the ‘sickness’ of passion,
results in loss of self-control, or can alter one’s identity. According
to both parties of the Querelle as well as to Rousseau, it seems that
this transformation is due to the represented passions of the
dramatic igure, i.e. to the actor’s semiotic body. However,
opponents of the theatre in the Querelle also argued that the sheer
physical attributes of an actor exercise an erotic attraction for
spectators of the opposite sex and stir immoderate desires. It would
seem that such seduction is caused rather by the phenomenal body
of the actor.
In the second half of the eighteenth century, a new art of acting
was demanded and theorized by Riccoboni, Diderot, Lessing,
Engel, Lichtenberg and others, which was supposed to rule out the
latter possibility. Actors had to become proicient at expressing
physically the meanings that the poet had expressed in the text of
his play – especially the emotions, mental states, thought processes
and character traits of the dramatis personae. To assist actors in
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Erika Fischer-Lichte
obliterating their bodily being-in-the-world on stage, this
reconceived art of acting transformed their bodies into a ‘text,’
consisting of physical signs for the emotions and mental states that
constitute the respective dramatic igure. The aim was to eliminate
the tension between the actors’ phenomenal bodies and their
semiotic bodies – their portrayal of the dramatic igures – in favour
of representation. It is not the actor that should be perceived as
being present on stage, but the dramatic igure.
The philosopher, and later director of the Royal Theatre in
Berlin, Johann Jakob Engel chides actors in his Mimik (1785/6) for
drawing the audience’s attention to their phenomenal body and
disrupting the perception of the signs that constitute the dramatic
igure. For in the performance, spectators were to exclusively
perceive the presence of and empathize with the dramatic igure. If
their attention was diverted to the actors’ phenomenal bodies, this
would ‘invariably destroy the illusion’ (Engel 1804: 58). The
audience would be forced to leave the ictive world of the play as
represented by the actors’ semiotic bodies, and enter the world of
the physically present actors. The new art of acting was thus meant
to make the actor’s phenomenal body disappear into his semiotic
body. The ‘infection’ triggered by the semiotic body and the
dramatic igure it portrayed was to be maintained but modiied,
while the performer’s erotic physicality was to be subsumed by the
dramatic igure. Hence, the spectators’ desires were directed at the
ictive character present in and through the actor’s semiotic body
instead of the actor himself or his phenomenal body, who should
neither appear nor be perceived as present on stage.
Of course, this construction never really worked. The tension
between the actor’s phenomenal and his semiotic body remained.
Within the framework provided by the weak concept of presence,
this problem is not to be solved.
Strong concept of presence
The strong concept of presence as actualized by Wuttke is dei ned
by the actor’s ability to occupy and command space and to attract
the spectators’ undivided attention. Spectators sense a certain
power emanating from the actor that forces them to focus their full
consideration on him without feeling overwhelmed, perceiving it as
a source of energy. The spectators sense that the actor is present in
an unusually intense way, granting them, in turn, the intense
Appearing as embodied mind
109
sensation of themselves as present. To them, presence occurs as an
intense experience of presentness.
This dei nition draws on the description of the scene from
Arturo Ui given in the introduction; the concept of presence
relected upon in that scene is the ‘strong’ one. It applies not only
to Martin Wuttke, but also to all the actors to whom we ascribe
stage presence. There is ample evidence that this kind of presence
was also sensed in performances at other times and in other
cultures and that it was/is usually experienced as an extraordinary
event.
If, for example, we look at performance reviews of the famous
German actor Gustaf Gründgens, dating between 1922 and 1962,
we are confronted time and again with expressions of admiration
and amazement at his intense presence. In an early review of
Gründgens’ Marinelli in Emilia Galotti (Stadttheater Kiel 1922),
one critic stated: ‘How he commands the space – with an almost
dancer-like freedom of movement! Yes, that was the most
memorable. It was so stunning that one at i rst forgot what [role]
he was playing’ (Kienzl 1999: 29). The critic Gert Vielhaber wrote
of Gründgens’ portrayal of Oedipus in his own production of
Sophocles’ King Oedipus (Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus 1947):
‘How to explain the stream of magic that spreads over the audience
as Gründgens all but appears? […] [H]e crosses the space, shaping
it […]’ (Vielhaber 1947). Despite the twenty-ive-year gap between
them, both reviews emphasize how Gründgens commanded the
space as soon as he entered the stage and profoundly affected
spectators even before they could form an image of his role
portrayal. It seems that he displayed this ability in every role,
irrespective of the particular dramatic igure.
Gründgens managed not only to command the stage but also
the entire auditorium, i.e. the full theatre space. He commanded it
by – ‘magically’ – affecting the spectators and claiming their
undivided attention. This vice-like grip on their attention was the
second striking quality with which Gründgens made himself
present to the spectators. According to the critic Herbert Ihering,
commenting on Gründgens’ portrayal of Mephisto in Lothar
Müthel’s Faust production (Staatstheater, Schauspielhaus am
Gendarmenmarkt, Berlin 1932), ‘[i]t is not easy to break through
the reserved bearing of a Staatstheater audience. This audience has
worn out quite a few of us. Gründgens shakes things up. He makes
things happen. He is provocative. But he forces people to listen […]
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Erika Fischer-Lichte
Breaking through the boredom is an unusual event in the
Staatstheater’ (Ihering 1932).
In all these reviews, it seems that presence – in the strong sense
of the concept – is not an expressive quality, related to the
representation of a dramatic igure, but a performative quality,
brought forth by a particular usage made of the body. This quality
was theorized rather extensively by Eugenio Barba.
Barba distinguished between the pre-expressive and expressive
levels of artistic articulation. While expressive articulation
represents something, Barba located presence solely on the preexpressive level of artistic articulation. The ‘stream of magic’
mentioned by Vielhaber with respect to Gründgens communicated
itself to Barba with particular intensity at performances of Indian
and Far Eastern theatre forms, which he therefore studied closely.
In his discussions with performers, he came to the conclusion that
their techniques and practices serve the purpose of generating
energy within themselves, which then transfers to the spectator.
Barba dei nes the techniques and practices that allow the masters
of Indian and Far Eastern theatre to generate this speciic type of
energy, realising it for the audience as a play of opposing tensions.
The basic postures of traditional oriental actors and dancers derive
from an alteration of balance which characterizes the performer’s
extra-daily technique and create a new balance requiring more
effort and utilizing new tensions to keep the body upright.
Moreover, oriental actors often begin their action in the direction
opposite to their intended goal: if one intends to walk left, one i rst
takes a step to the right, only to suddenly spin around and go left.
These represent body techniques that, as emphasized by Barba,
break with ordinary physicality and cause a disruption of the
audience‘s expectations12 .
Barba assumes universal laws to underlie these practices,
developed and actualized by performers of diverse cultures in order
to conjure up energy within themselves and let it circulate through
space, so it can be transmitted to spectators, who in turn also
generate energy. However, I believe we must i rst thoroughly
investigate these practices before it can be legitimate to refer all of
them back to the same ‘universal laws’. Quite obviously, Gründgens
developed and applied certain practices, as did and does Martin
Wuttke, in order to appear and be perceived as present in the strong
sense of the concept. What these practices may be and which
principles and ‘laws’ underlie them, we still do not know.
Appearing as embodied mind
111
According to the reviews of Gründgens’ performances as well as
Barba’s theory, it seems that the strong concept of presence is
realized by the actor’s phenomenal body. However, returning to
the end of the scene described in the introduction, there was a
moment when the actor, the dramatic igure and the historic igure
to which it referred, seemed to merge, when it was impossible to
distinguish between the phenomenal and the semiotic body of the
actor. In order to deal productively with such a moment, it seems
promising to introduce another concept – the concept of
embodiment.
I refer to the concept as it was redeined by the anthropologist
Thomas Csórdas. As Csórdas explains, until very recently cultural
anthropology mostly concerned itself with the body as a mere
symbolic tool in various cultural discourses, such as religion or
social structures. Accordingly, cultural anthropology was dominated by the explanatory metaphor of ‘culture as text’. Csórdas
contrasts this metaphor with the concept of embodiment. He deines
the body as the ‘existential ground of culture and self’ (Csórdas
1994: 6) and confronts the concept of representation with that of
‘lived experience’ and ‘experiencing’. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s
phenomenology, Csórdas laments that none of the deinitions of
culture proposed by the various disciplines of cultural studies ‘have
taken seriously the idea that culture is grounded in the human body’
(Csórdas 1994: 6). Only this insight can provide the starting point
for meaningfully discussing culture and the body.
As Plessner already stated, the human body is not a material like
any other, to be shaped and controlled at will. It constitutes a living
organism, constantly engaged in the process of becoming, of
transformation. The human body knows no state of being, it exists
only in a state of becoming. It recreates itself with every blink of
the eye; every breath and every movement bring forth a new body.
For that reason, the body is ultimately elusive. The bodily being-inthe-world, which cannot be but becomes, vehemently refuses to be
declared a work of art, or to be made into one. The actor instead
undergoes processes of embodiment that bring forth his body anew
and, at the same time, a dramatic igure – Arturo Ui or King
Oedipus.
It is thus in the processes of embodiment that the actor’s
phenomenal and his semiotic body are inextricably bound up with
each other. Therefore, all attempts to ascribe presence exclusively
either to the semiotic body (as in the eighteenth century) or to the
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Erika Fischer-Lichte
phenomenal body (as in Barba’s theory) fail. Presence is produced
by particular processes of embodiment, which are able to bring
forth anew the phenomenal body of the actor as an energetic body
and, at the same time, his semiotic body as a representation of a
dramatic igure. However, it is conceivable that processes of
embodiment performed by the actor or performer re-create his
phenomenal body as an energetic body and thus produce presence
in the strong sense of the concept, without representing any igure
or anything else. But even in this case, the spectator may attribute
certain meanings to the same processes.
Radical concept of presence – presence
Since the 1960s, theatre, action and performance art have tried out
ever new ways to relate the phenomenal and the semiotic body of
the actor, dancer and performer. Jerzy Grotowski, for example, did
this by fundamentally redei ning the relationship between the
performer and his role. In his view, the performer cannot serve the
purpose of portraying a dramatic igure. He sees the role as created
by the playwright as a tool: ‘[the actor] must learn to use his role
as if it were a surgeon’s scalpel, to dissect himself’ (Grotowski
1968: 37). The role is thus not supposed to constitute the ultimate
goal of the actor’s work, as demanded by the theoreticians of a new
psychological-realistic art of acting in the eighteenth century.
Instead, the emphasis lies on the actor’s phenomenal body, his
being in the world. He is asked to let the semiotic body merge with
the phenomenal body. In order to achieve this goal, in training the
actor Grotowski avoided:
teaching him something; we attempt to eliminate his organism’s
resistance to this psychic process. The result is freedom from
the time-lapse between inner impulse and outer reaction in
such a way that the impulse is already an outer reaction.
Impulse and action are concurrent: the body vanishes, burns
and the spectator sees only a series of visible impulses. Ours
then is a via negativa – not a collection of skills but an
eradication of blocks.
(Grotowski 1968: 16)
For Grotowski, ‘having a body’ cannot be separated from ‘being a
body’. The body is not supposed to be used as a tool – neither as a
Appearing as embodied mind
113
means for expression nor as material for the creation of signs.
Instead, its ‘material’ is ‘burnt’ and converted into energy through
particular processes of embodiment.
By performing these processes, the actor turns into a ‘holy’
actor: ‘It is a serious and solemn act of revelation […]. It is like a
step towards the summit of the actor’s organism in which
consciousness and instinct are united’ (Grotowski 1968: 210).
Grotowski’s notion of the ‘holy’ actor was perhaps best
approximated by Ryszard Cieślak in The Constant Prince.
Discussing and explaining Grotowski’s religious terminology, the
critic Józef Kelera writes in ODRA XI (1965):
The essence […] does not in reality reside in the fact that the
actor makes amazing use of his voice, nor in the way that he
uses his almost naked body to sculpt mobile forms that are
striking in their expressiveness; nor is it in the way that the
technique of the body and voice form a unity during the long
and exhausting monologues which vocally and physically
border on acrobatics. It is a question of something quite
different. […] Until now, I accepted with reserve the terms such
as ‘secular holiness,’ ‘act of humility,’ ‘puriication‘ which
Grotowski uses. Today I admit that they can be applied perfectly
to the character of the Constant Prince. A sort of psychic
illumination emanates from the actor. I cannot ind any other
deinition. In the culminating moments of the role, everything
that is technique is as though illuminated from within. […] At
any moment the actor will levitate. […] He is in a state of grace.
And all around him this ‘cruel theatre’ with its blasphemies and
excesses is transformed into a theatre in a state of grace.
(Kelera in Grotowski 1968: 109).
The religious terminology is not used arbitrarily. In Grotowski’s
utterance the ‘holy’ actor is implicitly linked to the resurrected
Christ who, through his suffering, death and resurrection created
and appeared in a body that was both lesh and spirit. In the igure
of Christ, the distinction or even dualism between body and mind,
so characteristic of the occidental tradition of thought, is abolished.
Here, the mind is embodied and the body ‘en-minded’. The critic’s
choice of words too, suggests that in the performance of The
Constant Prince Ryszard Cieślak transcended the two-world
theory by letting his body appear as embodied mind.
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The parallels between Grotowski’s theory and practice of
theatre and Merleau-Ponty’s late philosophy are striking. The
latter’s philosophy of the lived body (chair, ‘lesh’) represents the
ambitious attempt to mediate between body and mind, sense and
non-sense, by using a non-dualistic and non-transcendental
approach. Merleau-Ponty conceives of the relationship between
these two entities asymmetrically, that is, in favour of the
phenomenal body. The body is always already connected to the
world through its ‘lesh’. Any human grasp on the world occurs
through the body; it must be embodied. In this sense, the body
transcends both its instrumental and semiotic functions through
its leshiness13.
Merleau-Ponty thus cleared the path for the redei nition of the
term ‘embodiment’ as operated by Csórdas. Merleau-Ponty’s
contribution to philosophy, in this regard, is comparable to
Grotowski’s to the theatre. In the person of Ryszard Cieślak, an
actor appeared on stage who eliminated the dualism of body and
mind, his body appearing ‘illuminated,’ as his mind appeared
embodied.
By reversing the relationship of actor and role, Grotowski also
created the conditions for a redei nition of the concept of
embodiment. In the context of the two-world theory, the term
‘embodiment’ was dei ned as lending one’s own body to something
‘bodyless’ – a meaning, a dramatic igure, a spirit – in order to let
it appear and be perceived. The body was conceived of as a mere
vessel, a ‘medium,’ which was supposed to vanish behind the
mediated, the embodied, without leaving a trace. The phenomenal
body of the actor was conceived of as such a medium and the
actor’s skill was supposed to let it completely vanish behind his
semiotic body, representing the dramatic igure. According to
Grotowski’s theory and practice, however, embodying denotes the
emergence of something that exists only as body. If the dramatic
igure Prince Fernando appeared in and through the body of
Ryszard Cieślak, then it was a unique event tied to that speciic
body and brought forth by speciic acts of embodiment. The bodily
being-in-the-world of the actor provides the dramatic igure with
its existential ground and the condition for coming into being. The
igure exists only as embodied, i.e. in the actor’s physical
performance alone, and is brought forth by the processes of
embodiment he performs. In the case of Ryszard Cieślak, the actor,
by performing such processes, appeared as embodied mind.
Appearing as embodied mind
115
The discourse on the concept of presence undertaken by theatre,
action and performance art and aesthetic theory since the performative
turn in the 1960s touches upon the mind-body dualism prevalent in
Western tradition. The aesthetic discourse on presence discusses how
components of body and mind meet and interact in order to make
presence happen. Presence is deined as not ‘primarily a physical but a
mental phenomenon’ notwithstanding its physical effects on
performers and audience. ‘Presence is an “untimely” process of
consciousness – located simultaneously within and without the passage
of time’ (Lehmann 1999: 13). I agree with the deinition of presence
as a process of consciousness – but only insofar as it is articulated
through the body and sensed by the spectators through their bodies.
For, in my view, presence is to be regarded as a phenomenon that
cannot be grasped by such a dichotomy as body versus mind or
consciousness. In fact, presence collapses such a dichotomy.
When the actor brings forth his body as an energetic body and
thus generates presence, he appears and is perceived as embodied
mind. The actor exempliies that body and mind cannot be
separated from each other. Each is always already implied in the
other. This does not only apply to the oriental actors and dancers
whom Eugenio Barba witnessed, or to the ‘holy’ actor Ryszard
Cieślak. It also applies to Gustaf Gründgens and Martin Wuttke,
and to any actor who displays presence in the strong sense of the
concept. Through the performer’s presence, the spectator
experiences the performer and himself as embodied mind in a
constant process of becoming – he perceives the circulating energy
as a transformative and vital energy. This I call the radical concept
of presence, written as PRESENCE: PRESENCE means appearing
and being perceived as embodied mind; perceiving the PRESENCE
of another means to also experience oneself as embodied mind.
Due to their cultural tradition, Western audiences are used to
dei ning themselves within the framework of mind-body dualism.
They project its abolishment to the distant future or see it as a rare
boon granted only to a few chosen individuals, usually as the result
of spiritual epiphanies. When spectators sense the performer’s
PRESENCE and simultaneously bring themselves forth as
embodied minds, they experience a moment of happiness that
cannot be recreated in daily life. The philosopher Martin Seel
asserts that ‘we yearn for a sense of the presence of our life’ and
‘want to experience the presences in which we exist as sensual
presences’ (Seel 2001: 53). This ‘sense of the presence of our life’ is
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Erika Fischer-Lichte
given in experiencing the other – the performer – and oneself as
embodied minds. To recreate such an experience would require
another experience of PRESENCE. Consequently, spectators
might become addicted to these rare moments of happiness that
the performer’s PRESENCE alone offers them at the theatre. This
might explain the extraordinary success of Heiner Müller’s
production of Arturo Ui. Here, Wuttke appears as PRESENT in
the radical sense of the concept.
However, it is to be emphasized that, although in itself an
extraordinary phenomenon whose coming into being we are still
unable to explain (even assuming it is due to certain artistic techniques
and practices), PRESENCE does not make anything extraordinary
appear. Instead, it marks the emergence of something very ordinary
and turns it into an event: the nature of human beings as embodied
minds. Thus, ordinary existence is experienced as extraordinary – as
transformed and even transigured. Such an act of transiguration was
described by Grotowski, as well as by Kelera, by taking refuge in
religious terminology. The philosopher Arthur Danto explains art as
the ‘transiguration of the commonplace’ (Danto 1981). In
PRESENCE, the human commonplace of being embodied mind is
transigured. In perceiving it, we experience ourselves as embodied
mind. The actor who grants us such an experience, rare in everyday
life, will quite understandably be celebrated.
Works cited
Barba, E. (1986) Beyond the Floating Islands, New York: PAJ Publications.
Barba, E. and Savarese, N. (eds) (1991) A Dictionary of Theatre
Anthropology: The Secret Art of the Performer, London: Routledge.
Brecht, B. (1981) The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, in J. Willet and
R. Manheim (eds) Bertolt Brecht. Collected Plays, Vol. 6/II, translated
by R. Manheim, London: Eyre Methuen, 1–100.
Csórdas, T. (ed.) (1994) Embodiment and Experience: The Existential
Ground of Culture and Self, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Danto, A. C. (1981) The Transiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy
of Art, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Engel, J. J. (1804) ‘Ideen zu einer Mimik’ Schriften, 12 vols., Berlin: Mylius.
Fischer-Lichte, E. (2004) ‘Zuschauen als Ansteckung’, in M. Schaub and
N. Suthor (eds) Ansteckung: Zur Körperlichkeit eines ästhetischen
Prinzips, Munich: Fink, 35–50.
——(2008) The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics,
translated by S. Jain, London: Routledge.
Appearing as embodied mind 117
Grotowski, J. (1968) Towards a Poor Theatre, New York: Simon and
Schuster.
Heine, M. (1995) ‘Martin Wuttke: Der mit der Legende ringt’, Berliner
Zeitung, 5 July 1995.
Ihering, H. (1932) Review of Faust, dir. Lothar Müthel. Berliner BörsenCourier, 3 December 1932.
Kienzl, F. (1999) ‘Gustaf mit “f.” Wie Gustaf Gründgens entdeckt wurde’,
in D. Walach (ed.) Aber ich habe nicht mein Gesicht’: Gustaf Gründgens
– eine deutsche Karriere, Berlin: Henschel, 1–35.
Lehmann, H.-T. (1999) ‘Die Gegenwart des Theaters’ in E. Fischer-Lichte,
D. Kolesch, C. Weiler (eds) Transformationen: Theater der neunziger
Jahre, Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 23–6.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968) The Visible and the Invisible, translated by
A. Lingis. Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press.
Nicole, P. (1998) Traité de la comédie et autres pièces d‘un procès du
théâtre, edited by L. Thirouen. Paris: Champion.
Plessner, H. (1970) Laughing and Crying. A Study of the Limits of Human
Behaviour, translated by J. S. Churchill and M. Grene. Evanston IL:
Northwestern University Press.
Rousseau, J. J. (1987) Discours sur les sciences et les arts/Lettre à d‘Alembert
sur les spectacles, edited by J. Varloot, Paris: Edition Gallimard.
Seel, M. (2001) ‘Inszenieren als Erscheinen lassen. Thesen über die
Reichweite eines Begriffs’, in J. Früchtl and J. Zimmermann (eds)
Ästhetik der Inszenierung, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 48–62.
Vielhaber, G. (1947) ‘Ödipus Komplex auf der Bühne’, review of König
Oedipus, directed by Gustaf Gründgens, Die Zeit, 2 October 1947.
Notes
1 Regarding the writing in capitals, see p. 115–16. The radical concept
of ‘presence’.
2 After Minetti had fallen ill, he was replaced by Marianne Hoppe,
four years younger than him. Later, they took turns playing the part.
Meanwhile, both have passed away and have been replaced by
Michael Gwisdek. Minetti and Hoppe had been great stars in the
1930s at the Staatstheater, the Schauspielhaus am Gendarmenmarkt
Berlin (headed by Gustaf Gründgens) and in UFA i lms. There was
still a certain ‘l avour’ to their acting that even in the 1990s recalled
the 1930s.
3 ‘So hören Sie. Man hat mir zu verstehen gegeben, daß meine
Aussprache zu wünschen übrig läßt’ (Brecht 1981: 43).
4 Regarding performance as such an autopoietic feedback loop, see
Fischer-Lichte 2008.
5 ‘Wenn ich gehe, wünsche ich, daß bemerkt wird, daß ich gehe’ (Brecht
1981: 44).
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Erika Fischer-Lichte
6 ‘Stell zwei kräftige Jungens dicht hinter dich, und du stehst
ausgezeichnet’/‘Das ist Unsinn. Wenn ich stehe, wünsche ich, daß
man nicht auf zwei Leute hinter mir, sondern auf mich schaut’ (Brecht
1981: 45).
7 For the sake of simplicity, male forms are used throughout the text;
naturally, they also refer to the female forms.
8 Regarding the distinction between phenomenal and semiotic body see
Fischer-Lichte 2008.
9 See Plessner 1970.
10 See Nicole 1998.
11 It is striking how frequently the metaphor of infection, which renders
the aesthetic experience in theatre as a somatic process, is applied in
these debates. The term is also experiencing a renaissance in current
debates on aesthetics. See Fischer-Lichte 2004.
12 See Barba 1986 and 1991.
13 See Merleau-Ponty 1968.
Chapter 7
‘… presence …’ as a question
and emergent possibility
A case study from the
performer’s perspective 1
Phillip Zarrilli
This essay interrogates ‘presence’ from the performer’s perspective
inside a performance event – Told by the Wind2 . Co-created by
Kaite O’Reilly, Jo Shapland, and Phillip Zarrilli, Told by the Wind
premièred at Chapter Arts Centre (Cardiff) on 29 January 2010 for
an initial two-week run, was performed at Tanzfabrik (Berlin) on
27 March, and continues to tour internationally3. As noted in the
i nal paragraph of Elisabeth Mahoney’s review for The Guardian,
the performers’ ‘presence’ was central to her experience, reception,
and critical response to the première performance.
TOLD BY THE WIND
Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff: 29 January to 6 February 2010
Elisabeth Mahoney, The Guardian, 2 February 2010
Stripped of most elements we associate with drama, this intense
meditation in movement revels in stillness. It’s so still at times, you
worry that scratching your head or crossing your legs will be
audible to all. Performers Jo Shapland and Phillip Zarrilli, with
writer Kaite O’Reilly, draw on Asian aesthetics, string theory and
the Japanese theatre of quietude to present something that is
beyond linear narrative, character and gripping plot twists.
Instead, they offer fragments of memory, speech and gestures,
composed in moments that have a haunting, painterly beauty to
them. A man and a woman are on stage together at all times but,
never connect; he speaks a little, tugged at by the past, she
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Phillip Zarrilli
remains silent, trying to form words but expressing herself
physically as she shufles, runs and dances in bare soil.
With no dialogue or fathomable action to follow, you try to
make connections even though everything resists them. Is she in
the memory he speaks of? Is she a character in the music he is
writing, or the dance he appears to choreograph? What happens,
slowly, is that those nagging questions subside and a calmer
understanding emerges. It’s all very hypnotic, with repeated
small movements and shards of sentences, and it has the
astringent purity of a haiku poem, though haiku seems positively
wordy in comparison.
The performers have a remarkable presence, even when their
movement is barely perceptible. This is a challenging production,
but oddly affecting and – quietly cleansing. On the opening night,
the audience lingered at the end, as if not wanting to head back
out into the noisy, demanding world.
Although Mahoney is the only of three reviewers to speciically use
the term ‘presence’ with regard to the performers, all used a variety
of cognate terms to describe an intensity, valence, and quality of
the actors’ work which attracted and kept their attention: ‘hypnotic’
(Vale 2010; Mahoney 2010), ‘compelling’ (Vale 2010), ‘meditation’
(Mahoney 2010), ‘dreamlike’ (Kelligen 2010), and ‘mesmerized’
(Kelligen 2010).
If some of the audience found the performance ‘compelling,’
‘hypnotic,’ ‘dreamlike’ and/or ‘mesmerizing’ and if some
perceived the performers as having ‘remarkable presence,’ I argue
that ‘it’ emerged in the spatio-temporal realm of experience,
embodiment, and perception shared between the performer(s),
the performance score and its dramaturgy, and the audience.
From the performer’s perspective inside the performance
‘presence’ should only exist for the actor as a question – is it
possible on this night with this audience to attain an optimal
mode of engagement of awareness, deployment of energy, and
embodied consciousness appropriate to the aesthetic and
dramaturgy of this performance score?4
‘Presence’ is not some-‘thing’ I, as a performer either ‘have’ or
should strive for; rather, I argue that the performer’s relationship
to ‘presence’ is paradoxical in that the spectator is most likely to
‘… presence …’ as a question and emergent possibility
121
perceive ‘presence’ as emergent when the performer begins from a
dispositional state of bodymind readiness where enactment takes
place ‘on the edge of the absent’ (Zarrilli 2002: 164). For the
performer ‘presence’ can only ever be a question – an emergent
state of possibility.
‘Presence’ as a problem
‘Presence’ is a highly contested and vexed term. Post-structuralist
critiques of presence have rightfully debunked any notion of
presence as an essence5. I argued long ago that:
A reiied subjectivist notion of ‘presence’ is as complicit in a
dualist metaphysics as is the Cartesian ‘mind’. Neither provides
an adequate account of the ‘body’ in the mind, the ‘mind in the
body, or of the process by which the signs read as ‘presence’
are a discursive construct.
(Zarrilli 1995: 15).
Given the public visibility of ‘presence’ and its central place in the
phenomenon of performance, a number of scholars (Roach 2004;
2007; Dolan 2005; Fischer Lichte, 2008; Goodall 2008; and Power
2008) have begun a more nuanced discussion of the complex set of
issues marked by the phenomenon of ‘presence,’ especially the
pleasures afforded when one attends a performance where
‘presence’ emerges (Dolan 2005; Power 2008: 7). Cormac Power
provides a useful account of three main ‘modes of presence’ in
theatre – ‘the making-present, the having present and the beingpresent’ (Power 2008: 11) in order to demonstrate that ‘presence in
theatre is not a singular, monolithic entity’ but a complex
phenomenon (Power 2008: 13). Goodall writes a history of ‘the
poetics of presence – the rhetorics and imagistic language in which
presence is evoked in different cultural and historical contexts,
and across diverse forms of theatre and performance’ (Goodall
2008: 7). Roach studies ‘It’ – as ‘It’ appears in ‘common usage …
as charm, charisma, and presence’ (Roach 2004: 556, original
emphasis; Roach 2007), i.e., the association of the personal power
of ‘It’ involved in creating stars and stardom. Dolan takes a
different perspective. While warning that we should not ‘mystify
the notion of presence,’ she is interested in attempts to understand
its ‘inluence’ (Dolan 2005: 52). She therefore examines how
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‘… presence … talent and magnetism, can be used as a means to
progressive, rather than conservative, goals’ in and through
performance (Dolan 2005: 30–1).
Following my earlier book-length study of psychophysical acting
(Zarrilli 2009), I approach the question of ‘presence’
phenomenologically6, assuming an ‘enactive approach’ to acting in
which the actor as a gestalt optimally engages her bodymind fully
in each moment of performance as she creates, encounters, and
responds to the performance environment (Zarrilli 2009: 41–60).
At all performance events in which actors appear at least
momentarily in the same space as the audience, the performers
may be said to be literally or phenomenally present7, i.e., the
audience and performers together constitute a performance event
by their phenomenal co-presence (Fischer-Lichte 2008: 32–3;
see Zarrilli 2009: 222). How they inhabit and experience the
performance together constitutes a full phenomenology of
the performance event. Fischer-Lichte labels the simple presence
of the actor’s phenomenal body on stage as ‘the weak concept of
presence’ (Fischer-Lichte 2008: 94). In contrast to the ‘weak
concept of presence’ Fischer-Lichte dei nes the ‘actor’s ability of
commanding space and holding attention’ as ‘the strong concept
of presence’ (2008: 96, original emphasis)8. I argue that ‘the
strong concept of presence’ is not singular, but rather multiple –
the quality, valence, and intensity of the actor’s ability to generate
an inner ‘energy,’ to engage one’s entire embodied consciousness in
each performance task, to command space and hold attention is
always shaped by one’s training/experience, as well as the
dramaturgy and aesthetic of a speciic performance.
From the stage actor’s perspective, the ‘strong concept of
presence’ is the territory marked by psychophysical processes of
embodiment, attunement, awareness, and perception in which the
actor’s bodymind relationship to the enactment of a score makes
available a certain degree, quality, or heightened intensity of
relationship that is ‘energetic’ and attracts and sustains the
spectators’ attention9. This territory is the material basis of the
actor’s work and therefore is common to many systems of actor
training and performance such as Beijing Opera where a good
actor must ‘radiate presence’ (faqi) (Riley 1997: 206); the raising
and circulation of prana-vayu in the embodiment of states of
being/doing (bhava) in kathakali dance-drama (Zarrilli 2000:
65–97); the central role that the circulation of the vital energy (ki)
‘… presence …’ as a question and emergent possibility
123
plays in Zeami’s articulation of ‘vibratory theory’ at the heart of
the artistry of the Japanese noh actor (Nearman 1984; see Hare’s
translation of Zeami’s acting texts, 2008); or contemporary
psychophysical approaches to training the contemporary actor –
whether my own approach or those of Grotowski, Barba,
Stanislavski, Michael Chekhov, Lecoq, Mnouchkine, or others
(Zarrilli 2009, Chapters 1–2)10.
Although the territory marked by an audience’s perception of
‘presence’ is central to the material basis of the performer’s work,
there are a number of problems with ‘presence’. As observed by
Roach of Stanislavski, ‘presence’ is often associated with and/or
reduced to the notion of personal charisma – a reductive conlation
of the actor’s work with the actor’s personality, leading to the
‘disruptive effects’ of ‘Stage Charm’ for the work of the stage actor
(Roach 2004: 557). Similarly, ‘it’ can produce the ‘cult of the
individual’ (Goodall 2008: 12) – and thereby produce a narcissistic
subjectivity. And i nally, what is marked by ‘presence’ is problematically reiied by some as a kind of ‘mysterious,’ ‘magical’ or ‘secret’
power of the actor’s art.
Given these problems, as a practitioner I have deliberately
chosen not to use the term ‘presence’ when training or directing
actors, when discussing acting as a phenomenon in the studio, or
when describing my own process or relationship to acting. What
for the audience may be experienced as remarkable – ‘presence’ –
from the stage actor’s perspective should remain unremarkable.
The actor’s job is to stay focused while deploying one’s energy and
awareness to the speciic work she has to do in each moment of
performance. I argue that the actor should not strive to attain
‘presence’; rather, if ‘presence’ is perceived by the audience, ‘it’
emerges in the vortex of the performative moment. Therefore, in
this essay I use the term ‘presence’ guardedly and with quotation
marks to signal my reluctance to use the term in the studio11.
Told by the wind: development
To provide suficient contextual information for an analysis of the
appearance of ‘presence’ in performances of Told by the Wind, I
begin with an overview of the production’s development and a brief
outline of the performance structure and performance score. I then
address issues between production and reception. I i rst address the
issue of ‘presence’ in relation to the structure and dramaturgy of
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Phillip Zarrilli
Told by the Wind. I then examine ‘the strong concept of presence’
as marked and remarked upon by audiences for Told by the Wind12.
I do so by providing a detailed phenomenological account of several
sections of the performance score, articulating from inside that
score how the performers shaped and deployed energy, awareness,
and perception in enacting speciic tasks/actions that constituted
the score, and simultaneously addressing the question of how
audiences experienced and responded to our psychophysical
engagement of that score. I conclude with a brief summary of how
the approach to psychophysical training I have developed through
Asian martial arts and yoga supports the development and
deployment of the type, quality, and intensity of ‘energetic’
attentiveness, awareness, perception, and attunement utilized when
performing Told by the Wind and from which ‘presence’ emerged
in performances as a question.
Developing Told by the Wind
Told by the Wind was co-created over an 18-month process as an
experiment in intercultural theatre process and practice13. The
process included several initial short, focused periods of research
and development, devising, and writing; two longer intensive
periods of devising, writing, and rehearsing that resulted in
four work-in-progress preview performances in 2009 – three at
Tyn-y-parc Studio, Wales, and the fourth at the Escrita na Paisagem
– Festival de Performance e Artes de Terra in Evora, Portugal; and
a i nal period of rehearsals culminating in initial performances at
Chapter Arts Centre (Cardiff) and Tanzfabrik (Berlin). At various
points in the development/devising process, each of the three
co-creators took the lead, generating approximately one-third of
the i nal performance score14.
Zarrilli led the initial research and development phase of the
project in which the three collaborators encountered and responded
to a variety of intercultural and/or ‘post-dramatic’ (see Lehmann
2006) dramaturgies and aesthetics, both on their feet in the studio
and around the table. These included:
•
•
the dramaturgy of noh plays, especially ‘phantasmal’ dramas
with female transformation scenes;
key aesthetic principles that inform Japanese noh, especially
yugen;
‘… presence …’ as a question and emergent possibility
•
•
•
•
•
•
125
the principles and qualities of ‘quiet theatre’ as exempliied in
ta Sh go’s (1939–2006) body of work and his dramas of
‘living silence’ such as The Water Station which Zarrilli directed
in 2004 (Zarrilli 2009: 144–73) and The Tale of Komachi, as
analyzed by Mari Boyd in The Aesthetics of Quietude (2006);
contemporary noh-inspired dramas including Sotoba Komachi
(1952) and Aoi no Ue (1956) by Yukio Mishima (1925–70);
William Butler Yeats’ (1869–1935) plays for dancers including
At the Hawks Well and The Only Jealousy of Emer; and more
recent UK translations (Benjamin Yeho’s Nakamitsu at The
Gate in 2007) and experiments such as the collaborations
between Hideki Noda and Colin Teevan (The Diver 2008; The
Bee 2006 [Soho Theatre (London) and Setagayu Public
Theatre]);
Beckett’s ‘quiet plays’ and prose works that evoke and address
loss and otherness (see Zarrilli 2009: 115–43);
Japanese butoh’s exploration of inner-states and images;
Korean shaman (mudang) performances (see Hogarth 1999:
47); and
the conventions, aesthetic concerns, and alternative ways of
structuring ‘post-dramatic’ theatre found in the work of
Gertrude Stein, Kantor’s ‘theatre of memory’ and Heiner
Müller’s body of work15.
To this initial list of sources should be added O’Reilly’s dramaturgical interest in exploring shifts between irst and third person
voice central to noh dramas; the creation of ‘internal monologues’
– text and/or image-based scores which remain un-voiced but are
the basis for the actor’s internal psychophysical score; and ‘voicing’
some of the fragments of text that Zarrilli uses when sidecoaching actors while teaching and when devising a psychophysical
score through images and shifts in awareness. Shapland contributed
much to considerations and explorations of our use of space,
the relationship between the two igures within the space, issues
of tempo-rhythm, choreography/movement composition, and
attention to the material textures and sounds which helped create
the mise-en-scene. Elements and principles of Zarrilli’s approach to
psychophysical training (Zarrilli 2009) remained central throughout
the process, providing the basis for each performer’s generation and
deployment of an energetic awareness applied to each task and
structure as it developed.
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I will briely discuss our three initial points of departure –
phantasmal noh, the aesthetic principle of yugen, and ‘quietude’.
Although our initial point of departure was phantasmal noh, we
explored dramaturgically and performatively how to suggestively
touch, but not attempt to reproduce this source; therefore, our
approach to phantasmal noh might be described as indirect. We
did not want Told by the Wind to ‘look’ Japanese in some way, nor
did we want to attempt to stylistically reproduce noh. We did not
wish to literally reproduce the characteristic features of the
relationship between the two central igures of phantasmal noh –
the shite (doer/central performer) and waki (sideman/secondary
performer, usually a wandering priest). In phantasmal noh, the
shite often appears as a ‘restless’ female spirit who remembers a
past event through a dream or unsettling memory, encounters the
waki-priest-type igure who reveals what is troubling her, and is
paciied and/or transformed in some way. Shelly Quinn describes
phantasmal noh as like ‘an echo chamber of allusions’ (Quinn
2005: 14). While keeping female and male igures, in Told by the
Wind we wanted both igures as well as their relationship to remain
‘restless,’ unsettled in some way like ‘an echo chamber of allusions’;
however, there is no sense of paciication at the conclusion of Told
by the Wind.
Our indirect approach to phantasmal noh – touching but not
attempting to reproduce noh – relects the underlying aesthetic
concept of yugen. As Tom Hare explains, yugen ‘cannot be
translated. It has been proitably described in various places as
‘mystery and depth’ and as ‘what lies beneath the surface’; the
subtle, as opposed to the obvious; the hint, as opposed to the
statement’ (Hare 2008: 472). In our creative process we constantly
addressed ‘the hint,’ i.e., the question of ‘what lies beneath the
surface’ for these two igures. Dramaturgically, could the two
onstage igures be constantly present to one another, yet could the
presence of each to the other remain, somehow, a question mark?
At a certain point in our rehearsal process, O’Reilly framed and
articulated this ‘question mark’ as follows: who is ‘dreaming’
whom? We interpreted ‘dreaming’ as the active task of constantly
‘imagining’ or ‘conjuring’ an-Other. Is She ‘the dreamer of the
dream of He?’ And is He ‘the dreamer of the dream of She?’ Once
O’Reilly articulated this active question mark so clearly, it became
central to the i nal development of the dramaturgy for Told by the
Wind, as well as the primary activator for the two performers.
‘… presence …’ as a question and emergent possibility
127
Complimenting and informing our approach to noh were
elements and principles of ‘quiet theatre’ associated with the work
of contemporary Japanese playwright/director, ta Sh go (1939–
2006), as identiied by Mari Boyd in The Aesthetics of Quietude
(2006), and as developed in my previous productions of ta’s
signature non-verbal psychophysical score, The Water Station (see
Zarrilli 2009: 144–73). ta created dramas of ‘living silence’ in
which everyday action is slowed down and in which there is a
divestiture of all unnecessary words. ‘Quiet theatre’ does not
attempt to ‘aggressively transmit meaning to the audience’ (Boyd
2006: 3). Rather, it turns down the often busy volume of theatre’s
multiple modes of communication, paring away and divesting
performance of anything non-essential.
The underlying principle of quietude is what Ota Shogo terms
the power of passivity. Passivity in art refers to the making of
aesthetic distance. Instead of trying to aggressively transmit
meaning to an audience, passivity exercises a spirit of ‘selfreliance’ that compels the audience to attend, focus, and
participate imaginatively in the pursuit of signiication,
meaning, and pleasure. Passivity thus paradoxically engages
the audience in a dynamic exchange of energy.
(Boyd 2006: 3).
Working with that which lies ‘beneath the surface,’ in Told by the
Wind, each element operates at a subtle, suggestive level.
During the development phase of our work we psychophysically explored the suggestive and minimal in the following
ways: (1) slowing down everyday movement; (2) working with
slight and/or sudden variations in tempo-rhythm with
psychophysical actions to create juxtaposition, emphasis, or
surprise; (3) using fragments of text to create possible narratives;
(4) experimenting with multiple layers/strands of voicing/
speaking/sounding such as switches from i rst to third person
voice, description, directions, commands, etc.; (5) integrating
and juxtaposing task-based actions, semi-improvised tasks/
movement sequences; (6) sustaining embodiment of active
images for lengthy periods; and (7) experimenting with repetition
and synchronicity so that time and narrative are rendered
more contemplative as each loops back on itself, but is never the
same.
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Figure 7.1 The Llanarth Group, Told by the Wind (2010).
Structure 5: Male Figure has stepped into the earthen square.
Photo courtesy Kirsten McTernan.
Told by the Wind: the performance score
By the conclusion of the process of developing/devising Told by the
Wind we had developed the i nal performance score around ten
sections or structures. This score is an interweaving of two
templates or maps. The i rst template consists of the imaginative
possibilities made available to the audience with regard to the
relationship between the two igures inhabiting the mise-en-scene
together, i.e., this is the dramaturgical or ‘ictional world’ – the
possible ‘narratives’ made available by the performance score. The
second template is the very precise, and often subtle map of how
each performer deploys his embodied consciousness, awareness
and perception to embody, enact and inhabit each speciic task/
action that constitutes their speciic psychophysical score, and
from which the ‘ictional world’ or ‘narratives’ are generated16.
Both of these templates/maps are discussed and analyzed in detail
below.
Immediate Performance Context: When the audience enters the
black box studio theatre at Chapter Arts Centre (Cardiff), they
‘… presence …’ as a question and emergent possibility
129
Figure 7.2 The Llanarth Group, Told by the Wind (2010).
Structure 5: Male and Figures move/counterpoint.
Photo courtesy of Ace McCarron.
hear the sound of water-chime music playing at a low level, and
look down toward the dimly lit but visible playing space – a
rectangular area approximately six by nine metres set off by a thin
earth frame17. Toward the upstage right corner of the playing space
(see Figs 7.1 and 7.2) are a small, off-white, weathered writing
bureau, a spindle-backed wooden chair, and window frame
suspended in the air. Just downstage centre and stage left is a
different style of weathered, off-white wooden chair with a clothpatterned seat, in front of which is a wooden box on the loor. On
a diagonal between the two chairs, branches of evergreen are laid
on the loor to demarcate and contain a square of earth of
approximately two by two metres. At the middle of each face of the
earthen square, smaller branches of evergreen demarcate four
passageways into or out of the earth. The programme provides no
information about the setting, location, or time of the performance.
It lists the names of the co-creators, artistic consultants, and the
two performers.
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As soon as the audience is seated two performers – both barefoot
– enter, walking slowly from the far upstage right corner of the
theatre. The female (Jo Shapland) wears a dark brown, knee-length
skirt and tightly itting white v-neck top, while the male (Phillip
Zarrilli) wears brown trousers with a loose-itting white shirt.
The female traverses the upstage edge of the playing space, and at
the USL corner of the rectangle turns to cross downstage left
while the male enters and crosses downstage right. Both igures
stop and pause – the female just upstage of the stage left chair/box,
and male just downstage of the stage right window/writing bureau.
They turn to face the playing area, pausing at the threshold. As the
pre-set lights begin to fade and as the water-chime music fades to
silence, the two igures step into darkness.
Transitions between each of the ten structures are marked by
shifts in lighting; however, there is never a complete blackout in
these transitions with at least minimal lighting always present on
the earth square and therefore on the performers. Throughout the
50–53-minute performance the Female Figure and the Male Figure
are both onstage except for the penultimate structure when the
Male Figure steps outside the rectangular playing space and into
darkness offstage until he returns for the i nal structure. The two
igures never make direct visual contact with one another. There is
no dialogue per se, but Male Figure delivers fragments of suggestive
text during 4 of the 10 structures (3, 7, 8 and 10). Female Figure
occasionally mouths words that either remain unsaid or are barely
whispered and remain inaudible. Male Figure’s intermittent spoken
text is delivered during approximately 11 minutes of the total
running time. Except for the barely audible ‘white noise’ in the
background throughout the performance, there are lengthy periods
in which no overt and little inadvertent sound is made by the
actors.
Told by the Wind: brief outline of ten structures
Since the analysis below focuses primarily on Structures 1, 2, 3
and 10, for these structures more detail and the full text are
provided in the summary.
Structure 1: The two actors are discovered onstage: Female Figure
is seated in the centre stage left chair, and Male Figure is seated in
the upstage right chair. Their backs are to each other. In silence, for
‘… presence …’ as a question and emergent possibility
131
approximately three minutes the two igures only make subtle,
slight physical adjustments to their positions as they listen in the
silence. As the light fades out on Female Figure, Jo Shapland moves
down-centre stage where she assumes a crouching position.
Structure 2: While Male Figure remains seated at the desk upstage
right, Female Figure is discovered downstage centre of the earth
square with a withered evergreen branch casting a distinctive
shadow on the loor in her right hand. She purposefully moves the
branch … slowly … intently … to an inner score. Pausing … she
drops the branch and her gaze slowly rises. The light on Female
Figures fades to black.
Structure 3: In relative darkness, Female Figure facing upstage at
the periphery of the playing area, she begins a very slow sliding
‘walk’ – her bare feet sounding the surface of the loor. Continuing
to gaze through the window frame Male Figure eventually speaks
fragments of text, authored by Kaite O’Reilly:
The desolation of Autumn.
The 7th day of the 9th month.
Returning.
Night dew on feet.
Wet.
Stops.
Looks to dew and to past…behind.
Dew … on feet.
Takes three steps. Stops.
Arriving.
(Sound of steps stops. Silence.)
(Whispered) A bird…
Are you present?
(A beat. Suddenly Female Figure crosses, running from USL
to DSR.)
(Silence. MF listens, intent.)
That old compulsion.
Some thing … drawing you back …
… here … now …
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To stand and pause – take three steps…stop.
To look to the dew and the past, behind.
(Pauses…observing)
The end of Autumn … .
(As a question) What follows?
(To the distance…observing…) The dew on your feet.
Dew … wet … on feet.
(Two beats. FF crosses from USL to DSR a second time.)
(To the space behind ) Are you here?
Structure 4: Female Figure is discovered in the same crouching
position as in Structure 2 downstage centre of the earth square. She
now holds in her right hand a large green evergreen branch which
casts a shadow on the loor. In a moment of synchronicity
Male Figure draws his right hand outward toward the desk as
Female Figure executes a sweeping motion with the evergreen.
Female Figure performs a detailed and precise psychophysical
score, occasionally appearing to mouth words as she does so.
Structure 5: Lights brighten on Male Figure seated at the desk. With
his eyes closed and a pencil in his right hand, Male Figure slowly
rises as he ‘conducts’ a musical score moving around the chair.
Unexpectedly he stops, looks to the paper on the desk, and bends to
write. He stops, slowly lengthens his back. Taking several backward,
halting steps he stops at the threshold of the earth square. Suddenly
he is propelled backward into the earth square. For the irst and
only time in the performance, distant (recorded) sounds of ‘spring’
are audible – a wind chime, birds. He responds to the environment.
Closing his eyes again, he resumes ‘conducting’ (Fig 7.1) as Female
Figure simultaneously begins a ‘dance’ moving into, across, out of,
and/or within the earthen square. Never looking to one another, at
times they seem to be moving in response to one another or even
together with one another (Fig 7.2). By the end of this ‘dance’ the
sound has faded out. In the silence Female Figure resumes her seat
CSL, and Male Figure is seated at the desk. Silence…an echo of the
irst structure. They both mouth words … whispered fragments,
and listen in silence.
‘… presence …’ as a question and emergent possibility
133
Figure 7.3 The Llanarth Group, Told by the Wind (2010).
Structure 7: Male Figure in the downstage centre left chair delivers
text as Female Figure ‘dances’ a slowed-down version of her earlier
dance from Structure 5. Photo courtesy of Ace McCarron.
Structure 6: Dancing an ‘inner dance,’ Female Figure is animated in
her chair, levitates, and unexpectedly turns and rushes to the upstage
centre entry to the earthen square where she stops unexpectedly at
the threshold as Male Figure suddenly stands, looking out the
window. Silence … a few beats …
Structure 7: Female Figure slowly lifts a foot, stepping across the
threshold into the earthen square. As she begins a slowed down
version of her earlier dance, without seeing her, Male Figure slowly
crosses upstage of the earth square, and then downstage to the CSL
chair in which Female Figure had been sitting. Placing his left hand
on ‘her’ chair, he tells fragments of stories as she continues to ‘dance’
(Fig 7.3).
Structure 8: Female Figure is discovered downstage centre lying
with her back on the loor, eyes closed, and Male Figure is discovered
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Phillip Zarrilli
Figure 7.4 The Llanarth Group, Told by the Wind (2010).
Structure 10: In the inal structure, Male and Female Figures next
to one another, but each remains in their own parallel world.
Photo courtesy of Ace McCarron.
seated at the desk reading a text/score. At i rst he silently mouths
the words. He stands and marks the rhythm of the text with the
pencil in his right hand, simultaneously ‘dancing’ patterns of steps
in response to the text as he moves on a horizontal line upstage of
the earthen square from USR to USL, and back again toward the
desk. He begins to voice the text:
One foot in front of the other, another foot before the other,
step,
step, lightly step plod […]
‘… presence …’ as a question and emergent possibility
135
As text is voiced, Female Figure opens her eyes, sits, and comes to
standing. When Male Figure completes the text, he gazes out the
window, as Female Figure turns upstage and steps into darkness.
Again, the sound of Female Figure’s sliding feet. Listening, Male
Figure repeats two lines:
The seventh day of the ninth month…
Returning … .
Structure 9: At the threshold, Female Figure steps into the earthen
square and executes a subtle psychophysical score in response to
the environment. Eventually she senses and is slowly drawn down
toward the earth and repelled by the impulse to touch and reach
into the earth. She eventually reaches into the earth, grasping what
is there. She extracts a white cloth object … slowly. The earth falls
off parts of the object. It is revealed as a long-sleeved white shirt
covered with fragments of earth. Placing her right hand/arm into
the shirt, she inhabits the shirt and begins a slow stepping ‘dance’ as
the lights fade.
Structure 10: Lying on her back with her eyes closed near the chair
CSL where Male Figure sits, they are revealed. As Male Figure
delivers the text below, Female Figure opens her eyes, sits upright,
comes to her knees so she is parallel to Male Figure (Fig 7.4), and
goes through her inner physical score.
Crouching … she sweeps … stops …looks to leaves…drops
brush…the Memory of leaves…right hand to chin…left
follows…the weight of the chin in the hand…the smell of
burning leaves…takes in the smell with the breath…close
eyes…the memory in the leaves…watches smoke rise…
surprised… memories in lames…takes in the smoke with the
smell…takes in the past with the smell…senses the leaves down
right…looks…senses left hand…skeleton of leaf…opens palm,
looks to it…leaf crumbles…fragments of ash…catches ash in
right hand…lets the ash drop…
Male and Female Figures simultaneously raise their gazes to a
distant point on the horizon. Lights fade to black. The performance
concludes.
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Between production and reception:18
a phenomenological account of ‘presence’ as
emergent in told by the wind
Dramaturgy, structure and ‘presence’
If ‘presence’ was observed as arising in Told by the Wind, ‘it’ did
not arise in a vacuum. ‘Presence’ is always generated by the
dynamic quality of the actor’s embodied relationship to a speciic
performance score and its dramaturgy. As noted above, the
performance score structures each of the actor’s performance
tasks/actions while the dramaturgy of the score sets the overall
aesthetic and narrative parameters within which the performer
psychophysically shapes and deploys her energy, awareness and
perception as she attends to and embodies that score, and as she
perceives and responds to each stimulus offered by the score within
the performance environment. I begin this analysis with a
phenomenological account of the dramaturgy-at-work in
performances of Told by the Wind.
From the audience’s perspective, the series of structures that
constitute Told by the Wind provide stimuli that throw up possible
relationships between the Male and Female Figures on stage;
however, these narrative possibilities are never absolutely
determined. Under the guidance of dramaturg/playwright, Kaite
O’Reilly, we intentionally constructed a dramaturgy which refused
complete narrative closure.
As each structure presents itself in turn, there is no absolute
certainty that the associations that may have arisen for a spectator
in response to a structure necessarily ‘it’ where one might at i rst
think they ‘it.’ While it is clear that there is a relationship of some
sort between the two Figures in the stage environment, precisely
who they are and what their relationship had been, is now, or
might be, is never i nally resolved. Mahoney describes how a series
of ‘nagging questions’ presented themselves to her as the
performance developed:
With no dialogue or fathomable action to follow, you try to
make connections even though everything resists them. Is she
in the memory he speaks of? Is she a character in the music he
is writing, or the dance he appears to choreograph?
(Mahoney 2010)
‘… presence …’ as a question and emergent possibility
137
Michael Kelligen describes the possibilities and questions thrown
up for him about the two Figures:
A man, not young, in crumbled clothes sits at an old white
bureau. He is looking out through a window […] He turns his
head inwards, he may be looking for the younger woman who
is sitting at the other side of the stage. She turns her head, she
may be looking for him […] They never meet. Did they know
each other once? Are they yearning for each other? Are they
just igures passing by in the evening light?
(Kelligan 2010)
The possibilities posed as questions by the reviewers mark the
ever-shifting engagement of the audience’s imagination as they
responded to the possible narratives put into play by the two igures
within the mise-en-scene.
Some of our choices for the mise-en-scene – weathered off-white
wooden furniture/window-frame suspended in space, and costumes
(brown skirt/pants; white tops) – invited speciic associations tied
to certain places/spaces and period, while not allowing others.
However, the evergreen-bound earth square between the furniture
USR and CDSL complicated and unsettled these possibilities. The
playing space could not simply be read as ‘a’ single settled place.
For Erika Fischer-Lichte, the juxtaposition of the naturalistic
element of the furniture with the use of real soil meant ‘what was
out was in’ and this turned everything ‘inside out’ (Fischer-Lichte
2010). Maria da Paz observed that:
… the earth square in the middle of the space … gave me the
awareness of belonging and at the same time of distance; [the
Male Figure] and [the Female Figure] were … separated by it,
but at the same time it was what [the two] had in common
somehow keeping [them] together.
(da Paz 2009)
For some, such as Duarte da Silva, this ‘dis’location of space/place
was paralleled by a sense the performance ‘takes the spectator to
another time and place’ (da Silva 2009). Eleaonora Marzani
explained how for her in Told by the Wind:
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there is no time. The connection between the two igures may
suggest some lashback, getting back to a time of memories, or
again it can be a future vision, or a story created by imagination,
or maybe a wish out of a man’s mind. There are all the times
and there is no time at all; what is (not) going on is out of time
or is in a constant present of some other dimension …
(Marzani 2009)
Without a settled narrative, with everything ‘inside out,’ with no
direct eye-to-eye contact between the two Figures, with only
fragments of text and no dialogue per se, one way of explaining
the ‘relationship’ between the igures is as a shifting set of
possibilities. Mahoney’s observation that ‘everything [in the
performance] resists’ the making of ‘connections’ relects the
audience’s process of re-constructing narratives that, by the end
of the performance, were often not completely settled. This
openness to multiple, suggestive possibilities is relected in
Mahoney’s comparison of Told by the Wind to ‘the astringent
purity of a haiku poem, though haiku seems positively wordy in
comparison’ (Mahoney 2010).
Another way of describing the performance score and its
dramaturgy phenomenologically is that it presents itself to the
audience’s experience and consciousness as something like either
an ‘echo chamber of allusions’ (Quinn 2005: 14) or a jigsaw
puzzle. ‘Solving’ jigsaw puzzles engages one in seeing/sensing
solutions to the possibilities each piece of a puzzle presents as it is
encountered. The i rst structure presents one piece of the puzzle
– Male Figure seated at the writing desk looking out the window,
and Female Figure seated on a diagonal opposite with a framed
earthen square between them. They do not speak or look to one
another. The second structure presents another piece of the
puzzle with the Female Figure squatting downstage centre,
focused on the slow ‘sweeping’ action with the delicate, weathered,
fragile, brown evergreen in her hand while the Male Figure
remains at the desk upstage. How does Structure 1 ‘it’ in relation
to Structure 2?
In Structure 3, the fragmentary, poetic text delivered by Male
Figure reveals ‘the desolation of Autumn.’ Looking out the window,
he observes a igure moving in a landscape, arriving … somewhere.
Although some contextual information is provided, no absolute
‘answers’ are forthcoming; rather, further questions are posed or
‘… presence …’ as a question and emergent possibility
139
additional pieces of a puzzle are suggested, such as Male Figure’s
contemplative, ‘The end of Autumn. What follows?’ By the end of
the performance all the pieces of the puzzle are present, but they do
not it together in an absolute way that constitutes a framed and
i nished whole. Erika Fischer-Lichte explained how:
What the story was did not have to be pinned down […] The
performance was not vague, but there was a certain kind of
indeterminacy so you were free to have associations […] It was
open and invited the spectator in as a whole person […].
(Fischer-Lichte 2010)
From Tony Brown’s perspective, narrative in Told by the Wind:
became a much more amorphous thing. It was almost as
though, because of the deep interaction between what was
happening between the lit space and the observers in the
darkness, that we audience members were creating the action
in a web of space, time, movement and sound. Causality was
suspended but was in a strange way important. It was very
clear that the ‘characters’ (if that’s what they were) had a
hugely deep effect on each other but the why, where, when and
how of it could only be grasped like the effect of a breeze –
invisible but tangible.
(Brown 2010)
Initial responses to Told by the Wind
Reviewers and spectators alike commented on the unusual and
dificult demands made by Told by the Wind on spectators. Tony
Brown explained how ‘this was a different experience for an
audience […]’ where ‘one was made to work hard as an observer’
(Brown 2010). Allison Vale of The British Theatre Guide opened
her review with an admission of her scepticism about what she
might experience at Told by the Wind:
I’ll be honest. I’m a fan of traditional, narrative theatre. I like
being part of a passive audience, soaking up a damn i ne plot,
executed by fully developed characters. I enjoy the security of
the alternative reality they create […] I wasn’t at all sure I
wanted to be compelled to i nd my own meaning and
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signiicance in ‘embodied silences, splintered interactions and
slowed-down motion.’
(Vale 2010)
The ‘hard work’ began when the audience entered the theatre and
i rst encountered quietude. Taken together, the i rst two nonverbal, psychophysical structures of Told by the Wind last
approximately ive minutes. The performers make no overt sounds.
There is only the ambient ‘noise’ of the live performance
environment and the hardly audible ‘white noise’ that ills the
silence. It is only at the beginning of the third structure when
Female Figure begins to slide her bare feet on the loor that a
‘sound’ emanates directly from one of the performers.
The Guardian’s Elisabeth Mahoney explained how it was ‘so
still at times, you worry that scratching your head or crossing your
legs will be audible’ (Mahoney 2010). Responding to an online
post on The Guardian’s website by AJHampton [sic], Mahoney
further explained how during the i rst part of the performance she
‘was quite cross in fact […] I struggled a bit to begin with and felt
the day’s thoughts whirring round my head (as I always do with
yoga, ighting the calm) […]’ (Mahoney 2010a).
Although at i rst disconcerted by the initial quietude, a shift in
perception and reception eventually occurred for many in the
audience. Mahoney explained how she eventually ‘settled, and got
the richness of it […]’ (Mahoney 6 February 2010). For the initially
skeptical Allison Vale the ‘rigorous’ demands the performance
made on her as a spectator ultimately made the performance ‘all
the more affecting for that’ (Vale 2010). At least for Vale, an
alternative mode of spectating to the usual emerged in her response
to Told by the Wind: ‘[…It] is easily the most hypnotic piece of
theatre I have experienced. The extraordinary poise and perfection
in the movement, texting and staging of this piece makes for a
beautifully contemplative sixty minutes’ (Vale 2010).
What elements of the performance were suficiently ‘rich’ to
attract the attention and eventually ‘settle’ initially restive
spectators such as Mahoney and skeptics such as Vale? What
precisely was it that made the performance ‘hypnotic,’ ‘compelling,’
and ‘mesmerizing’? To answer these questions I turn to an analysis
of the second dimension of the performance score for Told by the
Wind, focusing on the dynamic quality of the actor’s embodied
consciousness, awareness, and perception deployed in enacting
‘… presence …’ as a question and emergent possibility
141
some of the speciic tasks/actions that constitute the total
performance score.
A phenomenological account of the actor’s
performance score
At the beginning of Told by the Wind, when Jo Shapland and I step
into the playing space and are seated to begin Structure 1, our
initial performance task is to open and engage our peripheral
awareness to the possible presence of an-‘other’ in the environment.
Phenomenologically, from my perspective inside the performance,
the act of ‘opening’ my peripheral awareness means using indirect
visual focus, i.e., my eyes do not attempt to focus speciically on
anything/anyone/anywhere. Since my visual focus is secondary
and indirect, my energy and awareness open to and attend to the
spatial environment surrounding me – to my right, my left, and/or
behind me. The ‘other’ to whom I am opening my awareness is not
a speciic individual, but rather a possibility or a question. This
‘other’ is constituted by a series of embodied questions, such as:
‘Is someone/something there?’
‘Is ‘she’ present?’
‘Is ‘she’ there?’ ‘Where?’
‘There…there…or there?’
I do not literally ask myself these questions in my mind, nor is this
‘other’ or this ‘she’ given a speciic name, identity, or history19.
Rather, I psychophysically engage my embodied consciousness in
subtly responding to the impulse of a ‘question’ or ‘possible
presence’ if/when/as each question/possibility emerges in the
moment of performance. It is important that this embodied process
of questioning/probing remains indeterminate. My focus/attention
should not ‘land’ or resolve itself. It is a constant process of active
searching/questioning.
About half way through Structure 1, this initial embodied
probing/questioning becomes much more speciic – both Jo
Shapland and I begin to attune our auditory awareness to our
possible ‘other’. We actively engage psychophysically in what may
be described as ‘attentive listening,’ i.e., opening our ears to the
sonority of the immediate environment. In his essay, Listening,
philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy asks the question: ‘What does it mean
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Phillip Zarrilli
for a being to be immersed entirely in listening, formed by listening
or in listening, listening with all his being?’ (Nancy 2007: 4). The
psychophysical task here is to ‘let go’ and abandon oneself
completely to this state of deep, profound ‘listening’ where all that
exists is a question. Nancy asks, ‘What secret is at stake when one
truly listens’ and thereby encounters ‘sonority rather than the
message?’ (Nanacy 2007: 5). We are listening, but what is ‘there’
remains a ‘secret’ – unknown to each of us. There is no ‘message’.
No ‘thing’ and no ‘one’ emerges as an answer to the psychophysical
‘questions’ posed. Our embodied consciousness/awareness is
always ‘on the edge of meaning’; however, ‘meaning’ and
understanding never emerge. As Nancy explains: ‘To be listening is
always to be on the edge of meaning, or in an edgy meaning of
extremity, and as if the sound were precisely nothing else than this
edge […]’ (Nancy 2007: 7). The kind of ‘listening’ I am attempting
to describe here is not an isolated or passive act of the ‘ears’ hearing;
rather, it is an act of absorption so complete and full that one’s
embodied consciousness is woven in the moment.
Optimally, this process of embodied attunement of the ear
absorbs and then re-directs our energy and awareness in a process
of taking in, searching, and questioning. The speciicity and
intensity of our engagement with these psychophysical tasks within
the i rst structure means that, as performers, we are animated and
energized ‘inside’ – not in a psychological or motivational sense –
as we attune our embodied consciousness to what might be present
in the environment. The result of this intense internal psychophysical
engagement is subtle, slight adjustments in each of our physical
positions within a ield of possibilities. Although we are basically
‘still,’ we are not frozen; rather, each of us is animated from the
inside-out by constantly being active and reactive. Phenomenologically our performative engagement with deep listening may be
described as opening a space of possibility within us as performers/
stage-igures.
If the i rst non-verbal structure of Told by the Wind engages the
performers in a deep form of attentive listening, in Structure 2
there is a phenomenological shift. The Female Figure is revealed in
a crouching position centre stage where she holds in her right hand
a withered evergreen branch which casts a long shadow on the
loor. For approximately two minutes, Female Figure is intently
engaged in executing a slow, subtle psychophysical score as ‘…she
sweeps … stops … looks to leaves … drops brush … the memory
‘… presence …’ as a question and emergent possibility
143
of leaves …’ Shapland’s performance score is not literally known to
the audience. What is available to the audience is the speciicity,
degree, quality, and intensity of psychophysical engagement that
she as performer brings to each task within this structure’s score,
and the sensory and imaginative links she makes between actions/
tasks within it, including:
•
•
•
•
•
her sensory/tactile engagement with the touch/feel of the
withered branch on the skin of her ingers/hand,
the weight and rhythm of the branch as she executes the arc of
each sweeping motion,
her embodied relationship to the impulse to drop the branch or
look down to ‘leaves,’
the appearance of a ‘memory’ in the (imagined) leaves, and
the associations that may arise in relation to being present at
the ‘threshold’ of the earthen square.
Upstage of Female Figure, as Male Figure I begin the structure
gazing out the window, but eventually shift my sensory awareness
from the auditory as primary to between the auditory and the
visual. My ears remain ‘open’ to the environment, but the question
of a possible presence engages me in both looking and listening. But
again, these questions are again not answered and indeterminate.
In Structure 3, after approximately seven sliding steps Male
Figure delivers the irst line of text: ‘The desolation of autumn.’
Unlike dialogue in a realist production, delivering the fragmentary,
suggestive, poetic text of Told by the Wind necessarily engages the
performer in a mode of voicing/sounding which cannot be pedestrian.
Phenomenologically, the performer’s optimal relationship to the
voicing of text in Told by the Wind is to engage one’s entire embodied
consciousness in hearing/sensing the ‘saidness’ of each line. At a
technical level, this involves the performer in ensuring that the pitch
of the text when delivered is ‘hitting’ and thereby ‘vibrating’ not only
the throat resonator, but also the chest resonator. If and when the
delivery of the text is ‘on pitch’ to resonate in the chest, the inner
‘vibration’ of the text as it is said creates a temporal ‘residue’. From
inside speaking the text, similar to the shifts of voice in noh dramatic
texts which move between third and irst person, so I attempt to
keep a dialectic between the constant presence of third person
observation and irst person experience. For example, in delivering
the following sequence:
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Phillip Zarrilli
Returning.
Night dew on feet.
Wet.
Stops.
Looks to dew and to past…behind.
Dew…on feet.
I interweave my sensory awareness between ‘seeing’ this possible
other ‘returning,’ and sensing myself as this ‘other’ with the ‘Dew …
on [my] feet.’ I therefore engage the tactile awareness of the feet of
my bare feet on the ground in the speaking ‘Dew … on feet.’ The
Male Figure’s ‘other’ is therefore always available and at times
present within my embodied awareness in the experienced ‘saidness’
of lines like ‘Dew … on feet.’ This dialectical mode of ‘saidness’
moving between third person description and irst person
inhabitation keeps the text from ‘landing.’ It is not simply a narrative
description. Delivering any of the text in Told by the Wind I
maintained this dialectic between irst and third person – between
‘being’ and ‘witnessing’.
For both Male and Female Figures their ‘other’ always remains
both a question and a possibility that is shaped and reshaped
throughout the performance. Their ‘other’ is always present in
some way in the mise-en-scene, and their traces are always
available, but that ‘other’ is never directly seen and they never
interact. The presence of the ‘other’ is indeterminate and keeps
shifting.
In Structure 3, I not only sense this ‘other’ within me, but
address this possible other outside me when I literally ask the
question, ‘Are you present?’ There is silence … a pause. And then a
sudden and unexpected rush of action as Female Figure suddenly
runs across the earthen square from USL to DSR – momentarily lit
at the centre of the earthen square behind Male Figure. This ‘other’
has passed within ive feet of me as Male Figure, but I do not move.
Remaining externally still is essential to the dramaturgy and
dynamic of the performance as a whole. By not looking/seeing
‘her’ pass and by not overtly responding to her passing, her possible
‘presence’ to Male Figure remains a question…a possibility. Where
was ‘she’ in relation to ‘he’? What is the earthen square in relation
to the space Male Figure inhabits at this moment in the dramaturgy?
From inside playing Male Figure, my task is to allow the question
I have just asked to echo or resonate as a possibility in the silence
‘… presence …’ as a question and emergent possibility
145
that follows its asking – ‘Are you present?’ My gaze is indirect. I
am listening and open to a possible presence. ‘Is there a presence,
here, now?’ Suddenly, something disturbs the still air of the
environment. I feel/sense the disturbance of the air/wind on my left
hand/arm as it grasps the back of the chair. As Jo Shapland passes
within ive feet of me, I literally feel/hear/sense her as she passes.
But inside Male Figure’s state of deep listening, I only absorb and
take in disturbance of the air/wind as it passes as a question, or
possibility. If ‘she’ is present, ‘she’ is still immaterial in some way
… indeterminate.
This sense of the simultaneous presence and absence of the
‘other’ to both Male and Female Figures was played out in different
ways throughout the remainder of Told by the Wind. In the
concluding, tenth Structure, even as we are literally side-by-side
(see Fig 7.4), we still inhabit two ‘worlds’. Our ‘other’ is present as
a trace, a question, a possibility.
Given the dramaturgy and performance strategy of Told by the
Wind, Jo Shapland and I constantly worked with the simple,
phenomenal co-presence of the other actor, as well as within the
possible presence of our (ictional) ‘others’ within the world of the
performance. The dialectic between the presence and absence of
our ictional ‘other’ was fundamental to the aesthetic, shape,
quality, and dramaturgy of Told by the Wind. We had to work
constantly on the edge of this ‘other’s’ appearance at the same time
s/he never materialized.
Acting as a ‘question’: ‘presence’ as emergent
I have provided a detailed phenomenological description of several
sections of the actors’ performance score for Told by the Wind and
of the dramaturgy of the whole. Perhaps the most important aspect
of these descriptions is the attention to precision and detail about
both templates which together create each performance. I would
argue that only when performers have conidence in and clarity
about the precise nature of their performance score can they allow
themselves the freedom to be ‘surprised’ in the moment-by-moment
enactment of that work in performance. I therefore agree with Jane
Goodall’s astute observation that if/when ‘presence’ is experienced
by the audience it is due in part to the performers’ ‘attention to
detail, process and technique’ (Goodall 2008: 33). With regard the
emergence of ‘presence’ in Told by the Wind, Allison Vale reached
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Phillip Zarrilli
a similar conclusion in her summary of how the performance
worked on her:
[…] Kaite O’Reilly’s hauntingly poetic snatches of text ripple
through the piece, adding texture without informing plot or
character. The slow, silent grace of his play without dialogue,
this ballet without music, make the experience of sitting in
the audience a wholly introspective one. At times it feels more
like a meditation than theatre […]. It is precision in the
crafting and execution of this piece which makes it so
compelling.
(Vale 2010)
Of course ‘presence’ does not emerge and a performance is not
‘compelling’ or ‘mesmerizing’ simply because an actor repeats with
precision the details of their performance score. Precision and
detail are necessary to the actor’s work, but they are also potential
traps. It is the quality and valence of embodied consciousness,
awareness, and perception that are deployed in relation to each
speciic task/action in the moment of each enactment that
determines whether ‘presence’ might or might not emerge at a
particular performance.
In this essay I have described the inherent indeterminacy and
lack of narrative closure that is central to both the dramaturgy of
the whole and of the performance scores in Told by the Wind.
Perhaps, as Jane Goodall also argues, the emergence of ‘presence’
in response to Told by the Wind was due in part to the fact that
‘Presence is often bound up with paradox, a holding together of
contraries, as if the one who embodies it is a convergence point for
opposing forces.’ (Goodall 2008: 188)
At this point in my argument, I want to consider the implications
for the acting process more generally of the issues raised in this
case study of Told by the Wind. Although indeterminacy,
questioning, ‘holding together contraries,’ and a dialectical process
between presence/absence are all speciic to Told by the Wind, I
would argue that they all describe and point to the optimal state
actors should embody when performing – a state of being/doing
where one’s embodied consciousness is absolutely ‘on the edge’ of
what is possible … what might come … what might happen …
what might be said … in each moment of doing, whatever the
dramaturgy.
‘… presence …’ as a question and emergent possibility
147
Too often actors are looking for ‘answers,’ want closure, or
simply try to repeat something that seems to ‘work’ and is
successful 20. Rather than closure, answers, or what seems to
work, paradoxically acting should always be considered as a
‘question’. Even though actors ‘know’ as a horizon of possibilities
each task/action that constitutes a well-rehearsed performance
score, phenomenologically actors should situate themselves in the
indeterminate position of being ‘on the edge’ of not knowing.
This place of ‘not knowing’ is a state of readiness – a dispositional
state of possibility to which the actor can abandon herself in the
moment. To inhabit this state of not knowing what is next or
what might emerge is to inhabit a place where there is the
potential to be ‘surprised’ in the moment of abandonment.
Paradoxically, the ‘knowing’ actor must become innocent, and
each task/action must always become a ‘question’ in the moment
of enactment.
Inhabiting this place of ‘not knowing’ is not a comfortable or
easy place because it requires one’s unrelenting attention. To
inhabit this location, and to achieve an optimal relationship of
the actor to the psychophysical scores described here is only
achieved through rigorous psychophysical training (see Zarrilli
2009, passim). As Goodall asserts, ‘… through the extreme rigors
of performance technique, the body and the mind are torn from
their comfortable lodgement in habit and circumstance’ (Goodall
2008: 159). I would argue that only as rigorous training dislodges
the practitioner from ‘habit and circumstance’ can the performer
be ‘alive’ to the moment of abandonment and surprise. In this
sense only a form of radical training that constantly moves the
performer into a territory of constant discovery, surprise and
‘questioning,’ even in the repetition of exercises that might
become habitual, can such training be effective in allowing the
performance to become available to each moment as it appears in
the now.
The process of embodied ‘questioning’ discussed here and
utilized in Told by the Wind is a way of opening oneself in the
moment to an unknown. When the actor opens into the unknown,
this may also open an imaginative space for the audience in which
they too enter a potentially compelling space of deep ‘listening,’
‘seeing,’ or ‘feeling’21. It is an unusual place because it only exists
on the edge of possibility.
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Works cited
Anonymous (2009) written responses to the Tyn-y-parc preview
performances.
Barba, E. (1995) The Paper Canoe, London: Routledge.
Brook, P. (1979) The Empty Space, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Brown, T. (2010) personal email communication to Phillip Zarrilli, Cardiff.
da Paz, M. (2009) personal email communication to Phillip Zarrilli, Lisbon.
Da Silva, D. (2009) personal email communication to Phillip Zarrilli,
Lisbon.
Dolan, J. (2005) Utopia in Performance, Ann Arbor MI: University of
Michigan Press.
Feral, J. (1982) ‘Performance and Theatricality: The Subject Demystiied’,
Modern Drama, 25, 17081.
Fischer-Lichte, E. (2010) personal interview/discussion, translated by
S. Jain, Berlin 27 April.
——(2008) The Transformative Power of Performance: a new aesthetics,
translated by S. Jain, London: Routledge.
Goodall, J. (2008) Stage Presence, London: Routledge.
Hare, T. (2008) Zeami: Performance Notes, New York: Columbia
University Press.
Kelligan, M. (2010) ‘Told by the Wind’, review Theatre Wales Website.
Online. Available at: www.theatre-wales.co.uk/reviews/reviews_details.
asp?reviewID=2260 (accessed 31 January, 2010).
Mahoney, E. (2010) ‘Told by the Wind’, review The Guardian, 2 February,
2010.
——(2010a) ‘Told by the Wind’, review Guardian.co.uk. Online.
Available at: www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/feb/02/told-by-the-windreview (accessed 28 July 2011).
Marzani, E. (2009) personal email communication to Phillip Zarrilli, Evora.
Nancy, J.-L. (2007) Listening. N.Y.: Fordham University Press.
Nearman, M. (1984) ‘Feeling in Relation to Acting: An Outline of Zeami’s
Views’, Asian Theatre Journal, 1:1, 40–51.
Pavis, P., Yarrow R. and Korklin, B. (1997) ‘Underscore: The Shape of
things to Come’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 6/4, 37–61.
Power, C. (2008) Presence in Play: A Critique of Theories of Presence in the
Theatre, Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Quinn, S. F. (2005) Developing Zeami: the Noh Actor’s Attunement in
Practice. Honolulu HI: University of Hawaii Press.
Riley, J. (1997) Chinese Theatre and the Actor in Performance, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Roach, J. (2004) ‘It’, Theatre Journal, 56, 555–68.
——(2007) It. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Segal, W. (2003) A Voice at the Borders of Silence, New York: Overlook
Press.
‘… presence …’ as a question and emergent possibility
149
Stanislavski, C. (1975) ‘Direction and Acting’, in Toby Cole (ed.) Acting:
A Handbook of the Stanislavski Method, New York: Crown Publishers.
Vale, A. (2010) ‘Told by the Wind’, review British Theatre Guide. Online.
Available at: www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/toldwind-rev.htm
(accessed 5 February 2010).
Zarrili, P. (1995) Acting (Re)considered: A Theoretical and Practical Guide,
London: Routledge.
——(2002) ‘The Metaphysical Studio’, TDR: The Drama Review, 46:2,
157–70.
——(2009) Psychophysical Acting: an intercultural approach after
Stanislavski, London: Routledge.
Notes
1 I use ‘actor’ and ‘performer’ interchangeably throughout this essay.
2 Told by the Wind was produced by The Llanarth Group (Llanarth,
Ceredigion, Wales, UK) – Artistic Director, Phillip Zarrilli. The
Llanarth Group was formed in 2000. I acknowledge, with thanks, the
following support: Told by the Wind was funded in part by the Arts
Council of Wales and an AHRC practice-led grant. I also acknowledge,
with thanks, the support for writing this essay provided by a residency
as a Fellow at the International Research Center, ‘Interweaving
Performance Cultures,’ Freie Universität (Berlin) directed by Prof. Dr
Dr h. c. Erika Fischer-Lichte.
3 Scheduled performances included Exeter Phoenix (11–12 October
2010), The Grotowski Institute, Wroclaw, Poland (22–23 October
2010), and as part of the Chicago Theatre: Past, Present, Future
Symposium (18–21 May 2011).
4 I use of the term ‘score’ to refer to both the visual/auditory/enacted/
tactile elements made available by the actor(s) for the experience of the
audience, as well as what Pavis calls the ‘subscore,’ i.e., that which lies
‘underneath the actor’s visible material score’ (Pavis et al 1997: 29).
The speciic discussion of Told by the Wind which follows provides
speciic examples from the performance score in this larger/expanded
sense of ‘subscore’.
5 For example, see Power 2008: 117–148.
6 Given my phenomenological approach I address some of the issues
examined in Erika Fischer-Lichte’s The Transformative Power of
Performance (Fischer-Lichte 2008).
7 In contrast to ‘presence,’ the simple, literal, phenomenal presence of
the actor need not be set off by quotation marks.
8 Power devotes a chapter (‘Having Presence’) in his book to this ‘strong’
form of ‘presence,’ and coins the speciic term ‘auratic presence’
(Power 2008: 47). For a much earlier critical discussion see Féral
1982.
9 This form of the actor’s presence is most associated with the work of
Jerzy Grotowski and Eugenio Barba. Barba provides the following
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Phillip Zarrilli
description of the how this type of ‘presence’ is derived from the
operation of principles informing pre-expressive modes of training
and embodiment: ‘These principles, when applied to certain
physiological factors – weight, balance, the use of the spinal column
and the eyes – produce physical, pre-expressive tensions. These new
tensions generate an extra-daily quality which renders the body
theatrically ‘decided,’ ‘alive,’ ‘believable,’ thereby enabling the
performer’s ‘presence’ or scenic bios to attract the spectator’s attention
before any message is transmitted’ (Barba 1995: 9). Goodall argues
that this form of ‘effective stage presence … begins with control of the
performer’s own bio-energetic ields’ as the performer maintains ‘a
calmness at the centre of all the sound and fury that adds to the
dramatic power while it is raging’ (Goodall 2008: 48). The type of
processes Barba describes, those I have described in Psychophysical
Acting (2009) as well as in Kathakali Dance-Drama (2000), and
those described later in this essay are grounded in the materiality of
psychophysical processes and should not, therefore, be mystiied. The
actor’s relationship to breath, focus, perception, attentiveness, etc.
may be paradoxical and even non-ordinary; however, I would argue
that this paradoxical/non-ordinary experience is anything but holy or
transcendent. Grotowski’s use of the term ‘holy actor’ should be
understood and examined historically and contextually. Any language
which mystiies the actor’s work I i nd highly problematic and think
has no place in the studio or rehearsal room.
10 As both Fischer-Lichte and Power argue in their own ways, a complete
analysis of how presence works must extend beyond the processes of
embodiment that create or manifest energy and explore additional
issues and/or other modes through which ‘presence’ emerges (see
Fischer-Lichte 2008: 96–100; Power 2008, passim). In this brief essay
I remained focused on one ‘mode of presence’ – the performer’s
relationship to the generation and creation of what is perceived as (‘the
strong concept of’) ‘presence’ in a speciic performance, and the
spectator’s experience of such ‘presence’.
11 Goodall makes the following helpful distinction between presence
and charisma: ‘charisma needs to be understood in a longitudinal
sense, as a heightened life-force that animates a whole career and fuels
the trajectory of a sustained mission in the world. Presence is an
expression of life force in the moment, so that the moment itself is
transformed in a way that has an impact on all who witness it’
(Goodall 2008: 46).
12 In performances with different dramaturgies and a different aesthetic
logic, the type and quality of ‘strong presence’ may be quite different
from that in Told by the Wind. In some of Forced Entertainment’s
productions, such as their recent, ‘And on the thousandth night …’
(Hau 1, Berlin, 2010) or in Spalding Gray’s monologues such as
Swimming to Cambodia, the performer’s mode of presencing is quite
different from ‘strong … presence’ and could be described as ‘cooler’
than that discussed in relation to Told by the Wind. The pleasures of
such performances derive not so much from a heightened intensity of
‘… presence …’ as a question and emergent possibility
13
14
15
16
17
18
151
the performer’s ‘energy’ but an intelligent if ‘everyday’ investment in
what is said. The performer’s mode of being present to her work takes
place in a different register and with a different intensity than that
described here with regard to Told by the Wind.
A future essay will speciically address how Told by the Wind
negotiated in an alternative way the complex issues of intercultural
production.
Our process was enhanced by the presence, feedback, and suggestions
of two artistic consultants – Mari Boyd (Tokyo), a specialist on
Japanese theatre, especially the work of Ota Shogo and ‘the ‘aesthetics
of quietude’ (Boyd 2006), and Peader Kirk, Artistic Director of
Mkultra (London) and a professional theatre director, performance
maker/deviser, and teacher of devising process. They each provided
targeted feedback separately and from their own perspectives for two
days as Told was in development, just prior to the oficial première,
and in response to our initial performances.
Among these seven sources, the i rst three played a central role in the
development of Told dramaturgically and stylistically, the fourth and
i fth contributed somewhat, while the i nal two sources remained in
the background.
Both part of performance score are not present somewhere in the
actor’s brain or mind; rather, these maps exist within the perceptual
experience of each performer as a horizon of possibilities. They have
been gradually sedimented into one’s embodied consciousness through
experimentation and repetition and are available for (re)enactment. At
each performance, in the present moment of doing the actor optimally
does not think about either the dramaturgy as a whole (the ‘ictional’
world) or one’s embodied relationship to speciic tasks/actions; rather,
the performer’s embodied consciousness, awareness and perception
are deployed in relation to each task/action in the moment in two
ways: (1) the actor shapes and deploys his ‘energy’ as he attends to and
embodies each task/action of the score within the dynamic and stylistic
parameters of the performance aesthetic as rehearsed, and (2) the
actor perceives and responds to each stimuli offered in the performance
environment, adjusting as necessary to any new stimuli in the
environment. In an enactive model of acting (Zarrilli 2009: 41–60),
the actor operates with a subjectivity that is constantly shifting as one
tactically improvises – making adjustments to and or from what
presents itself in the moment. Any particular iteration will be both
similar to, but different from previous enactments of the score. The
longer the period of development/rehearsal or performance, the larger
the ield of experience that accumulates as an expanding ield of
possibilities.
I describe here the performance as realized for the premire run at
Chapter Art Centre’s theatre which seats approximately 100.
This section of the essay draws on a i fteen responses to nine
performances: (1) six short anonymous written responses by audience
members written immediately after the work-in-progress showings at
the Tyn-y-parc Studio, Wales; (2) three detailed responses to the
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Phillip Zarrilli
Evora, Portugal performance (received via email); (3) three published
reviews were written in response to the initial run at Chapter Arts
Centre – two (Guardian and Theatre Wales) responsed to the opening
night (29 January 2010), and the British Theatre Guide review was a
response to the 4 February 2010 Chapter performance; (4) three
unsolicited responses to the Cardiff performances – two received by
email and one blog posted on the National Theatre Wales website.
These responses constitute approximately 5% of the total audience for
the nine initial preview and Chapter Art Centre performances. Four
additional opportunities arose for public feedback: (1) a talk-back
after the 5 February 2010 performance at Chapter Art Centre with
approximately 60 audience members present; (2) a talk-back following
the 27 March 2010 performance at Tanzfabrik in Berlin with
approximately thirty-ive audience members present; (3) a 90-minute
discussion with nine Fellows/Staff at the Research Institute for
‘Interweaving Performance Cultures’ at Freie Universität (Berlin) on
10 April 2010, and (4) a discussion with Prof. Erika Fischer-Lichte on
27 April 2010.
19 The psychophysical process I am describing is counter to many
approaches to constructing a character in realist character-based
acting. Asking and answering questions about this ‘other’ or ‘she’
would settle the questioning. The questioning is a form of
psychophysiological activation that should not be settled. This process
activates the actor precisely because the questioning remains unsettled.
20 The process of ‘not knowing’ I am discussing has nothing to do with
problematic notions of getting the actor ‘out of her comfort zone’ and
manipulating the actor’s ‘emotions’. I have described the active state of
readiness and one approach to training the actor toward this state in
Psychophysical Acting (Zarrilli 2009: 81ff).
21 Fischer-Lichte’s analysis calls our attention to the mutuality of
embodied experience which collapses the absolute dichotomies
between actor/spectator and body/mind. She observes how when
spectators experience the ‘strong presence’ of the actors and are
compelled by the intensity of the performance to become completely
engaged in the act of spectating, they may have ‘an intense sensation
of themselves as present’ and even ‘experience themselves as energized’
(Fischer-Lichte 2008: 96). Fischer-Lichte describes this process as
potentially ‘transformative’ in that there is ‘a constant process of
becoming’ – what she calls, ‘the radical concept of presence’ (FischerLichte 2008: 99).
Chapter 8
Out-standing standingwithin
Being alone together in the work
of Bodies of Flight
Simon Jones
Since 1996 Bodies in Flight, co-directed by choreographer Sara
Giddens and myself, has made a series of practice-as-research
works exploring what performance can contribute to our
understanding of the contemporary experience of identity and
knowledge-production (see Jones 2009; 2009a). Inspired by Martin
Heidegger’s and Emmanuel Levinas’ thoughts, I want to describe
how performer–auditor–spectator participation in two of our
performance-events has led me to move from the former’s notion
of ‘preserving’ an art-work within the co-presence of that work
and its participants, to the latter’s insistence that co-presence must
be realized quintessentially as a face-to-face between persons. The
one requires the active deconstruction of our making of ourselves
– what in Bodies in Flight we have come to call de-second-naturing
(see Giddens and Jones 2009; Jones 2007); the other permits its
ethical reconstruction, experienced fundamentally as a togetheraloneness. This leads me to question the limits of ‘interactivity’ as
the current mode through which presence in performance is
increasingly articulated.
In Bodies in Flight’s 2002 performance, skinworks, commissioned by Arnoli ni (Bristol) and Now Festival (Nottingham),
we explored the participants’ co-presence through dislocating
space by rendering an online sex-chatroom actual. Dream→work
(2009), commissioned by Singapore Arts Festival and Nottdance
Festival, desynchronized time to produce its mood of co-presence
by dwelling alongside whilst being-outside-of the morning rushhour. The former asked what happens when a virtual place is
physicalized in the space of the performance-event itself, speciically
what happens to the desires that force that place into being, desires
disembodied in the virtual realm. The latter required its participants
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Simon Jones
to walk through both the space and time of commuting, whilst
listening to the differing rhythms of an ‘every-person’s’ stream of
consciousness mixed live with happenchance street sounds.
Skinworks generated a welcoming and seating of each auditor–
spectator individually, so that their introduction into the space
was collectively noted, and the gathering of the chatroom made
palpable. A seating arrangement emerged whereby each individual
auditor–spectator was isolated in their own space, around which
performers circulated. In this way, people arriving in couples and
groups were separated and seated apart, the i rst seats being
positioned apparently at some distance from each other, the
precision and proximity of the overall seating plan not becoming
clear until the majority were seated. By this means, individuals
were both alone and together, both carrying the sense of joint
arrival and now separated from loved ones. Dream→work’s
auditor–walkers, however, were in the midst of the actual, mixed
right into the present of its occurring, but nevertheless
progressively stepping aside by both stepping inside the
performer’s head and stepping outside the current of events: of
the middle of things, but not in the middle. Thus both works
express a basic principle of Bodies in Flight – always to resensitize each individual audience-spectator to their own
embodied experience of the performance-event (see Machon
2009); to re-express a fundamental drive in all performance: this
gathering of the asocial (see Blau 1990).
For Bodies in Flight then, the performance-event is a privileged
site for modelling the possibilities of bodies mixing: performer–
auditor–spectator–participant. It is this middle that meddles: a
mixing of leshes, between and within bodies artiicially delimited.
I now realize that skinworks, in making the virtual place of the
chatroom actual, was ex-posing the crucial difference between the
so-called interactivity of that digital realm and the essential copresence of performance. And even with Dream→work when
eschewing the obvious disembodiedness of internet technologies
and working within the very intensities of the everyday commute,
passing close by others can often be alienating, as if one were not
actually there. Both these works came to be about the dificulty
with immediacy: that it is not immediate. Moreover, the particular
co-presence of performance challenges our easy recourse to the
technological solution for problems of engagement, participation
and citizenship – interactivity.
Out-standing standing-within
155
Figure 8.1 Bodies in Flight, skinworks (2002). Photo: Edward Dimsdale.
Indeed, the seductive illusion of speed and dependence on lastminute-dot-com service industries both drive contemporary culture
to pare down the instance of response: by closing up the space
between call and answer, this apparently immediate disclosure
lends to any exchange the force of a presence. This instant
gratiication reinforces not only ‘the need for speed,’ but the sense
of belonging inherent in the response made to the call: I exist
because I am interacting: to tweet or not to tweet, that is the
question. The interactive appears to accelerate time and condense
space: a self-fuli lling immediacy with all the force of touch,
without a space between, without a channel or medium –
im-mediate. However, this interactive force, despite its coupling of
the cultures of advanced capital to the converging technologies of
trans-national industries, with their apparently benign claims of
greater personal choice and freedom, actually occludes all that will
not yield itself easily in an instant. Within interactivity’s eventness,
the possibilities of a face-to-face encounter are degraded to an
inter-acting. Even Nicolas Bourriaud, the champion of ‘relational
aesthetics,’ recognizes this fundamental problem with interactive
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Simon Jones
technologies. ‘The “society of the spectacle” (see Debord 1992) is
thus followed by the society of extras, where everyone inds the
illusion of an interactive democracy in more or less truncated
channels of communication’ (Bourriaud 2002: 26). To inter-act
with the other becomes a tasking, rather than a being-with, such
that the other can be re-placed by a machine that does a passable
impersonation of the other, that is, a machine that does the same
tasks: the Turing test, the computer on the other end of the phone
that ‘speaks’ in the i rst person. Space is not opened out so that one
can see oneself in relation to the other: it is collapsed so that
distance, which gives a place for difference to happen, cannot be
felt. And time is i lled with tasking, so that one cannot stop to
think, since this kind of thinking – the recognizing the other –
must have its own time to contemplate the scene, i rst with the
other, then of the other.
Claire Bishop’s critique of Bourriaud’s description of relational
aesthetics focuses on their often game-like structure, with de facto
rules and predictable outcomes. As Bourriaud himself had noted
– ‘Artistic activity is a game, whose forms, patterns and functions
develop and evolve according to periods and social contexts; it is
not an immutable essence’ (Bourriaud 2002: 11). To which she
responds: ‘One could argue that in this context, project-based
works-in-progress and artists-in-residence begin to dovetail with
an “experience economy”, the marketing strategy which seeks to
replace goods and services with scripted and staged personal
experiences’ (Bishop 2004: 52). Interactivity requires that one not
only ‘respond’ to the next stimulus, but that the information
exchanged be ‘relevant,’ appropriate, proper, thus ensuring the
disappearance of difference, or more accurately, at best its nonappearance and at worse the suppression of its appearing.
Communicating re-places communion; a commun-icating only
possible because grounded on the previously agreed norms of a
third party, of society. Indeed, Bishop is right to criticize Bourriaud’s
overemphasizing the audience-spectator’s radical interest in the
relational art-work ‘as fundamentally harmonious, because they
are addressed to a community of viewing subjects with something
in common’ (Bishop 2004: 68, original emphasis). She calls for
participatory work which provokes the differences between
individuals and troubles the very relations through which the work
works: ‘the presence of what is not me renders my identity
precarious and vulnerable, and the threat that the other represents
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transforms my own sense of self into something questionable.
When played out on a social level, antagonism can be viewed as
the limits of society’s ability to fully constitute itself’ (Bishop
2004: 66–7, original emphasis).
This analysis echoes one of Heidegger’s key dei nitions of the
art-work:
In setting up a world and setting forth the earth, the work is an
instigating of […] strife. This does not happen so that the work
should at the same time settle and put an end to strife by an
insipid argument, but so that the strife may remain a strife. […]
It is because the strife arrives at its high point in the simplicity
of intimacy that the unity of the work comes about in the
instigation of strife.
(Heidegger 1978: 175)
Furthermore, for Heidegger this strife is where ‘opponents raise
each other into the self-assertion of their essential natures […] each
opponent carries the other beyond itself’ (1978: 174).
Levinas’ objection to simple physical proxemics also echoes
Bishop’s objections and can equally be applied to the participatory
art-work: ‘The idea of contact does not represent the primordial
mode of the immediate. Contact is already a thematization and a
reference to a horizon. The immediate is the face-to-face’ (Levinas
1969: 52). In inter-‘acting,’ one is fully ‘occupied’ in this to-and-fro
of exchanging: in effect, one acts or plays the ‘part’ of being
inbetween – ‘inter’. One is not dwelling in the space-time of the
event as oneself, but explicitly as not-oneself, as an-other (anyother) who only appears to the extent that their qualities can be
interactive, that is, expressed as turns taken in the exchange, moves
made explicitly in order to sustain that exchange, the commun(e)icating. This means that the an-other can only ever be normative:
a part-other, an un-whole-other, ultimately an unreal other who
cannot become as real as one is oneself, even in the intimacy of the
exchange’s turn-taking. This in turn effectively reduces the capacity
of one’s own self to become, as Heidegger pointed out in Being and
Time:
In these modes [of averageness] one’s way of Being is that of
inauthenticity and failure to stand by one’s Self. […] The Self
of everyday Dasein is the they-self, which we distinguish from
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the authentic Self – that is, from the Self which has been taken
hold of in its own way. […] Proximally, it is not ‘I,’ in the sense
of my own Self, that ‘am,’ but rather the Others, whose way is
that of ‘they’. In terms of ‘they,’ and as the ‘they,’ I am ‘given’
proximally to ‘myself’.
(Heidegger 1962: 167, original emphases)
Against this, performance’s face-to-face of othernesses has no
such beforehand under-standings or under-pinnings. This
encounter goes beyond normative interaction, which requires of
the self that its other be already like it-self, towards an altogether
different becoming. I would argue that this radical potentiality of
the face-to-face accounts for the so-called ‘live’ event’s remarkable
resistance to the seductiveness of interactive technologies. Against
what has been repeatedly asserted in advance of each new wave of
digital technology, the ‘recorded’ has not re-placed the ‘live’. Whilst
the latter has become ever more imbricated with the former’s
technologies, it resists a i nal, ironic (dis)appearance on to the
screen: for example, the resurgence of bands playing gigs, whilst
their music is downloaded for free from ile-sharing sites,
demonstrates not only the bands’ refusal to disappear commercially,
but also their listeners’ desire to experience them in the lesh.
Indeed, the Auslander–Phelan debate in Performance Studies has
tended to describe the performance as a quasi-object, which can
only be accessed by way of recorded media or doomed to a Pyrrhic
vanishing before the forces of commodiication. To this extent, it
has continued Derrida’s deconstruction of Artaud’s valorization of
‘pure presence,’ without considering Derrida’s telling admission
that theatre is ‘neither a book nor a work, but an energy, and in
this sense it is the only art of life’ (Derrida 1978: 247). If we think
of performance less in terms of its textuality or its thingness, we
are left with what remains – its eventness. And here the experiential,
phenomenological approach, laid out by Heidegger in his deinition
of the art-work and developed by Levinas, will help us to understand
more clearly performance’s unique contribution to (human) life.
The artist performs a crucial function in Heidegger’s ontology:
‘In the being of the artist we encounter the most perspicuous and
most familiar mode of will to power. Since it is a matter of
illuminating the Being of beings, meditation on art has in this
regard decisive priority’ (Heidegger 1981: 70). And yet it is the
inter-relationship between art-work and auditor–spectator where
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the work happens: for Heidegger, it is only truly made in its
preserving, that is, in the work that those who did not author the
work contribute to its making.
Preserving the work means standing within the openness of
beings that happens in the work. This ‘standing-within’ of
preservation, however, is a knowing. […] He who truly knows
beings knows what he wills to do in the midst of them. […]
[T]he essence of Existenz is out-standing standing-within the
essential sunderance of the clearing of beings.
(Heidegger 1978: 192)
The art-work only exists through the complicit and inclusive
encountering of communal attending, of spending time together:
‘A work, by being a work, makes space for that spaciousness. […]
The work as work sets up a world. The work holds open the open
region of the world’ (Heidegger 1978: 170). Furthermore, the
precise deinition of ‘knowing’ is also one of difference, of standing
out in the crowd, of recognizing that this very inbetween, across
which we come together, is also a gap that divides us, an incomplete
medium, or rather, a bundling of media (middles) each with their
very own kind of incompleteness, a cleft cleaving both unto and
asunder at one and the same time and one and the same point in
space. Or as Stephen Mulhall writing on Heidegger puts it:
[W]orking out an ontological characterization of Dasein is not
just an essential preliminary to, but forms the central core of,
fundamental ontology. […] First, and most importantly then,
Dasein is said to be distinctive amongst entities in that it does
not just occur; rather, its Being is an issue for it.
(Mulhall 1996: 14).
So, this ‘knowing’ jointly sustains an attending to not-knowing
or the issue of knowing, that is, performance’s quintessential work
– the problem of the person. The art-work becomes that which is
jointly preserved as a problem of knowing what it is to be a person:
the art-work remains in its asociability, its extra-ordinariness, only
for as long as the citizen, that is, the social form of the person, has
not yet incorporated what differentiates it from the person, which
is precisely the person’s problem of becoming, out-standing
standing-within. This is also why performance as a way of knowing
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the world is always a re-turning to or re-using: as child’s play
returns to what fascinates, as in delights or perturbs, that which is
not yet understood, so artists and audiences return to performance
texts or reviving plays or sustaining performance traditions. This
is performance’s way of preserving the working through of the
problem of being human, that licenses us, as in the sense of – gives
us a space-time, a where-when to dwell in these unknowables.
[Poetry as] language, by naming beings for the i rst time, i rst
brings beings to word and to appearance. Only this naming
nominates beings to their Being and from out of their Being.
Such saying is a projecting of clearing, in which announcement
is made of what it is that beings come into the open as. […]
Projective saying is saying which, in preparing the sayable,
simultaneously brings the unsayable as such into a world.
(Heidegger 1978: 198–9, original emphases)
In skinworks, the performers take each auditor–spectator by the
hand and lead them individually to their seat. This sweaty touch is
the only physical contact between any persons in the entire work.
By the uncertain, sometimes smiling looks on their faces, it was an
intimacy both felt and to be endured which forced open the
impossible dimensionality of the chatroom, by way of each person’s
re-sensing of their own embodiedness in the space, their own
participating in the event.
Ontically, of course, Dasein is not only close to us – even that
which is closest: we are it, each of us, we ourselves. In spite of
this, or rather for just this reason, it is ontologically that which
is farthest.
(Heidegger 1962: 36, original emphasis)
In crossing underneath a large, suspended screen, upon which
webcam video-clips were being manipulated by the performers,
each auditor–spectator not only crossed from their everyday,
normalized space into the extra-ordinary ictional space, but transformed from a they into an own-self. And since for Heidegger, the
‘subject’ is not in space, but of it: this could only have been felt
spatially as a moving across and between, as a being towards:
‘[B]ecause Dasein is “spiritual”, and only because of this, it can be
spatial in a way which remains essentially impossible for any
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extended corporeal Thing. Dasein’s making room for itself is
constituted by directionality and de-severance’ (Heidegger 1962:
419, original emphasis).
So, although ‘essentially impossible,’ the re-sensing of the
performance space as virtual chatroom was made palpable through
the moving across and the unexpected intimacy of being touched.
And this coming out of the anonymity of the crowd, who had up
until then been watching the event from the other side of the
projection screen, was experienced as a hyper awareness of the
bodily self, an appearing as one’s own-self amongst a host of
others, who were now listening to the ‘chat’ of that impossible
place – a co-presence of being alone together. This crossing of
media, from the predominantly visual to the predominantly aural,
forcing each participant to transform from spectator to auditor,
further re-in-forced the re-appearing of each one’s own-self, as
looking around or at each other or at the performers became
patently undoable for many. The very intimacy of this re-sensitizing
not only reinforced this paradoxical co-presence of being alone
together, but expressed it as a problem of becoming a person, as
Being at issue with its own Being (see Jones 2008 for further
discussion of this work).
this body feels so strange tonight
ill-itting
like I’m performing it rather than living it
a quasi-thing hardly crediting this quasi-real
look
somebody, look at this
halfway through a riff that’s suddenly playing itself
makes you kind of queasy cos you know you’re in for the ride
but high so high
cos it can’t be you that’s doing these things
you can’t be held responsible
sex without secretions, ha
a world of blame and not a single guilty soul.
Skinworks concludes with the physical body exhausted as the
still desiring mind runs out of imaginings, confronting both the
endless, inhuman space of the internet and the ini nite possibilities
of desire without bodies: in facing this void, it confronts the central
crisis of Heideggerian ontology. However necessary to the art-
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work the co-presence of its auditor–spectators, and however
decisive the artist’s work to the problem of Being, for Heidegger all
this is fundamentally stymied by death: ‘Death is the possibility of
the absolute impossibility of Dasein. Thus death reveals itself as
that possibility which is one’s ownmost, which is non-relational,
and which is not to be outstripped’ (Heidegger 1962: 294, original
emphasis). Not only is the individual’s death theirs and no one
else’s, this unique and impenetrable relation is what most dei nes
the individual’s life: in Heidegger’s terms, it offers them the way to
live authentically: ‘Dasein is the possibility of Being-free for its
ownmost potentiality-for-Being’ (Heidegger 1962: 183). If, as an
art-work, performance’s dei ning relation is the co-presence, not
of thing–work–auditor–spectator, but of performer–auditor–
spectator, then the ontological isolation of each person, dei ned by
their own death, renders this relation unworkable: this co-presence
can preserve nothing but the impossibility of its own becoming. It
is now-here, outstanding the everyday and standing within the
performance-event, that I want to introduce Levinas’ crucial
amendment to Heidegger’s ontology which, I believe, gives
performance as an art-form its particular potential: the participation
of the other in this problem of the person.
For Levinas this embodied encounter between two persons is
actually the unspeakable and indeterminable point when-where
we experience both the concreteness and the possibility of our
humanity, what he terms its totality (the ideologies and practices
within which we conduct our daily lives) and its ini nity (the
absolute possibilities of the universe within which we live which
automatically and necessarily challenge us both in fear of death
and in hope of justice): ‘The thou is posited in front of a we’
(Levinas 1969: 213). Performance puts an individual before
another before a host of others: it actualizes Levinas’ idea – ‘The
individual and the personal are necessary for Ini nity to be able
to be produced as ini nite’ (Levinas 1969: 218, original emphasis).
In doing so, performance draws attention to the very possibilities
of this encounter: its deconstructive work actually enacts them
within the event: it produces them, as in forces them to appear
[pro-ducare: to lead forth], within this relation of face-to-face,
not necessarily literally, but always the putting somehow of some
one before some other. And this very action both grounds
performance and allows its essential co-presence to overcome
death.
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The approach, inasmuch as it is a sacriice, confers a sense on
death. In it the absolute singularity of the responsible one
encompasses the generality or generalization of death. […] But
we can have responsibilities and attachments through which
death takes on a meaning. That is because, from the start, the
other affects us despite ourselves.
(Levinas 1998: 129)
Levinas is careful to insist that the face-to-face should not be
limited to a literal encounter, although it can only happen by way
of that concrete singularity: the very embodied and experiential
speciicity provokes the potentiality of the human confronting the
possibilities of ini nity.
The way in which the other presents himself, exceeding the
idea of the other in me, we here name face. This mode does not
consist in iguring as a theme under my gaze, in spreading itself
forth as a set of qualities forming an image. The face of the
Other at each moment destroys and overlows the plastic image
it leaves me, the idea existing to my own measure and to the
measure of its ideatum – the adequate idea. […] It expresses
itself.
(Levinas 1969: 50-1, original emphases)
Furthermore, that facing goes beyond Heidegger’s solicitude of one
Being to another: the approach requires an answer; and the
response always entails a responsibility impossible to fulil.
[I]n vulnerability lies a relation to the other that is not
exhausted by causality, a relation prior to all affection by the
stimulus. The identity of the self does not set limits to
submission, not even the last resistance that matter ‘in
potential’ opposes to the form that invests it. Vulnerability is
obsession by others or approach to others. […] An approach
reduced neither to representation of others nor to consciousness of proximity.
(Levinas 2006: 64, original emphasis)
In a recent article, Simon Bayly builds on Bruce Wilshire’s
earlier insight that ‘The intimate relationship between actor and
auditor is not a face-to-face encounter, but a presence in a “mask”
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indwelling a presence “without a face”’ (Wilshire 1982: 96). Bayly
asserts that performance’s contribution to an understanding of
Levinas’ facing is to make the difference between presentation of
self and the self itselves problematic.
What a theatrical thinking offers in response [to Levinas’
notion of vulnerability and self-effacement] is that the function
of a mask is not to hide the face as site of pure revelation of the
individual soul but rather to reveal it as complicated and
complicating igure of appearance. […] In erasing the
distinction between mask and face, the graphic symbol of the
personae announces the impossibility of a pure appearing or a
simple revelation of selfhood.
(Bayly 2008: 29)
Levinas would argue that the appearance is always already the
mask of an image, which the approach of a face undoes formally
and ethically in requiring ini nite responsibility: ‘Proximity appears
as the relationship with the other, who cannot be resolved into
“images” or be exposed in a theme’ (Levinas 1998: 100). This is
vulnerability without bounds in the concrete-ness of the speciic
encounter. In using the metaphor of the same approaching the
other, Levinas precisely describes a process of appearing,
dis-appearing and re-appearing, inherent in the movement towards,
thence away from, and re-turning back towards, the other. This
movement – variously described in theatrical terms as ‘an entry’ or
‘visitation,’ fundamental to appearance, appearing before the
other, even appearing on stage, necessitates instability, un-doing
and re-doing in its insistence on the dynamics of approaching the
other, a touching without ever reaching, always underway and
never undergone, always in action and never done. This is the
sensing of the matter materializing, rather than the ostensible
appearance of matter materialized, the (quasi-)thing that can only
be pointed to. This approaching is thus a pre-position-ing, before
either the performer takes a stand or the auditor–spectator understands, before the place is occupied, the point is made, when-where
‘we’ ‘know’ ‘where’ ‘we’ ‘are’. Thence-then the possibility of true
communion, on the outside of inter-acting, without rules, disclosing
in ini nite depth what it means to be human: a clearing always
underway as clearing: immediacy as ini nite un-doing of itself: an
ini nite self-un-doing.
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The absolute experience [of the Other] is not disclosure but
revelation: a coinciding of the expressed with him who expresses,
which is the privileged manifestation of the Other, the
manifestation of a face over and beyond form. […] The life of
expression consists in undoing the form in which the existent,
exposed as a theme, is thereby dissimulated. […] He who manifests
himself […] at each instant undoes the form he presents.
(Levinas 1969: 62, original emphasis)
Dream→work attempts to place both Heidegger’s being alonetogetherness and Levinas’ call of the Other into the very everyday
from which the art-work essentially lees. A group of twelve auditorwalkers follow two performers through the streets of a city (to date
– Bristol, Nottingham and Singapore) during the morning rush-hour,
listening through earpieces to the internal monologue of an everyperson in the daily process of re-constructing their publicly facing
self, moving from dreamtime to realtime. The literal face-to-face and
touch of skinworks is re-placed by a more complex encounter: the
performers disappear into the crowd only to re-appear indirectly by
way of the gathered gazes of the auditor–walkers. The very sharing
of public space, the middle-ground of the everyday, re-in-forces the
complex co-presence of auditor–performer–crowd, who ‘perform’
Levinas’ third party and force out of the immediate now-here of the
performance-walk a confronting of what it is possible to become,
that is, for Levinas, the problem of justice.
You will have seen him on the tram … and he will have been
the one who got away … like the others. It’s so hard to see the
someone else as whole. You will have glimpsed them on the
tram, cutting across your path, cutting you up, whatever …
in your road or in your face … and then how hard to think
of them as a whole person just like you. Yes, you will have
known they have their human rights, are equal under the law
… supposedly … in an ideal world. But … how hard to think
and feel him wholly there … her wholly there … whole in this
world … before you … you as me. Before an us that will have
made perfect sense of you and me, of all the possible yous and
mes, will have admitted all-comers to the completeness of this
you and this me, an absolute open only us.
(heard at Broadmarsh Shopping Centre, Nottingham
whilst looking at commuters using the escalators)
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Figure 8.2 Bodies in Flight, Dream→work, Nottingham (2009).
Photo: Tony Judge.
Unlike skinworks’ re-spatializing, this co-presencing amongst
the everyday is not essentially experienced spatially, but temporally,
as a de-synchronizing of times. The ever-increasing tempo of
living, as Paul Virilio has described, is articulated through
technologies which effectively repress all other times to clock-time:
the eficiency requirements of the rail network and the factory
production-line dominate the chronologies of bodies, weather
systems and the earth. Whereas for Heidegger, our experiencing of
time passing is further evidence of our Being’s ontological isolation
– ‘Temporality is the primordial “out-side-of-itself” in and for
itself. We therefore call the phenomenon of the future, the character
of having been, and the Present, the “ecstasies” of temporality’
(Heidegger 1962: 377, original emphases) – for Levinas, the jointed
times of encountering the other articulates this primary couple
with all the other others:
[T]he contemporaneousness of the multiple is tied about the
diachrony of two: justice remains justice only, in a society
where there is no distinction between those close and those far
off, but in which there also remains the impossibility of passing
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by the closest. […] The other as other, as a neighbour, is in his
presence never equal to his proximity. […] Between the one I
am and the other for whom I am responsible there gapes open
a difference, without a basis in community. […] Proximity is a
difference, a non-coinciding, an arrhythmia in time.
(Levinas 1998: 159 and 166, emphases added)
In this sense of proximity and temporal dissociation, Dream→work
steps over the middle ground (space) where we all necessarily live
with our commonsense and our ideologies: it jumps over the gerund
(time) of living whilst still remaining in the midst, in the middle of
things, as the work happens on the streets. It oscillates between
immediates (that which happens there and then before the
participants) and profounds (that which is at the deepest reach or
furthest throw of the mind and so cannot be there and then). In this
sense, Dream→work invites its auditor–walkers to enter into a
communion in the midst of the (technological) corporate, each in
their own way, to see the corporate as if from the outside of the
everyday problems of agency and attachment for what each thinks it
is, and yet from the point of view of the communion of the
performance’s contingent, temporary host. Thus in Singapore the
background synchronization of inancing and trading is interpellated
by each walkers’ heightened sensory awareness of their own nows of
being there then in the streets of that particular Central Business
District. This is provoked by opening up sonically the various gaps
in each one’s embodied mode of walking those very streets through
feeding back live sound-grabs, re-presenting the present aural
environment. The other of time is set forth diachronically through
texts which open up the possibilities of other times (with their
places), of children and death, provoking memories and hopes
through jointly listening to and having to consider these possibles in
the face-to-face with the performer – the other as distinct from
everyday capital’s an other, any other, quasi-other.
Paradoxically, in order to clear a space for these possible times
to be produced – the instances of immediates and the reveries of
profounds, Dream→work steps over its own locality. Since we
necessarily must be in the midst of things somewhere, to dwell in
the temporality of the cultural speciic with its ideological
constraints would simply be to re-produce them in a reductive
Marxist sense. In stepping over the middle-ground, we still leave
the auditor–walkers as the carriers of that middle, in fact the actual
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Figure 8.3 Bodies in Flight, Dream→work, Singapore (2009).
Courtesy of spell#7 performance. Photographer: Yuen Chee Wai.
possibles of that middle. They work the middle, which we step
over; they respond from that middle to our producing of the
immediates and profounds. And this answering the call of what is
there and could be there, from within the there, places them both
within the middle of things and outside it. They become aware of
their together aloneness: they are the necessary middle; or rather,
the necessary being in the middle of things, amongst the host
amidst things. The rhythms of the work force them to step aside in
two opposing directions simultaneously: towards the immediate,
what is passed over and no longer noticed; and towards the
profound, what cannot normally be borne in the rush of the
everyday and so is passed under, since there is not normally time to
disclose it and open it out.
So, as the work is peopled by a host of such ideological
enactments, it is relieved of doing that work itself. Furthermore,
Dream→work’s refusal to dwell in that middle, the absence of the
speciics of that cultural, ideological matrix calls forth the presence
of the auditor–walkers’ own ideologies: space without ideology
admits the possibilities not of a ‘non-ideological’ place, but of a
reconiguring and reconstituting of space-time with the ideological.
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And that reconiguring is properly the future work of the auditorwalkers themselves after our work in the work is done, since they
must live in that space once we are gone.
The act of consciousness is motivated by the presence of a third
party alongside of the neighbour approached. A third party is
also approached; and the relationship between the neighbour
and the third party cannot be indifferent to me when I
approach. There must be a justice among incomparable ones.
There must be a comparison amongst incomparables and a
synopsis, a togetherness and contemporaneousness; there must
be thematization, thought, history and inscription.
(Levinas 1998: 16)
Thus the clearing of Dream→work must be predicated, in our
case – literally grounded, on its relation to the everyday, whence it
emerges and through which every participant must have passed in
order to reach this clearing and be involved in the work. For the
work to be i rst recognized as a work, in order for its preserving to
become possible, it must be different from that everyday: it must
produce its very relation to the everyday as its work. This echoes
what for Heidegger is the very dei nition of Being – that for Being
its own being is an issue for it: art’s relation with the everyday is
hence posed as a problem for the work and its participants and
their own relatings to the world whence they have jointly emerged
in the preserving of the work. To see the world thence askance is to
see it as if for the i rst time, and so to see what it is possible to do
with that world. And not incidentally, that seeing of the
Heideggerian ‘earth’ must be by way of the Levinasian ‘element’
and from the point of view of Merleau-Ponty’s ‘lesh,’ that which is
normally occluded and hidden by everyday technology and
ideology and habitude, having the occasion to disclose itself fully.
In this way, even those very lived technologies, ideologies and
corporeal habits of movement and thought are turned against
themselves to ex-pose what they normally en-close: to set the
earth, the element, the lesh forth before the preserving participants.
Thence performance cannot be interactive: its participatory
aesthetics must be by way of and about presence: to be in the
co-presence of is to appear before the other, performer–auditor–
spectator, a face-to-face, as Levinas described it, of absolute
alterity. Performance poses, as in positions or places, the problem
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of the other, which is as much as to say the problem of oneself, of
becoming a person: poses this problem of the other before each
other: two others mutually recognizing the other othering.
The idea of Ini nity is transcendence itself, the overlowing of
an adequate idea. If totality cannot be constituted it is because
Ini nity does not permit itself to be integrated. It is not the
insuficiency of the I that prevents totalization, but the Ini nity
of the Other.
(Levinas 1969: 80)
Works cited
Bayly, S. (2008) ‘Figuring the Face’, Performance Research, 13:4, 25–37.
Bishop, C. (2004) ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’, October, 110,
51–79.
Blau, H. (1990) The Audience, Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University
Press.
Bourriaud, N. (2002 [1998]) Relational Aesthetics, translated by
S. Pleasance and F. Woods, Dijon: Les Presses du Réel.
Debord, G. (1992) The Society of Spectacle, London: Rebel Press.
Derrida, J. (1978 [1967]) Writing and Difference, translated by A. Bass,
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Giddens, S. and Jones, S. (2009) ‘De-second Naturing: Word Unbecoming
Flesh in the Work of Bodies in Flight’, in S. Broadhurst and J. Machon
(eds) Sensualities/ Textualities and Technologies: Writings of the Body in
21st Century Performance, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 38–50.
Heidegger, M. (1962 [1927]) Being and Time, translated by J. Macquarrie
and E. Robinson, London: Camelot Press.
——(1978) ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ in M. Heidegger Basic Writings,
edited by D. F. Krell, London: Routledge, 143–89.
——(1981) Nietzsche – Volume 1: ‘The Will to Power as Art’, translated by
D. F. Krell, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Jones, S. (2007) Imag[in]ing the Void. Online. Available at: http://presence.
standford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/1173 (accessed 27 July 2011).
——(2008) ‘Places Inbetween: I do not have to be there with you tonight,
A Case Study of Bodies In Flight’s Performance skinworks’, in
D. Cecchetto, N. Cuthbert, J. Lassonde and D. Robinson (eds) Collision:
Interarts Practice and Research, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press,
245–60.
——(2009) ‘The Courage of Complementarity’, in L. Allegue, S. Jones,
B. Kershaw and A. Piccini (eds) Practice as Research in Performance and
Screen, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 19–32.
Out-standing standing-within
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——(2009a) ‘Working on the Middle Ground: a Case study of Institutional
Inter-action about Practice-as-Research’, in L. Hunter and S. R. Riley
(eds) Mapping Landscapes for Peformance: Scholarly Acts and Creative
Cartographies, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 14–25.
Levinas, E. (1969 [1961]) Totality and Ininity – an essay on exteriority,
translated by A. Lingis, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
——(1998 [1974]) Otherwise than Being, translated by A. Lingis,
Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
——(2006 [1972]) Humanism of the Other, translated by N. Poller,
Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Machon, J. (2009) (Syn)aesthetics? Towards a Definition of Visceral
Performance, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mulhall, S. (1996) Heidegger and Being and Time, London: Routledge.
Virilio, P. (1986 [1977]) Speed and Politics, translated by M. Polizzotti,
New York: Semiotext(e).
Wilshire, B. (1982) Role Playing and Identity: the limits of theatre as
metaphor, Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.
Chapter 9
Mis-spectatorship, or,
‘redistributing the sensible’
Nicholas Ridout
‘Who’s there?’ Herbert Blau has already established this opening
question, uttered by Barnardo as the i rst words of Hamlet, as
perhaps the key question for any study of the theatrical audience.
As Blau himself observes, the study of the audience is beset with
dificulties regarding the presence of its object. The problem often
seems to be that there’s no one there. Or that no one who attempts
to respond to Barnardo ever turns out to have the right credentials,
whether they offer themselves as sociological data or personal
confession. These dificulties are particularly acute in the context
of the widely held conviction, especially among those of us who
practice ‘spectator studies’ (of which more in a moment), that it is
the audience or spectator who produces meaning in and around
the theatrical event. Blau writes:
We can speak as we wish of the audience’s producing meaning,
as if that were somehow a solution to the complexities of
power, but we are still left with the problem of evaluating
the meaning which is produced and equilibrating it with
the balance of power. While this is dificult enough with the
individual spectator (or reader), what are we really to make of
the continuing sentiments about collectivity that are, more
than with other forms, still encouraged by the folk-lore and
institutions of theatre?
(Blau 1990: 280)
So this essay, which seeks to ‘make’ something – an argument,
perhaps – out of the presence of the spectator, must confess from
the very start that it has no answer to Barnardo’s question, while
attempting at least to ‘make’ something of the ‘sentiments’ by
Mis-spectatorship, or, ‘redistributing the sensible’
173
means of which we sustain our belief in the audience’s capacity to
‘make’ meaning.
More recently, in the context of an ongoing investigation of the
potential for the production of knowledge by attending to the work
of expert-practitioners, Susan Melrose has suggested that much of
what passes itself off today as performance studies might better be
understood as ‘spectator studies’ (Melrose 2006: 120–2). In
particular, Melrose is persuaded that the two activities – expert
performance-making and expert spectatorship – are incommensurable. This only becomes a problem when one expert – the expert
spectator – claims to produce knowledge that might stand for or
above the knowledge produced by the other – the maker of
performance. In this essay I want to make sure that spectator
studies comes out of the closet in which Melrose suggests it usually
takes refuge. I also want to trouble the notion of expertise that
seems to underpin the knowledge produced by means of spectator
studies. For a measure of inexpertise may be crucial to an
interruption of the consensus around value to which experts, both
performance makers and spectators, routinely contribute, a consensus in which we agree only to see and hear what we already
know.
One name for that consensus (which is as political as it is
aesthetic) is what Jacques Rancière calls ‘the distribution of the
sensible’. For Rancière ‘the distribution of the sensible’ refers to the
entire system of social and cultural processes, codes, values and
material realities through which we jointly understand the world,
and according to which we make our judgements about what and
who belongs where, who has the right to speak and be heard, who
counts when it matters, and who gets to be recognized as an expert.
Rancière’s aesthetics thus involves a call for that consensus to be
interrupted by politics:
Politics occurs when those who ‘have no’ time take the time
necessary to front up as inhabitants of a common space and
demonstrate that their mouths really do emit speech capable of
making pronouncements on the common which cannot be
reduced to voices signalling pain. This distribution and
redistribution of places and identities, this apportioning of
spaces and times, of the visible and the invisible, and of noise
and speech constitutes what I call the distribution of the
sensible. Politics consists in reconiguring the distribution of
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Nicholas Ridout
the sensible which dei nes the common of a community, to
introduce into it new subjects and objects, to render visible
what had not been, and to make heard as speakers those who
had been perceived as mere noisy animals.
(Rancière 2009: 24–5)
It will therefore be the igure of the mis-spectator around whom
this attempt at reconiguration will be organized. This inexpert
igure closely resembles Rancière’s ‘emancipated spectator,’ who,
in his essay of that title (see Rancière 2009a), emerges as the
producer of meaning upon whom the theatre does not need to
exercise its powers of educational reform. Rancière departs in this
respect from the thinking of Bertolt Brecht, for whom the
production of the ‘expert spectator’ was a crucial element in the
reform of the theatre in the interests of politics (see, for example,
Brecht’s notes on how to make ‘a theatre full of experts’ in Brecht
1964: 44). For Rancière, Brecht’s error lies in the assumption that
the spectator begins as in-expert and un-emancipated, in need of
prosthetic support (see Rancière 2009a). I should therefore be
clear, right now, that as far as I am concerned, there is nothing
whatsoever wrong with the mis-spectator.
The mis-spectator is in his seat. At least he is where he is
supposed to be. Present and correct. He has accustomed himself to
the fact that there is only one stage for everyone, and he is happy
to i nd that the presence of other spectators does not impede his
view. This is ‘because, thanks to an arrangement which is, as it
were, symbolical of all spectatorship, everyone feels himself to be
the centre of the theatre’ (Proust 1989: 482). Centre stage, then, ‘as
it were,’ the mis-spectator now understands why Françoise had
said, on her return from a melodrama which she had watched from
the highest gallery, that she had had the best seat in the house.
Does the mis-spectator not mis-spectate spectatorship here? This
‘arrangement’ of which he speaks, or rather, writes, is normally
understood to be ‘symbolical’ of a certain social and spectatorial
hierarchy, in which, so the story goes, the best seat in the house is
assigned to the King, and in which servants such as Françoise make
do with the side-effects of an auditorium organized around the
gaze of their sovereign. This theatre, though, makes a King of
Françoise, or so the mis-spectator would give us to believe.
So the mis-spectator is in his seat, feeling, perhaps, a little like a
King himself. And he is experiencing pleasure, still. At least that is
Mis-spectatorship, or, ‘redistributing the sensible’
175
what the author would give us to believe. For let us recall, here and
now, that the mis-spectator is a boy named Marcel, and that his
author is the novelist Marcel Proust, and that it is Proust, or
perhaps even a narrator function designed by the same Proust, who
holds Marcel’s mis-spectatorship up for our attention. At this point
in the novel – the beginning of volume three of twelve – we do not,
strictly speaking, even know that the boy’s name is Marcel,
although we may have assumed as much from the autobiographical
nature of the text, Proust’s twelve-volume novel A la recherche du
temps perdu.
So, the mis-spectator is enjoying himself, we give ourselves to
understand. There he is, in his seat, the right seat, the best seat, the
only seat he has. The curtain rises on a writing table and a i replace,
and still, his pleasure ‘endures’ (Proust 1989: 482). He has time to
relect that these ordinary objects mean that the actors who are
about to present themselves will not be like actors come ‘to recite,’
but that they will, instead, be ‘real people’ upon whom he will be
able to ‘spy,’ without being seen. His presence will not interfere
with their presence to him. Strange that the very objects that might
recall the homes and drawing rooms in which he had previously
witnessed actors reciting at evening parties should here convince
him that this time he will see ‘real people, just living their lives at
home.’ The representation of a home by means of a writing table
and a i replace seems to present to the mis-spectator a far more
convincing representation of home than home itself.
His pleasure, remember, still ‘endures’. But now it is broken by
‘a momentary uneasiness’. Two angry men appear on stage, arguing
with one another. To the astonishment of the mis-spectator the
thousand-strong audience looks on and listens in silence at this
intrusion. Amid his astonishment the mis-spectator now realizes,
as waves of laughter start to erupt among the other spectators, that
this is a ‘curtain raiser’. But for a moment – a moment of uneasiness
– the mis-spectator had seen two ‘insolent fellows’ invade the stage
and appropriate the space and the attention of the public. For this
moment of uneasiness, some people had made themselves present
where they shouldn’t. The charge of insolence levelled against them
by the momentarily uneasy mis-spectator suggests that this
misappearance might be a matter of class. Not quite the reversal of
places implied by Françoise’s assumption of the place of the King,
of course, but, by the looks of things, the way Marcel Proust seems
to want us to see Marcel seeing things, that is, a little seizure of
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Nicholas Ridout
power, a it of insubordination, a behaviour of those who do not
know how to behave.
The mis-spectator’s unease is about to turn to terror. The
curtain-raiser is followed by an interval. The audience, back in
their seats, start to become impatient for the resumption of the
action. The action in question is what the mis-spectator has come
for. This is his i rst time in the theatre, and he has come speciically
to see the great tragedienne of the age, Berma, in the role of Phèdre
in Racine’s play. The build-up has been somewhat excruciating.
The mis-spectator is not the healthiest of boys and his mother has
been very anxious about the consequences of his becoming overexcited. The doctor had advised his parents not to allow him to go
to the theatre, for fear that he might be ill afterwards, perhaps for
weeks. When i nally his mother relents – ‘we don’t want to make
you unhappy,’ she says – the situation is still not resolved, since the
mis-spectator now fears for the distress that the risk to his health
will induce in his parents: ‘I would rather not go, if it distresses
you,’ he says. The mis-spectator now experiences the prospect of
the performance merely as the event which will bring to an end the
suffering of his hesitation. He fears that his pleasure will be marred
by the weight of obligation – the obligation to experience pleasure
– that the risk, to his own health and to his parents’ happiness, will
entail.
The impatient audience is stamping its feet. The mis-spectator is
terriied. This is yet more ‘bad behaviour’. The other spectators are
clearly ‘ill-bred’. What a hideous scenario. He has come to the
theatre, to worship for the i rst time at the throne of the goddess of
beauty, to receive intellectual benediction at the Holy of Holies.
And the riff-raff are threatening to spoil everything. Do they not
know how to spectate? The ‘stamping brutes’ with their ‘insensate
rage’ are going to upset the star of the show, who will respond, in
her vexation at their behaviour and her disdain for their evident
unsuitability even to be here, by acting badly. The mis-spectator
alone knows how to conduct himself, in the presence of the star
presence, and now, because there is only one stage for everyone, he
is going to be punished for the misdemeanours of the rest. He will
be deprived of the ‘rare and fragile impression’ he has come here to
seek. Despite, or rather, precisely because of the arrangement that
ensures that he has the best seat in the house, his pleasure is going
to be stolen from him by the nine hundred and ninety nine
occupants of all the other best seats in the house. There is something
Mis-spectatorship, or, ‘redistributing the sensible’
177
fundamentally wrong with the whole set-up, in which ‘solar myth’
and ‘delphic symbol’ are made to appear before ‘stamping brutes’.
If only the mis-spectator had stayed at home, after all, nursing his
fevered fantasies of a one-to-one encounter with the ‘Mycenean
drama,’ everything would have been all right. But he had to come
here, the idiot, and have everything spoiled for him by the theatre.
The theatre, he realizes, is other people. And other people just
don’t know how to behave.
The opening scenes of the play afford him his last moments of
pleasure, although they also bring further confusion. There seems
to have been a cast change. He knows that Phaedra herself does not
appear in these scenes, and yet, the i rst actress to emerge onto the
stage has ‘the face and voice, which, I had been told, were those of
Berma.’ Soon he realizes that he is mistaken. This is not Berma,
because a second actress, responding to the opening speech of the
i rst, ‘resembled her even more closely.’ What is going on here?
First, how has he been told, and by whom, what Berma’s face and
voice are like? The mis-spectator has been relying on hearsay, and
even though it contradicts his knowledge of the play itself, it
persuades him that Berma has switched roles, and is playing, not
the princess, but one of her servants. Even as he realizes that he is
mistaken, he mis-takes again. Yes, this is really her, this second
actress. Or, at least, she resembles her (more closely). There’s a
slippage here, from the i rst actress, who, or so he has been told,
somehow, has the face and voice of Berma, to the second, who, he
observes, resembles her more closely than the one who has her face
and voice. To have Berma’s face and voice is thus not to be Berma,
but rather to resemble her less closely than another actress. And to
whom does this second actress bear a closer resemblance than the
i rst, who, after all, has the very face and voice of Berma? The i rst
actress possesses the actual attributes of the great tragedienne,
while the second merely resembles her more closely. Resembles the
i rst actress more closely than the i rst actress resembles herself,
then? This is hopeless. Actresses appear to be indistinguishable
from one another, at least in the theatre. They seem to lack all
presence, or, to think of it another way, both are equally present,
but neither can be distinguished by her presence alone, as he had
anticipated Berma could.
Yet he is still experiencing his last moments of pleasure: these
actresses, whoever they are, offer noble gestures and skilful
changes of tone. He understands the signiicance of lines from the
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Nicholas Ridout
play to which he had not, in his solitary reading at home, paid
suficient attention. For a few minutes everything seems to be
going all right. Then, ‘in the cleft of the red curtain’ a third
woman appears and the mis-spectator recognizes his mistake:
‘the two actresses whom I had been admiring for some minutes
bore not the least resemblance to her whom I had come to hear’
(Proust 1989: 484). For it is this third woman who is Berma
herself. The mis-spectator had established resemblance where
there was none. He had confused two ordinary professionals
with the transcendent celebrity. And he had allowed himself to
take pleasure in the labour of these professionals, to i nd meaning
where his own reading had found none, to admire that which was
not, in fact, that which he had come here to admire. Just as in the
earlier confusions between Françoise and the King, between
the insolent fellows and the actors of the curtain-raiser, and in
the struggle over spectatorial behaviour between the stamping
brutes and Marcel the mis-spectator, there has been a
redistribution of roles or a change of cast (just as the mis-spectator
had momentarily suspected). And in each change of cast there has
been a confusion of class: between servant and sovereign in the
cases both of Françoise and the King, and Phaedra and Oenone,
and between those who know how to behave and those who do
not (the subtle and vicious demarcations of a self-stratifying
bourgeoisie), between spectators and mis-spectators. In this last
case, of course, it is the mis-spectator who knows how to behave,
and the spectators who are misbehaving, or, to be more precise,
who are mis-spectating.
So now the star is on stage, and pleasure is at an end. In vain
does the mis-spectator strain every sense to glean from her
performance any reason to admire her. It’s all happening too fast,
it seems. ‘Scarcely had a sound been received by my ear than it was
displaced by another.’ (Proust 1989: 484) She is barely present, she
cannot arrest time. He is observing intently, preparing in his mind
each line from the text he has read and memorised so avidly at
home. There is a discrepancy between the time of reading and the
time of performance, for which the mis-spectator is utterly
unprepared. He is unable to identify what Berma is bringing to the
role. He hears her speech as though he were reading, or as though
Phaedra herself were speaking. There is no Berma here: no talent,
no intelligence, no beautiful gestures: she is not, after all, a
presence. He tells his grandmother, who has accompanied him to
Mis-spectatorship, or, ‘redistributing the sensible’
179
the theatre, that he can’t see very well. She lends him her opera
glasses. Through the glasses he sees not Berma, but her image. He
puts the glasses aside, and now feels that the igure on the distant
stage is no more the real and present Berma than the magniied
image in the glasses had been. First the star appears three times –
in the two actresses who preceded her onto the stage and in her
own person – and now she is doubled out of existence somewhere
between the distant igure on the stage and the magniied image in
the glasses. This event – the encounter between transcendent
theatrical genius and aspirant young aesthete – is simply not taking
place. All around him the event appears to be in full swing. A
moment of stillness in which Berma raises her arm in a glow of
greenish light brings rapturous applause from the ‘whole house’.
They seem to know how to see and hear Berma: it is only the misspectator who labours in agonies of disappointment. Phaedra’s
declaration of her illicit love for Hyppolitus fails to deliver the
imagined effect. Berma delivers the speech in a ‘uniform chant,’ no
more likely to gain its effect than the efforts of ‘the least intelligent
of actresses’ (Proust 1989: 485) or students at an academy. In the
eyes and ears of the mis-spectator, once again, all the workers of
the stage have become equal and an appalling age of cultural
indistinction has dawned.
In this new age of cultural indistinction it will become very
dificult, if not impossible, to detect certain forms of irony.
Consider this passage, which precedes the scenes of misspectatorship which I have just discussed, and which describes
the labour of the family cook, Françoise, as she prepares for the
evening that is to follow the disappointing matinée. The
mis-spectator’s father is bringing M. de Norpois home for dinner.
It is M. de Norpois who has been encouraging the mis-spectator in
his aesthetic ambitions. A suitably artistic effort is required:
Françoise, rejoicing in the opportunity to devote herself to the
art of cooking in which she was so gifted, stimulated, moreover,
by the prospect of a new guest, and knowing that she would
have to compose, by methods known to her alone, a dish of
boeuf à la gelée, had been living in the effervescence of creation;
since she attached the utmost importance to the intrinsic
qualities of the materials which were to enter into the fabric
of her work, she had gone herself to the Halles to procure
the best cuts of rump-steak, shin of beef, calves’-feet, just as
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Nicholas Ridout
Michelangelo spent eight months in the mountains of Carrara
choosing the most perfect blocks of marble for the monument
of Julius II.
(Proust 1989: 480)
At i rst sight it seems that someone is taking the piss. To describe
Françoise’s culinary efforts in the language of aesthetic judgement
(just as one might, for example, describe the work of the great
actress) would appear to be a form of mockery, directed from a
position of social and cultural privilege towards the servant classes.
Françoise is no Michelangelo, however sumptuous her boeuf à la
gelée. However, there is nothing in this passage to suggest that
Françoise herself conceives of her labour in such terms. She is going
about her business, choosing the best ingredients for her dish:
someone else is offering the comparison with Michelangelo. And
since the narrator of this passage seems to show nothing but
genuine admiration for the quality of Françoise’s cooking, are we
then to assume that the conventional terms of this usually ironic
comparison, are to be reversed? Or at least that the labour of the
cook and the artist are to be considered as being of equal value?
Shortly after this passage, there is a brief account of how
Françoise has come to mis-speak York ham:
Believing the language to be less rich in words than it is, and
her own ears untrustworthy, the i rst time she heard someone
mention York ham she had thought, no doubt – feeling it to be
hardly conceivable that the dictionary should be so prodigal as
to include at once a ‘York’ and a ‘New York’– that she had
misheard, and that the ham was really called by the name
already familiar to her. And so, ever since, the word York was
preceded in her ears, or before her eyes when she read it in an
advertisement, by the afi x ‘New’ which she pronounced ‘Nev’.
(Proust 1989: 480–81)
This looks, again, like a standard trope of class condescension
towards those less adept in the languages of the world, and
particularly those aspects of those languages that serve as marks of
class privilege by way of cosmopolitan sophistication. It might give
us pause, then, to reconsider the preliminary conclusion we had
drawn about the equal value ascribed to cooks and to artists.
However, as we read on, and enter the theatre of mis-spectatorship
Mis-spectatorship, or, ‘redistributing the sensible’
181
in which Marcel is unable to tell one actress from another, even
when one of them is the transcendent genius that is Berma, not to
mention his inability to distinguish actors from non-actors, and his
confusion over who is real and who just has someone else’s face
and voice, we might conclude that Françoise’s seeing and hearing
of the word New (or Nev) before each appearance of the name
York, is an act of mis-spectatorship equivalent to that performed in
the theatre by Marcel, and that whatever irony might be attempted
in the comparison between her cooking and the sculpture of
Michelangelo is to be mis-read as a sincere statement of comparative
value. Mis-spectatorship, then, is a revelation of equality.
Françoise is the equal of Michelangelo; any actress the equal of
any other. It is only by means of the consensus of expert
spectatorship and in the perceptions of those who are habituated to
the theatre that such equality gives way to distinctions of class and
taste. As the account of the applause with which Berma’s
performance is greeted suggests, its quality or value is entirely a
matter of opinion, a question of who buys it and who doesn’t.
Effective regimes of value tend to reinforce themselves relexively,
in the absence of any external yardstick by which something as
imponderable as good acting might be measured. The imaginary
yardstick by which the audience here measures Berma is nothing
other than Berma herself, conceived as the yardstick against which
all acting must be measured. The mis-spectator, then, fails to
recognise a yardstick when he sees one, revealing the pure
performativity of theatrical value: good acting is good acting, and
it is by conforming oneself to this process that the spectator
becomes habituated to expertise, and gradually ceases to be the
mis-spectator. The habitué or expert spectator, of course, is
the narrator of Marcel’s spectatorial encounters, who, in revealing
the foundations upon which his own distinctions (of class and
taste) are constructed, inadvertently exposes to the spectatorial
eyes of the reader of his text, an alternative way of accounting for
what gets made visible here.
Of course this effect depends upon the fact that the mis-spectator
in question here is a kind of invention. He might be quite unable to
respond to Barnardo with even the barest call of ‘Present!’
Whatever the extent to which this episode may recall an episode
from the actual life of its author, the central igure of the narration
has been written in order to generate a speciic, and ironic
perspective. He has been sent out, into an imaginary theatre, in
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Nicholas Ridout
order precisely to perform those acts of mis-spectatorship that will
permit the reader of the text to see what is at stake in theatrical
spectatorship itself. As a presence in the text, then, the misspectator interrupts the machinery of the theatre, by making
present to himself, and thus, to the reader (but perhaps not to the
narrator, who retains his condescension), some of those things that
the machinery of theatre normally works to obscure, or rather
which the machinery, in collaboration with ‘expert spectatorship’
colludes in rendering absent. What the mis-spectator performs,
then, is the re-presentation of that which had been rendered absent,
the assignment of parts to those who have no part (or smaller parts
than the main part), the counting of those who do not count
alongside the Bermas and the Michelangelos who always do. If the
mis-spectator makes any meaning it is by disrupting the consensus
which masquerades as collectivity in the folklore of the institution
of the theatre.
Works cited
Blau, H. (1990) The Audience, Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
Brecht, B. (1964) Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic,
edited and translated by John Willett, New York: Hill and Wang.
Melrose, S. (2006) ‘Constitutive Ambiguities: Writing Professional or
Expert Performance Practices and the Théâtre du Soleil, Paris’, in
J. Kelleher and N. Ridout (eds) Contemporary Theatres in Europe:
A Critical Companion, London: Routledge, 120–35.
Proust, M. (1989) Remembrance of Things Past, Volume One, translated
by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and T. Kilmartin, Harmondsworth: Penguin
Books.
Rancière, J. (2009) Aesthetics and Its Discontents, translated by
S. Corcoran, Cambridge: Polity Press.
——(2009a), The Emancipated Spectator, translated by G. Elliott, London:
Verso Books.
Chapter 10
Looking back
A conversation about presence,
2006
Tim Etchells, Gabriella Giannachi and
Nick Kaye
Figure 10.1 Forced Entertainment, Bloody Mess (2004).
Photo: Hugo Glendinning.
184 Tim Etchells, Gabriella Giannachi and Nick Kaye
Do you approach the presence of the
performer and the ‘character’ or ‘role’ in a speciic way or
with a particular attitude?
TIM ETCHELLS: In Forced Entertainment’s process, we tend to think
about a kind of base line – about the performers being present,
in a certain way, more or less as themselves – or as kind of
slightly exaggerated or extended versions of themselves. And
from there, there is a kind of process of stepping into either
task, or character, or role, or into some kind of enactment. I
think that often in the pieces you will see both. Certainly, the
performers are present, let’s say, ‘as themselves,’ doing the job
– and then, in a layer above that, you will see them enacting or
stepping up into something that’s slightly more artiicial or
staged, if you like, or that maybe is not exaggerated. A nice
way to think about this, for me, is a quotation from Elizabeth
LeCompte, the Wooster Group director. She says at one point
– I read somewhere – that their Three Sisters piece, Brace Up!
(1993), is two stories: it’s the story of the Three Sisters and it’s
the story of the actors making their way through the Three
Sisters. You see these two stories in parallel – and although we
don’t work with dramatic texts such as Chekhov, we do – in a
way – often think about the pieces in this ‘parallel track’ kind
of a way.
NICK KAYE: You seem to be implicitly talking about a kind of
doubleness in performance. Do you think this doubleness is
speciically linked to presence?
TE: I think, for me, watching performance, I am aware of people
on a number of levels, like I’m seeing past one layer of what
they are doing to another layer and then maybe to another.
Perhaps there’s something important about this experience
that we have, of seeing layers of information, the feeling that
we are seeing through, from one layer to another to another.
As watchers, we aggregate all of that information and we make
a kind of map that allows us to say: there’s somebody there.
None of those layers is quite enough on its own – presence has
to do with the combination. I suppose another way to think
about that would be to say: I don’t know if there is such a thing
as simply ‘being there,’ just being present. Being present is
always a kind of construction. Perhaps we could think of
presence as something that happens when one attempts to do
something, and whilst attempting to do that thing you become
GABRIELLA GIANNACHI:
Looking back
GG:
TE:
185
visible; visible in ‘not quite succeeding’ in doing it, visible
through the cracks or the gaps.
As human beings we are always present or perceived through
something – through a particular aperture or through a particular
grid or through a particular frame. I’m talking about social
structures, frames of behaviour, social space and expectation. In
fact, it’s these layers or frames or constrictions that make you
visible – that make you there. Some people might harbour the
fantasy that there is an easy or absolute ‘here I am’. But I don’t
know if this can exist in society. Perhaps it can exist for some
group of guru-like beings who exist in some abstract place, but
in the real world we are already all performing too much. There
are already too many frames, codes, limits and needs that we are
performing in relation to and appearing through.
In Certain Fragments (Etchells 1999) you write that ‘presence
now is always complicated and layered, a thing of degrees,
and in these strange times one can feel closer to a person,
sometimes, when they are further away than when they are
fully and simply before us’ (Etchells 1999: 97). I was interested
in the relationship between this statement and the idea of
framing and shielding.
For me, presence is perhaps related to something that, on the
one hand, as subjects, we deploy in the form of certain signs in
order to appear, but actually presence is so much about
reception too. It’s about reading. And reading is a complicated
act. One of the things we do as readers of signs and situations
– and as readers of all things – is respond to absences – and we
tend to ill absence. So, you know, the way the telephone makes
us imagine the whole person, or the way that in texting or
instant messaging, in writing to someone, you sort of spend
time with other people but you are not in the same room as
them. Because the ‘presence’ of these other people is purely in
language, there is a huge job for you in mentally unpacking
what’s written or, in the phone conversation, unpacking what’s
being said – to “create” or summon people. Of course, it’s
good to spend time with actual people in actual places, but
there is this extraordinary thing that when there’s distance
involved, when your presence to other people is mediated via
the phone or via text or other means – because these things
involve an investment on the part of the reader or participant
– you can, in a strange way, be extraordinarily close and
186 Tim Etchells, Gabriella Giannachi and Nick Kaye
NK:
TE:
connected as well, despite or even because of, the distance.
Fundamentally this is again about frames, which are apparently
quite restrictive, but which can be extraordinarily productive
in terms of letting people appear. The constriction can become
a kind of gift inside which people operate as agents, but also
can be read with an extraordinary level of profundity.
Something like this might be true of a workshop exercise where
the performers are asked to behave inside extremely restrictive
sets of behavioural instructions: to sit or to stand behind a
table and so on. Here, in spite of – or let’s say because of the
kind of cruelty of these impositions – they manage to be present
in an extraordinarily vivid way. So I think restriction, absence,
distance, blankness – all these things which, in a way, have a
negative connotation if we want to talk about presence – can
actually all be extraordinarily positive. The fantasy of pure or
unmediated presence can be quite disturbing in fact – I can
only think of it as a horrible gushing forth! – because we can
only ever construct ourselves through all kinds of i lters,
frames, barriers and social frameworks.
In discussing presence in performance you tend to emphasize
interruption, failure and blankness, almost as if presence is
best brought into play by staging its antithesis.
This may be my taste, but I think it’s generally true that as
watchers we enjoy reaching through something to ind something.
We don’t necessarily enjoy the train driving right at us. We like to
ind things and, in a way, interruption and the failure – and
blankness – are all ways of inserting some noise, some disturbance
or some ‘anti’ signal between you and what’s being said. Again,
these glitches are the things that make it possible for us to see
what’s happening and to invest in it. Spaces are very productive
– they demand to be illed. An example that I have used is a
particular performance I made with Forced Entertainment where
one of the performers had an extraordinary long text, which was
quite hard to take in. I realized at a certain point that when two
of the performers were messing around in the space, causing a lot
of disturbance during this text, I found myself, as a watcher,
suddenly pulled to this text in an extraordinary way, because – I
think – somebody was making it very dificult for me to get to it.
There’s nothing purposely perverse about that – I think we are
always looking for these slightly circuitous routes. Socially, and
as audiences, there’s a pleasure in that.
Looking back
187
Figure 10.2 Forced Entertainment, Exquisite Pain (2005).
Photo: Hugo Glendinning.
GG:
TE:
In relation to this, in Certain Fragments you also write that
‘the theatre must take account of how technology […] has
rewritten and is rewriting bodies, changing our understanding
of narratives and places, changing our relationships to culture,
changing our understandings of presence’ (Etchells 1999: 97).
Could you expand on that? In what ways does technology
change our understandings of these things?
We are in an era where there’s a fairly large degree of
technological change – to do with networking, especially, and
communications – and I don’t think we can understand, really,
what that’s doing to us as people or as a culture. It’s quite hard
to get your head round it when you are in the middle of it, but
in a way, you do sense that these things, these changes are
making a profound difference. A supericial response to this
situation as performance-makers might be to think about
relecting those technological changes directly on the stage –
basically by answering the question: how can we put this kind
of technology on the stage in different ways? How does this
technology change the form of performance? To me, that is
less interesting than the question, how do these technological
changes affect us as human beings, in a deeper way, in the way
188 Tim Etchells, Gabriella Giannachi and Nick Kaye
NK:
TE:
that we think of – and feel – ourselves in the world? There are
so many examples of this. My kids have no expectation when
a photograph is taken that they should wait longer than two
seconds to see it because they just want to look at the back of
the camera. That’s not how I grew up with images. We now
expect to have the images immediately, as part of what’s
happening, and to be able to watch again. We have it even in
performances. During school parties, or concerts, or whatever,
people will be videoing while someone is performing and
they’re passing phones along to each other, sending the little
clips to their friends, all while they are watching. It’s not that
we particularly encourage this in Forced Entertainment! but I
am interested in the ways that this simultaneous watching and
recording changes how we think of ourselves and how we
think of our relationship to our own images. That is what
interests me – those kinds of changes in the construction of the
social sense of individuals. That’s what’s exciting to me. I don’t
care so much about how artists might put the technology on
the stage – I’m more interested in how we get a i x on how
these shifts affect what we are as human beings.
You have also talked about your interest in the ‘texture’ of
authenticity, which seems in a way paradoxical, especially
with regard to performer presence. I wondered how that
related to these affects of technology?
To give slightly separate answers – in one sense, when you
work in performance – as we have done for over twenty years
– you start to notice that there are certain ways of being on
stage or in public that maybe “guarantee” that you will be
listened to. Things that ensure or suggest that what you are
doing is felt as ‘real’ or as ‘really happening’. There are also
certain things you can do in a performance (unwittingly
perhaps) which mean that what you say is not listened to – that
it somehow doesn’t quite seem to happen. All of these things
aren’t in your control, but you do get some sense of control
perhaps. In different projects you learn certain strategies or
tricks or textures of how the ‘authentic’ might be read or how
it is constructed – and of course you get interested in being able
to reproduce those things, or else to make a point of not being
able to reproduce them.
It’s particularly easy to talk about this in relation to
language. In the beginning of the company’s work – and this
Looking back
GG:
TE:
189
maps into the thing about technology – we worked with texts
that were evidently written. There was an interest in writing
with a capital ‘W’ – an interest in poetry, if you like. Increasingly
we have come to work with improvised text and speech, so
there’s been a shift in the work from an interest in writing to
an interest in spoken language. One of the things you notice as
soon as you start working with a video camera on a daily basis
– as we did may be 10, 12 years ago – is that when you
transcribe actual speech it’s quite extraordinary. I mean, the
patterns of looping, self-qualiication, uni nished sentences,
ideas that low off in particular directions. Often, now, we are
effectively transcribing text off videotapes of rehearsals and
using that as the basis for scripts. What I like about this process
is that a performer will improvise a particular part of a show
and, the i rst time they do it, it will have a really rich texture
of dense qualiication, using language in the most amazing,
luid ways. The second time they improvise it, it tends to be
this intense over-simpliication of what they did before. But
when you go to the transcripts of the i rst one and you look at
it as text, you can end up with stuff that sounds like you are
really saying it now, for the i rst time – which is really
interesting – if you are able as performers to reproduce that of
course! We have become hugely interested in working from
transcription – and that’s only possible because of the ubiquity
of technology. And maybe that gives you an understanding of
a certain linguistic texture of authenticity.
What implications do words such as ‘presence,’ ‘being there,’
‘aura,’ ‘awareness,’ ‘or self-awareness’ have for you in this
process?
The thing we talk about the most, really, when we are working,
is the idea of ‘being there’. At one level I think we seek this
probably impossible thing – a very simple, human-scale
presence beneath the theatrical – a way of simply being in a
space and with some people. The other thing that is relevant is
an understanding of theatre, of performance – we often invoke
that as performers we are people at one end of a room who are
paid to do something for a bunch of other people in the same
room. It’s a deliberately rather levelling description of the
form! But I think we want to stress this idea of ‘some people in
a room,’ and just to feel – as it’s very hard to articulate – to feel
the absolute banality of that. That’s something that we have
190 Tim Etchells, Gabriella Giannachi and Nick Kaye
NK:
focused on and, I think, you sense it in the group’s work – that
the performers tend to show or deploy a very relaxed, very
human scale or version of themselves on stage. They don’t look
like they are in some other universe. There’s a certain feeling
of ordinariness, which I think is completely constructed – I am
not under any illusions about that. I think that ordinariness,
that human-scale presence, is a thing that we stage – and we
work very hard on how we want it to appear. We attempt to
create a kind of intimacy – an easy working day ‘nowness’ on
the stage and with the audience.
What we have gone after in the work is to i nd a way that
the performers look like they can just be there. I think you
can get that by training and by working for twenty years, like
we have done. To some people it comes more easily. I
sometimes think my brother was more or less born that way.
He was a postman – he works on a i sh farm now – but we
can put Mark in any of the pieces and he is immediately
comfortable, just doing what he’s doing in a very easy,
measured sort of way. I think that’s very interesting. I think
there is an interesting thing about people who ‘give time’ to
the thing that they are actually doing. There is a kind of
democracy, a lack of judgement and hierarchy about their
presence – as if to say ‘whatever’ they are doing, important or
not, that’s the thing they are doing. They are not anxiously
anticipating something over there; they are not fretting about
what they just did. They are just doing that thing – and that
is so extraordinary to watch. I mean, in an era in which
everything is fragmented and mediated, the live actor is the
one who stands up and says ‘I am here. You can look at me’.
There’s a huge simplicity to a lot of the live work that we have
done – a sort of peeling away of things to the point where we
are often standing in a line at the front looking back at the
audience – and very much measuring this body on the stage
and this bunch of people watching; measuring the distance
between the two.
In the images of empty stages and empty theatres that you
created with Hugo Glendinning, there seems to be a
tremendous sense of potential – of suspense – as if the image
captures or produces a very potent moment – or promise.
Does this link in some way to what you are describing with the
paring down of the performers’ activity and ‘being there’?
Looking back
TE:
191
Yes. There’s a very nice quote from Peter Handke. He says,
basically, that the trick is to have other people – the audience –
tell stories and then persuade them that you told them a story.
What we have done often in the performance work is to create
spaces of possibility – and these pictures of empty stages are just
that – when you see an empty stage, of course, you have to
imagine the performance that would take place there. You ill it.
It’s like you just rush in and start making meaning happen. And
similarly, you know, all the very minimalist text performances
that we’ve done with Forced Entertainment – a lot of the pieces
where you have repetition or you have very blank images – are
also very much about creating this kind of space. I work on the
assumption that in art at least, nobody likes to be told anything.
Instead we like to ind things. So when art offers something
blank or something that just slightly resists or frustrates my
ability to ‘get it clearly,’ I go in there and imagine – I want to get
my hands dirty. I think that’s what people like to do. We have
developed lots of tactics, I suppose, for creating different kinds
of spaces or different kinds of experiences that invite the active
participation of watchers and which give looking a kind of
agency. Theatre on the whole thinks that it’s a didactic medium
– it thinks it’s got to tell you something. We have always been
much more of the kind of camp that says, what you are doing is
creating space for other people to ill – and in that sense their
watching is hugely active. I think when you get people investing
like that, then things happen – and one of those things is
presence. If you think about the greatest movie actors – my God,
it’s really a collection of people with faces like a brick wall, the
camera goes to there and sees those eyes – Martin Sheen at his
best in something like Apocalypse Now – there’s nothing
coming back. And when there’s nothing coming back, the viewer
does all the work – you are telling yourself stories because there’s
nothing actually there. I think of what Michael Haneke does in
ilms like Funny Games or Hidden (Caché), or other people
working with very formal, slightly distant camera. That work is
so amazing and it is very much about creating emotional,
narrative and architectural spaces that are empty at a certain
level – and because they are empty, you go in. Blankness is a
huge magnet – people really, really rush into that; they ight it as
well too of course, because at irst they can get nervous in art or
cinema or performance if they’re ‘not being told anything’.
192 Tim Etchells, Gabriella Giannachi and Nick Kaye
Figure 10.3 Tim Etchells, Hugo Glendinning and Forced Entertainment,
Nightwalks (1998). Photo: Hugo Glendinning.
GG:
TE:
This makes me think of Forced Entertainment’s interactive
CD-ROMs such as Nightwalks (1998). In exploring these still
scenes, something has evidently happened in this space and
yet it’s still. And that stillness is provocative – it makes you
look more frantically.
Yeah. I think the link for me is that often, when we have
made theatre pieces, we’ve temporarily constructed a space in
the rehearsal room and then there’s a process for us, in a way,
of iguring out what could or would or should happen there
in that space we’ve built. And sometimes we can’t igure out
an answer – so we build something else – and sometimes
we can igure out an answer and that becomes the
performance. The process for us is, I suppose, understanding
that the space, the architecture, ‘is a kind of writing’ – it
makes things possible, it makes things happen, it suggests
some things and denies others. A line of chairs at the front or
a cluster of chairs at the back tells you different things about
what might happen. You might be wrong in your guessing,
but those are clues, architectural clues. That’s always been
part of how we’ve worked. So Nightwalks and Frozen Palaces
(1997) and the model city installation Ground Plans for
Paradise (1994), and even Nights in this City (1995) when we
did it in Shefield, were about seeing what happens when you
create, in a sense, empty spaces, empty city streets, and empty
model city streets, or photographed scenes that have igures
in them, but where the igures are completely frozen, locked
into a single moment in which they become a kind of scenery.
What does a viewer or an audience do with that? How do you
encounter that? What kinds of mental processes start to
happen?
Looking back
GG:
TE:
193
I suppose, for us, that’s very much related to the kinds of
explorations we have always made in the rehearsal studio, but
here translated into a form where it can be somebody else that
thinks, yeah, ok, what could go on here? It’s the viewer’s
imagination that makes the link between this igure in the
distance and this object in the landscape, or that doorway, or
whatever. In the theatre you sit in the dark and normally you do
all that work in your head. In the interactive digital work it’s the
same – you are making the meaning, you are joining things up
– but via the computer interface/navigation you are also steering
the gaze of the piece. A more explicitly active role is dramatized
in a certain way. And the CD-ROMs of course are very solitary
experiences. In the theatre pieces there is always a kind of social
negotiation going on. As an audience member you might be
absolutely captivated by looking at something on the stage, but
another spectator may be bored to death or walking out. So in
performance, one’s encounter with the work always has a social
dimension; there’s always a negotiation of some kind, in the
auditorium. On the other hand, sitting alone at your computer
making your way through Nightwalks – it’s a much more private
space you are able to go into. It does not have the same kind of
social question, which I think at the time we made these CDROMs was interesting for us to get away from. We are always
trying to give ourselves a holiday from the constraints and the
topics that live performance forces us back to!
At the same time, engaging with these works can produce the
illusion or sensation of some kind of spatial and social
negotiation – even in the absence of the performer – I found
myself going through a series of emotions, of being trapped
and trying to get back and being unable to do so.
I think the difference for me has to do with social negotiation.
In the digital pieces you go from one photographed environment
to another to another and in each of them you i nd the kinds of
images and clues that we’ve put in there – a guy lying on a bed
of old clothes, a pantomime horse outside some high-rise
building, a yellow shirt discarded near a smashed-up phone
booth… These things have a particular lavour and suggest
certain things more readily than others. They’re also linked in
what is, without question, a limited set of ways – I mean your
possible routes through the work are determined to a certain
extent. That produces the sense of encounter, limit and
194 Tim Etchells, Gabriella Giannachi and Nick Kaye
frustration even that you describe. The difference though is
that in encountering these things, you don’t have to negotiate
with any other real people – there aren’t 200 other people
sitting with you and giving their opinion (by reacting) as the
work unfolds. So there’s privacy to one’s encounter with the
digital work whereby one’s relation to it is not negotiated
socially. For me, that’s probably the key difference – that in the
theatre or performance everything is negotiated socially, whilst
in Nightwalks or Frozen Palaces – or in a way in the photo
works such as Empty Stages (2003-), which we mentioned –
that doesn’t really happen. Those works are just there – people
look at them and they work on them in their own minds, quite
privately. I guess it’s more like novels – our experience reading
a novel doesn’t have that social dimension either – it’s another
form that operates more privately.
Works cited
Etchells, T. (1999) Certain Fragments: contemporary performance and
Forced Entertainment, London: Routledge.
Part III
Traces
After presence
Written by researchers in performance studies and archaeology
engaging with phenomenology, philosophy, archaeology, performance
and documentation, and including an interview between archaeologist
Michael Shanks and artist Lynn Hershman Leeson, ‘Traces: After
presence’ interrogates readings of the performance of presence in the
recollections, records, or documents that remain in the aftermath of
the event. Here the question of presence is approached as a fulcrum of
relationships between present and past: as a means of interrogating the
persistence of ephemeral and performative acts in memory, trace and
documentation; and as a conceptual framework for understanding
performance and its documentation, memory and its affect on the
present. Thus these essays address articulations of presence through
mechanisms of trace and remainder invested in performance itself,
where the ephemerality of the event, and its claim to the present tense,
finds paradoxical relationships with signs of distance, absence, and the
past. Within these contexts, the question of how presence may
be curated, planned, or presented, and the impact of institutional
re-stagings of ephemeral works, as well as the implication of re-animating
and re-mediating the archive through new media, provides an arena for
discussions of the extension, recovery and memory of past events.
Here, too, the emergence or memory of presence is also addressed in
perceptions of imminent absence and absence as immanent presence –
and so in experiences and rhythms of appearance and disappearance
that remain in process. In each of these cases, the sense of presence is
read as occurring in the engagement with the trace, so producing
complex relationships with the past events they may appear to inscribe
into the present.
Chapter 11
Temporal anxiety/
‘Presence’ in Absentia
Experiencing performance as
documentation
Amelia Jones
Temporal anxiety, a 2010 preface to an essay
written in 1996
In 2010 the activities of one institution alone crystallized the
importance of continuing with the critique of assumptions about
documenting and historicizing live art, which I introduced in my
1997–98 essay reprinted here. The Museum of Modern Art, New
York, after 80 years of resolutely promoting and consolidating
modernist conceptions limiting art to painting, sculpture, or
possibly (in some forms) ‘high art’ photography or ilm, mounted a
number of key shows foregrounding the importance of performance
and the performative in post-1960s art1. The most notable was the
provocatively entitled, and heavily promoted, Marina Abramović:
The Artist Is Present, notoriously featuring the artist herself, seated
in the gleaming white atrium of the Museum and soliciting
encounters with visitors. This ‘presence’ of the artist complemented
a large-scale retrospective of her performance works as recalled
through vitrines of objects, photographs, video and ilm
documentation, and re-enactments of several key pieces by young
artists and dancers2.
Also displayed at the formerly hidebound and performanceresistant MoMA were, at the same time, two other performancerelated shows. First, part of the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus
collection, newly acquired by the Museum, occupied a small gallery,
illed with vitrines of oddly pristine Fluxus detritus including
objects, boxes, and scripts. Secondly, there was also in spring of
2010 an installation at MoMA of the Mirage performance project
by Joan Jonas, one of the most important artists active in producing
hybrid work across performance and video since the early 1970s.
198 Amelia Jones
This energetic and cacophonous installation, which gave a sense of
the unpredictable and uncontainable nature of performative
installations at their best, was prefaced by a thoughtful text
probably by the show’s curator Barbara London, noting Jonas’s
strategic activations across media. This text suggested, importantly,
the impossibility of recreating earlier performative events and
installations in any but new forms3.
While not discounting the wow-factor of sitting across from
Abramović, the usefulness of having access in some form to her
past works, and the fascination of seeing Fluxus materials cleaned
up, aestheticized, and historically presented by the very kind of
institution whose value systems Fluxus by and large sought to
critique and overturn, I would argue that the Jonas installation was
the only of the three renditions of performance histories that was in
any way subtle or thoughtful. The other two events seemed poignant
but failed attempts to recall complex performance histories – failed
because, particularly in the case of ‘The Artist Is Present,’
hypocritical in their promise to deliver on the one hand precisely
what, on the other, they claim to be unique to the momentary
encounter of the live: ‘presence’ itself. As I have argued elsewhere,
‘The Artist Is Present’ exempliied the politically dangerous trend
towards reifying precisely that which is still being claimed as
‘authentic’ in its supposed transfer of unmediated emotions and
energy4. In short, ‘The Artist Is Present’ exempliies what is lost
when performance is institutionalized, objectiied, and, by
extension, commodiied under the guise of somehow capturing the
ephemeral. You can’t ‘curate,’ plan in advance, or otherwise present
‘presence’; it is something that happens of its own accord through
interpersonal encounters.
These MoMA shows, however, did mark an epochal moment in
the loosening of the grip of the more conservative aspects of
modernism in the art world; it also simultaneously marked a
watershed moment in the history of live art. What are we to do
with the fact that, when the art world and its corollary discourses
such as curating, art criticism, and art history scholarship (which
are always already imbricated in the art market) embrace
performance they seem inevitably to turn live acts into objects?
What are we to do with the seemingly inexorable removal of the
very energy and unpredictability of the body-to-body exchange
potential to live performance when it is historicized and
commodiied, particularly through curatorial placement in
Temporal anxiety/‘Presence’ in Absentia
199
museums such as MoMA?5 For nothing could have been less
spontaneous or natural (if by ‘presence’ we imply the possibility of
unexpected relational sparks lying) than the spectacle of an artist
sitting in a giant circus-ring like structure in the center of the
institution at the center of the self-proclaimed urban center of the
international art world.
We are at a turning point where claims of the special status of
performance as authentically delivering ‘presence’ are in direct
conlict with the simultaneous efforts to raise the status and
economic value of performance events by displaying them in
museums. These claims of the special status of the live were actively
repeated by MoMA with their staging and promotion of the
Abramović exhibition (through the very title ‘The Artist Is Present,’
among other aspects) even as the museum turned Abramović’s ‘live’
body into a focus of spectacle and, with a phalanx of guards,
cameras, and klieg lights in full force, removed any possibility of
the spontaneous or unpredictable expression of emotions or
embodied states occurring throughout the event6.
2011: It is, then, an interesting and important moment in which
to rethink earlier attempts to theorize what happens when we
encounter live events presented as ‘art,’ and what happens when we
write them into history. I am, among other things, struck by how
my 1997–98 essay itself freezes the works it describes, turning them
in the direction (if ever so slightly) of my thoughts and arguments.
Is there a way to retain a sense of ‘liveness’ when writing about
one’s experience of durational art works?
It seems a lifetime ago, and at least three or four major shifts
in my own thinking about how to think about writing histories of
performance and live art, since ‘ “Presence” in Absentia’ was
published. I personally have developed my work on body art
(since the 1998 publication of my book Body Art: Performing the
Subject) to address issues of performativity in relation to the
identiications of the artist, viewer, and the subject in general (in
Self/Image: Technology, Representation, and the Contemporary
Subject, 2006, and related essays), substantially expanding my
own thinking about how most usefully to think about the
relationship between performance and the visual arts. I have
more recently, in fact, written explicitly about the issue of ‘live
art in history,’ what happens when art history and performance
studies come into contact, and have a large-scale book due out in
2012 which I have co-edited with performance studies scholar
200 Amelia Jones
Adrian Heathield entitled Perform, Repeat, Record: Live Art in
History 7.
Since the late 1990s I have been increasingly interested in
addressing both the deep question of interpretation in terms of
ephemeral acts and the correlative issue of how histories of art that
accommodate such events get written. As I began to point to with
this earlier essay, performance does something radical to structures
of visual arts interpretation. I have worked to explore the different
institutional structures of production and reception linked to
performance and visual art, including the different assumptions at
play in performance studies versus art history, criticism and
curating. This is useful in iguring out new ways to question the
tendency to force performance to become an ‘object’ or commodity
– as is inevitably done in putting performance in visual arts
institutions and in academic settings (as in fact I did in writing
about speciic performance events in this earlier article)8.
The responses I have received when presenting this new work
exploring conlicts and afinities across art history and performance
studies in relation to the historicization of live art conirms a sea
change in discourse – an increasingly fertile intertwining of concerns
across these two disciplines, and a wholesale adoption of
performance art by art institutions (for better or worse, as at
MoMA), resulting in a huge wave of exhibitions on live art reenactment and documentation9. And in the global art world an
increasingly deinitive shift has occurred since the early 2000s
embracing the durational and relational (intersubjective) aspects of
art introduced since the 1950s and reined with the development of
Fluxus, Happenings, and performance, video, and installation art
in the 1960s and 1970s. Sound byte terms such as ‘relational
aesthetics,’ proposed by Nicolas Bourriaud in 1996, have both
encouraged and responded to this trend. The notion of ‘relational
aesthetics’ has become so popular that students of art and art
history in Western Europe, North America, and the Antipodes are
clamouring for courses and writing dissertations on ‘relationality’
and time-based art – themselves ired by a trend, rather than
knowledgeable about the complex deep history of intersubjective
and durational approaches to art making. The popularity of
‘relational aesthetics,’ or what artists and theorists since the 1960s
have called ‘intersubjective’ or ‘reciprocal’ modes of opening up art
as a process or exchange among artists and those who experience
the work, points to a larger concern with understanding changes in
Temporal anxiety/‘Presence’ in Absentia
201
the very basic structures of how art functions in contemporary
society.
Perhaps this return to issues of reciprocity and durationality is
the most important aspect of putting performance in the frame of
art, as I began to explore in the 1997–98 article. Surely the artists,
musicians, dancers, and others who turned to performance in the
1960s understood the value of exploding the then-current frames
within which art was being made, evaluated, and positioned
historically. It was no coincidence that many of the people who
turned to the ‘live’ were otherwise marginalized from the
existing power structures of the art world. While I address this
connection between identity politics and performance in my 1998
Body Art, this connection remains to be fully explored and
examined.
These inal insights suggest that the most valuable thing that
the intersection of ‘presence’ (or its claims) and ‘art’ can offer
might be precisely the violent abutting of incompatible belief
systems, an abutting that serves to expose the hypocrisies motoring
the excesses of the art market. As well, thinking about performance
or ‘presence’ in relation to history points to the limits of critiques
of interpretation and meaning as these arose within postmodern
theory in the 1980s and 1990s. It is easy enough in the abstract to
note that performance, as a time-based act, points to the
impossibility of ever fully knowing embodied experience, and
thus of ever fully encompassing past events in the present – I have
made these arguments in the article published here and elsewhere.
It is a different story entirely, however, to insist on the political
importance, even in the light of such ‘impossibility,’ of attempting
to retrieve histories of live art (and, correlatively, of any events)
from the past. Nothing, in this age of perpetual forgetting (wherein
opponents can ignore the ‘presence’ of singular ‘proof’ of
citizenship – the existence of a birth certiicate – to argue that
Barack Obama is not ‘American’) could be more important, in
fact, than pushing ahead and continuing to write careful
provisional histories in the face of such dangerous and purposeful
erasures of evidence from the past.
202 Amelia Jones
‘Presence’ in Absentia: experiencing
performance as documentation
Originally published in Art Journal, Winter 1997–98
I was not yet three years old, living in central North Carolina, when
Carolee Schneemann performed Meat Joy at the Festival of Free
Expression in Paris in 1964; three when Yoko Ono performed Cut
Piece in Kyoto; eight when Vito Acconci did his Push Ups in the sand
at Jones Beach and Barbara T. Smith began her exploration of bodily
experiences with her Ritual Meal performance in Los Angeles; nine
when Adrian Piper paraded through the streets of New York making
herself repulsive in the Catalysis series; ten when Valie Export rolled
over glass in Eros/Ion in Frankfurt; twelve in 1973 when, in Milan,
Gina Pane cut her arm to make blood roses low (Sentimental Action);
ifteen (still in North Carolina, completely unaware of any art world
doings) when Marina Abramovic and Ulay collided against each
other in Relation in Space at the Venice Biennale in 1976 (Fig 11.1).
I was thirty years old – then 1991 – when I began to study performance
or body art1 from this explosive and important period, entirely
through its documentation.
Figure 11.1 Marina Abramović/Ulay, Relation in Space. Performed at Venice
Biennale, 1976. © Marina Abramović. Courtesy of Marina
Abramović and Sean Kelly Gallery, New York. DACS 2011.
Ulay: © DACS 2011.
Temporal anxiety/‘Presence’ in Absentia
203
I am in the slightly uncomfortable but also enviable position of
having been generously included in this special issue. Presented, in
the words of the editor, as a sort of oral history, the issue is based on
the premise that one had to be there – in the lesh, as it were – to get
the story right. I was asked to provide a counter-narrative by writing
about the ‘problematic of a person my age doing work on
performances you have not seen [in person].’ This agenda forces me
to put it up front: not having been there, I approach body artworks
through their photographic, textual, oral, video, and/or ilm traces. I
would like to argue, however, that the problems raised by my absence
(my not having been there) are largely logistical rather than ethical or
hermeneutic. That is, while the experience of viewing a photograph
and reading a text is clearly different from that of sitting in a small
room watching an artist perform, neither has a privileged relationship
to the historical ‘truth’ of the performance (more on this below).
I have been accused on the one hand (by art historians) of not
caring enough about ‘the archive’ and artistic intentionality (why
didn’t I ‘get to know’ Acconci before writing about his work so I
could have a ‘privileged’ access to his intentions) and on the other
(by artists) of not placing their needs or perceived intentions above
my own intuitions and responses. At least for me personally I ind
it impossible, once I get to know someone, to have any sense of
clarity about her or his work historically speaking (that is, as it may
have come to mean in its original and subsequent contexts). Once I
know the artist well, I can write about her or his work in (I hope)
revealing ways, but ones that are (perhaps usefully, perhaps not)
laden with personal feelings and conlicts involving the artist as a
friend (or not, as the case may be). Furthermore, as noted, such
relationships – especially if they are not positive – increase the
logistical dificulties of writing and publishing on the work. The
logistical problems are many: obtaining the documentation that is
available; getting photographs to study and reproduce without
blowing one’s tiny budget; writing about the work without
becoming entrapped in the artists’ usually fascinating but sometimes
intellectually and emotionally diversionary ideas about what the
work is (or was) about, and so forth.
It is my premise here, as it has been elsewhere, that there is no
possibility of an unmediated relationship to any kind of cultural
product, including body art. Although I am respectful of the
speciicity of knowledges gained from participating in a live
performance situation, I will argue here that this speciicity should
204 Amelia Jones
not be privileged over the speciicity of knowledges that develop in
relation to the documentary traces of such an event. While the live
situation may enable the phenomenological relations of lesh-tolesh engagement, the documentary exchange (viewer/reader
document) is equally intersubjective. Either way, the twelve-person
audience for the work may know a great deal or practically nothing
at all about who the performer is, why she is performing, and what,
consequently, she ‘intends’ this performance to mean. Either way,
the audience may have a deep grasp of the historical, political,
social, and personal contexts for a particular performance. While
the viewer of a live performance may seem to have certain
advantages in understanding such a context, on a certain level she
may ind it more dificult to comprehend the histories/narratives/
processes she is experiencing until later, when she too can look
back and evaluate them with hindsight (the same might be said of
the performer herself). As I know from my own experience of ‘the
real’ in general and, in particular, from live performances in recent
years, these often become more meaningful when reappraised in
later years; it is hard to identify the patterns of history while one is
embedded in them. We ‘invent’ these patterns, pulling the past
together into a manageable picture, retrospectively.
I will sketch out the problematic of experiencing performance or
body art from an historical distance through a series of case studies,
which will be interwoven with a discussion of the ontology of
performance or body art. All of this material forms the backbone of
my book Body Art/Performing the Subject (forthcoming from the
University of Minnesota Press), which argues that body art instantiates
the radical shift in subjectivity from a modernist to a postmodernist
mode. Making use of a feminist post-structuralism informed by
phenomenology, I argue this by reading this transigured subjectivity
through the works themselves (speciically: the works as documentary
traces, and this goes even for those events I also experienced ‘in the
lesh’; I view these, through the memory screen, and they become
documentary in their own right). I read body art performances as
enacting the dispersed, multiplied, speciic subjectivities of the late
capitalist, postcolonial, postmodern era: subjectivities that are
acknowledged to exist always already in relation to the world of
other objects and subjects; subjectivities that are always already
intersubjective as well as interobjective2. To the point, I insist that it
is precisely the relationship of these bodies/subjects to documentation
(or, more speciically, to re-presentation) that most profoundly points
Temporal anxiety/‘Presence’ in Absentia
205
to the dislocation of the fantasy of the ixed, normative, centered
modernist subject and thus most dramatically provides a radical
challenge to the masculinism, racism, colonialism, classism, and
hetero-sexism built into this fantasy.
Case Study 1: Carolee Schneemann’s Interior Scroll, 1975
In Interior Scroll, irst performed in 1975, Schneemann performed herself
in an erotically charged narrative of pleasure that works against the grain
of the fetishistic and scopophilic ‘male gaze’ (Fig 11.2).
Figure 11.2 Carolee Schneemann, Interior Scroll (1975).
Performance photograph. Photo: Anthony McCall.
206 Amelia Jones
Covering her face and body in strokes of paint, Schneemann then
pulled a long, thin coil of paper from her vagina (‘like a ticker tape …
plumb line … the umbilicus and tongue’) (Schneemann 1979: 234)3,
unrolling it to read a narrative text to the audience. Part of this text
read as follows: ‘I met a happy man / a structuralist ilmmaker … he
said we are fond of you / you are charming / but don’t ask us / to look
at your ilms /… we cannot look at / the personal clutter / the
persistence of feelings / the hand-touch sensibility’ (Schneemann 1979:
238)4. Through this action, which extends ‘exquisite sensation in
motion’ and ‘originates with … the fragile persistence of line moving
into space,’ Schneemann integrated the occluded interior of the female
body (with the vagina as ‘a translucent chamber’) with its mobile
exterior, refusing the fetishizing process, which requires that the woman
not expose the fact that she is not lacking but possesses genitals, and
they are nonmale5.
Movement secures Schneemann’s momentary attainment of
subjectivity (which coexists uneasily with her simultaneous situation as
a picture of desire). The performative body, as Schneemann argues,
‘has a value that static depiction … representation won’t carry’; she is
concerned, she has said, with breaking down the distancing effect of
modernist practice6. And yet, how can I, who experienced this work irst
through a series of black-and-white photographs published in
Schneemann’s More Than Meat Joy, then through a dissatisfyingly
short clip in a video compilation of her work7 – how can I speak of its
disruption of the fetishizing effects of ‘static depiction’? I ‘know’ this
movement through the stuttered sequence of pictures, through the tiny
fragment of performance on the videotape. I sit, still and quiet, and feel
the movement pulse from picture to picture, along the slick surface of
the magnetic tape.
The female subject is not simply a ‘picture’ in Schneemann’s
scenario, but a deeply constituted (and never fully coherent) subjectivity
in the phenomenological sense, dynamically articulated in relation to
others (including me, here and now in my chair), in a continually
negotiated exchange of desire and identiication. Schneemann plays
out the oscillatory exchange between subject- and objectivity, between
the masculine position of speaking discourse and the feminine position
of being spoken. By ‘speaking’ her ‘spokenness’ already and integrating
the image of her body (as object) with the action of making itself,
Schneemann plays out the ambivalence of gendered identity – the
Temporal anxiety/‘Presence’ in Absentia
207
luidity of the positions of ‘male’ and ‘female,’ subject and object as we
live gender in post-Freudian culture.
Was (or, for that matter, is) there anything more ‘present’ than
Schneemann, in her seemingly fully revealed sexual subjectivity, in
Interior Scroll? Would I have been able to experience her sexed
subjectivity more ‘truthfully’ had I been there (to smell and feel the
heat of her body)?
One of the major conceptual and theoretical issues highlighted by
body art as performance (which in this way, among others, is
closely linked to the contemporaneous movements of Minimalism
and Conceptualism), is that of the ontology of the art ‘object.’ Most
early accounts of these practices made heroic claims for the status
of performance as the only art form to guarantee the presence of
the artist. Thus, in 1975 Ira Licht triumphantly proclaimed that
bodyworks do away with the ‘intermediary’ mediums of painting
and sculpture to ‘deliver … information directly through transformation’ (Licht 1975: n.p.). And, in the early 1970s, Rosemary
Mayer claimed body art to be a direct relection of the artist’s life
experiences, while Cindy Nemser described the ‘primary goal of
body art’ as ‘bring[ing] the subjective and objective self together as
an integrated entity,’ which is then presumably experienced directly
by the audience (Mayer 1973: 33–6 and Nemser 1971: 42).
More recently, Catherine Elwes argued that performance art
‘offers women a unique vehicle for making that direct unmediated
access [to the audience]. Performance is about the ‘real-life’ presence
of the artist. … She is both signiier and that which is signiied.
Nothing stands between spectator and performer’ (Elwes 1985:
165). I have already made clear that I speciically reject such
conceptions of body art or performance as delivering in an
unmediated fashion the body (and implicitly the self) of the artist to
the viewer. The art historian Kathy O’Dell has trenchantly argued
that, precisely by using their bodies as primary material, body or
performance artists highlight the ‘representational status’ of such
work rather than conirming its ontological priority. The
representational aspects of this work, its ‘play within the arena of
the symbolic’ and, I would add, its dependence on documentation
to attain symbolic status within the realm of culture-expose the
impossibility of attaining full knowledge of the self through bodily
208 Amelia Jones
proximity. Body art, inally, shows that the body can never ‘be
known “purely” as a totalizable, leshy whole that rests outside of
the arena of the symbolic’ (O’Dell 1992: 43–4). Having direct
physical contact with an artist who pulls a scroll from her vaginal
canal does not ensure ‘knowledge’ of her subjectivity or intentionality
any more than does looking at a ilm or picture of this activity, or
looking at a painting that was made as the result of such an action.
Body art, through its very performativity and its unveiling of the
body of the artist, surfaces the insuficiency and incoherence of the
body-as-subject and its inability to deliver itself fully (whether to
the subject-in-performance her/himself or to the one who engages
with this body). Perhaps even more to the point than O’Dell’s
suggestive observations is Peggy Phelan’s insistence on the way in
which the body-in-performance puts forward its own lack:
Performance uses the performer’s body to pose a question
about the inability to secure the relation between subjectivity
and the body per se; performance uses the body to frame the
lack of Being promised by and through the body – that which
cannot appear without a supplement … performance marks
the body itself as loss … for the spectator the performance
spectacle is itself a projection of the scenario in which her own
desire takes place.
(Phelan 1993: 151–2)
Body art can thus be said to dislocate the modernist assumption of
authorial plenitude (where the author, whose body is veiled but
nonetheless implicitly male, is thought to be instantiated by the
work of art and vice versa)8. Body art launts the body itself as loss
or lack: that is, as fundamentally lacking in the self-suficiency
(claimed by Elwes et al.) that would guarantee its plenitude as an
unmediated repository of selfhood. The ‘unique’ body of the artist
in the body artwork only has meaning by virtue of its
contextualization within the codes of identity that accrue to the
artist’s body and name. Thus, this body is not self-suficient in its
meaningfulness but relies not only on an authorial context of
‘signature’ but on a receptive context in which the interpreter or
viewer may interact with this body. When understood in its full
open-endedness, live performance makes this contingency, the
intersubjectivity of the interpretive exchange, highly pronounced
and obvious since the body’s actions can be interfered with and
Temporal anxiety/‘Presence’ in Absentia
209
realigned according to spectatorial bodies/subjects on the register
of the action itself; documents of the body-in-performance are just
as clearly contingent, however, in that the meaning that accrues to
this action, and the body-in-performance, is fully dependent on the
ways in which the image is contextualized and interpreted.
Seemingly acting as a ‘supplement’ to the ‘actual’ body of the
artist-in-performance, the photograph of the body art event or
performance could, in fact, be said to expose the body itself as
supplementary, as both the visible ‘proof’ of the self and its endless
deferral. The supplement, Jacques Derrida has provocatively
argued, is a ‘terrifying menace’ in its indication of absence and lack
but also ‘the irst and surest protection … against that very menace.
This is why it cannot be given up’ (Derrida 1976: 154).
The sequence of supplements initiated by the body art project
– the body ‘itself,’ the spoken narrative, the video and other visuals
within the piece, the video, ilm, photograph, and text documenting
it for posterity – announces the necessity of ‘an ininite chain,
ineluctably multiplying the supplementary mediations that produce
the sense of the very thing they defer: the mirage of the thing itself,
of immediate presence, or originary perception. Immediacy is
derived. … The play of substitution ills and marks a determined
lack.’ Derrida notes that ‘the indeinite process of supplementarity
has always already iniltrated presence, always already inscribed
there the space of repetition and the splitting of the self’ (Derrida
1976: 157, 163).
Derrida’s insight explains the equivocal position of the body in
modernist and postmodernist art discourse. Within the modernist
logic of formalism, the body of the artist and of the interpreter – in
its impurity – must be veiled, its supplementarity hidden from view.
The formalist insists upon the ‘disinterestedness’ of his
interpretations and such disinterestedness requires a pure relation
between the art object and its supposedly inherent meaning
(embedded in its ‘form,’ to be excavated by the discerning
interpreter). The supplementarity of the body corrupts this logic.
For the nascent postmodernists such as Nemser and Elwes who
wish to privilege performance or body art as anti-formalist in its
merging of art and life, its delivery of the body/subject of the artist
directly to the viewer, the body must be seen as an unmediated
relection of the self whose presence guarantees the ‘redemptive’
quality of art as activism. I argue in my book on body art, however,
that body art practices are never unequivocally anti- or post-
210 Amelia Jones
modernist and certainly not guarantors of presence. Unlike formalist
modernism, which veils the body of the artist to occlude its
supplementarity (such that its transcendence – its masculinity –
seems obvious and natural)9, body art performances exacerbate the
body’s supplementarity and the role of representation in
momentarily securing its meanings through visible codes signalling
gender, race, and other social markers.
Case Study 2: Yayoi Kusama’s Self-Portrait
Photographs, c. 1960
There she is, enacting herself as pinup on one of her vertiginous
landscapes of phallic knobs (woman-as-phallus meets phallus-as-signof-male-privilege): naked, heavily made-up in the style of the 1960s, she
sports high heels, long black hair, and polka dots covering her bare lesh
(Fig 11.3). As Kris Kuramitsu has argued, this photograph ‘is only one of
many that highlight [Kusama’s] naked, Asian female body. These
photographs, and the persona that cultivated/was cultivated by them is
what engenders the usual terse assessment [in art discourse] of
Kusama as “problematic”10.
Figure 11.3 Yayoi Kusama, Untitled. Photo Collage with photograph by Hal
Reiff of Kusama reclining on Accumulation No.2. © Yayoi Kusama.
Temporal anxiety/‘Presence’ in Absentia
211
Kusama plays on her ‘doubled otherness’ (Kuramitsu, 1996: 2) visà-vis American culture: She is racially and sexually at odds with the
normative conception of the artist as Euro-American (white) male.
Rather than veil the ‘fact’ of her difference(s)(seemingly irrefutably
conirmed by the visible evidence registered by her body), Kusama
exacerbated it. (Intentionally? Would I have ‘known’ had I been there
for her public ‘performances’ of self?) In a portrait of artists who
participated in the 1965 Nul exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum,
Amsterdam, Kusama sticks out like a sore thumb: there she stands,
front and center – among a predictably bourgeois group of white,
almost all male Euro-Americans (dressed in suits) – her tiny body
swathed in a glowing white silk kimono11.
Am I an object? Am I a subject? Kusama continues to perform
these questions in the most disturbingly direct of ways, posing herself
in 1993, dressed in polka-dotted fabric on a polka-dotted loor in front
of a mirror relecting a polka-dotted wall (her installation Mirror
Room and Self-Obliteration). Now, her pose and garb remove her
from us, camoulage shifting her into the realm of potential invisibility
(‘self-obliteration’). She still can’t decide whether she wants to proclaim
herself as celebrity or pin-up (object of our desires) or artist (master of
intentionality). Either way, her ‘performance’ takes place as
representation (pace Warhol, she’s on to the role of documentation in
securing the position of the artist as beloved object of the art world’s
desires); she comprehends the ‘rhetoric of the pose’ and its speciic
resonance for women and people of color. The pictures of Kusama are
deeply embedded in the discursive structure of ideas informing her
work that is her ‘author-function’12.
Rather than conirming the ontological coherence of the body-aspresence, body art depends on documentation, conirming – even
exacerbating – the supplementarity of the body itself. Predictably,
although many have relied on the photograph, in particular, as
‘proof’ of the fact that a speciic action took place or as a marketable
object to be raised to the formalist height of an ‘art’ photograph, in
fact such a dependence is founded on belief systems similar to those
underlying the belief in the ‘presence’ of the body-in-performance.
Kristine Stiles has brilliantly exposed the dangers of using the
photograph of a performative event as ‘proof’ in her critique of
Henry Sayre’s book The Object of Performance. Sayre opens his
212 Amelia Jones
irst chapter with the now-mythical tale of Rudolf Schwarzkogler’s
suicidal self-mutilation of his penis in 1966, a story founded on the
circulation of a number of ‘documents’ showing a male torso with
bandaged penis (a razor blade lying nearby). Stiles, who has done
primary research on the artist, points out that the photograph, in
fact, is not even of Schwarzkogler but, rather, of another artist
(Heinz Cibulka) who posed for Schwarzkogler’s entirely fabricated
ritual castration (Stiles 1990: 35). Sayre’s desire for this photograph
to entail some previous ‘real’ event (in Barthesian terms, the having
been there of a particular subject and a particular action)13 leads
him to ignore what Stiles describes as ‘the contingency of the
document not only to a former action but also to the construction
of a wholly ictive space’14. It is this very contingency that Sayre’s
book attempts to address through his argument that the shift
marked by performance and body art is that of the ‘site of presence’
from ‘art’s object to art’s audience, from the textual or plastic to
the experiential’ (Sayre 1992: 5). Sayre’s ixation on ‘presence,’
even while he acknowledges its new destabilized siting in reception,
informs his unquestioning belief in the photograph of performance
as ‘truth.’
Rosalind Krauss has recognized the philosophical reciprocity of
photography and performance, situating the two as different
kinds of indexicality. As indexes, both labor to ‘substitute the
registration of sheer physical presence for the more highly articulated
language of aesthetic conventions’ (Krauss 1985: 209). And yet,
I would stress, in their failure to ‘go beyond’ the contingency of
aesthetic codes, both performance and photography announce the
supplementarity of the index itself. The presentation of the self-in
performance, in the photograph, ilm, or video – calls out the
mutual supplementarity of the body and the subject (the body, as
material ‘object’ in the world, seems to conirm the ‘presence’ of the
subject; the subject gives the body its signiicance as ‘human’), as
well as of performance or body art and the photographic document.
(The body art event needs the photograph to conirm its having
happened; the photograph needs the body art event as an ontological
‘anchor’ of its indexicality.)
Temporal anxiety/‘Presence’ in Absentia
213
Case Study 3: Annie Sprinkle, Post Post Porn
Modernist, 1990–93
Here’s a performance I have seen in the lesh. Do I have some special
access to its meaning or am I alternately distanced from/seduced by its
embodied effects just as I would be through its documentation? (Note:
I’ve also ingrained this piece, in other versions, into my memory by
viewing photographs, slides, videotapes, and by talking to the artist.)
A sex worker, Annie Sprinkle moved into the art world with her
1985 participation in Deep Inside Porn Stars, a performance at
Franklin Furnace in New York15. Since then, she has performed in art
venues as a whore/performer turned art/performer, still with ‘clients’ to
seduce and pleasure; one of the effects of Sprinkle’s merging of ‘sex
work’ with ‘art work’ is the collapsing of class distinctions (from lowerclass whore/porn star to the cultural cachet of artist). She has also
transformed her pornographic ilm career, moving into the production
of self-help/‘art’ videos on female and transsexual pleasure16. Sprinkle’s
work is nothing if not about mediation. (Perhaps this is to be expected
from someone who proffers her body regularly on the art and
pornography markets; the body/self is most directly ‘given’ and yet
never really ‘there.’)
Sprinkle’s most incendiary performative act is part of her Post Post
Porn Modernist performance; developed and performed over the last
several years, the piece includes several different narrative segments.
The most explosive moment occurs when Sprinkle displays her cervix to
audience members: she opens her vaginal canal with a speculum and
beckons audience members to ile by and take a look, welcoming
photography and videotaping. (It is, one senses, precisely through such
acts of techno-voyeurism that Sprinkle can experience her own selfdisplay.) Handing each spectator a lashlight to highlight the dark
continent of the female sex, Sprinkle interacts with them as they ile by
(Fig 11.4).
214 Amelia Jones
Figure 11.4 Annie Sprinkle, ‘The Public Cervix Announcement,’ from Post Post
Porn Modernist (1990–93). Courtesy of the artist.
Looping back to Schneemann’s self-exposure of the female sex, this
moment of display explodes the conventional voyeuristic relation that
informs the aesthetic (where the female body is represented as ‘lacking’
object of male viewing desire). Not only is the female sex in a general
sense displayed – its ‘lack’ refused; also put on view are the internal
female genitalia, including the paradoxically invisible, unlocatable
G-spot (a primary site of female pleasure). The cervix-viewing portion
of Sprinkle’s performance also, in Lynda Nead’s terms, destroys the
containing mechanisms of the aesthetic: as obscenity, Sprinkle’s
presentation ‘moves and arouses the viewer rather than bringing about
stillness and wholeness’ (Nead 1992: 2).
Or does it ‘arouse’? Sprinkle certainly knows how to give pleasure to
her audience/clientele. She has been professionally trained to do so. It
is dificult, in fact, to view Sprinkle’s cervix in an unequivocally selfempowering way (to pretend to possess an unmediated, dominating
gaze of desire). Sprinkle’s sex looks back: the subject of viewing is
confronted by the ‘eye’/‘I’ of the female sex.
Temporal anxiety/‘Presence’ in Absentia
215
This ‘eye’/‘I’ is fully contingent whether I view it ‘in the lesh’ or ‘on the
page.’ It operates as/through representation. For Sprinkle’s body, in this
particular scene distilled to the organs of her sex, is the image of Sprinkle
as acting subject. I am no closer to ‘knowing’ the ‘truth’ of Sprinkle having
seen and spoken to her than I would have been otherwise: She (re)
presents herself to me as I sustain myself in a function of desire17. While
Sprinkle can’t illustrate herself as a full subject of pleasure and desire, she
can situate herself in relation to us in such a way as to reclaim her own
‘look’ (the gaze of her cunt), if only momentarily, from the voyeuristic
relation. Sprinkle’s performance of self points to the always already
mediated nature of embodied subjectivity as well as the sexual pleasure
that gives this subjectivity ‘life.’
In the inal segment of Post Post Porn Modernist, Sprinkle takes on
the archaic-goddess persona of ‘Anya’ to bring herself to a twenty-minute
long spiritual/sexual orgasm on stage. My irst reaction on seeing this
elaborately orchestrated performance of jouissance was to assert to my
partner that she was faking it. My secondary response was to wonder
why I needed to think that she was faking it. As Chris Straayer puts it,
‘Whether Annie Sprinkle is acting (and/)or experiencing orgasms in her
performances cannot be determined by us’ – and, I would add, this is the
case whether we view the performance live or not (Straayer 1993: 174)18.
In 1938 the Surrealist ilm actor, director, and playwright Antonin
Artaud published his astounding collection of essays on performance
called The Theater and Its Double. In his manifesto ‘ The Theater
of Cruelty,’ published in this collection, he articulates a passionate
critique of realist theater, with its reliance on written texts and its
‘servitude to psychology’ and ‘human interest’ (Artaud 1958: 90).
The theater, rather, must draw on its own ‘concrete language’ to
‘make space speak’:
We abolish the stage and the auditorium and replace them by
a single site, without partition or barrier of any kind, which
will become the theater of the action. A direct communication
will be re-established between the spectator and the spectacle,
between the actor and the spectator, from the fact that the
spectator, placed in the middle of the action is engulfed and
physically affected by it.
(Artaud 1958: 96)
216 Amelia Jones
I return in closing to Artaud’s vibrant text, radical in its own
time, to stress the point that such a desire for immediacy is, precisely,
a modernist (if in this case also clearly avant-garde) dream. In this
in-de-millennium age of multinational capitalism, virtual realities,
post-colonialism, and cyborg identity politics (an age presciently
acknowledged and in some ways propelled by the radical body
artworks noted here), such a dream must be viewed as historically
speciic rather than epistemologically secure. Body and performance
art expose, precisely, the contingency of the body/self not only on
the ‘other’ of the communicative exchange (the audience, the art
historian) but on the very modes of its own (re)presentation.
Works cited
Artaud, A. (1958) The Theater and Its Double, translated by M. C. Richards,
New York: Grove Weidenfeld.
Barthes, R. (1977) ‘Rhetoric of the Image’, in R. Barthes Image-Music-Text,
translated by Stephen Heath, New York: Hill and Wang, 35–51.
de Beauvoir, S. (1970; [1949]) The Second Sex, translated and edited by H.
M. Parshley, New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Derrida, D. (1976) ‘That Dangerous Supplement’, in J. Derrida Of
Grammatology, translated by G. C. Spivak, Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 141–64.
Elwes, C. (1985) ‘Floating Femininity: A Look at Performance Art by
Women’, in S. Kent and J. Moreau (eds) Women’s Images of Men,
London: Writers and Readers Publishing, 164–93.
Foucault, M. (1977; [1969]) ‘What Is an Author?’, in M. Foucault
Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, translated by D. Bouchard and
S. Simon, Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 113–38.
Fuchs, E. (1989) ‘Staging the Obscene Body’, TDR: The Drama Review,
33:1, 33–58.
Heathield, A. and Jones, A. (eds) (forthcoming, 2012) Perform, Repeat,
Record: Live Art in History.
Jones, A. (1994) ‘Postfeminism, Feminist Pleasures, and Embodied Theories
of Art’, in J. Frueh, C. Langer and A. Raven (eds) New Feminist Criticism:
Art, Identity, Action, New York: Harper Collins, 16–41.
——(2008) ‘Live Art in Art History: A Paradox?’, in T. Davies (ed.) The
Cambridge Guide to Performance Studies, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 151–65.
——(2011) ‘The Artist Is Present: Artistic Re-enactments and the
Impossibility of Presence’, TDR: The Drama Review, 55: 1, 16–45.
Juhasz, A. (1994) ‘Our Auto-Bodies, Ourselves: Representing Real Women
in Video’, Afterimage 21:7, 10–14.
Temporal anxiety/‘Presence’ in Absentia
217
Karia, B. (ed.) (1989) Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective, exh. cat., New York:
Center for International Contemporary Arts.
Krauss, R. (1985) ‘Notes on the Index’, in The Originality of the
Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press,
196–220.
Kuramitsu, K. (1996) ‘Yayoi Kusama: Exotic Bodies in the Avant-Garde’,
unpublished paper submitted for Amelia Jones and Donald Preziosi’s
‘Essentialism and Representation’ graduate seminar, University of
California, Riverside/University of California, Los Angeles, Spring 1996.
Lacan, J. (1978) in ‘Anamorphosis’, in J-A. Miller The Four Fundamental
Concepts of Psycho-Analysis, translated by A. Sheridan, New York:
W. W. Norton and Co., 79–90.
Licht, I. (1975) Bodyworks, Chicago IL: Museum of Contemporary Art.
Mayer, R. (1973) ‘Performance and Experience’, Arts Magazine, 47: 3,
pp. 33–6.
Nead, L. (1992) The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity, and Sexuality, London:
Routledge.
Nemser, C. (1971) ‘Subject-Object Body Art’, Arts Magazine, 46:1, 38–42.
O’Dell, K. (1992) ‘Toward a Theory of Performance Art: An Investigation
of Its Sites’, PhD. diss., City University of New York.
Owens, C. (1992) ‘The Medusa Effect, or, the Specular Ruse’, in S. Bryson,
B. Kruger, L. Tillman, and J. Weinstock (eds) Beyond Recognition:
Representation, Power, and Culture, Berkeley CA: University of
California Press, 191–200.
Phelan, P. (1993) Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, New York:
Routledge.
Poster, M. (1990) The Mode of Information: Poststructuralism and Social
Context, Cambridge: Polity Press and Chicago IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Poster, M. (1995) The Second Media Age, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Roth, M. (1983) ‘The Amazing Decade’, in M. Roth (ed.) The Amazing
Decade: Women and Performance Art in America 1970–1980,
Los Angeles CA: Astro Artz, 14–41.
Sayre, H. (1992) The Object of Performance: The American Avant-Garde
since 1970, Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.
Schneemann, C. (1979) More Than Meat Joy: Complete Performance
Works and Selected Writings, edited by Bruce McPherson, New Paltz,
NY: Documentext.
——(1991) ‘Angry Women’, in A. Juno and V. Vale (eds) Angry Women,
San Francisco: Re/Search Publications, 163–76.
Sobchack, V. (1994) ‘The Passion of the Material: Prolegomena to a
Phenomenology of Interobjectivity’, manuscript of an article forthcoming in Sobchack Carnal Thoughts: Bodies, Texts, Scenes, and
Screens (Berkeley: University of California Press); published in German
218 Amelia Jones
in C. Wulf, D. Kamper, and H.U. Gumbrecht (eds) Ethik der Asthetik,
Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 195–205.
Stiles, K. (1990) ‘Performance and Its Objects’, Arts Magazine, 65:3, 35–47.
Straayer, C. (1993) ‘The Seduction of Boundaries: Feminist Fluidity in
Annie Sprinkle’s Art/Education/Sex’, in P.C. Gibson and R. Gibson
(eds) Dirty Looks: Women, Pornography, Power, London: British Film
Institute, 156–75.
Williams, L. (1993) ‘A Provoking Agent: The Pornography and Performance
Art of Annie Sprinkle’, in P.C. Gibson and R. Gibson (eds) Dirty Looks:
Women, Pornography, Power, London: British Film Institute, 46–61.
Notes, Temporal Anxiety
1 The Museum established a new department of ‘Media and Performance
Art’ as recently as 2006. See the press release relating to this
development, http://press.moma.org/images/press/PRESS_RELEASE_
ARCHIVE/Media.pdf. Accessed 10 February 2011.
2 See my extended critique of this exhibition in Jones 2011.
3 The text on MoMA’s website on the piece reads, similarly: ‘Inspired by
a trip the artist took to India, Joan Jonas’s Mirage (1976/2005) was
originally conceived as a 1976 performance for the screening room of
New York’s Anthology Film Archives. In it, Jonas carried out a series
of movements, such as running as a form of percussion and as gestural
drawing, while interacting with a variety of sculptural components and
video projections. In 1994, the artist repurposed these elements – metal
cones suggesting the form of volcanoes, videos of erupting volcanoes,
wooden hoops, a mask, photographs, and chalkboards, among other
items – as a discrete installation, which was itself reconfigured in 2005.
At MoMA, the artist once again re-imagines the work in an installation
that combines elements of ritual, memory, repetition, and rehearsal
with games, drawn actions, and syncopated rhythms.’ See www.moma.
org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1016. Accessed 10 February 2011.
4 In Jones 2011.
5 By commodified I mean both literally, as now glossy photographs,
books, and other aspects from Abramović’s work can be purchased,
and figuratively in the sense that critics and art historians can authorize
our own careers by writing about Abramović’s work. Abramović, who
has also founded a performance archive and a school of performance,
has understood the way in which the name of an increasingly famous
performer can itself have economic, cultural and social value. It is up to
the art and performance communities to address such a case with
critical acumen and by placing such efforts in a historical context,
rather than, as has been the tendency so far, promoting Abramović and
her work unquestioningly with hagiographic rhetoric.
6 The fact that websites, some sponsored by MoMA, sprung up
documenting aspects of the piece – such as ‘Marina made me cry’ –
Temporal anxiety/‘Presence’ in Absentia
219
confirms the instantaneous fixing of the spectacle as ‘Internet event’
rather than its capacity to evoke unpredictable or otherwise interesting
effects. See http://marinaabramovicmademecry.tumblr.com/. Accessed
10 February 2011.
7 See Heathfield and Jones forthcoming, 2012.
8 See Jones 2008.
9 See the extensive timeline of the publications, exhibitions, and art
works relating to this shift in Perform, Repeat, Record.
Notes, Presence in Absentia
1 I use the term body art rather than performance art for several
reasons. My interest in this work is informed by an embodied,
phenomenological model of intersubjectivity; furthermore, the work
that emerged during the period of the 1960s to the mid-1970s (before
performance became theatricalized and moved to the large stage)
was labeled ‘body art’ or ‘bodyworks’ by several contemporaneous
writers who wished to differentiate it from a conception of
‘performance art’ that was at once broader (in that it reached back to
Dada and encompassed any kind of theatricalized production on the
part of a visual artist) and narrower (in that it implied that a
performance must actually take place in front of an audience).
I am interested in work that may or may not initially have taken
place in front of an audience: in work – such as that by Ana Mendieta,
Carolee Schneemann, Vito Acconci, Yves Klein, or Hannah Wilke –
that took place through an enactment of the artist’s body, whether it
be in a ‘performance’ setting or in the relative privacy of the studio,
that was then documented such that it could subsequently be
experienced through photography, i lm, video, and/or text.
2 Mark Poster discusses the multiplicity of the subject in the age of
multinationalism and cyborg identity politics in The Mode of
Information: Poststructuralism and Social Context and The Second
Media Age; see Poster 1990 and 1995. On the body/self as
simultaneously subject and object, Sobchack 1994.
3 Schneemann has performed Interior Scroll three times: in 1975 at
Women Here and Now in East Hampton, Long Island; in 1977 at the
Telluride Film Festival in Colorado; and in 1995 inside a cave as
Interior Scroll – the Cave (with six other women). This reading of
Schneemann’s piece is modiied from my essay ‘Postfeminism, Feminist
Pleasures, and Embodied Theories of Art,’ see Jones 1994: 30–32.
4 The audience for its original performance was almost all female, see
Roth 1983: 14.
5 The i rst poetic descriptions in this sentence are from a letter sent to
me by Schneemann (dated 22 November 1992), who encouraged me
to revise my earlier, blunter readings of her work. Here is an example
of my susceptibility to personal contact: I have been swayed by
her powerful self-readings, changing my perceptions of the work.
The term translucent chamber appears in Schneemann 1979: 234.
220 Amelia Jones
6 Schneemann states, ‘my work has to do with cutting through
the idealized (mostly male) mythology of the ‘abstracted self’ or the
‘invented self’ – i.e., work … [where the male artist] retain[s] power
and distancing over the situation’; in Schneemann 1991: 169.
7 The video, Imaging Her Erotics, was produced by Schneemann and
Maria Beatty in 1995–96; the clip shown here is from the 1995 version
of the performance. Schneemann informs me that all of the original
footage of the earlier performances is in the possession of the
documenter, who will not relinquish it for publication or study.
8 This marking of the body as absence is also exempliied in the
photographic documents of Ana Mendieta’s later Silueta series works,
in which her body is enacted as trace (gash wounding the surface of
the earth).
9 It is Simone de Beauvoir, in her monumental 1949 book, The Second
Sex, who links the dream of ‘transcendence’ in Western aesthetics and
philosophy to masculine subjectivity. Here, she reworks the dialectic
between the self and other outlined by her partner, Jean-Paul Sartre
(and more subtly transformed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jacques
Lacan), with an awareness of the mapping of power through gender in
patriarchy. Beauvoir rereads Sartre’s existentialist argument (in Being
and Nothingness) that the subject has the capacity to project himself
into transcendence (the pour-soi) out of the fundamental immanence
of the en-soi, arguing that the pour-soi is a privileged potentiality
open only to male subjects in patriarchy. See de Beauvoir 1949:
especially p. xxviii.
10 See Kuramitsu 1996: 1, unpublished paper submitted for Amelia Jones
and Donald Preziosi’s Essentialism and Representation graduate seminar,
University of California, Riverside/University of California, Los Angeles.
Kuramitsu discusses this photograph of Kusama at some length. I am
indebted to Kuramitsu for introducing me to this aspect of Kusama’s
oeuvre and for leading me to the best sources on the artist (see also Karia
1989). I should note here too that it was the large number of photographs
such as these published as advertisements in magazines like Artforum
from the mid-1960s onward that initially sparked my interest in body
art. I am especially interested in the role these images play in enacting the
artist as a public igure: they are performative documents. The only
audience for the ‘original’ performance would have been the cameraperson and whoever else was in the room.
11 The other artists in the portrait include Jiro Yoshihara, founder of
Gutai, Hans Haacke, Lucio Fontana, and Giinther Uecker. See the
labelled photograph in Nul negentienhonderd viff en zestig, deel 2 fotos
(1965, Part 2, Photographs).
12 On the rhetoric of the pose, see Owens 1992: 191–200. The term
author-function is, of course, derived from Michel Foucault’s ‘What Is
an Author?’ See Foucault 1977: 113–38.
13 Henry Sayre’s reading of Schwarzkogler’s work can be found in Sayre
1992: 2.
14 See Barthes 1977: 44.
Temporal anxiety/‘Presence’ in Absentia
221
15 See Fuchs 198: 38–9. Chris Straayer stresses Sprinkle’s links to 1970s
feminist performance works by Schneemann and Linda Montano,
Sprinkle’s performance mentor, rather than her background as a sex
worker. See Straayer 1993: 157.
16 Her ilms include Linda/Les and Annie-the First Female to Male
Trans-sexual Love Story (1990), made in collaboration with Albert
Jaccoma and John Armstrong, and The Sluts and Goddesses Video
Workshop, or How to Be a Sex Goddess in 101 Easy Steps (1992),
made by Sprinkle and Maria Beatty. See Linda Williams’s discussion of
how Sprinkle maintains in her pornographic videos (and, I would add,
her ‘art’ videos) the ‘intimate address’ to the ‘client’ characteristic of the
whore’s ‘performance,’ in Williams 1993: 181.
17 This paraphrases Jacques Lacan, who writes of the subject ‘sustaining
himself in a function of desire’ in ‘Anamorphosis,’ in Lacan 1978: 85.
18 See also Juhasz 1994: 11 for a discussion of Sprinkle’s extended
performance of orgasm.
Chapter 12
Here and now
Lynn Hershman Leeson and
Michael Shanks
Figure 12.1 Lynn Hershman signing in at The Dante Hotel, San Francisco,
November 1973. Photo: Edmund Shea. Courtesy of the artist.
1972: You were working in San Francisco, and
you did a piece at the Dante Hotel.
LYNN HERSHMAN LEESON: Yes. I’d done a piece with sound at the
museum, but they said media wasn’t art and didn’t belong in
an art museum. So I thought, well, why not just use an
environment, wherever it exists?
MICHAEL SHANKS:
Here and now
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So, Eleanor Coppola and I created rooms in the Dante
Hotel, which was a run-down place in North Beach. It was
very simple. We rented the rooms – mine was rented
indei nitely; hers was rented for two weeks. And I created a
situation where people could look at presumed identities
constructed from artifacts placed in the room.
So, you put stuff in there?
Yeah. I put goldish in there. There was a soliloquy of Molly
Bloom. There were books that the presumed people might
have read, clothing that they might have worn. People were
invited to trespass. It was open 24 hours a day; people could
check in at the front desk, get the key, stay as long as they
wanted, and displace it.
Did anybody leave anything behind?
Nobody left anything. They grafitied the mirror that was
there, but nobody took anything. They really respected that
space.
Were you monitoring people coming and going?
No, not really. It was left gathering dust and the lux of time as
people traveled through. I was just starting to think of time
and space as elements of sculpture at that point.
And then the police came at some point, didn’t they?
Yeah – ha! Somebody reported a body in the bed, because
there were these wax cast igures –
– which had been there from the beginning?
Yes. And the police coni scated everything in the room and
took all the artifacts down to central headquarters, which,
I thought, was really the apt ending to that particular
narrative.
And then thirty-two years later, Stanford acquires your
archive of ninety-something boxes. The remains of your body
of work – whatever hadn’t been taken away by the police, I
guess!
Yes.
As an archaeologist, I’m interested in what comes after the
event, as it were. What you do with the remains of the past, to
somehow try to get back to where they originated.
I don’t know that you can ever get back to that point, but you
can go forward, using them as context for the future. The trail
and the remains may be dormant, but they exist, waiting to be
revived or resurrected into something else.
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Lynn Hershman Leeson and Michael Shanks
Figure 12.2 Lynn Hershman, The Dante Hotel (1973–74).
Courtesy of the artist.
MS:
Yeah, regenerated. This is one of our major points of contact.
A lot of people think that archaeology – archaeologists –
discover the past. And that’s only a tiny bit true. I think it’s
more accurate to say that they work on what remains. That
may sometimes involve, absolutely, coming across stuff from
the past – maybe a trilobite fossil, or a piece of Roman pottery,
Here and now
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or, as my colleague Henry Lowood and I did, your boxes in the
Stanford collection – but the key thing about archaeology is
that it works on what’s left. And that makes of all of us, really,
a kind of archaeologist. We’re all archaeologists now, working
on what’s left of the past.
And you’re right, as we explore this stuff, we igure out how
to bring it forward, i rst into the present, through our
interpretation of it.
Exactly. I didn’t want the work to remain in boxes. Much as I
love the Stanford Library and Special Collections, I wanted
this to be more universally accessible. I suggested to Henry
that, possibly, we could make a game, a mystery, or a ilm noir
about the remains of this evidence of a life, which portrayed
itself in various episodes. Henry suggested a possible adaptation
into Second Life, which then became the ‘Life to the Second
Power’ project.
And it connects with the interest that we share in the nature of
the archive. Boxes, in a collection, vitrines in a museum,
they’re often – and appropriately – seen as quite static.
That’s right. Static but charged.
Unless there’s a reason to reuse stuff, it’ll fall out of use or be
stored away; and, eventually, it’ll end up in a landill site, if
you’re lucky, or destroyed. So the question we share is how to
re-animate the archive.
Exactly. Revitalize the past, inserting it into the present, which
gives direction to its future.
Yeah. Displacement is another key feature of this archaeological
sensibility. What happens when old stuff – remains – are
shirted into new associations.
And, it’s particularly interesting because Second Life and some
of these social-network programs involve notions of trespass
that have no geographic boundaries. So it’s taking the exact
same premise of this project, the Dante Hotel, from thirty
years earlier and transplanting it into something that allows a
completely different, but yet related, experience.
Yeah. There are parts of our contemporary attitude toward
spaces and places that are very archaeological. It’s about how
we almost automatically and subconsciously look at spaces in
terms of evidence. It’s a forensic sensibility.
Archaeologists survey and excavate places. They document,
map, collect, and categorize, seeking to identify what generated
226
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Lynn Hershman Leeson and Michael Shanks
the remains – for example, past events, social or environmental
changes. Archaeological evidence is thus treated as symptomatic
traces of deep structures or events, archaeology is a hybrid
science of material traces.
The detective, another nineteenth century invention, also
connects evidence with event and place. But how do you know
what might be the key evidence at the scene of a crime or an
archaeological site? Anything might be relevant. Anywhere
could be the scene of a crime. This is what I mean by forensic
sensibility. Anything could be the trace of something that once
happened there.
But, now, with the forensic sensibility, there’s also a digital
demeanor that didn’t exist before.
Oh, right. ‘Digital demeanor,’ I like that.
A digital demeanor of trespass using interaction to reveal the
evidence.
Yeah, which brings up implications for storage, for retrieval,
and, of course, surveillance, looking, watching, and how these
have become incorporated in all sorts of digital technologies.
For two centuries and more, archaeologists have been
developing a toolkit for working upon the traces of the past.
They’re concerned with a kind of genealogy – how the past, in
its traces, has come down to the present, rather than the
traditional sense of history as what happened in the past.
This can involve the trauma of memory.
Oh, yes. This is absolutely archaeological. We often feel separate
from the past, and then, in that separation, we visit a room, such
as the Dante, and we instinctively look to piece together what
we see in front of us. Again, working on what remains.
But, in the particular case of our project, Life Squared, you’re
able to see the evidence being looked at and to lurk inside and
watch somebody else discovering the evidence and recreate
endless narratives, as they repattern the same information and
create yet another trail of how it’s being seen, re-seen,
recomposed, remixed, so that there are an ini nite number of
ways you can perceive it.
And, I think, our digital demeanor, as you put it, precisely
foregrounds us again. I mean I could argue that it’s always
been a component of what we do: taking up bits of the past,
reusing them, reworking them, which absolutely implicates
issues of memory.
Here and now
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And erasure of ownership.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I’m very keen on countering this
notion that, in terms of the past, we need to somehow hang on
to it and preserve it.
How do you preserve it? How do you embalm time?
Well, yeah. In this way, to preserve the past is to kill it off.
Transformation, translation is essential if the past is to live.
Yes.
Just yesterday, I got an email announcing a website that
essentially comprises virtual reality reconstructions of ancient
sites – 3D models of the forum at Rome, or a basilica, or an
ancient monument in Greece. These are CAD architectural
models visualized in 3D, so you can walk through them. And
they’re realistic, in the sense that you can admire the textures,
experience the spaces. It’s meant to be a very engaging
experience of the past – history reconstructed in some kind of
photographic verisimilitude – so that it’s present to you now.
But I i nd them utterly, utterly empty and dead.
Why?
Well, to walk through a room, in this way, on a computer
screen, doesn’t necessarily elicit any reaction other than a
distracting and supericial one, such as, ‘Ooh, the texture of
the loor is spot on …. Ooh, I like the light coming in through
that window; it’s just right.’
And what generates a sense of being there is not this kind of
surface authenticity, but the idelity of narrative. The narrative
of these graphics is nothing more than taking a stroll.
These models can be very lashy, highly naturalistic and
look ‘real’ but they don’t help us make sense of and understand
things – loor plans or the shape of ashlar blocks give little
understanding about life in the past. This is the old illusion,
that a faithfulness to the external appearance of things gives us
a hold on reality.
And such models forget about engagement. Not just the
experience of visiting old places, but the detective work that
turns data into information and then into stories that engage
people now.
I sometimes think that these elaborate models of the past
are part of a contemporary optimism that a quantitative
increase in data will somehow deliver a better understanding
of the world. In this kind of digital archaeology I see the dream
228
Lynn Hershman Leeson and Michael Shanks
Figure 12.3 The regenerated Dante Hotel in construction within Second Life
for Life Squared. Photo: Gabriella Giannachi.
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that eventually, and with so much data at hand, we will be able
to relive the past. This is the impossible desire to bring back
the dead. I say, look, the past is over and done, decayed, ruined,
lost. We only have a few bits to work on. And this is what is
fascinating.
Virtual reality archaeology is a project that brings to mind
the movie The Matrix – the creation of a world that actually
doesn’t or didn’t exist, though it is lived as reality.
The closer you get to what you think something is, the more
evident it becomes that it’s also an illusion.
Yes. Absolutely. It’s a question of what truly constitutes
evidence about who you are, about who I am.
It’s always apparent in the laws. You know, it’s in the crack in
the wall, not the replication of it. I mean, that’s where the truth
is. It hides, waiting to be discovered.
Yeah. It’s in the gaps, in the stuff that gets overlooked.
Here and now
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So, anyway, that issue of authenticity, I think, is a big one.
Considerable resources, research dollars, and institutional
support are being devoted to this kind of VR modeling. And
you know, it’s …
It’s wrong.
Well, it’s illusory in the Matrix sense. And there’s an
authenticity there, because all of the stuff that’s ‘left over’ is on
show, in high res, so you can zoom in on it and look at it in
considerable detail. But by no means is it ‘The Past.’
It’s an interesting negotiation between our current means
and the ends we have in mind for archaeology. How we
document the past connects, obviously, with all sorts of
technologies and instruments now. Instrumentalities relating
to information, information low and organization. The whole
ield of documenting ourselves is changing as our tools change.
The information age requires new tools, absolutely. I’m making
a piece right now that deals with the ive leading blog tags in
the world. It’s to see what people are thinking about, a global
mind-reader. Software reads key words, tags them, and makes
‘judgements’ about the emotional range of information. So it
lets us know at a glance the mood of the global mind, as seen
in constantly evolving and morphing blogs.
So many things that used to be hidden are now evidenced
and present. We’re inverting the exoskeleton. For example,
there are some wonderful ways to photograph and scan
paintings to uncover their histories.
I like to pull forward the things that we’ve always thought
should be invisible and make that a part of the communication
structure, in fact, the whole nature of a work. So the invisible
becomes the aesthetic itself. Because by revealing process, we
reveal meaning.
As you know, I have a deep interest in the history of
archaeological approaches to the world, to evidence, to
information, to documentation. And it’s undoubtedly the case
that a lot of this interest in ruination and the interest in decay
– the gothic interest in the dark side of things – is very much an
eighteenth century invention, or preoccupation at least.
It’s the idea, the igure, of the undead, of the renegade. It’s
the perverse count in some ramshackle castle who’s coming
back to haunt us and thereby, you know, inluencing the
present.
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Was the creation of the undead simultaneous with the invention
of electricity?
Well, certainly it all goes together. There was a barrage in the
age of reason, the development of experimental methods, of
science, of rationality. And this accompanied, of course, a
romantic fascination with the other side of reason. The
irrational. Whether it’s mental or social or cultural. The
invention of modern notions of crime comes at this same time.
So, deviation, crime, all goes with this hyper-rationalized
approach to nature and the world. It was about separating the
rational from the irrational.
And deciding which is which.
Yeah and trying to decide between the two, which is connected
to another component: the demarcation of what it is to be
human. What is human and what isn’t human.
So, it’s the machine and the human, or the inhuman and the
human. Or the stuff that is often seen as accoutrement to us,
separate from us, whether it’s the information that we generate
about ourselves, our relationships, or our stuff, our material
things.
So, questions of: Is it me? Is it not me? Is this trail I leave in
the world around me, this archaeological trace, is it me or is it
something secondary? The things I use and own, do they
constitute who I am? Or are they just the things that I use?
This theme of, where do I end and where does the world begin
and how am I, as a person, dispersed in the socio-cultural
world? This is a classic theme that has worried us – in its
modern guise – since the eighteenth century. And it goes with
the invention of disciplines such as archaeology, anthropology,
and human and social sciences.
But now we’re spawning a different kind of mutation, because
we’re able to reconceive ourselves virally and instantly put that
morphed and evolving regeneration into the world speciically
so that it can be adapted and changed. So, where does that
mutation leave us? Is our sense of presence, and who we are,
an appendage to how we are perceived?
I always say that what archaeologists have to make them
distinct is the long-term view of things. Absolutely, we’re made
very conscious of this now. But I see all of this, really, as just
coming at the end of a long, long history. I don’t think it’s new.
I think these issues have faced us for as long as we’ve been
Here and now
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human. The phrase that I use is: For as long as we’ve been
human, we’ve been cyborgs; we’ve been intimately connected
with things, with goods.
In the early days – and I’m going back to 120,000 years ago
– I think what made us human was an intimacy with goods,
with things, in kind of ‘machine-ic’ assemblages, even though
they weren’t formal machines.
The temple and imperial administrative bureaucracies of
the ancient Near East were what Lewis Mumford called megamachines. They built the pyramids – 20,000 horsepower
running for perhaps 600 years and capable of positioning a
million stone blocks accurate to a fraction of an inch.
So can autonomous agents even exist, do you think? Or do you
think that everything is kind of tempered by these assemblages,
this sampling and remixing? How would you determine
whether something is independent, isolated? It can’t be, in
order to function.
Yeah, yeah. I’ve been fascinated by the way your work explores
the limits of what makes someone an authentic self. As an
anthropologist I agree that authenticity is not best connected
solely to internal properties of an autonomous individual. We
i nd our authentic selves in others and in our relations with
goods.
Everything is dei ned by its relation to something else.
Right – think of what’s happening in this room right now.
That is, in the future, looking back, what would be the
dei nitive statement, representation, of the room here and
now?
There’s a conversation happening between you and me, but
even that is inluenced by where I’ve come from, where you’ve
come from, and it will take us in different directions in the
future. And, I don’t know, maybe in a little bit of time I’ll look
back on this and say, ‘Ah, that was when I realized my calling
was not archaeology but the arts!’ So, what happened in this
room was – yes, a conversation – but that was coincidental to
something else that I realized, only with hindsight, had
happened.
But then you might say, what’s happening in this room is
that the air conditioning has been switched off and the patterns
of heat transfer are now apparent. As a physicist, you have a
very different view of things. As an investor, perhaps your
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perspective is that this is the last use of the building before they
redevelop it and turn it into condominiums.
So, what’s going on here has no bottom line. There’s no
dei nitive answer to say, this is what’s going on here, and it can
therefore be represented in one way.
So, the question becomes, how do you take photographs of
all of that? How do you make a video out of it all? How would
you document it? That is the classic issue, I think: What is the
dei nitive record or representation of something, an event, an
occurrence, a person?
There isn’t one. Now, this is not disempowering, it’s the
opposite. It’s actually empowering, because it opens the door
to actually playing with it; to remixing, reworking the processes
of documentation, of engagement, whatever.
And invisibility, things we can’t see now, that are embedded in
time, even here in this room, waiting to reveal themselves. And
there are many ghosts lurking unseen that it will take
generations of inventive science to understand. Our perceptions
are limited to the technologies we can access.
So you really can’t discard anything. It’s only a matter of
time before we see what economies determine as being
sustainable. It is going to be surprising, not at all what we
expect, not at all linear.
I think what you’re looking for here, very appropriately, is
what I would call the politics of legacy.
Of presence.
Yes – the politics of presence. What is made present and what
is kept absent and invisible.
But it’s never completely invisible, because it can always be
traced.
Well, there, again, in my long-term perspective – it’s a very
melancholic one – I think that most of history is … . Well,
we’ve just lost it all.
Ahh.
And I think there is a crucial issue in our current politics, now
and for the future, which is what are we able to recall, to
document, to trace, and also what should be documented and
traced and not kept invisible.
And who makes those decisions.
Absolutely, it’s about power over these processes. It’s a crucial
issue.
Here and now
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Figure 12.4 Visitors in Second Life occupy room 47 of the regenerated Dante
Hotel in Life Squared. Photo: Gabriella Giannachi.
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At the same time, as I say, there is a melancholy about our
pasts in that so much has been deliberately destroyed or
concealed or forgotten. It’s the politics of the past. As we all
know, it’s the winners who write the history books.
But I think, with this digital moment, this digital demeanor
– and behind it lies the utopianism of a lot of digital culture –
the tools to uncover so much are in our hands; ours and those
of people who haven’t had access to this kind of cultural tool
before.
Our memories may be gone, but they’re certainly recorded
now in a way that was not possible before. They’re retrievable.
What will be preserved and archived will depend on the
priorities, cleverness, politics, and rebelliousness of each
generation.
Right, you’re talking about the will to conserve. It’s a task to
conserve, to rework, precisely in the way that we took that box
of stuff connected to 1972 and reworked it in 2006, 2007.
That’s the only way the past is going to keep going. It has to be
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taken up and reworked. So, in the digital proliferation of all
this stuff – from the mundane, the quotidian, the everyday of
people’s lives – we have to see value. The only way it’s going to
survive to give a new angle on the present, or be the basis for a
new kind of understanding of the everyday history of the
twenty-i rst century, is if people take it up in terms of those
energies you’ve just described.
They’ve got to want to do it. Material preservation won’t
work. Information is a verb. You have to take things up and
rework them, remix them.
To make them alive.
To make them live again. It’s reincarnation, literally. You
incarnate. You give them new material forms that you engage
with.
There is all this stuff, so much stuff. I think the great
prospect is that some unexpected components of today are
going to be taken up and remixed and reworked. Not the great,
grand stories of history, not the great accounts proffered by the
victors and the great, powerful igures of today. But rather the
mundane, the everyday, the stuff that really makes life what it
is. That would be fascinating.
And, actually, this is what archaeological science has always
offered – accounts of everyday life with which we can all
identify and yet i nd uncanny. It may simply be a thumbprint
upon an ancient pot that connects an inconsequential past
moment with the present; it may be the evidence of the lives of
those who built a place like Stonehenge. It is the archaeological
focus on the everyday that many people i nd fascinating.
Because these are the relics of ourselves.
Chapter 13
Photographic presence
Time and the image
Nick Kaye
The thing was there, we grasped it in the living motion of a
comprehensive action – and once it has become an image it
instantly becomes ungraspable, non-contemporary, impassive
[…] the present thing in its absence, the thing graspable
because ungraspable, appearing as something that has
disappeared, the return of what does not come back
(Blanchot 1999: 418)
The Californian artist Chris Burden’s White Light/White Heat
(1975) captures an experience of presence as processual and
performative. Directed toward phenomena emerging in the interval
or delay between expectation and appearance, Burden’s work
provokes a speculation and projection toward his ‘performance’ in
which the opposition between the space, action and presence of
self and other becomes friable and unclear, yet in which the
experience of presence unfolds in a distinctive and direct way.
Entering an otherwise empty white gallery space, the visitor
encounters Burden’s installation as a wide, white plinth suspended
below ceiling level. On the wall of the gallery room a discrete
statement indicates the form and event of the work. Burden’s
contemporaneous description, issued by Ronald Feldman Gallery
in announcement of the exhibition, has subsequently been
published as its documentation and is thus reproduced here, as the
artist normally requires, adjacent to the photographic record of the
event.
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Figure 13.1 © Chris Burden. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
White Light/White Heat
Chris Burden
8 February to 1 March 1975
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, New York
For my one-man show at Ronald Feldman, I requested that a large
triangular platform be constructed in the southeast corner of the
gallery. The platform was ten feet above the loor and two feet
below the ceiling; the outer edge measured eighteen feet across.
The size and height of the platform were determined by the
requirement that I be able to lie lat without being visible from any
point in the gallery. For twenty-two days, the duration of the
show, I lay on the platform. During the entire piece, I did not eat,
talk, or come down. I did not see anyone, and no one saw me.
Relic: section of board
Case: 7 x 151/4 x 10 inches
Collection: Noel Frackman, Scarsdale, New York
Photographic presence
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Figure 13.2 © Chris Burden. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
White Light/White Heat
Chris Burden
8 February – March 1, 1975
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, New York
Relic: section of board
Case: 7 x 151/4 x 10 inches
Collection: Noel Frackman, Scarsdale, New York
White Light/White Heat returns to the then well-established modes
of minimal art installations by artists such as Robert Morris,
Richard Nonas, and Donald Judd at a time in the mid-1970s when
East Coast artists, including Vito Acconci, Dennis Oppenheim and
others, were stepping out of ‘live’ performance (Acconci 1979)
toward installation, architecture and video. In doing so, however,
Burden’s act crystallizes an address to experiences of ‘liveness,’
mediation and presence that inds a common thread through many
of these developing forms and practices. Referencing the overt
‘theatricality’ of the white ‘unitary forms’ that had emerged from
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the early 1960s as sculptural interventions into the relational terms
– in ‘real time’ and ‘real space’ (Morris 1993: 175) – of the viewer’s
encounter with the gallery object, White Light/White Heat casts an
aggressively performative frame over the viewer’s entry into a
‘situation’ in which distinctions between viewer, ‘work’ and
performer have been radically eroded. Shadowed by the apparent,
if self-imposed, urgency of his situation, which counterpoints and
parodies the signature ‘indifference’ of the minimal object, Burden’s
proposition is aimed toward the awareness of a supplemental
presence that might force ‘the work’ through its aesthetic frame to
re-articulate the dynamic between viewer and viewed. In this
respect, Burden’s gesture carries an implicit logic of ‘so-called
minimalism’ (Morris 1997) to conclusion, whereby, in directing
sculptural form and function toward an intervention into the
visitor’s negotiation and awareness of their viewing, perceptual
experience usurps the conventional place of the object. Here, too,
White Light/White Heat is situated in relation to a post-minimalist
impulse toward dissolution of the object of attention in favour of
ephemeral processes and self-relexive experiences. Such work is
exempliied in installations by Bruce Nauman in the late 1960s and
early 1970s (Nauman 2003) and the contemporaneous ‘light and
space’ work of Southern Californian artists including Robert Irwin,
Doug Wheeler and Michael Asher (Clark 2011). Taking such
evacuations of the gallery space as a point of reference in his own
analysis of the reading and experience of constructed space, the
architect Bernard Tschumi argues that in this work conventional
oppositions between subject and object are collapsed, as:
By restricting visual and physical perception to the faintest of
all stimulations, they turn the expected experience of the space
into something altogether different. The almost totally
removed sensory dei nition inevitably throws the viewers back
on themselves. In ‘deprived space’ […] the materiality of the
body coincides with the materiality of space [and] the subjects’
only ‘experience their own experience’
(Tschumi 1994: 41–2)
Yet the supplementary nature of Burden’s presence complicates this
mode of post-minimalist relexivity. In contrast to the ‘light and
space’ installations’ extension of Frank Stella’s celebrated maxim
that ‘what you see is what you see,’ White Light/White Heat
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operates at a level of hypothesis, as a iction or a conceit given
material consequence by the viewer, for whom the question of
Burden’s presence presses forward. Resting on uncertainty, and
focusing on the visitor’s anticipation, Burden’s act haunts the
gallery in a will toward the immanence of the body and its
performance. For Robert Horovitz, whose article ‘Chris Burden’ in
Artforum in 1976 provided the i rst extended critical account of
Burden’s work, it is precisely this projection toward ‘presence’ in
denials and withholdings through which ‘[t]he piece dominates its
space effortlessly’ (Horovitz 1976: 24). Here:
The assumption that he is there alters everything – but I don’t
know for a fact that he really is there. I become ‘it’ in an
unannounced game of hide-and-seek. I listen for telltale
rustling, any breathing noises. The many small sounds that ill
the gallery are magniied by my attention […] The room is
haunted.
(Horovitz 1976: 24, original emphasis)
It is a haunting of space that also prompts an experience of
‘presence’ as divided and palimpsestual. Indeed, the uncanny effect
and fascination this installation provokes perhaps lies less in the
question of whether or not Burden ‘is present,’ so much as the
visitor’s realization that they may perceive only their projection of
themselves. In this case, the phenomenon of Burden’s ‘presence’
occurs in the sense of an interval, a difference, in the location of
one’s own presence in the installation. In retrospect, Burden
recounted his own participation, too, as inhabiting the actions of
those from whom he obscured himself:
I participated kind of like a ghost, in everything that would
happen in the gallery, because I could hear everything […] I
had day after day where the gallery opened up, and people
would start coming in, and business would happen in the
gallery, and I would participate in everything on a vicarious
level.
(Burden in White 1979: 15)
It is an approach to performance that also relects the preoccupations and tactics of earlier ‘body art’ work, which engaged
with questions of the body’s presence and its construction in and
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after the event. Thus for Dennis Oppenheim and Vito Acconci
developing body-based artworks through live performance, video
and photographic documentation in New York in the late 1960s
and early 1970s, the body provided a ‘de-materialized zone of
psychological topology’ (Oppenheim in Kaye 1996: 66) that would
evade the limits of the ‘object’ in processual, excessive and
ephemeral acts that also resisted reproduction. ‘[O]ne of the most
catalytic aspects of Body Art,’ Oppenheim later recalled, ‘was this
connection to the real world’ (Oppenheim in Kaye 1996: 66), a
connection that led him to emphasize the situated body and interconnected phenomena in time. In turn, the visual expression and
remainder of such events were frequently positioned as
documentation displaced from the ‘real time’ centre of an act or
event which may or may not have directly addressed a once ‘present’
audience. Indeed, Burden’s own most notorious ‘performances,’
including Shoot (1971), Trans-Fixed (1974) and 747 (1973)
occurred in the absence of knowing spectators, to be disseminated
as carefully selected photographic remainders (Auslander 2006)
seemingly charged by the ‘real’ acts to which they claim to be
witness. Such methods work against both the conventional
spectacle of performance and the binary opposition between
performance and documentation. Consistently with this, in the
event, White Light/White Heat provokes a heightened sense of
simultaneous investment in and ‘being before’ Burden’s action
driven and shaped in his refusal to come to visibility. It is a gesture
then reproduced in Burden’s photographic documentation, in
which his ‘act’ remains unavailable to view and in whose absence
the image also obtains its peculiar charge.
In their emphasis on the relational dynamics in which the body
is performed and perceived and the resistance of time-based
processes to the documentary image, these engagements with
presence may also be set against the inluential poet and
existentialist thinker Maurice Blanchot’s association of ‘the real’
with ephemeral phenomena at once encountered and betrayed in
their representation. Blanchot’s attention to the act of reading and
to modes of relexivity in art and literature published in French
from 1941 and disseminated widely in English from 1973 offer an
articulation of the practice of writing, a privileging of experience
and a scepticism toward the image that has had an overt inluence
on contemporary art engaging with presence as theme and
phenomena1. Blanchot’s emphasis, too, is consistent with the broad
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engagement with phenomenology that underpinned the emergence
of the ‘body art’ practices in the 1960s and 1970s and in which
latterly Burden’s work participated. Thus, for Acconci, among
others, approaches to the body in performance dei ned in the wave
of post-minimal body work in the late 1960s were overtly inluenced
by then recent and contemporaneous publications by Maurice
Merleau-Ponty (Blocker 2004: 27). Relecting back on his steps
into actions and performance from 1969, Acconci himself
concluded in this phenomenological vein that: ‘[o]ne thing I learned
through working with the body is that you can’t think of it as an
object’ (Acconci in Nemser 1971: 21).
Approaching encounters with ‘the real’ as inseparable from a
motion, an action or emergent process of comprehension that
arrives, i nally, at the stillness of the ‘image,’ Blanchot’s writing
emphasizes a dynamic relationship between sign and referent in
which experiences of presence are shaped. In this context, Blanchot
proposes in his essay ‘Two Versions of the Imaginary,’ i rst
published in English in 1981, and echoing Emmanuel Levinas’
phenomenology of an ‘I’ deined by ‘ini nity’ and so openness to
the ‘other’ (Levinas 1969: 26–7), ‘[t]he ‘real’ is that with which our
relationship is always alive and which always leaves us the initiative’
(Blanchot 1999: 418). Yet this phenomenon, he suggests, is grasped
through art only in the very process in which the image – and so
representation – emerges to obscure this ‘living motion,’ such that
the image comes to announce ‘the present thing in its absence […]
appearing as something that has disappeared’ (Blanchot 1999:
418). For Blanchot, this leads to a formulation in which approaches
to ‘the real’ in art come to be linked necessarily to art’s interrogation
of its own form and identity, and to an opening of itself to question.
‘[L]iterature,’ Blanchot thus emphasizes, ‘begins at the moment
when literature becomes a question,’ such that ‘[t]o make literature
become the exposure of this emptiness inside, to make it open up
completely to its nothingness’ is to ‘realize its own unreality’
(Blanchot 1999a: 359–60). For Blanchot, also, this interrogation
of means and forms is linked to the reader’s agency, whereby, as the
work negates itself, so ‘[t]he reader makes the work; as he reads it,
he creates it; he is its real author, he is the consciousness and the
living substance of the written thing’ (Blanchot 1999a: 364–5).
Read in relation to this account of the dynamic between action,
event and image, Burden’s White Light/White Heat offers the
visitor an encounter dei ned in displacements of the image in favour
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of the viewer’s agency and an emergent presence that anticipates
and so precedes the spectacle of ‘performance’.
This postponement and process, in which the viewer is installed
as the agent of the work, and in which the artwork engages with ‘the
living motion of a comprehensive action,’ is implicit not only to
Burden’s engagement with ‘performance’ in White Light/White
Heat, but also in the relationship between this event and its photographic documentation. Where the experience of White Light/White
Heat is prompted and unfolds in Burden’s refusal to appear, so there
is no straightforward opposition between Burden’s event and the
image and text that circulates as its remainder. Burden’s descriptive
text also provokes questions over this opposition, where, published in
advance of the event, his account is written in the past tense, and so in
anticipation of a documentary record. In these respects, the textual
and photographic re-presentation of Burden’s installation also marks
the various tenses and intervals in which this work functions.
Indeed, as ‘documentation,’ Burden’s account of White Light/
White Heat participates more broadly in a genre of ‘performed
photography,’ a mode of work that frequently announces itself in
articulations of the intervals and slips of tenses and times between
event, act and record. Invariably posing the question of where
performance occurs or is constituted, and explicitly engaging with
questions and experiences of presence, it is a mode of work, which,
after Jon Erickson, the performance theorist Phillip Auslander
considers to range from:
Marcel Duchamp’s photos of himself as Rrose Selavy to Cindy
Sherman’s photographs of herself in various guises to Matthew
Barney’s Cremaster ilms […] These are cases in which
performances were staged solely to be photographed or i lmed
and had no meaningful prior existence as autonomous events
presented to audiences. The space of the document (whether
visual or audiovisual) thus becomes the only space in which
the performance occurs.
(Auslander 2006: 2)
Here, it is the image’s relationship with a past event that Auslander
emphasizes, proposing that in this photography, ‘performance’ is
constructed in the space and practice of the image itself, so
revealing, after J. L. Austin’s theory of speech acts, ‘[t]he
performativity of documentation itself’ whereby:
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the act of documenting an event as a performance is what
constitutes it as such. Documentation does not simply generate
image/statements that describe an autonomous performance
and state that it occurred: it produces an event as performance
and, as Frazer Ward suggests, the performer as ‘artist’.
(Auslander 2006: 5)
In this formulation, the ‘performativity of documentation’ presses
toward the construction or reinforcement of a settled relationship
between a past event and its dei nition in the space of a ‘present’
image.
As a category of work, however, ‘performed photography’ can
readily be extended to embrace multiple relationships between
performance and its remainder, many of which call into question
oppositions between image and event. Thus the exhibition Staging
Action – Performance in Photography Since 1960, presented at the
Museum of Modern Art, New York, January to May 2011,
embraced the ‘documentation’ of performed actions by Gunther
Brus, Hermann Nitsch and the Vienna Actionists; the photographic
record of events, actions and situations by Vito Acconci; as well as
Cindy Sherman’s untitled ilm stills, Ana Mandieta’s Untitled
Facial-Cosmetic Variations (January–February 1972) and Lucas
Samaras’ Auto Polariod (1960–71). This work ranges across
radically different exchanges between image and performance:
from photographic records of Nitsch’s Orgien Mysterien Theatre
and Brus’ simulation of ritual actions on the body, to Acconci’s
elusive encounters or interventions into speciic sites whose
circulation has been primarily in their representation, to ‘autoperformances’ playing on the performativity of self and identity in
which exposures of the act of self-representation intrude on various
genres, including portrait photography, i lm and other media.
The range of work in Staging Action suggests that the dynamics
between performance, image and record may equally serve to
amplify or multiply the uncertainties over the identity of form and
practice, rather than determine temporal and other relationships
with a past event. Thus each of these images or image-sequences
installs, announces and conditions its reception with reference to
its multiple times: the times of action, record, staging, but also
frequently production and reading. It is an incursion of the
temporal that calls the image into question and that undermines its
autonomy. In this respect, ‘performed photography’ may also serve
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to advance the impulse toward event and performance within
much visual art, that has frequently aimed toward interrogating
and unsettling rather than resolving the established terms of the
object, text, or artist-viewer relationship. Recalling his own steps
into ‘live’ work, Vito Acconci thus recalled, in 1989, that, far from
asserting a new performative form, his eclectic engagements with
situated events or acts sought to displace and disturb the place and
role of artist, viewer and work, noting that: ‘[w]e hated the word
“performance,” because “performance” had a place, and that
place by tradition was a theatre’ (Acconci 2001: 358). Far from
settling the identity of performance or making available an earlier
event in another form, the ‘documentation’ of such activity
frequently sought to further examine and complicate the ield,
time, and event of that to which it referred, as an extension of the
original impulse and purpose. An analogous dynamic operates in
Burden’s record of White Light/White Heat. Where the
‘performance’ was ‘itself’ unavailable, so Burden’s image renews
and extends this gesture rather than render his act visible or
construct a stable point against which the past event is redei ned
or positioned: Burden’s image is empty, mute. Performance
documentation, and performed photography, through this lens,
may also extend the performativity of the ‘event’ in relation to the
reader or viewers, opening further the ield and eclecticism of the
work.
Read in relation to Blanchot’s analysis, such performativity also
operates more radically again, toward the provocation and
articulation of ideas and experiences of ‘presentness’. Where
phenomena of presence occur in time – and so where presence is
processual – the experience of presence may be produced in
mechanisms of refusal and delay; in provocations of anticipation
and projection with regard to the emergence of the ‘image,’ of this
‘limit next to the indeinite’ (Blanchot 1999: 417). After Blanchot,
then, it may be argued that the photograph, or more broadly the
image, provokes experiences of presence in the very lack in which
it obtains its relationship to its object: in the rhythm of appearance
and disappearance in which a ‘living motion’ is recalled or
produced, described and elaborated – in a self-negation that
invokes and lends the viewer agency. Here, where ‘performance’ is
deployed, represented or referred to in such a way as to effect a
sense of a lack, gap, or interval in relation to the image, where the
image ‘becomes a question,’ then this may itself become a focus for
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245
Figure 13.3 Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still (1977).
Black and white photograph 8 x 10 inches (image size)
20.3 x 25.4 cm; 135/8 x 161/8 inches (frame size) 31.4 x 40.3 cm.
Edition of 10. Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures.
engagements with presence. In such photographic work, the igure
of ‘performance’ conditions and informs the ‘presence’ of the
image to the reader, rather than deferring to a performance past.
In these contexts, Cindy Sherman’s celebrated untitled i lm
stills can be seen to gain their uncanny effect precisely in the
absence of the ‘performances’ to which they seem to refer.
Originally exhibited in series, in which Sherman’s role or identity
is re-made in diverse, fragmented and ambiguous references to
i lm genre, narrative and framing – and in overtly constructed
moments of ‘i lm performance’ – these images also refer to and
open the processes of their own making. Here, too, the
performative quality of Sherman’s gestures are revealed and
extended in their presentation against overtly projected
backgrounds that articulate the construction of the image, an
effect ampliied by these images exhibition in sequence. In these
mechanisms, the ‘presence’ of ‘Sherman’ to the image is asserted
in an overt layering and in separations that create the appearance
of a doubling; a sense of the image standing before itself or in
separation from itself. It is in these separations that these
fabricated or imagined self-portraits also gain their charge of
‘liveness,’ and so a quality of ‘documentation’ and ‘performance’
that exceeds its i lm references. Such tactics amplify the sense of
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Nick Kaye
an act performed and now lost: an act that engages with these
images’ displacement to and from the performance, to and from
the dramatic low and i lm medium their composition and framing
implies. Indeed these images’ ‘incompletion,’ their reference out
of frame, their gesture toward intermedia, all contribute to the
rhythm that Blanchot describes: the movement toward and away
from a resolution of the event into the image. Here, i nally, it is in
the articulation of the interval in which the performativity of the
image arises, that a sense of an emergent presence is evoked.
Where Sherman’s work emphasizes a recovery and representation
of time, other contemporary photographic work has explored a
performativity of presence in relation to images and constructions of
space. For Doug Hall, whose inluential work developed in the San
Francisco Bay Area through performance, video and installation
from the 1960s, including collaborations as T. R. Uthco and with
the media collective Ant Farm, toward more recent large-format
photography, the still image has provided a means of engaging with
qualities and effects that lie beyond the conventional ield of the
photograph. Hall recalls that: ‘I came to photography through the
back door, via video and installation. As a result my original interests
were less photographic and more spatial’ (Hall 2000: 2). In his
Anonymous Places series from 1989–91, comprising images of
ostensibly ‘empty’ institutional interiors, and also his images of
Archives, Museums and Opera Houses created in 1997 and 2002,
Hall’s work interrogated the architectural gaze and the ‘spatial
uncanny’ (Hall 2010: 2) expressed in various dynamics between
space, image and act. Here, too, his photography invariably pressed
toward a doubling or layering of vision and perspective, in revelations
of the camera’s ‘look’ and, implicitly, the gaze of both artist and
viewer. In relation to his work in 2002, in particular, Hall recalled:
I became more and more aware of the scopic quality of the
opera houses. What I mean by that is that, as I stood at centre
stage and looked back toward the halls, I felt as if the halls
themselves were looking back at me so that in a sense I was
photographing not just the spaces, but the act of looking itself.
(Hall 2005: 4)
This effect of a doubling is also driven at the level of meaning, and
speciically in the assertion of an interval between the image and
its signiicance; an interval advanced by the representation of
Photographic presence
247
Figure 13.4 Doug Hall, Teatro Dell’Opera, Rome (2002). Courtesy of the artist.
ostensibly ‘empty’ spaces. Indeed, these images purposefully
reproduce architectures that marshal the gaze and that are cultural
sites created for the overt production of meaning and value in
individual and communal acts of looking. In these respects, these
works exemplify an effect that Hall identiies more broadly with
his work, whereby large-scale still images of the everyday press
toward ‘allegory,’ noting that: ‘[b]y ‘allegorical’ I mean that the
photograph, in its stark literalness, distances itself from the worldas-fact.’ (Hall 2003: 6). In this event, and in their ‘stark literalness,’
these photographs gain an uncanny effect in their sense of the
image’s distance from ‘itself,’ produced in the reader’s impulse
toward metaphor even as the ‘empty’ image remains mute. Here,
where the interval between image and meaning intrudes upon and
shapes the viewer’s experience of reading the photograph, so the
viewer’s awareness of the time of reading, and the image as an
index of the time of looking, intervenes into their experience. Yet
the meaning of this image inevitably remains unresolved. Here,
Hall’s images work to capture in their ‘emptiness’ a layering of
gazes in which the artist’s own photographic act is relected upon
and ampliied; an act that the auditorium seems to uncannily
testify to and reproduce. Hall recalls that ‘when standing on the
stage and photographing the empty halls’:
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Nick Kaye
On more than one occasion, the ornate spaces seemed to be
staring back at me. I felt as if I was caught in he gaze from a
source I couldn’t identify and that what I was actually
photographing was not just a room, but the act of looking
itself. I understand that on the surface this is completely logical:
that centre stage where I was standing (and where the viewer
of the photograph also stands) is the optical and perspectival
hub to and from which all vision radiates. The result is that I,
the photographer, and you, the viewer of the photograph, i nd
ourselves at the centre of a world at least as it is dei ned by this
interior. With the empty seats and vacant tiers of boxes arrayed
before us, we are aware of ourselves as both the one seeing and
the ones being seen.
(Hall 2005: 3)
In their introduction of the experience of layering, too, these
images both reproduce and provoke, for Hall, a sense that ‘I was
photographing not just the spaces, but the act of looking itself’
(Hall 2005: 4). It is here, then, that an uncanny sense of presence
emerges in response to these photographs, as ‘I,’ the viewer, become
present to ‘my’ reading of the image, and to the layering of gazes in
which my looking is caught, so prompting a sense of agency in and
before the image. It is also a presence and effect that moves closer
toward the tactics engaged in Burden’s installation. Hall records
that:
The i nal twist to this and the thing that made it all a little
unsettling was the distinct impression that I had been caught
looking at myself by a presence that I can now only identify as
being both myself and other than myself. An odd equation
emerges: I see myself looking at myself looking at myself and
the result is a real and perceptible unease.
(Hall 2005: 4)
Such engagements with presence and the image are also evident in
the extended series of performance-related images, Empty Stages,
by the UK-based photographer Hugo Glendinning created in
collaboration with the writer, artist and artistic director of Forced
Entertainment, Tim Etchells. Initiated in 2003 and continuing,
Glendinning and Etchells’ images draw directly on practices of
theatre and performance documentation, to which Glendinning is
Photographic presence
249
Figure 13.5 Tim Etchells and Hugo Glendinning, from Empty Stages (2003).
Courtesy of the artists.
also extensively committed, yet the charge of these images lies
precisely in the absences to which they claim to be witness and
their carefully composed ambivalence toward the meanings of the
spaces they present. Etchells recounts that:
Each of the images shows some kind of raised platform in
locations such as working men’s clubs, village halls, amateur
theatres and city squares – as well as grander prosceniums in
theatres, opera houses and the like, in different parts of the
world. Each of these stages is empty – no actors or technicians,
and empty auditoria – but in a strange way I think of them as
performance photographs. They’re spaces of expectation and
waiting, certainly, but also of imagining.
(Etchells 2009)
Glendinning and Etchells’ images invite, again, a sense of
doubling, in which the reader becomes subject to the image’s
reproduction of the stage’s demand for meaning, and its apparent
anticipation of theatrical presence and purpose. It is an
anticipation further provoked and ampliied by the semiotics of
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Nick Kaye
the theatrical function and its cultural and aesthetic apparatus.
Yet Empty Stages operates in a palpable denial of that which
these spaces invoke. Laden with their meaning-making function,
yet seemingly absent from the performance of this meaning, these
images invoke their own uncanny double – becoming ‘meaningful’
in their very lack of signiication; ‘present’ in their emphatic
assertion of absence as the object of attention. In a recent
interview with Gabriella Giannachi, Glendinning linked this
gesture to that of Forced Entertainment’s live performances and
media work, which also pay close attention to the performance
and modulation of presence, noting that:
there’s an impulse in his work with the company to view or
underline the idea of the stage as a kind of container – a volume
to be illed either literally or imaginatively in the performance.
Many of the performances come back to this idea – the empty
frame or container of the stage … a space of potential.
(Glendinning in Giannachi 2011: 87)
This ‘space of potential’ marks the incursion of time and expectation
into the viewer’s relationship with the image, so reinforcing the
event of the uncanny and the reading and experience of presence.
Indeed, in these images, the sense that the still image captures and
provokes a sense of the temporal, and a pressing forward to the
future, toward an unrealizable potential, is an integral part of their
effect. Glendinning himself concludes that it is here that the link to
‘liveness’ is most evident, noting that: ‘I think the Empty Stages
give you a kind of photographic space that’s like the experience of
being in a live performance, where you can imagine, wander in
that space forward and backwards in time’ (Glendinning in
Giannachi 2011: 91).
Such tactics again bring performance forward in the
functioning of the image, in modes of work that emphasize
process and disjunction, memory and anticipation in the reading
and production of ‘presence’. Jon Erickson, writing in The Fate of
the Object: From Modern Object to Postmodern Sign in
Performance, Art, and Poetry (1998) observes the articulation of
the performer’s presence in disjunctive temporal relationships
between the body, action, and language, noting: ‘Presence’ in the
theater is a physicality in the present that at the same time is
grounded in a form of absence. It is something that has
Photographic presence
251
unfolded, is read against what has been seen, and is presently
observed in expectation as to what will be seen (Erickson,
1998: 62). Erickson concludes, ‘[p]resence has an inverse
relationship to language,’ arising in the moment where the body
is there and yet ‘[o]ne is holding back the articulate meaning that
the audience is expecting’ (Erickson, 1998: 62). In these images,
similarly, it is that which escapes representation or articulation,
and so in a dynamic relationship between that which the image
has stilled, and that which it denies, in which the layering of gaze
and engagement provokes an uncanny sense of the presence of
performance in and before the image. For Tim Etchells, too, and
speciically with regard to performance, it is precisely through
this introduction of the interval, the gap, and its consequences for
viewing, that presence is articulated. In his interview in this
volume, Etchells recalls that in witnessing Forced Entertainment’s
performance:
I am aware of people on a number of levels, like I’m seeing
past one layer of what they are doing to another layer and
then maybe to another. Perhaps there’s something important
about this experience that we have, of seeing layers of
information, the feeling that we are seeing through, from one
layer to another to another. As watchers, we aggregate all of
that information and we make a kind of map that allows us
to say: there’s somebody there. None of those layers is
quite enough on its own – presence is to do with the
combination.
In these contexts, and in amplifying the work of the ‘reader’
through layering or veiling, Etchells proposes, it is absence, lack,
and even obstruction that drives the reading and so effect of
‘presence’. Such tactics may clearly be set against the ‘interval’ in
Blanchot, and so aligned with a scepticism toward the image that
postpones its resolution in favour of the agency of the one who
looks or reads.
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Nick Kaye
Figure 13.6 © Chris Burden. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
While implicit in many of his photographic remainders of
performances, Chris Burden’s approach to audiences in the event
of performance also incorporated this construction of the interval
or difference. Where Burden’s images of White Light/White Heat
replay the muteness in which the original installation functioned,
in other work the interval is installed as a primary mechanism
of the event, which subsequently works against the attempt to
Photographic presence
La Chiaraicazione
253
Chris Burden
5 May 5 1975
Galleria Alessandra Castelli, Milan, Italy
The Castelli Gallery consists of a series of rooms, all of different
sizes and conigurations. One room was unusual in that it had only
one small entrance and no windows. In this room, I placed twentyive chairs in four rows in the traditional manner of theater
seating. I waited until eleven people had entered the room and
then sealed off the entrance from the inside with particle board.
An assistant placed a second panel on the other side which he
painted white to match the gallery walls. The majority of the
audience, about one hundred and ifty people, was locked out of
the room and could only imagine what was happening within.
Inside the room, I spoke to the eleven people in Italian and
convinced them to stay in the room until someone broke in from
the outside. I told them that they were the sculpture and the
responsibility for the success of the piece rested with them. I had
provided twelve bottles of mineral water, candles, and a makeshift
toilet. After we had been in the room about an hour and half, the
audience in the main gallery removed the outer panel and smashed
the inner panel to gain access to the room. The room was left
untouched for the remainder of the show.
separate the ‘performance’ from its record, or dissemination
through ‘performed photography’. Produced in Milan in the same
year as White Light/White Heat, La Chiaraicazione thus operated
in a series of deferrals of presence, as a performance never fully
resolved into appearance to its audience or performers and whose
principal remainder are charged yet ‘empty’ images.
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Nick Kaye
Figure 13.7 © Chris Burden. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
La Chiaraicazione
Chris Burden
5 May 1975
Galleria Alessandra Castelli, Milan, Italy
Relic: Hammer
Case: 5½ x 22¾ x 9¼ inches
Collection: Harvey La Tourette, Los Angeles, California
La Chiaraicazione poses the question of where its ‘present tense’
lies. Indeed, the ‘presence’ of this work is always subject to the
interval and to difference, both in its ‘original’ operation and in its
documentation. Thus Burden’s spectator-collaborators await their
audience, in anticipation of ‘their performance,’ only to discover,
in their audience’s appearance, that the event ends, to be displaced
toward its remainders; the broken door, the description and
Burden’s photographs. In this moment, and through these remains,
La Chiaraicazione works to cast a frame of performance in
retrospect over these various ‘audience’s’ actions; over the forcible
Photographic presence 255
intrusion; over the ‘spectator-performer’s’ waiting and anticipation;
which in turn becomes the past event to which the ‘present’ work
defers. In Burden’s expression of La Chiaraicazione in ‘performed
photography,’ it is the ‘absences,’ too, that are re-staged, in a
mode of presentation that extends this installation’s capture of
ephemeral acts within the everyday – acts framed retrospectively
as in ‘the real’ and that cannot come to ‘performance’ or ‘the
image’ without being transformed. Here performance, documentation and the photographic image each operate in the
incursion of the interval, and the concomitant denial or resistance
to the image – in explorations of a presence subject to ‘other’
times. In its ‘documentation,’ the performance of La Chiaraicazione
does not remain, yet it is in this image’s very refusal to bring its
performance to appearance that the persistence of presence is felt
and in which the potential of this event is most powerfully recalled
and reproduced.
Works cited
Acconci, V. (1979) ‘Steps Into Performance (And Out)’ in A. A. Bronson and
P. Gale (eds) Performance By Artists, Toronto: Art Metropole. 27–40.
——(2001 [1989]) ‘Performance After the Fact’ in G. Moure (ed.) Vito
Acconci: Writings, Works, Projects, Barcelona: Ediciones Poligrafa,
358–9.
Auslander, P. (2006) ‘The Performativity of Performance Documentation’,
PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, 28:3, 1–10
Blanchot, M. (1999) ‘Two versions of the imaginary’ in G. Quasha (ed.)
The Station Hill Blanchot Reader, translated by L. Davis, P. Auster and
R. Lamberton, Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press, 417–28.
——(1999a) ‘Literature and the right to death’ in G. Quasha (ed.)
The Station Hill Blanchot Reader, translated by L. Davis, P. Auster and
R. Lamberton, Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press, 359–99.
Blocker, J. (2004) What the Body Cost: Desire, History and Performance,
Minneapolis MN: University if Minnesota Press.
Clark, R. (2011) Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface, Berkeley
CA: University of California Press.
Erickson, J. (1998) The Fate of the Object: From Modern Object to
Postmodern Sign in Performance, Poetry, Art, Media, Ann Arbor MI:
University of Michigan Press.
Etchells, T. (2009) ‘Tim Etchells on performance: the drama of an empty
stage’, guardian.co.uk 1 December 2009. Online. Available at: www.
guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/dec/01/tim-etchells-photograph-empty-stage
(accessed 12 June 2011).
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Giannachi, G. (2009) ‘The Making of Empty Stages by Tim Etchells and
Hugo Glendinning – An Interview with Hugo Glendinning’, Leonardo
Electronic Almanac, 17:1, 84–99.
Giannachi, G. and Kaye, N. (2011) Performing Presence: Between the live
and the simulated, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Hall, D. (2000) ‘Note to Andrew Grundberg Concerning His Essay for a
Forthcoming Catalog’ in D. Hall, Short Statements, 2–3. Online.
Available at: http://doughallstudio.com/storage/On%20Opera%20
Houses.pdf (accessed 12/06/11).
——(2003) ‘Artist Statement for Atelier Books’ in D. Hall, Short Statements,
6–7. Online. Available at: http://doughallstudio.com/storage/On%20
Opera%20Houses.pdf (accessed 12 June 2011).
——(2005) ‘Concerning the Opera Houses’. Online. Available at: http://
doughallstudio.com/storage/On%20Opera%20Houses.pdf (accessed
12 June 2011).
——(2010) ‘Paradise – Notes on Photographs’. Online. Available at: http://
doughallstudio.com/storage/Notes%20on%20Paradise.pdf (accessed
12 June 2011).
Levinas, E. (1969 [1961]) Totality and Ininity: An Essay on Exteriority,
translated by A. Lingis, Pittsburgh PA: Duquesne University Press.
Horvitz, R. (1976) ‘Chris Burden’, Artforum 14:9, 24–31.
Morris, R. (1993 [1978]) ‘The Present Tense of Space’ in R. Morris
Continuous Project Altered Daily: The Writings of Robert Morris,
London: MIT Press, 175–210.
——(1997) Interview with Nick Kaye, New York, 8 April.
Nauman, B. (2003) Bruce Nauman: Theaters of Experience, New York:
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Nemser, C. (1971) ‘An Interview with Vito Acconci’, Arts Magazine, 5,
20–3.
Royle , N. (2003) The Uncanny, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Tschumi, B. (1994 [1975]) ‘The Architectural Paradox’ in B. Tschumi
Architecture and Disjunction, London: MIT Press, 27–52.
White, R. (1979) ‘Interview with Chris Burden by Robin White’ View 1:8,
whole issue, Oakland: Crown Point Press.
Notes
1 See, for example, the video artist Gary Hill’s discussion of his
engagement with Blanchot’s writing in Giannachi and Kaye 2011:
81–2. Hill’s single-channel video Incidence of Catastrophe (1987–88)
was inspired by Blanchot’s novel Thomas the Obscure while other
works have reflected his response to Blanchot’s writing more broadly.
Chapter 14
Neither here nor there …
Let’s talk about adult matters …
Mike Pearson
Figure 14.1 Me and her, Hibaldstow, January 1950.
I stood in the village churchyard with her, beneath the raucous
rookery, on the carpet of fallen nest-twigs, over the grave of her
grandfather Alfred Falkland Rogers, who was born in the Falkland
Islands and who, though miles from any sea, wore his sailor’s
jersey to the end.
And she handed me the copy of my childhood psalter – The
Cathedral Psalter with Proper Psalms; ‘Michael Pearson, Age. 8
years.’ inscribed in my late father’s hand in the front. I opened it,
and read these words:
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Mike Pearson
For my days are consumed away like smoke,
and my bones are burnt up as it were a i rebrand.
My heart is smitten down and withered like grass;
so that I forget to eat my bread.
For the voice of my groaning my bones will scarce cleave to
my lesh.
I am become like a pelican in the wilderness,
And like an owl that is in the desert.
I have watched and am even as it were a sparrow,
That sitteth alone upon the house-top.
Mine enemies revile me all day long;
and they that are mad upon me are sworn together against
me.
For I have eaten ashes as it were bread, and mingled my drink
with weeping.
And that because of thine indignation and wrath:
for thou hast taken me up and cast me down.
My days are gone like a shadow, and I am withered like
grass.
(Psalm 109, 3–11)
And I remembered singing, in the half-light of the church, incense
decaying to its half-life in the cold, still air: trying to make sense of
the dashes and asterisks, marks of pause and breath that score the
text; understanding little of the jealousy and violence and rapture
that soak the words. Remembered Reverend Clay’s scrawny neck
in his hard white collar. Remembered how close Evensong and the
closing of day had seemed to the closing of life, as the cracked
voices of the scattering of aged parishioners struggled to make
anything but their own requiem from these great sad songs to a
terrible and despotic god.
Wondered what a childish imagination had made of words of
anguish and self-loathing, of despair and rage: words of longing
and regret, of remorse, and of the smallest hope of deliverance and
reconciliation.
Pause and sit1
She had just fallen. Had struck her head on the kitchen loor. Had
somehow risen. Had broken nothing, this time. Had encouraged
Neither here nor there…
259
visitors to feel the lump – carers who were caring enough but not
taking care. Who came to administer pills and sandwiches – pills
that stop the trembles, that strengthen the bones – and to complete
the forms that said they had administered the pills and sandwiches,
pills that stop … Who litted in, and out, four times a day: markers
of the passing of the daylight hours.
House bound, chair bound; her world, that just within reach. She
would occasionally rise and shufle, pushing the wheeled trolley, at
which she ate, her preferred aid to locomotion: on missions already
forgotten after the irst few steps. The mats had been removed,
impediments dispersed; she was warned to avoid the kettle.
She was off-balance, out of kilter: turning and reversing, arduous
and fraught. For she had no self-defence, the slightest falter always
a fall. First time was in Marks and Spencer’s, standing on her scarf,
in Blackpool, ‘Fracture Capital of the North’: obstacle course for
elderly trippers. But they knew how to do it; screwed her hip
together.
Second time was in the yard, struggling with the wheelie bin.
Sat down, hard.
They did nothing. But her spine was rattled. The only relief, a
beanbag heated in the microwave.
Then others, some witnessed, others unseen … Recently she had
lain helpless in the bathroom, through the hours of darkness,
though she couldn’t tell … Her slippers had refused to slide, she
said, pitching her forward. But safe, this time.
She was in peril, a danger to herself, in need of care and
protection. Particularly at night: alone for twelve hours. Particularly
after it had all begun to become one, without measure.
But they were locked down at the home, everyone sick, couldn’t
take her. Didn’t want us coming round. So we spent a week
together, mother and son reunited.
It was bleak, desperate; called upon to do all she had once done
for me. And often silent …
She slept much, her head far forward, her teeth sometimes
slipping out; her waking schedule, the meals that she no longer
relished.
I slept little, and once when I did, I failed her. She was wandering
throughout the night, attending to this or that, that needed
attending to; busy at jobs that evaporated as soon as started. And
she fell often. Once I found her half out of bed, frozen in a moment
of descending or ascending.
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I listened out for sounds of impending disaster. I thought she
was just talking in her sleep. It was a small cry for help. Next
morning it was a crime scene: trolley overturned, clothes scattered,
drawer pulled out. Her: slumped against the cupboard. ‘I’m alright’
she said. Safe, this time.
She was a school cook. Every week she would arrive home
with some terrible burn to the forearm, some new cut to the
bone. The worst was when a catering-sized can of processed
peas slipped from a shelf and hit her on the bridge of the nose,
breaking it instantly.
(From Memory, 1992)
And she talked – with workmates, with children, with her beloved
mother – incessantly. Opinions proclaimed; thoughts for the day
mulled over: fearless in correcting table manners, all manners.
Now she went quiet, saying nothing without prompt, speaking
only in response, though often recalling details at a stretch of
memory, in moments of lucidity.
‘I think she’s got a urine infection’ said a carer. ‘Can you get a
sample?’ said a doctor. ‘Use any domestic container.’ I was out of
my depth.
And then they said they could take her. She answered all their
questions clearly – date-of-birth, likes and dislikes; wanted the
hairdresser, the chiropodist, though unsure about seeing the vicar.
‘I’ve got Parkinson’s.’
As I lifted her into the car something cracked. She winced then
said ‘I’m alright’.
Brittle, fragile; I might break her.
Walter Benjamin once wrote:
There used to be no house, hardly a room in which someone had
not died. Today people live in rooms that have never been touched
by death, dry dwellers of eternity, and when their end approaches
they are stored away in sanatoria or hospitals by their heirs.
(Benjamin 1992: 93)
I left. Out of sight, out of … I felt elated.
Three days later when no one was paying particular attention
– in broad daylight, when backs were turned – she fell, destroying
her elbow. ‘I’m alright’ she said. But she wasn’t, this time.
Neither here nor there…
261
Next morning she wouldn’t, couldn’t, eat; drink. They dialled
999, summoning transport to a circle of hell. It would need wiring
up, they said. Or she would forever remain in pain, they said. ‘At
least it’s her bad arm’ someone added – her hand closed with arthritis.
But infected, dehydrated, she was unit to be operated upon.
And as they pumped her with luid, through the back of her good
hand, it collected in her lungs. Pneumonia next.
By the time I got there, things were grave. They took me aside,
into a room marked ‘Quiet Room’: consultant, doctor, matron –
holy triumvirate. Asked me her history, her life history: of falls and
eating habits. Told me about the drop in blood pressure. Prepared
me for the worst, in an ‘only to be expected’, ‘at her age’ kind of
way. But they would maintain for twenty-four hours. Thank God
it was a weekend; twenty-four became forty-eight.
We started making ready, discussing the likely sequence of
events. Grown ups at last: doing adult business.
It was a shock. I took lowers and took them away again. She
was tiny. Tubes in her arm that she pulled at; tubes up her nose that
rubbed it sore. Everywhere veins suddenly at the surface. Without
her teeth, her face collapsed, skin drawn tight on her skull; her
wispy white hair matted. ‘You look more like her than your father’
someone said.
I am the family face;
Flesh perishes, I live on,
Projecting trait and trace
Through time, to times anon,
And leaping from place to place
Over oblivion.
The years-heired feature that can
In curve and voice and eye
Despise the human span
Of durance – that is I;
The eternal thing in man,
That heeds no call to die.
(Hardy 1993: 103–4)
After a man has turned ifty, he wears the face he deserves.
Her breath came in the faintest pants and puffs, her chest
luttering, her mouth caked and dry, skin peeling from her lips.
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Mike Pearson
Figure 14.2 Me and her, Hibaldstow, April 2000. During Bubbling Tom (2000).
Photo: Hugo Glendinning.
We held her hand; we stroked her cheeks; we whispered to her.
Sometimes she would tense, her arms mimicking a tree in some
childish game. Often she tugged at her nightgown, and pointed to
igures assembling on the bed.
Sometime she was with us, sometimes not, often betwixt and
between: ‘presence’ and ‘absence’ bereft of meaning. Only once did
she say ‘I wish I was dead.’ And then, echoing a distant conversation
I barely registered, ‘I wish I was in heaven too’.
Where was she? Often, eyes closed, she seemed to commentate
on the private screening of a ilm: our voices become ‘noises off’ in
the scene before her.
Sometimes she seemed to be with others: old, familiar faces in
old, familiar settings. Often involving some imperative, something
needing to be done: “Where shall I sit?’ she said; ‘I shortened her
dress you know, and his suits. He was a short, little man.’
Once it was her mother. ‘She never helped me’ she said, some
lasting moment of grievance or disappointment resurfacing,
rankling.
Neither here nor there…
263
Nan only ever trimmed her hair.
It grew below her waist,
Coiled round her head for work.
Then, just two weeks before she died,
They cut it all off, to make it more comfortable for her,
Or so they said.
I think it killed her.
(From Memory, 1992)
We brushed her hair. She smiled.
Others long passed, surely present again: her father who had
very cold hands. He was the local bonesetter.
He was particularly good with lumbago, a typical farm
labourer’s complaint. I remember one Saturday afternoon, a young
boy arriving from the village football team, the Hibaldstow
Hotspurs, in great pain, his collar completely dislocated. Calmly,
Grandad asked him to lie on the hearthrug and gently took him by
the hand. And then he pulled!
Her mother-in-law who had muttered ‘I never liked her’ once, as
she was leaving the home where the village elders sat a circle of
armchairs, rarely speaking; after a lifetime together, there was
nothing left to say …
…Whose stories as the end approached became fewer and fewer,
until i nally only one remained. And this she repeated over and
over. She must have been about ive years old, preparing the dinner
for the harvesters returning from the ields. But the tap on the beer
barrel was blocked. ‘Well Lillian’ said her mother ‘you’ll just have
to blow up it’. This she did, but it gushed back, giving her a
mouthful of bitter ale. It was her i rst, and only, taste of alcohol.
… Who thought I was my father whom she’d forgotten she had
already lost. ‘I am the family face.’
My father who gasped once in the bed beside her:
And in his dream, was there sudden black,
The jolt of a fall,
Or just another page turning in the wind?
At Fred Machin’s, she had bent down and kissed him on the cheek.
Only later would she stagger and wail
And here I can make no impersonation of my mother –
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Mike Pearson
‘He’s not coming back to me’.
She had known him since she was six years old.
‘Touch ‘im, touch ‘im, you ‘ave to touch ‘im’, my grandmother had
hissed. At the age of seventeen, she laid out her mother, washing,
combing, dressing the body, in preparation for the gaze of others.
Then later her father: shaving the face, scrubbing the hands. Just
twenty years ago, it was the turn of her aged sister.
But she died wi’ ‘er mouth open duck, and a couldn’t shut it.
I pushed and pushed.
But Harold Cox managed it, so that’s alright.
Harold Cox was her village undertaker.
Sometimes her face would distort, and she would begin to cry at
some personal anguish. ‘Don’t get fed up of me. Don’t stop coming’
she said.
Thinking she might need nursing care, I went in search. Descended
into the second circle of hell: to places where payment is by degree of
dementia, where the rooms are cellular, where residents sit in huge
silent conclaves, where the social has already died.
And then … she rallied. ‘Tough as old boots’; ‘She’s a ighter’
they said, the usual platitudes. Twice every day then, the ritual of
visiting and the alcohol handwash that some local places have
removed because the desperate are stealing it to drink. The short
anxious walk, not knowing what might await, what state of
waking.
Telling her stories – about lowers, about the market: the
mundanities of days become cyclic. Scraping the barrel.
‘She’s brightened up a lot’; ‘She’s a bit weepy’; ‘She’s eating quite
well’; ‘She had a bit of ice-cream’ they tell me.
Finally, it to operate: ‘Nil by mouth’ more a description than an
instruction. First time they were ready to roll, the anaesthetist was
unhappy. Pulled the plug.
Second time, they rang. ‘The risks are high’ they said. To go or
not to go? ‘Your decision.’ ‘Go then.’ And whatever happens, it is
the right decision, we agreed.
And they did it, put her back together: plated and wired the
multiple breaks and cracks.
And now she’s discharged, in a place of protection – ‘I’m not
bothered’ she said.
Neither here nor there…
265
Remembering what the surgeon had told her, but not the trip
there a few hours before.
But I know she is frightened. Not of slipping into another state:
already prepared for that. The advert on the kitchen notice board
– cut from the parish magazine for ‘Fred Machin: Funeral Directors’
– amended in biro: ‘Cremation only.’
But of the cracks she senses spreading and widening. In memory:
once something is said, it cannot be repeated, already gone. In
story: in all the non sequiturs, the uni nished sentences; in pauses,
in silences; in ‘I don’t know…’.
‘Just pull those wires out; those ones’ she said. ‘I got a lot of
presents’ she said. ‘I think they’re all drinkers here’ she said. I
laughed; she laughed; we laughed together. Out loud. Mother and
son reunited.
I left her. Alone now. Good days. And bad. In unknown territory.
Amongst the gaps and i rm ground. Between presence and absence.
*
*
*
I spoke the words above in Something happening, something
happening nearby, the performance that Mike Brookes and I
presented on 27 March 2008 in several adjoining rooms at the
Performing Presence conference in Exeter University.
It begins during a wine reception; I stand inconspicuously in the
crowd. A door opens and Mike enters with a chair, then a
microphone, then a second microphone, and i nally a music stand.
I sit and begin to cut the front of my shirt with a sharp knife, close
to the lower microphone. People turn; gradually the room falls
silent. From time-to-time over the next forty minutes as I deliver
the text sotto voce, I shred my clothes further – shirt, suit, tie – in
an act redolent of supplication. A waitress becomes disturbed,
distraught even – she has not been forewarned, cannot understand
why I am doing this. Some stay; others follow the cables, aware
that something else may indeed be happening nearby. In the next
room, Mike uses my ampliied voice as one element in his live
theatrical mix. On the wall: the large projection of a burning car
– follow the cable outside and it is revealed to be a toy on i re. On
the soundtrack: the insistent electric music of German-Slovene
composer Robert Merdzo, and a disquieting rustling – follow the
cable upstairs and in an empty room is a single microphone, placed
over a box of chirping and rasping crickets. The complete audio-
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Mike Pearson
visual composition is only available in full in that place where
Mike is. But some wander throughout. And I am surprised how
many remain with me, in the presence of the one person who –
even though I simply read and concentrate upon providing a sample
for elsewhere – resembles a performer.
*
*
*
The terrible gift that the dead make to the living is that of
sight, which is to say foreknowledge; in return they demand
memory, which is to say acknowledgement.
(Sante 1992: 63)
A tone continues; the key is minor …
It was a Monday. She had taken a turn for the worse during the
night; she was not expected to last the day, they said. We rushed
there, dutiful sons. Though she had already surrendered herself
into the hands of others, she struggled on for a week.
On sitting with the dying: a form of gentle encouragement, of
modest beseeching, of humorous cajoling; of quietly demanding
presence; of summoning from a distance already unbridgeable … .
Sometimes she seemed to see us, to see through us, transparent
and breakable as glass. Her breathing was at times faint and
luttering in her bird-like chest, at others short and in sharp pants:
speaking in syllables, in a tongue that sounded Latin.
On Wednesday, we combed her hair – though they had cut it, to
make it more comfortable for her – and she smiled for the last time,
and nodded her i nal acknowledgement: after that, little response.
Our devotion? Our continued presence, and heat, human heat …
But the arc has only one trajectory.
On Sunday, the curtains were drawn, the bedside lamp switched
on; no music played to keep her company. These were the signs of
a routine, regularly performed. I should have read them, understood
the full meaning of ‘She’s very poorly.’
And in the i nal moment, I was not there.
On sitting with the dead. I stroke her cheek, and brush her hair,
and hold her hand, and kiss her forehead. They have placed a single
daisy in her folded arms. Occasionally I whisper ‘Goodbye’ or
‘Sleep well’, but mostly am silent, no anticipated confessional
outpouring: her overwhelming presence and absence, her profound
silence and stillness, throwing me back on my own resources –
Neither here nor there…
267
confused thoughts of angels and autopsies. Hours pass. I stroke her
cheek, and brush her hair, and hold her hand, and kiss her forehead.
She has her father’s eyes, her mother’s nose. ‘Can I kiss her
goodbye?’ her carer asks. Hours pass. I stroke her cheek, and brush
her hair, and hold her hand, and kiss her forehead. She is insistent;
I cannot leave. Her awesome quietude absorbs me, this presentabsence: she, both familiar and ini nitely other. It feels cinematic;
a pietà reversed.
The time is now set. Clocks are running: only a limited period
in which all that needs to be said and done can, must, be said and
done. But there is a confusion: who does what, is authorized to do
what, can sign what? In the moment when discourse also dies –
reduced to ‘It was for the best’, ‘It was peaceful at the end’ and
such – process takes over: documentation, proof, certiication. And
it fails. Nobody’s fault: it is a warm bank holiday, and we are not
paying particular attention, some of us. Hours pass. The nurse
who tests for signs of life gets the call late. She apologises. I know
no better and am pleased for the hours.
Then Fred and his men arrive – in their van, a ‘private ambulance’
– and enter – in their dark suits – through a back door. I am shown
out; they take over, those who stand between, deferential but
workmanlike.
He was apprenticed as a wheelwright. With post-War mechanisation his trade diminished, but he could always ind a little extra
from his ration of wood. He became the local undertaker, the man
who carries out much that only a generation before was still in the
hands of the family, from laying out to carrying the cofin.
He has buried the ‘big’ farmers and village widows. He knows
the whole community, the living and the dead. Intimately. He has
passed on his business now, but is still requested, personally, by the
elderly. Trusted. His straightforwardness matches the ‘Primitive’
that still lingers in the ‘Methodist’ here.
We sit in her house, in the mise-en-scène of a life. We barely
know how to go on here, and there is no rehearsal for this. We seek
advice and sanction from neighbours and others, conscious of a
right way to do things, of answering claims barely articulate. But
this in between is taking its own course: the bracket is opened, the
momentum in a single direction. Then bank holiday confounds us:
suspension, limbo … . Monday passes.
Next morning the doctor is obliged to visit her at Fred’s, to pass
the i nal judgement. Once done, there is a renewed urgency to
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Mike Pearson
fulilling legal, religious, communal responsibilities, though the
i ne detail of myriad meetings is now dificult to recall.
The registrar is suspicious that the doctor’s form is not sealed.
Have I tampered with it? Is Parkinson’s Disease an actual cause of
death? Whose signature is this? We’re doing our best here. But as the
computer programme fails to respond, and we show our professional
appreciation, she relaxes. Reminded often enough, we collect the
green form for Fred, that gives him permission to proceed.
The near-sighted solicitor is witty, particularly when speaking
of the revenue, the reasons for her local popularity evident.
Full of old-style admonition, the vicar cautions against
immediate feelings of guilt and anger: ‘Banish them!’ Reminds us
that we are now orphans; that presentiments of our own mortality
will surely follow. We agree on the ritual: one hymn, his favourite
reading from Christina Rossetti …
Fred is solicitous. Should she wear her own clothes? Should he
remove her wedding ring? No need for ostentation we feel: for
over-elaborate indexing, for creating an impression ‘overdetermined and controlled’ (Pearson 1998: 40). But we follow his
counsel: this is, after all, our i rst time, for him the several
thousandth.
Others once intervened too: those ‘who may prepare, lex,
decorate, tend and carry the body, who grieve and who oficiate at
the graveside, who kneel to place objects …’ (Pearson 1998: 34). In
west Wales, there are stories of the sin-eater who, upon eating a
piece of bread placed on a plate of salt on the breast of the deceased,
devoured all sins. ‘He was utterly detested in the neighbourhood
– regarded as a mere pariah – as one irredeemably lost’ (Davies
1911: 45).
I become the bringer of news to the living: local relatives and
friends. Those I barely know as an adult embrace me, hold my face
and kiss me. ‘It’s the end of an era’ say two enigmatically. But talk
quickly turns to other matters: beautiful and intricate recitations
of genealogies; of the sequence of marriages in the Baptist chapel;
of who farmed where; of who did what, to whom, when. To
disability: ‘He’s not a very handy lad.’ To the trials of aging: ‘They
ought to rub us out and draw us again; only they’d probably draw
us the same.’ A ninety-three year old aunt is still the dramatic
storyteller: ‘I tried suicide’ she said sardonically, relating how she
had tipped over the wardrobe, trapping herself on the bed. ‘I
thought I’ve got to get out.’ Pulling out her leg, she took the skin
Neither here nor there…
269
off her shin. ‘Me head was bleeding.’ Somehow she managed to
crawl to the phone. Later in a moment of contemplation she said:
‘We had fun – me and Wilf and Sheila.’ What will disappear here
is not only accent, but a way of regarding the world: a matter-offact resignation in face of the vagaries of survival and of passing.
And the ways of telling that lessen the impacts …
Then we become forgetful, negligent, as – unexpectedly –
imperatives of kinship take over. We ignore those others who
attended, who also invested here – in friendship, companionship,
neighbourliness, in caring; in our absence … . This ignorance I
regret, but our instincts are those of strangers in a strange land.
It was foreseen. In the rummaging that inevitably begins the
search for clues and answers, we i nd scraps of paper upon which
she had monitored her own decline – strings of numbers to prove
she could remember. And a hand-written letter to be opened in her
absence, in a private act, anticipated, between her and us. Only.
She afi rms that everything is in order; directs us to bank accounts,
and to the small stashes of notes that came as comfort, even after
the burglary – the stigma of not being able to pay for one’s own
funeral perhaps echoing down the years. She informs us that we’ll
both receive the same, advises us to keep what we can of furniture
and belongings, but cautions us against ighting over them. She
beseeches us to stay good pals, and bids us farewell. ‘Let Mr
Machin of Kirton take over’ she ends …
We choose a single bouquet of the white arum lilies that she
carried at her wedding.
*
*
*
Fred drove up slowly and parked for a few moments outside the
house, in a tradition ancient, or recently invented. Either way, it
came as a surprise: we stood awkwardly. Then the cortège of two
proceeded.
Discrete strands came together at the crematorium: in the
manifestation and demonstration of communal obligations and
personal commitments – vicar, mourners, us, her; in an imbrication
of how she would want to be remembered, how we want to
remember her, and how things should be done.
We did the best we could: an improvised choreography of
following and leading, sitting and standing. We were deployed: the
ultimate demand of the dead upon the living. As expected, we
270
Mike Pearson
showed decorum. And our focus was unswerving, her presence
‘serving to disattend out-of-frame activities’ (Davies 1911: 36).
The committal was short, but seemed appropriate. We sang
Psalm 23 to Crimond. I gave a tribute, ending …
Canon Lilley asked us about her interests; we scratched our
heads. She took up painting at one point; she liked dressing up
for Kirton fête. But I think her main hobby was people – she
loved meeting people; listening; and talking. And that’s why
people loved her – her ease with others; her sympathetic ear;
and the reassurances she could give with a few words: usually
quietly, but unafraid to speak out if she felt something wrong
or unjust. This I think she got from her mother, a belief in
human decency and dignity; an old-school commitment to the
common good. In a changing world, she still had faith in the
importance of civility, of tending to relationships, and of
showing compassion for the trials of others.
And I read from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter
13, concluding: ‘And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three;
and the greatest of these is love.’
A curtain closed, a i nal curtain. Outside, lowers shone
and wilted: ‘The discarded paraphernalia of mourning’ (Davies
1911: 32).
Later, we provided tea; had bought far too much cake. And
people came and talked, as they have always talked here – familiar
stories, new revelations, startling re-workings; passing on bits of
this and that; setting the record straight. Once more.
*
*
*
‘Neither here nor there …’ is the last in a series of practical and
scholarly works set in rural communities of north Lincolnshire,
that have addressed and involved interpenetrating themes of
dwelling, place, memory and landscape. In 1992 I created From
Memory, a solo performance in response to the death of my father
James Frank Pearson, and it seems right to conclude here with the
passing of my mother Sheila Marjorie Pearson on Sunday 30
August 2009.
I have written intimately about family, and I have included
biographical material. The result is a blurring of distinctions
Neither here nor there… 271
between writing for performance and writing about performance,
and between academic and artistic modes. What has frequently
disappeared is citation, as the genealogy of people supplants the
genealogy of intellectual argument. As in the recent work of
anthropologists Kathleen Stewart (2007) and Daniel Miller (2009)
and historian Karl Schlögel (2004), opinion and expertise and
allusion can be palpable without being explicitly stated: evident in
signature style, and in the dramaturgy of textual composition.
These communities are in essence conservative: old ways still
haunt social attitudes and practices. But the reproofs and
approbations of communal life, for better or worse, weaken. And
ways of describing the world, of making sense in face of daily
travail, now hover on the brink of extinction. One small ambition
of my protracted attention has been to highlight its insights – in its
humour and its resignation – as it fades. Or perhaps it is just a
personal desire to recall and note some of the energy of post-War
aspiration, and the survival of traces of earlier attitudes and ways
of going on not quite extinguished in the rush to the modern.
After the performance in Exeter, several colleagues described
the work as ‘provocative’ and ‘challenging.’ Gratifying to know
that performance can still address adult matters, can still attempt
to deal with, to come to terms with, the most personal and poignant
experiences of presence and absence: the ultimate non-presence –
death; and the ever-presence of the departed – in memory.
The text for Something happening, something happening
nearby includes direct quotation from From Memory (1992); it
also draws upon the section in Theatre/Archaeology (Pearson and
Shanks 2001: 169–72) concerning my paternal grandmother. 2
Works cited
Benjamin, W. (1992) ‘The storyteller’, in H. Arendt (ed.) Illuminations,
London: Fontana Press, 83–107.
Davies, J. (1992 [1911]) Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales, Burnham-onSea: Llanerch Press.
Hardy, T. (1993 [1917]) ‘Heredity’, in T. Hardy Selected Poems, London:
Penguin, 103.
Miller, D. (2009) The Comfort of Things, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Pearson, M. (1998) ‘Performance as valuation: early Bronze Age burial as
theatrical complexity’, in D. Bailey (ed.), The Archaeology of Value,
Oxford: BAR International Series 730, 32–41.
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Mike Pearson
Pearson, M. and Shanks, M. (2001) Theatre/Archaeology, London:
Routledge.
Sante, L. (1992) Evidence, New York, Farrar: Straus and Giroux.
Schlögel, K. (2004) Moscow, London: Reaktion Books.
Stewart, K. (2007) Ordinary Affects, Durham and London: Duke University
Press.
Notes
1 Citations and indications of pause did not appear in the performance;
eccentricities and irregularities of punctuation result from the
compression of a working script, conceived originally for performance
as stanzas of short phrases and lines.
2 My considerable thanks are due to Dr Dee Heddon (University of
Glasgow) and my departmental colleagues Dr Carl Lavery and
Margaret Ames for their close and critical reading of this text, for
their advice on adjustments and amendments, and above for all their
encouragement to proceed.
Index
Please note that page references to non-textual content such as
illustrations will be in italics, while the letter ‘n’ will follow references to
Notes.
Abramović, Marina, 5, 6, 20, 197,
198, 199, 202
absence, 5, 12, 13, 14, 209; of
presence, 32
Acconci, Vito, 5, 202, 203, 237,
240, 241, 243, 244
acting, temporality of, 92–4
Aesthetics of Quietude, The
(Boyd), 125, 127
Agamben, Giorgio, 51
Albee, Edward, 91, 95
aliveness, 51
allegory, 247
ambient sound, 53, 54, 130, 140
America Play, The (Parks), 75
Angels in America, 91–2
Ant Farm (Media Collective),
246
Antigone (Sophocles), 97
Aoi no Uei (Yukio Mishima), 125
Apollinaire, Guillaume, 44
apparation, act of, 34
archaeology/archaeologists, 1, 2,
223, 224, 225–6, 228, 229,
230–1, 234
architectures of access, 74, 75
archival drive, 73
archive, 73, 203; Greek root of
word, 65, 68; logic of, 65, 66,
67, 68–9; oral, 68; performing
of, 13, 68–72
archive culture, 65
Archive Fever (Derrida), 65
archon, 65, 68
Aristotle, 94, 95
art, 35, 45, 53, 56, 197; see also
body-art
Artaud, Antonin, 86, 158, 215,
216
arte povera, 53, 56–7, 58
art history, 199, 200
artistic articulation, pre-expressive
and expressive levels, 110
artistic intentionality, 203
Artist Is Present, The
(Abramović), 5, 6, 20, 197,
198, 199
art-work, 153, 156, 157, 158, 159
Asher, Michael, 238
ashtray, description, 33–4
attention, 44, 93; tripartite
division of time (Ricoeur), 82,
94, 95, 98
attitude, in performance, 17
274
Index
audience, 19, 31, 53, 115, 122,
204; foreknowledge of, 93, 94,
95; meaning making, 172, 173;
and Told by the Wind, 128–9,
137; see also mis-spectatorship;
spectators
audio walks, 36–7
Augustine, 82
Auslander, Phillip, 6, 7, 158, 242
Austin, J. L., 242
authenticity, 198
authentic Self, 158, 162
authorial plentitude, 208
Auto Polariod (Samaras), 243
avant-garde performance, 2, 8, 9
avatar, 29, 49n
awareness, 34
Barba, Eugenio, 30, 47n, 91, 110,
115, 149–50n
Barney, Matthew, 242
Barthes, Roland, 98
Bateson, Gregory, 58
battle reenactment, 70
Bayly, Simon, 163–4
Beckett, Samuel, 96, 98, 125;
Waiting for Godot, 99
Beijing Opera, 122
Being (Heidegger), 158, 160, 161,
162, 163, 169
Being and Time (Heidegger),
157–8
being before, 1, 2, 11, 16
being here, 11, 16, 27, 106
being in, 2
being there, 1, 11, 29, 189
Benjamin, Walter, 260
Bergson, Henri, 34–5
Berliner Ensemble, 103
Berma (tragedienne), 176, 177,
178, 179, 181
Beuys, Joseph, 5
binaural effect, 37, 40, 41, 42,
48n
biographical material (Pearson),
23–4, 257–72
Bishop, Claire, 17, 156–7
Blanchot, Maurice, 23, 235,
240–1, 244, 251
Blast Theory, 3
Blau, Herbert, 72, 172
Bloody Mess, 183
Bodies in Flight (Physical Theatre
company), 17, 153–71;
skinworks, 153, 154, 155, 160,
161, 165, 166
body, 30, 31, 44, 65; bloating, of
Robert Lee Hodge, 70, 71;
body-subject and body-object,
106; circadian rhythms of, 83;
having, and being, 112–13;
phenomenal and semiotic, of
actor, 106, 107, 108, 111, 112,
114, 122; resonance, 33–4; as
supplementary, 209, 210
body art, 203, 204, 208, 212,
239–40, 241; as performance,
207, 209; practices, 209–10
Body Art: Performing the Subject
(Jones), 199, 201, 204
body-in-performance, 208,
209
body-to-body transmission
practices, 67, 74, 75
bodyworks, 207
Bourriaud, Nicholas, 17, 155–6,
200
Boyd, Mari, 125, 127, 151n
Brecht, Bertolt, 103–6, 174
Brecht, Stefan, 9, 71, 99n
Bret, Michel, 32
Brookes, Mike, 265
Brown, Kathan, 53
Brown, Tony, 139
Brown, Trisha, 89
Brus, Gunther, 243
Builders Association, The, 3
Burden, Chris, 23, 235–56
Index
Bures Miller, George, 36, 38–9,
40, 42–3
Butler Yeats, William, 125
Butoh, 88–9
Cage, John, 13, 53, 54–5, 56, 97,
98
Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi
da, 57, 58
Cardiff, Janet, 12, 30, 35,
36–43
Carlson, Marvin, 70
carnal coeficient, 44
Caruth, Cathy, 71
Castelli Gallery, Milan, 253
catharsis, 95
Cathedral Psalter with Proper
Psalms, 257–8
causation, 86, 96–7, 99
cells, biological operation of, 59,
60
centrifugal perception, 34
Certain Fragments (Etchells), 185,
187
Chamisso, Adalbert von, 58
Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, 119,
124, 128–9, 151n
charisma, 16, 123, 150n
Chatonsky, Gregory, 32, 47n
choral music, 38, 39
Church Fathers, 107
Cibulka, Heinz, 212
Cieślak, Ryszard, 113, 114, 115
circadian rhythms, 83
Civil War, US, 69, 70
‘clock time,’ 82, 83
Cocteau, Jean, 32
coercion, 85
collective trauma, 71
Columbia University conference
(1997), 67
comedy, tension/release in, 96
commodity, performance as,
200
275
communication, 156
computer science, presence
research in, 12
Conceptualism, 207
Confessions (Augustine), 82
consensus, 18, 173–4
conservation, environmental vs.
scientiic, 51
Constant Prince, The, 113
construction, acts of, 14
Cooper, Gary, 84
Coppola, Eleanor, 223
co-presence, 1, 153, 154, 169; of
actors and spectators, 17, 106,
122
corporeal presence, 31, 104
corpses, 70
Couchot, Edmond, 32
counter-memory, 71, 75
Cox, Harold, 264
Creed, Martin, 4–5
crescendo, in music, 86
‘crystal presence’, 33
Csórdas, Thomas, 111, 114
cultural anthropology, 111
culture, 111
Cure at Troy, The (Heaney),
95–6
Dai Rakudakan (Butoh group),
88
dance, 86
dance performance, and boredom,
89–90
dance-theatre, 89
Dandelion, The (Couchot and
Bret), 32
Dante Hotel (Hershman Leeson),
21, 22, 222, 223, 233
Danto, Arthur, 116
da Paz, Maria, 137
Dasein, 157, 160, 161, 162
da Silva, Duarte, 137
daydreams, 30
276
Index
Deafman Glance (Wilson), 9, 98
death: biographical memories
(Pearson), 23–4, 257–72; and
living remains, 72–5
Death of the Last Black Man in
the Whole Entire World
(Parks), 74
de Certeau, Michel, 56
deconstructive turn, 6
delay, 23
Deleuze, Gilles, 33, 51
Delocations (Parmiggiani), 57, 60
deprived space, 238
Derrida, Jacques, 65, 68, 73, 158,
209
de-second-naturing, 153
desynchronized time, 153
detective, 226
difference, 2, 10, 11, 17
differentiation, 10
digital world, 50, 52, 226
diminuendo, in music, 86
Dionysus in 69 (Performance
Group), 8–9
disappearance, and performance,
13, 14, 65–8, 72, 76
Disappearing Acts (Taylor), 76
dislocating space, 153
displacement, 24, 225, 241
dissociation, sensory, 40, 41, 42
distance, presence at, 33
distribution of the sensible, 18,
173–4
division, 10, 13
documentary exchange, 204
documentation, 197–221, 240,
243
documents, 65, 68
Dolan, J., 121–2
‘domiciliation’, 74, 75
doubling, 13, 246
dramatis personae, 107
dramaturgy, 17, 123–4, 128, 136,
138, 271
dread, 98
Dream→work, 153, 154, 165,
166, 167, 168, 169
dreaming, 126
Duchamp, Marcel, 242
durationality, 201
ears, 35, 40, 42, 44, 142
ecological logic, 58
ecology, 51, 52, 53; and presence,
50, 59, 60
Edsall, Mary, 67
Elwes, Catherine, 207, 209
‘emancipated spectator’, 174
embodied experience,
impossibility of ever fully
knowing, 201
embodiment concept, 111, 114
emergent presence, 120–1, 145–7
Emilia Galotti (Lessing), 109
emptiness, 247, 253
Empty Stages (Glendinning and
Etchells), 23, 248, 250
Enantiomorphic Chambers
(Smithson), 55
encounter, 2
Engel, Johann Jakob, 108
ennui, 98
environment, the, 50, 51
environmental art, 53
environmental conservation, 51
environmental presence, 12–13,
50–63; and subject, 52, 56, 59,
60, 61; and surroundings, 50,
52, 56
environmental sound, 53, 55
environmental works, 53–4
‘Ephemera as Evidence (Muñoz),
76
epistemic ields, 29–30
Erickson, Jon, 13, 14, 15, 82–99,
242, 250, 251
Etchells, Tim, 19, 20, 23, 183–94,
248, 249, 251
Index
ethnicity, 69
ethnotexts, 68
evaluation of presence, 47–8n
existential ield, 29
expectation, 23, 93, 99n; tripartite
division of time (Ricoeur), 82,
94, 95, 98
experience economy, 156
experience of presence, 244
experimental theatre, 3
expert spectators, 173, 174, 181
Export, Valie, 5
expressive artistic articulation, 110
extracellular matrix (ECM), 59
eyes, 40, 45, 56
Far Eastern theatre, 110
Fate of the Object, The (Erickson),
15–16, 250
fear, 88, 94
Feather, The (Couchot and Bret),
32
Féral, Josette, 12, 13, 29–49
Festival of Free Expression, Paris
(1964), 202
iction, vs. reality, 37, 39
i lmmaker, individuality of, 85
i lm performance, 245
Fischer-Lichte, Erika, 16, 17,
103–18, 122, 137, 139, 150n,
152n; Transformative Power of
Performance, The, 7, 149n
Five Hanau Silence (Cage), 53, 54
Fleming, Marnie, 37
lesh, 69, 75; disappearance of, 72,
73
Fluxus collection, Museum of
Modern Art (New York), 197,
198
ly, and spider, 51
focus, moments of, 91
Forced Entertainment, 3, 19,
150n, 184, 186, 188, 191, 250,
251; CD-ROMs, 192, 193
277
foreknowledge problem, 93
Forest Walk (Cardiff), 36
Forty Part Motet (Cardiff), 37–8,
39, 48n
Foucault, Michel, 65, 71
4’33” (three-movement musical
composition), 54, 97
Fractured Light - Partial Scrim
Ceiling - Eye-Level Wire
(Irwin), 57
Freud, Sigmund, 71, 73
From Acting to Performance:
Essays in Modernism and
Postmodernism (Auslander), 6
From Memory (Pearson), 23, 270,
271
futurity, in theatre, 96
gaze, 11; layering of gazes, 247,
248, 251
gestures, 15
Giannachi, Gabriella, 1–25,
50–63, 183–94, 250
Giddens, Sara, 153
Glass, Philip, 97
Glendinning, Hugo, 5, 23, 190,
248–9
Godard, Jean-Luc, 83
Gombrich, Ernst, 57
Goodall, Jane, 7, 121, 146, 147
Gray, Spalding, 8
Grotowski, Jerzy, 112, 113, 114,
116, 149n
Gründgens, Gustaf, 109–10, 110,
111, 115
Guattari, Felix, 51
Guggenheim Museum, New York,
5
Guralnik, Nehama, 58
Hall, Doug, 23, 246, 247, 248
Hamlet, 172
Handke, Peter, 191
Haneke, Michael, 191
278
Index
having been there, 212
Heaney, Seamus, 95–6
hearing, 40, 42
Heathield, Adrian, 3–4, 200
hegemony, ocular, 66
Heidegger, Martin, 9–10, 17, 153,
157–60, 162, 163, 166, 169
hermeneutics, 92
Herrera, Gerardo, 59
Hershman Leeson, Lynn, 21–2,
195, 222–34
High Noon, 84
hippocampus, 60
Hirose, Michitaka, 60
Hirst, Damien, 4
historical facticity concept, 68
historical practice, performance
practice as, 69–70
history, 65; ‘new’, 69–70
Hitchcock, Alfred, 94
Hitler, Adolf, 105
Hodge, Robert Lee, 70, 71
Horovitz, Robert, 239
‘house arrest’, 73, 74, 75
human-computer biosphere
interaction (HCBI), 61
Human Voice, The (Cocteau), 32
hunter-gatherers, 51, 52
Husserl, Edmund, 14, 82
hybrid reality, 43
I Ching, 53
identities, 22, 51
ideology, 168
Ihering, Herbert, 109
illusion, 16, 22, 55, 108, 193;
presence effects, 32, 35, 39, 40,
41, 43, 45, 48n
images, 33, 34, 44, 45, 235–56,
247; empty, 247, 253; see also
photographic presence
imagination, 35
immediacy, 155, 209
immersive media, 12
impression of presence, 30
inattention, selective, 32
indexicality, 212
Indian theatre, 110
inevitability, 97
Ini nity, 170
Ingold, Tim, 50–1
In Search of Lost Time (Proust),
55
instant gratiication, 155
intentionality of consciousness, 82
inter-acting, 18, 155, 156, 157
interactivity, 17, 154, 155, 156,
158
Interior Scroll (Carolee
Schneemann), 205–10
interlocutors, 32
intermittent state, presence as, 12,
32
internet technologies, 154, 155,
155–6
interpretation, 200
intersubjectivity, 200, 204
interval, 23
Irwin, Robert, 57, 58, 238
Jacob’s Pillow, Berkshires, 86
Jefferson, Thomas, 74
Jesus Christ, paintings of, 57
Johnson, Catherine, 67
Jonas, Joan, 197, 198
Jones, Amelia, 5, 20–1, 197–221
Jones, Simon, 17–18, 153–71
jouissance, 98
Judd, Donald, 237
Julius Caesar, 104
Kant, Immanuel, 82–3
Kantor, Tadeusz, 125
Kaprow, Allan, 13, 53
kathakali dance-drama, 122
Kaye, Nick, 1–25, 50, 54, 56, 58,
183–94, 235–56
Kelera, Józef, 113, 116
Index
Kelligen, Michael, 137
King Oedipus (Sophocles), 109
Kobayashi, Hiroki, 60
Komachi, The Tale of (Shōgo),
125
Kramer, Jonathon, 14–15
Krauss, Rosalind, 212
Kusama, Yayoi: self-portrait,
210–12
Kushner, Tony, 99n
La Chiaraicazione, 253, 254–5
language, 180
layering, 14, 15, 16, 245, 246; of
gazes, 247, 248, 251
LeCompte, Elizabeth, 184
Le Goff, Jacques, 65, 69
Le lieu des signes (Noël), 33
Lemieux, Michel, 30, 49n
Lepage, Robert, 32
Les Préludes (Liszt), 105
Letter to Monsieur d’Alembert
(Rousseau), 107
Levinas, Emmanuel, 17, 153, 157,
158, 162–6, 169, 241
‘libretto’, 86
Licht, Ira, 207
Life Squared (Hershman Leeson),
21–2, 226, 228, 233
‘light and space’ work, 238
Lingis, Alphonso, 60
listening, 42–3; see also sound
Listening (Nancy), 141–2
Liszt, Franz, 105
live art installations, 3
live art/theatre, 66, 198, 208, 237,
250
lived body, 114
living silence, 127
Llanarth Group, 129, 133, 134,
149n
localized knowledge, failure, 68
logic, ecological, 58
logic of archive, 65, 66, 67, 68–9
279
London, Barbara, 198
longeurs, 85
loss, 73
Lowood, Henry, 225
Ludlam, Charles, 71
Machin, Fred, 263, 265, 267, 269
Mahler, Gustav, 87
Mahoney, Elizabeth, 119–20, 136,
138, 140
Mandieta, Ana, 243
mapping, 60, 68
Marzani, Eleaonora, 137–8
Masaccio, Thommaso Guidi, 57
Matrix, The, 228, 229
Mayer, Rosemary, 207
media-based theatrical
performance, 6, 7
meditation, 61
mega-machines, 231
Melrose, Susan, 173
memory, 22, 233; of death of
parent (Pearson), 23–4,
257–72; tripartite division of
time (Ricoeur), 82, 94, 95, 98
mental absence, 32
mental presence, 31
Mercer, Kobena, 66
Merdzo, Robert, 265
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 17, 31,
35, 49n, 82, 111, 114, 169,
241
middle ground (space), 167–8
Miller, Daniel, 271
mimesis, 67
Mimik (Engel), 108
mind-body dualism, 113, 114,
115
Minetti, Bernhard, 103, 105
minimalism, 207, 237, 238;
minimalist music, 97
Mirage performance project
(Jonas), 197
mirrors, 55
280
Index
mis-spectatorship, 18–19, 174–82;
and Françoise (servant), 174,
175, 178, 180, 181; ‘insolent
fellows’ invading stage, 19, 175;
and King, 174, 175, 178;
uneasy, 175–6; see also Proust,
Marcel; Rancière, Jacques
mnemonics, 68
modernist art discourse, 198, 209
modes of presence, in theatre, 121
modulation structures, 86
MoMA, New York: retrospective
exhibition at (Abramović), 5,
20, 197, 198, 199, 200
monologue, 91, 125
Morris, Robert, 237
Moten, Fred, 71
movement, 10
movement sequences, in dance,
89–90
Mulhall, Stephen, 159
Müller, Heiner, 103, 116, 125
multipleness, 8
multitasking, 156
Mumford, Lewis, 231
Muñoz, José Esteban, 76
Museum of Modern Art, New
York see MoMA, New York:
retrospective exhibition at
(Abramović)
music, 14–15, 86, 89; minimalist,
97
Music for 18 Musicians (Reich),
97
Müthel, Lothar, 109
Nancy, Jean-Luc, 141–2
narrative, 85, 86
Nash, Roderick, 51–2
nature, 51
‘Nature of Language, The’
(Heidegger), 10
Nauman, Bruce, 238
neighborhood, 10
‘Neither Here Nor There’ (critical
relection by Mike Pearson),
23–4, 257–72
Nemser, Cindy, 207, 209
neurological foundation of
presence, 60
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 71
Nightsea Crossing (Abamović and
Ulay), 5
Nightwalks, 192, 194
Nitsch, Hermann, 243
Noda, Hideki, 125
Noël, Bernard, 33–4, 49n
noh, 124, 126
Nonas, Richard, 237
Nora, Pierre, 69–70
Norman, Marsha, 84
‘not knowing’, 147, 152n
nowness, 14
Object of Performance, The
(Sayre), 211–12
objects perceived, 31, 33, 34, 44
ocular hegemony, 66
O’Dell, Kathy, 207, 208
Oedipus Rex, 95
ontology, 73, 207, 211; of
performance, 13
Oppenheim, Dennis, 237, 240
oral history, 69, 70, 74, 203
O’Reilly, Kaite, 119, 125, 126,
131, 136, 146
organism, and environment, 56
Orgien Mysterien Theatre
(Nitsch), 243
oriental actors, 110
orientation, 60
Oster, Gerald, 41
Ōta Shōgo, 125, 127
otherness, 17, 60
out-standing standing-within, 18,
159
painting, shadows in, 57
Index
Pane, Gina, 5, 202
Paradise Institute, The (Cardiff
and Bures Miller), 36, 37, 38–9,
40, 43, 45, 48n
parahippocampal formation,
60
Parks, Suzan-Lori, 74, 75, 76
Parmiggiani, Claudio, 57, 58,
60
parody, 71
participatory aesthetics, of
performance, 18
past, present and future, 82
patriarchal principle, 73
Pearson, Mike: critical relection
on death of mother, 23–4,
257–72
Pellegrini, Ann, 73, 74
perception, 34–5, 44–5, 185;
objects perceived, 31, 33, 44; of
presence, 31–3
Perform, Repeat, Record: Live
Art in History (Heathield and
Jones), 199–200
performance, 64–81; and archive,
13, 65, 68–72; avant-garde, 2,
8, 9; body art as, 207; as
commodity, 200; dance, and
boredom, 89–90; death and
living remains, 72–5; and
disappearance, 13, 14, 65–8,
76; and documentation,
197–221, 240; historical ‘truth’
of, 203; ontology of, 13;
postmodern, 2, 3, 9;
production of time in, 82–99;
and remaining, 67, 69, 71–2;
stage, remaining on, 75–6; as
time-based, 21, 89, 200, 201,
240; Told by the Wind case
study, 119–52; and visual arts,
199, 200; as way of knowing
the world, 159–60; writing for
and writing about, 271
281
performance events, 122, 153; see
also Told by the Wind
(performance event)
Performance Group, The, 8–9
performance installation, 23
performance-making, expert, 173
‘Performance Remains Again’
(Schneider), 13
performance studies, 66, 158, 199;
as ‘spectator studies’, 173
performance theory, 1, 2, 7–8
performative behaviorism, 88
performativity, 181, 199, 208,
242, 243, 244, 246
performed photography, 23,
243–4, 253
performer-presence, 3, 8
performing body, 16
Performing Presence: Between the
Live and the Simulated (Kaye
and Giannachi), 50
Performing Presence conference
(Exeter University, 2008), 265,
271
persistence, 10, 11
phantasmal dramas, 124
Phèdre (Racine), 176–9
Phelan, Peggy, 6–7, 13, 76, 158,
208
phenomenal body, of actor, 106,
107, 108, 111, 112, 114, 122
phenomenological accounts, in
Told by the Wind: performance
score, 141–5; ‘presence’, 136–9
phenomenology, 41, 44, 111, 158,
204, 241
Philoctetes (Sophocles), 95–6
photographic presence, 235–56
photography, performed, 23,
243–4, 253
physical presence, intellectual
absence, 31–2
Pilon, Victor, 30
Piper, Adrian, 202
282
Index
pity, acts of, 94
place, 12, 13, 27, 56; see also
environmental presence
place cells, 60
pleasure, 96, 174, 175, 177
Plessner, Helmuth, 106, 111
Poe, Edgar Allan, 86–7
Poe Project (Stormy Membrane),
86, 95
poetics of presence, 121
politics, 173–4
postmodern performance, 2, 3, 9,
209
post-structuralism, 121, 204
Power, Cormac, 7, 121, 149n,
150n
practice-as-research works, 153
prana-vayu, 122
predictability, 97
pre-expressive artistic articulation,
110
prerelexivity, 59–60
PRESCENCE, in acting, 105, 106,
115, 116
presence: as ‘aliveness’, 5;
conversation (2006), 183–94;
dei nitions, 115; at a distance,
33; emergent, 120–1, 145–7;
epistemic ields, 29–30;
perception of, 31–3;
phenomenological account in
Told by the Wind, 136–9;
photographic, 235–56; as a
problem, 121–3; radical
concept, 16, 112–16; strong
concept, 16, 108–12, 122; in
theatre, 250–1; weak concept,
16, 106–8, 122
presence effects, 8, 12, 29–49
‘Presence in Absentia’ (Jones), 20,
199, 202–16
Presence in Play (Power), 7
Presence Project, 21–2
present moment, 71
presentness, 11, 244
present tense, 16, 27
preservation, 17, 159
primitivism, 69
protention concept, 14
Proust, Marcel, 18, 55, 175–6, 181
proximity, 164
psychophysical acting, 122, 124,
141, 152n
Pursuit of Oblivion, The (Hirst), 4
quality of being, 29–30
quasi-automatic practice, 93
Querelle de la moralité du théâtre,
107
questioning, embodied, 147
quiet theatre, 125, 127
Quinn, Shelly, 126
Racine, Jean, 176–9
racism, 69
radical concept of presence, 16,
112–16
Rancière, Jacques, 18, 173–4
‘real’ environments, presence in,
12
reality: vs. iction, 37, 39; vs.
imagination, 35
reality effect, 35, 46n
real time, 84, 238, 240
reciprocity, 24, 200, 201, 212
recognition, perceptive, 34–5, 43
reconstruction, acts of, 14
reenactment, battle, 70
relections, 55
relexivity, 240; post-minimalist,
238
Reich, Steve, 97
relational aesthetics, 17, 155, 156,
200
relational effect, 24
relational tool, presence as, 52
Relation in Space (Abramović and
Ulay), 202
Index
relics, 22
remaining, and performance, 67,
69, 71–2; remaining on the
stage, 75–6
remains, 65, 66, 72–5
Remembrance of Things Past,
Volume One (Proust), 18, 175
representation, 41, 43, 44, 108,
110, 175, 232, 241; presence as,
33–5
Researching Lost Silence (Cage),
53
residue, 69
Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, The
(Brecht), 103–6, 109
resonance, 33–4, 44
retention concept, 14
Rêve Télématique (Sermon), 33
rhythms, 85, 91, 96
Ricoeur, Paul, 89; tripartite
division of time, 82, 94, 95, 98
Ridout, Nicholas, 18–19, 172–82
ritual, 69, 74, 76
Riva, Giuseppe, 59–60
Roach, J., 121, 123
Rogers, Alfred Faulkland, 257
Ronald Feldman Gallery, New
York, 235, 236
Rosa-Blu-Rosa (Zorio), 58, 60
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 107
running, 5
Salisbury Festival Choir, 38
Samaras, Lucas, 243
Sayre, Henry, 211–12
Schechner, Richard, 8, 32
Schimmel, Paul, 67
Schlögel, Karl, 271
Schneeman, Carolee, 202, 205–10
Schneider, Rebecca, 7, 13, 14,
64–81
Schwarzkogler, Rudolf, 212
scientiic conservation, 51
sculptural form, 238
283
Second Life, 21–2, 225, 228, 233
Seel, Martin, 115–16
Self, 157, 158
self, the/self-awareness, 2, 18
self-consciousness, 42, 43, 88
Self/Image: Technology,
Representation, and the
Contemporary Subject (Jones),
199
self-indulgence, 90
semiotic, the, 16, 96
semiotic body, of actor, 106, 107,
108, 111, 112
sensations, 30, 34, 43, 44;
solicited, 35
senses, deceptive nature of, 41, 45
sensory organs, 34, 42, 44, 45
separation, 10, 17, 245
Sermon, Paul, 33
747 (Burden), 240
Seven Easy Pieces (Abramović), 5
shadows, 56–7, 58
Shanks, Michael, 1–25, 195,
222–34
Shapland, Jo, 119, 125, 130, 131,
141, 143, 145
Sha Xin Wei, 47n
Sha Xin Wei Laboratory,
Concordia, 30
Sheen, Martin, 191
Sherman, Cindy, 23, 242, 243,
245, 246
Shoot (Burden), 240
sight, 35, 41–2, 56
silence, 53, 55, 56
Silverman, Gilbert and Lila, 197
simplicity, 19–20
simulated experience, 42
Singapore, 167
skinworks, Bodies in Flight
(Physical Theatre company),
153, 154, 155, 160, 161, 165,
166
Slater, Mel, 54
284
Index
Sloterdijk, Peter, 32
Smith, Barbara T., 202
Smithson, Robert, 13, 55, 56
Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council (SSHRC),
46n
Societas Raffaello Sanzio, 9
solicited sensations, 35
Something happening, something
happening nearby (Pearson and
Brooks, 2008), 23–4, 257–72
Sontag, Susan, 86–7
Sophocles, 95–6, 97, 109
Sotoba Komachi (Yukio
Mishima), 125
sound: environmental, 53, 55;
‘ictional’ sound world, 12;
three-dimensional, 41, 42,
48n37
space: dislocating, 153; as middle
ground, 167–8; and place, 56;
of potential, 250; and time, 57
speaking, and thinking, 94
spectacle, society of, 156
spectators, 12, 19, 21, 32, 35, 104;
co-presence of actors and
spectators, 17, 106, 122;
‘emancipated spectator’, 174;
and emergent presence, 120–1;
expert, 173, 174, 181; presence
effects, 30, 31, 32, 35, 36,
38–45, 47n, 48n, 49n; and
strong concept of presence,
108–9, 110; tension/release and
time, 84–5, 95, 98; and weak
concept of presence, 106, 107,
108; see also audience;
mis-spectatorship
spectator studies, 172, 173
speech, 94, 96
speech acts, 242
speed, 155
Spem in Alium (Tallis), 38
spider, and ly, 51
Sprinkle, Annie: Post Post Porn
Modernist performance,
213–16
Staatstheater, 109, 110
‘Stage Charm’, 123
stage presence, 16, 109
Stage Presence (Goodall), 7
Staging Action - Performance in
Photography Since 1960
(exhibition), 243
Stanford Humanities, 22
Stanislavski, C., 123
Stein, Gertrude, 125
Stella, Frank, 238
Steps to an Ecology of Mind
(Bateson), 58
Steuer, Jonathan, 54
Stewart, Kathleen, 271
Stiles, Kristine, 211, 212
Stoller, Ann Laura, 68
strife, 157
Strindberg, August, 91
strong concept of presence, 16,
108–12, 122
subject, the, 52, 56, 59, 60, 61
subjectivity, 204, 206
succession, order of, 15
surroundings, 39, 42–3, 50, 52, 56
suspense, 94, 96
Sutton, Sheryl, 9, 98
symbolic status, 207
Take Up the Bodies: Theatre at
the Vanishing Point (Blau), 72
Tallis, Thomas, 38
Tanaka, Min, 86–9
Tanzfabrik, Berlin, 119, 124
Tarkovksy, Andrey, 85
tasking, 156
Tate Britain, 4
Taylor, Diana, 76
techno-voyeurism, 213
Teevan, Colin, 125
telephone, 185
Index
telepresence, 33, 61
telos, 86
Temporal Anxiety (2010 preface
to 1996 essay), 197–201
temporality, 13, 14, 27, 31; of
acting, 92–4; creation by
theater artist or i lm director,
85; pleasure, temporal
structure, 96; three domains,
82; see also time
tension/release: attempts at
subversion of model, 97–9; in
comedy, 96; incomplete
knowledge, 94–7; levels, 90–2;
memory and pain, 94–7; and
narrative, 85; repetitively
winding up tension and
suddenly releasing it, 88–9;
between scenes, 91–2; tension
without apparent release, 98;
and will to know, 86
theater, as time-based art, 89
Theater and Its Double, The
(Artaud), 215
theatre companies, 3
Theatre of Cruelty, 86, 215
Theatre of the Ridiculous, 71
they-self, 157–8
thinking, and speaking, 94
Third and Oak, 84
thought and memory, 33–5, 44
3-Legged Dog and Elevator Repair
Service, 3
three-dimensional sound, 37, 41,
42, 48n
Three Sisters, 184
through-lines, 92
time: acting, temporality of, 92–4;
desynchronized, 153;
experience of, 85; and image,
235–56; measures of, 83;
multiple times, 14; objective,
84; passage of, 83;
performance, as time-based,
285
21, 89, 200, 201; and place, 27;
production of, in performance,
82–99; psychological relation
to, 82, 89, 95; real, 84, 238,
240; scheduled, 84; sense of,
84; and space, 57; speed of, 83;
time differential between
performer and audience,
89–90; tripartite division,
Ricoeur, 82, 94, 95, 98; see
also temporality
Time and Narrative (Ricoeur), 82
Time of Music, The (Kramer),
14–15
Told by the Wind (performance
event), 119–52; acting as a
‘question’, 145–7; ambient noise
of live performance
environment, 130, 140;
development, 123–7;
dramaturgy, 17, 123–4, 128,
136, 138; Female Figure,
130–3, 135, 136, 137, 138,
142–3, 144, 145; immediate
performance context, 128–9;
initial responses to, 139–45;
Male Figure, 130–3, 135, 136,
137, 138–9, 143, 144, 145;
mise-en-scene, 125, 128, 137,
144; performance score,
128–30, 138, 141–5, 151n;
phenomenological account of
performance score in, 141–5;
phenomenological account of
‘presence’ in, 136–9; questions
posed by, 120, 136, 137, 138–9,
140, 141, 142, 143, 145–7,
152n; Structures (1-10), 130–5,
136, 138, 141, 142, 143, 144
traces, 52, 53, 59, 60, 65, 195;
documentary, 203, 204; and
shadows, 56–7
tragedy, ongoingness of, 98
Trans-Fixed (Burden), 240
286
Index
Transformative Power of
Performance, The (FischerLichte), 7, 149n
transmutation, 71
trauma/traumatic memory, 71, 94
tripartite division of time,
Ricoeur, 82, 94, 95, 98
Tschumi, Bernard, 238
Tudor, David, 97–8
Ueoka, Ryoko, 60
Uexküll, Jakob von, 51
Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysipen), 5, 202
uncertainty, 92–3
unitary forms, 237–8
Untitled Facial-Cosmetic
Varations (Mandieta), 243
unwakedness, 32
Uthco, T. R., 246
Vale, Allison, 139–40, 145–6
vanishing, 13, 65
vibratory theory, 123
video walks, 36–7
Vielhaber, Gert, 109, 110
Vienna Actionists, 243
Virilio, Paul, 166
virtual reality, 12
virtual reality archaeology, 228
virtual spaces, 37, 52, 153
visible and invisible, 35, 49n
vision, 35, 40, 45
visual art, 66; see also art
Waiting for Godot (Beckett), 99
Ward, Frazer, 243
Water Station, The (Shōgo), 125,
127
weak concept of presence, 16,
106–8, 122
Wearable Forest (Ueoka,
Kobayashi and Hirose), 60–1
Weekend (Godard), 83
Weems, Marianne, 3
Weissberg, Jean-Louis, 31, 32, 33
Western audiences, 115
Wheeler, Doug, 238
White Light/White Heat (Burden),
23, 235–56
‘white noise’, 130, 140
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
(Albee), 91, 95
wilderness, 51–2
will to know, and tension/release,
86
Wilshire, Bruce, 163–4
Wilson, Robert, 9, 98
witnessing, 2, 11, 60
Wooster Group, The, 9
Work No. 850 (Creed), 4–5
Wuttke, Martin, 103–6, 108, 109,
110, 115
Yeho, Benjamin, 125
Yoko Ono, 202
yugen, 126
Zarrilli, Phillip, 17, 119–52
Zeami Motokiyo, 123
Zen Buddhism, 61
Zorio, Gilberto, 13, 58, 60
Zyman, Daniela, 42