Art and Dance in Dialogue: Body, Space, Object [1st ed.] 9783030440848, 9783030440855

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Art and Dance in Dialogue Body, Space, Object Edited by  Sarah Whatley · Imogen Racz Katerina Paramana · Marie-Louise Crawley

Art and Dance in Dialogue

Sarah Whatley  •  Imogen Racz Katerina Paramana  •  Marie-Louise Crawley Editors

Art and Dance in Dialogue Body, Space, Object

Editors Sarah Whatley C-DaRE (Centre for Dance Research) Coventry University Coventry, UK

Imogen Racz School of Art and Design Coventry University Coventry, UK

Katerina Paramana Department of Arts and Humanities Brunel University London Uxbridge, UK

Marie-Louise Crawley C-DaRE (Centre for Dance Research) Coventry University Coventry, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-44084-8    ISBN 978-3-030-44085-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44085-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Clod Ensemble, Red Ladies (Margate, 2014) This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

As editors, our thanks go to all our authors, for their patience and commitment to getting this book to the ‘finishing line’. We are grateful to Palgrave Macmillan for their support throughout the production of this book and having faith in our belief that this book is important for its commitment to cross-disciplinary dialogue. We also wish to thank everyone who has given permission to include their images to be reproduced in this book and we trust that we have credited everything correctly and have acknowledged all copyright holders. If anything has been overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the earliest opportunity. The Editors

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Contents

1 Introduction  1 Marie-Louise Crawley, Katerina Paramana, Imogen Racz, and Sarah Whatley Part I Emergent Relations  17 2 Networked Commensals: Bodily, Relational and Performative Affordances of Sharing Food Remotely 19 Cinzia Cremona 3 Unsound Bodies: Mapping Manifolds in/of the Dance 39 Elise Nuding 4 TV, Body, and Landscape: Nam June Paik’s Show (2016) 59 Y J. Hwang 5 Please Do Not Touch: Dancing with the Sculptural Works of Robert Therrien 75 Marie-Louise Crawley 6 The Holding Space: Body of (as) Knowledge 91 Sally Doughty, Lisa Kendall, and Rachel Krische

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7 Contextualizing the Developing Self in Helen Chadwick’s Ego Geometria Sum105 Imogen Racz 8 Cutting Onions and Cooking Stew as Corporeal Palimpsests: Stabilising the Unstable on a Theatre Stage in Mexico City125 Ruth Hellier Part II Absence, (In)visibility and Resistance 145 9 Series and Relics: On the Presence of Remainders in Performance’s Museum147 Susanne Foellmer 10 Red Ladies: Walking, Remembering, Transforming163 Sophie Lally 11 A Dance After All Hell Broke Loose: Mourning as “Quiet” in Ralph Lemon’s How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere?179 Alison Bory 12 Theatre as FOMO: Metonymic Spaces of William Forsythe’s KAMMER/KAMMER197 Tamara Tomić-Vajagić 13 Broken Homes and Haunted Houses225 Gill Perry 14 The Monumental and the Mundane: Living with Public Art in London’s East End241 Robert James Sutton Index259

Notes on Contributors

Alison  Bory  MFA/PhD, is a dance artist, scholar and teacher whose work interrogates the theory and practice of contemporary experimental dance performance forms. She is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Dance at Davidson College. Marie-Louise  Crawley  is a choreographer, dancer and researcher. Her research interests include dance and museums, and areas of intersection between Classics and Dance Studies, such as ancient dance and the performance of epic through a practice-as-research lens. Educated at the University of Oxford and then vocationally trained at the Ecole Marceau in Paris, she began her professional performance career with Ariane Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil (2003–09). Having worked in the UK since 2010 as an independent choreographer and dance artist, she completed her PhD in 2018 and is currently Assistant Professor in Dance and Cultural Engagement, Centre for Dance Research, Coventry University). She is also an Early Career Associate of the Archive of Performance of Greek and Roman Drama, University of Oxford. Cinzia Cremona  is an artist and researcher from Italy. Cremona explores interpersonal relationships in video, performance and networked technologies, most recently focusing on food and virtual reality. She has exhibited and published internationally. She is a research associate at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee and visiting research fellow at Macquarie University, Sydney.

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Sally  Doughty  has an international reputation as a facilitator and performer of improvisational practices and is published widely. Her research interests span improvisation, choreography, documentation, and dancing and drawing. She is Associate Professor of Dance and Reader in Dance and Improvisation at De Montfort University, Leicester, where she supervises doctoral students. Susanne Foellmer  is Associate Professor in Dance, Coventry University, Centre for Dance Research. Current research topics include media-­ ontological question of dance and its remains, choreography and protest. Her recent publications are Performing Arts in Transition Moving between Media (ed., with M.K. Schmidt, C. Schmitz, 2019) and ‘On Leftovers’ (ed., with R. Gough, Performance Research 22(8), 2017). Ruth  Hellier is a creative artist and professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who focuses on experimental performance, ecology, embodied vocality and community arts. Her works include Performing Palimpsest Bodies: Postmemory Theatre Experiments in Mexico, Embodying Mexico: Tourism, Nationalism, and Performance and Women Singers in Global Contexts: Music, Biography, Identity. Y J. Hwang  is a teaching fellow in the department of Theatre Arts at the University of Pittsburgh. She has been working on her doctoral project in relation to South Korea’s Jeju massacre and its cultural memory. Her research interests include gender, memory and mobility. Lisa Kendall  has performed and taught internationally throughout her career embracing and immersing herself within a diverse range of creative processes and environments. Kendall’s research revolves around embodied knowing, improvisation, dance and theatre-making, and practice and performance as research. She is Course Director for Dance at Leeds Beckett University. Rachel Krische  has performed, made work and taught, extensively and internationally, in diverse creative contexts. Her research interests include improvisation, performance, dance-making, embodied knowledge and embodied cognition. As senior lecturer/HEA senior fellow at Leeds Beckett University, she supervises doctoral students and also delivers on the BA and MA Dance programmes.

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Sophie Lally  works in Mexico with the strategic research group Técnicas Rudas, who look to support and contribute to social movements and the defence of human rights. She works as a researcher on internationally funded projects and is currently developing the ‘artivism’ arm of the company. Elise  Nuding  is an independent dance artist whose research explores intersections of linguistic and kinesthetic knowledges in dancing/choreographic practices (the ‘somatic-linguistic’), and human/non-human entanglement. She holds an MA in Contemporary Dance with Distinction (London Contemporary Dance School) and a BA in Archaeology (Brown University). She currently teaches at DOCH/UniArts, Stockholm. Katerina  Paramana  is Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at Brunel University London, UK. Her research is concerned with the socio-­political and ethical dimensions of contemporary performance. It has been published with Performance Research, GPS, CTR and Dance Research journals. Paramana is co-editor of the interdisciplinary book series Dance in Dialogue Gill Perry  is Emeritus Professor of Art History at the Open University. She has written widely on twentieth-century and contemporary art and has a special interest in issues of gender difference, installation art and the ‘global contemporary’. Recent works include Playing at Home: The House in Contemporary Art and articles on the work of Agnes Varda, Tracey Emin and the body in contemporary Irish art. Imogen Racz  is Assistant Head of School – Research, School of Art and Design, Coventry University. Specialising in post-war sculptural and object-based practices, she has writen widely around themes related to the home, memory and identity, including Art and the Home: Comfort, Alienation and the Everyday (2015/2019). Robert  James is Teaching Fellow in Twentieth-Century Art at the University of Leicester. He is currently working on a critical history of the public art strategies developed in Greater London in the years immediately after the Second World War.

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Tamara Tomić-Vajagić  is dance scholar with a background in fine arts. She works at the University of Roehampton, London, UK where she researches and teaches topics such as performance, visual culture and dance. Her recent and upcoming works include studies of design and ­fashion as intertextual devices in William Forsythe’s choreography (2020), and inquiry into the modes of abstraction in twentieth-century ballet (forthcoming). Sarah Whatley  is Director of the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE), Coventry University, UK. Her research focuses on dance analysis, digital dance resources, dance and disability, and intangible cultural heritage. She has written widely on these themes and is founding editor of the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices.

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Cinzia Cremona, By Invitation Only, 2016, The Nunnery Gallery and Wimbledon Space, London 34 Fig. 3.1 An encounter with the two sounding lines. (Photo credit: Marit Shirin Carolasdotter/Dotra Productions) 43 Fig. 5.1 Dancer Marie-Louise Crawley in Tall Story (2014) at mac Birmingham (UK). (Photograph credit: Rabiyah K. Latif) 87 Fig. 6.1 Please Do Touch, Leicester New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, December 2018. (Photo Credit: Jason Senior, Redpix.co.uk) 98 Fig. 8.1 Zapata, Death Without End (Zapata, Muerte sin fin). El Foro del Dinosaurio del Museo Universitario del Chopo, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, La Máquina de Teatro, A la Deriva Teatro, la Rendija, Colectivo Escénico Oaxaca and A-tar. March 2015. Photo credit: La Máquina de Teatro (Juliana Faesler and Andy Castro) 127 Fig. 10.1 Red Ladies, Clod Ensemble, Margate 2014 164 Fig. 11.1 Lemon in How to Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? (Credit: Photo by Cameron Wittig, courtesy Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis) 191 Fig. 12.1 The Forsythe Company’s published advertisement for the 2015 performances of Kammer/Kammer at the Bockenheimer Depot. (Image courtesy of the Forsythe Productions and Surface Grafik) 201 Fig. 12.2 Dana Caspersen in Kammer/Kammer. (Photo: ©Julieta Cervantes)204

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Fig. 13.1 The Heidelberg Project: Dotty Wotty House, 2010. (Photograph Gill Perry) Fig. 14.1 William Silver Frith, The Edward VII Memorial Drinking Fountain, 1911, granite and bronze, Whitechapel Road, London. (Author’s photograph)

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction Marie-Louise Crawley, Katerina Paramana, Imogen Racz, and Sarah Whatley

This interdisciplinary book considers, questions, explores and problematises the relation between dance, visual art and performance. Relating to ongoing debates which draw together different fields of enquiry that connect the everyday world and the arts, it investigates the critical discourses and practices of dance and visual art: both the ways in which each field might situate itself within the discourses of the other and also how explorations of bodies, spaces and objects in contemporary visual arts and contemporary dance1 might speak to one another. Our interest is in interrogating these relations and their affordances: the new thinking (about both and their in-between relations) and the new practices that emerge from them.

M.-L. Crawley • S. Whatley (*) C-DaRE (Centre for Dance Research), Coventry University, Coventry, UK e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] K. Paramana Department of Arts and Humanities, Brunel University London, Uxbridge, UK I. Racz School of Art and Design, Coventry University, Coventry, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 S. Whatley et al. (eds.), Art and Dance in Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44085-5_1

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The book itself emerged from a series of meetings between dance and visual arts scholars and artists that extended to two international symposia at Coventry University held in 2015 and 2016. Their focus was on the triad ‘body-space-object’. In the spirit of the symposia that gave rise to it, and as its title suggests, this book seeks to present a dialogue between dance and the visual arts, with all of the chapters concerned in different ways with the social, embodied and perceiving body and how it performs within different forms of space. Underpinning this book is the practice and the spaces within which these practices take place and are experienced. Movement, or the suggestion of movement, the relationship that we all have with the environment and the echoes, memories and rituals associated with these are fundamental to being socially and culturally human. Many of these rituals and projected meanings between humans, and humans and their constructed environments, engender and maintain a sense of belonging and are gradually accreted onto consciousness through repeated actions.2 They are crucial in the development of individual and social identity-building. The phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, for instance, discussed how the world was inter-subjective and the relationship between consciousness and the material world is layered and interdependent. He argued that the world becomes reframed in the mind through memory and reflection.3 In his discussion of ontology as a process of individuation, the philosopher Gilbert Simondon proposed that the ontology of being is relational and that these (specific) relations amongst entities are ontologically pre-eminent.4 It is these immutable and apparently natural, and therefore overlooked, elements and relations that form the bedrock of many artists’ and dancers’ practices. This book focuses on two main themes—the subjective, lived relations with objects and the social sphere, and the different approaches to absence, visibility and resistance. In selecting the contributions for this book, we considered how the different perspectives, experiences, writing approaches and registers of the authors could open up new thinking about dance and visual art, the relationship between the two fields’ respective discourses and practices, and the social and cultural relationships of people with their environments through them. The authors build on existing dialogues between, for example, public art and human geography, art, dance and memory studies, participatory practices and politics, and art and post-­ humanism, and engage with a wide range of theory from phenomenology

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to relational aesthetics to new materialism.5 Despite their diversity, these frameworks dialogue back and forth across the collection. The chapters have all been written by specialists in their field and consider particular aspects from diverse cultures. They are by practitioners and dancers and historians and theorists. This allows for different forms of knowledge to be articulated. Some works relate to one genre, some blur the boundaries. Some are in the social world and others within institutionally framed settings. The collection has, in part, been shaped by recent discourse on the presentation of dance within the museum and aims to further current debates.6 This book also addresses more recent developments in contemporary dance and art and developments that sit outside the Western canon which have been less well considered. For example, it offers a range of perspectives across different locations, including Central and Western Europe, Mexico and the United States. They reveal the interesting tensions and disruptions to established conventions and modes of working in different practices. As early as 1992, Doreen Massey wrote that there have been huge structural, economic and political changes across the world during the previous few decades that had reshaped social relationships at every level.7 More recently, Wendy Brown suggested that neoliberal capitalism extends the logic of metrics to all areas of social life, which again has psychological, social, political and economic implications.8 At a time of social and political division and unrest, the themes and works discussed in this book have increased relevance as ways of reconsidering our relationship with the material and social worlds.

Background In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the relationship between dance and the visual arts was explored by artists and dancers in many ways, creating overlaps between theatre, music and art. The impact of Serge Diaghilev’s (1872–1929) ‘total theatre’ which brought together the leading choreographers, visual artists, composers and designers of the time, marked a move towards the theatrical integration of visual art and dance.9 Pablo Picasso, Henri Laurens and many other artists contributed to the sets and costumes of Diaghilev’s ballets. These experiences were important for their studio practices. Artists, dancers and theatre designers also collaborated in the work of Russian constructivists and the Bauhaus in

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Germany. In the United States, the work of choreographer Martha Graham (1894–1991) who collaborated with the sculptor/architect Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988), the filmmaker Maya Deren’s (1917–1961) pioneering ‘choreocinema’ project that started in the 1940s and explored links between dance, choreography and film and Merce Cunningham’s (1919–2009) work with leading artists (notably Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008), Jasper Johns (1930–), Andy Warhol (1928–1987) and composer and artist John Cage (1912–1992)) have all been profoundly influential, well documented and researched. The permeable boundaries between different genres that were being developed since the 1960s were mirrored by the creation of arts centres in Britain from the 1970s, which frequently had spaces for performance, music and exhibitions. The Plymouth Arts Centre, Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham and the Riverside Studios in London, for instance, proved to be important venues for contemporary practices, especially those that were collaborative projects between artists and dancers. After the 1970s, these inter-genre projects were particularly welcomed by women sculptors, who sought to challenge the accepted hierarchies of art by using materials and means that were less gender specific.10 To collaborate and work in ways that were seen as on the margins was liberating. One of the works that reflected this thinking was Borders (1982), the collaborative dance and installation work by Kate Blacker and Gaby Agis, presented at the Riverside Studios. In Borders, the costumes of the dancers reflected the corrugated metal of the installation sets, crumpling and bending with the movements of the bodies. Their suggestion of buildings and urban spaces echoed the sets and costumes of Picasso’s Parade (1917).11 Later, choreographer William Forsythe (1949–) began a process of boundary blurring work that explored the interconnection between dance and visual arts. His large-scale installations in major cultural venues (such as the Tate Modern in London) afforded the perception of his work to as much ‘sculpture’ as ‘dance’.12 Many dance artists since the 1970s have looked to the institutionally framed spaces of the gallery as a generative space in which to work. The late Rosemary Butcher (1947–2016), a major British dance and visual artist and a memorable contributor to the conversations in Coventry that gave rise to this book, advanced understanding about how the movement of bodies in relation to sculptures and other visual objects could generate new understandings about the human condition.13 Her work, influenced by minimalist visual art of the 1960s and 1970s, has left a valuable legacy

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that continues to inform work today, particularly in how dance operates as a visual art practice in non-theatrical spaces to bind environment and movement. Along with Butcher, British artist Siobhan Davies (1950–) has built a growing partnership with the gallery and, more recently, Berlin-­ based artist Tino Sehgal (1976–), who focuses on live encounters between people in museum spaces, has challenged conventions of choreography, spectatorship and the economies of art making, exchange and the ‘market place’. These and other dance artists have been exploring new aesthetics, a new spatial organisation and sensibility and (having entered into dialogue with the discourses of other disciplines such as visual arts, performance studies, philosophy, cultural studies and critical theory) new approaches to and understandings of what constitutes ‘dance’ and ‘choreography’. As a result, they have forged new forms of ‘choreography’ that further soften the boundaries between dance and visual art and call into question the politics that play out when dance is presented at these new institutional homes. As Lizzie Thomson points out, the trend of programming dance in museum and gallery spaces over the last decade has prompted lively (and ongoing) discourse among artists, curators and scholars.14 This collection has, in part, been shaped by some of this recent discourse. Over a similar period, art has been increasingly exploring ideas around performance and dance, and exhibiting and performing in non-gallery spaces. This has had the effect of blurring the boundaries between ‘performed culture’ and the everyday world. Movement and how to capture it truthfully in art has been an ongoing concern since the birth of photography and Muybridge’s experiments with humans and horses in motion during the 1870s, where he proved—among other things—that the traditional depiction of a galloping horse was scientifically inaccurate. However, it was in the twentieth century that this interest in bodily movement and gesture became more self-consciously personalised, socialised and politicised. For example, in her work Up to and Including Her Limits—Blue (1973–1976), Carolee Schneeman was suspended in a harness above and within canvas walls, making drawings using pencils and her body while swinging from the ropes. The gestural traces that were the residue of the performance were a critique of male-dominated Abstract Expressionism and Action Painting. In 1970, for her work Man Walking Down the Side of a Building, Trisha Brown strapped a male dancer into a mountaineering harness and sent him walking down the seven-storey façade of 80 Wooster St, in Manhattan. In contrast to the performance of Schneeman, or indeed

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the photographs of Yves Klein’s Leap Into the Void (1960)—some of the leaps resulted in broken bones—for Brown and her fellow dancers, gravity was not a transgressive force over which one had limited control but something to be explored, analysed and challenged.15 The limited control of Schneeman’s gestural marks, Brown’s formally beautiful, walking, horizontal figure, Klein’s apparently triumphal leap and the work of more recent artists and performers have relied on the muscle memory of the viewer to communicate meaning. As has been frequently described, these apparently innate human movements and feelings are also part of the social body. Some of the chapters in this book consider how the audience and artist interact in everyday situations. Cinzia Cremona’s chapter ‘Networked Commensals: Bodily, Relational and Performative Affordances of Sharing Food Remotely’, for instance, enacts eating—that most fundamental human activity that has been ritualised in so many ways—as a way of considering relationships and gestures. Food and the everyday rituals of eating and preparing meals that have been considered by many artists and performers since the 1960s, including Bobby Baker, Bruce Lacey and Jill Bruce, are investigated as activities mediated by technology. These normal socially anchoring rituals are made strange and reconsidered within the parameters of our changing bodily relationships with networked screens. Allan Kaprow’s Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life (1993) contains essays spanning many decades, all of which explore his original thoughts on reading a book by the American philosopher John Dewey. In the margins of his copy of Art as Experience, Kaprow noted ‘art is not separate from experience […] what is an authentic experience? […] environment is a process of interaction’.16 He described how through concentrating and reflecting on particular rituals, like cleaning teeth, aspects of muscle discomfort and the action of performing those rituals become understood in another way. He extended this to how and what we communicate in society. These aspects are also important in dance, art and choreography, where the articulation of life experiences is through embodied knowledge. Clearly these are framed by the performers’ embodied identities as ‘always already’ gendered, raced and classed individuals, and the places in which they are performed.17 The position of the body of the viewer in relation to the work is also crucial to the works’ reading. Cremona’s audience communicates remotely through the screen. Hwang and Racz discuss works shown in galleries, where the audience moves around objects, with the scale, material and

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imagery being measured against their bodies. While materials and manipulated objects frequently contain echoes of their previous lives, they are staged and articulate the elusive boundaries between fact and the subjective values we ascribe to things.18 Marie-Louise Crawley discusses a choreographed work set in a gallery, where it is the performer who interacts with objects while the audience pause to look. Robert Sutton discusses how works seen in the everyday environment can be ‘not seen’ by the audience. The works are experienced—or not—against the everyday sounds of city life and particular political and social backdrops. Many works, especially performances, are primarily viewed and experienced through written texts and archives of photographs or video as the exhibition or performance took place only once, or the original object has gone. These layers of evidence serve to filter and mediate the experience of the viewers. Because the flow of the original experience is lost, the inevitable fragmentary documentation of the original ‘becomes’ the work for the viewer, and increasingly how it is embedded into common consciousness. As Rosalind Krauss has argued, text, film and photography create extra layers of evidence, but the original space of engagement remains within the ‘literal space’ of the photograph.19 As with all images, they are anchored within the real world, and, in the mind of the maker and reader, are linked to a network of other representations that are themselves set within cultural and social frameworks. As such they can be manipulated to suggest a ‘fact’ while actually being the realisation of an already imagined image. Indeed, the images presented within this book act as a conduit between the performance, dance or artwork and information, and support what is being discussed within the written text. In some chapters, like Elise Nuding’s chapter ‘Moving Matter’, or Sally Doughty, Lisa Kendall and Rachel Krische’s chapter, the body of the performer is articulated as holding knowledge and offer an embodied, insider’s view of making the work. The imagery, however, can only tell part of that story. In other works discussed in this book, such as Imogen Racz’s chapter on Helen Chadwick’s Ego Geometria Sum, the author had to work with images of the sculptures individually and in exhibition alongside other forms of documentation as the work has been dispersed and is almost never seen as an entity and as Chadwick conceived it.

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Outline The book is structured into two parts. Each points to conceptual, aesthetic or theoretical connections arising out of the discourses and practices of art, dance and performance. Part I ‘Emergent Relations’ comprises seven chapters in which the authors explore the relation of the live body or subjectivity to objects. They examine the relationship of the human to the non-human body and the insights the one offers to the understanding of the other. They question where and how ideas and notions converge, are ingested, metabolised and transformed, and bring attention to the emergent relations ensuing from the interaction of body and object. Part II ‘Absence, (In)visibility and Resistance’ examines approaches to and understandings of absence (of objects and bodies) and their relation to notions of (in)visibility and resistance. The choice and the different approaches to making something or somebody absent and allowing for different kinds of visibility are seen as strategies of complication or subversion of expectations, and often of resistance to conventional ways of thinking and relating to others, to ideas and to practices. Chapter 2, ‘Networked Commensals: Bodily, Relational and Performative Affordances of Sharing Food Remotely’, by Cinzia Cremona addresses the emergent relationships and states of becoming in mediated social interactions between human and non-human actors. For this, the author draws on Bruno Latour’s work on ‘assemblages’, Donna Haraway’s work on ‘cyborgs’ and her own performance work By Invitation Only. She argues that sharing food remotely via networked screens reveals the materiality of both the consuming body and the screen (which appears to consume the body) and, as a result, it reveals that both are involved in a metabolic process. The author suggests that the act of eating with others and with screens is an attempt to regain control of relationality and embodiment, whilst acknowledging that all actors are ‘part of the same metabolic process of becoming-with’. In Chap. 3, ‘Unsound Bodies: Mapping Manifolds in/of the Dance’, Elise Nuding discusses her practice sounding score and the emergent relations of the agents that constitute it. For this, she draws on new materialist approaches to matter and in particular on Karen Barad’s concept of ‘intra-­ actions’. Nuding suggests that through attending to the spaces between bodies, matter and language, the sounding score (a score of movement, writing, speaking, listening and sensing) shifts the understanding of dance from a particular body or bodies to a phenomenon that is ‘constituted

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through specific agential intra-actions’ between human and non-human matter. Considering that all objects in the material world play an active role in human interactions, Nuding pays attention to the emergent relations between the different agents constituting sounding score, shifting the emphasis from ‘what a body is’ to ‘what a body is doing and how it is becoming’. Y J. Hwang’s chapter (Chap. 4) ‘TV, Body and Landscape: Nam June Paik’s Show (2016)’ examines this exhibition that was held in Seoul and discusses particular works, including Turtle, and the robots David and Marat (based on the painter Jacques Louis David and the politician and radical journalist Jean Paul Marat). Hwang explores how Paik’s nomadic life and political interests, combined with his international links within music and contemporary art, led him to focus on the domestic television and re-present it within the gallery space as a new living body with symbolic meanings of space and time. The robots, made up of TV sets, suggest the emergence of an artificial metabolism, with electronic imagery, names and postures. The mundane set that was a means of one-way communication has, in the gallery space, become an interactive and dynamic artwork, capable of creating its own aesthetic space. The gallery is also the focus for Marie-Louise Crawley in her chapter (Chap. 5) ‘Please Do Not Touch: Dancing with the Sculptural Works of Robert Therrien’ in which she offers an account of her experience of choreographing a new work alongside and inside the large-scale sculptural works of Robert Therrien. Crawley’s interest was in exploring the relationship of the choreographic to the sculptures’ ability to transform everyday objects to ‘dream-like, story-tale narratives’. In addition, Crawley wanted to examine how dance, like these works, can investigate space both as a physical and as a temporal entity, transforming the viewer’s perception of and bodily relation to it. For this, she observed the relationship and physical responses of the gallery visitors to the work, noting that a desire to play characterised the relationship of both adults and children to the work. Her research led to the creation of a solo choreographic work made up of four short movements sited alongside and within Therrien’s works: No Title (Table and Four Chairs), No Title (Stacked Plates), No Title (Oil Can) and No Title (Beard Cart). The dance work aimed to mirror the spatio-temporal distortions of Therrien’s sculptures, exploiting the tensions between the playful, tactile impulse of the present moment and the ‘intangibility’ of a lost childhood past.

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Dance is also at the root of Chap. 6, ‘The Holding Space: Body of (as) Knowledge’. Here, Sally Doughty, Lisa Kendall and Rachel Krische introduce, theoretically contextualise and reflect on their ongoing practice-as-­ research project Body of Knowledge and its accompanying website The Holding Space. The focus of the Body of Knowledge project is the examination of the dancer’s body as a living archive: as a collection of experiences that reside in the body. Doughty et al. suggest that personal archives play a significant role in our thinking and our (choreographic or otherwise) practices, and propose that the artist’s, and in particular the dancer’s, body should be considered a source of experience and knowledge and, ‘to a certain extent, its own legacy’. Through this project, they are interested in reflecting on how their own corporeal archives can contribute to the development of new choreographic work. The Holding Space website holds the audio-visual and written documentation of the Body of Knowledge project and, like Doughty et al.’s corporeal archives, will evolve over time as it continues to accumulate material. However, the authors recognise the inherent contradiction of constructing an online artefact of this living, embodied project, and therefore propose that the online resource, in correlation with the concept of the moving body as an archive, has a finite life-span, utilising encryption technology that makes electronic data ‘self-­ destruct’ after a specified period of time. Therefore, the content held online remains only in the memories, bodies and practices of the three artist-scholars and the readers who engage with the online artefacts within the identified timeframe. Perhaps what is most important about this project is what endures and emerges from its remnants. In Chap. 7, ‘Contextualising the Developing Self in Helen Chadwick’s Ego Geometria Sum’, Imogen Racz explores how, in this autobiographical work, Chadwick presents her subjective sense of self through particular objects that represent different stages of her early life using mathematical and universal means. Racz re-presents this pivotal work, exploring notions of performing belonging and alienation, home and society, and how Chadwick’s sense of emerging identity was linked to objects and events related to her extended home. Chadwick was concerned with how families and society gradually ‘train’ the individual, and Racz both maps the developing ideas and suggests how the realisation of the work was influenced both by contemporary art and by her reading of Arthur Koestler’s books The Sleepwalkers and Ghost in the Machine. The final chapter (Chap. 8) in this part is Ruth Hellier’s essay ‘Cutting Onions and Cooking Stew as Corporeal Palimpsests: Stabilising the

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Unstable on a Theatre Stage in Mexico City’. Hellier addresses the potential of sociality and everyday rituals through her analysis of Zapata: Death Without End, a multi-company collaborative project which explores questions of memory, temporality and history. Engaging with, among others, notions of the archive and precariousness, the author suggests that through social interaction and the everyday ritual of food preparation Zapata: Death Without End succeeds in both resisting and transforming ‘unstable narratives of violence into a stable scenario of convivial sharing’. Hellier’s articulation of the relations that emerged from bringing everyday rituals and narratives of the past to a performance space moves us to the next section, the chapters of which turn our focus further outwards: to the contexts of the works’ presentation and their interrelation. In the first chapter (Chap. 9) of Part II, ‘Series and Relics: On the Presence of Remainders in Performance’s Museum’, Susanne Foellmer discusses the ‘double state’ of the remnants of ORLAN’s series: MesuRage des institutions (1964–1983/2012). Focusing on the bottled artefacts containing traces of Orlan’s performance actions that were exhibited with other documentation of the actions, Foellmer argues that these simultaneously emphasise the absence and presence (albeit in different form) of the artist and also resist the representation of and fail to represent the actions performed by the artist. Instead, she argues they ‘conserve the energy of [the] labour’ involved in the performances and present presence by way of an absence, leaving the labour of tracing the presence of the artist to the viewer of the work. The labour of the everyday is the focus of Chap. 10, ‘Red Ladies: Walking, Remembering, Transforming’ by Sophie Lally. Lally analyses the work of the Red Ladies. Eighteen identically dressed women perform everyday actions in public or theatrical spaces throughout the world, often appearing (and disappearing) unexpectedly like a ‘swarm of ladybirds’. They walk; they knit; they lament; they witness; they remember. Through using these strategies that mimic and play with (in)visibility and the mundane, Lally suggests that the Red Ladies subvert and resist late capitalism’s preoccupation with individuality, originality and forgetfulness. In Chap. 11 ‘A Dance After All Hell Broke Loose: Mourning as “Quiet” in Ralph Lemon’s How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere?’, Alison Bory also deals with notions of (in)visibility and resistance. She first suggests that the work is ‘a meditation on loss and grief’. Engaging with the thinking of Bojana Cvejić, Peggy Phelan and Judith Butler, she then proposes that the work foregrounds moments of ‘quiet’:

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moments for the exploration of vulnerability and interiority, of feeling and sensation as central to experience, moments for ‘navigating the unknown’ and experiencing mourning ‘in all of its incompleteness’, which can, in turn, allow for transformation. Bory argues that in doing so, How Can You Stay offers a counter-narrative to the narrow framing of black cultural expressions in relation to visibility, publicness and resistance. A different view on absence and visibility emerges in Chap. 12 by Tamara Tomić-Vajagić, ‘Theatre as FOMO: Metonymic Spaces of William Forsythe’s KAMMER/KAMMER’. Tomić-Vajagić examines Forsythe’s work in relation to Hans Thies Lehmann’s notion of ‘metonymic space’ and the contemporary cultural phenomenon of ‘FOMO’ (‘the fear of missing out’). She suggests that by making it impossible for the viewer to take the work in all at once, the simultaneously occurring onstage events make the viewer feel at once an insider and an outsider. In this manner she suggests that the work mirrors the intimacy and the fear of missing out experienced in our encounter with social media. Extended notions of the home and how these are performed in different arenas is the focus for Gill Perry’s chapter (Chap. 13) ‘Broken Homes and Haunted Houses’, in which she considers three works: Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991), a gallery work by Cornelia Parker; Michael Landy’s performative work Break Down (2001) that was shown in the old C&A building on Oxford Street; and the ongoing Heidelberg Project in the McDougall-Hunt neighbourhood on the east side of Detroit, Michigan. As the body is conspicuously absent in all of these works, their broken-ness is suggested by metaphors, traces and surrogates. Readings of these works are contingent on cultural notions of belonging, identity and what constitutes a comfortable home. Through exploring the dynamics of these works, Perry argues that the playful, subversive and destructive practices can enrich and reframe the seemingly banal, ‘everyday’ themes of the house and home, thereby resisting, challenging and provoking our perceptions of domestic space. The final chapter (Chap. 14) of the collection returns to the outside. Robert James Sutton’s ‘The Monumental and the Mundane: Living With Public Art in London’s East End’ discusses some of the less acclaimed public artworks and cultural monuments in London’s East End, taking into account what these works say about the area’s evolution since World War II. The author argues that these works’ primary attribute is ‘mundanity’. Unlike gallery works that demand our attention and point to their individual maker’s intent and specialism, by embellishing our surrounding

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yet remaining in part invisible by resisting our attention, these works, Sutton suggests, evidence the impermanency and complexity of the histories to which they, like the public who lives with them, have been a part. As evidenced by the summary of their works, each of our contributors has approached questions about their own practice or the practice of others in response to our investigation of the relation between the discourses and practices of dance and visual art: the thinking and practices that emerge from their relation and how explorations of bodies, spaces and objects in the contemporary visual arts and contemporary dance might speak to one another. It is hoped that this book will encourage more writing that pushes at the boundaries between disciplines and builds on the insights that this collection offers on how the social, material and sensorial intersect in dance and visual art.

Notes 1. We are aware that the use of this term may be considered somewhat contentious given that the practices featured in this collection might also fall under the umbrella terms of performance art, or even live art; however, such a debate is not our primary interest here. We are keen to stress the choreographic nature of these works and, as several authors in this collection position themselves clearly in the fields of dance practice and research, we have chosen to use the wide term ‘contemporary dance’ to cover such practices. 2. See, for instance, Andrew Ballentyne, ‘The Nest and the Pillar of Fire’, in Andrew Ballentyne, ed., What is Architecture (London: Routledge, 2002). 3. Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans. W.  R. Boyce Gibson (London: Allen and Unwin, New  York: Humanities Press, 1931), esp. 101–103. 4. Gilbert Simondon, L’Individu et sa Genese Physico-Biologique: L’individuation a la lumiere des notions de forme et d’information (Paris: Millon, 2005) 5. For instance, Amelia Jones, Performing the Body/Performing the Text (London: Routledge, 1999), Susan A Crane, Museums and Memory (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000), Malcolm Miles, Art, Space and the City (London: Routledge, 1997), Anthony Downey, Art and Politics Now (London: Thames and Hudson, 2014), Rosie Braidotti, Metamorphoses: Towards a materialist theory of becoming (John Wiley & Sons, 2013), Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, trans. Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods with Mathieu Copeland (Dijon: Presses du reel, 2002).

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6. See, for example, Mark Franko and Andre Lepecki (2014). ‘Dance in the Museum’, Dance Research Journal, (46:3) 2014. 7. Doreen Massey, ‘A Place called Home’, New Formations 17 (1992), 3. 8. Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone Books, 2005). 9. See L.  Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (Boston, Mass: Da Capo Press, 1998). 10. See, for instance, Whitney Chadwick, ‘Reflecting on History and Histories’, in Dianna Burgess Fuller and Daniela Salvioni, eds., Art/Women/ California 1950–2000: Parallels and Intersections (Berkeley CA and London: University of California Press, 2002), 21. 11. http://www.kateblacker.com. 12. Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time (2009) at Tate Modern: https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/performance-at-tate/ case-studies/william-forsythe 13. See http://rosemarybutcher.com/ 14. Lizzie Thomson, ‘Dance/Visual/Art’ in Critical Dialogues vol. 9 (Sydney: Critical Path, 2018), 4–7, 4. 15. Maurice Berger ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’, in Hendel Teicher, ed., Trisha Brown: Dance and Art in Dialogue, 1961–2001 (Andover, MA: Addison Gallery of American Art, 2002), 17–23, 17. 16. Jeff Kelley, ‘Introduction’, in Jeff Kelley, ed., Allan Kaprow: Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life’ (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1993/2003), xi–xxvi, xi. 17. Jeff Friedman, ‘Muscle Memory: Performing Embodied Knowledge’, in Richard Candida Smith, Art and the Performance of Memory: Sounds and Gestures of Recollection (London and New  York: Routledge, 2002), 156–180, 161. 18. For a discussion of this, please see Imogen Racz, Art and the Home: Comfort, Alienation and the Everyday (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2015), 1–2. 19. See Rosalind Krauss, ‘Pictorial Space and the Question of Documentary, Artforum (November 1971), 68–71.

References Ballentyne, Andrew. 2002. The Nest and the Pillar of Fire. In What is Architecture, ed. Andrew Ballentyne. London: Routledge. Berger, Maurice. 2002. Gravity’s Rainbow. In Trisha Brown: Dance and Art in Dialogue, 1961–2001, ed. Hendel Teicher. Andover, MA: Addison Gallery of American Art.

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Brown, Wendy. 2015. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. New York: Zone Books. Chadwick, Whitney. 2002. Reflecting on History and Histories. In Art/Women/ California 1950–2000: Parallels and Intersections, ed. Dianna Burgess Fuller and Daniela Salvioni. Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press. Franko, Mark., and André Lepecki, eds. 2014. Dance in the Museum. Dance Research Journal 46 (3): 1–4. Friedman, Jeff. 2002. Muscle Memory: Performing Embodied Knowledge. In Art and the Performance of Memory: Sounds and Gestures of Recollection, ed. Richard Candida Smith. London and New York: Routledge. Garafola, Lynn. 1998. Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Boston, MA: Da Capo Press. Husserl, Edmund. 1931. Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Translated by W.  R. Boyce Gibson. London: Allen and Unwin; New  York: Humanities Press. Kelley, Jeff. 1993/2003. Introduction. In Allan Kaprow: Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, ed. Jeff Kelley. Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press. Krauss, Rosalind. 1971. Problems of Criticism X: Pictorial Space and the Question of Documentary. Artforum 10 (3): 68–71. Massey, Doreen. 1992. A Place Called Home? New Formations 17: 3–15. Racz, Imogen. 2015. Art and the Home: Comfort, Alienation and the Everyday. London and New York: I. B. Tauris. Simondon, Gilbert. 2005. L’Individu et sa Genèse Physico- Biologique: L’individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d’information. Paris: Millon. Thomson, Lizzie. 2018. Introduction. Dance/Visual/Art. Critical Dialogues 9: 4–9.

PART I

Emergent Relations

CHAPTER 2

Networked Commensals: Bodily, Relational and Performative Affordances of Sharing Food Remotely Cinzia Cremona

Introduction The reduction of air travel cost and the development of technologies such as broadband, mobile telephony and Wi-Fi in the last few decades have increased the ease of both mobility and long-distance communication. As a result, the definitions and configurations of families, partnerships and friendships have been stretched and modified by geographical distance and digital proximity, whilst elective communities of interest continue to multiply. Unlimited contracts have eliminated the pressure of using telecommunication solely for special occasions, productivity and emergencies. This landscape has opened communication technology to the potential for sharing intimacy, including the quotidian pleasure of eating together. This chapter examines the qualities of these intimate quotidian moments shared on networked screens via free or inexpensive digital platforms. It is

C. Cremona (*) Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee, Dundee, UK © The Author(s) 2020 S. Whatley et al. (eds.), Art and Dance in Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44085-5_2

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informed by my project By Invitation Only (2016–2017), a body of networked relational performances based on food sharing. I examine questions regarding the desire for embodied distributed connectivity in screen-based relationality and the performativity of everyday relationality as it emerges around food: how does sharing food qualitatively transform screen-based interpersonal relationships? How do artists intervene in these quotidian practices by producing proximity mediated by technology? How do these experiences shift the discourse on body and embodiment? And finally how can food become a catalyst for an effective analysis of the ever-changing relationships between bodies and networked screens? My interest in these issues grew directly out of my previous project Before You (2007–2013), a series of five video performances that explored the relationality and performativity of screen-mediated performance. Before You asked questions about the construction of subjectivity in interpersonal relationships in situations where screens mediate a large proportion of an intimate exchange. In this project, the performer invited a viewer to join her ‘at the screen’, provoking and manipulating them to question the dynamics of trust, gaze, affect and interpellation. Before You explored relational video performances and their ramifications for intersubjective relationships. It was contextualised in art practice more generally and entered into a dialogue with relational accounts from Nicholas Bourriaud’s (2002) Relational Aesthetics and successive elaborations of ‘dialogical’ practices and ‘associations’ (Kester 2004; Latour 2007). By Invitation Only (2016–2017), the work I am concerned with in this chapter, extends these enquiries to examine the remote sharing of food and the mundane as means to construct embodied co-presence. The term ‘commensals’ in the title of this chapter, from the Latin com- (together) and mensa (table), aims at directly evoking the act of gathering around the dining table and participating in the rituals of food sharing. In this chapter, I propose that remote food sharing offers the opportunity to explore the concepts of ‘body’ and ‘embodiment’ in relation to the technological mediation of interpersonal relationships. The quotidian use of networked screens and the pleasing aesthetics of communication devices and platforms blind users to the material existence and agency of screens themselves. The screen is the most common technological mediator—it is what embodies technology and, because of this, it can only be effective if it remains invisible. By analysing practices and ideas that focus on sharing food via networked screens, I demonstrate that the body of the screen and the human body are already part of each other in continuous metabolic processes of being-with and becoming-with human and non-human others.

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Following a discussion of key terms including ‘body’ and ‘embodiment’, I will examine recent contemporary practices and discourses concerned with food and their contexts as elements of networked performances, telematic artworks and interface designs. The history and analysis of telematic, sync and virtual dinners that follow are interwoven with a discussion of concepts relevant to food, networked screens, remote intimacy and their affordances. The last section will focus on my own project By Invitation Only. This overview of adjacent practices and discourses surveys the shifting ground of interpersonal relationships mediated by technologies and food, the interdependency between networked screens and human bodies, and some attempts to regain control of relationality and embodiment.

Body and Embodiment; Assemblages and Devouring This section surveys relevant critical studies that challenge the concept of ‘a body’ as marked with specific ontological qualities different from other material entities. Integrating political, philosophical and technological definitions, it analyses embodiment(s) as material, human and non-human ways of being and becoming in the world. In this perspective, sharing food remotely via networked screens reveals the common materiality of body and screen in mutual metabolic processes. Così non è soltanto la vita privata ad accompagnarci come una clandestina … ma la stessa vita corporea e tutto ciò che tradizionalmente si iscrive nella sfera della cosiddetta “intimità”: la nutrizione, la digestione, l’orinare, il defecare, il sonno, la sessualità. (Agamben 2015, 17) Therefore it is not only our private life that accompanies us like a clandestine … but corporeal life itself and everything that is traditionally ascribed to the so called “intimate sphere”—nutrition, digestion, urinating, defecating, sleep, sexuality. (Agamben 2015, 17, my translation)

In L’Uso dei Corpi (2015), Agamben extends the analysis of ‘bios’ and ‘zoe’ he had started in Homo Sacer (1998), arguing that the discursive separation of politically qualified life and bare life embedded in the history of western philosophy has also been the foundation of western politics. On this basis, Agamben concludes that ‘a political life, that is a life orientated towards happiness and cohered in a form-of-life, is thinkable only on the basis of an emancipation from this scission’ (Agamben 2015, 268, my translation).

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A form-of-life in this context is bare life as inseparable from its politicised form or the continuous ‘becoming human of man’ (Agamben 2015, 265, my translation). Agamben does not directly question the special status of the body in the context of material existence. In L’Uso dei Corpi, Aristotle’s comparison of the body of the slave to other possessions of the master allows the human body itself to remain in a special category, defined in opposition to the materiality of other entities. Yet, his approach usefully integrates everyday actions and social mechanisms, environmental concerns and international relations. If mundane bodily life needs to be acknowledged as politically charged, then all practices, including the everyday, are foundational of politics—politics materialise and are practiced in each individual everyday act of bodily life. In other words, washing, travelling, dressing, drinking and eating are performative and consequential acts that inform the balance of power in obvious as well as indirect ways—they are always political choices. It is worth noting that, in his use of language, Agamben confirms the male human body as the undisputed protagonist of political discourse— ‘becoming human of man’—missing the opportunity to integrate language in his emancipated politics of form-of-life (Agamben 2015, 265, my translation). In Italian, abstract and general notions are gendered and historically il corpo is a male word, constraining and othering the bodies of women in radical contradictions and power struggles. This is a clear example of how language perpetuates historical biases and structures of powers, in this case, confirming the ontological superiority of the human and of the male. New materialism attempts to dismantle these established dynamics ingrained in language and discourse with neologisms, appropriations and composite concepts. Rosi Braidotti (2015) describes this methodology as an embodied and embedded, empirical and grounded, situated and accountable modality of thinking, explicitly rejoining elements that western philosophy has historically kept separate to instantiate a political shift. Adopting terms from Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, from Judith Butler, Deleuze and Guattari, and from Donna Haraway among others, Braidotti proposes posthumanism and nomadic subjectivity as placeholders for concepts that can no longer be frozen in language  (Braidotti, 2013). Braidotti’s approach to embodiment promotes a contextualised reading of mediated interpersonal relationships by acknowledging a continuous process of being-with and becoming-with. Similarly, discourses on the construction of subjectivity adapt to this fluidity and uncertainty as they try to disentangle in the present—as they

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happen—emerging forms of interactions between human and non-human actors. They adapt to the complexity and dangers of analysing contemporary dynamics of political and economic powers that move in unpredictable ways. In this approach, ‘belonging to a category we cannot adequately think about’ is a common predicament that defeats and transcends the politics of identity, even when recognised in its complexity by intersectionality (Braidotti 2015). While Latour advocates a practice of observation and recording of shifts in the relay of actions to track the formation or transformation of associations as they happen, new materialism acknowledges a continuous state of flux and the artificiality of the perceived solidity of structures (Latour 2007). In a similar spirit, Donna Haraway proposes the Chthulucene as an era that ‘entangles myriad temporalities and spatialities and myriad intra-active entities-in-assemblages—including the more-than-human, inhuman, and human-as-humus’ (Haraway 2016, 101). In many ways, Donna Haraway continues the operation started by Bruno Latour in Reassembling the Social (2007). As she highlights the controversy in the conceptual separation and interdependent relationships between spaces, human lives, non-human lives and inanimate materiality, she also reassembles them within philosophical discourse into the chains of exchanges and interactions they always were. Therefore, the composite concept of ‘entities-in-assemblages’ reflects a return of discourse to the uncertainty and fluidity of performative relationality—of becoming-­ with—that was never exclusive to the internal dynamics of any subjectivity or identity. The becoming of the subject is always already relational as Butler (1999) has very skilfully demonstrated harnessing the legacy of psychoanalysis and Foucauldian analysis of power and its institutions. We are born within and defined by existing relationships that are also propelled and sustained by non-human actors. Refreshed in this new context, Latour’s actor-network theory becomes ‘vibrant matter’ within a more vital flat ontology  (Bennett, 2010). In other words, the bodies of non-­ animal entities enact a vitality and affectivity comparable to human life in many ways. The concept of assemblage acknowledges that the non-human matter of computers, mobile phones, their screens and the human entities they connect in active networks share materiality in inseparable co-embodied chains of entities-in-assemblage. Latour had already observed that face-to-­ face interpersonal relationships were never the privileged mode of encounter among human entities as different modes of mediation always inform

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and shape affective and intimate encounters (Latour 2007). Moreover ‘what is acting at the same moment in any place is coming from many other places, many distant materials, and faraway actors’ (Latour 2007, 200). The connection between the screen and the user is no more read as haptic—touched by the eye of a user separate from it—but as converging towards ‘incorporation’ understood as devouring, ingesting and merging of bodies. I borrow this approach to ‘incorporation’ from Cecilia Novaro, who explores the use of food in the art practice of the twentieth-century avant-­ garde as performative. ‘Performative here means an active rhetorical strategy that displaces food from its regular uses and turns it into words (e.g. names, insults), thereby destabilizing both the usual practical grammars of food and the grammars of language’ (Novaro 2010, IX). And a little further: ‘Incorporation as an act of subject-object interaction and mutual metamorphosis (thus a constant production and operation) replaces “food” as theme or “thought” or object’ (Novaro 2010, IX). The networked screen has always already devoured the person in front of the computer and the person has always already ingested the screen in shared materiality. Nevertheless, this ingestion is not a final entropic act but a process that ‘entangles myriad temporalities and spatialities and myriad intra-active entities-in-assemblages—including the more-than-human, inhuman, and human-as-humus’ (Haraway 2016, 101). This co-­embodied materiality is itself food, gastric juice, bacterial life and excretion, but it is also already humus—fermented re-digested material that again produces fertility and itself becomes food. To artificially freeze this process into ‘this body now’ is to exclude life itself from the realm of discourse. Within this assemblage, some entities attempt to erase the influence of other entities to feel that they are fully immersed-with another in unmediated, immediate relationality. In an exchange via a videoconferencing platform, eyes and attention move from the on-screen face of the other to one’s own face and back again; awareness darts from their presence to one’s own presence to the presence and position of the camera, screen and light. Then back to an awareness of the physical space occupied by the human body as objects in the background appear on screen as well. This can appear as more of a nibbling than devouring, but eating and thinking about eating also encompass shifts of awareness from the gaze into the plate and the desire for food—anticipation of flavour and texture stimulated further by the smell—to the proprioception of the contact of the lips and tongue with the temperature, texture and first hint of flavour of the

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foreign body entering our own. The movement travels from bodily surface to inner depth to outside and back again without interruption—‘intra-­ active entities-in-assemblages’ (Haraway 2016, 101). I return to Haraway’s quote because sharing a mediated meal materialises in one action the entanglement of ‘temporalities and spatialities and myriad intra-active entities-in-assemblages—including the more-than-­ human, inhuman, and human-as-humus’ (Haraway 2016, 101). Server, satellite, terminal, screen, food, eyes, mouths, cutlery and crockery converge in the moment two people sit in front of two screens to share a meal. Objects, spaces and bodies assemble around a relational desire that reconfigures all human and non-human actors. The (self)representation of the user that appears in the small window of a videoconferencing platform is already metabolised by the screen and not quite given back to them. Webcam and screen take possession of my bodily presence to filter my materiality and extract the information that suits the digital system. The active ‘I’ is now digital humus. As the screen eats up, digests and spits out the human body, eating with the screen and with others is an attempt to regain control of relationality and embodiment in the awareness of the mechanisms of the digitally mediated becoming-with; or at least an effort at agency in a process that otherwise exploits desires and appetites, rendering the user passive within an illusion of (inter)activity.

Relevant Practices and Discourse This section surveys a selection of adjacent mediated practices and conceptual approaches that aim to enhance the physicality of remote relationships via the sensations and rituals associated with food sharing. In the context of this research, this selection of artists and designers emphasise embodiment in technological mediation but also the material and conceptual hybridisation that make this possible. Already in 1983, the Canadian director David Cronenberg had imagined that with the increasing power of screen-based media the body and the screen would find ways into each other. In the film Videodrome, the television screen is described as ‘retina’ but represented as a devouring mouth and as spilling guts. In the film, the programme ‘Videodrome’ produces a tumour in the brain capable of altering viewers’ perception of reality. More recently, the artist Ed Atkins has adopted a similar narrative in the work A Tumour in English (2011), which uses the form of a book and a video to suggest that the act of watching or reading it will materialise

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a tumour in some part of the body of the audience. The screen finds a way into the body and the body a way into the screen. I would argue that Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) represents an attempt to reclaim the body back from this digital digestion. The pseudo-scientific phenomenon of ASMR was established in 2010 by Jennifer Allen, at first with a sexual connotation, then as a more generic sense of pleasure linked to specific audio-visual stimuli. It describes the experience of tingling sensations descending from the back of the head to the spine in response to specific sounds. Binaural microphones are used to record subtle bodily noises to activate physical sensations in the other body in front of the other screen: whispers, the sounds of hair being brushed, fingernails tapping or scratching, food and mouth noises. The concept of ASMR resonates with a deep desire for a paradoxical immediacy not with another represented on screen but with one’s own body. It could be read as one way of using the physicality of sound to return the body that has been ingested into digitality back to its physical presence via proprioception and tactile sensations. A very different approach to integrating networked screen-life with food is the South Korean phenomenon of mukbang or mokbang. A combination of the words for food and broadcast, it consists of hosts (Broadcast Jockeys or BJs) cooking and eating in front of web camera and screen (Observers, 2014). Park Seo-Yeon, also known as La Diva, cooks and eats elaborate and extravagant dishes on request while advertising and typing into a chatbox. Erotic pleasure is part of watching her slurp on dripping prawns, exaggerated quantities of butter, overflowing bowls of noodles and colourful crabs. La Diva has established a direct relationship with a large group of devoted followers via food. Some seek company while they eat, others combat eating disorders, but the majority of her viewers ask her to handle food for their own voyeuristic pleasure. Like pornography, this relational fusion of body and screen allows one subject the privilege and power to make use of the body of the other as a vicarious inter-actor of sensual pleasures. In China and Japan, two chains of restaurants have put the relationship between food, screen and commensals in a different balance by integrating a videoconferencing apparatus in a dining setting. In 2014, the telecom company KDDI and restaurant chain Hiramatsu launched a dedicated romantic sync dinner set up between Tokyo and Osaka. Two people could share each other’s remote company in a sophisticated environment taking advantage of a large high resolution screen and some playful digital effects.

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In China, the technology giant Huawei paired with the restaurant chain Hai Di Lao to create the opportunity to share a hot pot remotely (CNNGo Staff, 2012). In this traditional way of cooking and eating together, commensals simmer their chosen ingredients in a shared saucepan of broth. In a similar spirit, interactive systems have been developed aiming to improve the mediated relational and affective aesthetics of remotely shared meals. For example, NetPot was developed by a group of Canadian researchers to enhance the experience of preparing food together remotely. It shares visual aesthetics and dynamics with computer games: ‘half of a traditional Yuān Yāng Guō , or “Mandarin Duck”, hotpot is used for cooking, while the other half serves as a display and tracking surface to interact with remote diners’ (Foley-Fisher et al. 2010, 447). Distant commensals can simmer their chosen ingredients at the dining table but also use their chopsticks to select virtual items that will appear in the remote guests’ pot. The designers privilege specific relational factors—interacting as a group with food, a central shared hotpot and a feeling that others are nearby. Yet, in this tech-heavy set-up, diners are invited to look down towards the pot, not at each other. Food Media attempts instead to build a complete networked dining experience by integrating four different elements—an animated tablecloth, a networked tabletop that allows diners to move plates remotely, a 3D printer that ‘squirts’ edible messages and a vertical screen with integrated gesture tracking and video chatting  (Wei et  al., 2011). This last element is critical to the ‘relational aesthetics’ of the shared dining experience—the possibility to ‘meet the eye’ of the dining companion(s), even in mediated form, is essential to the established practices of food sharing (Bourriaud 2002). It could be argued that when interactivity is focused on inanimate objects, the participants are rendered passive as they are confirmed in their imaginary subjectivity, satisfied of their symbolic power over virtual items that have no intentional agency, and withdrawn from relationality. The relational potential of networked technologies was already influencing critical discourse in the 1990s: Bourriaud recognised that ‘in the nineties’ art, while interactive technologies developed at an exponential rate, artists were exploring the arcane mysteries of sociability and interaction’ (Bourriaud 2002, 70). This crucial link between interactivity, relationality and performativity is at the roots of this focused analysis of mediated social interactions involving screen-based technologies and food. Specifically interested in the interstice and conviviality as relational forms—the shared meal, the club, the party—Bourriaud stated that

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the purpose is not conviviality, but the product of this conviviality. Otherwise put, a complex form that combines a formal structure, objects made available to visitors, and the fleeting image issuing from collective behaviour. (Bourriaud 2002, 83, emphasis in original)

His influential book Relational Aesthetics makes a strong case for the performative relational power of the ‘constructed situations’ of performance and moving image works (Bourriaud 2002). In the field of performance studies, Haraway and her elaboration of the cyborg remain key referents for the theorisation of the relationship between human bodies and technological tools (Birringer 2000; Dixon 2007; Chatzichristodoulou and Zerihan 2012). Jennifer Parker-Starbuck in particular argues for a ‘multiple subject capable of biological, psychological, technological, or organic and non-organic affiliations’ (Parker-­ Starbuck 2011, 150). This author perceives performance practices as a fertile ground where experiments with hybrid embodied subjectivity contribute to a widespread understanding of subjects in a continuous process of redefinition. The cyborg as a shifting conceptualisation of body in question allows practitioners and thinkers to engage with embodiment on a ground already made unstable (Harraway, 1991). In dialogue with these studies, I return to the critical thinking in which they are rooted to look at mediated performance practices that involve human and non-human actors from a slightly different perspective to these theorists. The work of Melrose is particularly relevant to this study as it questions the notion of ‘the body’ in a direct and radical way: ‘the term “the body” itself is a shifter, able to move endlessly between contexts of use, slipping easily, and apparently without loss of identity, into multiple relational sets’ (Melrose 2011, 8). This author argues that a writer limiting herself to this generic term does not acknowledge the assumptions and idealisations that the concept carries from previous uses, including the dichotomy body-soul, gendering and the desire for an impossible unmediated, ‘pre-cultural’ experience. On this basis, I argue that the sharing of food and screen-based relationality, as and outside of performance art practices, shifts the discourse on body and embodiment further away from epistemological conceptualisation of the body and towards a horizontal ontology.

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Art Practices This section focuses on selected historical and contemporary art practices that have used the rituals of food sharing to challenge, test and reclaim a fluid embodied grounding for relationality in the context of technologically mediated interactions. In 1971, Roy Ascott, a pioneer of telematic art practice, constructed an interactive table for the work Table-Top Strategies. In 1975, in the essay Table, he analysed the aesthetic and relational potential of this object as a locus of meaningful interactions: The table enables us to sit around our universe of discourse and to transact with one another in that universe. […] The preparation of a meal is always a ritual analogue of our ways of dealing with the world, the ways we transmute raw matter, stuff of our daily physical existence, into new forms, concepts, and experiences. […] This arena has its own semiotic. […] To participate in table behaviour is to stand, or more generally sit, at a table, somewhat apart from it, while entering into transactions with people or objects across this arena. The table is a medium of exchange, the space between behaviours and states, the grounds for change. A table is very properly a matrix (and so at all levels). (Ascott 2003, 168)

This essay articulates the kitchen and dining table as specific mediators of interpersonal and intimate relationships, and suggests that no interaction is ever immediate, unmediated or purely face-to-face. Ascott recognises that even the quotidian act of sitting at the table to share food carries a set of codes, rituals and, ultimately, its own semiotics. We can therefore deduce that all interactions, no matter how basic and apparently spontaneous, are already codified and mediated by culture, history, language and already constructed within social structures. From this perspective, the behaviours, meanings and aesthetic potential that dining tables activate are already akin to those of networked screens and vice versa. Long before the lips part to allow the first item into the mouth, we are taking part in embodied and embedded, situated and grounded, chemical and electric, cultural, affective, relational and performative exchanges. These exchanges involve desires, openings and bodily products and could be read as a form of eroticism explicitly allowed at the dinner party. The table is a matrix at all levels as it is the acknowledged pivot around which the rhythms of day, season and shared customs are articulated. In his practice and writings, Ascott focuses on telematics to combine the study of emerging technologies and interpersonal relationships to

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explore remote mediated relationality. The word telematics merges the terms telecommunications and informatics to represent the technological shift from localised information to networked systems. It combines the Greek tele—far away, distant—with matos—from machinery, or contrivance, usually taken in this context to mean ‘of its own accord’, describing the process of long-distance transmission of (computer-based) information. In Ascott’s practice, relationality is the information that is transmitted from a distance. In his words, a ‘user coming online even for the first time senses a connection and a close community, almost intimacy, which is quite unlike initial face-to-face meetings’ and ‘computer-mediated networks, in my view, offer the possibility of a kind of planetary conviviality and creativity that no other means of communication has been able to achieve’ (Ascott 2003, 188). Rooted in the 1970s utopian vision of technology forming an expanded nervous system for humankind, this approach recognises the appetite for affective connectivity that networked technologies both satisfy and exploit. A student of Ascott, Paul Sermon, continued to explore telematic intimacy and to construct for his participants ‘an immediate relationship to the contents of that medium’—the representation of the other person across the networked devices. Although electronic technology adds a further layer of mediation, adopting familiar mediators like the dining table with its recognisable accoutrements gives rise to habitual behaviours and ways of relating, reducing further the distance between interlocutors (Bolter and Grusin, 2000). In Telematic Encounter (1996), Sermon joined two locations so that (the images of) the participants acted in a complementary manner: ‘the table, carpet and back drop in location 2 are all painted chroma-key blue, only the chair and various drawers—contained within the table, are wood in colour [sic]’ (Sermon 2016). Chroma-key is a technique that allows one colour to become transparent so that the images from different cameras can be integrated. In other words, the colour is the key for bodies and objects to access the ‘other’ space. In Telematic Encounter the remote interactions between distant participants are driven by the structure of the table and props made available to encourage the unfolding of an open narrative. The social conventions that inform table behaviour facilitate interaction among participants, evoking existing social and cultural bonds conventions and decreasing the distance between ‘commensals’. Polly Barden’s Telematic Dinner Party is driven instead by a desire to ‘celebrate togetherness apart’ and enhance the experience of the shared

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meal when commensals are not able to be in the same geographical space, including the physical consumption of food (Barden et  al. 2012, 38). Barden’s practice is particularly relevant in the context of this study as she is interested in finding a balance between the affordances of the technology and the potential of the social rituals to enhance remote interpersonal relationships between commensals. The London-based American artist focused on interfaces to ‘explore the possibilities and consequences of designing for togetherness, performance and playfulness toward a form of social presence’ (Barden et al. 2012, 38–39). Barden first developed this project in 2009 for her doctoral research at Queen Mary University in London. She analysed the social capital of the dinner party and compared it to the family meal. In the home, a family member prepares food and settings without being considered a host, but an instrument for the cohesion of the family itself. In a sense, the invisibility or apparent effortlessness of the preparations is key to the relaxed atmosphere of ‘natural’ belonging. Conversely, in a dinner party hospitality is demonstrated via the efforts of the hosts, who create special food and a special atmosphere. On these bases, the dinner party is more akin to the ceremonial sharing of food that marks religious and social occasions and reaffirms the cohesion of a community. Barden chose the group toast as a recognisable ritual to open the meal and connect all commensals co-present and remote. The rituals of toasting could be seen as a declaration of cohesion—to consolidate or establish social bonds, kinship and trust. In most cultures, one guest or host dedicates the toast to a fact or a person and the others concur by lifting or touching their glasses. It is essential to look at dining companions in the eye while doing this and drink immediately after. In Asia, it is also important to toast people according to an acknowledged hierarchy. These conventions use eating and drinking to consolidate or create social bonds, kinship and trust. Similarly, Barden aimed to construct networked relational settings to engage participants in a playful experience cemented by the existing rituals and conventions of sharing food. To achieve this, she conducted a systematic set of experiments deploying emerging technologies and existing research in pilot networked meals. She tested a variety of interactions, dining configurations and interfaces, which she recorded, complemented with participants’ interviews and analysed: ‘the data was analysed based on actions in context, tempo of conversation and actions in relation to others’ (Barden et  al. 2012, 40). She observed participants’ behaviour first in

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co-­present dinner parties with ten, twelve and forty participants. Having noted that conversations generally happened in small groups or pairs, she decided that the Telematic Dinner Party should take place among a small number of participants. In its final configuration, the Telematic Dinner Party featured a round table that alternated three co-present guests with three projections onto the table itself as well as a monitor screen relaying a view of the whole table. Four dinners were structured around games, storytelling or themes and elicited different responses. One participant in the first dinner reported the need to see the facial expressions of the remote guests and her frustration at having to rely on a television screen away from the table. On the other hand, some participants reported feeling as if they were addressing the person and not a disembodied voice coming out of a speaker. Barden also observed that co-present participants took ‘time out’ to converse with each other for a few minutes at a time then reconnect with distant commensals. The artist interpreted this ‘as an indication that there was a lack of sense of togetherness between the remote groups’ (Barden et al. 2012, 41). I would argue that this could also be interpreted as a reaction to the intensity of focus required by mediated relationality. While sharing food with co-present commensals allows for a loose rhythm of conversation, attention and distraction, mediated relationality relies on visual and auditory cues that demand the full attention of remote interlocutors.

By Invitation Only To be a painter, it is necessary to have guts. Just like Eating: first comes the appetite, then the choice of the dish. (Georges Braque quoted in Novaro 2010, p.xxix).

The research and practices discussed so far demonstrate an appetite for an embodied and embedded, empirical and grounded, situated and accountable mediated relationality. But they also show an appetite for a more balanced dynamic of agency in the reciprocal devouring of human body and body of the networked screen. By Invitation Only activates these mechanisms in situations that merge quotidian and artistic engagement with screens, others and food. This ambiguity fosters unguarded responses to the camera, heightened by the familiarity of the tools and the settings. The desire explicitly expressed focuses on achieving an impression of the

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union of the humans at the geographical ends of the exchange, which inevitably encompasses the screens and the other mediators that make the desire itself emerge. Food re-embodies the digitised entities produced in the mediation and materialises the possibility of sensing together. From this perspective, it is performative: it produces the subjects that take part as always already hybrid or, in Haraway’s words, as cyborgs (Haraway 1983). By Invitation Only lends itself to experimenting with these dynamics as well as with the visual aesthetics and playfulness of mediated conviviality. It is as a versatile methodology based on different combinations of hosting, screen presence, food preparation and consumption in private and public settings. Different configurations of hosts, guests, food and technology have revealed different possibilities, dynamics and affordances. In different contexts, its strategies have been useful to make explicit the embodied mechanisms at work and to divert them by adopting food and drink as transformative mediators. For the moving image and performance festival Visions in the Nunnery in London, I hosted a meal in which all the connotations of sharing food could be brought into play—stimulation of the senses, conviviality, playfulness, sensuality, entertainment, ethics and so on. I prepared a table with a white tablecloth, two bottles of red wine and two trays of plant-based red food; I placed a tablet and two laptops so that co-present and remote guests could interact easily; a snaking strawberry string and other sweets connected commensals in a circle; I prepared small cards with instructions for all commensals to touch, bite, kiss, lick and feed each other and me; I prepared a short text to read as a closing gesture; I asked remote guests on the laptops to appear on screen with a co-present dining companion, whilst the tablet showed a plate on which the dancer Rebecca O’Brien performed a choreography for hands and red food (Fig. 2.1). Members of the audience were invited to join the table or to invite the person beside them. As a host, it was important to me that everyone could choose to participate or watch. This created a relaxed environment in which all remote and co-present guests could interact comfortably. The atmosphere remained joyous for the whole meal; although in the complex network of overlapping connotations the most delicate aspects remained hidden. Within the programme What Happens to Us (WHTU) co-curated by Amy McDonnell and Marsha Bradfield at Wimbledon Space in London, By Invitation Only was ideal to evaluate key aspects of the interplay between artistic and political practices. WHTU examined concepts of

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Fig. 2.1  Cinzia Cremona, By Invitation Only, 2016, The Nunnery Gallery and Wimbledon Space, London

democracy in the contexts of curating and of building communities. A table and chairs designed and built with participants were used for discussions, games hacking, workshops and seminars. Towards the end of the four weeks programme, I invited remote and co-present guests to describe and discuss the affordances of relevant projects over soup, salad and wine. We moved small USB speakers and microphone around the table to make sure that everyone was participating fully without the need for cumbersome technology. The discussion became livelier as commensals progressively discovered the most effective strategies to communicate and interact. The familiarity with the communication tools and with the dinner settings allowed everybody to feel confident and express their opinions with ease (Fig. 2.1). Merging a shared meal, discussion and remote guests created a hybrid setting that produced conviviality and ease of participation. In the context of an event that questioned ideas of democracy, By Invitation Only put the remote guest speaker on the same level as the other guests around the table. The dialogue flowed easily, alternating the attention of co-present guests towards each other and towards the screen. Quickly the commensals became used to moving the small microphone and speaker to make sure that nobody was excluded. We sealed the event by leaving handprints on the paper tablecloth, while remote guests moved their hand close to her webcam leaving a digital print. I would argue that the surge of desire to be able to touch each other at that moment made their bodily presence even more tangible. The remote speakers were evoked as a body at the table by the shared appetite for the presence of hands just as sharing a bowl of soup and a glass of wine made remote bodies present to each

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other by the similarity of shared bodily sensation. Moreover, this evoked co-presence persisted in the aromas of herbs, garlic, onion and wine long after the meal in the room, on clothes and in bodies. As part of By Invitation Only I have also shared one-to-one remote meals selecting commensals among Facebook contacts I never met in person or whose posts never appeared in my feed. This was a way of merging the remote connections created on social media and embodiment by converging their convivial dimension. To maintain a balance between sight, taste and conversation, food and drink were chosen from the dominant colour of my guests’ posts and photos. Meals started with the same food to connect biological bodies by sharing similar sensations. Looking into each other’s eyes remained important, but mediated synchronicity is often  complicated as webcam and image on screen cannot be aligned effectively. Yet, the familiarity of these communication tools lessens the discomfort as most frequent users have embedded strategies to overcome this. The one-to-one meals were intense and emotional, paradoxically enhanced by the geographical distance. Remote proximity allowed each commensal to evoke the other in a special relational form, to be freer in the expression of emotions and opinions, and to share an enhanced set of quotidian actions. This key performative aspect of remote intimacy became tangible in our conversations and was prolonged with different strategies—a friend could not find a pomegranate in her rural Irish village and we decided to exchange gifts after the dinner; I sent her a pomegranate and she sent me a ladle as I discovered that I didn’t have one when I shared soup with her. This added another dimension to the performativity and the relational aesthetics of our networked meal as our exchange of gifts extended the remote relationality instantiated by the meal into taking care of each other’s further needs. Another guest suggested a chain of invitations where each guest proposes a person for the next meal, allowing the project to involve participants who have no previous direct connection with me. Moreover, the frequency of exchanges on social media increased even with those who did not accept my invitation—the simple act of actively seeking them changed our respective positions in the algorithm.

Conclusions At the beginning of this chapter I proposed that integrating the sharing of food into screen-based relationality shifts the discourse on body and embodiment. The practices and ideas examined here show how the body

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of the screen and the human body are already part of each other in continuous devouring and metabolising. We are-with and become-with the other in an already mediated process. Sharing food via networked screens heightens the awareness of this mechanism and offers a unique opportunity to analyse the contemporary question of embodiment. As technology evolves, so do the ways in which embodiment is mediated and perceived— for example developments in robotics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, geotagging, voice recognition, bots, wearable technology and so on. As software and hardware become more sophisticated and familiar, the screen transforms and becomes increasingly more invisible. Screens are in our hands, respond to touch, move with us and allow access to hard drives, apps, networks, satellites, archives, other spaces and human bodies. Yet, we never mention them directly and this gives screens a power difficult to quantify. The screen is the most common technological mediator—it is what embodies technology and, because of this, it can only be effective if it remains transparent. Sharing food remotely reveals the screen as a living permeable membrane—an active porous barrier. While engineers and designers focus on interfaces that can reproduce smells, gestures, edible messages and so forth, I would argue that the distributed relational aesthetics of mediated shared meals hinges on basic technology and networked screens as effective mediators for commensals to  sense textures, temperature, flavours, smells and physical effects when ingesting food. Their bodily materiality is evoked and perceived already connected by the connotations of the screen as well as shared memories, the social and cultural practices of eating and table behaviours. The complex sensorial qualities of food can complement the networked possibilities of technology by revealing that the materiality of the screen and the materiality of the eating body are already part of the same metabolic process of becoming-with.

References Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ———. 2015. L’Uso dei Corpi. Vicenza: Neri Pozza. Ascott, Roy. 2003. Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness. Berkeley: University of California Press. Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. n.d. [Internet]. Accessed March 20, 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_sensory_meridian_ response.

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Barden, Pollie, et  al. 2012. Telematic Dinner Party: Designing for Togetherness through Play and Performance [Internet]. Accessed December 21, 2016. http://isam.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/projects/telematic_dinner_party/telematic-dinner-party.pdf. Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press. Birringer, Johannes. 2000. Performance on the Edge: Transformations of Culture. London: Athlone Press. Bolter, Jay D., and Richard Grusin. 2000. Remediation: Understanding New Media. London: MIT Press. Bourriaud, Nicolas. 2002. Relational Aesthetics, trans. Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods [1998], Dijon: Les presses du réel. Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. 2015. Posthuman All Too Human? A Cultural Political Cartography. Inhuman, Symposium [Podcast], May 25. Accessed April 10, 2017 https:// www.youtube.com/channel/UCjWR6XWyP6eqXhWRy5mw-5g. Butler, Judith. 1999. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Chatzichristodoulou, Maria, and Rachel Zerihan. 2012. Intimacy Across Visceral and Digital Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. CNNGo Staff. 2012. Cyber Supper: Multi-city Virtual Dining Comes to China: Hot Pot Diners 1,200 Kilometers Apart Can Boil Mutton Face-to-Face. Accessed April 15, 2017. http://travel.cnn.com/shanghai/eat/china-virtual-diningconcept-399417/. Dixon, Steve. 2007. Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Foley-Fisher, Z., et al. 2010. NetPot: Easy Meal Enjoyment for Distant Diners. In Entertainment Computing—ICEC 2010, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, ed. H.S. Yang et al., vol. 6243. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. Haraway, Donna. 1983. A Cyborg Manifesto. New  York: The Berkeley Socialist Review Collective. ———. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge. ———. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press. Kester, Grant. 2004. Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Latour, Bruno. 2007. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-­ Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Melrose, S. 2011. Bodies Without Bodies. In Performance and Technology: Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity, ed. S.  Broadhurst and J. Machon. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Novaro, Cecilia. 2010. Anti-Diets of the Avant-garde: From Futurist Fast Food to Eat Art. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press. Observers. 2014. [Internet]. Accessed January 9, 2017. http://observers. france24.com/en/20140314-south-korea-mokbang-trend-eating. Parker-Starbuck, J. 2011. Cyborg Theatre: Corporeal/Technological Intersections in Multimedia Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Sermon, Paul. 2016. Works [Internet]. Accessed April 15, 2017. http://www. paulsermon.org. Wei, June, et  al. 2011. Food Media: Exploring Interactive Entertainment Over Telepresent Dinner [Internet]. Accessed April 6, 2017. https://www. researchgate.net/publication/220982482_Food_Media_ Exploring_interactive_entertainment_over_telepresent_dinner.

Artworks Ascott, Roy. 1971. Table-Top Strategies. Telematic Installation. Atkins, Ed. 2011. A Tumour In English. Video and book Barden, Pollie. 2011. Telematic Dinner Party. Telematic Participatory Installation. Cremona, Cinzia. 2016–2017. By Invitation Only. Series of Networked Performances. Cronenberg, David. 1983. Videodrome, Film. Gould, Charlotte and Sermon, Paul. 2010. Urban Picnic. Telematic Installation. Sermon, Paul. 1996. Telematic Encounter. Telematic Installation.

CHAPTER 3

Unsound Bodies: Mapping Manifolds in/of the Dance Elise Nuding

This chapter draws on sounding score, a practice concerned with the entanglement of material bodies, to explore the contingency of dancing bodies and bodies of the dance. My studio explorations are positioned in dialogue with new materialist approaches to matter, particularly Karen Barad’s concept of ‘intra-actions,’ to draw out what is emerging from sounding score. The following questions offer a focus for this enquiry: How does the practice (re)map bodies through their entanglements? In what ways does the practice map out and ‘qualitatively shift the relation between matter/materiality and language, between the interior and exterior of the body’?1

sounding score emerged from a process akin to a research mash-up where I built on, blended, and reimagined previous enquiries, bringing together three strands of my research: the entanglement of the human and nonhuman in relation to the dancing body, the slipperiness of language, and scored improvisation. The proposal was to observe existing overlaps between the enquiries and find new ones; to reimagine their possibilities

E. Nuding (*) Vallentuna, Sweden © The Author(s) 2020 S. Whatley et al. (eds.), Art and Dance in Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44085-5_3

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by throwing them into a melting pot; to let them seep and bleed into one another; to submerge myself in them to see what (re)emerged.2 What surfaced was sounding score—a dance that spans moving, writing, speaking, listening, and sensing, and which arises through the intra-actions of dancing bodies. It has become a practice of shifting, expanding, dissolving, and reforming bodies’ boundaries—or rather, attending to the ways in which they are already, always doing so. sounding score arose from a twofold desire: first, to engage with the complex web of bodies, imagination, objects, places, socio-cultural histories, and memories constituting two particular material things—the sounding lines that give the score its name; second, to map some of the ways these co-exist, bleed into, and filter through one another. In other words, sounding score stemmed from a desire to tap into the shifting, subjective entanglement of bodies where human/non-human and self/other cease to be meaningful constructs, and in-between spaces start to matter. I am interested in these in-between spaces—between bodies, between matter and language, between interior and exterior—that the act of dancing opens up. I propose that attending to these spaces shifts the conception of the dances emerging from sounding score as located in, or resulting from, a certain body or bodies. Instead, the dances come to be understood as phenomena—‘dynamic topological reconfigurings/entanglements/ relationalities/(re)articulations’3—which are mapped and re-mapped with every realisation of sounding score through the complex, shifting intra-­ actions of co-implicated bodies. The following section addresses one of sounding score’s frameworks: the practice of mapping. Subsequently, ‘The immanent gesture of new materialism’ sketches out some common ground shared by the diverse new materialisms. ‘From interacting to intra-acting’ goes on to explore Karen Barad’s concept of ‘intra-actions’ in depth—a concept whose implications provoke more nuanced considerations of what sounding score is doing and becoming. These considerations are addressed in the final section, ‘Unsound bodies,’ and in the conclusion. Additionally, the three main elements that constitute sounding score— which I term folds—are expounded on to elucidate the particulars of the practice. The three folds are: an encounter between my body and the sounding lines; a dance of surfaces; and a text, and explications of these folds are themselves folded into the chapter between the sections detailed above. Separating the folds thus slightly simplifies the matter as they do not exist discretely but rather overlap, feed into, and rupture one another.

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Additionally, the folds’ relationships with/in each other remain in flux as sounding score develops. Nevertheless, considering the three folds separately in this way offers a useful structure for engaging with sounding score and its proposals.

Mapping the Practice Mapping has been a central framework for the research; along with collecting my daily written reflections in a text entitled ‘Mapping the practice,’ I also found mapping a useful method in the studio for following sounding score’s emergence. These mappings were not representational acts intended to fix points or establish territories. Rather, they traced and re-mediated in a process of ‘gestural re-enactment of journeys actually made’4; a following-through-doing of pathways of thought, dancing, memory, and curiosity, mapping and re-mapping sounding score’s becoming. This chapter continues that process of mapping, both tracing what is already there and opening future pathways for the practice.5 Although the elements of the practice elucidated here are ones I consider central, there are also other facets to sounding score, other things it explores, connects to, and questions. In this way too the chapter acts as a map of sorts—necessarily partial in its representation, necessarily focusing on certain aspects and excluding others.6 Mapping is also a concept utilised by many of the new materialists whose work I draw on. This is perhaps exemplified by Dolphijn and van der Tuin’s positioning of their co-authored work on new materialism as an ‘open cartography’7—a framework reflecting new materialism itself, which they characterise as cartographical due to its non-dualist approaches that de-territorialise disciplinary and epistemological classifications.8 In drawing on new materialism to articulate sounding score’s proposals, I am not framing the practice as based on or ‘about’ new materialism. Rather, following Dolphijn and van der Tuin’s exhortation of new materialism as ‘something to be put to work,’9 this chapter aims to put new materialism to work in articulating and contributing to a specific practice of dancing.

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FOLD: Sounding Out (An Encounter) I find the sounding lines buried under a haphazard assortment of other things. The stall’s owner watches me sift through the pile of ironwork heaped upon, tangled up, and tumbling over itself as I look for something without knowing what. Things juxtaposed, existing in odd relations. But there is order within the disorder: tools grouped together, laid out in what were perhaps once lines before busy hands intervened. Miscellaneous metalwork. —Excerpt from a text written in April 2015 ‘I like this thing—there is something about really having to pay attention to the dance emerging from the encounter.’ —Mapping the Practice, 25.01.17

This fold is a structured improvisation I perform with the sounding lines, where physical contact between bodies occurs throughout. It hinges upon attentiveness, a listening to the materiality of the dance that then informs my movement choices. This fold started simply as exploring movement possibilities of the sounding lines in contact with my body, subsequently refining itself through repeated doing and consciously articulating the doing. But what is this ‘materiality of the dance’ to which I attend? It includes textures, weight, and temperatures, but also less obviously material qualities, such as memories, tempos, sounds, and energies. It includes the material qualities of my body and bodies of the sounding lines, but also of other bodies folded into these bodies (floor, notebook, sound, water, walls). They too have agency and presence. The dance that unfolds from these multiple foldings is a collaboration, a co-creation arising from the intra-actions of these dancing bodies (Fig. 3.1).

The Immanent Gesture of New Materialism The term ‘new materialism,’ first used in the late 1990s,10 encompasses a complex, wide-ranging ecology of scholarship traversing disciplinary fields. New materialism re-thinks matter—something consistently dismissed or accorded lesser significance in dominant Western thought traditions of the modern era. Rather than considering matter as static, passive, or inert, new materialism approaches matter as ‘dynamic, shifting, entangled, diffractional, and performative.’11 It reconfigures it as an active process in which humans are ensnared, thereby diverging from the legacy of Cartesian philosophy.

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Fig. 3.1  An encounter with the two sounding lines. (Photo credit: Marit Shirin Carolasdotter/Dotra Productions)

Significantly, new materialism does not advance a new epistemology of matter; rather, it reconfigures matter ontologically, proposing a ‘monolithic but multiply tiered ontology … [with] no definitive break between sentient and non-sentient entities or between material and spiritual phenomena.’12 This stance complicates not only the human/non-human binary (and its implicit hierarchy, where humans are exceptional and dominant) but also challenges the separation of life and matter. In place of these increasingly untenable epistemes, new materialism advocates for a ‘vital materialism,’13 where matter is intrinsically vibrant and agential. Accordingly, new materialism can be considered part of the posthumanist project, which challenges the anthropocentric humanist narrative and its presuppositions. Indeed, Braidotti considers matter’s vitality fundamental to the wider posthuman condition; if matter is ‘intelligent and self-organizing [this] means that matter is not dialectically opposed to culture, nor to technological mediation, but continuous with them.’14 New materialism’s posthumanist orientation also positions it firmly as a feminist approach as the humanist project has consistently promoted a

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specific category of human—namely, the white, cisgender male. As Braidotti poignantly observes: In the political economy of phallologocentrism and of anthropocentric humanism … my sex fell on the side of ‘Otherness,’ understood as pejorative difference, or as being-worth-less-than. The becoming-animal/ becoming-­world speaks to my feminist self, partly because my gender, historically speaking, never quite made it into full humanity, so my allegiance to that category is at best negotiable and never to be taken for granted.15

In addition to the human/non-human and nature/culture binaries, new materialism also unpicks the materiality/representation dichotomy, where matter is passive and requires representation—often linguistic signification—to create meaning (it is worth noting that these dualisms do not exist as separate epistemologies, but feed into and reinforce one another; as Vicky Kirby reminds us, ‘all binary oppositions are co-implicated’).16 By reconfiguring matter as inherently meaning-making, as ‘a transformative force in itself, which, in its ongoing change, will not allow any representation to take root,’17 new materialism challenges postmodernism’s emphasis on representation.18 It therefore cuts across modernist and postmodernist paradigms as both are built on a representation/material binary.19 Whilst new materialism recognises that ‘language has been granted too much power,’20 which has been ‘too substantial, or perhaps more to the point, too substantializing,’21 language is not dismissed. To do so would merely shift what is given weight, reinforcing the dualism. Thus, instead of discarding signification new materialists redirect it, posing ‘no division between language and matter’22 and approaching processes of materialisation and processes of linguistic and cultural construction as inextricably intertwined. In addition to its specific rethinking of matter, another defining feature of new materialism is its ethos of knowledge production. Dolphijn and van der Tuin frame new materialism as offering a ‘new metaphysics’ that ‘traverses and thereby rewrites thinking as a whole … redirecting every possible idea according to its new sense of orientation.’23 As such, the ‘new’ in ‘new materialism’ does not indicate erasure or replacement of previous traditions, and new materialism ‘does not intend to add yet another specialized epistemology to the tree of academic knowledge production.’24

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Rather, it works through existing traditions to generate fresh ways of thinking, necessarily traversing the sciences, humanities, and arts.25 Hence, new materialism is not another ‘turn’ to be imported into a discipline; doing so positions both the discipline and new materialism as ‘pre-existing or generated rather than generative, and consequently as interacting rather than intra-acting.’26 Instead, new materialist approaches require recognising reciprocal engagements with specific fields, where what is generated, what ‘emerges from a discipline is an immanent gesture.’27 Karen Barad similarly insists against understanding her work as a ‘turn’ in the sense of turning away from as doing so reinforces a future-focused temporality splintered from the past. Instead, she advocates for ‘a diffractive methodology’ of reading, where insights are read through one another to build new insights28 with an ‘inheritance and indebtedness to the past as well as the future.’29 She calls for a different ethics of scholarship entailing ‘close respectful responsive and response-able (enabling response) attention to the details. … It’s about working reiteratively, reworking the spacetimemattering of thought patterns; not about leaving behind or turning away from.’30 This insistence on close, diffractive readings highlights something I consider crucial to practice-based research in the arts. Here, the work is not oriented towards constantly generating the new at the expense of the old—a mode of production that feeds into neoliberal (un)ethics of consumption. Rather, the work is primarily that of close-looking: re-­searching, paying attention to what is emerging (whether new or not-so-new), questioning the work’s effects/affects, and considering their implications. As such, this chapter engages both with new materialism’s specific reconfiguration of matter and with its methodological proposals of diffractive reading, transversality, and immanent gestures. It explores what is emerging from sounding score whilst simultaneously recognising how the chapter is itself a specific intra-action that materialises and shapes the research. FOLD: Sounding Out (A Text) Sounding out how sound what is found may be. A quiet sounding, a sound without a sound. Or maybe it’s not so sound. —Fragments of the sounding score text

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Working with my voice. Layering the sounding text onto the surfaces score. Murmuring, whispering, mouthing. Riffing it. —Mapping the practice, 21.09.16 I like the way the text gets into my head, heart, and flesh; its rhythms and sounds resound. —Mapping the practice, 10.10.16

The text constituting this fold was written early in the process as a freewrite, and subsequently tweaked for grammar and syntax. It draws on the sounding lines’ socio-historical contexts, metonymy, and linguistic possibilities, referencing their original function of measuring water depth and playing with etymologies and multiple meanings of words such as ‘sound’ and ‘fathom.’ In this fold the text manifests in live vocalisations. I am not reciting the text, but rather recalling it and improvising around it—what I have previously termed ‘riffing’31—so that the text is ‘constantly morphing, being re-­ remembered, re-found, re-constituted and re-made.’32 I am less interested in ‘the idea of an “original” or “correct” text. I want to resist setting it in stone, and avoid sharing it with an audience in a way that does so.’33 Instead, I am compelled by the text as an inherently shifting entity within the score and my body, where the riffing is more akin to re-collecting, following, and wayfaring,34 than replicating or representing.

From Interacting to Intra-acting Karen Barad’s concept of ‘intra-actions’ fundamentally reconfigures understandings of agency and causality, and as such I have found it particularly pertinent in articulating sounding score’s proposals. Barad’s formulation of intra-actions is part of her larger ontology of agential realism stemming from her work in quantum physics. As the concept of intra-­ actions is vital to my proposals, it is worth spending some time with Barad’s rigorous work in order to better flesh out this concept and its implications. Barad draws on Niels Bohr’s pioneering work with his model of the quantum atom to detail his shift from thinking in terms of objects with fixed boundaries to thinking in terms of phenomena, where a phenomenon’s boundaries and properties are discursively constituted through specific agential intra-actions. This shift emerged from experiments where electrons acted like both particles and waves depending on the apparatus

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used.35 From this, Bohr identified that ‘what we observe in any experiment is a phenomenon or entanglement or the inseparability of the apparatus and the observed object’36—a realisation that fundamentally undermines the epistemological distinctions between observer/observed, subject/object, or knower/known established by classical physics and Cartesian philosophy.37 This also highlights the differentiation between interactions and intra-actions: the former ‘presumes the prior existence of independent entities/relata,’38 but this is erroneous as ‘the actual objective referent is the phenomenon—the intra-action of what we call the electron and the apparatus.’39 However, whereas Bohr considered phenomena primary epistemological units,40 Barad argues Bohr’s insights are not merely epistemological but ontological as they show that ‘things are indeterminate; there are no things before measurement.’41 Elaborating on this elsewhere, Barad states: ‘phenomena do not merely mark the epistemological inseparability of “observer” and “observed”; rather phenomena are the ontological inseparability of agentially intra-acting “components.”’42 Thus, what emerges is not merely an alternative conceptualisation of the world but a metaphysics fundamentally reconfiguring it. Barad’s ontology of agential realism directly challenges representationalism’s metaphysical foundations, rejecting its ontological distinction between ‘words’ and ‘things.’43 She offers performativity as an alternative to representation, where performativity ‘is not understood as iterative citationality ([as advocated by] Butler) but rather iterative intra-activity.’44 This ‘shifts the focus from linguistic representations to discursive practices,’45 which (following Foucault) ‘produce, rather than merely describe, the “subjects” and “objects” of knowledge practices.’46 As such, rather than trying to determine or interpret relations between things and their representations, we attend more ‘to matters of practices/doings/ actions,’47 which are inherently agential. But, importantly, agency is not a thing someone or something has.48 Rather, agency is ‘an enactment, a matter of possibilities for reconfiguring entanglements’49 manifested through specific material practices. Reconfiguring discursive practices as material practices dissolves the ontological schism between the two, allowing an understanding of how ‘matter and meaning are mutually articulated.’50 Barad further elucidates this, observing that ‘[m]aterial conditions matter not because they “support” particular discourses that are the actual generative factors in the formation of bodies but rather because matter comes to matter through the

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iterative intra-activity of the world in its becoming.’51 Thus, in the process of mattering, boundaries and meanings are constantly reconfigured through material-discursive intra-actions. It is worth highlighting one additional point that Barad herself explicitly makes: her work is not drawing analogies between quantum physics and the social world or suggesting applying the former to the latter.52 Rather, Barad suggests that, by disrupting fundamental classical epistemologies, the insights arising from quantum physics offer the chance to shift our onto-epistemological frameworks. And it is by ‘delving into the details of this disruption [that we] can open up exciting realms of thought’53—in which thought is a reciprocal process of thinking-doing, expanding the possibilities of our practices. FOLD: Sounding Out (A Dance of Surfaces) Sounding out surfaces of my body: where/what are they, where can they go, how can they move, what are their limits? —Mapping the practice, 15.09.16 Attempting to locate surfaces of sounds and words … the surfaces of my face, my mouth, my speech muscles. The surfaces of my speech. —Mapping the practice, 25.01.17

This fold occurs after the encounter with the sounding lines and works with, in, and around the surfaces of my body, tuning into and moving different surfaces at different times. Immediately the question becomes one of defining the body; working with its surfaces is a process of locating them, or rather, of realising there is no conclusive way of doing so. It is a seemingly simple proposal, but one that soon challenges ideas of interiority and exteriority, and bodies within/without bodies. This fold does not happen in direct physical contact with the sounding lines. This is a somewhat nominal construct, as the fold in part explores the continuation and reconfiguration of contact between my body and the sounding lines—whether through traces, sense-memories, sight lines, or riffing. I bring the sounding lines with me into this next phase of the dance—or perhaps the dance brings us with it. But there is a change of temperature, tempo, and texture from the previous phase, which causes (or perhaps is caused by) a re-­ mapping of the dancing bodies.

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Unsound Bodies The fundamental enquiry running through sounding score’s three folds concerns the shifting limits of the not-so-sound body, complicating the notion of how a body is constituted. But which body? The bodies of sounding score are manifold, including but not limited to: the body of the sounding lines, my body, the body of one sounding line as opposed to another, the body of the score, the body of language, the body of words, the body of sound, the body of the dance emerging with each iteration of the score. My formulations of these bodies are more than turns of phrase; these bodies are not metaphorical. Rather, ‘body’ denotes the material substance of an entity. Similarly, in the sounding out of sounds in sounding score—the riffing—the wordplay’s appeal is not based on verbal quips that feed into self-perpetuating cycles of linguisticity. Instead, its appeal lies in the way it opens up a non-representationalist experience of language; the text’s meanings shift depending on my tone or emphasis, or on the subjective listening of the witness/doer. Furthermore, the improvised nature of the riffing means the slips and slides of (non)sense that occur are not always intentional. Thus, the riffing shifts how the body of language matters. It tunes my attention to how sounds bubble up through and out of the body—to how the soma’s linguistic-kinetic processes materialise the body of sound and the sounds of bodies in the dance.54 The compelling linguistic-kinetic space opened by the riffing highlights the untenability of direct connections between signifier and signified and, consequently, of fixed divisions between interiority and exteriority. It further complicates the notion of a bounded human body as these complex linguistic-kinetic processes cannot be causally located concretely inside or outside of my body; ‘exterior’ phenomena, such as inked words on paper, heard sounds, and remembered places are present and processed in my body through the dancing and vocalising—an act that sends vibrations of sound and breath into the space beyond the body but also simultaneously through(out) and (with)in the body. This complication of exteriority/interiority returns us to the representationalist dichotomy between matter and language; here, the exterior is grasped through language, setting up a binary where the interior is left ungraspable.55 In contrast, Barad’s concept of agential intra-actions diverges from entrenched understandings of absolute interiority and exteriority. It rejects understandings of causal apparatuses enacting onto

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affected bodies, thereby reworking the causality between the two. Instead, Barad’s ontology posits ‘a sense of “exteriority within”’ that is a reciprocal doing—an enactment, rather than a static positioning.56 This articulation resonates with my experiences of riffing, where the body of sound and sounds of the body are continually gathered into and surfacing from the other folds of sounding score, confusing the interior and exterior relationality of bodies and language. But, again, which body? As Barad reminds us, ‘all bodies, not merely “human” bodies, come to matter through the world’s iterative intra-­ activity.’57 And even the notion of a body as entirely ‘human’ quickly loses tenability; discussing microbiomes, Jane Bennett notes the ‘“alien” quality of our own flesh,’ where our ‘“own” body is material, and yet this vital materiality is not fully or exclusively human.’58 Complicating the humanness of our bodies necessitates recognising that ‘“[h]uman bodies” and “human subjects” do not preexist as such; nor are they mere end products. “Humans” are … part of the world in its open-ended becoming.’59 And it is not only a question of shedding the human/non-human construct but also the life/matter dichotomy. Doing so facilitates attentiveness to the multiplicity of mutually implicated bodies in other bodies, and shifts the question from what a body is to what a body does and how it is becoming. But where does this leave the oft-celebrated ‘human’ body, so central to (and, sometimes, defining of) dance? And what of the dance, which is often located in, or seen as emanating from, a specific (human) body? Furthermore, if new materialism reconfigures the concept of the individual, unitary human subject as agent, or author, of their being-in-the-­ world, where does this position me as the ‘creator’—both of sounding score and this chapter, where I utilise the first-person subject to relate my experiences of the practice?60 As a way of approaching these questions, I return to some texts I wrote in response to my encounters with the sounding lines: Brain-freeze induced by cold metal imprinting temperature into skull, cold weight sinking through warm flesh, staying there. Heavy, stumpy metallic horn protruding from forehead. A heady pointedness, lumbering weight, unbalancing, rebalancing centres. The invitation to yawn maw wide open, gaping, consuming, bellowing. Hands cupping, cradling weight, cold, angular, curvy. Solid mass. Cocooning, holding together parts that want to clank and clang, noisily. A

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deadener, muffling, prolonging noiselessness by keeping pressure on. Muscle tone holding back sound.61

These texts skip over and slide around the first-person, avoiding locating the experiences in an ‘I’—an intentional choice made in order to explore other possibilities for the dances and their expression through language. Reading these texts, new bodies emerge and the words locate the dances somewhere between bodies, positioning the writing subject both inside and outside of the dancing. However, this task did not reflect a desire to completely eschew the ‘I’; recognising the human subject as an assemblage62 of human/non-human elements in material-discursive process does not eliminate it, it merely shifts understandings of what the subject is and can be. It redistributes agency across human and non-human matter, and recognises the subject’s position in the phenomena it observes; the subject’s relationality is always, already one of ‘exteriority within.’63 These questions of agency and subjectivity are connected to questions of affect, which takes me back to the starting point for this research: a desire to mediate, reconfigure, and map the complex, reciprocal entanglement of bodies. But not just any bodies; my desire to work with the sounding lines arose from their affective quality. I was drawn to them; they pulled me in, these strange little stringy beings, awkward and clunky, yet poetic. But rather than understanding affect solely as an interpersonal, subjective human experience, I am working with what Bennett terms impersonal affect. She draws on Spinoza’s notion of affect where there is ‘the capacity of any body for activity and responsiveness,’ whether these bodies are organic or inorganic.64 But significantly, the capacity to affect goes hand in hand with the capacity to suffer affect,65 positioning all bodies as continuously affecting and affected. In this way, impersonal affect is intimately connected to Barad’s formulation of matter as agential in its reciprocal enactment. Understanding the bodies of sounding score as inherently affective/ affected bodies implicates not only the sounding lines and my ‘human’ body in this reciprocal affecting but also the bodies of language, words, and sounds. For, if rather than a ‘fixed, determining, inhuman grid imposed upon life,’ language is viewed as ‘a living force,’66 then it too has the capacity to affect and to have aesthetic and material dimensions.67 Similarly, Bourassa discusses ‘language-as-affect’68 where affect exceeds

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signification and is a non-human modality that ‘allows us to think of the human in terms of what surpasses it, undermines it, fragments it, but also in terms of what simultaneously supports it, energizes it, and holds it together.’69 Here, affect is a force, an agential enactment that energises human and non-human alike, contributing to their formation. These approaches force a rethinking of affective, and consequently of aesthetic, experience as the exclusive remit of the human subject.70 They situate the affective and aesthetic capacities of bodies ‘between the human and non-human, the material and immaterial, the social and physical,’71 and between matter and language. Doing so complicates the notion of a unitary human subject in the dance and highlights the contingency of all the dancing bodies—bodies that exist in exteriority with/in/between spaces and come to matter through sounding score.

Conclusion What if what matters is the dance?

This question, formulated shortly before this chapter was written, positions the dance as the phenomenon emerging (mattering) from the intra-­ actions of the bodies performing sounding score. The dances that emerge are specific to each iteration of the score, situating sounding score as the framework, or apparatus, mapping out the dance. However, the score is also a phenomenon, and therefore is itself realised in the process of mapping. Thus, the manifold bodies of the dance—score, sounding lines, my body, bodies of sound and movement, body of language, body of space— are co-implicated in each other’s emergence. They both contribute to mapping other phenomena in the dance and are themselves mapped out, thus becoming part of the phenomena they produce. Consequently, the dance emerges as a continuous folding, where bodies become through(out) the dance, and the dance becomes through(out) the dancing bodies. Here, the dance and the act of dancing complicate the subjective ‘I.’ This positions dance and dancing not so much as an ontology or epistemology but rather as an ‘onto-episteme-ology—the study of practices of knowing in being’72 grounded in a vital materiality. This stance is perhaps somewhat self-evident for practice-based research in the arts, where working with practices of knowing-in-being could be considered a definition for the field.73 However, my proposal is oriented towards a slightly

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different phenomenon, namely the way in which the manifold bodies of the dance exceed a knowing-doing that can be located as being in, or resulting from, a specific body. What, then, are the ethical implications and responsibilities of dancing as a non-representative affective practice that has the capacity to effect shifts in knowing-doing, through which different bodies and dances are given time and space to matter? This question deserves more in-depth exploration elsewhere, but to fold up the map of this chapter I offer the following articulations of the dance, both as reflections on the current practice and as proposals for the research going forward: The particular attunements to the unbound, less-than-sound, entangled nature of bodies facilitated by sounding score locates the dancing body (the body of the dance) as an assemblage of human/non-human/non-­ biological bodies in ongoing intra-action. It is a reversible body that, following Merleau-Ponty, is composed of coils, hollows, vortices, labyrinths, and deferrals, reflexively wrapping around itself.74 A body that envelops other selfs, reconfiguring the ‘I.’ A body where familiar matter and alien flesh are confused. A body where surfaces slide into other surfaces: skin, breath, touch, metal, eye/I, memory, colours, knotted line, sensation, muscles, fascia, floor, sweat, space, sound. These fleshy-yet-not-fleshy, (dis)continuous surfaces simultaneously surface from and fold with/in one another through the multiple bodies of sounding score; the body of the dance becoming through the material-discursive affective timespacemattering of the dancing bodies.

Notes 1. Rick Dolphijn and Iris van der Tuin, New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies (Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press, 2012), 108 (hereafter cited as NM). 2. The research was undertaken during residencies in September 2016 and January 2017 at Weld and November 2017 at c.off, Stockholm. 3. Karen Barad, “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28, no. 3 (2003): 818 (hereafter cited as PP). 4. Tim Ingold, Lines: A Brief History (London: Routledge, 2007), 84 (italics original). 5. This chapter was written when sounding score was still evolving, occurring alongside and in dialogue with studio explorations; as such, it engages with sounding score as ongoing research. Subsequent to writing this chapter,

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sounding score was developed into Sounding lines (2018) and performed at Weld, Stockholm and Siobhan Davies Dance Studios, London. 6. The necessarily partial nature of maps is the subject of a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, On Exactitude in Science, where the inhabitants of an unnamed Empire create a map on a scale of 1:1. It is ultimately considered useless, and the parable serves as a reminder that representations are always inherently incomplete. 7. NM, 16. 8. Ibid., 111–112. 9. Ibid., 103 (italics original). 10. Ibid., 93. 11. Francesca Ferrando, “Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Antihumanism, Metahumanism, and New Materialisms: Differences and Relations,” Existenz 8, no. 2 (2013): 31. 12. Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, “Introducing the New Materialisms,” in New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, eds Diana Coole and Samantha Frost (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 10. 13. Jane Bennett, “A Vitalist Stopover on the Way to a New Materialism,” in New Materialisms (see note 12), 47. 14. Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (Cambridge: Polity Press 2013), 35. 15. As cited in NM, 99. 16. Vicky Kirby and Elizabeth A. Wilson, “Feminist Conversations with Vicki Kirby and Elizabeth A. Wilson,” Feminist Theory 12, no. 2 (2011): 231. 17. NM, 107 (italics original). 18. This is perhaps epitomised by Judith Butler’s work. But despite Butler being one of the most (arguably the most) influential advocates of linguisticism, many new materialists read her work affirmatively (NM, 114). 19. NM, 108. 20. PP, 801. 21. Ibid., 802. 22. Ferrando, “Differences and Relations,” 31. 23. NM, 13. 24. Ibid., 89. 25. Notably, new materialism discourse often refers exclusively to the sciences and humanities. The arts (and social sciences) are not entirely omitted but make scattered rather than consistent appearances, suggesting the tenacity of inherited hierarchies lingering within the epistemological field. 26. NM, 101 (italics original). 27. Ibid. (italics original). 28. Rick Dolphijn and Iris van der Tuin, “Matter feels, converses, suffers, desires, yearns and remembers: Interview with Karen Barad,” in New Materialism (see note 1), 50.

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29. Malou Juelskjær and Nete Schwennesen, “Intra-active Entanglements: An Interview with Karen Barad,” Kvinder, Koen og Forskning 21, nos. 1–2 (2012), 13. 30. Ibid. Another aspect of Barad’s response-able ethics of scholarship is her critique of critique (see Juelskjær and Schwennesen, “Intra-active Entanglements,” 13–14; Dolphijn and van der Tuin, “Matter feels,” 49). 31. Elise Nuding, “Riffing, Writing, Realizing (Or, a Simultaneous Reflection on and Re-entry into a Particular Score),” Choreographic Practices 8, no. 1 (2017): 67–87. 32. Author’s notebook, 21.09.16. 33. Mapping the practice, 21.09.16. This is also why I have not included the full text in this chapter; to do so would calcify it in a way that works against sounding score’s proposal. 34. Ingold, “Lines,” 14–15. 35. Dolphijn and van der Tuin, “Matter feels,” 61. For further details of these experiments, see PP, 815–816; Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 247–352. 36. Ibid., (italics original). 37. PP, 813. 38. PP, 815. 39. Dolphijn and van der Tuin, “Matter feels,” 61. 40. PP, 816. 41. Dolphijn and van der Tuin, “Matter feels,” 62. 42. PP, 815 (italics original). 43. PP, 814. Here, Barad’s use of ‘things’ denotes discrete entities with fixed boundaries (see also PP, 812). However, there also exist articulations of ‘things’ that position them as dynamic, shifting entities (cf. Ian Hodder, Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships Between Humans and Things (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012)), which complement rather than oppose Barad’s intra-actions. This is partly an issue of semantics, and considering Barad’s divergent use of ‘things’ (cf. Dolphijn and van der Tuin, “Matter feels,” 62) perhaps not one to get bogged down by. Nevertheless, it illustrates the complexity of different working definitions, and the sometimes utter impossibility of language. 44. PP, 828. 45. Ibid., 807. 46. Ibid., 819. 47. Ibid., 802. 48. To frame it thus implies one entity can give agency to another but, as Barad notes, ‘the granting of agency is an ironic notion, no’? (Dolphijn and van der Tuin, “Matter feels,” 54). 49. Dolphijn and van der Tuin, “Matter feels,” 54.

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50. PP, 822. 51. Ibid., 823 (italics original). 52. Both these (potential) misreadings of Barad’s work are predicated upon a separation of micro-world and macro-world as if ‘at a particular scale, one conveniently accessible to the human, a rupture exists in the physics and ontology of the world’ (Juelskjær and Schwennesen, “Intra-active Entanglements,” 17–18). 53. Juelskjær and Schwennesen, “Intra-active Entanglements,” 18. 54. For an in-depth elucidation of riffing, see Nuding, “Riffing.” 55. NM, 108. 56. PP, 825. 57. Ibid., 823. 58. Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 112. 59. PP, 821. 60. Vicky Kirby identifies this as a common issue. Despite a multitude of work advocating new materialist approaches, a ‘return to this trust in the human as the intending/inquiring agent is a constant recurrence’ (Kirby and Wilson, “Feminist Conversations,” 232). 61. Author’s notebook, 23.01.17. 62. See Bennett, Vibrant Matter, 23–24. 63. PP, 829. 64. Bennett, Vibrant Matter, xii. 65. Ibid., 21. 66. Claire Colebrook, “On Not Becoming Man: The Materialist Politics of Unactualized Potential,” in Material Feminisms, eds Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 64. 67. Estelle Barrett, “Materiality, Affect, and the Aesthetic Image,” in Carnal Knowledge: Towards a ‘New Materialism’ Through the Arts, eds Estelle Barrett and Barbara Bolt (London: I. B. Tauris, 2013), 65. 68. Alan Bourassa, “Literature, Language, and the Non-Human,” in A Shock to Thought: Expression After Deleuze and Guattari, ed. Brian Massumi (London: Routledge, 2002), 65. 69. Ibid. 70. A discussion of aesthetics is beyond this chapter’s scope, but it is worth noting that at its roots the term ‘aesthetic’ deals with sensation and perception, and is therefore intrinsically linked to affect. For a discussion of aesthetics as an embodied phenomenon in relation to the human soma, see Richard Shusterman, Thinking Through the Body: Essays in Somaesthetics, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012). See Barrett, “Materiality,” for a new materialist discussion of affect in her concept of the ‘aesthetic image.’

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71. Barbara Bolt, “Introduction: Towards a ‘New Materialism’ Through the Arts,” in Carnal Knowledge (see note 67), 6. 72. PP, 829. 73. Indeed, arguably the material and affective/aesthetic modes of knowing advanced by practice-based research in the arts position it as an inherently new materialist endeavour (see Barrett, “Materiality”). 74. Diana Coole, “The Inertia of Matter and the Generativity of Flesh,” in New Materialisms (see note 12), 108–9.

References Barad, Karen. 2003. Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28 (3): 801–831. ———. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway. Durham: Duke University Press. Barrett, Estelle. 2013. Materiality, Affect, and the Aesthetic Image. In Carnal Knowledge: Towards a ‘New Materialism’ Through the Arts, ed. Estelle Barrett and Barbara Bolt, 63–72. London: I. B. Tauris. Bennett, Jane. 2010a. A Vitalist Stopover on the Way to a New Materialism. In New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, ed. Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, 47–69. Durham: Duke University Press. ———. 2010b. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press. Bolt, Barbara. 2013. Introduction: Towards a ‘New Materialism’ Through the Arts. In Carnal Knowledge: Towards a ‘New Materialism’ Through the Arts, ed. Estelle Barrett and Barbara Bolt, 1–14. London: I. B. Tauris. Borges, Jorge Luis. 2018. The Garden of Forking Paths. Trans. Donald A. Yates, Andrew Hurley, and James E. Irby. Milton Keynes: Penguin Random House. Bourassa, Alan. 2002. Literature, Language, and the Non-Human. In A Shock to Thought: Expression After Deleuze and Guattari, ed. Brian Massumi, 60–76. London: Routledge. Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press. Colebrook, Claire. 2008. On Not Becoming Man: The Materialist Politics of Unactualized Potential. In Material Feminisms, ed. Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman, 52–84. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Coole, Diana. 2010. The Inertia of Matter and the Generativity of Flesh. In New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, ed. Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, 92–115. Durham: Duke University Press. Coole, Diana, and Samantha Frost. 2010. Introducing the New Materialisms. In New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, ed. Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, 1–43. Durham: Duke University Press.

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Dolphijn, Rick, and Iris van der Tuin. 2012a. New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies. Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press. ———. 2012b. Matter Feels, Converses, Suffers, Desires, Yearns and Remembers: Interview with Karen Barad. In New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies, 48–70. Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press. Ferrando, Francesca. 2013. Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Antihumanism, Metahumanism, and New Materialisms: Differences and Relations. Existenz 8 (2): 26–32. Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships Between Humans and Things. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Ingold, Tim. 2007. Lines: A Brief History. London: Routledge. Juelskjær, Malou, and Nete Schwennesen. 2012. Intra-Active Entanglements: An Interview with Karen Barad. Kvinder, Koen og Forskning 21 (1–2): 10–24. Kirby, Vicky, and Elizabeth A. Wilson. 2011. Feminist Conversations with Vicki Kirby and Elizabeth A. Wilson. Feminist Theory 12 (2): 227–234. Nuding, Elise. 2017. Riffing, Writing, Realizing (Or, a Simultaneous Reflection on and Re-Entry Into a Particular Score). Choreographic Practices 8 (1): 67–87. Shusterman, Richard. 2012. Thinking Through the Body: Essays in Somaesthetics. New York: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER 4

TV, Body, and Landscape: Nam June Paik’s Show (2016) Y J. Hwang

“Let us live long …. As Marcel Duchamp did”. Nam June, Paik, “Binghamton Letter (January 8, 1972)”, Ars Electronica, accessed July 1st 2017, http://90.146.8.18/en/archives/ festival_archive/festival_catalogs/festival_artikel.asp?iProjectID=9535

It was during the summer and fall of 2016 that there was a special exhibition entitled “Nam June Paik’s Show” held in Seoul’s landmark Dongdaemun Design Plaza in South Korea to mark the 10th anniversary of Paik’s death. In order to commemorate his legacy as a media artist, the exhibition was centered on his fidelity toward and life devoted to the media, by displaying his artwork, including large-scale video installations, such as Turtle and M200. As Kim Bang-eun, an owner of Gallery Yeh, which hosted the exhibition, stated, it started with the idea that “if Paik was still alive, what kind of exhibition would be possible to make?”1 Such a question is deeply rooted in the contribution of Nam June Paik (1932–2006) to

Y J. Hwang (*) Department of Theatre Arts, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 S. Whatley et al. (eds.), Art and Dance in Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44085-5_4

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contemporary video art. As John G.  Hanhardt notes, Paik has been regarded by commentators as “the father of video art” or “the George Washington of video art.”2 This means that “[a]s early as the 1960s the artist Nam June Paik challenged his contemporaries to imagine a future where today’s innovations might exist.”3 According to Im Young-kyun, a photographer and Paik’s friend, Paik’s pioneering characteristics are demonstrated in comparison with those who lived in Korea between the 1960s and 1990s. It was in the 1960s that Nam June Paik used TV as an artistic medium for the public. During this time Korean people began to use TVs as personal items in their daily lives for the first time. Paik was a trailblazer and went further, by bringing the satellite into his artistic world (later best known for one of his famous video installations, entitled Good Morning, Mr. Owell) in the 1980s and lasers in the 1990s even when the notion of the laser was unfamiliar to the public at that time.4 To put it another way, although TV was a private commodity  as  a conduit of the household, Paik’s use of TV as a creative medium for the public and his mastery influenced media artists from the 1970s onward.5 In order to understand his artistic world, we may first ask ourselves where such originality came from. Although regarded as the pioneer of video art, Paik’s life was not easy: He underwent financial difficulties for years as he spent most of his money purchasing hundreds of TV sets no matter the cost, and when his career peaked in the 1990s he suffered and collapsed due to a serious stroke. Furthermore, given that he only lived in Korea for 16  years of his life and became a permanent resident in the United States from 1964 until he died of a stroke in 2006, we may consider his work came about partly through his “nomadic”6 lifestyle. Indeed, without his nomadic experience, it is not possible to think of his life as a video artist. Born in Seoul in 1932 during the Japanese colonial rule, he left his hometown at the age of 16 during the Korean War as the 7th passport holder issued by the Korean government at that time7 and then was educated at the University of Tokyo, the University of Munich, the Freiburg Conservatory, and the University of Cologne. He was a composer and a performer until in 1963 when he held his first exhibition, Exposition of Music—Electronic Television at the Gallerie Parnass in Wuppertal, Germany.8 Unlike ordinary Korean people from his generation, his childhood was far from the poverty-ridden realities of colonial Korea or the Korean War because of his wealthy family background. He learned to play the piano through private lessons and became interested in Karl Marx and Arnold

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Schoenberg in the 1940s. This led to his thesis on Schoenberg at the University of Tokyo, where he studied aesthetics.9 Later, Paik confessed that “If I had stuck to my preference for communist ideology in Korean society, I would have been killed during the Korean War in 1951 or have gone to the North to become a teacher.”10 As Paik recalled, his interest in Schoenberg allowed him to go to Germany for his studies.11 In developing his art world, Paik was also inspired by John Cage’s experiment of sounds. Cage’s work influenced him in the ways in which art is presented and blurred between the private and public through the use of daily objects as an artistic medium. Paik’s preference for Cage’s work and association with him led to his decision to move to the United States.12 According to Paik, he “learned from Arnold Schoenberg to dig up the root and shake up the tree from the root on”13 by articulating “What I learned from John Cage is to enjoy every second by de-control.”14 Tellingly, Paik’s interests in Western music reveal that his way of creating video works may be described as “making electronic music, which is sometimes scoreless.”15 This is where his sense of identity lies as an artist rather than a technologist: Paik’s interests in Schoenberg and Cage indicate that his taste in art-making is an obvious break from the context of conventional arts, such as music and performance.16 In addition, it is well-known that Paik was one of the members of the Fluxus Movement. In 1962, he participated as a performer, staging Zen for Head, in the first Fluxus Internationale Festspiele Neuester Musik. This work was based on Paik’s interpretation of La Monte Young’s score.17 By dipping his head in paint and drawing a line on paper as if writing Chinese calligraphy, Paik demonstrated how a music score could be performed visibly and transformed as a form of performance.18 One of the reasons why Paik was obsessed with combining video art with technology originates from his viewpoint that “There is no difference between ritual, classical, high art and low, mass entertainment, and art. I live—whatever I like, I take.”19  Paik recalled that when he studied in Japan, he would think highly of art.  But when in Germany, he gained confidence that art can be created from nothing so that he was able to pursue that path.20 This shift of awareness enabled him to comprehend that the intersections of technology with fine art and popular culture are possible in his art-making. Here, his sense of identity as a video artist stemmed from being both a composer and performer, thereby giving him music as an artistic root. This is why he stated that “It was natural for me to think

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that something similar to electronic music could also be done on the TV screen.”21 Again, this statement underscores how Paik challenged and expanded the notion of art into video art throughout his artistic practice. And the idea that “Paik did not seem to shy away from artworks’ challenging productions and made use of varied and combined media, therefore re-­ defining the field of art and placing himself at the center of it”22 reminds us of Jacques Rancière’s viewpoint. Connecting arts with the political, he argues that the established order of the sensible in the field of arts can be violated and recreated by rearranging the relationship of what we perceive.23 In this view, what is interesting about Paik’s artistic practices is not their playful aspects, but rather the way in which he recreated and transformed reality into another realm of landscape. With this in mind, this chapter aims to explore how Paik transformed TV into a living body and shaped the digital landscape through his installation art. Although his artwork is quite broad, ranging from human-­ shaped TV sculptural works to TV satellite works, this chapter is limited to some of his artistic works, such as David and Marat, displayed during Nam June Paik’s Show exhibition in 2016. In this context, I will firstly outline how Paik used television to reveal his aesthetic strategy. Then I will discuss how TV as an everyday object is transformed into a new living body and thus creates symbolic meanings of space and time in relation to his sense of identity as a media artist. I will also show peculiar aspects of Paik’s artwork in terms of the shaping of a digital landscape as an expanded framework for the boundaries between reality and fantasy. This chapter will thus shed light on an aesthetical dimension of his artwork from this new perspective.

TV as an Aesthetic Medium In the video recording entitled “Nam June Paik Performing Participation TV” (1984), Paik explained the nature of TV in a general sense during the isnterview: “Television allows only one way communication. Like government says something and the citizens listen. The citizens did not have a tool or method to respond to it.”24 Then he brought a magnet to the TV screen and rubbed the magnet over it; By following his hand movement, the screen image was created by a dynamic flow of electronic waves—what he called “dancing patterns.”25 This reveals that, unlike traditional TV

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viewers, the audience could be less passive in the sense that they are also engaging in forging the electronic images on the screen. In his writing, entitled “Afterlude to the Exposition of Experimental Television” (1964)—based on his first television show consisting of 13 TV sets—Paik argues, “My experimental TV is not always interesting but not always uninteresting, like nature, which is beautiful, not because it changes beautifully, but simply because it changes.”26 Here, TV can be redefined as an interactive object because electronic images on the screen are manipulated by the artists/viewers. If we agree that “the definition of a medium determines notions of aesthetic value,”27 Paik’s TV is  grounded on the notion of being organic and changeable like nature. Not only does he broaden the notion of TV as an everyday object, but also embodies it as human-shaped installations and architectural works by  utilizing TV as a creative tool. As David A. Ross contends, “Paik ‘played’ the television like a musical instrument.”28 In this sense, TV serves as an aesthetic medium in the context of Paik’s artistic practices as his transformation of TV had been broadly done through cable and satellite. TV can thus contribute to shaping an aesthetic form in which a fictional future is embodied and actualized in accordance with challenging the concept of art. This brings about the question of what “aesthetic” means here. The notion of “aesthetic” is linked to Jacques Rancière’s view. As discussed earlier, he points out that aesthetics is implicated on “the distribution of the sensible” and “is structured by disconnection”29 in the field of our perceptions. This stresses that the aesthetic is posited as a liminal state in which the boundaries between the established and fictional orders are blurred and disturbed throughout rearranging our sensory fabrics. Admittedly, Paik’s transformation of televisions is occasioned “by mechanically adjusting the circuitry, tubes, and condensers to redirect the image into abstract, moving electronic patterns.”30 In doing so, he claimed that “My TV is not the expression of my personality, but merely a ‘PHYSICAL MUSIC.’”31 Paik’s editing and image-making through TV has led to deconstructing one way of communicating between the object and the viewers, thereby transforming the viewers’ perceptions into active and participatory ones in the knowledge that “TV picture is ‘disturbed’ by the strong demagnetizer’s place and rhythm.”32 He further goes on to explain an innovative aspect of employing TV as an aesthetic medium in comparison with music. He states that, unlike the usual music composition that requires “the pre-­ imaged ideal” prior to the completed work, the working process of the

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experimental TV is the reverse of this. Accordingly, there is no need to have “any pre-imaged Vision before working”: Instead, a work is completed  by means of the ways “to study the circuit, to try various ‘FEEDBACKS,’ to cut some places and feed different waves there, to change the phase of waves, etc.”33 This awareness is equivalent to what he calls an “electronic truth”34 that embraces risks and uncertainties during the process of art making. Indeed, the electronic truth affords the artist freedom to make the imaginary happen on the condition that “The artist’s job is to make better use of technology, not to pretend it doesn’t exist.”35 In order to  deploy TV as an aesthetic medium, the duty of the artist is to keep up with cutting-edge technology. This explains why Paik bought the first Sony portable recorder and camera in the United States in 1965. Such an act is a product of searching for the ways to transform conventional notions about arts and visual imagery.36 This is, however, not confined only to his technology craftsmanship. When Paik said that “[w]e are in open circuits,”37 it can be understood that the artist using the technology as a creative tool has to be futuristic in relation to his perspectives on time and space. In fact, Paik’s desire to control and manipulate TV became possible in 1969 when he made Abe-Paik Video Synthesizer with Japanese video engineer Shuya Abe,  along with  the help of a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. Through this machinery Paik freely created and transformed black and white images into colorful ones. His unique imagination that considered “the moon” to be “the oldest TV”38 underlines that TV is not only a daily commodity, but also a medium that can become anything. As his wife, Shigeko Kubota recalled and defined him as “a man as much as naïve as well as a man as much profound as universe,”39 Paik’s world of art can also apply to this. By utilizing TV as his creative medium, he forged human-shaped robots similar to toys, despite that the scale of his work and the dimension of his perspective on time and space are quite broad and unlimited. Furthermore, his interest in TV as an aesthetic means is accompanied by a humanistic approach to technology. Paik speaks to the fact that “we will demonstrate the human use of technology, and also stimulate viewers NOT for something mean but stimulate their phantasy to look for the new, imaginative and humanistic ways of using our technology.”40 For him, TV is nothing more than a means “to humanize everything.”41 To borrow John Hanhardt’s words, Paik can be viewed as “a utopian artist,

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looking to achieve the impossible to realize a better world for art is undeniable.”42  However, this aspect doesn’t simply articulate that he invented human-­ shaped installation. Rather, he created multiple realities by positioning TV as an aesthetic tool. Paik’s humanistic approach to technology elaborates on his works  as “unpompous, cheerful and even witty,”43 allowing the audience/viewers to have great accessibility to his work. This is linked to the way  TV also functions as the framework for  shaping multiple realities rooted in the expanded dimension of time and space, which will be discussed later in the chapter.

The Invention of a New Digital Body Nam June Paik’s Show displayed a range of works from the early 1990s, including TV robots and Turtle (1993). Some of the works presented were pieces of robot sculptures consisting of old-fashioned TV sets to create historical figures, such as Jacques Louis David (1748–1825) and Jean Paul Marat (1743–1793). In 1989, on the request of the French government, in order to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution Paik created a series of eight historical figures of the revolution, namely, Danton, David, Diderot, Robespierre, Rousseau, Marat, Gouges, and Voltaire. These historical figures were constructed through TVs and radios as a humanoid shape that comprised a head, torso, arms, and legs. During the exhibition David and Marat are displayed among them. Both robots are over six feet tall and have arms, legs, bodies, and heads made of TV sets and radios. They stand still as video sculptures, but the screens as their body parts function as a kind of “artificial metabolism.”44 According to Paik, artificial metabolism seems to indicate a living organism with unlimited capacity to perform any task.45 In fact, his interest in challenging the concept of the body appears as far as back as 1965 by the following statement, written in a letter from that year: “Someday more elaborate scanning system and something similar to matrix circuit and rectangle modulations system in color TV will enable us to spend much more information at single carrier band, f.i.audio, video, pulse, temperature, moisture, pressure of your body combined.”46 As a result, he transformed TV sets into a diverse range of pieces from TV Bra (1969), TV Cello (1970) in combination with a performer’s body, and TV Bed (1972) among others. Their images and shapes became an allegory to describe the relationship between human beings and technology. That is,

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his early works make a point that the performer’s body may be regarded as a video or vice versa. Although there is a certain criticism on his artistic pieces in the sense that “The thread of his work includes the fetishization of a female body as an instrument that plays itself, […],”47 Paik’s approach to formulating a new digital body with the human shape articulates how “the embodiment of live video art” is linked to everyday life as “a new way of life.”48 As he notes, it is of importance that “the word QUALITY means only the CHARACTER, but not the VALUE. A is different from B, but not that A is better than B.”49 His philosophy of combining art with technology equates a different humanistic voice or artificial metabolism with an individual art work. In this context, the robots of David and Marat in the exhibition demonstrate that each has their own artificial metabolism that is described by electronic moving images related to their individual lives, just as they have an individual name, posture, and color. More specifically, in the case of David, it was made of 14 TV monitors and radios. As David is based on Jacques Louis David, a painter and supporter of the French revolution, the robot holds paintbrushes with a left hand and a magnifying glass with a right hand. TV screens making up his body allow for abstract electronic images, including a globe and fragmented images of a bathtub that his friend Marat was assassinated in. In the globe on the monitor, France is emphasized as the center of the revolution. Television screens, however, that produced electronic waves,  do not convey a  clear meaning to the viewers for the most part. The image patterns in the robot of David mark that “It is a way in which things themselves speak and are silent”50 in terms of revealing the characteristic of this historical figure. In addition to these images, the artwork is highlighted by David’s famous painting The Death of Marat. The close-up image of Marat’s dead face occupies one of the screens, as if an electronic signature of the individual robot represents. This points to David’s relationship to Marat as a friend. Moreover, the side of the robot is inscribed by Paik’s Chinese letters, which read “200th anniversary of the French Revolution,” as well as tiny drawings of his self-­ portraits on the back side of the robot. Written in calligraphy, the robot shows his own manifesto, that “The cultural-revolution requires the ART revolution as the pre-requisite and as the pre-condition.” Conversely, in the Marat robot the calligraphy literally says “Assassination,” representing his death. It is composed of 15 TV sets and radios on which two of the screens capture the word, revolution in Chinese. With movable open arms, the robot Marat stands. Here, the 15

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TV monitors are transformed into different organs ranging from the head to the body as “Paik saw the medium as an extension of the body, and the video as a prosthetic that embodied the instrumentality of the body.”51 The artificial metabolism in the robot manifests electronic images associated with Marat’s death. For example, the landscape of sea that occupied the screen is related to the water in the bathtub where Marat was assassinated. This also links to the value of the revolution’s eternity. The image of written letters on the screen may be understood as one that Marat was reading while dying in the bathtub. If an  image is defined  as “one that presents a relationship between the sayable and the visible,”52 the operation of the images on the screens pertains to electronic imaginary records of Marat’s life as a revolutionist. As Paik declared in the Binghamton Letter, “The word ‘history’ came into being, because our events were told and written down thereafter. Now history is being recorded in image or video. Therefore, from now on, there is no more ‘History,’ but only ‘Imaginary’ or ‘Videory.’”53 In this view, past and present are dissolved into the bodies of the robots in accordance with the eternal meaning of the revolution. Through the bodies of the robots, the repetitive play of the electronic image renders the French Revolution into an  abstract mode of  present time. This implies that in the context of cybernetics the body is given to “information flows and feedback loops” and “becomes a system to be assembled and disassembled rather than an entity whose organic wholeness can be assumed.”54 For this reason, as Paik affirmed, the bodies of his robots consisting of TV monitors, or any of his works using TV as the creative medium can be replaced with new monitors when one of the TV sets becomes broken or stops working.55

Traversing Landscape Toward an Aesthetic Institution One of the most elaborate works during the exhibition was Paik’s M200 (1991). In order to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Mozart’s death, Paik placed 86 TV monitors on both walls of the exhibition room. These monitors showed commercial television advertisements and synthesized imagery, some of which display an edited video of Paik’s colleagues’ images, including Merce Cunningham’s dance movements and Charlotte Moorman’s cello performance. This variety of visual compositions plays a pivotal role in dissolving the boundaries between art and technology into

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a form of aesthetic installation. The predominant music of Mozart’s Requiem and other electronic sounds of music  converge on forming a “sound collage,”56 creating and establishing their own “rhythm,” structured by “different temporalities.”57 What is noteworthy here is that, no matter how many monitors are arranged, each has their own characteristics although all together function as continuous in an effort to commemorate Mozart’s death and the legacy of his art. This stresses that by placing each monitor on an “equal”58 level of the installation during the exhibition, M200 forges a liminal state. The content of video images is manifested in the fact that “there seems to be an interface between ritual-classical tradition and the modern popular culture.”59 As Paik claimed, “cybernetics is the exploitation of boundary regions between and across various existing sciences.”60 This statement reflects that “Paik’s consistent medium of television transmission cements a long-distance relationship between here and there without fixing a precise location”61 and that each regime of spatial configuration is traversed. The number of the monitors thus creates and  shapes multiple realities. Paik further stated the value of media that “I foresee video not as a dictatorial medium, but as a liberating one. That’s what this show is about, to be a symbol for how television can cross international borders and bridge enormous cultural gaps.”62 This aspect of video art is best highlighted in the large-scale media installation Turtle during the exhibition. It consisted of 166 TV monitors and, as its title suggests, an assemblage of monitors displayed to resemble the shape of a turtle. Turtle was grounded on a well-known admiral Yi Sun-shin and his  famous battle with the Japanese navy in the sixteenth century when Japan invaded Korea, the battle in which he used a turtle-­ shaped battleship during the Chosun dynasty. In addition to this historical background, in the social and cultural context of Asia the turtle itself is seen as a sacred creature that symbolizes an eternality and longevity in life. This giant sculpture was 6 meters wide, 10 meters long, and 1.5 meters high. In order to highlight the Turtle in its huge entirety, the installation was placed in the entire exhibition room—where it was darkened, silent and the only spotlight illumination was on the Turtle—so the viewers were able to move around. Moreover, the ceiling was like a mirror reflecting the whole installation from above. Each monitor displayed has a similar size and the images on the monitors are changeable and moving, ranging from the turtle-shaped battleship to the landscape of nature, which links to the symbol of the turtle. Along

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with an electronic music, Paik’s video moving images are projected onto the floors and animated images on the screen are transformed into colorful lights. In particular, the visual composition on the monitors is powerfully given to both visual and aural grounds, especially when viewers experience the multidimension of the installation. The floor occupied by the Turtle and the walls of the exhibition room are flashed by colorful electronic waves and lights, and throughout them, temporal and spatial ellipses occur, thereby creating and expanding viewers’ perception of time and space. In other words, Turtle  foregrounds that technological advances allow us to experience how Paik’s TV is played out as expanded dimensions of time and space. Articulated in the fact that the “Ultimate goal of video revolution is the establishment of space to space, or plain to plain communication without confusion and interference of each other,”63 the exhibition room becomes a place for transforming our time and space into a fantasy space, where our sense of future is to be actualized and embodied by visual and aural compositions. Throughout the work Paik also comes into play to embody our reality layered on multiple levels: “I would study how it was made and I discovered it was made of electrons and protons directly. Then I can have the reality of ready-mades, spiritual reality and scientific reality.”64 In Paik’s viewpoint,  the realities that he created are made of “randomness” and “patterns.”65 These aspects of diverse realities are grounded in the fact that his media installation sets in motion how time is constructed and refigured by the media. According to Paik, “Our problem is not Capitalism versus Socialism, but the conflict of human time versus machine time.”66 This division of time points out how he views the feature of reality in terms of its relation to illusion. Based on his concept of time that “… because the written word is very efficient due to its random-access-ability. You can skip and jump any part of a book. There is complete freedom, whereas in television you are the prisoner of time,”67 his approach to time came from the fact that his career was as a composer prior to becoming a video artist: “I think I understand time better than the video artists who came from painting-­ sculpture. Music is the manipulation of time. All music forms have different structures and buildup. As painters understand abstract space, I understand abstract time.”68 Most importantly, what makes Paik’s perspective on time interesting is that for him, only the future exists in his artwork. This is in the knowledge that “Paik has posited a future for video on television, in museums and in

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the home …”.69 His approach to TV as an artistic medium debunks the binary between the private and the public in terms of the way in which TV is conceived. By allowing for a futuristic perspective on his works, Paik accentuates how a private object can be transformed into a public one through an exhibition space. Though it is well-known that Paik reused images related to his previous works and used reusable and disposable materials,70 the images that recur from the past works come into play when  envisioning our future in his video art. Therefore, it can be stated that all the sounds, images, and lights contribute to making the exhibition place an aesthetic institution. What is intriguing about the installations is not their large scales, but the way audiovisual compositions are arranged and embodied, thereby creating and traversing landscape into a form of aesthetic institution.

Notes 1. The Program Nam June Paik’s Show (Seoul: Gallery Yeh, 2016), 4. [English translation is mine]. 2. John G.  Hanhardt, “Nam June Paik (1932–2006): Video Art Pioneer,” American Art 20, no. 2, Summer 2006, 148. 3. Michelle Yun, “Nam June Paik: Evolution, Revolution, Resolution,” in Nam June Paik: Becoming Robot, ed. Melissa Chiu and Michelle Yun, Asia Society Museum (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015), 15. 4. Keum-young, Kim, “Echoing Paik’s ‘IDEA’ more loudly that celebrates 10th anniversary of his death,” CNB Journal, July 22th, 2016, http://m. weekly.cnbnews.com/m/m_article.html?no=119311 [English translation is mine]. 5. John G. Hanhardt, “TV Guide,” Art News, May 1999, 144. 6. Mee-yoo, Kwon, “Remembering Paik, father of video art,” The Korean Times, February 18th, 2016. 7. Hyung-soon, Kim, “Why did a rich family’s youngest son have an interest in Marx?,” Oh My News, May 13, 2013, http://www.ohmynews.com/ NWS_Web/View/at_pg.aspx?CNTN_CD=A0001863515 [English translation is mine]. 8. Spring Arts Festival ’68 (University of Cincinnati: 1968), Box “GR 0001,” Folder 4, Nam June Paik Archive, Nam June Paik Art Centre. 9. Jung-ho, Nam and Kubota Shigeko, My Love, Nam June Paik (Seoul: Arte, 2016), 55-57 [English translation is mine]. 10. Nam June, Paik, Name June, Paik: From Horses to Chisto, trans. Wang-­ Joon, Im, Moon-young, Kim and Mi-ae, Jung (Kihueng: Nam June Paik Art Centre, 2010), 72.

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11. Taehi, Kang, “Nam June Paik: Early Years (1958–1973),” PhD diss., Florida State University, 1988, 6. 12. Kang, “Nam June Paik”, 6. 13. Nam June, Paik, Interview by Paul Schimmel, “Abstract Time,” Arts Magazine, December 1974, 53. 14. Paik, “Abstract Time”, 53. 15. Jon Huffman’s remarks, “Ok, let’s go to Bimpies Talking about Nam June Paik,” in Nam June Paik: Becoming Robot, 41. 16. Hanhardt, “Nam June Paik (1932-2006),” 150. 17. Elizabeth Armstrong, “Fluxus and the Museum,” in In the Spirit of Fluxus, ed. Janet Jenkins (Minneapolis: Walker Art Centre, 1993), 14. 18. Armstrong, “Fluxus and the Museum,” 14. 19. Paik, “Abstract Time,” 52. 20. Tae-Ik, Kim, “Cover Story: a Marvel Who Overturned the Concept of Art: The Founder of Video Art, Nam June, Paik’s Life and Art,” Weekly Chosun, August 15th, 1993, 12-13. 21. Paik, “Abstract Time,” 53. 22. Lanfranco Aceti, “The Global Play of Nam June Paik,” in Far and Wide: Leonardo Electronic Almanac Catalog, volume 19 issue 5, ed. ÖzDen Şahin and Catherine M.Weir (San Francisco, CA: Leonardo/ISAST, 2013), 9. 23. Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics, trans. Gabriel Rockhill (London: Continuum, 2006), 45. 24. Nam June, Paik. 1984. Nam June Paik Performing Participation TV, Exhibition entitled Extraordinary Phenomenon, Nam June Paik, Nam June Paik Art Centre (Kiheung, Korea: July 2016). 25. David Ross, “A Conversation with Nam June Paik,” in Nam June Paik: Video Time—Video Space, ed. Toni Stooss and Thomas Kellein (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1993), 58, quoted in David Joselit, “No Exit: Video and the Readymade,” October, vol. 119 (Winter, 2007), 44. 26. Nam June, Paik, “Afterlude to the Exposition of Experimental Television,” http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/source-text/31/. 27. Christopher Balme, “Distributed Aesthetics: Performance, Media, and the Public Sphere,” in Theatrical Blends: Art in the Theatre/Theatre in the Arts, ed. Jerzy Limon and Agnieszka Zukowska (Gdansk 2010), 138. 28. David A.  Ross, “Nam June Paik’s Videotapes,” in Nam June Paik, ed. John Hanhardt (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art in association with Norton & Company, 1982), 101. 29. Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2011), 59. 30. Carla Hanzal, “Traversing the Worlds of Nam June Paik,” Sculpture (Washington, D.C) 20, no.5. June 2001, 20.

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31. Paik, “Afterlude to the Exposition of Experimental Television.” 32. Paik, “Afterlude to the Exposition of Experimental Television.” 33. Paik, “Afterlude to the Exposition of Experimental Television.” 34. Nam June Paik, “Communication-Art,” in Nam June Paik: Videa ‘n’ Videology 1959–1973, Exhibition Catalogue (New York: Everson Museum of Art, 1974), unpaged. 35. Patrick Goldstein, “Paik’s Vision of Where the Interaction is,” Los Angeles Times (December 31, 1983), unpaged. 36. Goldstein, “Paik’s Vision of Where the Interaction Is.” 37. Nam June Paik, “Cybernated Art,” in Nam June Paik: Videa ‘n’ Videology 1959-1973, Exhibition Catalogue (New York: Everson Museum of Art, 1974), unpaged. 38. “Moon is the Oldest TV” is the title of the video installation at Gallery Rene Block, New York, February 1976. 39. Nam and Shigeko, My Love, Nam June Paik, 375 [English translation is mine]. 40. Nam June Paik, “TV Bra for Living Sculpture,” in newspaper clips, Schu Archive Collection, Nam June Paik Art Centre. 41. Huffman, “Ok, Let’s Go to Bimpies Talking about Nam June Paik,” 41. 42. John Hanhardt, The Worlds of Nam June Paik (Guggenheim Museum, 2000), 108. 43. Grace Glueck, “Art: Nam June Paik has show at Whitney,” New York Times, May 7, 1982. 44. Willoughby Sharp, ““Artificial Metabolism:: An Interview with Nam June Paik,” Video 80 (San Francisco), no.4 (Spring/Summer), 16. 45. Sharp, ““Artificial Metabolism:: An Interview with Nam June Paik,”16. 46. “Nam June Paik with Charlotte Moorman: Videa, Vidiot, Videology”, in New Artist’s Video: A Critical Anthology, ed. Gregory Battcock (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1978), 127, quoted in David Joselit, “No Exit: Video and the Readymade,” October, vol. 119 (Winter, 2007), 44. 47. Martha Rosler, “Video: Shedding the Utopian Moment”, in Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art. ed. and intro by Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer (New York, Aperture, 1990), 45. 48. Paik, “Abstract Time,” 52. 49. Paik, “Afterlude to the Exposition of Experimental Television.” 50. Jacques Rancière, The Future of the Image, trans. Gregory Elliott (London and New York: Verso, 2008), 13. 51. John G. Hanhardt, Nam June, Paik: Global Visionary (GILES, 2013), 55. 52. Rancière, The Future of the Image, 7. 53. Nam June Paik, “Binghamton Letter (January 8, 1972),” Ars Electronica, accessed July 1st 2017, http://90.146.8.18/en/archives/festival_ archive/festival_catalogs/festival_artikel.asp?iProjectID=9535.

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54. N.  Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 160. 55. “Nam June, Paik, Turtle and Future,” Culture: Technology, 5th Story of 2016, http://blog.naver.com/creative_ct/220878384847. 56. Erika Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power of Performance, trans. Saskya Iris Jain (New York: Routledge, 2008), 134. 57. Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power of Performance, 134. 58. Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, 22. 59. Paik, “Abstract Time,” 52. 60. Paik, “Cybernated Art.” 61. Emile Devereaux, “To Whom It May Concern: Nam June Paik’s Wobbulator and Playful Identity,” in Far and Wide, 31. 62. Goldstein, “Paik’s Vison of Where the Interaction is.” 63. Nam June Paik, “Binghamton Letter (January 8, 1972),” Ars Electronica, accessed July 1st 2017, http://90.146.8.18/en/archives/festival_ archive/festival_catalogs/festival_artikel.asp?iProjectID=9535. 64. Nancy Miller, “An Interview with Nam June Paik,” in The Color of Time: Video Sculpture by Nam June Paik (Waltham, Mass: Rose Art Museum, 1984), n.p., quoted in David Joselit, “No Exit: Video and the Readymade,” October, vol. 119 (Winter, 2007), 38. 65. Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, 26. 66. Paik, “Abstract Time,” 53. 67. Paik, “Abstract Time,” 53. 68. Paik, “Abstract Time,” 52. 69. John G. Hanhardt, “TV Guide,” Art News, May 1999, 144. 70. Hanhardt, Global Visionary, 34.

References Balme, Christopher. 2010. Distributed Aesthetics: Performance, Media, and the Public Sphere. In Theatrical Blends: Art in the Theatre/Theatre in the Arts ed. Jerzy Limon and Agnieszka Zukowska. Gdansk. Fischer-Lichte, Erika. 2008. The Transformative Power of Performance. Trans. Saskya Iris Jain. New York: Routledge. Hanhardt, John G. 1999. TV Guide. Art News, May. ———. 2000. The Worlds of Nam June Paik. Guggenheim Museum. ———. 2006. Nam June Paik (1932–2006): Video Art Pioneer. American Art 20 (2, Summer). Hanzal, Carla. 2001. Traversing the Worlds of Nam June Paik. Sculpture 20 (5. June).

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Hayles, N.  Katherine. 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Joselit, David. 2007. No Exit: Video and the Readymade. October 119 (Winter). Kang, Taehi. 1988. Nam June Paik: Early Years (1958–1973). PhD diss., Florida State University. Kim, Tae-Ik. 1993. Cover Story: a Marvel Who Overturned the Concept of Art: The Founder of Video Art, Nam June, Paik’s Life and Art. Weekly Chosun. August 15. Kim, Keum-Young. 2016. Echoing Paik’s ‘IDEA’ More Loudly That Celebrates 10th Anniversary of His Death. CNB Journal. July 22. Kwon, Mee-yoo. 2016. Remembering Paik, Father of Video Art. The Korean Times. February 18. Nam, Jung-ho, and Kubota Shigeko. 2016. My Love, Nam June Paik. Seoul: Arte. Paik, Nam June. Binghamton Letter (January 8, 1972a). Ars Electronica. ———. 1972b. Binghamton Letter. Ars Electronica. January 8. Paik, Nam. 1974a. Communication-Art. In Nam June Paik: Videa ‘n’ Videology 1959–1973. Exhibition Catalogue. New York: Everson Museum of Art. June. ———. 1974b. Cybernated Art. In Nam June Paik: Videa ‘n’ Videology 1959–1973. Exhibition Catalogue. New York: Everson Museum of Art. June. Paik, Nam June. 1974c. Interview by Paul Schimmel, “Abstract Time.” Arts Magazine. December. ———. 1984. Nam June Paik Performing Participation TV. Exhibitionentitled Extraordinary Phenomenon, Nam June Paik. Korea: Nam June Paik Art Centre. Kiheung. July 2016. ———. 2010. Name June, Paik: From Horses to Chisto. Trans. Wang-Joon, Im, Moon-young, Kim, and Mi-ae, Jung. Kihueng: Nam June Paik Art Centre. Rancière, Jacques. 2006. The Politics of Aesthetics. Trans. Gabriel Rockhill. London: Continuum. ———. 2008. The Future of the Image. Trans. Gregory Elliott. London and New York: Verso. ———. 2011. The Emancipated Spectator. Trans. Gregory Elliott. London: Verso. Ross, David A. 1982.“Nam June Paik’s Videotapes. In Nam June Paik, ed. John Hanhardt. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art in association with Norton & Company. Sharp, Willoughby. Artificial Metabolism: An Interview with Nam June Paik. Video 80 (4, Spring/Summer). Spring Arts Festival ’68 (University of Cincinnati). 1968. Box “GR 0001,” Folder 4, Nam June Paik Archive, Nam June Paik Art Centre. The Program Nam June Paik’s Show. 2016. Seoul: Gallery Yeh. Yun, Michelle. 2015. Nam June Paik: Evolution, Revolution, Resolution. In Nam June Paik: Becoming Robot, ed. Melissa Chiu, Michelle Yun, and Asia Society Museum. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

CHAPTER 5

Please Do Not Touch: Dancing with the Sculptural Works of Robert Therrien Marie-Louise Crawley

Though everything takes place through the eye, sculpture energetically engages and recruits the body’s intramuscular knowledge, its internal sense of weight, mass, gravity and balance. The viewer’s response takes place powerfully at the level of muscular sensation and memory, and of the body’s intimate knowledge and understanding of the impact that the objects and forces of the outer world would have on the body’s interior spaces. Norman Bryson, “Robert Therrien and the Taming Power of the Small”. In Robert Therrien (New York: Gagosian Gallery 2008), 132–145, 137.

I have chosen to open this chapter with art historian Norman Bryson’s description of how sculpture affects bodily sensation because it offers a fitting introduction to what it feels like to physically experience the large-­ scale sculptural works of American visual artist, Robert Therrien (1947–2019). Born in Chicago, and latterly living and working in Los

M.-L. Crawley (*) C-DaRE (Centre for Dance Research), Coventry University, Coventry, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 S. Whatley et al. (eds.), Art and Dance in Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44085-5_5

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Angeles, Therrien was an accomplished draughtsman and sculptor who for more than thirty years created large-scale sculptures that transform ordinary, everyday objects into dream-like, story-tale narratives. His huge sculptures, or sculptural installations, of ordinary domestic objects blown up to massive proportions straddle a midline between figuration and abstraction; they are, at once, familiar and strange, simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary. Disorientating and sometimes disconcerting, they inhabit space while transforming the viewer’s perception of it, and of the viewer’s own body in relation to it. As Bryson goes on to argue, setting Therrien’s work in the context of Minimalism,1 these large-scale sculptures continually ‘oscillate between optical forms (the forms disclosed on the eye) and muscular or proprioceptive form (the impact those forms have at the level of posture and body-ego)’.2 To enter a gallery housing colossal works like No Title (Table and Four Chairs) is to enter a world of shifting scale and perspective, where you shrink like Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland after she has drunk the magic potion.3 It is a disorienting and yet compelling experience; above all, it is a bodily one, where, as viewer, you cannot help but feel the primacy of your body’s visceral responses both towards the sculptural object on display and towards space itself. Therrien’s work has to date been the subject of solo exhibitions at Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and several of his large-scale sculptural works toured the UK between 2013 and 2015 as part of the ARTIST ROOMS scheme.4 It was during one of the ARTIST ROOMS tours of Therrien’s work to mac Birmingham (UK) that I had the enormous privilege of undertaking a month-long artistic residency, creating and performing new choreographic work alongside the exhibition. The exhibition itself ran from 21st June 2014 until 7th September 2014 and it included four of Therrien’s astonishing and monumental sculptures: No Title (Table and Four Chairs), No Title (Stacked Plates), No Title (Oil Can) and No Title (Beard Cart). I used the residency to create a solo choreographic work, made up of four short movements.5 Each of the four movements corresponded to one of the four large-scale sculptural works on display and was performed within or alongside them in the gallery space. The aim of this chapter is to document and investigate, from the choreographer-performer’s perspective, this experience of choreographing alongside and with(in) these large-scale sculptural works. How did the choreographic practice explore the spaces

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between an already very physicalized, almost kinetic sculpture, and dance? How did the dance, like Therrien’s own artwork, investigate space as both a physical and a temporal entity? And how did the choreographic dance alongside the sculptural within the institution of the white cube of the gallery, the dance not only existing ‘in reponse’ to the artwork but speaking back to it on its own terms?6 It was from the 1980s onwards that Therrien began to make explicit reference in his artwork to real, domestic objects (such as tables, chairs, and stacks of plates and dishes), expanding them into large installations and playfully examining the viewer’s relationship to scale, with table and chairs enlarged into giant sculptures raised sufficiently high for the viewer to be able to walk beneath them or for a stack of plates to loom six feet tall. Amongst his works exhibited for ARTIST ROOMS at mac Birmingham were No Title (Table and Four Chairs), a giant table with its matching set of four chairs so huge that the viewer could both walk around and under it; No Title (Stacked Plates), a looming stack of plates which, as you walked around them, through some optical (and proprioceptive) illusion, suddenly appeared to take on a life of their own, spinning and modulating on their own axis; No Title (Oil Can), an oversized oil can measuring 2.5 metres tall, its long spike stretching into space and its reflective mirrored surface offering the world of the distorting mirrors of the fairground; and No Title (Beard Cart), a playful trolley of fake beards, like some sort of mobile dressing-up table upon which a series of dark disguises were strung. For a choreographer, this exhibition offered itself up as a gigantic playground: I wanted to run, to jump, to touch, to scale, to climb, to clamber. Yet, as the notices placed on the gallery walls starkly warned me, I was reminded: ‘Please Do Not Touch’. Here was a striking tension: the dancer’s tactile impulse, how the dance might foreground the need for, or the invitation to, touch, and the gallery prohibition of that ‘touch’. Furthermore, as I will detail later, this tension would in fact become an essential underpinning of the choreographic work as a whole. In addition to the spatial and bodily disorientations that Therrien’s four sculptural works provoke in the viewer, it is easy to see how the sheer spectacle of such massive enlargement of ordinary, domestic objects also opens up a universe brimming with narrative associations and with playful allusions. These in turn themselves conjure up a whole host of childhood memories and personal histories. In his review of the ARTIST ROOMS exhibit at mac Birmingham for The Guardian, art critic Robert Clark picked up on the playful potential of the work:

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Kids play under tables, while adults eat off them and conduct interminable meetings sitting at them. Robert Therrien’s No Title (Table and Four Chairs) is simply what it says on the tin, but enlarged to surreal proportions. […] An accompanying pile-up of giant plastic plates No Title (Stacked Plates) and a stainless steel oil can No Title (Oil Can) can look like a model for some modernist tower block. Therrien is a big kid, reliving the primal delight of the world.7

In Therrien’s artwork, space is both physical and temporal: as Clark points out, the space of his sculpture is a place to ‘relive’ the delightful, playful past of childhood. There were two things going on in this exhibition then, which were not necessarily unrelated: a bodily impression of disorientation (or what might even be termed a physically induced hallucination), and a journey in the realm of memory and story, itself perhaps provoked by the effects of this physical disorientation. In such a way, as Bryson (2000) points out, Therrien’s work can in fact be seen to be pushing Minimalism’s boundaries. For while, like Minimalism, it opens sculpture up to the space surrounding it, it does much more than this; it opens sculpture into ‘a psychically charged [field] that directly engages the viewer’s sense of the boundaries and the forces that act upon those boundaries’.8 These boundaries are both spatial and temporal. My very first viewing of the four very playful works on display at mac Birmingham certainly brought Bryson’s analysis home: the sculptures seemed somehow to exist outside of the dimensions of real-world space and time. Inanimate objects appeared to be physicalized, even animated.9 They appeared, like bodies, to move and shift and warp through time and space even though it was I who was doing the moving, walking around and through them. Immediately, therefore, it is easy to see how this physical, animated sculpture might attract a choreographer’s eye. Indeed, the starting point for my practice during the residency was to find the place of the animated, human dancer in relation to such physical, animated objects. In preparing for the residency, I initially planned a threefold approach to the intended movement research. First would be to investigate the viewing public’s immediate physical responses to these pieces that, as we have just seen, are themselves so physical. How could the sculpture become not just a stimulus for, but also a site of performance? Could choreographic work inhabit Therrien’s universe in a very concrete way, co-­ existing within it, and not merely alongside it? Secondly, I quickly realised

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that, much like the sculptor, the choreographer also has the ability to manipulate the audience’s perception of space, time and object, meaning that for the choreographer too, as for Therrien, simple, familiar objects and spaces (a table, a chair, a room, a gallery) become much more than that which they actually are; they are transformed into dream-like universes. The choreographer-performer is the ultimate shape-shifter, possessing the means to manipulate space, time, object and body, in order to develop an accessible, visual narrative and to tell an engaging story. It is similar shifting changes of perspective and constantly evolving metamorphoses that are at the heart of Therrien’s work; that magical transformation of ordinary, everyday objects into extraordinary, dream-like, fairy-tale narratives. It was this idea of metamorphosis transforming the everyday, domestic world into the realm of fairy tale and fable, the worlds of Alice in Wonderland, of Thumbelina, of the Brothers Grimm, which interested me most of all. Working from these three perspectives, what in fact emerged from the movement research, and which will be explored in depth throughout this chapter, was a striking exploration of the experience of a certain solitude; a solitude that comes with the constantly shifting perspectives of being caught between a childhood past and an adult present, and of attempting to become a child again in order to view the world with the playful, joyful eyes of a child, but realising that this past vision is intangible and can never be entirely recaptured. Prior to the residency itself, I undertook a period of primary research and observation during the arrival and installation of the work in mac Birmingham’s gallery and exhibition space. Alongside Matthew Gale, Curator of Modern Arts and Head of Displays from Tate Modern, and Craig Ashley, mac Birmingham’s Visual Arts Producer, I observed the installation of the work in order to understand the sheer scale of the pieces, evident from the way in which these huge works were carried, handled and put together, like the assembly of some giant flat-pack furniture. Observing the installation, and in particular the relationships of scale and size between the artworks themselves and the gallery workers installing them, as they constantly navigated and negotiated the space around them, I was reminded of Therrien’s own explanation for the scale of his work: The projects that are blown up in scale are about things that are thought of two dimensionally, and then inserting yourself into it, rather than having an interest in just blowing things up. The reason the table became big was because I asked, “What if people could walk into an environment like that?”10

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Immediately I asked myself, ‘what if a dancer could dance in an environment like that?’ Once the exhibit had opened to the general public, I regularly visited the gallery to observe first-hand visitors’ reactions to and interactions with the work. I also talked to gallery assistants about their own experiences of observing visitors and read through the extensive comments left in the gallery’s visitors’ book. This was certainly a work that gave people something to say and the comments left behind by visitors were very revealing. How visitors of all ages, adults and children alike, articulated their experience in the gallery as noted in the visitors’ book immediately took one into the world of narrative and fairy tale: It looked like it was real giants’ things […] Table and chairs like Alice in Wonderland […] Do giants sit on these chairs? […] It looks like Jack and the Beanstalk […] I feel like Alice […] Maybe giants live there […] These chairs are huge. I think that the giant has died […] The room where the giants live […] The Borrowers!11

Adult visitors also recognised a return to childhood. Looking through the visitors’ book, I found comments that repeatedly centred on childhood memories, or on feeling small again: For the first time in my life I feel very small […] a shift of perspective, I felt small again […] It transported me back to a childhood memory I had forgotten—playing under my Nan’s kitchen table […] Being a child again.12

A final element of the work as noted by viewers in the comments that they left behind in the book was the celebratory and transformative power of the work: ‘a celebration of the everyday’, as one visitor put it. Alongside the idea of a celebratory transformation came themes of childhood games of pretence and disguise: ‘I pretended to be my cat’ and ‘beards as disguises, the seven dwarves’.13 Also frequently mentioned by the visitors commenting in the book were allusions to children’s literature–Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Mary Norton’s The Borrowers (1952) and, of course, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) books. Following the visitors’ lead, I started to re-read the children’s books that they frequently mentioned, and it was at the same time as re-­ reading Carroll’s Alice books that I discovered the existence of a documented neurological condition, known as Alice in Wonderland Syndrome.

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This is a documented perceptual disorder involving brief, transient episodes of visual distortions known as metamorphopsia: this includes phenomena such as macropsia, which is seeing objects bigger than they actually are, and its opposite, micropsia, or seeing objects as smaller than they are. Such episodes include an experience of distorted space, sound, time and body image. It seemed that this might be one way to develop a choreographic language in relation to the sculpture on display; to somehow exploit the distortion of scale and speed of movement to match the perceptual distortions presented by Therrien’s sculptures. By kind permission of mac Birmingham’s visitors to the Therrien exhibit, I was also granted access to CCTV video footage of the main gallery during one busy Saturday. I was interested in using the CCTV footage to map visitor pathways within and throughout the works, in an attempt to see how the curatorial might inform the choreographic, in terms of the manipulation of spatial pathways and, by extension, of audience perception. Looking at these pathways was somewhat surprising: I noted that visitors often travelled the gallery in an anti-clockwise direction rather than what might be the more usual, clockwise direction around the space (at least as indicated by the way in which the works themselves and accompanying information panels were arranged around the gallery space). I wondered if the anti-clockwise patterns created by the visitors’ movements around the space were perhaps subconsciously influenced by the sense of turning back time, of going backwards to the past, towards childhood, that the sculptures themselves offered. And yet, because of the very primary physical nature of visitor interaction with the sculptures, I quickly came to realise that there might be something else of interest in addition to simply mapping pathways. What was particularly striking from the CCTV footage, and which confirmed my own in-gallery observations, was that audiences seemed to share a common gestural language in response to the work. Certain gestures, some more surprising than others, consistently recurred: looking up, raising the head on a tilt, lifting one or both arms, reaching up, jumping. I started to think about the possibility of developing a choreographic and gestural language based on visitors’ actual physical responses. I would sample their gestures and movements to create a series of movement scores, and then build on this initial scoring process by distorting the speed and scale of the movements in the scores to correspond to the distortions presented by the sculptural works. A recurrent desire articulated by the visitors was the tactile impulse: to reach out to the work, to touch it and, especially with No Title (Table and

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Four Chairs), to climb. Again, the comments in the visitors’ book reveal how countless visitors had this experience with one visitor noting ‘I want to climb on those chairs’ and another commenting ‘I need a ladder to climb’. From both in-gallery observations and from the video footage, I noted how it was children in particular who rushed straight in to engage with the work, going underneath the table, creeping and crawling, or jumping and climbing, trying to touch the top of the chairs. On entering the gallery space, one child immediately rushed under the table and pretended to be a cat, whilst another stood on tiptoe as tall as they could make themself, expanding their body through space as far as it would go, pretending to be a giant. Adult visitors, on the other hand, would have the impulse to immediately engage physically with the work, reaching out a hand to touch the work on display but then, unsurprisingly, they would swiftly pull it back; they might even take an immediate, spontaneous step towards the work (and, in the case of the table and chairs, even start to venture underneath it), but would then suddenly draw themselves back. It was as if they were checking themselves for ‘received’ gallery behaviour. Whereas children would rush right underneath No Title (Table and Four Chairs) no questions asked, adults would first politely check with gallery assistants whether they were in fact allowed to walk under the table and through the sculpture. It was as if adult viewers were constantly shuttling back and forth between a child’s reaction to the work on display, that close interaction with and experience of it, and an adult’s response, drawing back for perspective. This idea of shuttling between present experience and past memory became foundational to the choreographic practice, giving rise to a sense of narrative that would later inform all four choreographic pieces created during the residency. In addition, gallery assistants who had on a daily basis been observing how viewers navigated the work also noted the way in which strangers responded to each other when viewing it. One gallery assistant revealed that, unlike during other previous exhibitions in the same space, total strangers would very often turn to one another to comment upon the Therrien exhibit as if all their inhibitions had been removed. This assistant noted that they even spoke to each other ‘as children would’. Again, we see at work in the viewer a constant shift between an adult’s received in-gallery behaviour and their inner child wanting to come out and play. This sense of shifting between temporal zones of past and present, of adulthood and childhood, also emerged during a series of movement workshops for mac Birmingham’s wider general public that I facilitated

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during the residency. During these workshops, participant dancers were guided around the Therrien exhibition and as they engaged with it, I asked them to note what they were feeling, what was happening to their body, and how they found themselves moving around the space in relation to the huge objects on display. The dancers were then offered a series of movement tasks to respond to their own experience of the exhibit; together we explored our physical reactions to Therrien’s sculptures and the physical stories that these sculptures brought to our bodies. During the workshop, dancers generously offered the following reflections: What world is this? […] It’s a world from the past, a world of dreams […] Moments of disorientation, you feel you’re hallucinating … distorted reflections […] Crawling, I’m reliving childhood […] Zooming in and out, shrinking back and moving in; intimidated at first, then safe, then curious […] Moving from and within these sculptures is a total reawakening. It’s play; play is the way forward—into movement, into choreography, into thinking.14

I began to notice that the idea of shuttling back and forth between a childhood experience and the memory of that experience from an adult’s perspective, of ‘zooming in and out, shrinking back and moving in’ as one of the participant dancers put it, was very important to viewers’ perception of Therrien’s work. On the one hand, there was the experience of play, of being a child and of seeing the world with the open and curious eyes of a child where ordinary objects become invested with new personality, and then on the other hand, there was the experience of solitude and loneliness in being the adult who can never completely regain the experience of childhood. Following this  observation and research period, I then  had several approaches to explore: a gestural language created from audience’s actual physical behaviour in the gallery, a sense of a narrative sliding between childhood and adult experience, and the aim to match that narrative with both a sense of perceptual distortion and a sense of the fairy tale. I also wished to focus on the joy and play of childhood experience, and the attempt to recapture the distant memory of that lost past in an adult present. I now turn to the question of how this was achieved through the choreographic practice. During the course of the residency, as briefly alluded to above, I developed a work in four short movements, each movement related and set within, or in physical relation to, one of Therrien’s large-scale pieces. The

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first of these movements, Please Do Not Touch, was designed to take place under and around Therrien’s No Title (Table and Four Chairs). Movement vocabulary stemmed from the initial movement scores sampling the common physical language of visitors to the gallery, and built to a repeated pattern of reaching, crawling and jumping, which also hinted at the childhood game of hide and seek. This first movement set the tone of the choreographic exploration with some spoken text, gleaned almost entirely from audience comments in the visitors’ book. The spoken text with its allusion to fables, and in particular to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, began to outline the narrative of a journey going back in time to a childhood world; both a shrinking, collapsing of time and space, and a constant shifting back and forth between the past and the present: Please do not touch. The giants have left this place and we are the only ones. The question is: where have they gone? A chair is like a creature. It has four legs and a curved back. A table also has four legs but generally doesn't move. Curiouser and curiouser! Alice was a little girl who fell down a rabbit-­ hole. She drank a drink labelled “drink me” and folded up like a telescope. She shrank to a tiny dot. She was like us. Please do not touch. What's on top of the table? Ready or not, here I come. Like you, I wanted to climb. But they said, “No, please do not touch”.

The slightly tongue-in-cheek title of this first movement, Please Do Not Touch, operates on two levels: there is of course the obvious allusion that neither visitors—nor choreographers—should touch the work. There is an interesting paradox at work here: for while we might consider that it is the viewer who actually ‘completes’ the large-scale works by the way in which they physically respond to how the work physically exerts influence over them, something always remains intangible, that childhood seen from an adult present perhaps? For me, the request ‘Please Do Not Touch’ therefore also introduces the viewer to a darker sense of intangibility at work in Therrien’s sculpture and subsequently in my own dance narrative. The title to the dance-work reveals how the gallery prohibition can be read on two levels: a checking of the tactile impulse, but also a darker prohibition warning us to leave the past well alone. We cannot turn back the clock; the past is intangible. We might try to grasp it, but it will forever escape us. The second movement, A Sensation of Spinning while Stationary, set in relation to Therrien’s No Title (Stacked Plates), develops the themes of spatial distortion that are at work in the first movement into an

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exploration of temporal distortion. This movement is based on a score of a series of rapidly repeated and accumulating gestures sampled from my in-gallery observations of viewers’ physical actions. The choreography builds on repeated patterns of acceleration and deceleration, exploring different distorted relationships of time and space through the body’s gestures. The sampled gestural language erupts into sometimes breathless, euphoric (reminiscent of joyful childhood play) and dizzying movement (continuous turning on the spot, such as a child might do, spinning until dizzy). These outbursts are marked by the use of physical spirals through the body that match the spirals at work in Therrien’s No Title (Stacked Plates), and especially the peculiar sensation experienced by the viewer when the very stationary plates seem to move, undulate and spin as they walk around them. In A Sensation of Spinning while Stationary, the dancer too becomes a spinning top: there is a sense of the perpetual movement that is also at work in Therrien’s plates, the dizzying movement which, as art critic and curator Margit Rowell observes, creates ‘a loss of balance and orientation, even a sense of disjunction in the viewer, or a dislocation from reality’.15 Such a sense of dislocation from present reality further develops in the third movement, Short Story. Here I took the risk of introducing another object into the gallery and therefore into Therrien’s world: my chosen object was a child’s red plastic chair. I chose to place the small chair in front of the ‘mirror’ of the oversized oil can and perform a seated dance in front of it. This seated dance was a playful exploration of the same range of gestures and temporal distortions encountered in the previous two movements, but this time doubly repeated in the performer’s reflection in the mirrored surface of the oil can. During the whole movement, I remained seated, and throughout appeared unable to get up from my seat. The overriding sensation throughout the dance was therefore one of reaching, of wanting to get something, but of never being quite tall enough to actually reach it. Again, the sense of intangibility was ever-­ present, permeating both the sculpture and the dance, the motif of reaching up in the dance ‘mirrored’ in the long spike of the oil can’s funnel stretching up into space.16 As the movement sequence built, so did a sense of frustration, of the frenetic, of the absurd, mundane quality of everyday life, a life that in the end amounts to nothing more than a series of repeated, ordinary, domestic gestures. The positioning of the performer to the ‘hall of mirrors’ oil can, by its very material making her shrink or grow dependent on her distance from it, added to that sense of the constant shifting

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between getting bigger and getting smaller. Once again, the bigger story revealed in Short Story was one telling of the constant shifting and morphing between a child’s and an adult’s perspective, between embodied present and intangible past. The final choreographic movement, Tall Story, corresponds to the darker fable underlying Therrien’s on first glance very playful No Title (Beard Cart). Here we are in the world of disguise, of darker fairy tale narrative, and Tall Story is perhaps the most narrative of the four choreographic movements. The narrative underpinning it developed fairly quickly, both from writings I made in response to the object of the child’s red plastic chair and to No Title (Beard Cart) itself and from movement improvisations emanating from that emerging written text. The story of a ‘lost’ childhood emerged, with childlike, playful transformations of the red chair into various guises (a beard, a creature) alongside a central movement phrase that acted as a pendant for the frenetic seated phrase of Short Story. This was a last repeat of the accumulative, gestural phrase previously seen in Short Story but this time slowed down in one final distortion and danced in extreme slow motion. The slow motion phrase serves as a reminder of things (danced) past as well as an attempt to regain what has already been lost through its rememorisation. Yet in the rememorisation, the original movement phrase changes and is itself transformed into something new: the original is lost and can never be fully recovered. In this way, the playful and almost comic Short Story becomes a Tall Story where all that remains is retrospection, a looking back, an attempt to recapture a past that cannot be entirely recaptured. At the very end of Tall Story, the dancer is left looking back up at the first work in the exhibit, No Title (Table and Four Chairs). We have come full circle around the gallery, and yet both dancer and viewer are still left looking, unable to touch. We are left with the overriding sense of the intangibility of childhood once an adult; having experienced that sense of the shuttling between childhood experience and the adult’s view of it once grown up throughout the duration of the choreography (and of our time in the exhibition), we eventually find ourselves in a present where the past may be viewed through a lens but never recaptured in its fullness. Furthermore, like the solo dancer, we experience it alone, in solitude. At the end of the ARTIST ROOMS residency, having had the great privilege of spending a month immersed in Therrien’s sculptural universe, this sense of solitude was key to how I as a choreographer personally engaged with his work. It is the solitude that comes with being somehow

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Fig. 5.1  Dancer Marie-Louise Crawley in Tall Story (2014) at mac Birmingham (UK). (Photograph credit: Rabiyah K. Latif)

suspended in time and in space, caught between a childhood past and an adult present. It is the solitude that comes from an attempt to become a child again and to view the world with the playful, joyful eyes of a child; an attempt that is  swiftly followed by the realisation that this return to childhood is, in fact, impossible. The request ‘Please Do Not Touch’ to a choreographer who at first wished to scale, clamber and climb all over Therrien’s table and chairs suddenly takes on a much darker meaning. The playfulness of both the sculpture and the dance belies a deeper sense of loss. We can no longer touch our childhood past once in our adult present: it is, perhaps, best left alone (Fig. 5.1).

Notes 1. Bryson points to the relationship of Therrien’s work with American Minimalism of the 1960s, in terms of both the simple geometric shapes underpinning the sculptures and the industrial properties of the materials of which they are made. 2. Ibid.

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3. Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (London: Egmont 2015 [1865]) 11. 4. ARTIST ROOMS is a collection of international contemporary art, established in 2009 through the d’Offay Donation (2008) and with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF), Art Fund and the Scottish and British governments. The collection is owned, on behalf of the UK, by Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland who curate and tour high-profile monographic exhibitions in venues across the UK. A particular aim of the programme is to inspire young audiences. Since the launch of the programme in 2008, over 40 million people have visited ARTIST ROOMS exhibits and 600,000 young people have participated in associated learning programmes (figures taken from www.artistrooms.org, accessed 15th November 2017). The Robert Therrien ARTIST ROOMS exhibit has to date toured to the MAC in Belfast (21st April 2012–22nd July 2012), MAC Birmingham (21st June 2014–7th September 2014) and The Exchange, Penzance (11th July 2015–26th September 2015). 5. The four movements were entitled Please Do Not Touch, A Sensation of Spinning while Stationary, Short Story and Tall Story. 6. For a more extended discussion about the co-existence of dance and the visual arts within the white cube space, and about how dance enters the gallery space on its own terms, see the collected conversations between dance artists, directors and curators in Sara Wookey’s Who Cares? Dance in the Gallery and Museum (London: Siobhan Davies Dance, 2015). 7. Robert Clark, “Robert Therrien, Birmingham”, The Guardian, 21st June 2014. 8. Norman Bryson, “Coda: Animating Sculpture”. In Robert Therrien by Lynn Zelevansky (with contributions from Norman Bryson and Thomas Frick), (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2000) 92–97, 94. 9. Bryson terms Therrien’s work as ‘animated sculpture’ (ibid, 96) and both he (2000, 2008) and curator Lynn Zelevansky (2000) offer in-depth investigations of the visceral effects of Therrien’s sculpture on the viewer and relate its effects to animated cartoons and to the influence of Max Fleischer’s cartoon animation on Therrien’s own artwork. So, while the relationship between cartoon animation and Therrien’s work has already been fairly widely considered, I wish here to probe the relationship of ‘animated sculpture’ to what we might term the ‘animated body’ of the dancer. 10. Robert Therrien cited in Blake Gopnik, “If Gulliver Were a Conceptualist: Robert Therrien Gets a Solo Show at the Albright-Knox”. The New York Times, 12th July 2013 11. Comments taken from the visitors’ book that remained in the gallery throughout the duration of the Therrien ARTIST ROOMS exhibit at MAC Birmingham.

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12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. Reflections offered by the dancers taking part in a workshop exploring the Therrien exhibit, MAC Birmingham, 2nd August 2014. 15. Margit Rowell, “Private Fables/Collective Histories: The Art of Robert Therrien”. In Robert Therrien (New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2008), 22–35, 26. 16. Norman Bryson (in Robert Therrien: The Taming Power of the Small, 2008) uses Therrien’s oil can sculpture as an example of how his sculpture has ‘a different relation to space’ (93). Bryson asks us to consider the long spike of No Title (Oil Can) and the force it appears to have on space, or at least how the viewer perceives the object (and thus their own body in relation to that object) in space: The sculpture’s base appears to accept normal proportions and measure of object in the real world, but its projecting funnel is stretched and gradually attenuated to such a degree that it suggests a different order of space. As the funnel goes on rising, it is as if not only the oil can but the space it occupies changes in quality, becoming elastic or rubberized. At the same time, the object projects an affect of the dangerous or the malign, as though the sculpture were able to hook onto the spectator’s own sense of bodily outline, provoking a feeling of being pulled from above (by one’s hair). (Ibid, 93–4)

References Bryson, Norman. 2000. Coda: Animating Sculpture. In Robert Therrien, ed. Lynn Zelevansky (with contributions from Norman Bryson and Thomas Frick), 92–97, Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art. ———. 2008. Robert Therrien and the Taming Power of the Small. In Robert Therrien, 132–145. New York: Gagosian Gallery. Clark, Robert. 2014. Robert Therrien Birmingham. The Guardian, June 21. Gopnik, Blake. 2013. If Gulliver Were a Conceptualist: Robert Therrien Gets a Solo Show at the Albright-Knox. The New York Times, July 12. Rowell, Margit. 2008. Private Fables/Collective Histories: The Art of Robert Therrien. In Robert Therrien, 22–35. New York: Gagosian Gallery. Wookey, Sara. 2015. Who Cares? Dance in the Gallery and Museum. London: Siobhan Davies Dance. Zelevansky, Lynn. 2008. No Title: The Work of Robert Therrien. Robert Therrien, ed. Lynn Zelevansky (with contributions from Norman Bryson and Thomas Frick), 47–77. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

CHAPTER 6

The Holding Space: Body of (as) Knowledge Sally Doughty, Lisa Kendall, and Rachel Krische

Introduction The body as archivist is one thing. The body as archive is quite another. (Lepecki 2010, 34)

Body of (as) Knowledge is a research project undertaken by UK-based dance artist/scholars Sally Doughty, Lisa Kendall and Rachel Krische. Our project was initiated and produced by Dance4, Nottingham1 after we each gave a presentation on a shared panel at the Thinking Dance: Questioning the Contemporary conference at Leeds Beckett University, UK, on 16 October 2015. We offered a particular perspective on our individual stands of engagement with performative archives. Realising the crossover of our

Body of (as) Knowledge was supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. S. Doughty (*) De Montfort University, Leicester, UK e-mail: [email protected] L. Kendall • R. Krische Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 S. Whatley et al. (eds.), Art and Dance in Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44085-5_6

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individual research, and the potential for continued collaborative research post-conference, Body of (as) Knowledge as a research project was born. A key objective for Body of (as) Knowledge was to challenge the traditional notion that archives only contain tangible artefacts, by privileging the knowledge that resides in and with the dancer. Investigating the role that our personal archives play in our choreographic and performance thinking and practices has supported us to examine how our own dancing bodies can be conceived of and used as a ‘corporeal archive’ (Lepecki 2010, 44). Indeed, Jennifer Roche recognises that ‘artists whose practice is embedded in knowledge outside of linguistic or literary codes’ (2015, 2) are not considered as hosting knowledge in the body, and she acknowledges that in mainstream thinking ‘the archive […] exists independently of their bodies’ (ibid.). She further highlights the problem of the archive as text, photograph or video existing independently of dancers’ bodies, and therefore ‘rendering their material presence insignificant’ (2015, 3). In recent years however, artists and academics alike have reconsidered how the body might function as an archive: Martin Nachbar (2010) articulates his experience of embodying Dore Hoyer’s Affectos Humanos (1962/1964) solo dances; Marcella Lista (2014) writes about Boris Charmatz’s much acclaimed work 20 Dancers for the XXth Century (2015) in which performers perform, recall, appropriate or transmit solo performances from the last century, and André Lepecki (2010) discusses how Julie Tolentino, Martin Nachbar and Richard Move all attempt to serve as a living physical archive of performance work by embodying the work of other artists. This literature, amongst other sources, certainly contributes to the acknowledgement of the primacy and agency of the dancer’s own body as a corporeal archive, but it also establishes a position of authority that is external to the choreographer/performer/artist her/himself. There is slim literature that acknowledges the artist as a living archive of their own practice. Let us return then, to Julie Tolentino who re-enacts performances by other artists. She learns, imitates, copies, appropriates and simply does another artist’s work in front of an audience (Lepecki 2010, 33) and insists that this is explicitly aimed at ‘turning her body into an archive’ (Lepecki 2010, 34). We question then, why Tolentino’s body is considered to be an archive of an artist’s work in a way that the artist’s own performing body is not. If, as Heike Roms suggests, ‘the archive is always haunted by the spectre of authorial intent’ (2013, 36), then we argue that there is no higher authority than the artist her/himself. What we are proposing here is that the artist’s body—and specifically the dancer’s body—has not been adequately considered as an optimum source of knowledge, experience, and

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to a certain extent, its own legacy. Susan Melrose’s ‘expert practitioner [who has] internalised rich or complex knowledge practices acquired in the professional environment, through ongoing experimentation, experience (including recognition and judgement) and progressive enculturation’ (2015), is certainly not evidenced in the literature. There is much published about the training and the legacy of dance techniques such as Cunningham and Graham, and how they service a particular technical demand and aesthetic. However, these sources refer to how techniques are passed down through generations of dancers and companies as a means of preserving choreography, rather than addressing how an artist might, as Roche writes, use their ‘dancing body [as] a crucible, a host to the haunting power of choreographic traces (that remain available to be re-embodied again), a site of potentiality [and] a lived archive’ (2015, 16). There are scant sources that refer explicitly to the originator of performance materials and experiences being considered as an archive. However, one such example is by Laura Griffiths, who refers to members of Phoenix Dance Theatre recalling their memories of making and performing early works, and therefore drawing upon their ‘embodied traces of the past’ (2015) to recall the pieces. It is certainly not uncommon for artists to develop and maintain a highly personalised and individual movement vocabulary; creative process and/or aesthetic for their work, and indeed, this is part of what we recognise as an artist’s signature. Reflecting on this legacy, Roms writes that an artist’s archive, which is consistently sourced, contains the ‘remains [that] speak of performance as an artistic project that is sustained over a body of work, sometimes over the entire professional lifespan of an artist’ (2013, 36). Indeed, American choreographer Meg Stuart and French choreographer Xavier Le Roy, amongst many others, recognise the value of referring back to earlier ideas and acknowledge the role that this plays in their process. Stuart explains how material from her previous pieces folds back into her current work (2004), and Le Roy refers to his performance lecture Product of Circumstances (1999) in which he recycles material from earlier pieces but places it in a completely different format (2004). He acknowledges that this material is drawn from his archive, but is used to reactivate and transform rather than document (2004), thus challenging an archive’s expected function. For the Leeds conference presentations, Doughty treated one of her previous performances, Hourglass (2015) as an ‘anarchive’ (Massumi 2016, 6), which supported her to generate new meaning and material in

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her performative presentation Hourglass: Archive as Muse (2015). Kendall took her performative immersion in the work A String Section (2012–to date), an improvisatory piece choreographed by Leen Dewilde, core artist with the Anglo-Belgian performance company Reckless Sleepers, as an opportunity to explore and reflect upon processes of devising, editing and curating the living and lived archive. Krische presented on her experience as one of the six co-authors of Siobhan Davies’ live movement installation Table of Contents (2014–2016), in which the artists considered their own histories as choreographers and performers to question how dance is archived, thus proposing the body as a location of where that archive might reside. Recognising ourselves in Roms’ observation above, we entered into Body of (as) Knowledge curious about the traces or ‘remains’ (Roms 2013, 36) that we sub/consciously weave into our movement practices. We are now in a position of reflecting upon our middle-aged, life-long archives in order to understand more about what they hold; why they hold what they do; what choices we have made (whether consciously or not) about what is held and/or not held; and what we have archived that we have forgotten about, so that we might use these rich corporeal archives to support the development of new choreography. We want to emphasise that whilst referring to our lived and living corporeal archives, we do not confine these to our fleshy bodies, but rather extend them to encompass memories of past experiences, intangible expectations of the future and everything in between: this offers us the opportunity to weave the physical with the metaphysical in this rich and slippery field.

Body of (as) Knowledge: The Project During the first phase of research for Body of (as) Knowledge (March 2016–March 2017), our activities were aligned towards developing our understanding of the practices that exist regarding preservation, cataloguing and archiving so that we might begin to re/consider how to use personal, corporeal archives in the generation and performance of dance practices. Throughout this time, we undertook a series of residencies at Dance4’s International Centre for Choreography, Nottingham; The Silk Mill Museum, Derby and Leeds Beckett University, Leeds. Phase two of the research (March 2017–December 2018) focused on the development of a new full-length performance work, Please do Touch that was made for

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and presented in Leicester’s New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, December 2018.2 Through partnership with the Derby Museums Trust we explored more traditional approaches to archiving physical objects and artefacts. During the project, The Silk Mill was going through a process of redevelopment, with its archive being strategically worked through as items were moved and put into storage. Learning about processes that encompassed identification, cataloguing and preservation techniques with The Silk Mill’s team of professional archivists informed our thinking, enabling us to approach the research from new perspectives in order to challenge assumptions and notions of the archive. One particular insight came when we established that only 4% of The Silk Mill’s full archive is on display to the public at any one time, with the rest being in storage. This prompted us to consider how much of our archives are on display and how much of that is actively decided by us in the moment of performing. Krische was very clear that in her (broader imaginative) understanding, her full archive always tacitly informs all that is happening; Kendall proposed that she curates her living archive during the moment of performance, and Doughty’s interest lay in consciously selecting material from her archive and tracking creative decisions made across different performances. We also explored the parallels between the decay and preservation of objects with Sally Hawsley, Logistics and Collections Co-ordinator at The Silk Mill, and of bodies with osteopath Adam Richmond. Richmond discussed how he goes about preserving the body by challenging it physically rather than keeping it static, and Hawsley drew a parallel here to a First World War Norton motorbike on display at The Silk Mill, the engine of which has to be turned over on a regular basis to preserve it. Body of (as) Knowledge has opened up debate and discussion around the synergistic notions of autobiography, knowledge, memory, preservation, erosion, time and archive, and how these support us to trace, productively and consciously, the lineage of certain ideas, preferences and skills to generate new performance work. This logging or tracing of influences and experiences offers valuable insight into the nature of our practice and acts as an underpinning for it. Alongside our studio-based practice, preliminary research and development also included time spent within The Silk Mill during opening hours, taking up a position within the spaces of ‘display’. Our practice here, although located in the museum space, did not directly or explicitly respond to the exhibits on display in that space, but were drawn from our

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experiences and histories, dance related and other, that remain and re-­ emerge in our memories and bodies. Recalling, documenting and categorising these memories allowed us to acknowledge and develop archive ‘collections’, which provoked the generation of new performance work specifically in and for the museum. Interaction with museum visitors often gave rise to informal performances of nostalgic ‘stand up’ acts; a recycling of movement memories; sharing photographs; capturing fleeting moments to generate written catalogue lists or collections; conversation; telling stories and reminiscing. Locating ourselves in the museum space brought forward the body within a space full of objects, equating its value (within the context of this space) to that of the exhibits and giving rise to a reconsideration of how the dancer’s body, a living being, can be conceived of as both an archive and an artefact. Throughout this initial phase of the project we developed two performative outputs: Handle With Care (2016) was presented at Nottingham Contemporary Gallery at the InDialogue conference, and Body of (as) Knowledge (2017) was presented at Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery as part of Dance4’s International Dance Festival, Nottdance 2017. These have provided a framework for an ongoing and developing strategy for dissemination of this research. For both outputs we developed a set of choreographic organising principles incorporating improvised movement and the live writing of ‘collections’ that housed our emerging memories, and which were projected onto a screen within each performance/sharing. Allowing new memories and associations to appear, both physically and in writing, rather than re-performing or re-instating what had previously emerged within our studio research, echoes Thomas Fuchs’ observation that, Body memory does not represent the past but re-enacts it. But precisely through this, it also establishes an access to the past itself, not through images or words, but through immediate experience and action. Thus, it may unexpectedly open a door to explicit memory and resuscitate the past as if it were present as such. (2012, 19)

To mark the end of each performance, we visibly deleted the writing that had emerged in an endeavour to demonstrate the ephemerality of the act of remembering. In this context, we deemed the written form to be as transient as our movement activity.

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Following on from this initial phase, we realised that one of the deepest outcomes was that of recognising a profound and meaningful partnership between us. The desire for an ongoing development of our collaborative performance making within the frame of Body of (as) Knowledge had been established. Our research prepared the ground for the performance work Please Do Touch (2018–ongoing), commissioned by Leicester’s New Walk Museum and Art Gallery. We perform a series of evolving performance encounters throughout different gallery spaces, considering how embodied memory can be as resonant and as rich in history as the exhibits on display through movement, spoken and sung choreographic responses to our corporeal archives. Within the immediacy of Handle With Care (2016), Body of (as) Knowledge (2017) and Please Do Touch (2018), our endeavour to amass memories in the moment of performance demanded that the past and the personal became public; the private became shared; and connections were remembered, made and lost. Through this we offered a consideration of how our fragmented past(s) could be dragged into our present(s) and presence, and in doing so, we hoped that the audience would re/consider their individual yet interwoven, personal archives (Fig. 6.1).

The Inception of the Holding Space The opportunity to contribute to this publication directly influenced the next phase of the project. Up to this point, we had considered that the forms of dissemination of the research would uphold the project’s primary aim of asserting that the moving body acts as corporeal documentation. This would therefore entail privileging the dissemination of this particular research through live exchange and performance practice. By its very nature, a book chapter presented a particular conundrum for us in that it is a hard copy document—a tangible artefact—that cannot reflect the time-sensitive nature of our living, corporeal archives. Therefore, we needed to address sensitively and creatively this situation in a way that supported our contribution to the wider debate of embodied, archival practices without compromising the project’s key aim: to promote the dancer’s body as an archive in its own right. In response, we created a digital holding space as a repository for the film, audio and written documentation of the Body of (as) Knowledge project that we had privately accumulated so far. This repository is not a static entity but is conceived to be a dynamic and evolving space that

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Fig. 6.1  Please Do Touch, Leicester New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, December 2018. (Photo Credit: Jason Senior, Redpix.co.uk)

accumulates material over time, mapping onto and reflecting this project, and our ongoing collaborative and individual creative practices. However, in correlation with the body as archive, this holding space has a finite lifespan of 45 years—a figure arrived at as an approximate collective average of our assumed remaining lifespans (we are all in relatively good health and descend from a line of nonagenarians). What will eventually remain for those who have engaged with the online materials is an intimate intertwining of technology and memory that ‘transforms how we remember, how our and others’ memories are entangled in the here-and-now and, in the end, even how we think and imagine’ (Bleeker 2012, 2). The Holding Space is a time-sensitive archive that challenges the traditional notion ‘of “the archive” as that which endures’ (Roms 2013, 45), and which is ‘subject to change, or even disappearance’ (ibid.), to reflect the condition of our own mortal, corporeal archives.

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The Holding Space https://www.bodyofknowledge.co.uk/

Reflections, Tensions and Conclusions The need/want/pressure to document and disseminate our outputs and findings through both this publication and The Holding Space has posed certain methodological challenges that run counter to the project’s thrust of privileging our dancing bodies as archives. A tension is evident in the ephemerality of the dancing body’s archive and the permanency of materials captured as documentation of the project, but we have endeavoured to address this through imposing the finite lifespan of The Holding Space. It was crucial for us to acknowledge the time-sensitive nature of our own corporeal archives within the website’s construction so that its life expectancy reflects our own mortality. This online impermanency has the potential to suggest that the archive transforms into a ‘non-archive’ (in the traditional sense of the word) when the website ceases to be accessible. But we propose that its cessation endorses the primacy of our ‘embodied memories [that] constitute the most important resource in maintaining and developing theatre dance’ (Burt 2003, 41). Burt goes on to assert that this embodied resource is shared amongst communities of performers and handed down through generations who have participated in theatre dance work (ibid.), suggesting that the etymology of influences, knowledge and practices could feasibly be traced. However, in addition to knowledge being solely generated through physical participation, we propose that knowledge extends to any person who has engaged with our online materials, so that as Roms states, ‘instead of lamenting performance’s [and in this case the online holding space’s] inevitable pastness, the archive encourages us to explore performance’s continuing presence in our encounter with these ideas’ (2013, 35). Therefore, it can be said that the extinct archive will be sustained by the knowledge of those who engaged with its materials online, in much the same way that Slovenian artist Igor Štromajer, after ritually deleting ten years of his projects from the Internet, acknowledges that ‘the deleted artworks or their remaining fragments—can no longer be deleted due to the dispersal and the fragmentation of the world wide web’ (Štromajer in Bleeker 2012, 2). The very nature of how digital information is copied and shared reflects an evolution of the oral tradition, but it also means that complete eradication of digital information is perhaps impossible. By dictating the lifespan of

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The Holding Space we become what Allana C. Lindgren and Amy Bowring term as a ‘double-creator, [that being] a choreographer as archivist who not only originates the material to be saved, but also crafts and directs the modes of communication of the saved documentation’ (2013, 37), and in doing so we attempt to retain control over the engagement and use of these materials whilst acknowledging and inviting their potential use and reuse by others. A second tension arises from the impermanency of The Holding Space and raises questions around the ongoing legacy of the project. During the post-performance conversation as part of our Body of (as) Knowledge (2017) sharing, choreographer and performer Matthias Sperling commented that the finite lifespan of our online archive might have a negative impact on the provenance of the British contemporary dance field (2017b). This has raised questions for us about how our individual archives might make a more longitudinal impact on the field beyond the timeframe of the project itself. Archives, by their very nature, capture and document, and as Sperling acknowledges, ‘there are ways in which ephemerality/disappearance/avoidance of capture by archives can be a great strength of dance and choreography’ (Sperling 2017a), but he also cautions that, when the work and qualities of artists working in dance and choreography are lost to memory, I see that as a loss to the future of the field, as it often, in my view, means that the same ground must be gone over again rather than enabling next steps to be taken. (ibid.)

However, Sperling’s observation here is countered by Maaike Bleeker who makes an interesting case for not documenting events, as they ‘will forever tether us to all our past actions, making it impossible, in practice, to change our relation to them, or to escape them’ (2012, 1). These two differing perspectives on the impact of recording and documenting have offered us rich provocations about how we address the project’s dissemination. Whilst we have tested and asserted that knowledge resides in and with the dancer’s body and positioned it as a most fundamental archive, how can we ensure that we make a contribution to the field beyond the life of the project? How can we ensure our legacy remains if all online materials pertaining to this work cease to exist in the future? We look to Ernest Van Alphen here, who suggests that there are always certain exclusions to a traditional archive, and that these

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exclusions concern memories, documents and practices of knowledge production overlooked, not taken seriously, considered unimportant or as without value […] This explains why memories and knowledge ‘outside the archive’ are also part of the archive, in the sense of being produced by archival rules of exclusion. (2014, 225)

It is well known that histories and stories have been passed on through generations as oral traditions, and that these can exist without being captured in written form. This then, can translate to the experiences of dance training, performance and choreography and offers us a subversive perspective on the archive and a way forward for the provenance of this project. It is our ambition that our individual and collaborative traces, and therefore our legacies remain, albeit not through the materials found on our holding space, but rather—and preferably—through the memories and experiences of those who have engaged with us live, online and in hard copy. Jayce Salloum writes that ‘To amass an archive is a leap of faith, not in preservation but in the belief that there will be someone to use it, that the accumulation of these histories will continue to live, that they will have listeners’ (2006, 186), and we hope that through our collaborators, our students and audiences amongst the many others with whom we have engaged physically or virtually, the work will carry on in tandem with our own corporeal archives that continue to form and transform.

Notes 1. Dance4 has a unique national voice in the development of new discourses, knowledge and practices that are informing the future of the dance and choreographic field from its home at the International Centre for Choreography in Nottingham, UK. As a strategic agent for dance, Dance4 provides local, national and international leadership, working in partnership with venues, local authorities, education, creative industries and other providers to connect the exploration of new territories in dance and choreographic practices, to the widest possible audience. 2. Subsequent performances have taken place at The Modes of Capture: The Capturing of Process in Contemporary Dance-Making conference, University of Limerick, Ireland, 22 June 2019; and in Cultural Exchanges Festival at Leicester Gallery, De Montfort University, Leicester, 28 February 2020.

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Bibliography Bleeker, M. 2012. Introduction: On Technology & Memory. Performance Research 17 (3): 1–7. Burt, R. 2003. Memory, Repetition and Critical Intervention. Performance Research 8 (2): 34–41. Fuchs, T. 2012. The Phenomenology of Body Memory. In Body Memory, Metaphor and Movement, ed. S.C.  Koch, T.  Fuchs, M.  Summa, and C.  Muller. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Griffiths, L. 2015. Dance Practice and Provenances: Archival Bodies of Evidence. In Theatre and Performance Research Association Conference 2015. 8–10 September 2015, University of Worcester. Le Roy, X. 2004. Interview with Sally Doughty. Greenwich, London, UK. Lepecki, A. 2010. The Body as Archive: Will to Re-enact and the Afterlives of Dances. Dance Research Journal 42 (2): 28–48. Lindgren, A.C., and A. Bowring. 2013. The Choreographer’s Trust: Negotiating Authority in Peggy Baker’s Archival Project. In Preserving Dance Across Time and Space, ed. L. Matluck Brooks and J.A. Meglin. Abingdon: Routledge. Lista, M. 2014. Play Dead—Time, Museums and the Time-Based Arts. Dance Research Journal 46 (3): 6–23. Massumi, B. 2016. Working Principles. In The Go-To How To Book of Anarchiving, ed. A. Murphie, 6. Montréal: The Senselab. Accessed May 14, 2018. http:// senselab.ca/wp2/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Go-To-How-To-Book-ofAnarchiving-landscape-Digital-Distribution.pdf Melrose, S. 2015. Chasing Expertise: Reappraising The Role of Intuitive Process in Creative Decision Making. In Keynote Address at Thinking Dance 2015: Questioning The Contemporary Symposium, 16–17 October 2015, Leeds Beckett University, 16 October. Nachbar, M. 2010. in Lepecki, A. 2010. The Body as Archive: Will to Re-enact and the Afterlives of Dances. Dance Research Journal 42 (2): 28–48. Roche, J. 2015. Multiplicity, Embodiment and the Contemporary Dancer: Moving Identities. Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan. Roms, H. 2013. Archiving Legacies: Who Cares for Performance Remains? In Performing Archives/Archives of Performance, ed. G. Borggreen and R. Rune Gade. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Salloum, J. 2006. Sans titre/Untitled: The Video Installation as an Active Archive, In The Archive: Documents of Contemporary Art, ed. C. Merewether. London: Whitechapel Gallery; Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

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Sperling, M. 2017a. Personal Email Communication with Sally Doughty, Tuesday, November 7. ———. 2017b. Body of Knowledge Performance: Post-show Conversation, at Nottingham Castle and Museum, NottDance2017, Nottingham, Sunday. March 12. Stuart, M. 2004. Interview with Sally Doughty. Berlin, Germany, August 28. Van Alphen, E. 2014. Staging the Archive: Art and Photography in the Age of New Media. London: Reaktion Books.

CHAPTER 7

Contextualizing the Developing Self in Helen Chadwick’s Ego Geometria Sum Imogen Racz

In Ego Geometria Sum (I am Geometry) (1982–84), Helen Chadwick charted her childhood and early adulthood through ten, schematized, geometric sculptures that represented material objects that she had chosen to represent different stages of her development from her premature birth to the age of thirty. Onto these she printed transparent layers of photographic imagery that conflated her adult self, performing in relation to the objects and their symbolism for her, with scenes and objects from her past that conformed to the sculptural shapes, which she gained from her family album and through triggering memories by revisiting and photographing key sites. This depiction of her adult self in relation to objects is a continuation of some of Chadwick’s previous performance and performative works, including an early video work where she had explored the idea of incorporating herself into situations as a way ‘back into [the] subconscious via room’, and, echoing the transparency of the photographs on the sculptures in Ego Geometria Sum, her body was seen as ‘traces left across room’

I. Racz (*) School of Art and Design, Coventry University, Coventry, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 S. Whatley et al. (eds.), Art and Dance in Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44085-5_7

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like ‘snail tracks’.1 Jon Thompson aligned her work to a range of artists working in or basing their work on photography and film, including Gilbert and George who, like Chadwick, had their roots in performance and self-presentation, and created a suggestion of autobiography that questioned the boundaries of different realities.2 For Chadwick, Ego Geometria Sum was an important investigation into and negotiation with her past. Throughout her research for this work she can be seen engaging with her material past as a way into understanding her adult feelings of alienation. The display, about which she devoted a lot of consideration, showed the sculptures softly lit in a hushed environment, enclosed by peach-coloured curtains.3 It was intended to create an ambience that would help the audience to enter into her mind. Initially called Growing Pains, Ego Geometria Sum drew on a broad range of influences. As well as being very active within the British and European artistic scenes, Chadwick was widely read. This included books about art, architecture, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and the spiritual and occult. While Ego Geometria Sum has been discussed as a self-­ contained entity in relation to architectural contexts, and as a ‘biography’, what has not been explored is the way that it combined postmodern ideas with classical, mathematical notions, and how these were underpinned by her reading of Arthur Koestler’s The Sleepwalkers and Ghost in the Machine.4 These influences helped her unite a subjective narrative of a fluid sense of self with ideas of the universal.

Initial Ideas Chadwick’s earlier works had been concerned with identity construction within the social world. These included In the Kitchen (1977), where she and three other performers satirized the expected roles of women through staging a performance of themselves dressed with kitchen equipment, including a cooker and washing machine. The initial idea of turning the focus towards her own life emerged while working on Model Institution (1981), an installation that invited the viewing audience to enter reconstructed DHSS booths (Department of Health and Social Security) and hear taped monologues of five benefit ‘claimants’, each of whom was heard reacting to their situation with varying forms of ‘agro’ in their voices. Chadwick kept detailed notes of her projects in small notebooks, and on a couple of pages in the one dedicated to Model Institution, she had the heading ‘About the Artist’, and underneath she drew up plans for what should be put on the information panel for the exhibition. It listed details

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about her early life, starting with ‘Born—hosp / Houses lived / School / Played in the house of my best friend / Grandma’s flat’. She later returned to these pages, cramming further ideas into the spaces, including ‘Bland impassive buildings passed through. Faceless yet loaded with memories […] The cold hard unsentimentality of the camera—truth physical but mechanical. GOING BACK’.5 At the beginning of her next notebook, devoted to Ego Geometria Sum, she tidily rewrote most of the text from these two pages on a page headed “‘About the Artist”. Review of life up to present day’.6 She then wrote that her new project was to look ‘at the past and upbringing—memories’, and create a ‘personal museum / archaeological presentations of fact … metaphysical shapes—cones etc.’, in an attempt to overcome her alienation with the world around her.7 These notes show that for her there were two important frameworks that she wanted to develop and reconcile: the emotional and the rational. These ideas were crystallized through reading Arthur Koestler’s The Sleepwalkers, which sought to bring together the two disciplines that Koestler believed had been wrongly separated in the European mind since the Renaissance—the sciences and humanities.8 He also wrote about the ‘deadly’ division between faith and reason, where on each side symbols had hardened into dogmas, and the common source of inspiration had been lost from view.9 This book plotted the changing understanding of the universe over the centuries, which, as new scientific discoveries were made, came into conflict with Christianity. The fourth section, of which ‘Growing Pains’ is the third chapter, considers Johannes Kepler’s (born 1571) discoveries about the geometrical nature of the universe, with his writings about his own life, development and relationships forming a leitmotif through the text. Like Koestler’s juxtapositions of Kepler’s life and work, Chadwick’s notebooks aligns her research, sketches and technical details with personal memories and to-do lists. This blurring of the artistic/everyday boundaries in her notebooks continues a tradition of the 1960s and 1970s American female and feminist artists like Ree Morton and Eva Hesse. It can be argued that notebooks that combine diary, research and the development of artistic projects are ways of plotting and constructing a sense of self. This reconstruction of personal narratives was important during the 1980s, when both postmodernism and feminism sought to destabilize universalizing narratives and suggest that identities are formed through complex relationships within social, intellectual and economic frameworks. As was being widely discussed, the notion of the ‘I’ is complex. Chadwick wrote of her need to rescue hers from ‘the severity and cruelty adopted to survive now’.10

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Reading Koestler: The Universal and the Personal The forms of the objects in Ego Geometria Sum were based on classical prototypes outlined in Koestler’s The Sleepwalkers. Likewise, there are many overlaps in ideas, narrative and presentation. Kepler was, like Chadwick, born prematurely—at thirty-two weeks. There are notes that he made about his health and particular events, which, like Chadwick’s notes for Ego Geometria Sum, are linked to particular ages—his ‘hands were badly crippled…1577 (aged six)’, he lost a tooth ‘(fourteen–fifteen)’, and ‘was beaten in a drunken quarrel by Rebstock…1590’.11 His introspection and objectivity about his poor health, lack of friends and pain in love would have been, as Koestler noted, unusual at the time.12 Chadwick was also given to introspection. Early in her notebook for Ego Geometria Sum she heads a page ‘melancholic idlings’, and remembers ‘places + people… empty warmth + sense of loss + distance as images flood in… welcomed yet unconsoling…’. 13 Kepler wrote about himself in the third person, suggesting the detachment of an onlooker. Rather than just presenting a subjective, indulgent account of her past, Chadwick also wanted to find a pattern underpinning her development and show ‘detachment from oneself  +  own past’.14 However, she also thought it was important to use sites related to her strongest emotional experiences, like love, trauma and friendship.15 She wanted to build up a picture of her past through ‘objects that a) contained me b) (re)orientated me c) moulded / shaped me’.16 After much musing, her final choice was the Incubator—birth, Baptismal Font—three months, Pram—ten months, Boat—three years, Wigwam—five years, Bed—six and three quarter years, upright Piano—nine years, gym Horse—eleven years, High School—thirteen years, and Statue—fifteen to thirty years. Although Kepler saw no conflict between his religious faith and science, he was working against the grain of orthodox thinking when he published his scientific discoveries in Mysterium Cosmographicum.17 He illustrated geometrical models of planetary systems and their relationship to the universe, and determined that although the pattern of men’s lives was cosmically determined, individual events were not. Within this pattern, man is free.18 When Chadwick was thinking about how to ‘validate’ the installation, she decided that she needed to apply some ‘code/rule/theory’ to create an ‘organizational model’ of ‘physical  +  emotional/perceptual’ growth.19

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Chadwick also took notes from this book about the ideas of Pythagoras, writing that the construction of order would show the ‘release from alienation and angst’, and how the work itself was creating form and order out of confusion.20 Koestler wrote how Pythagoras thought that numbers were the highest form of philosophy, as ‘all things are form; and all things can be defined by numbers’.21 As well as considering square and oblong numbers, which underpinned both the harmonies of music and mathematical principles, Pythagoras generated pure-number, three dimensional, crystal shapes. This idea of uniting principles that brought together the micro with the macro was extended to the universe, where he conceived of an earth sphere, surrounded by the sun and planets that rotated around it, always in fixed positions, each of which created a musical hum as it swirled around its orbit.22 What Pythagoras also developed was a religion that combined the rational and intuitive called Orphism. In this, science is perceived as both an intellectual delight and a way of spiritual release, leading to purification of the soul and its ultimate liberation.23 Although Chadwick was also to consider the geometrical forms of Christianity with the circle suggesting eternity, perfection and the heavens, the octagon being part way between circle and square representing the universe, the square representing the earth, and the triangle representing God the Father, it is the uniting of spiritual release with the numbers and order of the universe that underpin the geometricized forms of the objects in Ego Geometria Sum and their arrangement in a spiral that emulated a planetary system. 24 Chadwick noted Pythagoras’ ideas that the laws of metaphysical forms are universal and mathematical. Linked to this was the sacred relation of music to numbers that underpinned Pythagorean spiritual experience. Music and harmonies were based on ratios and proportions, and contemplation of both music and numbers were ways of enabling intellectual ekstasis and purging the soul of earthly passion. Chadwick was to write later in her notebook that her work was the Pythagorean ‘passage from chaos by purge to armonia, order, release from alienation and angst’.25 As well as the proportions of the sculptures, Chadwick was aware that the harmonies of the atmosphere were embedded in the imagery of the chimes, triangle, and pylon hum that she incorporated into Ego Geometria Sum. While echoing universal factors, the photographic imagery was intended to represent the visible world and be the ‘detailed materialism of one individual’.26

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Another book that Chadwick read prior to making Ego Geometria Sum was Arthur Koestler’s The Ghost in the Machine (1967). In the opening section, Koestler outlines findings from the previous fifty years of research into understanding human development: that mental evolution, like biological evolution, is the result of random mutations, which in this case are reinforced by rewards, and that man is essentially passive in the face of his controlling environment.27 Koestler outlined the arguments of Behaviourists like Professor Skinner of Harvard University, who described how habits learned within social environments would predict particular patterns of actions.28 This clinical way of measuring human achievement that develops alongside environmental and social reward systems had an impact on Chadwick’s thinking, where she wanted to show ‘the cold unsentimentality of truth’ about the places that housed her development, and the ‘training’ of her developing self within the social and environmental systems.29 Behaviourism was an attempt to create a grand narrative that aligned the responses of all living organisms, including that of man. However, Chadwick was constructing her own narrative within the fractured and contingent notions of identity outlined in postmodernist and feminist thinking. Like all autobiographies, Chadwick made choices about what was to be revealed and what hidden or forgotten.30 The ten objects of Ego Geometria Sum demonstrate Pierre Nora’s notion of individuals creating a ‘scaffolding’ of memory: traces that tie the past to the eternal present in an attempt to materialize the immaterial.31 However, as will be discussed, rather than the photographs on the sculptures being documentary evidence that presented Chadwick’s past, the composite images conflate past and present, and the  staged poses combine with representational ‘facts’ becoming  collages of fragments that undermine objectivity and instead lead to a fluidity of meaning. When reconstructing his childhood in written form, Walter Benjamin wrote that his memories were given tone through repeatedly returning to them and, like ‘a man digging’, turning over the soil in search of collector’s pieces, he would arrange them in the ‘prosaic rooms of […] later understanding’.32 For Chadwick also, this was to be an active reconstruction, requiring visits to the sites of memory and hypnosis to ‘regress’ and rediscover the past. Far from being the post-enlightenment project of presenting a stable, rounded individual, the fractured, postmodern self was constructed against unstable contexts that called for a constantly evolving act of self-discovery and self-creation.33 For Chadwick, this required an ‘assertive retraining of my view of myself + my past’.34

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Geometry, Metaphysics and Experience All the chosen objects from Chadwick’s life were depicted using the geometrical forms closest to their normal shape and adhered to the symbolic forms that she had researched. The font was an octagonal prism, which Chadwick noted was linked to the heavens, the pram was a cylinder with quarter of the circumference removed, representing the ‘oyster—earth’, the wigwam a pyramid, and the school a cube, which showed ‘increasing rationalization’.35 Chadwick’s ten sculptures were arranged in a spiral, suggesting the planetary formation of an imaginary galaxy, with the smaller sculptures representing the early years being closest, and the larger ones breaking away from the central pull.36 In her notebook she also notes Bode’s Law for planetary distribution, which states that the distances between each planet is always double that of the previous one, which she used to determine the spaces between the sculptures in exhibition.37 However, this arrangement representing the gravitational pull of influences must have been considered after her initial application for an exhibition of this work at the Aspex Gallery in Portsmouth, as her sketch drawing of the proposed exhibition layout showed the sculptures arranged non-chronologically and distributed around a demarcated space, with an unknown shape, Boat, Wigwam and Font marking the corners.38 An early decision was that each object should correspond with her size at each represented age. She had read a book on human development and growth from birth onwards, taking notes of standards of heights, weights and body measurements.39 A drawing from November 1982 shows the geometric forms graded according to size and arranged in a line.40 This was not just being systematic, as at the top of a sheet where she had written in arbitrary order ‘Incubator 17 ½” Font 22” Pram 27” Wigwam 1 metre Piano 50” Horse 54” Bed 45 ½” Book/desk 60” Statue 63”’, was her heading ‘Metaphysical Geometry’—she clearly believed that scaling each object added metaphysical value.41 The importance of the work being seen as metaphysical rather than just being a documentation of her development is evident throughout her notebooks and the photocopies that she kept. One of the newspaper cuttings that Chadwick collected and annotated was a review written by Waldemar Januszczak on an exhibition of de Chirico’s paintings at the Tate Gallery in 1982. It discussed the artist’s use of classical forms that were simultaneously symbolic and emotionally charged.42 Always keen to

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read in relation to what she was making at the time, she underlined particular phrases, such as ‘Empty squares framed by sinister arcades’, and in the adjacent margin she wrote: ‘* Parthenon + desk’ ‘casting long menacing shadows’. Sometimes she just underlined phrases such as ‘all the objects have the authority of a symbol, but none of its clarity of meaning’. Across the top of the page she wrote: ‘hands repossess (objects of) the past, frozen fragments of time heavy + proud with meaning… pure melancholic sense of loss’. This combination of subjective emotion, memory and classical forms underpinned her thinking for the work. In the catalogue to the Serpentine Summer Show 1 Chadwick wrote: Suppose one’s body […] could be traced back through a succession of geometric solids, […] taking form from the pressure of recalled external forces […] and if geometry is an expression of eternal and exact truths, inherent in the natural law of matter and thus manifestations of absolute beauty, predestined, of divine origin […] then let this classical model of mathematical harmony be infused with a poetry of feeling and memory to sublimate the discord of past passion and desire in a recomposed neutrality of being.43

Finding and Constructing Memory Objects experienced over time create a mesh of meaning for the owner that become part of their personal world, which, as Gaston Bachelard—a philosopher whom Chadwick read and admired—Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty have all argued, is carried around within us, and is understood through bodily interaction, memories and imagination.44 In his book The Poetics of Space, Bachelard wrote about childhood spaces in the home, and how particular nooks and crannies where one had dreamed are inscribed into our childhood selves, and become places to which one can mentally return later in life to relive those memories.45 Chadwick chose the objects and related images that were to be shown in Ego Geometria Sum after much research, both into her family archive and through revisiting key places. She collected toys, clothes, letters, school reports and receipts for the pram, which she arranged chronologically.46 Echoing Bachelard’s dictum that one should explore experiences actively and that perception was an imbrication of subject and object, Chadwick created an album that juxtaposed childhood photographs with those that she took in the same location.47 Opposite a childhood picture

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of her with her parents, playing in a wigwam in the garden, is one depicting the same bungalow that she photographed from the street, with a huge electricity mast behind. On another page is an old photograph from her junior school of young children arranged in lines, playing triangles and cymbals, with another child on a stool in front directing. Opposite this is a photograph she took of the outside of the school in the 1980s.48 Whereas her family album would have acted, like all family albums, like a ‘prosthetic’ memory, capturing events to be activated in future presents, Chadwick’s revisiting of sites from her childhood and taking reels of film created an archive of the present. The childhood photograph showing Chadwick crouched in the wigwam in her best dress, with her father and mother seemingly casually standing on either side, grasping the wigwam, is a sun-drenched image, with doors and windows of the bungalow open, and everyone smiling. Although apparently about the everyday, it also encapsulates a particular social and intellectual world with its performances and negotiations, set against a material backdrop.49 Both Marius Kwint and Daniel Miller have observed how objects and possessions are instrumental in the formation of consciousness and identity, through stimulating remembering, setting one within a set of cultural relationships and becoming analogies to living memory.50 Chadwick found that when returning to sites she was an outsider. As Andreas Huyssen wrote, the past is not simply there in memory; there is a fissure between experiencing an event and remembering it in representation.51 Obviously, Chadwick would not have remembered engaging with all of the objects, but when displayed in a gallery, for both viewer and Chadwick, they would trigger particular cultural resonances and personal memories. The sites and objects that Chadwick documented were greater than those used in the final work. For instance, she took photographs of the houses where she lived in Bristol and Brighton, of the Hayward Gallery where she had a season ticket, and her grandfather’s shed and allotments in Leyton, Essex.52 Chadwick’s adult presence is evident throughout these, through her determined and searching eye seeking out the places of enactment, and once there, the perfect image. When visiting her high school, she photographed different pieces of gym equipment, as well as the library, notice boards and lockers, and the lectern was photographed from a number of angles.53 When she was unable to photograph the original, she found objects of the same type. Chadwick’s engagement with these objects from her past is evident throughout her photographic archive. Her hands open and close the Oxygenaire incubator. She sits smiling in the sand boat

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that she has built. She pushes a pram, and there are a number of photos of the wigwam with her hands coming out of the flaps at different heights and positions, and one of her sitting outside it fully clothed.54 All of the final objects show Chadwick’s adult hands touching or holding the objects. She wrote about the ‘laying on of hands’ as soothing, as a means of transferring energy between the past and present, and of recovering her past.55 At the end of her notebook she writes about the hands playing the music of the spheres, with the objects as musical instruments.56 Like the use of metaphysical shapes, she joins the rational and classical with the emotional and spiritual. It is this duality that she wanted to suggest in the hands that ‘played’ the Piano, that touched the top of the Horse and that splayed out from the Wigwam flaps.

The Juggler’s Table The small, card maquettes that Chadwick made in 1982 were trials for the larger sculptures. Onto these she printed photographs from her childhood. One printed in the catalogue for the Serpentine Gallery’s Summer Show 1 had the wigwam with flaps closed and adult hands coming out, with Chadwick and her best friend to the left, and on the right she is in the wigwam with her parents.57 When shown in exhibition at the Aspex Gallery, this table-top version of card sculptures combined with photographs from her family archive was called The Jugglers Table, and was set up in the niche of the gallery.58 The small sculptures were made like the images that were printed on the back of cereal packets during her childhood, which could be cut out, folded and pasted into animal heads and small toys.59 She offered to make ‘freebies’ of these objects ‘à la Weetabix box’, for the public to take away.60 Chadwick saw herself as the figure of The Juggler—also known as the Magician, the Conjurer and Le Bateleur—in the tarot cards. There is a photocopied image of this ambivalent card from B.  P. Grimaud’s 1969 pack of cards, the Tarot of Marseilles pasted into Chadwick’s notebook, and she also made copious notes about the underlying meanings from Fred Gettings’ The Book of Tarot.61 On the one hand, the Juggler is Everyman who juggles with everyday items like peas, a knife and a dice. However, these are symbolic of potentially more potent objects, symbolizing the idea that the Juggler has the capacity for development and spiritual vision within his grasp, but does not realise this.62 In Chadwick’s notes she writes ‘Why juggler acting to audience? Who is audience? […]

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development of self as spiritual exercise within the framework of ordinary life. Reconciliation.’63 This also draws out the continuum in Chadwick’s thinking between the everyday and its staging as art, between her private world and that which she presented to the public. While Ego Geometria Sum is easily perceived as symbolic, the small arrangement of card sculptures set on a table with snapshots from her family album informally arranged, suggests the raw material in a domestic setting waiting to be transformed. She appears as the Juggler in front of the Juggler’s Table in the catalogues of the Serpentine Gallery’s Summer Show 1 (1983) and Hand Signals at the Ikon Gallery (1985). Whereas most of the photographs taken during the photographic shoot depict Chadwick behind the installation, the final version shows only Chadwick’s hands on the table, with the camera angle and height suggesting that it is she who views the objects and considers their potential. The associated poem to the image in the Ikon Gallery catalogue reads: Poised in the act of entertaining An invisible audience, the Juggler stands before a Table laid with the paraphernalia of time.64

Ego Geometria Sum: Image and Truth The imagery on the plywood sculptures is complex, layered and fractured. Chadwick noted the need to add a ‘ghost’ and double expose the photographs.65 In this she was aligning her work with a major photographic preoccupation in Britain in the early 1980s: that of severing the binary opposition between photography as objective truth, and art as being the province of subjective expression. Like many artists of the decade, she looked back to photography from the 1920s and 1930s to create a different relationship between the image and the world, art and culture.66 The images on the sculptures were tinted peachy-brown and blue to suggest old photographs. However, her family and childhood-self have been removed, and instead, only the places and objects of experience are shown. Superimposed onto these are images of her nude adult body in poses that relate to the forms and that perform in relation to those objects, and her adult hands touching the objects in ways that suggest nurture.

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Chadwick had read and taken notes from Psychic Photography by Hans Holzer.67 She noted ‘thought forms registering on photographic film’ and ‘Psychic photography can = record of past events somehow left behind in atmosphere during event itself’. She also notes how ‘multiple exposure types and patterns: suggests mirror-like reflections’.68 When later asked which photographers she admired, Chadwick said Man Ray. She found his images very elusive—‘suspended’—and spoke of his photograms as seeming to ‘float like an aura, a presence left behind’.69 The collaging of time and space suggests some surrealist photomontages. However, in Chadwick’s work there is less play with scale, and rather than the images being cut fragments with clear foci, the collaging is more subtle and images transparent. Unlike the decontextualizing of the disparate narratives in Dada photomontages, Chadwick’s composite images remain individually coherent, and are veiled over relevant objects. Later, in a way that echoed her reading of The Ghost in the Machine, she was to write about the images in Ego Geometria Sum that these ‘fugitive traces offer evidence of the passage of time, the effects and constraining influence of socialisation’.70 The forms of her adult naked body—she refers to her nakedness as giving her the status of subject rather than object—were designed to conform to the shape of the objects and convey a mental state. Overall, the poses gradually become more rigid as her represented age increases, to show her ‘training’. The Incubator shows her adult body in a foetal position. The Font depicts her on her stomach, head to one side and legs bent outwards, resembling the pose of many sleeping babies. Those representing her older self are more active in their emotional content. On one side of the cuboid form of ‘School’, she is shown crouched, arms extended and head turned away, apparently in a gesture of rejection similar to that of Susanna in Artemisia Gentileschi’s Susanna and the Elders (1610). For the final sculpture, The Statue, she stands stiffly upright, a performing artist, head turned to face the door of 45 Beck Road—her home and studio. Amelia Jones was later to argue that the inclusion of the artist’s body as a performing element can open up the interpretive exchange between audience and artist, as it becomes the site at which production and reception come together.71 Penelope Curtis wrote in in an exhibition catalogue from the early 1990s that the depiction of artists’ bodies worked as a bridge between the art and spectator.72 The imagery of Chadwick in Ego Geometria Sum was part of the theatricality of much postmodern practice, where the body was frequently staged as contingent, fragmentary, and

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suggestive of absence rather than full presence.73 The combination of her photographed, posed body and the ‘boxes’, ‘cabinets’ or ‘coffins’ as she termed the sculptural forms, which she felt encased and contained her past, brings together two ideas: that of the box as used by artists over the twentieth century and tableau vivant. Aura Satz has pertinently written that in tableaux vivants, the performer camouflages her identity to assume different guises, and disappears while still being present.74 She reveals something through interrupting of the flowing choreography of life, fixing and framing a moment in sculpture.75 This idea of elusive and performed presence is also explored by Roland Barthes, when he wrote that a photograph of oneself represents a subtle moment when one is neither subject nor object, but a subject who feels that she is becoming an object. ‘The photograph is the advent of myself as other: a cunning dissociation of consciousness from identity’.76 This play with the fluidity of identity where an identifiable person appears in another guise was explored in many feminist works from the 1970s and 1980s, including by Susan Hiller, Cindy Sherman and Hannah Wilke. Unlike Sherman or Wilke, Chadwick’s staged poses were not garnered from the gender codes of film or historic paintings. In Ego Geometria Sum, Chadwick turned her head away from the viewer, so that apart from The Statue, her face is not seen. Her poses do not suggest the non-­ reflexive, passive nude designed for the male gaze, and neither do her eyes confront or seduce the viewer. Chadwick resisted that objectification. An example of this is the relation of Chadwick’s body to the Piano. Chadwick wrote about her hostility and resistance towards the instrument, how she was forced to practice and how this gave her back pain. She used the metronome as a technique for hypnosis to regress to the ‘unpleasant piano experiences of early days’.77 On one side of the sculpture, her kneeling, naked, adult body is depicted. The contact sheets of the photo shoot show her always kneeling, but she experimented with her arm gestures, looking defiant with arms on hips or crossed. In the final work her pose suggests her playing the instrument.78 On the front, her disembodied hands engage with the keyboard, and staves of music are printed on the top. The ply grain shows through the imagery suggesting the act of remembering as much as the memories themselves. This transparency and complexity was only made possible by the improvements made to photographic emulsion. Chadwick was never afraid of using the latest technical developments, in this case Silver Magic by Barfen.79

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Ego Geometria Sum: Containing Memory The perfection of the making of the industrial plywood sculptures, with chamfered edges held closed with tiny pins and the imagery that fits the forms exactly, helps the illusion that these are less worked sculptures and more a symbolic manifestation of memories, where her past and present are suspended within the context of the objects and places. Chadwick kept detailed notes of her ideas about the way the work could be displayed, including a performance, holding conducted tours, whispered sounds coming from the sculptures and a video.80 Surrounding and defining the extent of the installation in all its various configurations were long, sateen, peach-coloured curtains. Chadwick later wrote that she used these to suggest a space beyond the forms associated with memory.81 This notion of hidden space together with the iconographic tradition of curtains proposing theatrical reality, combine with the sculptural ‘boxes’ that suggest repositories of memory. In her notebook, she frequently questioned the relationships between outer surface and hidden lives, between the containing space and different forms that act upon the psyche, and between the tangible enclosing the intangible. She wanted the objects to suggest memories and trigger intuitive and contemplative thought in the audience.82 Her overriding concept was that ‘the gallery becomes the memory / [the gallery] is the brain / a metaphor for the memory / Walk in space = getting inside artist’s head.’83 This chapter has considered how Chadwick instilled identity formation within the making and exhibiting of Ego Geometria Sum. Chadwick was a meticulous artist who researched widely, and through this was able to combine contemporary and classical ideas in ways that undermine a safe reading. Chadwick’s use of visual language was constantly inventive; she always explored new techniques, and honed the aesthetic to be relevant for what she wanted to convey. As Marina Warner expressed it: ‘Helen Chadwick’s search was metaphysically ambitious…she believed that the objects of knowledge become part of one’s being, that you can metamorphose according to what you explore, how you express it, what you choose to inquire into and what knowledge you ingest’.84

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Notes 1. Helen Chadwick, Further Notebook on Early Work, 20. Available at http://hmi.onlineculture.co.uk/ttp/?c=7 Last accessed 4 October 2017. 2. Jon Thompson, “Presenting Reality”, in The British Art Show: Old Allegiances and New Directions, 1979–1984 (Arts Council: Orbis, 1984), 108–111, 111. 3. Richard Cork, “A Splendid Case for Mixing Media’” The Standard (30th June 1983). 4. Stephen Walker, Helen Chadwick: Constructing Identities between Art and Architecture (I.B. Tauris, 2013). Leonie O’Dwyer, ‘Ego Geometria Sum’: A Biography (Leeds: Henry Moore Institute, 2012). Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe (Harmonsworth: Penguin Books, 1964). Arthur Koestler, The Ghost in the Machine (London: Arcana, 1989/1967). 5. Chadwick, Notebook for Model Institution, 68–69. Available at http:// hmi.onlineculture.co.uk/ttp/?c=7 Last accessed 8 July 2017. 6. Helen Chadwick, Notebook for Ego Geometria Sum, 4–5. Available at http://hmi.onlineculture.co.uk/ttp/?c=7 Last accessed 5 September 2017. 7. Ibid., 6–7. 8. Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe (London: Hutchison/Penguin, 1959), 9. 9. Ibid., 10. 10. Chadwick, Notebook for Ego Geometria Sum, 23. 11. Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, 233–236. 12. Ibid., 239. 13. Chadwick, Notebook for Ego Geometria Sum, 7. 14. Ibid., 6–7. 15. Box 18, folder 5/10 Research notes. Helen Chadwick Archive at the Henry Moore Institute. All further references to boxes are from this archive unless stated. 16. Chadwick, Notebook for Ego Geometria Sum, 54. 17. Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, 255. 18. Ibid., 247. 19. Chadwick, Notebook for Ego Geometria Sum, 82. 20. Ibid., 79. 21. Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, 30. 22. Ibid., 30–32. 23. Ibid., 35–37. 24. Chadwick, Notebook for Ego Geometria Sum, 70. 25. Ibid., 79. 26. Ibid., 80 and 83.

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27. Arthur Koestler, The Ghost in the Machine (London: Hutchinson, 1967), 3. 28. Ibid., 9–11. 29. Artists Recordings from the Arts Research Archive 1989–96, at the Henry Moore Institute archive. Cv-var. Helen Chadwick recorded 6 October 1989. 30. Gunnthórunn Gudmunsdóttir, Borderlines. Autobiography and Fiction in Postmodern Life Writing (Amsterdam and New  York: Rodopi, 2003), 1 and 11. See also Imogen Racz, Art and the Home: Comfort, Alienation and the Everyday (I.B. Tauris, 2015), 134–139. 31. Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire,” Representations (Spring 1989), 7–25, 19. 32. Walter Benjamin, “A Berlin Chronicle”, in Walter Benjamin, One Way Street (London and New York: Verso, 2000), 314. 33. Paul John Eakin, Fiction in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of Self-­ Invention (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 3 and 5. Leigh Gilmore, “The Mark of Autobiography: Postmodernism, Autobiography and Genre”, in Kathleen Ashley, Leigh Gilmore and Gerald Peters, eds. Autobiography and Postmodernism (Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), 3–18. 34. Chadwick, Notebook for Ego Geometria Sum, 82. 35. Ibid., 79. 36. John Roberts, “Introduction” to Summer Show 1 (London: Serpentine Art Gallery, 1983). 37. Chadwick, Notebook for Ego Geometria Sum, 104. 38. See sketch in Helen Chadwick folder, Aspex Gallery Archive. 39. Chadwick, Notebook for Ego Geometria Sum, 68–69. She took notes from J. M. Tanner, Foetus into Man, Physical Growth from Conception to Maturity (London: Open Books, 1978). 40. See image in O’Dwyer, Helen Chadwick’s ‘Ego Geometria Sum’, 21. 41. Box 18, Folder 4/10. 42. “Waldemar Januszczak Reviews de Chirico at the Tate. Dreams of the Metaphysician,” Arts Guardian, August 4, 1982. Box 18, 5/10. 43. Helen Chadwick, Enfleshings (Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd, 1989), p.  9. This was also the text accompanying the invitation card for Ego Geometria Sum and for the exhibition poster for the Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth. See letter dated September 22 1983 from Helen Chadwick to Andy/John, and finished card in the Helen Chadwick archive of the Aspex Gallery. 44. See, for instance, Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space [1958], trans. Maria Jolas (1964; Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1994); Maurice Merleau-­ Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (London and New  York, NY: Routledge, 2002); and Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans. W. R. Boyce Gibson (London: Allen & Unwin; New York, NY: Humanities Press, 1931).

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45. Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 14. 46. Sue Breakwell and Victoria Worsley, “Collecting the Traces: an Archivist’s Perspective”, Journal of Visual Art Practice, 6:3 (2007), 175–189. Viewed online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1386/jvap.6.3.175_1. Last accessed 8 July 2017. 47. Mary McAllester Jones, Gaston Bachelard, Subversive Humanist: Texts and Readings (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), pp. 9–11. 48. Box 58.1. Photograph album called Photographies. 49. See Judy Attfield, Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000), 173–179. 50. Marius Kwint, “Introduction” to Marius Kwint, Christopher Breward and Jeremy Aynsley, eds., Material Memories (Oxford and New  Yorks: Berg, 1999), 2. Daniel Miller, The Comfort of Things (Cambridge and Malden Mass: Polity, 2008), 287–293. 51. Andreas Huyssen, Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 3. 52. Box 58.1. Ring-binder of negatives and contact prints. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. Chadwick, Notebook for Ego Geometria Sum, 77, 76, 98. 56. Ibid., 123. 57. Roberts, “Introduction”. 58. See exhibition pamphlet, ‘My Personal Museum’. Ego Geometria Sum from the Helen Chadwick Archive (Leeds: Henry Moore Institute, 2004). 59. See diagrams in Chadwick, Notebook for Ego Geometria Sum, 60–61. 60. Letter from Helen Chadwick to Steve, n.d. Aspex Gallery Archive, Folder ‘Helen Chadwick, 1983/4. Installations exhibition’. These were to be printed using a computer. 61. Chadwick, Notebook for Ego Geometria Sum, 88–91, Walker, Helen Chadwick, 24–25. 62. Walker, Helen Chadwick, 32. 63. Chadwick, Notebook for Ego Geometria Sum, 90. 64. Conrad Atkinson, and Andrew Nairne, Hand Signals (Birmingham: Ikon Gallery, 1985), 30. 65. Chadwick, Notebook for Ego Geometria Sum, 84. For an interesting discussion about Chadwick’s composite imagery in relation to Hogarth and Boullee, see Stephen Walker, “Helen Chadwick’s Composite Images”, Journal of Visual Culture (April 2015), 74–98. 66. John Roberts, The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography and the Everyday (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 146. 67. Hans Holzer, Psychic Photography: Threshold of a New Science? (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969)

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68. Box 18, folder 5/10. 69. “A Mirror to Yourself, Helen Chadwick Interviewed by Tom Evans (June 1986)” in David Brittain, ed. Creative Camera, Thirty Years of Writing (Manchester University Press, 1999), 145–149, 148. 70. Chadwick, Enfleshings, 11. 71. Amelia Jones, Body Art/Performing the Subject (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 14. 72. Penelope Curtis, “Introduction”, Elective Affinities (Liverpool: Tate Gallery, 1993), 6–12, 6. Helen Chadwick was included in the exhibition. 73. Jones, Body Art/Performing the Subject, 241, note 3. 74. Aura Satz, “Tableaux Vivants: Inside the Statue”, in Aura Satz and Jon Wood, eds, Articulate Objects (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009), 157–181, 179. 75. Ibid. 76. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), 13. 77. Box 18. Folder 5/10. 78. Box 58.1. Ring-binder of negatives and contact prints. 79. Roberts, “Introduction”. 80. Chadwick, Notebook for Ego Geometria Sum, 9. 81. Unedited transcript of a dialogue between Helen Chadwick and Emma Cocker, dated 2 December 1995. In Women’s Art Library, Artist’s box: Helen Chadwick 1953–1996. 82. Chadwick, Notebook for Ego Geometria Sum, 98–9. 83. Ibid., 12. 84. Marina Warner, “Preface”, in Mark Sladen ed., Helen Chadwick, (London: Barbican Art Gallery; Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2004), 9–11, 10. See also her essay: “In Extremis’ Helen Chadwick and the Wound of Difference”, in Helen Chadwick and Marina Warner, Helen Chadwick: Stilled Lives (Portfolio Gallery and Kunsthallen Brandt Klaedefabrik, 1996), n.p.

Reference List Archive Material Helen Chadwick, Further Notebook on Early Work. Available at http://hmi. onlineculture.co.uk/ttp/?c=7 Helen Chadwick, Notebook for Model Institution. Available at http://hmi. onlineculture.co.uk/ttp/?c=7 Helen Chadwick, Notebook for Ego Geometria Sum. Available at http://hmi. onlineculture.co.uk/ttp/?c=7

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Helen Chadwick Archive at the Henry Moore Institute: Box 18, and Box 58.1. Artists Recordings from the Arts Research Archive 1989–1996. Cv-var. Helen Chadwick recorded 6 October 1989 Aspex Gallery Archive: Helen Chadwick Folder Women’s Art Library: Artist’s box: Helen Chadwick 1953–1996

References “A Mirror to Yourself, Helen Chadwick Interviewed by Tom Evans, (June 1986)”. 1999. In Creative Camera, Thirty Years of Writing, ed. David Brittain, 145–149. Manchester University Press. Atkinson, Conrad, and Andrew Nairne. 1985. Hand Signals. Birmingham: Ikon Gallery. Attfield, Judy. 2000. Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life. Oxford and New York: Berg. Bachelard, Gaston. 1994. The Poetics of Space [1958]. Translated by Maria Jolas. 1964; Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Barthes, Roland. 1982. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New  York: Hill and Wang. Benjamin, Walter. 2000. A Berlin Chronicle. In One Way Street, ed. Walter Benjamin. London and New York: Verso. Breakwell, Sue, and Victoria Worsley. 2007. Collecting the Traces: an Archivist’s Perspective. Journal of Visual Art Practice 6 (3): 175–189. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1386/jvap.6.3.175_1. Chadwick, Helen. 1989. Enfleshings. Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd. Chadwick, Helen, and Marina Warner. 1996. Helen Chadwick: Stilled Lives. Portfolio Gallery and Kunsthallen Brandt Klaedefabrik. Cork, Richard. 1983. A Splendid Case for Mixing Media. The Standard, June 30. Curtis, Penelope. 1993. Introduction. In Elective Affinities, 6–12. Liverpool: Tate Gallery. Eakin, Paul John. 1985. Fiction in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of Self-­ Invention. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gilmore, Leigh. 1994. The Mark of Autobiography: Postmodernism, Autobiography and Genre. In Autobiography and Postmodernism, ed. Kathleen Ashley, Leigh Gilmore, and Gerald Peters. Amhurst: University of Massachusetts Press. Gudmunsdóttir, Gunnthórunn. 2003. Borderlines. Autobiography and Fiction in Postmodern Life Writing. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. Holzer, Hans. 1969. Psychic Photography: Threshold of a New Science? New York: McGraw-Hill. Husserl, Edmund. 1931. Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Translated by W. R. Boyce Gibson. London: Allen & Unwin; New York, NY: Humanities Press.

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Huyssen, Andreas. 1995. Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia. London and New York: Routledge. Jones, Amelia. 1998. Body Art/Performing the Subject. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Koestler, Arthur. 1989/1967. The Ghost in the Machine. London: Arcana. ———. 1964. The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Kwint, Marius, Christopher Breward, and Jeremy Aynsley, eds. 1999. Material Memories. Oxford and New Yorks: Berg. McAllester Jones, Mary. 1991. Gaston Bachelard, Subversive Humanist: Texts and Readings. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Miller, Daniel. 2008. The Comfort of Things. Cambridge and Malden Mass: Polity. O’Dwyer, Leonie. 2012. ‘Ego Geometria Sum’: A Biography. Leeds: Henry Moore Institute. Pierre, Nora. 1989. Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire. Representations. Spring. 7–25. Roberts, John. 1998. The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography and the Everyday. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Satz, Aura. 2009. Tableaux Vivants: Inside the Statue. In Aura Satz and Jon Wood, eds., Articulate Objects. Oxford: Peter Lang. 157–181. Sladen, Mark, ed. 2004. Helen Chadwick. London: Barbican Art Gallery; Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz Thompson, Jon. 1984. Presenting Reality. In The British Art Show: Old Allegiances and New Directions, 1979–1984. Arts Council: Orbis. Walker, Stephen. 2013. Helen Chadwick: Constructing Identities between Art and Architecture, London: I.B. Tauris.

CHAPTER 8

Cutting Onions and Cooking Stew as Corporeal Palimpsests: Stabilising the Unstable on a Theatre Stage in Mexico City Ruth Hellier Scenario Six On a tiny stage in a small theatre in the north of Mexico City, about 150 performers and members of the public co-mingle in the performance space. Row after row of red velvet seats in the auditorium are empty, provocatively emphasising the mixings of bodies on stage. Already over two hours into the performance, everybody on stage transitions into the sixth scenario. Three performers—Sandra, Sergio, and Víctor—carry a red table laden with food items and cooking objects into the brightly lit space and place it near the back wall. Setting up the culinary equipment—a stovetop, a large pot, an open frying pan, a chopping board, knives, a bag of potatoes, onions, shrimp, herbs, oil, seasoning, and nachos—they make preparations for the performative scenario of cooking stew. Sandra puts on an apron and stands behind the table with her back to the wall. After lighting a candle to San Judas Tadeo—patron of impossible and

R. Hellier (*) University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2020 S. Whatley et al. (eds.), Art and Dance in Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44085-5_8

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difficult causes—and taking a swig of mezcal from a glass, Sandra scrutinises the array of objects, checking that she has everything she needs for her familiar, everyday ritualistic actions. Meanwhile, other participants (performers and public alike) move chairs into a semi-circle around the table, their backs to the unoccupied auditorium. They generate a spatiality of intimacy and sharing, “as if” in Sandra’s kitchen in the coastal city of Tampico. Everybody chatters and settles through these processes of trans-forming, re-forming, and re-placing of bodies in the space. Sandra picks up a sharp knife and an onion and begins to cut. Her choreographed slicing motions are efficient, with movements of her arms, hands, and fingers that are habitual and almost instinctive. As she cuts she talks. She talks informally, intimately, passionately, and casually of her daily life in Tampico, pausing now and again to pick up another onion, or to slide the neatly cut pieces into a pan. She talks of how the city has recently become a place of instability through the presence of rival drug-dealing factions; of the difficulties of meeting up with her friends; of Oliver, a teenage boy who asked her not to cancel the scheduled theatre workshop, reminding her that doing so would be giving in to the control of the lawbreakers; and of phoning Sergio and Víctor to arrange to meet at her home to eat a meal together. As she cuts and talks, and talks and cuts, Sandra focuses her eyes on the knife and onion, looking up now and again to make eye contact with the audience around her. As she talks and cuts, the audience listens and watches intently, eager witnesses to the gradually-taking-shape meal. In the transformed context of the theatre stage, the usual iterations of cutting, peeling, and stirring are multiplied to accommodate the expectations of 150 peckish bodies. (Fig. 8.1)

Scenarios as Palimpsests This is the penultimate scenario of the multi-company collaborative project titled Zapata, Death Without End (Zapata, Muerte sin fin) which took place over the course of a year during 2014 and 2015. It was organised by La Máquina de Teatro (the Theatre Machine), one of Mexico’s leading experimental body-based performance companies, directed by Juliana Faesler and Clarissa Malheiros.1 In this 20-minute scenario of cutting onions and cooking stew, the loose collective of three theatre performers/ artists from the city of Tampico, Tamaulipas move with significant objects to perform provocations and re-visions. Together they prepare and then serve a meal of shrimp stew. Through spatial co-mingling and ritual performance of everyday food preparation they resist and transform unstable narratives of uncertainty into a stable scenario of convivial sharing.

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Fig. 8.1  Zapata, Death Without End (Zapata, Muerte sin fin). El Foro del Dinosaurio del Museo Universitario del Chopo, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, La Máquina de Teatro, A la Deriva Teatro, la Rendija, Colectivo Escénico Oaxaca and A-tar. March 2015. Photo credit: La Máquina de Teatro (Juliana Faesler and Andy Castro)

Collective performance projects of La Máquina de Teatro are always politically and aesthetically provoking and deeply playful. Their strategies and approaches engage with trans-ness, multiple identities, fluidity, and queer sensibilities. They encompass complex feminist cultural positionings. They develop apposite aesthetics through explorations in collective creative laboratories, working through body-based devising processes and collective creation (using Lecoq and Viewpoints expertise). They draw on multiple crossings of historical bodies with personal experiences. They engage traits that require a form of synesthetic perception and evenly hovering attention, using concepts of diversity, complexity, simultaneity, contradiction, and density so that their work can be analysed in terms of the aesthetic practices of liminal performance (Broadhurst 1999) and postdramatic theatre (Lehmann 2006).2

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From the complex project Zapata I have selected one section for my focus. I have given this the label “scenario of cutting onions and cooking stew.” I find Diana Taylor’s concept of a scenario particularly useful as an analytical framework for understanding the performative iterations and aesthetic practices in this project. Taylor describes how a scenario “makes visible, yet again, what is already there: the ghosts, the images, the stereotypes. … A scenario usually works through reactivation rather than duplication,” therefore confronting and transforming stereotypes (2003, 28).3 As “the scenario forces us to situate ourselves in relationship to it, as participants, spectators, or witnesses” (ibid.), so the familiarity with every object and movement enables deep corporeal experiences of postmemory and rememory through convivio. For Argentinian theatre scholar Jorge Dubatti the notion of convivio is one of sharing, meaning “to coexist or, literally, to co-live” (2010).4 Ileana Diéguez Caballero, one of Mexico’s leading theatre and performance scholars, expands on Dubatti’s notion to describe convivio as an encounter of presences, as dialogical audience-­ performer relationships, and as with the audience not for audience (2007, 33).5 Indeed, in the project of Zapata the many scenarios incorporate notions of histories, memories, and temporalities through the body-to-­ body transmission of the re-visions which playfully and powerfully subvert expectations. Everybody participates in re-visions of history through active collaborative encounters. For my analysis, I draw on participant-observation experiences both with this project and with the company La Máquina de Teatro in Mexico. I combine these project-specific research processes with three long-term professional frameworks: firstly, as a creative artist, practitioner, teacher, and facilitator of experimental and devised theatre and interdisciplinary performance-making; secondly, as a researcher of politics and poetics of cultural practices in Mexico (particularly theatre, dance, music, and performance); and thirdly, as a scholar of theatre, dance, and performance.6

Collective Creation Through Disparate Processes For the duration of one year, the multi-ensemble, multi-aesthetic laboratory project Zapata, Death Without End brought together five theatre groups from five different states engaging five deeply diverse aesthetics and objectives, engaging embodied inquiries to explore complexities of collective and personal memories, histories, and temporalities.7 With an open and complex structure of playfulness and community, this project

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enabled dialogues of community engagement of difference. Embodying concepts of hybridity, plurality, trans-ness, translations, and journeys, the project involved four types of events: (1) multi-ensemble workshops; (2) ensemble-specific workshops; (3) at-distance virtual communication; and (4) public performances. Multi-ensemble workshops were held for a week in the city of Mérida, Yucatán, and in the studio of the organising company La Máquina de Teatro in Mexico City. Throughout these sessions there was a fluidity of coming and going, with variable numbers of participants. As is usual with lab sessions, these workshops were liminal and ritual spaces, in which strangers became friends through embodied praxis. Unlike many arts projects seeking to generate unity through similarity, distinct differences in aesthetic practices and experiences were utilised as key elements for creating community engagement and dialogue. After the in-person workshop sessions, the five ensembles returned to their own communities, where they continued to generate and shape material through live workshops in their home cities. Using virtual technologies (particularly uploading photos taken on personal phones to a dedicated website), the five groups maintained a network of creative practice. The project culminated in four public performances in March 2015 when all five collectives gathered for a week in the theatre of El Chopo University Museum, Mexico City. Working on the small, enclosed stage, they workshopped and shared their material, structured their scenarios for public performances, and, for four nights, performed two different loosely organised performances for a paying public. Through a flexible yet structured framework of collective participation—comprising fully rehearsed scenarios, improvisational scenarios, and deliberately inclusive scenarios with the public—the performances engaged a politics of invitation by sharing lives through performing palimpsest bodies.

Remains of a Body of History As a framing strategy for the whole project, remains of a body of history were used to engender embodied inquires. The man—Emiliano Zapata— was an archetypal hero, an iconic revolutionary, and a rural worker who was elected to become a leader in the struggles for land, liberty, justice, and rights in the chaotic revolutionary wars of the early twentieth century (1910–1920). In Mexico, Zapata embodies activism for human rights, struggles for land and freedom, resistance to powerful leaders by underdogs, community through heterogeneity, and hopes and expectations

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connecting national collective memories with very personal and familiar experiences. The three object-related questions opened up multiple possibilities for shared and personal explorations and re-visions of memories and histories:—“What is the value of land?”—“What is freedom?”—“What is a hero?” This framework provided the potency for performing diversity and resistance as performers and public co-mingled and co-participated on stage through actions of real-time cooking and eating. These specific, materials of shared history enable a framework of diverse responses for “[I]t is then through the continuities between a heightened sense of creativity and the apparent trivialities of everyday living that we may come to see what is extraordinary in ordinary life, and what is strange in it’s mundane familiarity” (Negus and Pickering 2004, 61). When this takes place within a context of postmemory, this tension between ordinary lives and traumatic collective histories of rupture offers multiple possibilities for creative expression. The concept of postmemory, drawing on Marianne Hirsch, describes an overt relationship between a present generation and past actions, where the relation with the past is active and generative, mediated by imaginative investment, projection, and creation (1997, 2008, 2012).8 Working through the historical postmemory of Zapata and through relationships with struggles for land and movements for social justice, this artistic translation presents scenarios of collective memories and histories that were able to “activate and open the past within the present” and “to imagine other ‘potential historical realities’ and thereby ‘open up a different future’” (Heathfield 2012, 30).9 As Rebecca Schneider has suggested, reading history 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] resituate[s] the site of any knowing of history as body-to-body transmission. (2011, 104)10

Through the postmemory of Zapata, the five ensembles generated multifaceted re-visions of shared concerns, using everyday objects for rituals of rememory of issues of land, freedom, and heroes. They were performing palimpsest bodies (Hellier-Tinoco 2019). Palimpsests are inherently trans-­ temporal containing traces and remains of previous existences, even as they are experienced in a present moment. Palimpsests are formed through deliberate rupture and  erasure, through movements over time, through

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layering and sedimentation, through complex arrangements, and through shifts and accumulations of iterations. Palimpsests contain a plurality of fragments and ephemera, existing through simultaneity and juxtaposition. Palimpsests provide evidence of multiple journeys, stories, and environments through a temporal narrative that is often ambiguous. Palimpsests involve strategies of re-using and re-forming, where traces endure, sometimes barely tangible, sometimes ghostly, yet always remaining. Performing palimpsest bodies always contain trans-temporal plurality through remains and re-making.

Zapata, Death Without End: An Outline of Scenarios As the public enters the theatre, walking into the back of the auditorium, and moving to sit in the empty seats, performers approach them in the aisles, inviting and encouraging them to walk up five steps and onto the stage, where bright stage lights shine down on the gathering assembly. On stage, people walk around and chatter. Soon the stage is a container of roughly 150 people. It is not clear who is who. Some wear what seem to be obvious costumes—one woman wears a mariachi (charro) suit of black jacket and trousers with silver buttons down the sides; another wears a large hat with a moustache drawn on her face; some are wearing tee-shirts emblazoned with the iconic face of Zapata and the words “Oaxaca Colectivo;” five wear matching crisp white shirts, neat ties, and jeans; and two young children are carried by two women. All are in a liminal and palimpsest state of subjunctivity, waiting and ready for possibilities, as boundaries between active performers and passive audience are blurred and crossed. For three hours everybody is on stage together, moving around and being moved around. There are no clear demarcations and delineations of space to indicate which bodies should go where; rather, the stage-space is a container of diversity, with no objective of producing unity or sameness, but rather one for generating multiple crossings and layerings. The space is constantly constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed, creating palimpsests of making, re-making, and unmaking11 through co-existence, inclusion, integration, cooperation, communitas, and convivio. There is a tangible sense of bodies being re-placed, re-formed, and trans-formed, even as ephemeral traces remain of each scenario. With a continuous

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dramaturgical structure, five scenarios created by each ensemble are juxtaposed with and merge into collectively created scenarios. In each scenario, simple and familiar objects—stones, egg-boxes, darts, soil, earth, onions, petrol, mangoes—create a trace of shared experience. Scenario One: The opening scenario is overtly participatory. A man’s body lies in the centre of the stage, his arms crossed over the chest and his eyes closed. Stones are scattered around his body. Everybody is offered a pen and invited to write the name of their hero on two stones and place them around the body. As everyone gathers around the body, one by one performers and public individually speak out loud their brief micro-stories of their hero in a ritualistic sharing of experiences. The newly arrived public are encouraged to share in an act of personal and collective re-vision and rememory through processes of writing, speaking, and listening. Scenario Two: Four Mexico City performers, in semi-darkness, transform the stage into an urbanscape with now-empty cardboard egg-box trays (usually holding objects of great fragility) as they re-construct and re-­member personal traces: of a grandfather who fought in the revolution; of a body cut for cancer surgery; of daily living with embodied memory through a poetic iPad reading; and of an adult six-year-old girl’s body held high in the arms of a president assassin. Transitioning into scenario three, the four performers rush around the stage destroying the egg-­box structures in a frenzy of kicking and stomping, re-forming the space as if children playing a game. Scenario Three: The Guadalajara scenario interweaves three elements: a carnivalesque and transgressive game of darts; an impossible domestic task of grinding earth on a tortilla press; and an adult re-vision of a children’s action-song. Everybody is invited to participate in the energised atmosphere of dart-throwing at a balloon-covered board. One by one the balloons are burst, revealing the bloodied and iconic photographed face of the dead Zapata as slips of paper documenting political land use issues are read out loud. Scenario Four: Three highly trained physical theatre performers from Mérida work through repetitive and exhaustive movements in three mounds of earth, offering bodies and soil in states of gradual transformation. As the three performers situate themselves at the edge of the stage, their backs to the uninhabited auditorium, everybody gathers around, feeling the vibrations, hearing the deep breathing, seeing particles of soil rise into the light

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beams, and acting as witness to the bodies-­on-the edge and the alterations of land. Scenario Five: The Oaxaca Collective shifts the focus to the middle of the stage as 12 participants create an inner circle of bodies surrounded by all other public and performers. One by one, each person moves to the centre of the space, holding a small container of earth, and quietly speaking of their own daily experiences, offering glimpses of everyday life. Each dampens the earth and draws a line of mud across their face to mark their skin. When all the stories are told and all the bodies are marked, in an instant the stage is transformed into a raucous and communal environment of laughing and swirling bodies as everyone sings and dances to a familiar song and mezcal is passed around.

Scenario Six: Cutting Onions and Cooking Stew Sandra, Sergio, and Víctor carry a red table laden with food items and cooking objects onto the brightly lit stage area and place it near the back wall. Sandra puts on an apron and stands behind the table with her back to the wall. Everybody else moves chairs into a semi-circle around the table with their backs to the unoccupied auditorium seats, ready to share with Sandra as she shares her experiences and prepares a meal. Onions: Sandra cuts onions. As she cuts her eyes weep tears. She talks and cuts, cuts and talks. She pauses now and again as if re-membering her experiences. As she continues to cut, Víctor and Sergio perform two interstitial traces with potent, iconic objects: petrol and mangoes. Petrol: Víctor picks up a clear glass bottle filled with viscous liquid and walks from person to person around the semi-circle, offering the bottle to everybody to smell. As people sniff at the liquid there are many visceral reactions. As he walks, Víctor talks of the oil industry in Tampico, of foreign companies, of appropriation and expropriation, of huge profits, of this liquid that is so iconic and deeply embedded in questions of exploitation, control, and mobility, extracted from far below the earth’s surface. An archival trace of distant eras, it is intimately part of the transformations of the city of Tampico. Mangoes: Sergio picks up some mangoes and walks from person to person around the semi-circle offering a mango to everybody. As people bite into their mango, sticky juice oozes from the fruit and flows down the sides of their mouths. As he walks, Sergio talks about this quintessential

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food of Tampico as fruits of the earth that are so symbolic of everyday life, of capitalism, and of consumerism. Through talking, smelling, eating, listening, and watching, these two interstitial, inter-related, and juxtaposed traces of everyday objects of Tampico encompass multiple corporeal fragments of cross-temporality, of hyper-locality, and transnational business, of the earth as container and producer. All the while, Sandra continues her choreographies of cutting, cooking, stirring, tasting, talking, and telling.

Ultimate Scenario: Performance Without End As Sandra announces that the food is ready, everybody stands up and steps forward to the table. Plates are filled and people eat, moving around the stage, chattering, chewing, and swallowing. The theatre stage is a site and sight of normalcy and conviviality. Through the postmemory of Zapata, everyday eating is transformed into a performance of resistance, reinvention, and translation. Almost imperceptibly, choreographies of everyday eating transition into choreographies of everyday returning. Gradually, everybody walks off the stage, down the steps, through the auditorium past the rows of empty seats, and out of the building into the night air, returning to their homes.

Rememory and Re-visions and Corporeal Translations in Scenario Six: Cutting Onions and Cooking Stew The potency of the scenario of cutting onions and cooking stew lies in the simplicity and normalcy of the objects and actions of food preparation and cooking, combined with the spatial arrangement and the informality of the speaking. The further integration of two sensory objects—petrol and mangoes—extends the experiences. Of course, food preparation and cooking are ubiquitous and necessary repeated corporeal activities.12 Even in the intimacy of private home kitchens in innumerable global contexts, spatialities and choreographies of cooking offer a potent setting for the sharing of lives and stories. This scenario of cooking performs everyday rituals through rememory. For Toni Morrison, rememory is the continued presence of that which has been forgotten, either actively or passively, embodying a disconnect, a haunting, and a doubleness of “my memory”

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and “not my memory” (1987).13 Morrison’s deeply poetic and evocative use of rememory is wholly corporeal, connecting intimate personal experiences with collective histories. Presences remain as traces that are concealed, and which return through bodies as visceral experiences. The living body is therefore a storehouse and repository, a form of body-­ archive, where rememory is embodied knowledge, buried, concealed, covered, but present. As Sandra cuts and chops, and as she talks of the violence on the streets and of meeting up with her friends Víctor and Sergio, and of not knowing whether it is safe to walk the streets because of the control of territory by rival drug-traffickers, her facial muscles reveal her rememory. Her body offers traces of countless daily bodies since time immemorial preparing everyday sustenance, holding objects of everyday cooking. Her body is a normal body performing her daily repetitive actions as she prepares a meal. On stage, the scenario offers effective and affective performative re-­visions. Adrienne Rich’s concept of re-vision involves the act of going back and entering texts from a new critical direction, not in order to know the texts better but to transform them and to “live—afresh” (Rich 1972).14 Re-vision (and re-membering) involves re-doing and producing new from and with old, specifically with the aim of challenging and transforming values. This coheres with Taylor’s notion of scenario which works through reactivation rather than duplication, therefore confronting and transforming stereotypes (Taylor 2003, 28). The scenario “makes visible, yet again, what is already there: the ghosts, the images, the stereotypes” (ibid.). By using a familiar scenario and by embodying a ritual repetition, the performers transform stereotypical narratives of fierceness of drug-­ trafficking that the Tampico performers could have attempted to re-enact and re-present. These re-visions playfully subvert expectations of repeated violence through the normalcy of corporeal familiarity of cutting onions.15 These are the actions of palimpsest bodies, performing erasure, rupture, and re-making through unremarkable objects and movements. The corporeal actions of Sandra, Sergio, and Víctor perform embodied translations of their everyday lives. Through performative cooking—cutting and frying onions, peeling and boiling potatoes, offering petrol and mangoes as sensory experiences, and inviting to partake of the food—the three performers translate and express their experiences. In “The Performance of Translation,” Patrick Primavesi, reiterating Walter Benjamin’s discussion in “The Task of the Translator,” notes that:

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Benjamin reflects the provisional nature of translation and its irreducible violence, a necessity of interruption and choice and the obligation to ­perform a loss of parts and details. Benjamin defines translation as a process of destruction and transformation. … From a pragmatic point of view, translators always have to decide what to keep and what to lose. (Primavesi 1999, 54–55)16

In these powerfully affective, effective, and kinesthetic choreographies with objects of cooking, the three performers translate and transform the physical, corporeal ferocity of the global drug-trafficking activities of their locality into ubiquitous cooking within the convivial space of a theatre stage. This performance transforms the destruction into sustenance and into a shared meal that can literally be taken into every body. Acting and trans/acting pragmatically, these creative artists have indeed decided what to keep and what to lose, keeping the cutting of onions, the cooking, the chatting, the conviviality, and the shared normalcy of everyday living; and losing the explicit oppressions produced by the power struggles of drug-­ trafficking and criminal transnational businesses.

Stabilising the Unstable: Liminal Norm States of in-betweenness and liminality are also key to the potency of this scenario. Regular and quotidian acts of food preparation and cooking are obvious states of “in-betweenness” and of liminality as norm. Laurietz Seda, in her discussion of trans/acting, has described the “ceaseless process[es] of reinventing and redefining the art of living ‘in-between,’” where “in-betweenness” is a condition, an ontology, a process of living, not a temporary state or phase that is being passed through (2009, 17).17 Jon McKenzie has described the normative dimension of liminality, indicating a sense of stability (2001, 50). On the stage in Mexico City, through these choreographies of daily stability of the normal, the sharing of cutting onions and preparing stew becomes a performative translation of physical violence, corporeally reinventing and redefining notions of power relations, fear, and harassment. Referring to liminality as the subjunctive mood of culture, Victor Turner has described “a striving after new forms and structures” (1984, 11–12).18 As the subjunctive mood is a key component of the Spanish language, embedded in Mexican ways of being, doing, constructing, and conceiving, which includes embodied processes,

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and as subjunctivity indicates potentiality and futurity, so the simplicity of the everyday cutting with an object of everyday normalcy is a performative form of moving into possible futures.19 Through their scenario of everyday cooking, Sandra, Sergio, and Víctor choreograph a form of liminality, unexpectedly stabilising their physically violent experiences through subversion, and simply performing cooking, generating potentiality (preparing food leads to a meal to be eaten) and futurity (food is necessary bodily sustenance for life).

Collective Memory, Communities, and Radical Potentialities What appears as simple, daily cooking offers up a scenario of live bodies performing subjectivity and resistance. Sandra intermingles domesticity with a sense of getting on with life, and a demonstration cooking show in the intimacy of her kitchen at home, generating a sense of belonging through “a politics of invitation, [and] a politics of community” (Taylor 1994, 15).20 George Lipsitz has suggested that communities can be called into being through performance, particularly connecting past and present, describing works of expressive culture as “archives of collective struggle, as repositories of collective memory” (2014, 62–63).21 When the act of recollection takes place in frameworks of social memory (Halbwachs 1991),22 and when the framework incorporates performers and public co-mingling and co-participating on a theatre stage with the expectation of eating a shared meal, then this performance, as a doing and thing done, offers great potential for powerful and playful shared creativity (Diamond 1996; Taylor 2016).23 Amelia Jones has discussed “the politically radical potentialities of the live body in action,” describing how “live art works can thus function ‘as complicated sites where subjectivity challenges subjection, where resistance initiates its moves’” (Jones 2012, 14).24 As Sandra holds a knife, cuts onions, and talks familiarly while she prepares a shared meal, her body translates and transforms a scenario of ferocity into a scenario of collective doing, with politically radical potential to resist and challenge subjection by stabilising the unstable. Her own body is a performing palimpsest body containing and reiterating gesture-traces of erasure, violence, and struggle with embodied movements of unremarkable resistance. Her palimpsest body offers re-visions through relationships of postmemory and rememory.

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Endings and Poiesis The scenario of cutting onions and cooking stew on a theatre stage in Mexico City is an embodied translation and transformation of stereotypes, calling communities into being through performance as ethical praxis. I also tender this description as an ethical praxis of transformation, as another gesture of stabilising the unstable. Feminist scholar Terry Threadgold has described how “critique is itself a poiesis, a making” (1997, 1).25 Taylor has explained how “[t]he West has forgotten about many parts of world that elude its explanatory grasp. Yet, it remembers the need to cement the centrality of its position as the West by creating and freezing the non-West as always other, ‘foreign,’ and unknowable” (2003, 11–12).26 So, as “Mexico” is frequently “frozen” as other, foreign, and unknowable, my critique as poiesis provides a glimpse into the richness and complexity of theatre and performance practices in Mexico, contributing to collective global interconnections for shared understanding. Through cooking with co-mingling performers and public on a theatre stage, my translation of a live body cutting onions in Mexico connects to daily bodies cutting onions in countless global contexts through corporealities of everyday normalcy. Together all are performing palimpsest bodies through moving with everyday objects.

Notes 1. See Hellier-Tinoco. 2019. Performing Palimpsest Bodies: Postmemory Theatre Experiments in Mexico. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect and the University of Chicago Press; and “Dead bodies/live bodies: death, memory and resurrection in contemporary Mexican performance.” In Performance, Embodiment, & Cultural Memory, edited by Colin Counsell & Roberta Mock. 114–139. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press. Zapata, Muerte sin fin. March 2014 to March 2015. Residency Foro del Dinosaurio del museo universitario del Chopo, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City. Concept and direction: Juliana Faesler; Production: Moisés Enríquez and Sandra Garibaldi. 2. Both frameworks are familiar in Mexican artist and scholarly contexts. 3. Taylor (2003, 28) (quoting Roland Barthes Mythologies, 110), 32. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas, Durham and London: Duke University Press.

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4. 2010. "La Poética teatral en marcos axiológicas: criterios de valoración.” Revista Colombiana de las Artes Escénicas. Vol. 4. 9–15. 5. Escenarios liminales: teatralidades, performances y política. Buenos Aires, Argentina: ATUEL. 6. As the editor of the binational, bilingual journal Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos for five years (2014–2019), I also engaged with a wide range of research dealing with Mexican contexts.  See also Hellier-Tinoco 2010, Corpo/Reality, Voyeurs and the Responsibility of Seeing; and 2011, Embodying Mexico: Tourism, Nationalism and Performance.  7. The five collectives were La Máquina de Teatro (Mexico City); A la Deriva Teatro (Guadalajara, Jalisco); la Rendija (Mérida, Yucatán); Colectivo Escénico Oaxaca (Oaxaca City, Oaxaca); and A-tar (Tampico, Tamaulipas). These collectives include a long-established professional community and schools theatre company; a professional experimental, body-based and conceptual company; a community-based collective working with teachers and professors and engaging with Indigenous communities in the surrounding regions; and a loose ensemble of a theatre director and collaborators. Participants: La Máquina de Teatro (Mexico City) is the company at the core of this study, directed by Faesler and Malheiros. For this project, Faesler and three other participants formed the ensemble. Two were particularly experienced in experimental devising and one was more familiar with dance and the folklórico repertoire. Juliana Faesler (director), Sandra Garibaldi, Carmen Ramos, Isaac López, Vicenta Peruric; A la Deriva Teatro (from Guadalajara, Jalisco) is a professional community and schools theatre company, creating theatre work to enable students and children to think about their current lives. For this project, this company used a flexible framework of participation, engaging a few young professional actors to take part in the workshops and performances. Susana Romo and Fausto Ramírez (directors; Ramírez is a renowned director with a long career with University of Guadalajara), Horacio Quezada, Alejandro Rodríguez, Viridiana Gómez Piña, and Ana. Susana and Fausto’s two-year-old daughter Juliana (named for Juliana Faesler) was present on stage during most of the public performances; la Rendija (from Mérida, Yucatán) is a professional experimental, bodybased, and conceptual company, who have their own theatre space in Mérida, where they perform and host other companies. For this project, three professional physical theatre performers participated. Raquel Araujo (director), Katenka Ángeles, Rafael Hernández, joined by Alejo Medina and Bryant Caballero (Tapanco Centro Cultural, Mérida). (For a discussion of work by La Rendija, see Araujo 2014; Araujo and Castrillón 2014, Prieto Stambaugh 2016); Colectivo Escénico Oaxaca from Oaxaca City, Oaxaca is a community-­based collective which specifically engages with

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Indigenous communities in the surrounding regions and works with teachers and professors (e.g., one professor of environmental science at the Polytechnic College uses theatre to work with K-12 children). The collective is based in a house in Oaxaca, and is a location for arts activities and community activities. Rosario Sampablo (director), Olga Herrera, Itandehui Méndez, Palemón Ortega, with ten other participants who came and went on a fluid basis; A-tar from Tampico, Tamaulipas is a loose ensemble of three performers. Sandra Edith Muñoz Cruz (director), Víctor de Jesús Zavala Vargas and Sergio Enrique Aguirre Flores. Muñoz is full-time professional director of theatre for the municipal government, directing a youth theatre group. She is also involved with the Artistic Direction of the National Theatre Showcase. Distances and directions from Mexico City: Guadalajara, Jalisco, 300 miles west; Mérida, Yucatán, 1000 miles north east; Oaxaca city, Oaxaca, 230 miles east; Tampico, Tamaulipas, 300 miles north. 8. 1997. Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP; 2008. “The Generation of Postmemory.” Poetics Today 29.1: 103–128; 2012. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. New  York: Columbia University Press. 9. Adrian Heathfield is reiterating the ideas of Jan Verwoert, 2005. “Then Again.” In Perform, Repeat, Record, edited by Amelia Jones and Adrian Heathfield. 27–45. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect; Verwoert, Jan. 2005. “The Crisis of Time in Times of Crisis.” In Experience, Memory, Re-enactment, edited by Anke Bangma, Steve Rushton and Florian Wüst. 37–40. Rotterdam: Piet Zwart Institute and Revolver. 10. Performing Remains: Art and War in times of Theatrical Reenactment. New York: Routledge. 11. In her study on performing cultural memory in the Americas, Diana Taylor describes how “constructedness allows for communication, presence, and exchange. … The constant making and unmaking points to the active role of human beings in promoting the regenerative quality of the universe, of life, of performance—all in a state of againness” (Taylor 2003, 38–39).  Although Taylor is referring to distinctly sacred and religious Nahuatl practices, the concept is apt for this performance project. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas, Durham and London: Duke University Press. 12. For two obvious examples of cooking and food preparation as performance, see the UK artist Bobby Baker and the Montreal-based company Les 7 doigts de la main (particularly their recent Cuisine and Confessions). 13. Beloved. Knopf Publishing Group.

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14. “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision.” College English, 34.1 Women, Writing and Teaching, 18–30. (National Council of Teachers). 15. For a discussion of the performance Timboctou by Alejandro Ricaño, a work dealing with issues of transnational  violence connected with the drug-­trafficking business, see Hellier-Tinoco. 2016. “Re: Moving Bodies in the USA/Mexico drug/border/terror/cold wars.” In Choreographies of 21st Century Wars (Studies in Dance Theory), edited by Gay Morris and Jens Giedersdorf. 287–314. New York: Oxford University Press. 16. “The Performance of Translation: Benjamin and Brecht on the Loss of Small Details.” The Drama Review, 43/4: 53–59. 17. “Trans/Acting: the Art of Living ‘In-Between.’” In Trans/Acting: Latin American and Latino Performing Arts, edited by Jacqueline Bixler and Laurietz Seda. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press. 13–23. 18. Performance scholar Ileana Diéguez, in her discussions of relationships between art and violence in Mexico, has drawn on the work of Victor Turner to write of the liminal as a metaphorical state which engenders “unexpected, interstitial and precarious states” and also generates practices of inversion, which “parody and overthrow conventions” and “subvert relations and destabilize them” (Diéguez 2007, 60). Diéguez Caballero, Ileana. 2007. Escenarios liminales: teatralidades, performances y política. Buenos Aires, Argentina: ATUEL. 19. It is worth noting that 500 years ago the English language had a highly developed subjunctive mood. Today the mood has practically vanished: modern speakers tend to use the conditional forms of “could” or “would” to indicate statements contrary to reality: “If I were a butterfly, I would have wings.” 20. “Opening Remarks.” In Negotiating Performance: Gender, Sexuality, and Theatricality in Latin/o America, edited by Diana Taylor and Juan Villegas. 14–16. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 21. “‘Standing at the Crossroads’: Why Race, State Violence and Radical Movements Matter Now.” In The Rising Tide of Color: Race, State Violence and Radical Movements, edited by Moon-Ho Jung. 36–70. Seattle: University of Washington Press. 22. On Collective Memory. Ed. and trans. Lewis A. Coser. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 23. Performance and Cultural Politics. Routledge. 24. Jones is quoting Lepecki (2004). Jones, Amelia. 2012. “Foreword.” In Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative Practices, edited by Dee Reynolds and Matthew Reason. 11–15. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect; Lepecki, André, ed. 2004. Of the Presence of the Body: Essays on Dance and Performance Theory. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

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25. “Critique is itself a poiesis, a making. In feminist theories and practices what has been at issue is the rewriting of patriarchal knowledges” (Threadgold 1997, 1). Feminist Poetics. Poiesis, performance, histories. London and New York: Routledge. 26. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas, Durham and London: Duke University Press.

References Araujo, Raquel. 2014. Aprendiendo a sembrar teatro. Paso de Gato, 59 (2014): 84–85. Araujo, Raquel, and Luis Castrillón. 2014. Paisaje Meridiano del espacios para el arte. Paso de Gato, 57: 75–76. Broadhurst, Susan. 1999. Liminal Acts: A Critical Overview of Contemporary Performance and Theory. New York and London: Cassell. Diamond, Elin. 1996. Performance and Cultural Politics. Routledge. Diéguez Caballero, Ileana. 2007. Escenarios liminales: teatralidades, performances y política. Buenos Aires, Argentina: ATUEL. Dubatti, Jorge. 2010. La Poética teatral en marcos axiológicas: criterios de valoración. Revista Colombiana de las Artes Escénicas 4: 9–15. Halbwachs, Maurice. 1991. On Collective Memory. Edited and translated by Lewis A. Coser. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Heathfield, Adrian. 2012. Then Again. In Perform, Repeat, Record, ed. Amelia Jones and Adrian Heathfield, 27–45. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect. Hellier-Tinoco, Ruth. 2009. Dead Bodies/Live Bodies: Death, Memory and Resurrection in Contemporary Mexican Performance. In Performance, Embodiment, & Cultural Memory, ed. Colin Counsell and Roberta Mock, 114–139. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press. ———. 2010. Corpo/Reality, Voyeurs and the Responsibility of Seeing: Night of the Dead on the island of Janitzio, Mexico. Performance Research (“Memento Mori”) 15 (1): 23–31. ———. 2011. Embodying Mexico: Tourism, Nationalism and Performance. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2016. Re: Moving Bodies in the USA/Mexico drug/border/terror/cold wars. In Choreographies of 21st Century Wars, Studies in Dance Theory, ed. Gay Morris and Jens Giedersdorf, 287–314. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2019. Performing Palimpsest Bodies: Postmemory Theatre Experiments in Mexico. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect and the University of Chicago Press. Hirsch, Marianne. 1997. Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. ———. 2008. The Generation of Postmemory. Poetics Today 29 (1): 103–128.

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———. 2012. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press. Jones, Amelia. 2012. Foreword. In Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative Practices, ed. Dee Reynolds and Matthew Reason, 11–15. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect. Lehmann, Hans-Thies. 2006. Postdramatic Theatre. Abingdon and New  York: Routledge. Lepecki, André, ed. 2004. Of the Presence of the Body: Essays on Dance and Performance Theory. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Lipsitz, George. 2014. ‘Standing at the Crossroads’: Why Race, State Violence and Radical Movements Matter Now. In The Rising Tide of Color: Race, State Violence and Radical Movements, ed. Moon-Ho Jung, 36–70. Seattle: University of Washington Press. McKenzie, Jon. 2001. Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance. London: Routledge. Morrison, Toni. 1987. Beloved. Knopf Publishing Group. Negus, Keith, and Michael Pickering. 2004. Creativity, Communication and Cultural Value. London: Sage Publications. Primavesi, Patrick. 1999. The Performance of Translation: Benjamin and Brecht on the Loss of Small Details. The Drama Review 43 (4): 53–59. Prieto Stambaugh, Antonio. 2016. Memorias inquietas: testimonio y confesión en el teatro performativo de México y Brasil. In Corporalidades Escénicas. Representaciones del cuerpo en el teatro, la danza y el performance, edited by Elka Fediuk and Antonio Prieto Stambaugh. Buenos Aires: Editorial Argus-a Artes y Humanidades, 216–52. Rich, Adrienne. 1972. When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision. In College English, 34.1: Women, Writing and Teaching, 18–30. National Council of Teachers. Schneider, Rebecca. 2011. Performing Remains: Art and War in times of Theatrical Reenactment. New York: Routledge. Seda, Laurietz. 2009. Trans/Acting: the Art of Living ‘In-Between.’. In Trans/ Acting: Latin American and Latino Performing Arts, ed. Jacqueline Bixler and Laurietz Seda, 13–23. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press. Taylor, Diana. 1994. Opening Remarks. In Negotiating Performance: Gender, Sexuality, and Theatricality in Latin/o America, ed. Diana Taylor and Juan Villegas, 14–16. Durham and London: Duke University Press. ———. 2003. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham and London: Duke University Press. ———. 2016. Performance. Translated from Spanish by Abigail Levine. Adapted into English by Diana Taylor. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Threadgold, Terry. 1997. Feminist Poetics. Poiesis, Performance, Histories. London and New York: Routledge.

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Turner, Victor. 1984. Liminality and Performative Genres. In Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals toward a Theory of Cultural Performance, ed. J.J. MacAloon, 19–41. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. Turner, Victor. 1990. Are there universals in performance of myth, ritual and drama? In By Means of Performance, eds. R. Schechner and W Appel, 8–18. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Verwoert, Jan. 2005. The Crisis of Time in Times of Crisis. In Experience, Memory, Re-enactment, ed. Anke Bangma, Steve Rushton, and Florian Wüst, 37–40. Rotterdam: Piet Zwart Institute and Revolver.

PART II

Absence, (In)visibility and Resistance

CHAPTER 9

Series and Relics: On the Presence of Remainders in Performance’s Museum Susanne Foellmer

Along with the recently observed shifts in performing arts towards re-­ enactment or creating remainders via exhibiting and documenting, one can assert a turn from performance art’s formerly appraised (critical) ephemeral presence to archiving and reproducing the (own) artistic work. The change of set-ups, for instance from stages or performance spaces to museums or galleries, often plays a crucial role in these processes of conversion. For example, the nails of Chris Burden’s seminal performance Trans-Fixed (1974) were already meticulously displayed in the set-up of the artist’s Retrospective at Newport Harbor Museum in 1988, convened by Paul Schimmel.1 In the case of choreographer Boris Charmatz, his approach transforms the notion of a choreographic centre into that of a “dancing museum” by using the idea of the museum as a counter-­narrative to the occasionally hegemonic scopes of choreography.2 The example of Chris Burden—displaying remnants of his bygone performances way ahead of the discourse on remains3—especially triggers questions as to what extent performance art always already referred to the seemingly more “durable” display of artefacts and artworks that it supposedly opposed in

S. Foellmer (*) C-DaRE (Centre for Dance Research), Coventry University, Coventry, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 S. Whatley et al. (eds.), Art and Dance in Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44085-5_9

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the first place. To inscribe oneself in art history seems to demand considering further modes of (re-)presentation that admittedly should try to include the “eventful” characteristics of singular performances, for example by Marina Abramovič. She responded to this challenge in her “performance retrospective” The Artist is Present, “exhibited” at the MoMA, New York (2010). I will thus concentrate on what remains in what is allegedly transitory. Remnants, so is the basic assumption, appear in a double state. First, they conceive of a temporal figure that emerges as traces of performances that point to delimitations in aesthetic set-ups of experience such as museums, thus rendering the status of the bygone event and its artefact in an unstable temporal relation between then, now, and prospective appearances. That said, they secondly already indicate a repetition in the sense of aesthetic procedures: as methods of remaining within the performances themselves, that is, by using serial practices. The series MesuRage des institutions (1964–1983/2012) by the French performance artist ORLAN serves as an example in this double sense, thus indicating that the questions of remaining were already relevant in the heyday of performance art.

Corporeal Measures: Turbid Relics May 2004, Centre national de la photographie in Paris: I am visiting a solo exhibition presenting the work of ORLAN,4 performance artist, visual artist, dancer, among others.5 Distributed over eleven rooms, one can study the artist’s early works such as the documentation Baiser de l’artiste (The Kiss of the Artist, 1977), where she positioned herself at the Grand Palais in Lyon animating passersby to “buy” a kiss,6 or her photographed self-­ representations as Sainte Orlan (1980), as well as the artistic interventions involving her own body that made her famous: the Opérations chirurgicale-­ performances […] dites Omniprésence (1990–1993) in which she underwent a series of plastic surgeries transforming her face according to beauty ideals drawn from art history.7 I find one room particularly striking, though it does not seem to be very spectacular on first glance. Via various media, it displays the performance series MesuRage des institutions that ORLAN enacted from 1964 to 1983. Repeatedly performed in various institutional contexts by literally measuring the size of museums for instance, using the length of her body as a device and marking it with chalk on the floor, ORLAN then erased the chalk marks by wiping the floor and preserving the

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suds—consisting of dirt, liquid, and her own sweat. Those remnants then later appeared as bottled artefacts in exhibitions. This is how she herself describes the action: I slip on a dress made of sheets, always the same one. I measure the site with my body, laying on the floor and tracing a line of chalk behind my head. With one or two witnesses, I calculate the quantity of the ORLAN-body contained in the site—I write the official report—I gather water—I remove my dress and wash it in public—I take samples of the dirty water—the samples will then be labelled, numbered, and sealed with wax—I present in galleries those samples, the official reports and the photos and videos that concretize the work.8

ORLAN’s work is widely considered feminist art, among other attributions.9 She uses her female body as a means of alternatively proportioning space; traditionally, the male one was used as a measure of all things in reference to Leonardo da Vinci.10 As there is already a large body of work attributing this relation, I will concentrate on the question of remainders. This is what strikes me most as I am wandering through the room, rather casually gazing at the photo documentation that reveals almost on the spot what this artistic intervention is about, and dwelling for some time in front of the video taken from one of the actions: what really hits me is a rather shabby and trivial looking glass jar that contains an indefinable brownish liquid substance: the leftovers of the marking and washing action, as I learn upon consulting the little sign placed at its side. I am contemplating this residue of a bygone performance event, wondering first what it could “tell” me as this hermeneutic attitude “befalls” me as a starting point: how could I refer to the event “as such” by means of this blurry liquid something, which resembles some deteriorated liquefied food in a preserving glass that someone has forgotten in a cellar. Obviously, the thing is nothing without its context, namely the meticulous performance documentation via video, photos, reports—or so it seems. The worn-out apron that ORLAN used every time is also on display, neatly pressed between two layers of glass. But because this artefact looks rather like a costume or other dead objects typically employed when trying to represent for instance bygone theatre productions in a museum, it leaves me rather unaffected. I constantly return to the other leftover object, the reliquary of the ORLAN-street-water-encounter. Does it

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emanate a certain aura, fascinating me because, in its blurriness, it precisely depicts the unavailability of the artwork itself, if we agree with Benjamin? I am also struck by how much effort is placed on the diligent act of retracing ORLAN’s work, soon realising that it is she who places so much emphasis on being distributed as widely as possible as an artist. Accordingly, ORLAN argues that she—as an artwork—cannot be represented because one deals always already with images of herself that are then put on display. Inadequate as this situation appears, she adopts a strategy of massive distribution, “omnipresence”, that is, by “circulat[ing] around those possible images, extract[ing] and unravel[ing] them”.11 In contrast to other performance artists of her time, or so it seems, ORLAN is already interested in an artistic distribution that gives her a certain position in art history, a discourse that she is constantly referring to, for instance in her photographic self-portraits Le Drapé-Le Baroque (1978–1986).12 Given the seriality of many of her works, here the MesuRages, and her obvious “will to distribution”, creating derivatives of her own body being present(ed) in glass jars in this case, I would like to focus on three aspects: Seriality and repetition as modes of remaining constituted through the performances itself; the concept of relics prominent in the documentation of MesuRage; as well as the question of documentation in the mode of the iconification of the artist connected to it.

Series of ORLANs Each version of the MesuRage follows a precise scheme: before ORLAN starts the action, she announces the title of the action, place, date, start and end time, as well as the present witnesses on a board.13 She puts on an apron, lies down, marks the space her body takes with chalk above her head, then moves further, lying down and marking again. After the measurement is done, the witnesses help count the length consisting of ORLAN’s body as a measure and confirm it by signature.14 Each performance follows the same scheme, which has been labelled as ritualistic.15 However, I would see this ritual form as being more bureaucratic than transgressive, since ORLAN then scrupulously converts the data on the board into reports that are on display afterwards, presented in exhibitions,16 and “decorated” with a photo of ORLAN washing the cloth with which she cleaned the space from the marks, and a phial with the washing suds placed alongside.17 However, because she always wears the same apron18 and uses an easel for the board as a “cult […] of art”,19 the series

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also moves within ritualistic concepts akin to religious forms. The matter-­ of-­factness of gathering data and accurately documenting the whole performance series thus mingles with derivatives from religious rituals—I will come back to this point later. Howard Caygill refers to Leibniz when suggesting that ORLAN’s work can be regarded as serial. Instead of claiming individuality, Leibniz focuses on the series as an ontological stance, promoting concepts of “temporal flux” over notions of the closure of an individual thing.20 Accordingly, Caygill positions ORLAN’s work in the baroque realm (an iconography that she is also dealing with), claiming that her work moves between a nomadic dissolution of essence into series and the staging of a playful interference between them that produces strange and transgressive objects, all alongside a monadic attempt to establish a definitive synthesis capable of arresting the decay of the temporal series into an eternal, re-iterated present.21

As striking as the “will to documentation”22 and accumulation of data is, one has to reflect on what the mentioned “present” precisely means when it comes to the “durability” of ORLAN the artist. As mentioned earlier, the artist claims a certain unrepresentability of herself, thus creating multiple derivatives that refer more to the absent artist than that they create an infinite present. Or, to be more precise: what is at hand in terms of a ‘there-ness’ is the data produced by ORLAN that are constantly redistributed, not only in museums but also in interviews, texts, or reflections like this one. Thus, instead of pursuing an eternal presence of the artist named ORLAN, one could say that the constant repetition of her meticulously enacted performance procedures, and creating leftovers such as the jars with suds and other by-products, actually point to the fact that the artist is always already absent, or rather present in another format than that of the “live” event. Though ORLAN’s work series was formerly a critical response to the male-dominated institution of art, “rescaling it to include herself”,23 today it seems to legitimise institutions in that realm—which then again require the artist’s repeated presence on location. In 2012, ORLAN practically re-enacted the MesuRage at the Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst (M HKA) in Antwerp on the occasion of the institution’s 25th anniversary. The procedure was the same as described, with two small differences: She wore a new apron (as the other one was obviously already serving as a relic that should not be scuffed further) and the witnesses were well

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known, being themselves already representatives of their field, among them Marina Abramovič and Jan Fabre. Being now an internationally critically acclaimed artist and assembling prominent personae of the art world to testify her action, one could thus claim a reversal of the action’s initial impulse: It is no longer a protest against the establishment anymore. Instead, the performance is actually invited by the institution itself that thus legitimises its status as a space presenting a state-of-the-art intervention “blessed” by ORLAN. That aside, ORLAN even stepped further into the accumulation of data by wearing a “BODYMEDIA armband” that gave a precise account of the artist’s internal body data, such as her heart rate during the action or the calories burned.24 Again, this data found its way into the catalogue documenting the event,25 and with it into the whole MesuRage series from its start in the 1960s. Beholders thus not only get “possession” of the external ORLAN via sweat, dirt, and other liquids but are tempted to get hold of her internal processes when performing—the series of actions now being transformed into series of numbers, dismembering the artist into scientifically reaped data. It is obvious that ORLAN’s endeavours—other than claiming the present body as being the only transmitter of performance art—aim at advanced means of artistic (re-)distribution. They are doing so at a time when performance deals primarily with singular events, taking into account the non-representability of the persona ORLAN and thus addressing processes of image and artefact production. Hence, the status of the production and display of her relics comes to the fore. This also provides further space for reflecting on the idea of a present absence of the artist.

ORLAN in Bits and Pieces Coming back to the glass jar that initially attracted my attention as a relic in the aftermath of ORLAN’s performance series, it is worth taking a brief look at the use and meaning of relics in religious contexts. Generally, relics are considered to be imbued with the energy and a certain power of the person who passed away, usually a saint, and thus meant to have been equipped with a certain ability to heal or to bring calm by the virtues they achieved during their lifetimes.26 This does apply not only to whole bodies but also—and this is where relics come into play—to fragments of them or even objects known to be touched by the saint when still being alive, or even when dead.27 One of the most famous examples is certainly the

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Shroud of Turin, ostensibly showing the faded face of Christ on the cloth.28 One could say that in this regard ORLAN’s apron serves as a relic, having even been repeatedly touched, or rather worked through by the artist during her performance series. The “fragments” in the liquids, however, are more blurred when it comes to the idea that the person who passed away leaves something behind of his or her bygone power that is said to be sustained even after death. However, on another occasion, ORLAN left “more” of herself: flesh and fat taken from her Opérations chirurgicale-performances […] dites Omniprésence mentioned earlier, also displayed in exhibitions of her work.29 Kate Ince depicts the religious context as an important feature in ORLAN’s work from early on, for instance in her photographic ‘re-­ enactments’ of Christian imagery, focusing on baroque Madonna portraits30 or playing with drapery. According to Ince, the use of multiple media of distribution such as photography and video addresses the idea of “literally achiev[ing] transcendence through technology rather than any conventional spiritual means”.31 ORLAN herself declares that the influence of religious motives on her work actually stems from a sensed violation of female bodies represented in paintings of saints and virgins. In being adopted with a critical, feminist view, “the religious vocabulary […] became my visual vocabulary”.32 Within this framework, I am now specifically interested in the relation between imagery and relics in this almost sacral context, especially as a certain idea of transcendence actually does not spring to my mind when seeing the glass jar with the brownish, rather squirmy looking decomposed substance. However, the design of the room tells another story. Though it looks like a typical space in a museum at first glance—in this (re-)presentation of documents of past performances—the presence of the relics as well as the description on the exhibition’s leaflet presents another picture. The leaflet describes each room (of which there are eleven, each dealing with different stages of ORLAN’s artistic œuvre), announcing room 4 as being “consacrée aux ‘MesuRages’”.33 The French notion “consacrée” reflects the notion of dedication but also of sanctification, as a church would be consecrated in order to serve the purpose of divine service. Thus, it is interesting to observe that the pursuit of distributing ORLAN via relics and pictures depicting a religious imagery even influences the language with which the curators describe what is on display. This is further mirrored by another of ORLAN’s projects in which she created a “chapel” for Sainte ORLAN (1980), an installation resembling

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the ecclesiastic architecture of an altar space, assembling images from former performances such as the Baiser de l’artiste as well as multiple reproduced photoprints of her baroque image series.34 These overt attempts to massively circulate the artist’s image not only serve the purpose to be, at least medially, “omnipresent” but have obviously already had an impact on the curatorial framing of her work. Even more so, as already mentioned, her “retrieved” body serves to now legitimise a museum institution in being part of the communion of the arts years after the MesuRage series was completed. Coming back to the documents and artefacts of MesuRage on display in the exhibition in 2004, the room itself, though “consecrated”, is rather sober looking, as already described, with the jars sticking out in an awkward manner, creating an unstable atmosphere that I am not able to grasp. Are those remnants just liquid memories of a past event, or are they re-­ valorised in their essence as vestiges, placed in this sacred place by the curators? Moreover: is each jar recharged (again) auratically as an archaeological find, purposefully provided by the artist herself? But what would this jar emanate other than its decomposed contents and not fit for the purpose if I wanted to get a glimpse or an idea of what the performance was like? Looking again at the function of relics in the religious realm, it is important that one cannot simply claim that, for example, a piece of a bone or some sample of hair is a relic of a worshipped saint. Proof is necessary in order to authenticate the relic in question. Joe Nickell gives the example of the bones of St. Briocus of Great Britain which had been transferred to the church of Angers whereupon “they [the bones] jumped for joy”, thus proving to actually having been associated with the saint.35 Another example is that of the hand of St. William of Oulx, whose mortal remains manifestly refused to be buried: The hand was constantly “pushing itself through the coffin”, and was thus named the “Angelic Hand”.36 Which means of authentication might now verify the glass jars in the exhibition as being “real” samples, a conglomerate of one part of the bygone performance series that ORLAN conducted? Here, the relationship between relics, images, and documents plays an important role. In his seminal study on the history of images in the Middle Ages, Hans Belting explores the close relationship between image and relics, among others. Studying the function of icons in the Russian Orthodox Church, especially in the city of what was then Constantinople, he asserts a close, even symbiotic relation between the two expressions of religious

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belief. On the one hand, it was believed the icons themselves served as relics, by way of being an effigy and thus a “tangible proof” of the pictured person.37 On the other hand, they were often found in close proximity to relics as such: “Images assumed the appearance of relics and in turn gained power from their coexistence with relics”.38 And furthermore, “The image, with the bodily appearance of a sculpture, was an agent of religious experience as it represented the reality of the presence of the holy in the world, on terms similar to those of the relics. Images and relics explained each other.”39 In the same way, the room in the Centre national de la photographie (re-)presenting the MesuRages could be said to serve as the interplay between image and relic, usually being placed in a church. Retracing my memories of visiting the exhibition, I remember that it was actually the jars that caught my attention first. Occupied with my dissertation on the concept of unfinished bodies in dance at that time, which is what had actually brought me to the museum, I initially found myself rather situated in the academic mode of meticulously gathering information, which almost immediately led me to referencing the surrounding documents: Images, videos, and descriptions were there to unravel what this liquid something was supposed to denote. In this respect, one could conceive of a circle of authentication that leads from the jars to the documents, giving an account of happenings in the past, thus assigning the jars to their context and at least making us believe that the liquids were a part of it: Because who can prove that they really belonged to what was said they were? The authentication process merely takes place in the motion of referencing references reassuring the beholder what the thing he looks at is meant to be. However, anybody could have filled his/her dirty dishwater into the container, claiming it to be a remnant of an intervention series called MesuRage. As the jars do not “jump for joy” or perform other miraculous moves, it thus needs the confirmation of the artist that this is “real”—ORLAN explains the procedure in one of her notifications on the series that served as an announcement and was displayed on the aforementioned reports that were also on display during the action itself.40 However, my knowledge of the composition of the leftover substance does not lead me very far. Even though I now know how it came into existence, it leaves questions open as to what the liquids actually represent. Not being distinguishable as a relic by means of anatomical resemblance or because it is a fragment left from a former “whole”, the jars both refer to the action and simultaneously neglect to represent action in terms of

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creating a proximity to the body that fulfilled the task. Instead, they seem to emanate a certain hidden, though unsavoury, energy. Belting describes the status of icons as “containers” for the energy of the person they represent. It is said of the so-called Berytus icon that it was painted by Nicodemus who is purported to have been present at the crucifixion himself. The icon thus claims the “status of an original” and serves as an “authorized memento” of Christ,41 but by way of the genealogic history of the image and not by serving as an incarnation of the person itself. Thinking back to ORLAN’s articulated impossibility of self-­ representation, the glass jars seem to give an almost literal account of this aporia. However, one could ask why the jars are necessary if the images themselves already give a vivid example of the artist being visually represented and thus not present—even if displayed on life-sized cardboards, “guarding” the entrance to a “hall of relics” as part of an early exhibition of MesuRage at the Internationaal Cultureel Centrum (ICC) Antwerp in 198042—, and then again conceiving of a certain “there-ness” in an iconic sense according to Belting, who explores the function of pictorial copies especially “in bodylike sculptures [that] made the saint physically present”.43 One possible lead—if one refers to the idea of icon and relic as an energetic “tin”—is the physical labour ORLAN invested in the action. If the previously mentioned internal body data give an account of the exertion of energy during the performance, the liquid in the jars seem to conserve the energy of labour in a rather blurry state, as a  liquid, which consists of the “derivatives” of the strain of cleaning, that is sweat, dirt, and water. However, this residual energy does not come for free. The labour of referencing the surrounding documents in the exhibition space is required in order to decipher the status of the jars. Another perspective refers to the rather profane idea of recycling, thus also countering the “religious gravity” relics usually imply.44 In the context of her surgical operation series, ORLAN adopts an almost thrifty attitude by seeing to it that nothing is wasted, not even the superfluous flesh taken from her body. Serving as relics of “Sainte ORLAN”, they are rather profanely introduced in their existence as holy proof: “The idea behind this series is to produce as many relics as possible […] until the body and the flesh that were recovered from the surgeries are totally recycled into relics, until I have no more skin to encrust into relics”.45 In order to not waste anything, the leftovers from ORLAN’s performance series thus serve as testimonials to account for the event actually having taken place. Moreover, her idea of “producing” relics actually

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profanes the idea of the relic as a unique conservatory device of saintly energy, alluding,  incidentally, to the fact that relics were sometimes so highly sought after that it is said that the ubiquity of relics of the “True Cross”, for example, could have been “enough to build a ship”.46 ORLAN’s relics do not claim an exclusive status as a saintly object, or even as a unique artwork. Instead, they refer to the idea of the reproduction of an artwork that garners its material from the artist herself, who then again—and in that respect referring to female body art of the 1970s47— places an end to reproduction by the finiteness of her bodily “source” material. In a radical pursuit—and then in a complete U-turn away from the prospects of feminist performance art—this would also contribute to the idea of an obsolete body, being only present in the mode of data resources.48

Conclusion: Absent There-Ness ORLAN’s procedures of recirculating her images and leftovers could be said to actually hold true to structural and distributive modes of ecclesiastical votive images that usually consist of the picture of a saint including an inscription denoting the name and domain of the person, or a phrase that, for example, expresses gratitude for the miracles performed by the saint. In that respect, reproduced printed images of saints contain a certain aura in terms of the idea of particular impacting forces that emanate when “using” the picture for prayer. The same now could be said of the omnipresent circulation of ORLAN’s images, for example those picturing her as Sainte ORLAN, thus actually representing the non-representability of the artist herself, and in this necessary absence, again, presenting her working methods of seriality, reproduction, imagery as such and the re-­ utilisation of waste. Here, the glass jars are particularly interesting as they actually (re-)present a transformation of (work) energy into an artefact that itself exudes a certain unstable force when placed in the context of an exhibition. Those relics are not able to give an account in terms of precisely retracing what happened, but rather “refigure” a certain energy of the work force applied when one is washing up the floor—and thus quite profanely serve a waste-to-energy principle, sustaining the energy of bygone events. Hence, one could conceive of the glass jars in the mode of a “polluted aura” that is only unveiled in the beholders’ continuous (counter-)referencing between images, videos, documents, and the blurry jars that first

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trouble efforts of retracing, and then reveal themselves as a kind of energetic preserve.49 Other than the Benjaminian articulation of aura as the “appearance of a distance, however close the thing that calls it forth” in terms of the object actually arresting its beholder,50 ORLAN’s suds present themselves in a mode of representative friction, being unavailable as such, to follow Benjamin, but then release the energy inherent in the performance through the constant labour of re-referencing. As a result, the liquid relics are actually presenting rather than re-­ presenting presence by way of an explicit absence of the bygone event, but preserve its energy as a profane tin containing the used substance as a liquefied sample of artistic work and energy. In that respect, one could even depict those relics as an advanced “self-portraiture” of the artists to cite Paul Virilio in dialogue with ORLAN.51 He refers to the facial collages ORLAN performs not only in the operation performances but also in projects such as her pictorial series of Self-Hybridizations (1998–2005), asserting that her portrait methods go “beyond everyday resemblance” and thus foster a particular artistic mode of “pictorial transfiguration”.52 The jars as leftovers of the MesuRages push this concept even further by only referring to a certain performed energy that no longer claims representation but refers to an impossible “there-ness”—though excessively using traces and “evidence” of the artist’s work as described. Or as ORLAN puts it: “Working on my representation is better than nothing, but it does not represent me”.53 Thus, the displayed glass jars not only present the used energy it took to clean the space but then also refer ambivalently to both the energy it needs to undo the idea of visual representation—and to push boundaries of representation as such— while at the same time painstakingly trying to document and preserve as much of the work as possible. The responsibility of trying to trace the presence of the artist is then transferred to the beholders. As literal work, as a laborious venture, it is they themselves who now administrate the work of referencing in the mode of performance, especially in the sense of effort and activity that does not lead to a satisfying end. The artistic set-up of the exhibition always already refrains from providing access to representing ORLAN “as such”. Already inherent in the series of MesuRage, for instance in the format of the reports, ORLAN’s performance actually does not end. Being exhibited within various derivatives in the “aftermath” of the events, it shifts the work of performance and the aporia of representation to the beholders in the museum who continue to detect and redistribute what is already absent—and there again.

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Notes 1. However, we could say that especially performance artists like Marina Abramovič, the already mentioned Chris Burden, or ORLAN actually used the gallery space from the beginning, but transforming its use as a locus of quiet contemplation of artworks into an environment that follows the temporal structure we know from the apparatus of theatre. 2. Charmatz, Manifesto, 45. 3. Cf. Schneider, Performing Remains, 2011. 4. ORLAN.  Méthodes de l’artiste, 1964–2004, exhibition at the Centre national de la photographie, Paris, 31.3.–28.6.2004. 5. Thompson, Orlan, 248. 6. Thompson, Orlan, 55. 7. Busca, Les Visages d’Orlan, 12. 8. ORLAN, “Action ORLAN-Body”, 18. 9. Cf. Wilson, “L’histoire d’O”, 10. 10. Ince, Orlan, 35; Petitgas, “ORLAN”, 58. 11. ORLAN, “This is my Body”, 38 12. Petitgas, “ORLAN”, 51–56. 13. Thompson, Orlan, 36. 14. Thompson, Orlan, 36, 4. 15. Caygill, “Carnival in ORLAN”, 52. 16. Thompson, Orlan, 37. 17. Thompson, Orlan, 37. 18. ORLAN in Thompson, Orlan, 17. 19. ORLAN, “This is my Body”, 40. 20. Caygill, “Carnival in ORLAN”, 49. 21. Caygill, “Carnival in ORLAN”, 50. 22. I am alluding here to André Lepecki’s concept of the “will to archive” that he describes for instance within dance re-enactments, which he conceptualizes as embodied archival operations. These “acts” are not only characterized by a mere redoing of past events but by their transformation and actualization of that which has been. Lepecki, “The Body as Archive”, 34–38, 45. 23. O’Bryan, Carnal Art, 6. 24. Dewachter, ORLAN, 27. 25. Dewachter, ORLAN, 32–33, 46. 26. Pick, Mysteries of the World, 101. 27. Pick, Mysteries of the World, 102. 28. Nickell, Looking for a Miracle, 74. 29. ORLAN, “This is my Body”, 46. 30. Ince, Orlan, 14–20.

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31. Ince, Orlan, 20. 32. ORLAN, “This is my Body”, 35–36. 33. Leaflet, Orlan, 2. 34. ORLAN, “This is my Body”, 36. 35. Nickell, Looking for a Miracle, 75. 36. Nickell, Looking for a Miracle, 75. 37. Belting, Likeness and Presence, 195. 38. Belting, Likeness and Presence, 301. 39. Belting, Likeness and Presence, 302. 40. ORLAN, “Action ORLAN-Body”, 18. 41. Belting, Likeness and Presence, 305. 42. Dewachter, ORLAN, 54–57. 43. Belting, Likeness and Presence, 299. 44. Caygill, “Carnival in ORLAN”, 79. Caygill refers to the Operation performances and the “playful” character of ORLAN’s self-display of her leftover flesh as relics in connection to texts that she also recites during the operations themselves: “The religious gravity of reliquary art is overturned in the artistic use of the fleshy detritus of the operations, as in the Large Reliquaries: My Flesh, the Text and the Languages which frames the Christian obsession with the bodily traces of sanctity with, among others, Hebrew and Arabic text.” (Caygill 2010, 79) 45. ORLAN, “This is my Body”, 46–47. 46. Pick, Mysteries of the World, 76. 47. See Wilson for a contextualization of ORLAN’s work in the realm of body art, for instance Gina Pane (Wilson 1996, 9–10). 48. See Wolf-Dieter Ernst, who claims that performers like ORLAN or Stelarc do not deal with the idea of pain or endurance in their performances but rather adopt a playful mode of what a body can do. In that respect, their work is always already embedded in a larger network of interfaces between body and machinery or body and language/discourse (Ernst 2003, 164–165, 31–53). 49. It would be worth to further pursue the relation between the work of art as an “energetic preserve” in the way Aby Warburg depicts it—that is a painting or a sculpture serving as a symbolic carrier of memorial traces of past events and emotions, “as an ‘organ of social memory’”—(cf. Gombrich 1970, 241–243) and the way ORLAN’s glass jars function as such a “device” by rather accounting of a diffuse (emotional) energy as they do not convey a visual reference of what has happened. 50. Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 447. 51. ORLAN and Virilio, Interview, 191. 52. ORLAN and Virilio, Interview, 191. 53. ORLAN and Virilio, Interview, 192.

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References Belting, Hans. 1994. Likeness and Presence. A History of the Image Before the Era of Art [1990]. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. Benjamin, Walter. 2002. The Arcades Project [1927–40]. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, Massachusetts/London: Belknap Press/ Harvard University Press. Busca, Joëlle. 2002. Les Visages d’Orlan. Pour une relecture du post-humain. Brussels: La Lettre volée. Caygill, Howard. 2000. Reliquary Art. Orlan’s Serial Operation. In Time and Image, ed. Carolyn Bailey Gill, 48–57. Manchester/New York: Manchester University Press. ———. 2010. Carnival in ORLAN. In ORLAN. A Hybrid Body of Artworks, ed. Simon Donger, Simon Shepherd, and ORLAN, 74–83. London/New York: Routledge. Charmatz, Boris. 2014. Manifesto for a National Choreographic Centre. Dance Research Journal 46 (3): 45–48. Dewachter, Liliane. 2012. ORLAN.  MesuRages 1968–2012. Action: ORLAN-­ Body. Catalogue of the exhibition. Antwerp: M HKA. Ernst, Wolf-Dieter. 2003. Performance der Schnittstelle. Theater unter Medienbedingungen (Performance of the Interface. Theatre Under the Condition of Media). Wien: Passagen. Gombrich, E.H. 1970. Aby Warburg. An Intellectual Biography. Oxford: Phaidon. Ince, Kate. 2000. Orlan. Millenial Female. Oxford/New York: Berg. Lepecki, André. 2010. The Body as Archive. Will to Re-Enact and the Afterlives of Dances. Dance Research Journal 42 (2): 28–48. Nickell, Joe. 1993. Looking for a Miracle. Weeping Icons, Relics, Stigmata, Visions and Healing Cures. Amherst/NY: Prometheus Books. O’Bryan, C.  Jill. 2005. Carnal Art. Orlan’s Refacing. Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press. ORLAN. 2010a. Action ORLAN-Body/MesuRages of Institutions. In ORLAN. A Hybrid Body of Artworks, ed. Simon Donger, Simon Shepherd, and ORLAN, 18. London/New York: Routledge. ———. 2010b. This is My Body … This Is My Software. In ORLAN. A Hybrid Body of Artworks, ed. Simon Donger, Simon Shepherd, and ORLAN, 35–47. London/New York: Routledge. ORLAN, and Paul Virilio. 2010. Interview. In ORLAN.  A Hybrid Body of Artworks, ed. Simon Donger, Simon Shepherd, and ORLAN, 188–195. London/New York: Routledge.

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Petitgas, Caterine. 2010. ORLAN Undraped. In ORLAN.  A Hybrid Body of Artworks, ed. Simon Donger, Simon Shepherd, and ORLAN, 49–60. London/ New York: Routledge. Pick, Christopher. 1929. Mysteries of the World. Secaucus/NJ: Chartwell Books. Schneider, Rebecca. 2011. Performing Remains. Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment. London/New York: Routledge. Thompson, Sophy, ed. 2004. Orlan. Catalogue of the Exhibition. Paris: Flammarion. Wilson, Sarah. 1996. L’histoire d’O, Sacred and Profane. In ORLAN. This Is My Body … This Is My Software …, ed. Duncan McCorquodale, 7–17. London: Black Dog.

Other Leaflet. 2004. Orlan. Méthodes de l’artiste, 1964-2004. Paris: Exhibition Centre national de la photographie, March, 31–June 28.

CHAPTER 10

Red Ladies: Walking, Remembering, Transforming Sophie Lally

Their story begins on ground level, with footsteps […] They are myriad, but do not compose a series. They cannot be counted […] their swarming mass is an innumerable collection of singularities. Their intertwined paths give shape to spaces. They weave places together. Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Randall (Los Angeles: University of California Press Berkley, 1988), 97

The Red Ladies are an international, leaderless phenomenon, known to manifest in towns and cities around the world. Like insects, birds and fish, they swarm, flock and shoal, drawing attention to the things they see and the specific contexts in which they find themselves. The activities of the Red Ladies are facilitated by Clod Ensemble, who act as their auxiliary staff. Clod Ensemble, led by director Suzy Willson and composer Paul Clark, have been making performance work combining original music and movement for over twenty years and Red Ladies is an ongoing project.

S. Lally (*) Técnicas Rudas, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 S. Whatley et al. (eds.), Art and Dance in Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44085-5_10

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This ‘performance’ takes on two distinct forms: the outside interventions, which feature 18 identically dressed women in red stilettos, black trench coats and red headscarves walking through a town or city; meeting with local people on the street; creating architectural images by standing on the balconies of private properties and the roofs of cultural institutions; or performing set pieces, taken from the indoor theatrical performance, in town squares, green areas and beachfronts. The second form is described as an indoor, theatrical demonstration, where they meditate on all they have witnessed in their missions around the world. They begin dressed in their Red Ladies uniforms, discarding them as the performance moves through acts of convergence, where they imitate the movements of animals who flock, swarm and migrate, and moments of disintegration, where they fight, lament and run across the stage. They end by reassembling their Red Ladies image to the beat of a military drum. The Red Ladies create intimate relationships with local people and the local area. They are a metaphor for complex emergent systems in the natural world, simultaneously about difference (they are of different ethnicities, sizes, nationalities, backgrounds, and artistic disciplines) and community. They place global concerns—war, the loss of ecological sustainability, increased government surveillance—in the context of the everyday, and they do so in traditionally ‘domestic’ ways. ‘They knit, they cook and they wait (Fig. 10.1).’1 The Red Ladies hold multiple identities through their individual bodies, skills, languages and interactions, as well as their collective identity as Red Ladies. They work in counterpoint to late capitalism’s project of individualism, revealing the power of the collective in bringing about transformation and the impact of the individual’s role within the collective. I will

Fig. 10.1  Red Ladies, Clod Ensemble, Margate 2014

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argue that through their concern for the collective and the importance of considering the inter-connectedness of disparate groups, the Red Ladies call for an orientation toward ‘obligation and care’, in an endeavour, as Shannon Jackson has articulated, to offer a ‘contribu[tion] to interdependent social imagining.’2 I suggest that they attempt to do so in multiple ways, drawing on the tactics of mimicry and play that emerge out of postcolonial discourse and through a focus on the banal, on what is ‘right before you’, as a strategy of resistance to neoliberal capitalism’s preoccupation with novelty.3 Beginning by situating their work in relation to ‘socially turned’ practices, I will then discuss the forms their work takes, before focusing on their tactics of mimicry and the banal.

The Social Turn Arguing that the work of the Red Ladies has ‘transformative powers’ points to its relationship to ongoing scholarship that emerged in the 1990s around what Claire Bishop retrospectively called ‘the social turn’. One of the most influential threads of discourse to emerge at this time was Nicolas Bourriaud’s ‘relational aesthetics’, which looked to describe the move in many artistic disciplines towards interaction between the art object and the spectator and in many cases ‘do-it-yourself’ or direct participation on the part of the audience member.4 This collaborative, process-driven and anti-authorial practice was seen to exist in opposition to neoliberalism and, as Claire Bishop articulates in Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and Politics of Spectatorship (2012), the ‘economic practice of private property rights, free markets, and free trade.’5 In Bourriaud’s words, this type of art can be defined as ‘a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of the human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space.’6 However, Claire Bishop has articulated that the drive towards ‘fairer social relations,’ identified as the goal of this relational or socially turned art, and in my opinion a primary aim of the Red Ladies, becomes problematized when the process is geared towards social inclusion, ‘sensitivity to difference risks becoming a new kind of repressive norm.’7 Bishop, beginning with her 2004 article ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,’ turns instead to the technologies of disruption, dissension and antagonism. The argument being that the discourse around social inclusion maintains unhelpful value-based binaries, where the individual and passivity are bad in contrast to the collective and active participation as good.8

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I would identify Red Ladies as socially turned theatre, in so far as their relations to power structures and the publics they encounter can be described as antagonistic. As I go along I will detail moments where the Red Ladies are placed in dialogue with police officers, where they place the Houses of Parliament under ‘surveillance’ and where they enter parts of a town some locals would rather avoid. They place themselves in positions of height, which they call ‘roosting,’ encouraging those who meet them to ask: How did they get past security? How did they gain access? Their resistance to hierarchical structures, and their apparent transgression of the rules, presents the public with a way in which they too can resist. However, those who encounter the Red Ladies are not part of the performance; this is not a conventionally participatory work in the vein of Punchdrunk or You Me Bum Bum Train, nor is it explicitly community or applied theatre. Red Ladies walk and observe, they converge in an area and might sit and knit, and should a member of the public wish to speak to them, they welcome them, but there are no forced interactions and participation is not a pre-requisite. Red Ladies look to the natural world, to the co-dependence of eco-­ systems and to the emergent hierarchies within groups to think about ‘social co-ordination’ and ‘social imagining’, but they do so from the outside. In placing themselves in a continuum with groups of women such as the Amazons or the Suffragettes, they draw on a history of oppositional politics. They reflect the functions of the Greek Chorus and like the Trojan Women (Euripides) they witness from the outside, from the edges. They align themselves with disenfranchised groups who have been excluded from public histories. They help to represent the influence of those who are excluded from the mainstream or who may have been discounted in the social activism stemming from civil society movements. They visit a women’s centre, delivering flowers to an old people’s home, speaking with migrant communities and visiting small local businesses (a tiny theatre in Malvern, a seafood stand in Hastings, a teashop in Margate) lost in a sea of franchises. In drawing on those who witness, but do not have an active role, Red Ladies antagonise the boundary between passive and active participation. Through their watching they focus on small moments or problems that speak to macro issues around climate change, migration and violence in its many forms. Their role as outsiders brings a fresh perspective, their looking through binoculars at nesting kestrels on the roof of a 1970s tower block could seem insignificant or it could be seen as a question about

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ecological sustainability and the growth of urban areas. The Red Ladies interrogate what it is to be part of a group, a community, a collective. This is of course in counterpoint to the ‘cult of the individual,’ which serves to isolate the subject of neoliberalism, rendering it impotent. By exploring the ways in which each group or system can affect another, the Red Ladies also highlight how an individual’s move within a discrete group brings about larger changes in interconnected systems. This work is socially turned by virtue of its whole-hearted embrace of the collective with respect for the role difference plays in the efficacy of a group, the way in which it plays with private space (climbing on roofs) and utilises tactics of the state (surveillance) to trouble and antagonise. Their performance looks to render an alter-relation between distinct social groups, as well as the environments in which they are situated.

Outdoor and Theatrical Interventions This work is made up of two parts: the outdoor interventions and theatrical demonstrations. The outside interventions are most commonly called ‘missions,’ where the performers experience the space through walking, meeting with knitting groups, putting on an owl display before evacuating the town by helicopter and limousine. Although there are moments of large-scale convergence—they come together to read on their buckets or to knit on the seafront—the missions can be thought of as a large improvisation. The actions of these women are entirely dependent upon their encounters as they walk. They place seats of power under surveillance, counting security cameras around government buildings and cultural institutions, and participate in social movements in local areas. They are an architectural force that transforms the space they occupy, cutting a red slash across their chosen environment. As their posters warn us, Red Ladies ‘watch the watchers.’ In addition, in their outdoor interventions, the Red Ladies both converge as a whole and work in small groups. In both cases they continually engage in emergent leadership and self-organization, evident through their choices to knit (this might be motivated by the need to rest weary feet), to bison (move in the self-organised way bison do when they come together to migrate) or play triangles (a game of self-organisation where finding yourself equidistant from two peers is the goal). Identifying this as emergent also stems from the fact that no outcome can be predicted—no one knows who is going to take charge and when; it just happens. At any

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given moment, someone may take the lead, but this leadership is fleeting. In this way, the group makes use of everyone’s skills, they may take different perspectives in relation to their surroundings or their encounters with the public, and each member of the group is at once influential and responsible. In fact, responsibility and commitment to one another, to the people they meet, and to the ecological systems around them are key concerns of the missions of the Red Ladies. However, they do not do away with leadership entirely. What becomes clear is that an understanding of leadership as ephemeral and emergent affords the individual within the group far more agency; it is an attempt not to suppress or obfuscate, but to empower the individual within the collective. The Red Ladies challenge not only the space of the city, but also the traditional performance space. The theatrical demonstrations are understood within the mythology of the Red Ladies as an occupation of a theatre, where the audience becomes privy to a record of the Red Ladies’ collective memory. Just as the women are understood to simply appear or emerge in a town or city in times of need, their residency in a theatre is also to be understood as an unexpected annexation of the space in order for them to share their stories and galvanise their audiences into action. From the very beginning, the demonstration looks to disassemble the traditional rules of the theatrical space. Before a performance, the Red Ladies can be seen on the roof of the theatre or keeping watch around its perimeter, ultimately leading audiences into the space through back and side entrances and across the stage. The sharing of collective knowledge collected through the mythic history of their missions creates a continuum between past and future, continuing the work of the missions which aim to trouble the relationship between the private and the public. Here, reflection and memorialisation can aid in an alter-approach to being-in-the-world. When the Red Ladies move in small groups during missions and when they converge there is also an aspect of co-evolution. Patterns take form, hierarchies constantly shift and tempos change through their interactions. This is also evident in the choreography of the theatrical demonstration where at times they all seem to be performing individual actions, but each one is constantly evolving in relation to what the others are doing. The care the Red Ladies espouse is taking responsibility for one’s actions and how they affect the collective as a whole. Care, as well as transformation and mobility, are the guiding principles of their work and of the relation their work establishes with its audience and the contexts in which it is presented.

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Rules of Engagement: Care, Transformation and Mobility It was in Margate 2014 when I was able to observe the Red Ladies in action and witness how they trouble and disturb the architecture of the townscape and engender conversations between disparate groups. Margate, still seen by many as an ailing seaside town and most recently as the home to the UKIP party conference, is a site of conflict based on race, class and economics. However, although they play an antagonistic role in relation to the way class or social tensions present themselves in a place like Margate, they do so without aggression. Within the group itself and with those they encounter on streets, beaches, squares and gardens, the Red Ladies rely on a set of rules of engagement: they need to ‘be kind to each other, give each other the benefit of the doubt, listen, pay attention, show up.’9 In the context of our current political and social climate where borders are closing, walls both literally and metaphorically are being raised and self-interest proliferates, this manner of engaging with others seems perhaps radical. In The Wasteland, T.S. Eliot wrote, ‘On Margate sands, I connect nothing with nothing’ and yet on Margate sands, I witnessed an improvised interaction between a group of Red Ladies which created a profound connection based on care.10 Although their ‘missions’ or interventions are not traditional public spectacle, this does not mean that the Red Ladies always avoid making a scene. Those who had already reached the town met Red Ladies—who arrive in Margate by sky and sea—on the shore. As a helicopter circled overhead, a speedboat came ashore bearing barefoot Red Ladies to land. Disembarking, they were met by a very small welcoming committee, who in this instance chose to kneel in the sand and help the new arrivals into their stilettos. It was a quiet moment compared to the high-drama of helicopter, Tannoy announcement, speedboat and dinghy, and yet it perfectly encapsulated the care that the Red Ladies proffer to each other and the environments in which they find themselves. This was one of many improvisational moments that arise in the Red Ladies’ interventions. As a member of the auxiliary staff on this particular mission, I can attest that this was an emergent moment that articulates the transformation the Red Ladies work towards. As a group, they infiltrate an environment, but the outcomes of these subversions can never be predicted; they are entirely emergent. Furthermore, these are also not large-scale attempts to change the opinions or actions of an entire community; they are instead small

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moments, individual encounters that have the potential to bring about a transformation in how someone accesses art or how they think about their individual responsibility for those around them. The combination of improvisation, movements embodying self-­ organisation, emergence and co-evolution speak to the type of resistance that is needed in the face of contemporary power structures. In thoughts echoed by feminist thinker Rosi Braidotti, the collective Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) wrote in ‘Electronic Civil Disobedience’: ‘Even though monuments of power still stand, visibly present in stable locations, the agency that maintains power is neither visible or stable. Power no longer permanently resides in these monuments and command and control now move about as desired.’11 Modes of direct action like sit-ins no longer hold the same value. The Red Ladies play with tradition—they visit the Houses of Parliament, the seat of power for the British government, or set up home in Trafalgar Square, the national home of protest. In so doing, they acknowledge the continuing symbolic power of these sites. However, they also acknowledge that disruption has to come by other means and for the most part this is through action based on mobility, which reflects and playfully mimics the prevailing system. Their statement ‘We are not what you think, whatever you think we are not that’ speaks to Rebecca Schneider’s invocation that, ‘[p]ower is neither visible nor stable—thus effective resistance must make use of the invisible and the unstable.’12 The flocking, the unpredictable manifestations of the Red Ladies and their ‘masks’ that serve to disguise reflect their interest in mobility as a mode of resistance.

Mimicry and Play The first ‘performance’ of the Red Ladies in Trafalgar Square and outside the National Theatre as part of Architecture Week in 2005 was in part a response to the interventions of the British and US governments in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Red Ladies responded to propaganda around this conflict, which asked the public: ‘If you see something, say something.’ Within this political context, every outsider became a potential threat. The body of the other and specific objects—a woman’s headscarf, a seemingly abandoned bag—created fear and anxiety. As Suzy Willson stated in her interview with Helen Eastman published in 2011, the Red Ladies ‘also respond to the current hysteria around national security, ID cards etc., reminding us, perhaps, that it is all too easy to project an idea of the “other”, terrorist, criminal on people because of the clothes they wear or

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the bags they carry’13. Mimicking the appearance of those who are perceived suspicious due to this appearance, they covered their faces and heads with scarves and sunglasses, and carried conspicuous red vanity cases. The Red Ladies used their striking aesthetic to oppose a system that fostered fear.14 The mimicry inherent in their donning of a ‘uniform’ has been known to often provoke suspicion from the establishment; one interaction with a police officer went as follows: Policeman: Red Lady: Policeman; Red Lady:

‘Why are you wearing that outfit?’ ‘Why are you wearing that outfit?’ ‘I’m a policeman’ ‘And I’m a Red Lady’15

Mimicry resists through pun, parody and scandal, and as Homi Bhabha suggests, this disturbs the originality, stability, homogeneity and authenticity of a given culture.16 Disturbing the stability and authority of the policeman comes through the Red Ladies’ proximity to his position. They too wear a collective uniform; they too observe and document what they see in the notebooks they carry in their red vanity cases; they too identify themselves as a distinct collective with a distinct role. It calls on the importance of what Bhabha refers to as the ‘not quite.’ Mimicry is also the sign of the inappropriate […] the effect of mimicry on the authority of colonial discourse is profound and disturbing […] For [it] alienates its own language of liberty and produces another knowledge of norms.17

The Red Ladies mimic tactics of the state—observing and surveilling— but rather than looking for what is out of the ordinary (the person who does not fit in, the person whose bag looks suspicious) they look at what has been forgotten, what is ‘right before you’ (the banal), they remember. The Red Ladies can be seen to utilise strategies that involve the rejection of stable subject positions ‘utilising other beliefs, ideologies and subject positions to act.’18 However, as stated, the mimicry is never exact, never quite right, it always enacts a slippage, which in the case of the policeman makes him question his identity and stable subject position within an authoritarian rhetoric.

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The Banal The Red Ladies, through this mimicry, create a liminal space in which they interrupt the everyday, but they do so with a preoccupation with the banal. Benjamin, writing in 1927, proposed that, ‘when we reach for the banal, we take hold of the good along with it—the good that is there (open your eyes) right before you.’19 The Red Ladies engage with the banal through the use of the domestic sphere, a space stereotypically held by women. They carry buckets (cleaning), they list a recipe for onion tart (cooking), they knit, they wear floral vintage dresses and read together on their buckets during the theatrical demonstrations, echoing both a 1950s aesthetic and drawing on images of women reading together in a Jane Austen novel. In the hands of a red lady, these domestic acts and visuals are transformed into acts of resistance, acknowledging a long history of women’s resistance in which domestic arts like sewing, embroidery and crafting engage with a poetics of emancipation linked to action. As Betsy Greet attests in Knitting for Good, ‘every act of making is an act of revolution.’20 The efficacy of the Red Ladies lies in its ability to draw focus to and transform what is ‘right before you’ into something unrecognisable. This may be through an engagement with the domestic, as in knitting or cooking, or through the way walking has been articulated as a transformative act. Playing with stereotypes of female cooking presenters, and groups like the Women’s Institute, their reading of a recipe for onion tart turns into a call to arms. Through the poetry of Peter Oswald, the recipe develops from simple instructions to a demand for transformation: When it turns golden brown … a noisette colour, Colour of love, you know, of change Stir in the flour. Now add the stock and simmer. … and simmer For two thousand years, getting angrier and angrier.21

Walking is another way in which the Red Ladies engage with the banal. Thinkers from Walter Benjamin to Henry Thoreau,22 Gaston Bachelard23 and Michel de Certeau have taken walking to be an act of resistance. I read the walking these women do throughout their outdoor interventions as poems-in-motion; they write across their chosen environment. The Red

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Ladies draw desire lines, which transgress the institutionally constructed space. They might be found on the roof of the Turner Contemporary or the Royal Festival Hall, taking tea in a local teashop, knitting outside a department store, storming the local council or helping the local community with litter collection. In all cases—the policeman, the onion tart and their walking—the Red Ladies subvert the everyday and transform it into an act of revolution. In doing so, they symbolically place the potential for change into everyone’s hands; even those who feel excluded or sit on the outside.

Knitting and Stitching Maureen Daly Goggin argues for stitching as ‘a discursive practice […] for those who have suffered untold violence.’24 This continuum of ‘craftivism’ is also seen in how the Suffragettes used stitching as a way of recording experience whilst interned in Holloway Prison. One of the most famous of these objects is the embroidered handkerchief of Janie Terrero stitched in 1912. As Eileen Wheeler states, this piece of embroidery ‘engages us with her act to resist, petition, and memorialise.’25 This act of women coming together to use apparently domestic arts of knitting and stitching has even been seen across the world in 2017 with the Women’s Marches. The handmade ‘pussy hats,’ which were seen adorning the heads of supporters and protesters, are just another example of this type of activism in practice. The Red Ladies’ knitting speaks to the domestic space where women often gather, a space in the margins which can be read as passive. However, in the context of their work, it also performs as a metaphor for the complex systems and group behaviours the Red Ladies examine (between nature, architecture and the human animal), the connections they create through their walking and the maps of desire lines they mark upon a city. They re-articulate watching, witnessing, sitting and the domestic arts, as active, transformative and public rather than passive and private. De Certeau, in The Practice of Everyday Life (1984) writes that cities are shaped by the procedures of institutions, governments, big business, and the ideological tools of cartography to produce a specific architecture.26 Roads and paths, he suggests, are specifically designed to construct the city dweller as consumer, but deviating from these paths (taking shortcuts, ignoring ‘no entry’ signs, climbing over fences and gates and generally writing one’s own desires across the cityscape) enacts resistance to the institutional construction of their environment. Walking in this context

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becomes an anti-language, which disturbs and transforms, marking the space with poetic gestures in the language of action, the language of emancipation. The Red Ladies’ ability to create new openings, connections and disturbances is multiform. They walk paths others may never have tread—connecting communities and parts of a town that exist in antagonistic relationships. The presence of these women in areas of tension does not implicitly mean change is possible, however, their complete otherness as they arrive in a residential square accompanied by a barn owl named Gizmo is intriguing enough for members of different communities to come together and realise on some points at least they can find agreement. This specific instance took place in Dalby Square, Margate, where tensions have arisen in part due to the presence of an isolated immigrant community in an area whose resources are already overstretched. The act is of course symbolic and does not change the day-to-day realities for these people. However, the walking for the Red Ladies from the Theatre Royal Margate, through Dalby Square and continuing onto the Turner Contemporary cuts an unusual path and shows that the architectural logic of a town which in this case has served to define people, can be transgressed. Understanding these knitted together paths of desire lines etched in the landscape as ‘poems-in-motion’ or intertwining paths of ‘unrecognised poems’ as per de Certeau can be seen as a way of ‘speaking’ to transform reality.27 Speech can fail when there are ideological or idiomatic contradictions and conflicts, in these instances action can speak for us. The Red Ladies create an alter-narrative, telling a different kind of story about a group of people or a town. Their walked paths mark the landscape permanently with their rhizomatic connections, creating an ‘alter-map’ of the environments they confront. Postcolonial writer Gloria Anzaldúa articulated it in the following way: ‘Caminante no hay puentes, se hace puentes al andar’—Voyager there are no bridges, one makes them as one walks.28

Conclusion The Red Ladies generate a call to arms for an alternative relationship to each other and our environment. They signal to those they encounter during both their missions and their theatrical demonstrations that engaging with disenfranchised groups, acknowledging the violence taking place at home and in far-off lands, recognising the need to restore a balance with

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the natural world, and ultimately taking action, is the reality of everybody’s everyday. They visually manifest how the individual has agency within the collective to bring about change, creating connections between and drawing attention to disparate groups, ideologies and spaces. They disturb the architecture of power through mimicry and play, using the act of walking to speak the possibility for change that cannot be spoken. They are always watching, always commenting on events, and struggling for a unified voice and body in the midst of fragmentation and destruction. They mimic the strategies of the state through their surveillance, but rather than looking for what is out of the ordinary as a novelty that forces movement and change, they focus on what has been forgotten, what is right before you. They resist looking from the inside out for the catalysts of transformation and instead reveal how looking from the outside in with a preoccupation for the banal can revolutionise social relations. Drawing on the history of women’s movements, looking and witnessing are moved from the passive and private sphere to an active participation in forming strategies of resistance. They create urgency, they empower, they threaten, they witness. The context of the Red Ladies is—NOW!

Notes 1. Suzy Willson and Helen Eastman, “Red Ladies: Who are they and What do they want?,” in The Ancient Dancer in the Modern World: Response to Greek and Roman Dance, ed. Fiona Macintosh (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 421. 2. Shannon Jackson, Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics (USA and Canada: Routledge, 2011), 14. 3. Walter Benjamin, Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings 1927- 1930, trans. Rodney Livingstone, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith (Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 1999), 4. 4. Nicolas Bourriaud (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 2002). 5. Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and Politics of Spectatorship (London, New York: Verso, 2012), 12. 6. Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, 113. 7. Bishop, Artificial Hells, 25. 8. Bishop, Artificial Hells, 25. 9. Willson and Eastman, “Red Ladies”, 423. 10. T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland and Other Poems (USA: Harcourt Inc., 1934), 41. 11. Critical Art Ensemble, Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas (New York: Autonomedia, 1996), 9.

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12. Rebecca Schneider, Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment (USA and Canada: Routledge, 2011), 126. 13. Willson and Eastman, “Red Ladies”, 425. 14. Having had the opportunity to look inside their vanity cases, it is clear the Red Ladies carry many necessary accoutrements. These may include their knitting, a book, a magnifying glass, even a small microscope. Also contained within this bag is a notebook used to capture their observations. These notebooks might contain a list of flowers found in a public garden, the number of surveillance cameras in a shopping area or an enlightening exchange between the red lady and those they have encountered. 15. Willson and Eastman, “Red Ladies”, 425. 16. Homi. K Bhabha, The Location of Culture (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge Classics, 2004). 17. Homi. K Bhabha, The Location of Culture (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge Classics, 2004), 122. 18. Chela Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed (London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 31. 19. Benjamin, Walter Benjamin, 4. 20. Betsy Greer, “Craftivism,” Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice, ed. Gary L. Anderson and Kathryn Herr (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2007), 402. 21. Peter Oswald and Clod Ensemble, Red Ladies, Unpublished Script. 22. Henry David Thoreau, Walking (Maryland: Arc Manor, 2007). 23. Gaston Bachelard, Poetics of Space, trans Maria Jolas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994). 24. Maureen Daly Goggin, “Threads of Feeling: Embroidery Craftivism to Protest Disappearances and deaths in the ‘War on Drugs’ in Mexico,” Textile Society of America 2014 Biennial Symposium Proceedings: New Directions: Examining the Past, Creating the Future (September 2014), 1. 25. Eileen Wheeler, “The Political Stitch: Voicing Resistance in a Suffrage Textile,” Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings (September 2012), 1. 26. Henry David Thoreau, Walking (Maryland: Arc Manor, 2007), 8. 27. De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life. 28. Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga ed., This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015), 254.

References Anzaldúa, G., and C. Moraga, eds. 2015. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Albany: State University of New York Press. Bachelard, G. 1994. Poetics of Space. Trans. M. Jolas. Boston: Beacon Press.

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Benjamin, W. 1999. Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings 1927–1930. Trans. R. Livingstone and Ed. M.W. Jennings, H. Eiland, and G. Smith. Cambridge: The Belknap Press. Bhabha, H.K. 2004. The Location of Culture. Abingdon: Routledge Classics. Bishop, C. 2012. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and Politics of Spectatorship. London, New York: Verso. Bourriaud, N. 2002. Relational Aesthetics. Dijon: Les presses du réel. Critical Art Ensemble. 1996. Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas. New York: Autonomedia. De Certeau, M. 1998. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. S.  Randall. Los Angeles: University of California Press Berkley Eliot, T.S. 1934. The Wasteland and Other Poems. Harcourt Inc. Goggin Daly, M. 2014. Threads of Feeling: Embroidery Craftivism to Protest Disappearances and deaths in the ‘War on Drugs’ in Mexico. In Textile Society of America 2014 Biennial Symposium Proceedings: New Directions: Examining the Past, Creating the Future; September, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Greer, B. 2007. Craftivism. In Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice, ed. G.L. Anderson and K. Herr. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Jackson, S. 2011. Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics. USA and Canada: Routledge Oswald, P., and Clod Ensemble. 2005. Red Ladies. Unpublished Script Sandoval, C. 2000. Methodology of the Oppressed. London: University of Minnesota Press. Schneider, R. 2011. Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment. New York: Routledge. Thoreau, H.D. 2007. Walking. Maryland: Arc Manor. Wheeler, E. 2012. The Political Stitch: Voicing Resistance in a Suffrage Textile. In Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings; September, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Willson, S., and H.  Eastman. 2010. Red Ladies: Who Are They and What Do They Want? In The Ancient Dancer in the Modern World: Response to Greek and Roman Dance, ed. F. Macintosh. New York: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 11

A Dance After All Hell Broke Loose: Mourning as “Quiet” in Ralph Lemon’s How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? Alison Bory

How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? (2010) is a performance work by US-based, multi-disciplinary artist Ralph Lemon. The work is composed of several parts, which shift between media and modes of presentation: In “Sunshine Room,” the opening section, Lemon offers a contemplative, and sometimes confessional, monologue alongside a non-narrative video. “Wall/Hole” features six dancers (Djedje Djedje Gervais, Darrell Jones, Okwui Okpokwasili, Omagbitse Omagbemi, Gesel Mason, and David Thomson) in near constant action, twisting, tossing, flailing, collapsing, and eventually crying.1 “No Room,” a sedate duet for Okpokwasili and Lemon, closes the performance. A related video installation, “Meditation,” was presented after the performance had finished, separately from the performance itself.2 Employing projected film, live narration, frenetic dancing, and periods of elongated inaction, the work

A. Bory (*) Davidson College, Davidson, NC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 S. Whatley et al. (eds.), Art and Dance in Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44085-5_11

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conjures the personal, historical, and philosophical. Engaging the emotional, the cerebral, the representational, and the somatic, the content complicates the ways in which theatrical meaning is often made. With its combination of text and image, live presence, and projected video, “Sunshine Room” establishes the terms of the work: images are introduced only to be destabilized; text is offered as both explanation and obfuscation. Aspirations are introduced and personal details are revealed, but precise meaning is perpetually unfixed. Buried in the opening monologue, Lemon reflects upon the ending of his previous work—the insistent, stumbling, disorienting improvisational structure that closes Come home Charley Patton (2004)—which occurs just as the work seems to be finding energetic and narrative closure. He explains the movement coda as an exploration of ecstasy, what he articulates as “some lovely transcendental illusory thing marking where we had been, what we had made.”3 Its compositional placement, though, registered it as a perceived sense of beginning again, or perhaps just a (temporary) refusal to conclude. As such, this movement section troubled the multitude of ideas that precede it, and deferred the work’s theatrical resolution. As a result, as Lemon notes, everyone was seemingly frustrated by the placement, inclusion, and quality of this section. He explains, [the dancers] and the audience were angry that it went on for as long as it did—all three minutes of it, after an hour and forty minutes of everything else. I seem to recall the audience walking out in droves. When it was over, the performers and I didn’t speak for four years. Darrell told me later that the only way he could get through it was to chant, ‘Fuck, Ralph, Fuck, Ralph.’ over and over.4

With the reflection of time and distance, Lemon confesses, “Watching this dance [now] makes me happy and sad at the same time, a good-bye dance before all hell broke loose.”5 The revisiting of this “good-bye dance” is situated as Lemon’s initiation for creating How Can You Stay … (HCYS). Crafted in the wake of the death of Asako Takami, his romantic partner, and mounted following the passing of Walter Carter, his artistic collaborator, Lemon’s composition can be seen as a meditation on loss and grief. 6 Examining it as such, I propose, it can be understood as an assertion of interiority that is not often ascribed to black cultural products, what scholar Kevin Quashie has called, an act of “quiet.”7 Building upon Quashie’s discussion of the necessity of

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such formulations for African-American artists, I argue that HCYS offers a counter-narrative to the framing of publicness and resistance with which black cultural expressions are often defined. Prioritizing affect and internal experience, this work dwells in the kinesthetic and the corporeal, reconfiguring the images evoked in Lemon’s earlier pieces to create a site for personal mourning. Utilizing various modes of presentation and representation that play with the ephemerality of performance, HCYS positions the weight of bereavement as the frame for the composition, offering sensation and physicality as its avenues of expression. Focusing the employment of these tactics, I examine the work in conversation with Judith Butler’s writing on the power of mourning and Peggy Phelan’s theorizing of the corporeality of theatricality, identifying the experience of loss embedded in moments of “quiet.” Creating a theatrical landscape that foregrounds ineffability, vulnerability, and endurance, HCYS stages a nuanced and complex articulation of mourning, collapsing, and complicating ideas around public and private, personal and political, interiority and expressivity.

Reading “Quiet” In The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture (2012), Quashie outlines the difficulty in recognizing interiority within discussions of black cultural identity. He writes, This exploration is a shift in how we commonly understand blackness, which is often described as expressive, dramatic, or loud. These qualities inherently reflect the equivalence between resistance and blackness. Resistance is, in fact, the dominant expectation we have of black culture. Indeed, this expectation is so widely familiar that it does not require explanation or qualification; it is practically unconscious.8

Prescribed by the United States’ history of enslavement, its repressive ideologies, and structural racism, African-American culture has often been discussed in opposition to hegemonic white culture.9 As such, black cultural expressions have been limited in their interpretations, with visibility, publicness, and resistance as primary modes of understanding. Further, African-American artists have been framed by a “politics of representation, where black subjectivity exists for social and political meaningfulness rather than as a marker of human individuality of the person who is

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black.”10 Looking beyond—or beneath—this framework, Quashie’s examination asks, “What, then, would a concept of expressiveness look like if it were not tethered to publicness?”11 Identifying expressions of “quiet” as the metaphor for this alternative, his analysis offers explication of black cultural identity outside of its public and presentation modes, uncovering, instead, “the interior aliveness, the reservoir of human complexity that is deep inside.”12 Applying the possibilities of such reading to dance composition, I propose that Lemon’s work is articulating a performance of “quiet,” offering a resulting revelation of interiority that creates a space of personal mourning. Examining this work within the context of Lemon’s recent repertory, I suggest, reveals the significance of this turn, and the possibilities for framing subjectivity that such positioning allows. After disbanding his postmodern dance company in 1995, Lemon undertook an extensive research and performance project that would span the next decade of his career.13 Through a combination of travel, ethnography, and responsive artmaking, Lemon sought to establish a new relationship to his work and investigate “the broad themes of his own autobiography.”14 As an African-American artist, who had been working in a genre of dance largely dominated by white dancemakers, this journey often centred on his understanding of his racial identity. The first phase, which took him to West Africa, resulted in the performance Geography (1997), featuring a cast of African and diasporic male performers, and a journal-style book, Geography: Art/Race/Exile, that documented his experiences. For the second phase, Lemon travelled through Asia, in an effort to trace (amongst other things) the historical birthplace of Buddhism, the religion with which he most identifies. In response, he produced Tree (2000), with dancers from India, Japan, and Taiwan, and musicians from China, and published a reflective travelogue/journal of the same name. In the third phase, Lemon journeyed from the American South (what he has called the “ground zero of African-American history”) to his home state of Minnesota, staging intimate performances for those individuals that he met along the way and creating a series of (often invisible) counter-memorials, public demonstrations that marked the historical sites of lynchings and other acts of racial violence.15 His reflections became Come home Charley Patton, the title of both a performance (2004) and a book (2013). Each of the works produced in and alongside the trilogy wrestled with various aspects of identity and ways of positioning the markers that define communities. They revealed an ongoing struggle with defining selfhood

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through externalized means. Moments of “quiet” live within each work; however, representations of violence, defiance, and public expectations of identity were central to each production. In Geography, for example, Lemon is metaphorically stoned, backed against a metal wall, while rocks are cast in his direction. As something of a climax for the non-narrative work, critic Ann Daly describes its significance, “Mr. Lemon portrays the exiled sons of his mother Africa. Dancing is his crime, a stoning his trial, and an ancestral chorus his threshold to the future.”16 He is cast off from the group, isolated, and made different. Defiance is embedded in both his positioning and the violence of the act itself. Similar images emerge in Tree, in which Lemon throws stones at his own feet, initiating a “forced” response to dance. Serving as both instigator and recipient of this violent act, Lemon clashes with his own body. Violence against Lemon’s dancing body again appears in Patton, with the images more precisely fixed to the U.S. Civil Rights movement. At the end of the work, Lemon begins a solo of loping, jig-like movement reminiscent of the buck dance, when he is assaulted by a torrent of water projected from a fire hose.17 Recalling the brutal police responses to protests of the 1960s, Lemon’s body is assaulted by the pressure. Struggling to remain standing and often knocked down by the force of the water, he dances through the barrage. Following this act of simultaneous violence and defiance, the dancers return to the stage to begin the improvisational score that becomes the central focus of HCYS. While the productions crafted from the trilogy offer complicated and nuanced reckonings with the claiming of community, the nature of the project is suggestive of the discussion of artistic expressiveness Quashie describes as often attributed to African-American artists. Even as they foreground Lemon’s active negotiation with assertions of identity, troubling expected allegiances and straightforward narratives, the premise of these works grapple with externalized markers and presumed sites of identification. As such, the project can be seen to enact the presumption of publicness Quashie describes. He notes, “So much of the discourse of racial blackness imagines black people as public subjects with identities formed and articulated and resisted in public.”18 By its very engagement in these dialogs, it can be understood within this familiar paradigm of black expressiveness. Further, the repeated stagings of violence—against Lemon specifically—can be seen to reinforce this framing, and the subsequent positioning of resistance. Whether these attacks on Lemon’s body are perceived as persecution for racial “betrayal,” tests of his cultural alliances, or references to historical acts of racial violence, they operate as

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signifiers of struggle. They offer versions of defiance, defining the self against something else. Commenting on cultural expectations, these performances wrestle with the publicness of articulations of blackness and the presumed expressivity of black identity. Responding to experiences in Lemon’s life after the trilogy, HCYS structures its investigations into selfhood on more intimate terms. Working with the cast from Patton, Lemon returns to some of the emotional impulses and choreographic scores from his earlier work. However, the return is contextualized by the time away, re-imagined as a response to personal losses and shifting reflections on the material investigated. What had started as a chaotic response to national tragedies and historical traumas becomes the initiation for private lament. The material that had choreographically served as a complicated assertion of identity is re-examined to speak to internal experience. In this act of repurposing and reframing, Lemon enacts the “quiet” that Quashie describes. No longer focusing on external markers of identity or the public configuration of self, Lemon prioritizes interiority and stages the experience of affect. What “quiet” allows, according to Quashie, is acknowledgement of the important experiences that are internally located, and that shape a sense of being in the world. He explains, Quiet is a metaphor for the full range of one’s inner life—one’s desires, ambitions, hungers, vulnerabilities, fears. The inner life is not apolitical or without social value, but neither is it determined entirely by publicness. In fact, the interior—dynamic and ravishing—is a stay against the dominance of the social world; it has its own sovereignty. It is hard to see, even harder to describe, but no less potent in its ineffability.19

Reading HCYS as an act of “quiet,” I am exploring the ineffability of the performance, attempting to reveal the expressiveness that is found outside of the representational and semiotic. Instead, I suggest that “quiet” exists within the compositional scores, dancing bodies, and somatic experiences generated by the work. In this work, the investigation of the interior allows for an exploration of affect, an examination of feeling and sensation as a locus of experience. Lemon’s composition foregrounds the complexity and capacities of human existence and refuses a kind of expressiveness that requires public recognition to be rendered meaningful. Crafting a theatrical production that resists traditional associations with performative expressivity and

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demonstrates an ambivalence to legibility, Lemon stages the resonances of what is located within. This approach, per Quashie’s theorizing, is a shift in how black identity might be considered and how the work of black artists might be defined. Considering Lemon’s work as an act of “quiet” renders visible the interiority of subjectivity, creating a space for mourning, in which grief can be explored as deeply personal and profoundly held.

Staging Interiority, Embodying Mourning Employing conceptual strategies of dancemaking alongside more familiar theatrical practices and representational tactics, HCYS intermingles various mediums and modalities. Operating on different registers, each of these approaches offers a reflection on loss, as a theatrical act of “quiet.” “Sunshine Room” includes the most transparent navigation of grief: Lemon sits next to a video screen, delivering a calm, thoughtful monologue that comments on the images on the screen, discusses his making process, and waxes prophetic. During the narration, he shares the personal trauma that instigated the work: “After we finished Come Home Charley Patton, at the end of the nine-year Geography trilogy, my partner Asako became sick and she and I stayed home—Tokyo, Niigata, New York City, San Francisco—for a long time it seemed, until it became too short a time.”20 He describes the conditions of her illness, explaining that as she grew ever sicker, they watched movies. He recalls their final days, their last kiss, and the “remarkable and confounding absence” that followed her death.21 The lament is palpable in the words and the images. As Lemon speaks, sections from the watched films are interspersed with home-video style re-creations of the scenes, primarily drawing from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, a film that Lemon describes as central to the last weeks before Asako’s death. In the re-creations, Walter Carter, Lemon’s then 102-year-­ old collaborator, and his eighty-eight-year-old wife, Edna, enact stilted versions of the slow-moving film: lying next to each other on a bed, sitting with his head in her lap, slow dancing in the kitchen. The film’s narrative, in which the stranded astronaut finds himself hallucinating visions of his deceased wife, offers a parable for Lemon’s loss. It embodies the absence and disorientation that shapes his mourning. Re-imagined through the body of Carter, who passed away the year of the work’s premier, this character serves as a placeholder for the profound grief described. Through the re-enactment of this cultural artefact, the experience of grief is positioned as both intimate and familiar.

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Although it is most explicitly addressed in this opening section, the themes of loss thread through the entirety of the piece. As Lemon explained, “[the work] was, in part, about radical transformation and my direct experience of losing my partner—the whole caregiving, death-and mourning experience, when there’s a breakdown in language.”22 The sections that follow, then, illuminate that breakdown, presenting ways of approaching mourning outside of language and expected representational signs. Investigating sensation and duration, the work, explores how loss feels, rather than how it is discussed. This process, as Lemon suggests, also necessitates a “radical transformation,” a reaction to loss and the process of mourning that recalls Judith Butler’s discussion of grief. Responding to Sigmund Freud’s evolving approaches to psychologically navigating “successful” mourning, she writes, Perhaps, rather, one mourns when one accepts that by the loss one undergoes one will be changed, possibly forever. Perhaps mourning has to do with agreeing to undergo a transformation (perhaps one should say submitting to a transformation) the full result of which one cannot know in advance. There is losing, as we know, but there is also the transformative effect of loss, and this latter cannot be charted or planned.23

The act of mourning, as Butler describes it, requires the withstanding of the sensations, the emotions, and the physicality of the experience. Navigating the unknown and the unplanned of that experience facilitates change. Grieving, then, can be understood as a willingness to traverse the unexpected, to participate in the chaotic life of the interior, and to embrace “quiet.” This willingness materializes in the improvisational dance, “Wall/ Hole,” that makes up the second section of HCYS. Dwelling in the ambiguous and engaging the somatic experience of loss, this section foregrounds the sensations of its affect. Returning to ideas instigated in Patton, six dancers perform an improvisational score that results in often-chaotic movement and erratic choreographic structures.24 In this dance, patterns and approaches emerge, only to dissipate again, without recognizable decisions about duration or placement. The dancers enter and exit the stage with matter-of-fact resolution, but the actions within the space seem to have unclear rules about beginning and ending. Phrases initiate and ramp up, or fizzle to nothing, without apparent reason. As the dancers move, it is often with a sense of abandon. Bodies act, and react to their

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own propulsion: lunging, stumbling, flailing, spinning, rolling, jumping, and falling. In unpredictable rhythms, individuals stop or slow, watch or look away. Bodies gather in corners, finding proximity without interaction; bodies collide, fumble, and grab in centre stage. Bodies insist on verticality; bodies struggle to remain upright. The sounds of effort, growling, muffled screams, and the occasional “God damn,” are audible. Relation to form emerges only to disintegrate without cognitive or somatic explanation. As quickly as pattern develops, it recedes again—or doesn’t, but remains to become something else. Disorientation—in both action and structure—seems inevitable. Exhaustion is unavoidable. And, then as straightforwardly as it began, it ends. After (approximately) twenty-two minutes, the dancers clear the stage. For this section, Lemon’s initiating interest, according to his dramaturg Katherine Profeta, was to create a “dance that disappears.”25 In this, Profeta suggests, Lemon was interested in making something that was inherently “unrepeatable and allegedly unviewable,” a performance that would perpetually live in the present of its enactment.26 As a result, the rules for the movement and parameters for performance were defined by an interest in undermining meaning—or continually subverting its definition. To generate these rules, the dancers gathered (over the course of two years) to investigate how this desire for ineffability and the slipperiness of signification might be made manifest in bodies and across time. Working with externalized instruction and experiential reporting, they developed a score that built upon parameters instigated by the sensations of both doing and watching. Familiar corporeal habits and patterns were challenged so that choices around space and time avoided customary principles of compositional ordering. Through the rehearsal process, the dancers enhanced their skills for generating unpredictable action and grew the physical endurance needed to sustain the action that the score required. What had started as the short burst of energy ending Patton was evolved into an extended exploration of perpetual deferral. Derived from his investigation into the defining of his own identity, this iteration of the movement score built a structure that would attempt to “disappear.” Situating improvisation in this way is not unfamiliar in contemporary dance practices. Choreographer William Forsythe, for example, definitively declared: “the whole point of improvisation is to stage disappearance.”27 This rhetoric reinforces many ideas about improvisation’s nature as well as its meaning. While all performance can be claimed to be ephemeral, unable to be captured beyond the moment of its enactment,

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improvisation is often explored as a manifestation of this ontology. The navigation of this improvisational score, then, can be understood as manifesting Lemon’s state of grief. As Profeta suggests, “[t]he performers’ bodies in ‘Wall/Hole’ were Lemon’s body; their painful flailing surrogates for his own. In the mind of the mourner the past is gone, the future is gone too, all that exists is the painful now.”28 Further, as the use of improvisation requires a kind of instantaneous decision-making, its employment in theatrical work often suggests a valorization of unrepeatability. The improvisational creation is perceived to be inimitable, with its very being seeming to foreclose the possibility of reproduction. As such, improvisational forms can be understood to promote—or reveal—the instability of the performance form. The simultaneity of deciding and embodying can provide a sense of risk, generating a theatrical method that seems inherently on the edge of precarity. The instability of the improvisational form only magnifies the realities of performance itself. Heightening the stakes, the corporeality amplified by Lemon’s composition, I argue, opens up the significance and signification of these bodies in action, positioning the manifestations of grief explored in the work. In Mourning Sex, Peggy Phelan proposes performance as a negotiation of the symbolic languages of trauma and death. She suggests that performance allows for a particular wrestling with loss that foregrounds the physical. She asserts, “The enactment of invocation and disappearance undertaken by performance and theatre is precisely the drama of corporeality itself. At once a consolidated fleshly form and an eroding, decomposing formlessness, the body beckons us and resists our attempts to remake it.”29 The disappearance of form, which Lemon was so drawn to, reveals the deterioration of the bodies themselves. As Phelan suggests, the score provides a physicalized negotiation of those very real questions that haunt those who remain in the wake of death: What does it look like for bodies to disappear? What does it mean for lives to be no longer? Lemon’s instruction—and positioning of this section—can be seen to be re-producing a kind of kinesthetic narrative of instability suggested by these very questions. The bodies enter and exit the space erratically; their participation in the theatrical world created is unstable. The action unfolds in fits and starts. Movement ideas go unfulfilled, expected sequences are cut short. Stumbling sometimes leads to falling, but sometimes finds recovery. Replicating the volatility of experience, the cause does not consistently produce an effect. Further, the interactions between the dancers reinforce this sense of undependability. They share

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the space, exist in relation, but are not always available to catch the body that falls or to support the body that struggles. Sometimes encounters are sustained, with small, temporary communities seemingly created; but, just as often, an anticipated encounter seems to end as quickly as it begins. Potentiality is suspended: a glimpse at a possible future is presented and immediately foreclosed. In this staging of instability, bodies and form are revealed to be both fragile and deteriorating. The score of six competing, but complimentary, solos is, thus, filled with a multiplicity of images and invocations of affect. In his discussion of the work, Ryan Platt surmised, “Although the choreography was not mimetic, this writhing invoked the pain of grieving.”30 Something about the movement was understood as a manifestation of grief, not a reproduction of its appearance. More than a metaphorical representation of either death or mourning, this effort to enact deterioration became an extensive exploration of physicality, cognition, and Lemon’s relationship to his audience. Considering the kinesthetic resonances for the audience complicates representational understandings of the work. As the dancing bodies gain and lose specific cognitive meanings, the kinesthetic experience of being with these bodies also becomes about physical and emotional fatigue. Watching their energies ebb and flow, seeing these individuals push past suggestions of exhaustion or work within the weariness, is a reminder of the materiality of the body, of the fragility of the human form. These, it becomes clear, are bodies that are subject to pain, that are capable of hurting. They are also subject to frustration, to fear, and to frenzy. Experiencing the work, then, offers access to empathy, and to attending to the experience of these other bodies. It offers an understanding of the potential impotency of the witness, acknowledging the disempowerment that comes from being the spectator to a love’s demise. Watching these bodies continually react reveals the relationality of mourning, creating a space for the transformation necessitated by grief. In its staging of deterioration, it positions humanity, recalling what Butler suggests: “You are what I gain through disorientation and loss. This is how the human comes in to being, again and again, as that which we have yet to know.”31 Lingering in this “yet to know,” cultivating a space for the “painful now,” the improvisational score surfaces a cacophony of responses and reactions. Examining its form, it can be seen as the enactment of decomposition, the deterioration of an idea, an embodiment, and a way of being. Probing for internal meaning, it can be understood as cultivating perpetual confusion, as generating a space for the bewilderment and the not knowing that pervades

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loss. Focusing on its shaping of space, it can be conceived as creating a kinesthetic experience in which affect is embodied and a liminal site in which transformation might transpire. Whatever temporary meaning is made, the duration of the exercise provides palpable sensations of unremittingness. Perhaps made inevitable or brought on by human conditions, the ongoingness of the action becomes a dominant sensation, and awareness of what it means to endure becomes central to the experience. In this, the work attends to the choreographic element of time—asking its participants and its audiences alike to be present in each moment, and cognizant of its passing. The focus on endurance, on sitting with the uncomfortable and being in the difficult, is further emphasized in the section that follows, as the audience is asked to focus on the rhythm of this manifestation of sadness. Just as the chaotic improvisational score finds some sort of end, the crying begins: projected onto an empty stage, a single voice alternates between wailing, sobbing, snivelling, and howling.32 The sensation of relentlessness shifts from visual to aural. Eventually, Okpokwasili emerges from the wings, crying as she walks away from the audience. As her back heaves and slumps, physicality is added to this sound. Both representational and somatic, holding on the depictive associations and the experiential resonances, this section demands endurance. It is, as Platt suggests, excruciating for some. He describes: “Save for her wailing, nothing happened for seven long, torturous minutes. By the time she appeared, her screams had become intolerably aggravating.”33 For those, then, the endurance provoked discomfort, and they are asked to withstand the pain.34 For others, it is an invitation for empathy. Profeta writes, “Okpokwasili’s choking grief, with its disturbingly familiar ebbs and flows, also belonged to the universe—to everyone and anyone who was willing to recognize it as their own.”35 While the experience of witnessing eight minutes of crying is certainly not universal, it calls attention to the amplification of time. In this work, the durational experience of grief is foregrounded—as pain, as lament, as potentially shared. Its enactment, as Phelan suggests, illuminates the temporality demanded: “Whatever else the work of mourning requires, it demands time. … The work of mourning is never clear, never complete, never solid.”36 In all of its erratic affect, grief lingers. It generates ambiguity, and compels survival. Dwelling in the sensation of grief and exploring the somatic effect of mourning, HCYS calls attention to the experience of loss. Perhaps conjuring deterioration and disappearance, it takes on the implications of death. It stages absences, creates chaos, and remains in the space of being with

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discomfort—be it thrashing bodies or intense wailing. It gestures to both the sublime and the mundane. As the work comes to a close, Lemon returns to the stage in a duet with Okpokwasili. After staging both frenetic energy and catharsis, the two seem sedate and detached, simply inhabiting the same space, engaged in their own kinesthetic exploration of largely pedestrian tasks. Lemon is only wearing one sock, which he removes to hold, contemplate, spin in circles above his head, and, eventually, return to his foot. Lemon jumps, calmly and methodically tossing himself to floor, while Okpokwasili slowly sinks to the ground. From a position of recline, Lemon proclaims, “yes, oh yes.” Okpokwasili exits. Lemon sits, legs long before him. He stays for a while, then stands and leaves. The lights dim (Fig. 11.1). The ending does not provide explanation or reprieve. There is no resolution found in the movement on stage, or in the bodies shaped by the movement. There is only sitting; there is only contemplation; there are only bodies in relation. Examined alongside Lemon’s previous work, Fig. 11.1  Lemon in How to Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? (Credit: Photo by Cameron Wittig, courtesy Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis)

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HCYS asserts subjectivity and the subjective experience. It steps away from the externalized markers of identity, and explication of race present in the Geography trilogy, to look internally. It insists on its own internal focus and functioning. It offers the immediacy of the now, positions reflection, and calls for withstanding the unrelenting. Reading this as “quiet” asks Lemon’s audience to attend to the cultivation of interiority that pervades this work. In so doing, cultural positionality is re-framed, and identity is imagined outside of the narrative of resistance with which African-American cultural expression is often understood. Probing the experiential and somatic implications of the work casts Lemon’s theatrical negotiations with identity apart from the rhetoric of publicness. Foregrounding its “quiet,” and sitting with the grief that the work acknowledges, employs, and actively cultivates, HCYS provides a way of expressing mourning outside of traditional modes of theatrical representation and systems of making meaning. Driven by affect, HCYS generates the unresolvable sensation of loss. Instigating questions that it never answers, the work foregrounds the somatic, asking performers and audiences alike to dwell in the experience of grief. It interrogates the experiences of loss, through the manifestation of disappearance and deterioration. It expresses the ineffable nature of bereavement, operating in and through the possibilities of performance and the ephemerality of the performing moment. Near the end of his book, Quashie elaborates the complexities of “quiet.” He writes, “Quiet is to feel deeply and to feel what is deep. It is the space of interrogation, of being able to ask and ponder beyond what might be appropriate. A practice of knowing that is incomplete.”37 So, too, is mourning. It requires transformation, but is never concluded. In HCYS, I suggest, room is made for “quiet,” so that mourning can be practised, experienced, and staged in all of its incompleteness.

Notes 1. “Wall/Hole” is followed by “Fairy Tale,” a subsection not discussed in this chapter. 2. Created with designer Jim Findlay, “Meditation” was presented away from the immediacy of the performance space, to be available the day after the show had closed. 3. Lemon, Ralph. How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? November 10, 2010. On-the-Boards-TV, http://www.ontheboards.tv/performance/dance/theater/how-can-you-stay#about.

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4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. While researching Patton in the Mississippi Delta in 2002, Lemon met Walter Carter, who was introduced as “the oldest man in Yazoo City, Mississippi” (Hannaham, “Ralph Lemon.” 36). They began to work together on video projects, which were incorporated into Lemon’s work in various ways. While most of Carter’s recorded performances play with everyday tasks and imagined scenarios, Carter’s positionality, as an African-­ American man who had seen the expanse of the twentieth century from the rural South, and his mortality were frequent themes in their work together. 7. Quashie, Kevin. The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012). 8. Quashie, The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture, 3. 9. While Quashie’s discussion is focused on “blackness” more generally, the subjects of his analysis frame his argument in a United States context. My elaboration similarly assumes this framing. 10. Quashie, The Sovereignty of Quiet, 4. 11. Quashie, The Sovereignty of Quiet, 20–21. 12. Quashie, The Sovereignty of Quiet, 26. 13. Lemon creates across mediums. Known as a dancer, choreographer, writer, visual artist, and curator, Lemon serves as the Artistic Director of Cross Performance, a company dedicated to producing cross-cultural, cross-­ disciplinary work. His early work with Ralph Lemon and Company (1985–1995), however, was more traditionally defined within the “post-­ modern” dance genre. 14. Profeta, Katherine, “Notes," Geography Trilogy DVD, by Ralph Lemon. New York: MAPP International, 2007. 15. Cited in Birns, “Ritualizing the Past: Ralph Lemon’s Counter-­Memorials,” 18. In his discussion of these memorializing acts, Birns argues, “Lemon’s documentations of his revisits are counter-memorials that provide a different take on a commemorative process usually left to official history. They evoke history that is still not, on the most formal level, totally acknowledged. But they also counter overly facile ideas of memory. They forestall a premature healing, a rushed reconciliation” (22). This analysis, I propose, foretells some of what Lemon is to explore in his approach to own personal history, allowing for the sensation of mourning to linger. 16. Ann Daly, “Conversations about Race in the Language of Dance.” New York Times, December 7, 1997. 17. Tied to American slavery and minstrel traditions, the buck dance has a complex and fragmentary history of embodiment. As a form that has been borrowed, combined, and re-claimed, the dance itself serves as one of the fragmented and unstable spaces of identity engaged in Lemon’s Patton.

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18. Quashie, The Sovereignty of Quiet, 8. 19. Quashie, The Sovereignty of Quiet, 6. 20. Lemon, How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? 21. Ibid. 22. Hedstrom, Cynthia, “Ralph Lemon,” Dance Magazine, April 2013, 32. 23. Butler, Judith, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (New York: Verso, 2014), 21 (original emphasis). 24. Like choreography, dance improvisation relies on determining the action of the body in space and time. Providing parameters for those elements, improvisation is structured to allow other choices to be made in the moment. 25. Profeta, Katherine. “Training the anti-spectacular for Ralph Lemon’s dance that disappears,” Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 2 (2011): 216. 26. Profeta, Katherine. “Training the anti-spectacular for Ralph Lemon’s dance that disappears,” 216. 27. Qtd in Gilpin, “Aberrations of Gravity,” in William Forsythe and the Practice of Choreography: It starts from any point, ed. Steven Spier (New York: Routledge, 2011), 122. 28. Profeta, “Training the anti-spectacular for Ralph Lemon’s dance that disappears,” 226. 29. Phelan, Peggy, Mourning Sex: Performing Public Memories (New York: Routledge, 1997), 4. 30. Platt, Ryan, “Ralph Lemon and the Language of Loss,” PAJ: Journal of Performance and Art 34 (2012):75. 31. Butler, Precarious Life, 49. 32. Lemon insists that Okpokwasili’s tears are authentic, not mimetic. Her crying was initiated by an elaborate preparation ritual, which included looking at book of representations of suffering that she created. While the specifics of the contents have mostly been kept private, the reality of her expression of pain seems important to Lemon’s discussion of the work. 33. Platt, Ryan, “Ralph Lemon and the Language of Loss,” 75. 34. According to Lemon, many did not “withstand the pain.” Instead, they left the theatre or chose not to participate in the work. He noted, “I was trying to collect some empirical evidence, because it was so interesting to me. So I kept a list and what we found is that young people would not walk out but pulled out their cell phone. That was their way of exiting” (Hannaham, 40). 35. Profeta, “Training the anti-spectacular for Ralph Lemon’s dance that disappears,” 226–227. 36. Phelan, Mourning Sex, 171. 37. Quashie, The Sovereignty of Quiet, 134.

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References Birns, Nicholas. 2005. Ritualizing the Past: Ralph Lemon’s Counter-Memorials. PAJ: Journal of Performance and Art 27: 18–22. Butler, Judith. 2014. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. New York: Verso. Daly, Ann. 1997. Conversations About Race in the Language of Dance. New York Times, December 7. http://www.nytimes.com/1997/12/07/arts/conversations-about-race-in-the-language-of-dance.html. Accessed 1 Feb 2017. Gilpin, Heidi. 2011. Aberrations of Gravity. In William Forsythe and the Practice of Choreography: It Starts from Any Point, ed. Steven Spier, 112–127. New York: Routledge. Hannaham, James, and Ralph Lemon. 2012. Ralph Lemon. Bomb, No. 20, Summer. Hedstrom, Cynthia. 2013. Ralph Lemon. Dance Magazine, April. Lemon, Ralph. 2010. How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? November 10. On-the-Boards-TV, http://www.ontheboards.tv/ performance/dance/theater/how-can-you-stay#about. Accessed 1 March 2017. Phelan, Peggy. 1997. Mourning Sex: Performing Public Memories. New  York: Routledge. Platt, Ryan. 2012. Ralph Lemon and the Language of Loss. PAJ: Journal of Performance and Art 34: 71–82. Profeta, Katherine. 2007. Notes. In Geography Trilogy DVD, ed. Ralph Lemon. New York: MAPP International. ———. 2011. Training the Anti-Spectacular for Ralph Lemon’s Dance That Disappears. Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 2: 215–230. Quashie, Kevin. 2012. The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

CHAPTER 12

Theatre as FOMO: Metonymic Spaces of William Forsythe’s KAMMER/KAMMER Tamara Tomić-Vajagić

Michel Foucault’s 1971 lectures on Édouard Manet’s paintings include a proposal that the work Un bar aux Folies-Bergère (1881–1882) leads to the conceptualisation of painting as a “discursive field”,1 one which represents a particular rupture in the historical tradition in viewing images. This research was conducted with a generous support of Lisa Ullmann Travelling Scholarship Fund, which enabled my attendance of the closing performances of Kammer/Kammer in 2015 in Frankfurt. I am grateful to Alexandra Scott and Forsythe Productions, to William Forsythe and The Forsythe Company, particularly Dana Caspersen, Christopher Roman, Mechthild Ruehl who helped me generously by providing access to information. Thank you to Julieta Cervantes and Surface Grafik (Markus Weisbeck and Stephan Bütikofer) for lending me the copyrighted images. I am further grateful to Caspersen, as well as to Arabella Stanger, Sinisa Savic and Theresa Buckland for reading this text in drafts. I am indebted to Stanger, Ljudmila Stratimirović and Herbert Wright for illuminating conversations about FOMO. Thank you to Antonin Artaud for inspiration. T. Tomić-Vajagić (*) Department of Dance, University of Roehampton, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 S. Whatley et al. (eds.), Art and Dance in Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44085-5_12

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Manet’s displacement of the viewer recasts the spectatorial role, argues Foucault, as the painting invites a shift in the act of viewing. The movement of the viewer—a physical step to the left—helps to recognise the painting as a game of identities, as the spectator becomes a mirror image of the figure in the painting. By repositioning the viewer, Manet’s painting acts as a commentary on the socio-economic hierarchies that coloured gender relationships of his era. As suggested by the art theorist Nicolas Bourriaud, in Foucault’s reading, Manet’s painting invents “the figure of the modern viewer, questioned by a pictorial object”, which renders the viewer “conscious” of their own presence and “position within a much larger system”.2 Using Foucault’s example as an overture, this article proposes that William Forsythe’s theatre work Kammer/Kammer (2000) may be understood as a similarly discursive choreographic intervention, but one that uses theatre proscenium work as its field of the spectatorial shift. I argue that accounting for the spectator’s experience enables a reading of Kammer/Kammer as a metonymic postdramatic space,3 and a choreographic anticipation of the post-digital era with its shifts in the “period eye”.4 Such a reading may offer us deeper modes of dialectic engagement with our own contemporaneity and foregrounds new forms of “mixed reality”5 in theatre spectatorship. Many of Forsythe’s choreographies to date explore the place of the spectator. These works include numerous choreographic objects and site-­ specific performance installations in various environments, as well as theatre choreographies that use reconfigured spatial arrangements that invite spectators to move and interact with the work.6 Yet, Kammer/Kammer seems particularly interesting because its shift in the spectatorial experience is created while firmly retaining what Forsythe’s chronicler Roslyn Sulcas calls, “a conventional theatrical expression”,7 which is to say it is a traditional proscenium work, presented to the audience stationed in their seats. Through a spectatorial account of the most recent live performances, during the April 2015 finale of The Forsythe Company in Frankfurt’s Bockenheimer Depot,8 this essay explores Kammer/Kammer as a case of blurred boundaries between the experiences of the viewer and the characters in the work. Similarly to Foucault’s spectator of Manet’s painting, Forsythe’s viewer of Kammer/Kammer is led to contemplate their own position within the much larger socio-cultural production system. This effect, it is argued below, is achieved partly through Forsythe’s aim to play around with the spectators’ “assumptions”,9 and partly through a

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stimulation of their FOMO, or the present-day cultural phenomenon of the “fear of missing out”.10 I propose that Forsythe’s cultivation of the viewer’s engagement, including the (perhaps unplanned) FOMO effect, reaffirms Kammer/Kammer as a discursive field which, analogous to Manet’s intervention, implicates the spectator as an agent of the work and a constituent of social systems in the post-digital era. Ultimately, a retrospective view of Kammer/Kammer reveals it as a paradigmatic example of a hybrid theatre choreography at the turn of the twenty-first century; the work appears to imagine and anticipate a digital-native seer who has a facility to absorb a multitude of stimuli, and to navigate the ambiguity of physical and digital intimacies and detachments as a dynamic field of “mixed realities”.11

≥ The Spectator >Je tourne12

Kammer/Kammer was created by Ballett Frankfurt in 2000. It was last performed by Forsythe’s subsequent troupe, The Forsythe Company, during its 2015 closing celebrations at the Bockenheimer Depot, a former tram warehouse which the city of Frankfurt converted into a theatre in the late 1980s. Forsythe showed his works at the Depot from the late 1990s, utilising interesting theatrical possibilities of its flexible space.13 The porous space of the Bockenheimer Depot offers important stimulation for this analysis because it promotes the spectator’s feeling of being on the verge of inclusion into the inner operations of the theatrical event. Not being built as a theatre, the Bockenheimer auditorium is not closed off by soundproofing walls and heavy doors. This spatial permeability may be experienced immediately in the lobby, which is a broad social space with a bar. The proscenium is integral to the same space, and is effectively demarcated by several softer barriers: the stage is obscured by the back of a broad and high seating platform; on the sides are symmetrically positioned roped posts. Those are the only obstacles blocking the entry. The delineation of the “inside” and the “outside” of the auditorium, upheld by the ropes and curtains, therefore, is light. Early performances of Kammer/ Kammer in Frankfurt drew attention to this aspect: as Sulcas describes, a “30-minute ballet” was performed “while the audience (who could hear the music and even catch glimpses of the dancers) waited to be allowed to take seats”.14 As Forsythe clarifies, this was a “red herring” prelude—a

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staged rehearsal, designed to challenge the spectator’s assumptions and bring about “confused expectations”.15 Although Kammer/Kammer in its later iterations excluded this particular oblique overture, the effects of the Depot’s spatial porousness were still left as a possibility for the spectator’s consideration. Waiting in the lobby, a 2015 spectator may have noticed resonances of the stage preparations and warm ups—the pre-performance sound checks were heard, layered with the distant noise of people and scenographic elements in motion. It was still possible to peer around the seating platform to catch a light of the “inside” action. During the company’s closing celebrations such a para-“insider” experience was further textured by the emotional context, as the company’s regular Frankfurt audience, along with many international fans travelled to see the shows, some arguably urged by the publicity materials shared through social media (Fig. 12.1). Moreover, during the final week of the Forsythe Company, some spectators found themselves in the vicinity of the former Ballett Frankfurt members (including some of the Kammer/ Kammer’s original performers) whose reunion brought them into the audience. At the same time, there was a sense of looking ahead to the future too. In the lobby there were flyers (in visual synergy with Fig. 12.1), advertising the upcoming event of the company members—the choreographic work by the company artist Fabrice Mazliah, which featured dancers of The Forsythe Company. The text included a humorous invitation to the intimate “sharing” of “the tribe”, perhaps connoting the closeness to the company hypothetically felt by some spectators.16 Christopher Roman, the original cast member and the company’s Associate Artistic Director who staged Kammer/Kammer with Forsythe in 2015 clarifies that the context of the Company finale was not the focal point of the preparations: “We were quite focused on the work as it happens on the stage”.17 Indeed, the on-stage work also reinforces the idea of a play upon the spectator’s anticipation and “insider” knowledge. In 2015 and other versions of Kammer/Kammer without the ballet-prelude, a different kind of diversionary tactic was deployed on the open stage: while audience members enter the auditorium, they were seemingly accidental witnesses to a mid-action warm-up in which scattered dancers practised in “plain clothes”, while one performer (playing Forsythe) directed them.18 This is part of the device known as the “Vorschau”, or the “before-­ show”,19 encountered in several Forsythe’s works. In Kammer/Kammer this pre-show also integrated various insider tips: dancer-actor Anthony Rizzi, one of the two protagonist performers, addressed spectators directly

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Fig. 12.1  The Forsythe Company’s published advertisement for the 2015 performances of Kammer/Kammer at the Bockenheimer Depot. (Image courtesy of the Forsythe Productions and Surface Grafik)

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and advised them about the details of the story, but also about the “best seats in the house” (at the back). The latter point is significant particularly at the Bockenheimer Depot, where the seating is not numbered—Rizzi’s tips may have influenced a spectator’s interpretation, as well as led to some actual seat selections and changes of mind. The game of expectations and choices, therefore, is signalled in the work from the outset. Furthermore, in the back of the Depot auditorium, behind the top back row of the seating platform, there is a long and open technical booth in which the viewer might spot the real crew—performance designers, the dramaturge and the actual choreographer at work throughout the performance. With the inside workings of the event not fully concealed, the viewer’s ambiguous position of quasi-insider in the event is reinforced, even before the themes of the work’s plot, including intimacy, are known. Although the experience of various agents in the work might vary across performances and contexts, Kammer/Kammer’s staging, therefore, promotes the spectator’s position of an invited guest, always at the verge of inclusion, in some way always close to “feeling in the know”, even directly implicated into the dialogue with the choreography on the stage. For the Bockenheimer Depot’s spectator-partial insider from the lobby entrance onward, it may be difficult to know, therefore, where and when exactly the choreography of Kammer/Kammer begins.

≥ The Work > “This is mental. Two parallel red lines of different lengths inch forward, not touching.”20

Kammer/Kammer is a mediated choreography, constructed out of complex referential threads, physical and virtual outputs, including Philip Bussmann’s live video feed, edited during the performance. The work’s fabula refracts narrative strands from two contemporaneous literary texts, also published in 2000: Anne Carson’s prose poem “Irony is Not Enough: Essay on My Life as Catherine Deneuve (2nd draft)”21 and chapter from Douglas A. Martin’s novel Outline of My Lover.22 The plot, woven out of these two separate stories is told through the overlapping first-person accounts of two protagonists (enacted by Rizzi and Dana Caspersen, in speaking roles). Caspersen plays the narrator from Carson’s text, a university Classics professor who imagines herself as a romanticised persona of the actress Catherine Deneuve. Carson’s

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“Deneuve” embodies traits of the film character Marie Leblanc, played by the real actress Deneuve in André Téchiné’s film Les voleurs (1996).23 Carson’s Deneuve professor is not quite a doppelgänger to Téchiné’s Leblanc, but rather a docufictional guise that facilitates the former’s capacity to narrate an intimate, homoerotic love story. Caspersen-as-Carson’s“Deneuve” fantasises about her young student, “the Girl” (performed by Jone San Martin), who is much more interested in her boyfriend (in 2015 danced by Tilman O’Donnell24). The second sub-plot is woven from Martin’s novel, in which his autobiographical persona, the “Boy in a Blue Sock Hat”—narrated by Rizzi—reminisces about a tender time when he was a boyfriend of the famous “international rock star”. As an archetypal ingénue-romantic partner, the Boy is a frequent wide-eyed intimate companion to the Star during concerts and tours, but he often feels excluded and left just outside the inner circle. Implied in these plot tangles, therefore, we encounter the theme of simultaneous inclusion and exclusion, similar to some spectators’ pre-­ show experience. In the work itself, the motif of the inconsistent intimacy is visually reinforced by the partially obstructed viewing experience of Kammer/Kammer. The stage is physically sectioned off by the broad wooden panels, extending across the space at times like paravanes. They resemble a backstage clutter, yet these coulisses include rolling walls, “the active mechanics of the backstage of a scene, so the audience is often placed literally behind the scenes”, explains Caspersen.25 Across the two-­ act work, the partitions variously form secluded spaces, sometimes rooms or pseudo-confessionals; remapped at other times, they become backdrops for particular scenes. In the story, both characters, often located alone in bedrooms and hotel rooms contemplate memories and fictions about various encounters with the subjects of their respective desires. In Forsythe’s account, the narrative junctions reveal an alternative structural possibility: the texts by Carson and Martin share “a number of common themes”— “obsessive love, monetary considerations, power”, so that the act of “weaving them together” creates a “fugal structure” (Fig. 12.2).26 The word “kammer” if translated as a “chamber” or “a room” is one of the junctions of the work’s confluent narrative. In addition to the physical chambers in the scenography, there is also a potent metaphorical meaning of the “chambers of the heart”.27 Kammer/Kammer’s dramaturge, a composer-­scientist Joel Ryan proposes that the structure of the work can be understood as a “multi-dimensional map of the lovers”—“the

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Fig. 12.2  Dana Caspersen in Kammer/Kammer. (Photo: ©Julieta Cervantes)

geometry of their consciousness is the geometry of the space” arranged in front of the spectator.28 Dance performed by the ensemble only occasionally happens visibly on the stage. More often, physically “hidden” events are exposed through film projections on the monitors, some of which are protruding into the audience space. Sometimes dance scenes are “perceived in interstitial glimpses” as performances often occur “behind continually shifting walls”; the view, thus is “mediated through highly-choreographed camera movement” and video sequences “dispersed throughout the space”.29 Choreographic cross-fertilisations of the theatrical and the cinematic have interested Forsythe across his career, details Sulcas.30 The choreographic role of the camera in Kammer/Kammer is particular and substantial, however: cinematic thinking and the form of film make some of the principal constituents of the choreography.31 Sulcas’s point may be easily seen: at times, the camera acts as a surgical magnifying lens (for instance, showing the protagonists’ monologues in frontal close-ups); at other times it acts as an uncomfortable device of CCTV surveillance (showing the bird’s-eye view of the group of dancers in action in a secluded space, on and around

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a mattress). Particular effect of the screens in Kammer/Kammer is contemplated by philosopher Alva Noë, who as a spectator of earlier versions encountered an “irresistible” draw of the screens that pulled his attention apart in several directions at once.32 The aesthetic effect of the projections therefore is magnetic, but their content is ambiguous. While the screens project closeness, as a whisper to the viewer, they leak the theme of “intimacy” into the auditorium; yet, simultaneously, the incorporeal form of screen projections promotes the feeling of detachment. The visualisation of the key characters also promotes ambiguity, whilst alluding to the cinematic principles of double exposition and cross-­ dissolve. One of the examples is the styling of Deneuve. Carson’s reference to Techiné’s character is further layered by Forsythe: in Kammer/Kammer Deneuve is dressed in the iconic signifiers of another, arguably more familiar, double persona played by the actress—Séverine Serizy from Luis Buñuel’s 1967 film Belle de jour, costumed in Yves Saint Laurent-style caramel-taupe turtleneck and a two piece suit with a pencil skirt and knee-­ length high heel boots; she wears big “Jacky O” sunglasses and a round “pillbox” hat. As a multiple exposition, then, she reflects Carson’s, Buñuel’s and Forsythe’s exotic representations of the Deneuve iconography: seemingly buttoned up, yet possibly highly sensuous and unrestrained underneath. Other examples of the game of discovery through visual refractions and cross-dissolves may implicate the spectator directly. Rizzi in the “before-­ show” introduces an oblique cameo—Martin Schwember’s film shows a young violinist in training, practising in his room. He is dressed in a simple outfit, similar to Rizzi’s own costume as the Boy—light blue shirt and khaki trousers; nearly the same clothing is also worn by San Martin’s Student. Their outfits partake in the visual culture of the “everyman/ woman” unisex normcore “uniform”, a genre of clothing associated with “the desire to fit in rather than stand out”.33 The cascade of referential echoes is thus felt as another porous aspect in the work and another possible invitation to the contemporary spectator’s identification. Formally, Kammer/Kammer’s fugal amalgamation of cinematic and theatrical forms invokes “cinematographic theatre”, a genre akin to “radical montage”, as theorised by Hans Thies Lehmann.34 Although not analysing Forsythe’s works, but referring to broader  examples from late twentieth-century European and North American theatre,35 Lehmann describes cinematographic theatre as a “kaleidoscope of visual and verbal aspects of a story” which gives an “impression of a collage and

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montage—videographic, filmic, narrative” and destabilises “the perception of dramatic logic”.36 This aspect seems to echo Forsythe’s aim to subvert performance conventions and disrupt the audiences’ expectations, yet in the case of Kammer/Kammer as I argue below, the dramatic logic is cohesive—this collage is part of a tessellated metonymic structure. Forsythe’s own descriptions suggest the reason: he was interested in the compositional refractions as principles of music composition—“subjects are continually reiterated and played in another key, so to speak, against each other, backwards”; in choreography, there are “countless levels of kinetic juxtaposition, many beyond the immediate, visible sphere of dancing”.37 As far as dancing, variably forceful or gentle, the movement is initiated from the unexpected points in the body, articulated even when it appears dishevelled. Dancing style may be described as the polycentric embodied action, which (particularly in duets and groups) might echo the idea of reverberations found throughout Kammer/Kammer.38 The principle of “multicentricity” in Forsythe’s choreography is illuminated with detail by dance scholar and the company dramaturge, Freya Vass Rhee.39 In Kammer/Kammer it is seen clearly in the movement style, the narrative structure and the mise-en-scène. This polycentricity is best observed through a panoramic view, and this may be why Rizzi suggested that the “best seats” are in the back. For instance, fragments of a vibrant scene that takes place “in the metro” in the first act may be seen in several places simultaneously. On the stage, this scene is only visible as a sliver of action, indicated by a very bright spotlight onto a bunch of performers doing something behind a tall panel in the foreground, accompanied by a noisy cacophony of sounds. The scene can be fully understood only if the spectator diverts attention from the stage, and instead follows the live feed on the monitors, showing a close-up of Deneuve fighting her way through the busy rush hour. Similarly, about half way into the first act, on a nearly completely dark stage, there are several faintly lit focal points. Upstage, across the centre, a row of dancers is seated at a long table; a large cubicle forms a dark spot obstructing the table’s middle. In front of these elements, in the dark, occasionally the spectator might spot the cinematographer with the camera filming. The clearest action, however, takes place on the bright screens that show Rizzi in a close-up delivering a monologue whilst seated at a table (perhaps the performer is physically positioned behind the dark spot, illuminated from the inside—a viewer might ponder). While all this is happening, a dimly lit undulating duet melts in a dance action, upstage right, in front of the seated group. The dancers at

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the tables face us frontally. They seem as participants-extras, insiders/outsiders in the event and perhaps a mirror image of us, the audience. The scene on the monitors soon changes through a cross-dissolve, morphing into another dreamy Deneuve monologue. The spectator may partake actively in the detective-like pleasure, rapidly deciding on the choice of focus in order to read the meaning. As the protruding monitors positioned above the audience infiltrate screened action far into the auditorium, they add more puzzles. Although often they project live feed of the stage action (as in the “Metro” scene, for instance), in some sections they show pre-filmed material or live remixes by Bussmann, video designer. Clearly, we realise that the scene with the Boy in a boat travelling alone through a landscape, filmed in a natural exterior, cannot be a live feed. At other times, we see kaleidoscopic images, perhaps visualisations of protagonists’ intimate thoughts, reveries and fantasies. The polyvalent form of the work that perpetually implicates spectators as intimate confidantes, therefore, also keeps disorienting them by the ambivalent possibilities of choosing to read the projections as the “reality” of the live feed, or as pre-recorded, imagined, or remembered layers of the narrative. The spectator’s dilemma about the meaning deepens, while Deneuve’s lines from Carson’s text, “This is mental” and, “is it all mental?” resonate with meanings. The puzzled themes of intimacy, choice and illusion are prevalent, and further amplified by the seating choices. Several spectator-writers emphasised these aspects. Sulcas noted “Forsythe’s proclivity for forcing the audience to choose between competing visual attractions”.40 The journalist Gabriella De Ferrari found that spectators’ perpetual selections of focus might divert from crucial information; furthermore, a spectator who selects the seats closer to the stage may end up “very frustrated”.41 Forsythe is on record anticipating that Kammer/Kammer’s narrative and visual structure might lead spectators to choose, as they may feel “torn between watching the screen images and watching the live performance”, so that “eventually one overwhelms the other”.42 Indeed, the back seating helps with sweeping views, and increases an understanding of the overall relationship between the live and pre-recorded projections. Seated at the front, the spectator is lacking this panoramic view, and additionally may wonder whether the screens above and behind them show the same projections as the ones in the front–on/around the stage. Yet, being up close to the event might still reveal unexpected “insider” knowledge, being privy to “interstitial” and intimate details behind the panels. This might remind

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us of the image of a hypothetical spectator waiting for the show’s beginning in the lobby, peering behind the platform onto the stage. Ultimately, therefore, one concludes that there are no “best seats”, nor worst seats, and that all the choices are part of the work’s poetic illusion. Through its multi-track channels, threads, parallels and double expositions Kammer/Kammer offers a myriad of possibilities to the spectator. While engaging with the work, the viewers, therefore, may take up any, from a number of positions: they may struggle with the selection, resigning to the elegiac conclusion suggested above—the choice is illusory and overwhelming. Equally, the viewer may simply relax and delight in surf-­ like attempts to carve out own pathway through the work, absorbing only as much as is pleasurable. Finally, there may be spectators who delight in being swept by the flood of signs, marvelling at the ever-changing kaleidoscopic pastiche. As I argue later, this final possibility might be particularly significant part of the poetry of the event.

≤ Intimacy and the Spectator: The Formation of a Metonymic Space >“Téléphones”43 >intimate. inward, essential, intrinsic; pert. to the inmost thoughts; closely associated (also sb.). XVII.—late L. intimātus, pp. of intimāre, f. intimus inmost, f. int- of INTER- + superl. suffix; see -ATE2. Hence intimacy XVII44

So far, several discursive levels in the choreography were noticeable. From the entrance, the spectator is involved more than usually; the theme of finding oneself in-between, a parallax of the insider-outsider perspective is reinforced continually through constant openings out and closings off of views and insights. At the same time, the spectator follows the two protagonists, themselves increasingly frustrated by an inability to resolve their yearning for intimacy with the subjects of their desires. Initially calm, sophisticated and collected, Caspersen’s Deneuve is ultimately seen unbuttoned, barefoot and with hair let down, tired of waiting for the Girl “to show up”; she cries out a phrase repeated through: “Nothing is happening!” As De Ferrari noticed above, certain spectators might feel frustration too. Thus, in a fashion similar to that encountered by Foucault in Manet’s painting, Kammer/Kammer yet again mirrors and scrambles the positions of characters and spectators. Just as the characters in the story who feel

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close but are detached from their desired subjects, the spectators who participate in the interplay between the real and the illusory soon become acutely aware that they too are “intimate partners” in the event, always a little on the  inside and outside, regardless of their choices during the performance. This polycentric yet firm dramaturgical and choreographic construction of Kammer/Kammer then does not require a change in the  traditional proscenium  seating to achieve its striking effects. This aspect might be understood through another Lehmann’s concept—the “metonymic postdramatic space”. In relation to Forsythe’s particular works, Lehmann’s concepts are analysed by dance scholars Vass Rhee, and Ann Cooper Albright.45 Yet, his metonymic space in Kammer/Kammer has not been discussed so far. In my reading of the work, Lehmann’s metonymic space particularly assists in the observation of the spectator’s integration into the event, just as his concept of the “cinematographic theatre” helped to understand the inner, formal and kaleidoscopic choreographic structures. As Lehmann suggests, “[t]he rhetorical figure of metonymy creates the relationship and equivalence between two givens by means of letting one part stand in for the whole”.46 Metonymic space reveals the relation of the work seen on the stage to broader spaces—the more expansive space of the theatre itself, as well as further “broader setting” of the work within its society. To Lehmann, the work’s space may be called metonymic “if it is not primarily defined as symbolically standing in for another fictive world but is instead highlighted as a part and continuation [original emphasis] of the real theatre space”, and also of “the surrounding space at large”.47 As discussed in the previous sections, in Kammer/Kammer the knots of the stage action create transpositional knots of attention-tension in the audience space, through various “illusionary” choices, cinematic refractions and multiple-expositions. Furthermore, if the spectator’s experience is followed from the entrance into the Bockenheimer Depot, then Kammer/Kammer works on an extensive scale—it spills over the effects from the stage into the broader theatre space. The 2015 audience may have heard sound checks, felt part of the “tribe” and received insider advice by Rizzi. That staging of the spectator’s pseudo-insider position occurs early, thus imbricating the proscenium and the lobby into one broader, ludic space. The metonymic relationship, animated through layers of presence and absence, of intimacy and detachment in cohabitation, therefore, is not confined to the spectator in relation to the events on the

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theatre stage. The on-stage event rather “stands in”, as Lehmann proposes, for the broader context of the theatre and further, society at large. In Kammer/Kammer the spectator gradually, similarly to Manet’s viewer, faces an intricate negotiation of own position in relation to the work, and the society at large. I propose, thus, that the metonymic space in Kammer/Kammer is at least three-fold: (a) the firm choreographic structure positions the spectator in a mirror-relation to the characters in the dance text; (b) the performance event also recasts the spectatorial role more broadly within the whole theatre/Depot space. Finally, as I argue in the following section, there is a further metonymic level of event “standing in” and reflecting its society: (c) by operating on the level of “the fear of missing out”, vernacularly FOMO, Kammer/Kammer from its 2000 premiere onward anticipates the post-digital era cultural shifts in the scopic regime, revealing the changes in the “period eye” (after Baxandall).48

≤ Frustration, Desire and FOMO > “Nothing is happening!”(Deneuve character by Dana Caspersen) >FOMO, “fear of missing out”. The fear that if you miss a party or event you will miss out on something great. “Even though he was exhausted, John’s fomo got the best of him and he went to the party.”49

In 2000, the inclusion of film into Kammer/Kammer itself represented a pop-culture reference, as noted by the performer Rizzi.50 Since then, in the following two decades, the inclusion of screen-based media into the everyday lives has grown exponentially. Particularly, the rise of the “new media”, as well as social digital platforms and smart devices in the twenty-­ first century amplified the possibility for simultaneous engagement with multiple outputs. Two decades after the premiere of Kammer/Kammer our everyday relationships between technology and intimacy “in real life” (IRL) are far more entwined. Cultural theorist and psychologist Sherry Turkle in her book Alone Together suggests that technology is even becoming a prop for intimacy: These days, insecure in our relationship and anxious about intimacy, we look to technology for ways to be in relationships and protect ourselves from them at the same time. … We expect more from technology and less from each other.51

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As if forecasting the phenomenon of technological near-supremacy of images over the IRL experiences, in the original Kammer/Kammer programme notes52 Forsythe included a nineteenth-century quote by Ludwig Feuerbach who observed his era’s images, their domination and elusive relationship to the truth. Feuerbach associated this development with “the history of western culture [which] hails illusions as sacred while rendering truth increasingly profane”.53 Similarly, in Kammer/Kammer’s narrative strands love plays out as an illusion, a visualisation, “an empty token of the imagination that has profound emotional currency”, but is “remembered as unfulfilled”.54 Related tensions between intimacy and detachment in the twenty-first-­ century digital era were articulated by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman who described this contemporaneity as the “liquid modernity”, a concept which elucidates ambiguous relationships that are built through digitisation of social lives through online networks: The 16 billion dollar valuation of Facebook is based on this need to not be alone. On the other hand, we dread the commitment of becoming involved with someone and getting tied down. We are afraid of missing out. We long for a safe haven yet we still want to keep our hands free.55

Being “afraid of missing out”, as Bauman says, reveals tensions between longing for connection and keeping distance all at once—choosing one of the two implies leaving something out. Psychologist John Grohol associated such negotiations with the rise of the social media and digital “smart” devices that cultivate the culture of hyper-connectivity, and simultaneously lead to the split attention. This is to say, the wealth of possibilities means that we live through ambivalent micro-choices, not necessarily prioritising physical social experiences. Grohol noticed increased occurrences of people checking their social-media streams whilst watching a movie in a cinema, or “while on a date, because something more interesting or entertaining just might be happening”.56 Grohol associated this multi-­ track perception with the complex phenomenon of FOMO—the fear of missing out. Possibly57 formulated by Dan Herman in 2000 (incidentally, during the year of the Kammer/Kammer premiere), FOMO becomes a prevalent slang term and a recognisable contemporary phenomenon only several years later. It is included into the online Urban Dictionary in 2006; in 2013 it appears in Wikipedia58 and is included into the English Oxford

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Living Dictionary, where it is described as an “[a]nxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere, often aroused by posts seen on social media”.59 In sociological scholarship, the frequent focus of FOMO studies is on the aspect of “fear”, “social anxiety” and addictiveness, thus underscoring the pathological gradations of the “syndrome”.60 There are various forms of FOMO, however, and not all are as ominous. Marketing scholar Barbara Khan suggests that FOMO is polymorphous, but the common denominator of many forms is its close relation to intimacy—FOMO grows when the subjects are closely socially connected.61 Mild forms of FOMO are sometimes discussed as a post-digital zeitgeist symbol. As such, FOMO was highlighted for two years in a row (2011 and 2012) in societal trend reports of the New York City marketing specialists WJT.62 The elements of the mild FOMO might remind us of the text on the Forsythe Company’s advertisement (Fig. 12.1) which did not necessarily intend to give rise to our social anxieties, but still referred to its audience’s fear that they might miss out. Although some spectators of Kammer/Kammer mentioned “frustration” due to constant need to tend to micro-choices, and that “[n]obody is able to take in all simultaneous events” in Forsythe’s dances,63 the possibility of FOMO emerging through choreographic structures is not yet analysed in detail. A possible choreographic visualisation of the trend is briefly hypotheticised by journalist Donna Schons (Sleek Magazine), who described Anne Imhof’s three-part choreo-operatic installation series, Angst II (2016) as a “performative recreation of online FOMO”.64 But, I argue that Kammer/Kammer, the work which is not about the phenomenon, actually operates on the level of FOMO.  Mild FOMO operations coexist with cinematic aspects, as well as with various diversions of spectators’ expectations deployed by Forsythe. Next to these, FOMO effects accompany choreographic and metonymic structures. Each participant in the piece (the audience included) has an ability to be an agent who can select from an overwhelming amount of micro-choices, navigating Kammer/Kammer as a half-charted map, never quite able to get to every geotag. The descriptions of FOMO echo Rizzi’s Boy’s soliloquies with his laments on loneliness, and being in and out of the inner social circle, feeling both “in the know” and simultaneously deprived of closeness to his desired subject. Similarly, FOMO elements are present in Caspersen’s yearning to be intimate, “in the same room” with the student “Girl”, while organising for her a party for which the latter never shows up.

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(Nothing is happening!) Finally, FOMO relates to the spectator who is always feeling both included and excluded—making “informed” micro-­ choices, but then always also missing out on certain experiences. Clearly, melancholy about “missing out” far predates FOMO.65 Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips researched the Western idea of yearning and “missing out” from Greek Antiquity onward, as part of psychological “frustrations” induced by “unrealistic wanting”.66 To Phillips, desire and the [lack of] intimacy are tightly woven: “[t]he trials and tribulations of wanting are born of frustration; to choose one thing may involve frustrating ourselves of something else”; yet, a frustration is also hopeful because it predates resolution.67 There is something optimistic, then, in missing out, as Phillips suggests. Similarly, the “frustration” felt by some spectators in Kammer/Kammer is also potentially hopeful, even if the principal characters, Deneuve and the Boy, might not have arrived at such a conclusion. The work, I argue, through its FOMO effects reminds spectators to keep their gaze forward and to engage with changes in their world(s). In the safe space of the theatre auditorium FOMO encounters might be useful—a form of exercise for IRL events—and even enjoyable for spectators, if not for the characters. Structurally speaking too, FOMO can function as a constructive, invisible supporting metonymic element that reveals the work’s relationship with its society. Recent art scholarship recognised the potentials of multi-­ focal engagements with the everyday that are not necessarily leading to dystopian futures. Art curator Omar Kholeif, for example described “seismic cultural shifts”68 that affected art and everyday lives in the early decades of the twenty-first century. These shifts include different relationships to proximity and distance, mediated through the internet and smart devices; combined these nurture a new dynamic—such as the users’ abilities to “navigate their gaze” in an instant, “if not simultaneously”.69 Art theorist Gene McHugh suggested that the presence of the multi-level digital platforms in our everyday lives (the same ones that give rise to the FOMO, according to Grohol above) may be constructive. Reading these aspects as a binary to IRL, in our “real” lives, only may reveal a generational divide: someone born post-2000 is a “digital-native” who, according to McHugh, may not have  experienced a binary division between physical and virtual outputs—the relationships formed in both spheres at times can seem equally real.70 McHugh draws upon Mark Hansen’s theories of “mixed reality” in the present “historicotechnical moment”: “the digital” coexists with “the physical as the space in which reality occurs”, so

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that potential “for complex relationships can and does exist”.71 The internet and digital platforms induce the new mundane, with interesting “interpersonal negotiations of the ‘real world’”.72 Digital business analyst Simon Nash suggests that we are now inhabiting the “post-digital” living,73 in which new tendencies of AR (augmented reality), and VR (virtual reality) may help us blur the boundaries between that which is known as “reality” and “virtuality”—the use of Google Maps street-views, or games which utilise blended embodiment, including “Pokemon GO”, may ease us into the mixed reality. This all suggests that there may be a new type of spectator, then—a digital native who is more comfortable with hyper-connectedness of the everyday, and whose attitude to cohabitation and navigation of multiple channels of experiencing may be more flexible. Analogous to the Foucauldian spectatorial shift seen in Manet’s painting, Forsythe’s stage action surrounded by the multiple screen lights and projections, in the context of the second decade of the twenty-first century, projects a new spectatorial shift. Unknowingly Kammer/Kammer anticipated today’s frequent viewing experiences in the theatre—a spectator focused upon the stage event is often surrounded by the audience-peers’ lit-up smart phone screens. The modes of simultaneous engagement, that were not yet habitual during Kammer/Kammer’s inception in 2000 thus certainly echo various spectatorial engagements in art and everyday contexts of later decades. As explained by art historian Michael Baxandall, each period and culture forms its own absorption and interpretation of visual information according to the particular sets of cultural understandings—as a form of visuality—a scopic regime—which he conceptualises as the “period eye”.74 In particular eras and cultures, there is always a specific knowledge that becomes part of an individual’s reserve of references, making one attuned to reading information in a particular way. As Baxandall says, we are continually trained “in a range of representational conventions”, which include our experiences drawn from the environment—this helps “visualizing what we have incomplete information about”.75 Here, then, Foucault’s theory of the shift in the modern viewing, embedded in Manet’s painting, comes to connect Baxandall’s “period eye” and the millennial spectatorial engagement encapsulated in Kammer/ Kammer. Similarly to Manet’s painting, Forsythe’s work may be seen to disturb the audience’s viewing experience but it also strongly reveals new relations between the stage space and theatre, as part of its society. But, even more than the spectator in Foucault’s proposal who marks the shift

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in art spectatorship, it is possible that Forsythe’s work not only foresees the post-digital shift in the “period eye”, but also actively contributes to it. By promoting realms of mixed reality in the theatre ludic space, Forsythe’s choreography fully participates in the shift in the period eye. It is a work that actively elicits multi-track engagement and integrates simultaneous closing off and opening out of views, and negotiates insider and outsider positionalities. Extending Kholeif’s thesis, we might recognise that the fear of not connecting (enough) to the present moment in the theatre work may deploy FOMO as a potential conceptual remedy that leads to resolution, testing out and safely failing in utopian aims to be omni-­ present—to experience everything at once. The work’s cohesive kaleidoscopic structure that reverberates through the entire theatre, also unearths the parallactic proximity of everyday multi-channel cohabitation in the social-media era. Perhaps, this reading from the field of choreographic analysis might contribute to the depathologisation of FOMO by revealing its creative potentials, not yet reconciled in the current sociological scholarship that considers it as a form of social anxiety in need of a corrective. We do not have as many accounts by 2015 viewers of Kammer/Kammer and cannot know how many young “Millennials” and “Gen Zs” may have actually experienced the work.76 It is more certain that Forsythe could not have predicted that there will be an accelerated FOMO “syndrome” in our society in the decades following Kammer/Kammer’s premiere. Nevertheless, this work may be viewed as an incubator of FOMO as it unearths a pertinent active negotiation of spectatorial daily engagement with information overflow, and the resulting projections of desire and illusion. This conclusion is only possible if the spectator’s perspective is included into the analysis of Kammer/Kammer as a choreographic text and a discursive field—this is when an origami-like, trifold structure of metonymic layers emerges. Just like Manet’s painting, Forsythe’s work reframes the spectator’s perspective and artistic agency, yet this time active participation is achieved even without altering the traditional physical (seated) position of the seer in the proscenium. As a dance theatre example, Kammer/Kammer, a text about intimacy which always remains on the horizon, invites and displaces the spectator’s attention through the sea of refractions—a guest-confidant ever kept tightly close, yet always on the outside. In many ways, Forsythe’s work eases us into the idea that intimacy and distance are an ambiguity, a parallax rather than a dichotomy. On the other hand, Kammer/Kammer (again similarly to Un bar aux Folies-­ Bergère) speaks to the spectator’s desire to be inside the work. As its final

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“optical curtain”77 descended, Kammer/Kammer itself gazed toward the imagined new digital-native spectator adept at the conventions of polyvalent seeing, experiencing, and reading information through multi-channel outputs. As the act of The Forsythe Company’s closure in 2015 transformed Kammer/Kammer into a subject of memories and archives, the concept of “missing out” is perpetuated perhaps endlessly—the work’s final curtain was a FOMO-nod to any future hypothetical spectator who did not get to see the work.

Notes 1. Michel Foucault, Manet and the Object of Painting, trans. Matthew Barr (London: Tate Publishing, 2009). 2. Nicolas Bourriaud, “Manet and the Birth of the Viewer,” in Manet and the Object of Painting, M. Foucault (London: Tate Publishing, 2009), 17. 3. “Metonymic space” is formulated by Hans Thies Lehmann in Postdramatic Theatre, trans. Karen Jürs-Munby (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2006). 4. “Period eye” is Michael Baxandall’s concept from Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1972). 5. Gene McHugh, “The Context of the Digital: A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships,” in You Are Here: Art After the Internet, ed. Omar Kholeif, 28–34 (London: Cornerhouse and SPACE, 2014). 6. See Sabine Huschka, “Media-Bodies”, Dance Research Journal 42 (2010), 61–72. 7. Roslyn Sulcas, “Watching the Ballett Frankfurt, 1988–2009,” in William Forsythe and the Practice of Choreography: It Starts at Any Point, ed. Steven Spier (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), 14. 8. The analysis in this text is based on my viewing of four consecutive live performances of Kammer/Kammer at the Bockenheimer Depot, 16–19 April 2015. My descriptions are based on live performance observations, post-­performance reflections and viewings of several archival films and subsequent interviews with the choreographer and several performers of the work. 9. William Forsythe, telephone interview with the author, 16 November 2017. 10. See Joseph Reagle, “Following the Joneses: FOMO and Conspicuous Sociality”, First Monday, 20:10, 2015. http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index. php/fm/article/view/6064/4996 (Accessed 11 November 2016); Dan Herman, “Introducing Short-term Brands”, The Journal of Brand Management, 7: 5, 335. 11. Mark Hansen in McHugh, 2014, 28–34.

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12. Text from Anne Carson’s “Irony is not Enough: Essay on my life as Catherine Deneuve (2nd draft)”, in Man of the Off Hours (New York: Knopff, 2000), 123. This phrase and several other textual elements from Carson’s text also appear visually as the citations carved out as three-­ dimensional sculptural elements of Kammer/Kammer’s stage design (similar to text fragment “je traduis”, visible on Fig. 12.2 in this text). 13. Details about Forsythe’s use of Bockenheimer Depot as a convertible interactive space is in the texts by Gerald Siegmund “Of Monsters and Puppets” (20–38) and Steven Spier “Choreographic Thinking and Amateur Bodies” (139–148), both in Spier’s anthology William Forsythe and the Practice of Choreography, S. Spier (ed.) (London and New York: Routledge, 2011). 14. Sulcas, 2011, 14. 15. Forsythe, in telephone interview with the author, 16 November 2017, clarified that the ballet in question was a rehearsal of a section that was intended for Kammer/Kammer, but was ultimately taken out of the work. In the original 2000 performance run, “we actually rehearsed that ballet in the half hour when the audience was allowed into the house. I wanted to put the audience in a state of confused expectation. It’s what they call ‘a red herring,’ a narrative that doesn’t go in the expected direction. The spectators are expecting a ‘ballet-ballet’ but they weren’t going to see it once they were inside.” 16. The flyer for Mazliah’s work ‘In Act and Thought’ in the associated venue Frankfurt LAB partly read: “The members of the tribe wish to share with you in act and thought, their tribute to what they do when they do what they do”. 17. Christopher Roman, interview with the author, 7 April 2017. 18. The original “Forsythe” was played by Roman, and in the 2015 this role was played by Spenser Theberge. 19. See Freya Vass Rhee, “Audio-Visual Stress: Cognitive Approaches to the Perceptual Performativity of William Forsythe and Ensemble,” Unpublished PhD thesis (University of California, Riverside, 2011), 187. 20. Carson, 2000,123. 21. Carson, 2000, 123. 22. Martin, Douglas A. Outline of My Lover: A Novel. (Berkeley: Soft Skull Press, 2000). 23. In Téchiné’s film Leblanc is a philosophy professor who develops a homoerotic relationship and a love triangle with a young troubled woman and her male lover. 24. The role was created by Richard Siegal, and later played by Cyril Baldy, before O’Donnell. 25. Dana Caspersen, email correspondence with the author, 21 June 2017.

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26. In Gabriella De Ferrari, “William Forsythe”, Bomb Magazine, issue 96, 2006 http://bombmagazine.org/article/2839/william-forsythe (accessed 23 Jan 2017). 27. Forsythe quoted by Claudia La Rocco in “Love Hurts/Love Hurts”, The New York Times, 30 April 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/ arts/dance/love-hurtslove-hurts.html (accessed 2 Jan 2017). 28. Quoted in La Rocco, 2006. 29. The Forsythe Company. “PressKit: KAMMER/KAMMER a piece by William Forsythe”, 2015. 30. Roslyn Sulcas, “Forsythe and Film: The Habits of Seeing”, in Envisioning Dance on Film and Video, eds. J.  Mitoma, E.  Zimmer and D.A.  Sieber, 96–103 (London and New York: Routledge, 2002). 31. Sulcas, 2002. 32. Alva Noë, in “The Power of the Screen,” NPR: Cosmos & Culture, 12 Apr 2015 https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/04/12/399182367/ the-power-of-the-screen (accessed 11 Nov 2017). 33. “Normcore” in fashion is defined as a style of unpretentious, everyday clothing “in an utterly conventional, nondescript way”. Aimee Farrell, “Meet Norma Normcore,” Vogue, 21 Mar 2014 http://www.vogue.co. uk/gallery/normcore-fashion-vogue-definition (accessed 2 Jun 2016). 34. Lehmann, 2006, 114. 35. Lehmann’s influential postdramatic theatre paradigm does not include indepth analyses of dance or performance examples, although he refers to various choreographers, including Forsythe. This particular issue of vague dance and performance analysis in Lehmann’s English language edition is taken up in the critical review by Elinor Fuchs, “Postdramatic Theatre: Review,” The Drama Review 52 (2008): 178–183. 36. Lehmann, 2006, 114. Similarly, Valerie Briginshaw analysed Forsythe’s construction of subjectivity in Ballett Frankfurt work Enemy in the Figure (1989), and noticed how the choreography and performance disrupt the ‘logic of visualisation and point to new possibilities for subjectivity’. In Briginshaw, ‘Architectural Spaces in the choreography of William Forsythe and De Keersmaeker’s Rosas Danst Rosas’, Dance, Space and Subjectivity, 2nd. Edition, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, p.185). 37. Forsythe cited in De Ferrari, 2006. 38. Archival recordings of Kammer/Kammer reveal that the movement style initially included more instances of performing en pointe. Just as the style of the pre-show changed, movement style also evolved over time—in the 2015 revival, balletic style is not asserted, yet movement is equally virtuosic. 39. Vass Rhee, 2011, 142. 40. Sulcas, 2002, 101. 41. De Ferrari, 2006.

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42. Cited in Wendy Peron, “The Force of Forsythe”, Dance Magazine (22 Jun 2007): http://www.dancemagazine.com/the-force-of-forsythe-2306889432.html (accessed 22 Jun 2016) 43. Carson, 2000, 123; also, another of three-dimensional sculptural stage elements. 44. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (2003) https://en. oxforddictionaries.com/definition/intimate (accessed 12 February 2016) 45. Cooper Albright (2015) analysed Decreation (2003), while Vass-Rhee (2011) explored performativity in several choreographies originated by the Forsythe Company. The links between postdramatic theatre and choreography more broadly are considered within dramaturgy discourse in Peter Boenisch’s “Spectres of Subjectivity: On the Fetish of Identity in (Post-) Postdramatic Choreography,” in Postdramatic Theatre and the Political: International Perspectives on Contemporary Performance, ed. Karen Jurs-­ Munby et  al., 111–128 (London, New Delhi, New  York and Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2013). 46. Lehmann, 2006, 151. 47. Lehmann, 151. 48. Baxandall, 1972. 49. Beaqon, “FoMO”, Urban Dictionary, 2 Oct 2016, www.urbandictionary. com/define.php?term=fomo (accessed: 12 Dec 2015). 50. Rizzi cited in La Rocco, 2006. 51. Sherry Turkle, Alone Together (New York: Basic Books, 2011), xii. 52. Feuerbach’s quote is found in Ballett Frankfurt, Kammer/Kammer programme, Bockenheimer Depot Frankfurt, 9–13 Oct 2002, n.p. 53. The Forsythe Company, 2015. 54. The Forsythe Company, 2015. 55. Zygmunt Bauman, and Peter Haffner, “Love, Fear and the Network”, 032. Magazine, 29: Winter (2015–16) http://032c.com/2016/zygmunt-bauman-love-fear-and-the-network/ (Accessed 05 July 2016). 56. John Grohol, “FOMO Addiction: The Fear of Missing Out”, Psych Central (2011) https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/04/14/fomoaddiction-the-fear-of-missing-out/ (Accessed 7 Jan 2017). 57. The idea appears in Herman's 2000 study of the contemporary brands about contemporary consumers’ “ambition to exhaust all possibilities and the fear of missing out on something”, p  335. The exact origins of the FOMO acronym are unknown, however. 58. The Wikipedia article date in Reagle, 2015. 59. Oxford English Living Dictionaries, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/ definition/fomo and in Alexis Kleinman “Oxford English Dictionary Adds Selfie, Derp, Fomo and More”, in Huffington Post, 28 Aug 2013: http://

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www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/new-words-dictionary_n_3829770 (accessed 18 June 2015). 60. For instance, Riordan, B. C., Flett, J. A. M., Hunter, J. A., Scarf, D. and Conner, T.  S. “Fear of missing Out (FOMO): the relationship between FOMO, alcohol use, and alcohol-related consequences in college students”, Annals of Neuroscience and Psychology, 2, 2015. Accessed 15 July 2016. As an antidote, the concept JOMO is an antonym to the overwhelming FOMO.  According to the Urban Dictionary contributor Narajan (2013) JOMO stands for the “joy of missing out”’, which “means that you prefer being unavailable and deliberately risking to miss a party that could be the greatest of all time, because (to be honest) you really don’t care and rather stay home and watch that new Sandra Bullock movie.” [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jomo] (accessed 12 Jan 2020). 61. Khan in conversation with Shankar Vedantam in “SchadenFacebook: Episode 68,” Hidden Brain Podcast, National Public Radio NPR, 17 April 2017. 62. J Walter Thompson (JWT) “Intelligence Trend Report: Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO): Update” (New York: J.  Walter Thompson Worldwide, 2012) https://www.jwt.com/en/worldwide/news jwtexploresfearofmissingoutreportsxswpresentationspotlighthowbrandscanleveragefomo/ (accessed 4 May 2016) 63. Lehmann, 2006, 87–88. 64. See Schons’s “How the Internet Has Changed the Performance Art of Today”, Sleek Magazine http://www.sleek-mag.com/2017/03/08/performance-art-internet/ (accessed 17 Apr 2017) 65. Reagle, 2015. 66. Adam Philips, Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2012), 33. 67. Phillips, 2012, 3. 68. Omar Kholeif, You Are Here: Art After the Internet (London: Cornerhouse and SPACE, 2014), 12. 69. Kholeif, 2014, 12. 70. Gene McHugh. “The Context of the Digital: A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships,” in You Are Here: Art After the Internet, ed. Omar Kholeif (London: Cornerhouse and SPACE, 2014), 32. 71. McHugh, 2014, 32. 72. McHugh, 32. 73. Simon Nash. “Digital Jumps the Shark: Hello to the Post-Digital Era,” The Drum, 10 Aug 2016, http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2016/08/10/ digital-jumps-shark-hello-post-digital-era (accessed 14 Mar 2017)

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74. Baxandall, 1972, 29–30. 75. Baxandall, 32. 76. Rare accounts of the final performances include Roslyn Sulcas’s text “A William Forsythe Dancer Moves from Toe-tapping to Hand-shaking,” The New York Times, 24 Apr 2015 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/arts/ dance/a-william-forsythe-dancer-moves-from-toe-tapping-to-handshaking. html (accessed 28 April 2015); other accounts are found in German blogs which mainly focus on the fact that the performances signified the Forsythe Company finale, as in: http://www.lesstuck.com/news-1/2015/4/19/ frankfurt-ballet-reunion and http://zuhausestehtdiewaschmaschine. de/?tag=frankfurt 77. Forsythe in our 16 Nov 2017 interview uses the term ‘optical curtain’. It is to say that Kammer/Kammer’s final curtain is not physical, but rather an optical projection of the curtain-screen, lowered over the video and Caspersen’s monologue at the end of the performance.

References Bauman, Zygmunt, and Peter Haffner. 2016. Love, Fear and the Network. 032. Magazine, Issue 29, Winter 2015–2016. http://032c.com/2016/zygmuntbauman-love-fear-and-the-network/. Accessed 5 July 2016. Baxandall, Michael. 1972. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth- Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Bourriaud, Nicolas. 2009. Manet and the Birth of the Viewer. In Manet and the Object of Painting, ed. M. Foucault, 7–21. London: Tate Publishing. Carson, Anne. 2000. Irony Is Not Enough: Essay on My Life as Catherine Deneuve (2nd Draft). In Man of the Off Hours. New York: Knopff. Cooper Albright, Ann. 2015. Split Intimacies: Corporeality in Contemporary Dance Theater and Dance. In The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater, ed. Nadine George-Graves, 19–34. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. De Ferrari, Gabriella. 2006. William Forsythe. Bomb Magazine, Issue 96. http:// bombmagazine.org/article/2839/william-forsythe. Accessed 23 Jan 2009. English Oxford Living Dictionaries. 2013. FOMO. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/FOMO. Accessed 19 Feb 2017. Foucault, Michel. 2009. Manet and the Object of Painting. Trans. Matthew Barr. London: Tate Publishing. Grohol, John. 2013. FOMO Addiction: The Fear of Missing Out. Psych Central. https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/04/14/fomo-addiction-thefear-of-missing-out/. Accessed 7 Jan 2017.

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Herman, Dan. 2000. Introducing Short-Term Brands: A New Branding Tool for a New Consumer Reality. Journal of Brand Management 7 (5): 330–340. JWTIntelligence. 2012. J Walter Thompson Intelligence Trend Report: Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO): Update. New  York: J.  Walter Thompson Worldwide. https://www.jwt.com/en/worldwide/news jwtexploresfearofmissingoutreportsxswpresentationspotlighthowbrandscanleveragefomo/. Accessed 4 May 2016. Kholeif, Omar. 2014. You Are Here: Art After the Internet. London: Cornerhouse and SPACE. La Rocco, Claudia. 2006. Love Hurts/Love Hurts. The New York Times. 30 April. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/arts/dance/love-hurtslove-hurts. html. Accessed 2 Jan 2017. Lehmann, Hans Thies. 2006. Postdramatic Theatre. Trans. Karen Jürs-Munby. Oxon and New York: Routledge. McHugh, Gene. 2014. The Context of the Digital: A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships. In You Are Here: Art After the Internet, ed. Omar Kholeif, 28–34. London: Cornerhouse and SPACE. Nash, Simon. 2016. Digital Jumps the Shark: Hello to the Post-Digital Era. The Drum, 10 Aug. http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2016/08/10/digitaljumps-shark-hello-post-digital-era. Accessed 14 Mar 2017. Noë, Alva. 2015. The Power of the Screen. NPR: Cosmos & Culture, 12 Apr. https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/04/12/399182367/the-powerof-the-screen. Accessed 11 Nov 2017. Philips, Adam. 2012. Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life. London: Hamish Hamilton. Reagle, Joseph. 2015. Following the Joneses: FOMO and Conspicuous Sociality. First Monday 20 (10). http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/ view/6064/4996. Accessed 11 Nov 2016. Schons, Donna. 2017. How the Internet Has Changed the Performance Art of Today. Sleek Magazine. http://www.sleek-mag.com/2017/03/08/performance-art-internet/. Accessed 17 Apr 2017. Sulcas, Roslyn. 2000. Frankfurt Ballet, review of Kammer/Kammerat TAT Bockenheimer Depot, Frankfurt Germany. Dance Magazine, December. http://dancemagazine.com/reviews/Frankfurt_Ballet/. Accessed 20 May 2015 ———. 2002. Forsythe and Film: The Habits of Seeing. In Envisioning Dance on Film and Video, ed. J. Mitoma, E. Zimmer, and D.A. Sieber, 96–103. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2011. Watching the Ballett Frankfurt, 1988-2009. In William Forsythe and the Practice of Choreography: It Starts at Any Point, ed. S.  Spier, 4–20. London and New York: Routledge.

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The Forsythe Company. 2015. PressKit:KAMMER/KAMMERa piece by William Forsythe. Turkle, Sherry. 2011. Alone Together. New York: Basic Books. Vedantam, Shankar. 2017. Schadenfacebook. Hidden Brain Podcast, ep.68.National Public Radio. https://www.npr.org/2017/04/17/524005057/when-itcomes-to-our-lives-on-social-media-ther es-always-anotherstory?t=1586172246499. Accessed 17 April 2017.

CHAPTER 13

Broken Homes and Haunted Houses Gill Perry

(for Art and Dance in Dialogue: Body, Space, Object)

In 2013 East Coast Trains launched a much-publicised advertising campaign that used the symbolic potential of the home to promote the value and advantages of rail travel and sell the East Coast brand. Called ‘Feel at home with East Coast’, the campaign featured a young woman walking through a homely kitchen, a communal lounge and other rooms before settling with her family on a comfy couch. At the end of the film, scenery outside the window begins to move, and the East Coast brand appears across the screen, revealing that she has apparently been on a train the whole time. The campaign also included some sculptural displays in and around Kings Cross, including a large garden gate and an over-sized chair. The film depended for its effect on the relationships of the people—the supposedly happy family—to the feigned material structures of ‘home’. The relationship with the body, albeit various stereotyped bodies, is critical to this form of myth making. These homes are always inhabited. In this chapter I explore forms of visual art on the theme of the home in which the body is conspicuously absent. I’m concerned with artistic practice that depends on traces and surrogates of the body, and loaded

G. Perry (*) Open University, Milton Keynes, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 S. Whatley et al. (eds.), Art and Dance in Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44085-5_13

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metaphors of destruction; my homes are broken or even haunted. I hope to distinguish their power and multivalent meanings from the ubiquity of the theme in the contemporary media, advertising and so on. The East Coast advertisement referenced so many familiar aspects or tropes of home: experiential and performed, associated with place and space, belonging and comfort, (although it was white and middle class). It deployed seemingly comfortable bodies, suggesting that a train journey can produce a surrogate ‘homeliness’. It was also contradictory; it represented a mobile home, a moving place of comfort on the railways. What is it that can distinguish a critical form of visual art on this theme from the complex wealth of visual imagery within our culture that uses the idea of ‘home’ to convey a multitude of myths of comfort and ‘homeliness’? Of course, ‘home’ can be a spatial imaginary, a discursive trope, a material focus for the idea of ‘dwelling’, a cultural, political and social construction, a gendered, classed and ethnically or geographically defined space.1 It is one of the most complex theoretical concepts that resonates across multiple cultures and academic disciplines. The home and its material correlates—including the house, shack, apartment and bungalow, have become popular themes in visual art of the late twentieth and early twentyfirst centuries. They have inspired a remarkable range of imaginative, critical, destructive and playful forms of experimentation by artists working across different cultures.2 In what follows I focus on installation work by British artists Cornelia Parker and Michael Landy, and the American collaboration the ‘Heidelberg Project’, which (as I argue) creatively combined three important traditions within recent art history to actively engage and provoke the viewer: the sculptural, the performative and the destructive. The works I have chosen literally and metaphorically turn upside down some dominant—even hegemonic—myths of ‘home’. They break, enter and rework ideas of belonging, comfort, identity and commodification—albeit in some very different ways. They are engaged with breaking and re-framing the home, rather than branding or mythologising it. And breaking and entering/re-­ framing has an important legacy in twentieth century art. American artist Gordon Matta Clark famously cut through the centre of New Jersey house in 1974 in Splitting, an aesthetic dissection that gestured towards social conditions and a profligate housing industry. More recently in 1996 the British artist Richard Wilson installed builder’s cabins colliding with and breaking the floors, windows and ceiling of the Serpentine Gallery in London. His Jamming Gears used the surrogate house or shelter of

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builders’ cabins to provide a destructive and macabre intervention in the hallowed space of an art gallery.3 The various art practices that interest me are engaged self-reflexively with the ideological baggage of the home and its multivalent cultural, social and gendered meanings. These are precisely the associations that the East Coast advertisement seeks to naturalise, mythologise and brand. In contrast, many contemporary artists have engaged with the theme of the home as an ideological site—as a discursive (and material) space with affective and metaphorical possibilities. Those possibilities include ideas of ‘everyday life’, a concept that has also been vividly theorised over the last eighty years, and to which I will return. Several recent British installations on the theme of the house or home have taken a primarily sculptural or architectural form, including (now) iconic works on this theme by Rachel Whiteread in her celebrated House, that stood for three months in 1993–4 on Grove Road in the East End of London4 and Michael Landy’s replica of his parents’ house Semi-Detached that filled the Duveen Gallery of Tate Britain in 2004.5 The following three short case studies are more performative; each involves some destructive process—or what the art critic Lucy Lippard might have called ‘dematerialisation of the art object’.6 Moreover, in each case that very process becomes the work. They also reference traces of, rather than present, bodies which positions my arguments within a paradox. Installation art is the focus of my interest; it has been described as a ‘living art’—an art form that by definition involves an embodied spectator who can move around— or even ‘inhabit’ the installation.7 Although actual bodies are absent from these works, they involve art practices that invite some kind of audience experience or interaction that is physical, emotional, intellectual or even ‘participatory’.8

Destruction and Transformation Firstly, I want to look at an example that uses installation art to combine sculptural and performative practice: Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View, 1991 by Cornelia Parker (b.1956). I have already explored Parker’s work in relation to what has been broadly described as ‘the turn to the domestic’ in recent British art, and the complex gender issues implicated in that turn.9 The themes of destruction and transformation are also central to some of her most compelling works. She has frequently engaged obliquely with themes of the domestic or ‘home’, and often with a playful

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sense of the enigma of transformation. Her practice has consistently employed metamorphosis, including processes or events that mimic what she describes as ‘cartoon deaths’—to create puzzling effects. Explosions, cliff falls, scattering and steam-rolling have all been deployed to transform everyday household objects into evocative installations with wide-ranging associations. Moreover, she usually deals with indexical traces—rather than corporeal bodies. If ‘home’ is a spatial imaginary imbued with feelings, then an art that makes some sort of direct appeal to feelings—or experience—can have the potential to engage the spectator to reflect on the associations of concepts of ‘home’ and ‘homeliness’. The role of affect—that is the experience of the embodied spectator of installation art—can be relevant to the work’s critical potential, as in Cold Dark Matter. The garden shed is an iconic site of national domestic life and often (masculine) pottering. One such shed chosen by Parker was famously blown up by the British army, and its charred, blackened, broken and twisted pieces suspended from the gallery ceiling around a central light bulb in Cold Dark Matter. Playful undercurrents consistently tease the knowing viewer: the exploded contents here include discarded toys, books, Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, bent, charred and twisted bicycle parts, wheels, tools, fuel cans, buckets and so on. The viewer is invited to explore the strange distortions and charred remains, identifying the transformations of significant domestic objects. Moreover, Parker’s installation embodies within itself its performative history. This is no longer a recognisable sculptural object; representation here has a metonymic function through transformation that produces puzzling juxtapositions and curious affects. Clichéd objects are broken and reassembled as evocative floating forms. In the catalogue to Parker’s recent retrospective at the Whitworth Gallery the writer Colm Toíbín wrote a suitably poetic account of her process: The idea of blowing up a garden shed, using Semtex, once it occurred to her, seemed almost a natural impulse. In London in those years you waited for explosions; there were explosions on the television news at night, controlled explosions of suspicious looking cars, or explosions which came as a surprise, a way of terrorising people.10

By exploding her shed, Parker might also be seen to detonate some of the myths that shape both material culture and language, to question our comfortable relationship with the idea of everyday life. Parker subverts then as she imaginatively transforms her symbolically loaded objects.

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Breaking Down on Oxford Street Destruction and process was also explored in British artist Michael Landy’s performative work Break Down—but to some different ends. In February 2001 Landy (b.1963) crushed and shredded all his possessions over a two-­ week period in the old C&A store on Oxford Street, Central London. Commissioned by the arts charity Artangel, Break Down involved the destruction of 7227 personal items and possessions, leaving the artist with nothing but ‘a cat called Rats and his girlfriend [the artist Gillian Wearing].11 100 metres of conveyor belt looped around the floor space, connected to a series of bays for the different functions (including an electrical bay, a shredding and granulating bay, a car bay and a furniture and artwork bay). Eleven assistants worked with Landy on the sorting and destruction of all his possessions from the most banal, homely objects such as kitchen utensils, bills, cassettes, clothes, furniture, books, to his beloved Saab 900 car, his own sketches and textile designs and valuable works by artist friends such as Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst. Everything ended up in landfill. In addition, a massive inventory was published that clinically itemized and numbered each of the 7227 objects destroyed.12 Almost 50,000 people came to view Break Down in the recently closed C&A building over the two-week period. These high audience figures reveal the insatiable curiosity of the viewing public for works that reveal intimate details of (supposedly) private, domestic lives. The building is now the Primark store in the consumerist paradise of London’s Oxford Street; the site was deliberately chosen to encourage the audience to reflect on the nature of modern consumerism, and our insatiable accumulation of everyday things. For some, it also suggested what Landy described as a ‘lifestyle analysis: looking at how much energy a particular object used from construction to purchase, to maintenance, to disposal. And the idea of sustainability as well.’13 Needless to say, the project was not without controversy. For some viewers, the sheer banality of the everyday objects that make up a work such as Break Down did not seem worthy of documentation, archiving or recording, even though they were all ultimately destroyed. But subversive strategies were built into the performance of this performative project. The viewer was invited to move around the conveyor belt, to witness the destruction and touch the shredded objects—to become physically and emotionally engaged with the complex destructive process involved. During the private view, some spectators actually stole objects and

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shredded material heading for landfill, a form of audience participation that (understandably) annoyed the artist. Apart from the autobiographical element involving a shredding of Landy’s domestic life, it was widely seen as an anarchic, anti-consumerist work, a comment on modern life-styles, sustainability and ‘commodity fetishism’. In Break Down Landy engaged with what has been broadly categorised as ‘the everyday’, a concern that has become ubiquitous in some areas of contemporary art, especially installation art, photography and film. He has drawn on a reservoir of often unnoticed or ordinary objects and repetitive activities that form the basis of (his) daily life in the home. The ubiquitous rise of ‘the everyday’ (sometimes referred to as the ‘quotidian’ from the French quotidien) in contemporary art is often understood in terms of a desire to bring (what some regard as) the banal and often overlooked aspects of our daily experience into visibility, to challenge our sense of the inherent value of the ‘unique’ art object. Of course, this concern can be traced back to the early twentieth century, especially the work of Marcel Duchamp and his influential notion of the ‘readymade’, and to Dada and Surrealist practices that deployed ordinary domestic objects. That said, the broad theme of ‘the everyday’ has become ubiquitous in art since the 1990s; many art exhibitions and international biennales have been saturated with site-specific projects, installations, films, videos and performances that feature banal, everyday objects, spaces and activities.14 Works that somehow reference ‘the everyday’ have become big business, but they can also be deployed to carry critical potential. As a theoretical concept it has attracted the interest of many disciplines, including cultural geography, sociology and politics, and is often seen to invite an interdisciplinary openness. The French philosopher and cultural theorist Henri Lefebvre’s theorisations in his essays and three volume Critique of Everyday Life (published between 1947 and ’81) have significantly contributed to debates about the relevance of the concept to modern life and culture, ideas that have been reworked by many cultural theorists including Michel de Certeau.15 I suggest that an understanding of the concept of ‘the everyday’ can inform both what artists make (which might involve some sort of event or performance), and how we interpret what they make. Lefebvre perceived everyday life as lived experience, and as a Marxist he believed it could be exploitative and alienating, especially through the processes of modernisation (including the growth of consumerism and

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advertising). He argued for the value of cultural critics and artists to have and share ‘moments’ that can provide an insight into everyday culture and are at the heart of his idea of ‘critique’. These are moments when he feels shock, delight, disgust and/or a sense of ‘alienation’. Through their provocative effects they can upset the continuum of the present, perhaps offering the possibility of a different daily life.16 Important to my argument is that throughout his analysis of everyday life Lefebvre involves or implicates a spectator or viewer who (like him) can feel shock or disgust that enables him/her to critique aspects of contemporary life. His notion of ‘the everyday’ thus emphasises the importance of a form of critical spectatorship, establishing dialectical links and implications. The invitation to engage in this critical spectatorship is what distinguishes some of the most interesting contemporary art works on the theme of the home. Lefevbre famously wrote: ‘Critique of everyday life encompasses a critique of art by the everyday and a critique of the everyday by art.’17 It affects both what we chose to represent, and how we interpret what is represented. Can we usefully apply such theories to examples of recent art practice? I suggest that Landy’s Break Down is an example of contemporary art that goes some way to fulfil these dialectical aims. It was a transitory, self-­ destructive work that could be seen to challenge our notion of the artwork as a unique sculptural object, perhaps to offer the viewer a Lefebvre-type ‘moment’. It challenged elevated ideas of both art (and the artist) and ‘homeliness’ by annihilating all the artist’s cherished possessions, that metonymically represent the comfort of home and its absent bodies. Of course, we must be cautious when drawing parallels between cultural theories developed in post-war France of the 1960s–80s and art works of the early twenty-first century that are informed by a wide body of conceptual and avant-garde practices developed since the 1960s–80s. That said, I would hazard a guess that were he still alive, Lefebvre would welcome this anarchic intervention. Moreover, Landy used a conveyor belt to process his possessions, echoing, perhaps, Lefebvre’s interest in the mechanised labour of ‘modern capitalism’ and the ‘boredom’ of the assembly line and continuous production. However, Break Down also subverts the main tenet of this form of ‘alienated’ production. Rather than making commodities for sale (and profit) in the market place, this assembly line prepares them for destruction and landfill.

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Destruction and Domestic Hauntings As Lucy Lippard among others has pointed out, the destruction or ‘dematerialisation’ of the art object has played a critical role in the evolution and radicalisation of many post war art practices and projects.18 My final case study involves some uninvited destruction, an anarchic appropriation of everyday objects, and domestic hauntings. Over thirty years old, the Heidelberg Project in the McDougall-Hunt neighbourhood on the east side of Detroit, Michigan, was established as an evolving community initiative and one of the longest running site-specific art installations in the USA. It covered two partly abandoned residential blocks along Heidelberg Street in inner city Detroit and has now become a key tourist attraction and site of international pilgrimage. In 2008 the Venice Architecture Biennale included an installation created by the Heidelberg Project community, and in 2015 the Shenzhen Architecture Biennale invited representatives from the Project to contribute a site-specific work that engaged with the broad question: how can architecture and design act as catalysts for social change? In the Heidelberg Project the boundaries between architecture, design and installation art are necessarily blurred, predicated on the potential of art to connect and engage with the local community. Moreover, a modern focus on ethnic and cultural origins, and the acknowledgment of marginalised histories and communities, have increasingly informed and enriched some artistic projects in America’s blighted and post-industrialised cities.19 In 1986 the artist Tyree Guyton started this art project in the houses of Heidelberg Street, Detroit, Michigan. This was Guyton’s childhood neighbourhood—an area that had significantly deteriorated since the so-­ called white flight and the Race Riots of 1967, five days of urban rioting that set into sharp focus Detroit’s serious housing problems and economic inequalities, despite the prosperity brought by the (then) growing car market.20 By the 1980s the area was characterised by dilapidated and abandoned houses marred by drug crime, prostitution and gangs. It was an inner-city area in which people were afraid to walk. Guyton and his colleagues started the project by painting some of the houses in the street (including his family home) with brightly coloured dots and creating sculptural installations on and around the buildings (Fig.  13.1).21 They used salvaged junk and debris ranging from toys, shoes to old car parts, scrap and abandoned furniture, household rubbish, toys, clothes, shoes— described by one journalist as ‘pure dumpster trash’.22 The local

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Fig. 13.1  The Heidelberg Project: Dotty Wotty House, 2010. (Photograph Gill Perry)

community, including many children, were involved and it evolved as a controversial major inner city arts initiative that reconfigured these neglected Detroit houses and grounds as an extended, participatory museum and artists’ community. In the midst of inner-city blight they constructed a ‘fantasyland of twentieth-century detritus.’23 In response to local complaints, two attempts were made by the district council to bulldoze buildings on the site in 1991 and 1999. Despite these set-backs, by the early twenty-first century, the project incorporated many evolving ‘house-installations’ and site specific works, including The New White House (former Dotty Wotty House) (Fig.  13.1), and the Party Animal House wall-papered inside and out with stuffed cuddly toys, evolving piles of doors, shoes, bicycles or bottles, and domestic junk. The latter was burnt down by arsonists in 2014. After surviving a series of arson attacks, Guyton announced that the project was to be slowly dismantled bit by bit and transferred to various destinations, including art collections, for preservation.24

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‘Home’ and the detritus of past homes were reconceived in these collaborative art works as a form of Bakhtinian carnivalesque, a fantasyland of painting, sculpture and installation, imaginatively explored around the structures of pre-existing detached houses. The turbulent social history of Detroit, its segregated urban housing and corrosive inequalities haunted this project.25 Yet these political ghosts from the town’s black history were referenced obliquely through irreverent and subversive strategies. Bits of hand-written text and graffiti on various installations, and oddly positioned portraits of black figureheads such as Martin Luther King, reinforced irony, innuendo and dramatic juxtaposition in crowded accumulations of discarded domestic objects. The appropriated houses contributed rather to the evocation of memories and projections, associations that can change with each new installation. The Heidelberg Project involved a changing programme of installations and ‘house sculptures’, creative subversions of ‘the everyday’. The remarkable visibility of old toys, from stuffed animals (that function as surrogate bodies) to plastic cars, tells us that these were deceptively child-­ like subversions or artistic pranks. They reveal a direct and playful engagement with contemporary American social life, its consumerism, commodity fetishism, its housing problems and its waste. Moreover, the profusion of used domestic objects reminds us that all houses are haunted by the interactions with their dwellers. As Barry Curtis has written: ‘Houses inscribe themselves within their dwellers, they socialize and structure the relations within families, and provide spaces for expression and self-realization in a complex interactive relationship.’26 In their teeming piles of stuff, the Heidelberg house installations also evoked other European and American legacies, including Arte Povera and traditions of assemblage that can be traced to works such as Kurt Schwitter’s notorious Merzbau. The latter involved the transformation of over six rooms of Schwitter’s family house in Hannover, begun in 1923 and continued through the 1930s, into grotto-like spaces of ever encroaching sculptural forms made from junk and domestic ‘rubbish’. Most of these detached houses around Heidelberg Street were no longer inhabited; despite some of the traumatic memories (of housing segregation and poverty) that they carried, they were reconceived as agents—or metaphors—of more celebratory, mischievous art practices. Moreover, these separate house installations remind us of a distinctive feature of Detroit housing. Until a few decades ago, Detroit probably contained more single-family detached houses than any other urban conurbation in

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the USA, and possibly the world. Even as people left the town centre in the post-war period, 65% of Detroit housing was single-family detached. The detached Detroit house once had iconic status as a model of urban prosperity. Within the Heidelberg Project such houses are in constant flux with changing installations and continually evolving sculptural effects. Although real estate values are now slowly beginning to rise again, much of the area around the Project continues to be affected by some of the social and housing issues that have haunted the history of Detroit: urban decay, lack of suitable housing, poverty and unemployment—partly related to the collapse of the car industry in and around the city. Between 2012 and ’14 the project experienced 12 arson attacks that burnt to the ground some of the most famous house installations, including the so-called Penny House, Clock House, House of Soul, War Room, Obstruction of Justice House, Party Animal House. However, destruction has been incorporated into its performative history; many of the charred and damaged house installations were reconceived and rebuilt. And that very destruction speaks of the on-going mismatch between some members of the economically deprived community in central Detroit and those communities who sought to develop and rebuild this art project. The McDougall Hunt neighbourhood continued to be one of the most economically depressed areas in the city. In 2014–16 it had less police presence than some other city centre areas such as Midtown and Downtown and was vulnerable to local crime. In its evolving, excessive installations, the Heidelberg project was both part of, and a response to, the on-going social and economic problems of central Detroit and its local communities.27 Conceived as both transformative and disruptive, Guyton’s messy, invasive, practices have also been compared with the strategies of the mythological figure of the trickster; the ‘trickster’ is a transgressive challenger of boundaries, whose practice may involve guile and craft. As Marion Jackson has pointed out, the Yoruban trickster Eshu arrived in the Americas on slave ships in the sixteenth century, and has now been assimilated into the cultures of Brazil, Haiti, Cuba and areas of North America where traditional African practices have been revived.28 While the trickster is a mischief maker, he also deploys skill and artifice to suggest new imaginative possibilities; he may also encourage communities to develop creative collaborative initiatives. If applied to the Heidelberg Project, such initiatives, largely led by the black community, can have an affective power in their display of teeming, mischievous (yet carefully choreographed) excess.

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They transform the house into an art installation, but in the process they also changed the demographics of the area. Guyton hired participants, artists and collaborators almost exclusively from the local community, especially schools. Moreover, after each arson attack they called on the local community to rebuild—to join forces and create yet another house installation. That said, I should clarify here that I am not concerned to attempt to define the problematic idea of a ‘black aesthetic’. While many characteristics of these works might be seen to resonate with the cultures of black diasporal communities, through association or visual memory, it is not easy to claim any distinct practices and characteristics of the Heidelberg Project as belonging exclusively to that aesthetic. And, of course, the intrinsically hybrid nature of African American black culture inevitably complicates any analysis.29 Above all, this is a project that positioned art practice as both playful and serious; through its excessive, irreverent and kitsch engagement with the detritus of ‘home’, it had the potential to redefine—and even rejuvenate a previously blighted and segregated urban neighbourhood. It works through association and provocation, through a disturbance of the idea of ‘the everyday’. In Lefebvre’s terms it even provokes a shock effect, engaging playful strategies and surrogate or imagined bodies—whether cuddly toys, artificial limbs, photographs, household objects and so on. Bedraggled cuddly toys were literally piled up in Noah’s Ark, an on-going installation positioned in front of the Dotty Wotty House. It consisted of a decorated plastic swimming pool, overflowing with abandoned oversized stuffed animals, an obvious reference to the great biblical myth of the Ark. Deployed here, the installation was provocative and mischievous, with great metaphorical potential. The symbol of an American consumerist paradise, the plastic swimming pool, became the floating ‘home’ that saved civilization—or at least the animal kingdom—from the biblical floods. The overflowing (and ever increasing) pile of weather-beaten cuddly toys extended the carnivalesque aspects (to use Bakhtin’s metaphor) of this extraordinary, excessive, participatory art project. Destruction, the detritus of domestic life in the home, even arson, was incorporated into the on-going performative and participatory events, partly dependent on these mischievous surrogate bodies. In an era of economic recession, climate change, war and mass migration, notions of home, homelessness and shelter loom large in the visual imaginary—and Detroit has taken on an emblematic status for its highly

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evocative symbolic imagery of abandoned homes and urban blight. By deploying visual excess, surrogate bodies and detritus that invade, break down and reframe the structures of home—the grammar of the everyday, artists can invite and engage our critique, especially, perhaps, when a house is no longer a home.

Notes 1. I explore these issues for art practice in Playing at Home: the House in Contemporary Art (London: Reaktion, 2013). See also Imogen Racz, Art and the Home: Comfort, Alienation and the Everyday (London: I.B.Tauris, 2015) and Colin Painter ed., Contemporary Art and the Home (Oxford and New York, Berg, 2002). There are many publications on this theme from the disciplines of cultural geography and sociology, including a useful introduction by Alison Blunt and Robyn Dowling, Home (London and New York: Routledge, 2006). 2. I explore some of the cross-cultural implications of the theme in Playing at Home (especially Chap. 7). 3. For an account of Wilson’s history and early works see Simon Morissey, Richard Wilson (London: 2005, revised 2012). 4. Much has now been written about House; the original Artangel publication that accompanied the project provides a useful source of information and debates: ed. James Lingwood, Rachel Whiteread’s House (London: Phaidon and Artangel, 1995). 5. For a history of the work’s production at Tate Britain see Judith Nesbitt and J.  Slyce, Michael Landy: Demi-Detached (London: Tate Publications, 2004). 6. See note 18. 7. See, for example, Claire Bishop’s publications on this theme, including Installation Art: A Critical History (London, Tate Publications, 2005). 8. The participatory nature of installation art and its political potential has also been explored by Bishop in her book: Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London: Verso, 2012). 9. See Gill Perry, ‘Dream Houses: Installations and the Home’ in Gill Perry and Paul Wood eds., Themes in Contemporary Art (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004) and Gill Perry ed., Difference and Excess: The Visibility of Women’s Practice (Oxford: Blackwells, 2004). 10. Colm Toíbín in Cornelia Parker (Manchester: Whitworth Gallery, 2015), p. 42. 11. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1162348.stm (accessed 20 November, 2017).

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12. Michael Landy, Breakdown Inventory (London: Ridinghouse, 2011). 13. Michael Landy: Everything Must Go!, (London: Ridinghouse, 2008), p. 106. 14. See, for example Hou Hanru’s curation of the Lyon Biennale in 2010, titled The Spectacle of the Everyday: Hou Hanru, The Spectacle of the Everyday—10th Biennale de Lyon (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 2010). 15. Henri Lefebvre, Critique de la vie quotidienne, Vols 1–III, translated by John Moore as The Critique of Everyday Life (vols I–III), published by Verso, London in 1991, 2002 and 2005). Michel de Certeau The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988 (1984)). More recently many theorists and art historians have usefully explored the relevance of the concept to modern and contemporary art including Ben Highmore (see footnote 16) and Grant Kestner, among others. 16. Ben Highmore has usefully explored Lefebvre’s evolving philosophy of ‘everyday’ and his ‘moments’ that can provide ‘an immanent critique of the everyday’. Ben Highmore, Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 115ff. 17. Lefebvre, The Critique of Everyday Life, vol 2, p. 19. 18. Lippard identifies these processes as key characteristics of conceptual art. See Lucy Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 (London and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 19. See also the work of American artist Theaster Gates in Chicago, including the ongoing Dorchester Project, described in 2015 in an article by Natalie Moore as ‘revitalising Chicago’s south side, one vacant building at a time’ (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/theaster-gates-ingenuity-awards-chicago-180957203/ accessed 7 June, 2017). 20. The Detroit Race Riot of 1967 was one of the most violent urban revolts of the twentieth century, rooted in many social factors, including police abuse, lack of affordable housing, segregated houses and schools, economic inequality, rising black unemployment and urban renewal projects. The riot began after the police had raided an after-hours ‘blind pig’ unlicensed bar on the corner of 12th Street and Clairmont Avenue at the centre of Detroit’s poorest black neighbourhood. Over 5 days of riots and violence, 33 blacks and 10 whites were killed, 1189 were injured and over 7200 arrested. (http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/detroit-race-riot-1967). 21. Guyton claimed that he had ‘a divine vision’ that inspired him to transform the area into ‘something incredible’. Quoted in Marilyn L.  Wheaton, ‘Heidelberg and the City’ in Connecting the Dots: Tyree Guyton’s Heidelberg Project, (Michigan: 2007), p. 72. 22. Michael H. Hodges, ‘Heildelberg and the Community’, in Connecting the Dots, p. 51.

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23. Aku Kadogo, ‘Heidelberg Art and About’, in Connecting the Dots, p. 102. 24. This announcement confused many admirers of the project. The on-­going community wprk associated with this ‘dismantlement’ is described in an article in the New  York Times by M.H.  Miller, May 9, 2019: https:// www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/magazine/tyree-guyton-art-detroit. html (accessed Dec 10, 2019) 25. In the 1950s and the 1960s central Detroit experienced massive demographic changes. During the 1950s the percentage of non-whites rose to 29.1%. By 1967 the black population of Detroit was an estimated 40% of the total population. See Detroit Riots 1967—University of Rutgers (http://www67riots.rutgers.edu/d_index.htm). 26. Barry Curtis, Dark Places (London: Reaktion Books, 2008) p. 34. 27. Slow shifts in the local economy towards ‘gentrification’ are described in The New York Times article cited in footnote 24 above. 28. Marion Jackson, ‘Trickster in the City’, in Connecting the Dots, pp. 36–37. 29. In the late 1990s Richard Powell demonstrated that we need to acknowledge ‘the problematic nature of blackness—both as a protean identity and as a proactive social presence’, in order to understand and define cultural production in a problematic post-modern world. Powell argues: ‘Although indistinguishable at times from the cultural forms of other U.S. ethnic groups, African American styles of religious worship, performance and verbal and literary expression stand out among U.S. cultural products, representing a shared vision that often resonates with black diasporal counterparts in the Caribbean, Central and South America, Europe and Asia.’ Richard J.  Powell, Black Art and Culture in the twentieth Century, (London, 1997), pp. 12–13.

References http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/enter tainment/1162348.stm. Accessed 20 Nov 2017 Bishop, Claire. 2005. Installation Art: A Critical History. London: Tate Publishing. ———. 2012. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London: Verso. Blunt, Alison, and Robin Dowling, eds. 2006. Home. London and New  York: Routledge. Curtis, Barry. 2008. Dark Places. London: Reaktion Books. De Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Detroit Riots 1967—University of Rutgers. http://www67riots.rutgers.edu/d_ index.htm. Accessed 6 June 2017.

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Hanru, Hou. 2010. The Spectacle of the Everyday—10th Biennale de Lyon. Dijon: Les presses du réel. Highmore, Ben. 2002. Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction, Routledge. London. Landy, Michael. 2001. Breakdown Inventory. London, Ridinghouse. Lefebvre, Henri. 1991, 2002 and 2005. Critique de la vie quotidienne. Vols. 1– III.  Trans. John Moore as The Critique of Everyday Life (vols I-III). London: Verso. Lingwood, James, ed. 1993. Rachel Whiteread’s House. London: Phaidon and Artangel. Lippard, Lucy. 1997. Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Objectfrom 1966 to 1972. London and Berkeley: University of California Press. Michael Landy: Everything Must Go! 2008. London: Ridinghouse Moore, Natalie. Revitalising Chicago’s South Side, One Vacant Building at a Time. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/theaster-gates-ingenuity-awards-chicago-180957203/. Accessed 7 June 2017. Morissey, Simon, 2005, revised 2012. Richard Wilson. London: Tate Publishing Nesbitt, Judith, and John Slyce. 2004. Michael Landy: Demi-Detached. London: Tate Publishing. Painter, Colin, ed. 2002. Contemporary Art and the Home. Oxford and New York: Berg. Perry, Gill. 2004a. Dream Houses: Installations and the Home. In Themes in Contemporary Art, ed. Gill Perry and Paul Wood, 230–275. London and New Haven: Yale University Press. ———, ed. 2004b. Difference and Excess: The Visibility of Women’s Practice. Oxford: Blackwells. ———. 2013. Playing at Home:The House in Contemporary Art. London: Reaktion Books. Powell, Richard J. 1997. Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century. London: Thames and Hudson. Racz, Imogen. 2015. Art and the Home: Comfort, Alienation and the Everyday. London: L.B.Tauris. Toíbín, Colm. 2015. Everything is Susceptible. In Cornelia Parker, 37–45. Manchester: Whitworth Gallery. Wheaton, Marilyn L. 2007. Heidelberg and the City. In Connecting the Dots: Tyree Guyton’s Heidelberg Project. Michigan: Wayne State University Press.

CHAPTER 14

The Monumental and the Mundane: Living with Public Art in London’s East End Robert James Sutton

Parameters Public art demands our attention. Think of the rotating commissions for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square; how the works installed there consistently confront and confound visitors expecting something rather more traditional. Or think of Antony Gormley’s much beloved Angel of the North, wings outstretched to greet the traffic on the A1 south of Gateshead, or Henry Moore’s “Old Flo”, the recipient of much media attention in recent years despite not having resided publicly for more than two decades. Think even of Thomas Heatherwick’s much maligned B of the Bang, a towering throng of metal spikes that attracted all the wrong sorts of attention, or Anish Kapoor’s Orbit, presiding expectantly over the largely uninhabited remains of the Olympic Park in East London. Hashtags, column inches, brand recognition: these appear the currency of much public art now. But the short life of Heatherwick’s B of the Bang might equally be taken as a test case for the pitfalls of public commissions that lobby too earnestly

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for our regard. Commissioned in 2003 to commemorate the previous year’s Commonwealth Games in Manchester, this erinaceous monolith began unceremoniously shedding its huge metal spines days before its much-delayed unveiling in early 2005. At 56 metres high and weighing 165 tonnes it couldn’t help but be noticed, but for much of its life span it was fenced off, interaction prohibited. The imminent threat this massive work posed would predict its own legacy; a short inglorious history of litigious scuffles and its gradual dismantling that was concluded before the decade’s end, its core sold for scrap in the summer of 2012.1 That news of the B of the Bang’s denouement came just weeks before the beginning of the London Olympiad appears fitting. Eight years on, Anish Kapoor’s Orbit prompts similar questions about the propriety of public statuary’s demands. After all, what is the lifetime of a monument commissioned to celebrate something as transitory as a sporting event? And what sort of a legacy can be attributed to a folly dreamt up in a Davos cloakroom between Lakshmi Mittal, a billionaire steel magnate, and the then Mayor of London Boris Johnson, each clamouring for a legacy of their own?2 Does a public work need more than just attention, if even that? Visible from afar down occasional sightlines—the Roman Road running east from Bethnal Green station aims straight for it—the ArcelorMittal Orbit (named for its benefactor) leans presumptuously towards East London but offers only stilted conversation. It asks to be considered public while wearing its corporate sponsorship like a title. It hankers after acceptance, and will do anything to guarantee it. Or at least its grandees will. With the addition of Carsten Höller’s slides to the central core of Orbit in 2016—a calculated compromise “foisted” on Kapoor to shore up dwindling interest in the monument and to sustain the work financially3— came the embodiment of that recreancy, reimagining the folly now more like a visitor attraction. Stained in Kapoor’s trademark red, this calligraphic paean to steel, looping through the Stratford sky, appears rather like an inappropriately sanguine eulogy penned to the memory of the British steel industry, the slide tumbling downward like the many compromised promises of an “Olympic Legacy” in the regeneration of East London.4 Monuments such as these are designed to compete with their surroundings, jostling for approval and risking rebuke. They exist to be noticed and they thrive through interaction. But as Harriet F. Senie identified in 2003, they are the exception. Though the public’s attention is often courted through controversy or scandal, the reality is more prosaic, more mundane. “Most public art slips into the urban scape without a ripple, often

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ignored by its immediate audience or used according to their everyday needs.”5 How then to register such a public work? One that resists attention and slips seamlessly into its environs: unnoticed, overlooked, forgotten? Senie argues for the importance of activating these works: of drawing attention to them. Her article presents some of the findings of her students at the City University of New York who, over time “observed, eavesdropped and engaged the audience” for public works, soliciting a variety of responses and reflections. In accounting for the insights offered up by people who live and work alongside such works—insights, she says approvingly, that had little to do with the “art frame that guides public art’s creators and commissioners”6 —Senie identifies the fundamental ambiguity of this relationship between the work and its audience. “Adopted or adapted according to audience activities and inclinations” she writes, “public art is reframed by its immediate audience to fit the parameters of everyday life.”7 But what happens when these works aren’t activated, or “reframed”? The “parameters of everyday life” are what interest me here too, though perhaps more indifferently than Senie. For where she seeks to make public works serviceable and elucidative, I am comfortable with their silence; happy to concede to their ordinariness and to allow for, even welcome, their neglect. The districts of East London that neighbour Kapoor’s Orbit are riddled with such reticent public works. Living in and walking through these neighbourhoods prompted this line of thought. Through a discussion of the public identities of the works I would pass by in Tower Hamlets—largely in the undulating rectangular expanse that extends eastwards from the City towards the Olympic Park, bordered by the Whitechapel and Bethnal Green/Roman Roads—I will identify two different registers on which to judge that public art: one monumental, the other mundane. For it is this quality of mundanity that marks the most successful of public works, I contend. Those works that resist our attention. Those works that anonymously embellish or augment our surroundings: a testament to the transient nature of the histories to which they have been party. They hunker down incognito, accompanied by the street art and physical marginalia left behind by shifting populations, speaking almost imperceptibly of waves of regeneration and to those who have walked these streets, around and alongside one another. Taken collectively, these artistic interventions into public space effortlessly and endlessly represent their publics in an ambivalent, reciprocal exchange based in the humdrum existence of the everyday.8

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Walking through the East End, publicly commissioned art works appear unimposingly at irregular intervals whilst memorials to the area’s proud and varied histories permeate the area more sparingly still. Where they have survived intact or at all, these works speak to a litany of local histories with the subtlety of a game of Telephone. So too do the less earnest works left behind anonymously: all participate in the exchange and the befuddlement that defines the culture of these streets. By contrast, contemporary commissions sustained by corporate sponsorship abound on the peripheries of the East End—in the City, throughout the Docklands—with all the subtlety of a steam train whilst a supporting cast of blue plaques and guided walks do the heavy lifting in the transmission of official cultural history. Sylvia Pankhurst and Edith Cavell, C.R.  Ashbee and Mahatma Gandhi; each and more besides have been immortalised in the streets they once passed through whilst their contemporaries remain mere footnotes. It is to their contemporaries that public art speaks. Public art’s mundanity might then be the quality that differentiates it from that which we see in galleries, in print, and online. An art that demands attention speaks of itself and its makers first, whilst any attempt to engage with the idea of audience is necessarily reductive, as Senie in part concedes (though this is not to lessen the importance of such an approach). A neglected public work that is rendered as such, however— whether forgotten, ignored or simply passed by—speaks more open-­ endedly of and to the space it exists in. We respond to it in the way we relate to the furniture of the streets: post boxes, discarded shopping trolleys, last night’s kebab. We are afforded the opportunity to pay attention or not. Attempting to pinpoint the ways that public artworks are received is of course imperative for its successful commissioning, but allowing for the possibility of its neglect might better appreciate the way it exists in real time and space.

Living with and Ignoring Public Works When I first moved to East London in the winter of 2006–7, long before the Orbit came to preside over the area like a totem, I lived on the very eastern edge of Tower Hamlets, a stone’s throw from the Olympic Park. I watched it slowly rise from its foundations, encroaching on the histories that surrounded it. My house sat across the Blackwall Tunnel Approach

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Road in the shadow of the “Bow Quarter”: a gated community of boutique condos occupying one of those histories—the former Bryant and May matchstick factory. A Bow Heritage Trail plaque on the outside wall identifies this as the scene of the London matchgirls’ strike of 1888 whilst another blue plaque erroneously memorialises the role Annie Besant played in leading the strike. But that is all. Nothing more concrete—or bronze—has been installed to recognise the many “silent, nameless faces” of the women who instigated the strike, helping to sow the seeds for the New Unionism of the following year.9 At the end of the road, the hands of Albert Bruce-Joy’s 1882 statue of Gladstone—commissioned by Theodore H. Bryant of the Bryant & May factory and paid for via compulsory deductions from his workers—continue to be sporadically daubed with red paint in tenacious protest at the donor’s treatment of his workers whilst, opposite, the old and listed Poplar Town Hall retains five small reliefs in stone by David Evans from the late 1930s portraying various trades and professions that have long since left the building.10 During my two years in Bow, these public works hardly registered despite my walking past them on a daily basis. To compare the grandiose imposition of Kapoor’s Orbit to these unimposing mementos of a time long-since passed is to conceive of the roles public works (have the potential to) play in ascribing and reviving past narratives, as well as the problems of an overly declarative monument extolling its own importance. This is not to say that public works and their commissioners must be overly self-aware of their responsibilities. But the brazen assuredness of demanding public sculpture represents a very different proposition to works that reside more unassumingly in their environs—the monument and the mundane. Take Franta Belsky’s The Lesson of 1957–58; a bronze mother and child of just larger than human scale mounted on a small rise set back from the corner of Turin and Gosset Street in Bethnal Green. Just minutes from Columbia Road and its popular weekend flower market, the work enjoys numerous passing visitors most weekends but few devotees. The work was among 41 examples of post-war public art listed by Historic England in January 2016, marking a clear indication of the conceived value of this work, commissioned by the London County Council to support the reconstruction of the area after the Blitz. But that value was never anything other than implicit locally. Upon its unveiling in 1961, one local resident suggested “it’s not the kind of thing really … I mean for children round here … it’s only been up a few hours and they were climbing all

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over it … I give it a month, and I don’t think it will be as it is now.”11 Now largely shorn of that attention—the criticism and the climbing—the work has become pedestrian. Set back from the road with little fanfare, this life size bronze study of a mother overseeing her child’s first tentative steps is left to get on with it, as much a constituent of the local population, perhaps, as a comment upon or analogue for it. In comparison, Henry Moore’s Draped Seated Woman has long since enjoyed such a sense of community. Known affectionately as “Old Flo”, this work once sat prosaic amongst the high rises of the Stifford Estate, to the south of the borough in Stepney. Appreciated locally but hardly revered, Old Flo existed as much as climbing frame for children or a canvas for miscreants as an exemplary work of art. But after the demolition of the Estate in 1997, and with no other suitable location identified locally, the work was moved to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park on a long-term loan where it remained in abeyance until 2012. Potentially worth as much as £20  million but uninsurable due to the threat of theft, a cash strapped Tower Hamlets council decided to cash in on their errant daughter and put Old Flo up for auction.12 The furore that followed set in motion numerous discussions about the value of public art—monetary or otherwise—at the centre of which were the various legal challenges that met the council’s intent to sell her. (The recent listing of a number of post-war public works seems to have come, in part, off the back of these discussions). Perhaps most conspicuously in the arts media, artists Bob and Roberta Smith and Jessica Voorsanger led a delegation of protestors to the Tower Hamlets Town Hall in the Docklands where they announced their opposition to the council’s decision theatrically, resplendent in green flowing draperies after Old Flo’s own image.13 In an article for the Tate website, since removed, Smith repeated some of the argument he delivered there, characterising Old Flo as “an East End survivor” drawn from the shelterers Moore witnessed cowering underground during the Blitz, famously captured in his Shelter Drawings.14 This personification of “Old Flo”, comparable to that which has proliferated throughout the reporting of this controversy—“‘Old Flo’ makes her way back to London” announced The Guardian—rendered her local; one of those “survivors”.15 It invested Moore’s work with the humanity it once stood for, nestled among the tower blocks built to rehouse a displaced population. But it also smacked of over-familiarity. More somebody than anybody, Old Flo had transcended her social mores, like the children

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of Labour Party politicians sent to public school. The attention paid and her potential riches elevated her above the throng. In the various legal challenges put forward to protest her sale, the only factor ever considered was ownership: who bought the work, not who it was bought for. In early 2017, after much legal wrangling, it was confirmed that Old Flo would be returned to Tower Hamlets later that year, first to Cabot Square in the shadow of Canary Wharf before her eventual reintroduction to Whitechapel, half a mile or so west of her former home. (It has long been hoped that the work will eventually be moved into the new Town Hall, currently being renovated from the abandoned central buildings of the Royal London Hospital on the Whitechapel Road. As of writing, this long-term future remains uncertain). In the Docklands, Moore’s Draped Seated Woman will briefly accompany all manner of public sculptures enjoying the security of corporate sponsorship, party to a “differentiated, yet homogeneous, public of finance and other related service sector workers” in a series of “sanitised and highly controlled public spaces.”16 Such spaces are hardly conducive to feelings of community or belonging, however, and neither are they really public. James Fournière has identified the extent to which the programmatic design of these spaces prescribes navigation through them for the uninitiated, alienating or dissuading “those who do not fit in.”17 Specifically, Fournière invokes the residents of the neighbouring Lansbury Estate in Poplar who, he suggests, self-exclude themselves from much of a development to which they feel no belonging. That the Lansbury was built for the Festival of Britain in 1951 as a prototype of post-war housing and was an important precedent for the Stifford Estate might suggest the difficulty Old Flo might have once experienced fitting in there. But now demanding attention, she’ll sojourn there like a cultural ambassador welcoming guests in to her temporary quarters. Saddled with celebrity, she has been elevated to the monumental. But this local hero’s homecoming will last only until the attention of celebrity begins to wane and then, or shortly thereafter, Old Flo might retreat back into the hubbub of her surroundings. As familiarity breeds contempt, so too does over-familiarity breed mundanity and neglect. Across the road from the Royal London Hospital, just down from the tube station, William Silver Frith’s Edward VII Memorial Drinking Fountain of 1911—described as “one of the finest London memorials of the period” by Philip Davies in 1989—has long since been neglected by most.18 Ensconced amongst the market stalls, often with palettes or empty

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cardboard boxes at its base and obscured from view (Fig. 14.1), this monument’s monumentality has been rejected by an audience unconcerned with such pomp. The work was paid for a century ago by the Jewish inhabitants of the area in memoriam to the recently deceased king, but it also memorialises its patrons: a representation of one wave of the East End’s

Fig. 14.1  William Silver Frith, The Edward VII Memorial Drinking Fountain, 1911, granite and bronze, Whitechapel Road, London. (Author’s photograph)

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shifting migrant populations and continued regeneration. In its cracks and crevices might be found a century and more of such histories, the characters that decorate the plinth having born witness to these waves moving through the East End. But today, inundated by a Babelian rabble of voices criss-crossing in the surrounding streets, the particularities of this work’s meanings are drowned out even as its allegories resonate in the life of the neighbouring community and in its streets. The angel perched atop the plinth—facing away from the street—offers her left hand compassionately forward but, twelve feet up, attracts only the occasional attention of passengers on the top deck of passing buses. Either side of the tapered central pillar, figures representing Justice and Liberty stare dispiritedly into the striped canvases of the adjacent market stalls accompanied by equally distracted putti. Liberty, with her broken shackles and scroll, stands over two cherubs playing with toys, a car and a ship, the latter once anticipating the child’s future in the local dockyards, perhaps. Justice, meanwhile, clutching onto her scales and propped up against a giant sword, is kept company by two cherubs engrossed in the contents of their reading material; the means to self-improvement.19 Politics, religion, industry, leisure, education: all reverberate socio-historically and visual-culturally. Four years prior to the installation of the fountain, the fifth Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party met at the Jewish Socialist Club on the opposite corner of Fulbourne St counting Rosa Luxemburg, Maxim Gorky, Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin amongst its delegates. Twenty-three years earlier still, John Merrick, the Elephant Man, was exhibited for the entertainment of the community in a shop at no. 259, directly behind where the monument stands.20 With no memorials, these histories remain only implicitly. Just to the east, at the crossroads where the Whitechapel and Cambridge Heath Roads meet, two separate monuments to William Booth can be found besides a bust of King Edward VII. Situated across from the Blind Beggar pub outside of which Booth delivered some of his first sermons ahead of founding the Salvation Army and inside of which George Connell was famously murdered by the Kray Brothers on 9 March 1966, the histories overlap.21 The pub’s name, meanwhile, memorialises the local legend of Henry de Montfort who, returning home from the Battle of Evesham in 1265, was found blind, wounded, and dressed as a beggar by a nobleman’s daughter who nursed him back to health. The histories triangulate and coagulate. On Whitechapel Road’s south side, meanwhile, just another

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100 m east, a large stone plaque marks the spot where “a house occupied for some years by Captain James Cook” once stood. Four competing histories of the East End align ordinarily, largely unrepresentative of the many who have passed through them, and no more or less recognisable or culturally significant to most than the stump of a defunct granite drinking fountain erected by the Cattle Trough Association that sits to the west of the Cook memorial, unless noticed. North east of Whitechapel on the Globe Town estate, Elisabeth Frink’s 1957 Blind Beggar and his Dog similarly deflects attention. Nestled among fifteen low rise houses on the southern edge of the Cranbrook Estate, the bronze is perched five feet up atop a tiered concrete block. But set back from the road and surrounded by foliage, the work is largely hidden from sight. To see it properly, one must climb over a fence into this ostensibly private garden. Having been moved from its original location in the nearby Market Square in 1963 after being damaged four years after its unveiling, the work’s resonance has long been curbed by its relative privacy. But still Frink’s disabled mendicant signifies. Rehearsing and appropriating its source in local mythology, the Blind Beggar stands in for both the experience of war that had devastated the adjacent area and the post-war policies that sought to provide safety nets for those whose squalid lives had been exposed. Protected by its listed status and setting, the work will continue to rehearse these local histories with as much muster as do the surrounding houses that provide its camouflage: unimposing, dated, and uninterested in anything more ostentatious. The few times I have asked to look at the work, neighbours have obligingly let me into their garden, but with little interest in my interest in the work, either. Three decades later and just 100 metres or so east, Rachel Whiteread’s House was pulled down in the winter of 1993–94 having existed for just a few months. Whiteread had worked with Artangel to find a terraced house ahead of its destruction and had taken a concrete cast of its interior to leave in the footprint of the former building. No time to signify publicly but plenty to ruffle feathers, it brought attention and it brought outrage to the area and to itself: a cause célèbre for both the questions of what (public) art was and should be and for the issues of gentrification and regeneration that were encroaching upon the East End at that time.22 As an exemplary work by the Turner Prize winning artist of that year that spoke pointedly to such topical issues, House’s brief history has received much subsequent veneration and revision in efforts to appreciate

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its significance and to salute its memory even if it wasn’t much liked locally during its brief tenure. Indeed, in the catalogue published to memorialise House a year after its demolition, James Lingwood, Director of Artangel, suggested the work might well have functioned effectively as a memorial to the history of its immediate vicinity—“the place where the first flying bomb fell” —were it to have remained intact; a remnant of the changing architectural character of the surrounding streets.23 This in response to a campaign led that year by the Evening Standard for a potential monument to “commemorate the experience of London and its people during the Second World War before it passes beyond living memory.”24 It certainly had the capacity to pose as a record of the past as the area around its former location continued to evolve, but so too does Frink’s work still have the capacity to fulfil that responsibility. Indeed it already does, benignly and unimposingly. More effective in a treatment of Whiteread’s work’s potential mundanity should it have lasted, however, might be Bartomeu Marí’s discussion of the work for the catalogue to her 1996 Tate exhibition. Identifying the way the work existed between the states of domesticity (interiority) and monumentality (exteriority) that characterise what he calls our “experience” of architecture, Marí suggested that the graffiti daubed onto House during its short tenure served to reconcile something of these private and public contradictions. “Graffiti are an index of the intersection of public and private”, he writes, “a way of inscribing an architectural, monumental structure with the immediate concerns of an individual. They connect the grandeur and symbolism of the monument back to the small lives it seeks to memorialise.”25 By writing on the walls of House, Marí suggests, local individuals served to deny or dilute the work’s attestations of power: something Marí ascribes to the role of monuments more generally. “In a society that defines itself as democratic, anybody with something to say only needs a wall to make it known to others.”26 Such “concerns” continue to proliferate throughout the immediate area. Whether in the anonymous paintings of an emergency alarm panel that decorates a fence further along the Roman Road, in the brightly coloured tags that coalesce under the bridges of the adjacent canal, or in the Sharpied scribbles across the surfaces of the glazed ceramic sculptures of an oversized fishtail and float that border the canal just south of the Roman Road, here are the renditions of everyday public life that Marí lauds. In the latter of these, the interrelation between (1) those black scribbles, (2) the children’s designs and names baked into the works’

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orange tiles, (3) the populist agreeableness of the pop-like forms, and (4) the primary function of the fish’s caudal fins in serving as a bench for passing visitors suggests this work might well serve as the most representative example of mundanity discussed here. This work is, in turns, by, of, and/ or for the communities that pass by it, many of whom (passing down the Regent’s Canal by boat or by running shoe) are itinerant; most of whom pay it no attention. Further west along the canal, just before one gets to Broadway Market, an interjection on the wall at the entrance to the bridleway in mosaicked tiles reads: “You are the best damn girl I have ever met. Will you marry me?” Two individual stories, two lives, written into the life of everyone else’s with all the naivety of Tracey Emin’s neon works or the brazen simplicity of Robert Indiana’s text pieces. But it resists such attestations of self-importance. It is merely “street art” to most, as though that somehow denies its potentiality. Similarly, a number of street signs populate the area with no purpose or past ascribed to them. A favourite, on Sugar Loaf Walk just behind the V&A Museum of Childhood, portrays a figure swimming across the panel rendered in childish daubs of colour, subtitled with the encouraging mantra: “kick your feet.” Another, under a train bridge on Globe Road, depicts a thunder bolt and rain cloud accompanied by the warning shot, “one big zoom”. These artworks, like Belsky’s Lesson, might equally be recognised as constituents in the everyday life of the spaces they inhabit. They are activated in the relational dialogue encouraged between them and their audience, but without that dialogue they participate still, unremittingly mundane.

Conclusion In a survey of avant-garde artistic interventions into everyday space, Alastair Bonnett pitched the idea of artistic creativity as distinct from, or even contrary to the idea of everyday space. “Everyday space”, he writes, “is where routine, conformist, and unimaginative social roles are played out […] it is the arena of noncreativity: the ‘passive’ space around the work of art from which the latter derives its identity as art.”27 He does so in an evaluation of the success of various attempts to reconcile these antagonistic forces—to “dismantle the barriers” between art and everyday space—whilst acknowledging that that barrier is manifest in the very act of creative production: “This is not to argue that creativity never takes place in everyday space”, he writes, “but, rather, to draw attention to the fact

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that they are not sites of legitimate creativity in a society which conceives of this phenomenon as the specialized practice of the artist in twentieth-­ century Western society.”28 This interpretation of creativity prioritises individually oriented notions of intent and specialism, however, whereas the heterogeneity and ambiguity of the publics that constitute and populate everyday spaces resist such easy categorisation even in their most banal social transactions. As Senie identified in that essay quoted from at the outset, the audiences for public works are consistently more dextrous in their thinking than commissioning bodies allow for; more creative, perhaps, than the artists who ostensibly cater for them. But so too are those audiences frequently oblivious to the world around them, concerned more with the goings on in their own lives or the stimuli issuing from their mobile screens than the impertinent demands of artworks hawking their propositions. To render everyday space as unspecialised is only to acknowledge its complexity, not conformity. In defining his idea of “culture” at the tail end of the 1950s, Raymond Williams pilloried the idea of a separating out of distinct versions of culture. “What kind of life can it be”, he asked, “to produce this extraordinary fussiness, this extraordinary decision to call certain things culture and then separate them, as with a park wall, from ordinary people and ordinary work?”29 The same might be said of art, of creativity, especially when thrust into the ordinary spaces of public life. With this essay I have sought to treat artistic interventions into the public sphere—commissions, memorials, interjections, intrusions—with a broad brush in order to identify their similarities. In the streets all are equal, all are ordinary, demanding the attention of others more or less successfully but all fundamentally banal. Iain Sinclair’s many articulations of the experience of living and being in East London have helped in the consolidation of this area as palimpsest; replete with the echoes of lives lived on these streets. Indeed, in the treatment of his findings from a series of systematically prescribed walks through the area logged in Lights Out for the Territory, he refers to the scrawls left behind on “walls, lampposts [and] doorjambs” as “the spites and spasms of an increasingly deranged populace”.30 They overlap and intermingle, repeating the concerns of their characters cacophonously. But so too might we register the psychosis inherent in the bodies who thrust public works into these streets expecting anything other than a spiteful, spasmodic, apathetic or indifferent response from those who pass by them daily.

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In demanding a response from us, public monuments can come on like visual cold callers, unwelcome and insufferable. And so we should not be surprised when the public do respond, even vociferously, as with the Rhodes Must Fall protests beginning in 2015. But subsumed into the life of the streets we pass through mechanically, public artworks offer up the possibility of multiple discoveries: testament to the transient nature of the histories to which they have been party, but mute, like neighbours unspoken to or the deceased unspoken for.

Notes 1. Mike Keegan, “Bang ends with a whimper as sculpture sold for £17  k scrap”, The Manchester Evening News, 4 July 2012, 3. 2. Felicity Carus, “ArcelorMittal’s emissions make a monumental joke of Olympic Park tower”, The Guardian, 9 April 2010, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/apr/09/arcelormittal-anishkapoor-orbit, accessed 20 January 2020. 3. Hannah Ellis-Petersen, “Anish Kapoor says addition to artwork was ‘foisted’ on him by Boris Johnson”, The Guardian, 26 April 2016, https:// www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/apr/26/anish-kapoor-addition-artwork-foisted-on-him-boris-johnson, accessed 20 January 2020. 4. For a more developed treatment of this work’s shortcomings and its compromised legacy, see Douglas Murphy, Nincompoopolis: The Follies of Boris Johnson (London: Repeater Books, 2017), 26–56. 5. Harriet F.  Senie, “Reframing Public Art: Audience Use, Interpretation, and Appreciation” in Art and its Publics: Museum Studies and the Millenium, ed. Andrew McClellan (Malden MA and Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 185 6. Senie, “Reframing Public Art”, 197. 7. Ibid. 8. Ben Highmore, Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction (Abingdon: Routledge, 2001). 9. The five women named by Bryant & May as the ringleaders of the strike were Kate Slater, Alice Barnes, Jane Wakely, Eliza Martin and Mary Driscoll. See Louise Raw, Striking a Light: The Bryant and May Matchwomen and their Place in History (London: Continuum, 2011). 10. Ibid, 150–151. 11. Anon, “The Lesson”, London Town: The London County Council Staff Gazette LXII, no. 735 (1961), 67. 12. Rowan Moore, “Should Tower Hamlets Council Sell Off Its £20 m Henry Moore?”, The Guardian, 3 November 2012, https://www.theguardian.

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com/artanddesign/2012/nov/03/henry-moore-tower-hamlets-sculpture-sale, accessed 20 January 2020. 13. “Flogging Old Flo”, Art Monthly, Iss. 362 (2012), 15. 14. This article was previously available on the Tate website as Bob and Roberta Smith, “Tate Debate: Should Tower Hamlets Council be Able to Sell a Public Artwork?”, Tate.org.uk, 15 November 2012, http://www.tate.org. uk/context-comment/blogs/tate-debate-should-tower-hamlets-councilbe-able-sell-public-artwork, accessed 29th June 2017. The comments were repeated in a free talk at London Metropolitan University on the 7th March 2013 entitled ‘Fighting for Old Flo’, archived online at: https:// www.londonmet.ac.uk/news/articles/fighting-for-old-flo/ accessed 20 January 2020. 15. Mark Brown, “‘Old Flo’ Makes Her Way Back to London from Yorkshire”, The Guardian, 28 March 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/mar/28/old-flo-makes-her-way-back-to-london-fromyorkshire, accessed 29th June 2017. 16. Fournière also notes the Canary Wharf Group’s identification of the Estate as home to one of the largest collections of public art in the country. James Fournière, “Sustaining the Public: The Future of Public Space in London?” in Sustainable London? The Future of a Global City, ed. Rob Imrie and Loretta Lees (Bristol: Policy Press, 2014), 228. 17. Fournière compares the “similar situation at the London Olympic site in Stratford” as identified in Paul Watt, ‘“It’s not for us”: Regeneration, the 2012 Olympics, and the Gentrification of East London’, CITY 17, no.1, 99–118; Fournière, “Sustaining the Public”, 229. 18. Philip Davies, Troughs & Drinking Fountains: Fountains of Life (London: Chatto & Windus, 1989), 107. 19. “King Edward VII Jewish Memorial Drinking Fountain Opposite Main Entrance To London Hospital”, Historic England List Entry Number 1065821. 20. Ed Glinert, The London Compendium: A Street-by-Street Exploration of the Hidden Metropolis (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 304–307. 21. Peter Matthews, London’s Statues and Monuments (Oxford: Shire Publications, 2012), 230–231. 22. See James Lingwood, ed. Rachel Whiteread: House (London: Phaidon in association with Artangel, 1995) 23. James Lingwood, “Introduction”, in Rachel Whiteread: House, 11. 24. Ibid. 25. Bartomeu Marí, “The Art of the Intangible” in Rachel Whiteread: Shedding Life (London: Tate Gallery, 1996), 68. 26. Ibid.

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27. Alastair Bonnett, “Art, Ideology, and Everyday Space: Subversive Tendencies from Dada to Postmodernism” in Everyday Life: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, vol.III, ed. Ben Highmore (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), 383–404. 28. Bonnett, “Art, Ideology, and Everyday Space”, 384. 29. Raymond Williams, “Culture is Ordinary” in The Everyday Life Reader, ed. Ben Highmore (Abingdon: Routledge, 2002), 94. 30. Iain Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory: 9 Excursions in the Secret History of London (London: Granta Books, 1997), 1.

References Anon. 1961. The Lesson. London Town: The London County Council Staff Gazette LXII (735). ———. 2012. Flogging Old Flo (Artnotes). Art Monthly 362 (15). Bonnett, Alastair. 2012. Art, Ideology, and Everyday Space: Subversive Tendencies from Dada to Postmodernism. In Everyday Life: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, ed. Ben Highmore, vol. III, 383–404. Abingdon: Routledge. Brown, Mark. 2017. ‘Old Flo’ Makes Her Way Back to London from Yorkshire. The Guardian, March 28. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/mar/28/old-flo-makes-her-way-back-to-london-from-yorkshire. Accessed 29 June 2017. Carus, Felicity. 2010. ArcelorMittal’s Emissions Make a Monumental Joke of Olympic Park Tower. The Guardian, April 9. https://www.theguardian.com/ environment/blog/2010/apr/09/arcelormittal-anish-kapoor-orbit. Accessed 20 Jan 2020. Davies, Philip. 1989. Troughs & Drinking Fountains: Fountains of Life. London: Chatto & Windus. Ellis-Petersen, Hannah. 2016. Anish Kapoor Says Addition to Artwork Was ‘Foisted’ on Him by Boris Johnson. The Guardian, April 26. https://www. theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/apr/26/anish-kapoor-addition-artwork-foisted-on-him-boris-johnson. Accessed 20 Jan 2020. Fournière, James. 2014. Sustaining the Public: The Future of Public Space in London? In Sustainable London? The Future of a Global City, ed. Rob Imrie and Loretta Lees, 221–244. Bristol: Policy Press. Glinert, Ed. 2003. The London Compendium: A Street-by-Street Exploration of the Hidden Metropolis. London: Penguin Books. Highmore, Ben, ed. 2001. Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction. Abingdon: Routledge. Keegan, Mike. 2012. Bang Ends with a Whimper as Sculpture Sold For £17k Scrap. The Manchester Evening News, July 2012 4, 3.

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Lingwood, James, ed. 1995. Rachel Whiteread: House. London: Phaidon in association with Artangel. Marí, Bartomeu. 1996. The Art of the Intangible. In Rachel Whiteread: Shedding Life. London: Tate Gallery. Matthews, Peter. 2012. London’s Statues and Monuments. Oxford: Shire Publications. Moore, Rowan. 2012. Should Tower Hamlets Council Sell Off Its £20m Henry Moore? The Guardian, November 3. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/nov/03/henry-moore-tower-hamlets-sculpture-sale. Accessed 20 Jan 2020. Murphy, Douglas. 2017. Nincompoopolis: The Follies of Boris Johnson. London: Repeater Books. Raw, Louise. 2011. Striking a Light: The Bryant and May Matchwomen and Their Place in History. London: Continuum. Senie, Harriet F. 2003. Reframing Public Art: Audience Use, Interpretation, and Appreciation. In Art and its Publics: Museum Studies and the Millenium, ed. Andrew McClellan, 185–200. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell. Sinclair, Iain. 1997. Lights Out for the Territory: 9 Excursions in the Secret History of London. London: Granta Books. Smith, Bob, and Roberta. 2012. Tate Debate: Should Tower Hamlets Council be Able to Sell a Public Artwork? Tate.org.uk, November 15. http://www.tate. org.uk/context-comment/blogs/tate-debate-should-tower-hamlets-councilbe-able-sell-public-artwork. Accessed 29 June 2017. Watt, Paul. 2013. “It’s Not for Us”: Regeneration, the 2012 Olympics, and the Gentrification of East London. CITY 17 (1): 99–118. Williams, Raymond. 2002. Culture is Ordinary [1958]. In The Everyday Life Reader, ed. Ben Highmore, 91–100. Abingdon: Routledge.

Index1

A Absent bodies, 231 Actor-network theory, 22, 23 Aesthetic institution, 67–70 medium, 57n73, 62–65 Affect, 20, 45, 51, 52, 56n70, 75, 89n16, 167, 168, 181, 184, 186, 189, 190, 192, 228, 231 Agency, 20, 25, 27, 32, 42, 46, 47, 51, 55n48, 92, 168, 170, 175, 215 Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, 80 Archive, 7, 10, 11, 36, 91–101, 112–114, 119n15, 120n43, 137, 216 Artefacts, 10, 11, 92, 95–97, 147–149, 152, 154, 157, 185 ARTIST ROOMS, 76, 77, 86, 88n4, 88n11 Assemblage, 8, 21–25, 51, 53, 68, 234

Audience, 6, 7, 26, 33, 46, 63, 65, 79, 81, 83, 84, 88n4, 92, 97, 101, 101n1, 106, 114, 116, 118, 126, 127, 131, 165, 168, 180, 189, 190, 192, 198–200, 203, 204, 206, 207, 209, 212, 214, 217n15, 227, 229, 230, 243, 244, 248, 252, 253 Aura, 116, 150, 157, 158 Autobiography, 95, 106, 110, 182 Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR), 26 B Bachelard, Gaston, 112, 172 Ballets and total theatre, 3 Banal, 12, 165, 171–173, 175, 229, 230, 253 Barad, Karen, 8, 39, 40, 45–51, 55n43, 55n48, 56n52

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 S. Whatley et al. (eds.), Art and Dance in Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44085-5

259

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INDEX

Belsky, Franta, 245, 252 Benjamin, Walter, 110, 135, 136, 150, 158, 172 Blackness, 181, 183, 184, 193n9, 239n29 Bodies, 1, 20–25, 39–53, 62, 76, 91–101, 105, 125, 129–131, 148, 164, 183, 206, 225, 253 Body as archive, 91, 98 Bourriaud, Nicolas, 20, 27, 28, 165, 198 Braidotti, Rosie, 22, 23, 43, 44, 170 Bryson, Norman, 75, 76, 78, 87n1, 88n8, 88n9, 89n16 Butcher, Rosemary, 4, 5 Butler, Judith, 11, 22, 23, 47, 54n18, 181, 186, 189 C Cage, John, 4, 61 Care, 35, 165, 168–170, 220n60 Carroll, Lewis Alice in Wonderland, 76, 80, 84 Chadwick, Helen, 7, 10, 105–118, 120n43, 121n65, 122n72 notebooks, 106–109, 111, 114, 118 Childhood, 9, 60, 77–87, 105, 110, 112–114, 232 Choreography, 4–6, 33, 83, 85, 86, 93, 94, 100, 101, 117, 134, 136, 147, 168, 189, 194n24, 198, 199, 202, 204, 206, 208, 215, 218n36, 219n45 Cinematographic theatre, 205, 209 Clod Ensemble, 163, 164 Co-evolution, 168, 170 Collective creation, 127–129 Commensals, 6, 8, 19–36 Connectivity, 20, 30 Contemporary dance, 1, 3, 13, 100, 187

Cooking, 10, 26, 27, 125–138, 140n12, 172 Corporeal archive, 10, 92, 94, 97–99, 101 Corporeal palimpsest, 10, 125–138 Craftivism, 173 Cunningham, Merce, 4, 67, 93 D Dance body, 39–53, 93, 183, 184, 189 movement, 67 Dance4, 91, 94, 96, 101n1 David, Jacques Louis, 9, 62, 65, 66 Davies, Siobhan, 5, 54n5, 94 De Certeau, Michel, 172–174, 230 The Death of Marat, 66 Dematerialisation, 227, 232 Desire lines, 173, 174 Devising, 94, 127, 139n7 Diaghilev, Serge, 3 Digital body, 65–67 Digital landscape, 62 Document/documentation, 7, 10, 11, 76, 93, 97, 99–101, 111, 148–151, 153–158, 171, 193n15, 229 E Ego Geometria Sum, (I am Geometry) (1982–84), 7, 10, 105–118, 120n43 Electronic music, 61, 62, 69 Embodied knowledge/body of knowledge, 6, 135 Embodiment, 8, 20–25, 28, 35, 36, 66, 189, 193n17, 214, 242 Emergence, 9, 41, 52, 170 Entanglement, 25, 39, 40, 47, 51 Ephemerality, 96, 99, 100, 181, 192 Everyday, the, 230, 231, 234, 236

 INDEX 

261

F Fairy tale, 79, 80, 83, 86 Fluxus Movement, 61 Folds, 40–43, 48–50, 53, 93 Food, 6, 8, 11, 19–36, 125, 126, 133–137, 149 Forsythe, William, 4, 12, 187, 197–216, 217n13, 217n15, 217n18, 217n19, 218n35, 218n36, 221n77 Bockenheimer Depot, 198, 199, 201, 202, 209, 216n8, 217n13, 219n52 Kammer/Kammer, 12, 197–216, 217n12, 217n15, 218n38, 221n77 Foucault, Michel, 47, 197, 198, 208, 214 Frink, Elisabeth, 250, 251 Frith, William Silver, 247, 248

Heidelberg project, 226, 232–236 Histories, 11, 13, 21, 29, 40, 67, 77, 94, 96, 97, 101, 127–131, 135, 148, 150, 154, 156, 166, 168, 172, 175, 181, 193n15, 193n17, 211, 226, 228, 232, 234, 235, 237n3, 237n5, 242–245, 249–251, 254 Home, 5, 10, 12, 31, 70, 78, 101n1, 112, 116, 126, 128, 134, 137, 166, 169, 170, 174, 182, 185, 220n60, 225–237, 247, 249, 255n16 Homelessness, 236 House, 12, 113, 140n7, 202, 217n15, 225–237, 238n20, 244, 250 How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? (2010), 11, 179–192

G Gallery Yeh, 59 Generation, 93, 94, 96, 99, 101, 130 Genre boundaries; permeability of, 4 Geometry, 111–112, 204 and harmony, 112 Ghost in the Machine, 10, 106, 110, 116 Graffiti, 234, 251 Guyton, Tyree, 232, 233, 235, 236, 238n21

I Identity, 6, 10, 12, 23, 28, 61, 62, 106, 107, 110, 113, 117, 118, 127, 164, 171, 181–185, 187, 192, 193n17, 198, 226, 239n29, 243, 252 Identity building role of objects, 10 role of social world, 106 Improvisation, 39, 42, 86, 167, 170, 187, 188, 194n24 Installation, 4, 59, 63, 65, 68–70, 72n38, 76, 77, 79, 94, 106, 108, 115, 118, 121n60, 153, 179, 198, 212, 226–228, 230, 232, 234–236, 249 Installation art, 62, 227, 228, 230, 232, 237n8 Interiority, 12, 49, 180–182, 184–192, 251

H Hands, 32–34, 36, 50, 51, 62, 66, 82, 83, 108, 112–115, 117, 126, 151, 154, 155, 172, 173, 211, 215, 245, 249 Haraway, Donna, 8, 22–25, 28, 33 Harmony, 109, 112

262 

INDEX

Interiority and exteriority, 48, 49 In the Kitchen (1977), 106 Intra-actions, 8, 9, 39, 40, 42, 45–49, 52, 53, 55n43 J The Juggler’s Table (1982), 114–115 K Kapoor, Anish, 241–243, 245 Kaprow, Allan, 6 Kepler, Johannes, 107, 108 Knitting, 167, 172–174, 176n14 Koestler, Arthu, 10, 106–110 The Sleepwalkers, 10, 106–108 L La Máquina de Teatro, 126–129, 139n7 Landy, Michael, 12, 226, 227, 229–231 Language, 8, 22, 24, 29, 39, 40, 44, 49–52, 55n43, 81, 83–85, 118, 136, 141n19, 153, 160n44, 160n48, 164, 171, 174, 186, 188, 218n35, 228 Lefebvre, Henri, 230, 231, 236 Leftover, 149, 151, 155–158, 160n44 Legacy, 4, 10, 23, 42, 59, 93, 100, 101, 226, 234, 242, 254n4 Lehmann, Hans Thies, 12, 127, 205, 209, 210, 218n35 Lemon, Ralph, 11, 140n7, 179–192 Lepecki, André, 14n6, 91, 92, 141n24, 159n22 Liminality, 136, 137 London County Council, 245

M Mapping, 8, 39–53, 81, 98 Marat, Jean-Paul, 9, 62, 65–67 Massey, Doreen, 3 Material culture, 228 Mathematics, 106 Matter, 8, 9, 23, 29, 39, 40, 42–45, 47, 49–53, 60, 68, 112 life dichotomy, 50 Mediation, 20, 23, 25, 30, 33, 43 Melrose, Susan, 28, 93 Memory, 2, 6, 10, 11, 36, 40–42, 53, 77, 78, 80, 82, 83, 93–101, 105, 107, 110, 112–114, 117, 118, 127–130, 132, 137, 138n1, 140n11, 154, 155, 168, 193n15, 203, 216, 234, 236, 242, 251 Metonymic space, 12, 197–216 Mexico, 3, 11, 125–138 Mimicry, 165, 170–172, 175 Minimalism, 76, 78, 87n1 Model Institution (1981), 106 Monumentality, 248, 251 Monuments, 12, 170, 242, 245, 248, 249, 251, 254 Moore, Henry, 241, 246, 247 Moorman, Charlotte, 67 Mourning, 12, 179–192 Movement, 2, 4–6, 8, 9, 25, 42, 52, 62, 67, 76, 78, 79, 81–86, 88n5, 93, 94, 96, 97, 126, 127, 130, 132, 135, 137, 163, 164, 166, 167, 170, 175, 180, 183, 186–189, 191, 198, 204, 206, 218n38 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 67, 68 Mukbang/mokbang, 26 Mundanity, 12, 243, 244, 247, 251, 252

 INDEX 

N Narrative, 9, 11, 25, 30, 43, 76, 77, 79, 80, 82–84, 86, 106–108, 110, 116, 126, 131, 135, 180, 183, 185, 188, 192, 202, 203, 206, 207, 211, 217n15, 245 Networked screen, 6, 8, 19–21, 24, 29, 32, 36 New materialism, 3, 22, 23, 40–46, 50, 54n25 Non-human, 8, 9, 20, 21, 23, 25, 28, 39, 40, 43, 44, 50–53 Nora, Pierre, 110 Norton, Mary, 80 Novaro, Cecilia, 24, 32 O Object, 1, 2, 4, 6–10, 13, 24, 25, 27–30, 40, 46, 47, 61–63, 70, 76–79, 81, 83, 85, 86, 89n16, 95, 96, 105, 108–118, 125–127, 130, 132–136, 138, 149, 151, 152, 157, 158, 165, 170, 173, 198, 228–232, 234, 236 Olympics, 255n17 Online, 10, 30, 98–101, 211, 212, 244, 255n14 ORLAN Baiser de l’artiste (1977), 148, 154 Le Drapé-Le Baroque (1978–86), 150 MesuRage des institutions (1964–1983/2012), 11, 148 Opérations chirurgicale-performances […] dites Omniprésence (1990–93), 148, 153 Sainte Orlan (1980), 148, 153, 156, 157 Self-Hybridizations (1998–2005), 158 Orphism, 109

263

P Paik, Nam June, 9, 59–70 Palimpsests, 126–128, 131, 253 palimpsest bodies, 129–131, 135, 137, 138 Park Seo-Yeon (La Diva), 26 Parker, Cornelia, 12, 226–228 Performance, 1, 20, 61, 78, 92, 105, 125, 147–158, 163, 179, 198, 229 remains, 147 Performance-making, 97, 128 Performative/performativity, 12, 20, 22–24, 27–29, 33, 35, 42, 47, 91, 94, 96, 105, 125, 127, 135, 136, 184, 212, 219n45, 226–229, 235, 236 Performer, 6, 7, 20, 60, 61, 65, 66, 85, 92, 94, 99, 100, 106, 117, 125, 126, 130–133, 135–138, 139–140n7, 160n48, 167, 180, 182, 188, 192, 200, 206, 210, 216n8 Period eye, 198, 210, 214, 215, 216n4 Phelan, Peggy, 11, 181, 188, 190 Photograph/photographic imagery, 6, 7, 87, 92, 96, 105, 109, 110, 112–115, 117, 233, 236, 248 Photography, 5, 7, 106, 115, 153, 230 Play, 5, 9–11, 33, 60, 66, 67, 69, 70, 78, 82, 83, 85, 92, 93, 116, 117, 147, 152, 154, 165, 167, 169–171, 175, 181, 193n6, 198, 200, 202, 211, 245 Poses, 110, 115–117, 251 Postdramatic theatre, 127, 218n35, 219n45 Posthumanism, 22 Postmemory, 127, 130, 134, 137 Postmodernism, 44, 107 Practice-based research/practice-­ research, 45, 52

264 

INDEX

Presence, 11, 24–26, 31, 33, 34, 42, 92, 97, 99, 113, 116, 117, 126, 127, 134, 135, 140n11, 147–158, 174, 180, 198, 209, 213, 235, 239n29 Public art, 2, 241–254 Public sphere/public space, 243, 247, 253 Pythagoras, 109 Q Quashie, Kevin, 180–185, 192, 193n7, 193n9 Quiet, 11, 159n1, 169, 179–192 R Rancière, Jacques, 63, 71n23, 71n29, 72n50 Reckless Sleepers, 94 Red Ladies, 11, 163–175 Regeneration, 242, 243, 249, 250, 255n17 Relationality, 8, 20, 21, 23–25, 27–30, 32, 35, 50, 51, 189 Relics, 11, 147–158 Remains, 7, 10, 20, 22, 28, 41, 84, 86, 93, 94, 96, 98, 100, 101, 116, 129–131, 135, 147, 148, 154, 183, 187, 188, 190, 215, 228, 241, 244, 247, 249 Rememory, 127, 130, 132, 134–137 Remnants, 10, 11, 147–149, 154, 155, 251 Remote intimacy, 21, 35 Resistance, 2, 8, 11, 12, 117, 129, 130, 134, 137, 165, 166, 170, 172, 173, 175, 181, 183, 192 Re-vision, 130, 132, 134–137 Ritual, 2, 6, 11, 20, 25, 29, 31, 61, 126, 128, 130, 134, 135, 150, 151, 194n32

Robots, 9, 65–67 Roche, Jennifer, 92, 93 Roms, Heike, 92–94, 98, 99 Rowell, Margit, 85, 89n15 S Scenario, 11, 125–128, 130–138, 193n6 Schoenberg, Arnold, 60–61 Score, 8, 40, 46, 49, 52, 61, 81, 84, 85, 183, 184, 186–190 Screens, 6, 8, 19–21, 23–27, 29, 32–36, 62, 63, 65–67, 69, 96, 185, 205–207, 214, 225, 253 Sculpture, 4, 7, 9, 65, 68, 75–78, 81–85, 87, 87n1, 88n9, 89n16, 105, 106, 109–111, 114–118, 155, 156, 160n49, 234, 245–247, 251 Sehgal, Tino, 5 Self-organisation, 167, 170 Seriality, 150, 157 Signifier and signified, 49 Sinclair, Iain, 253, 256n30 Siobhan Davies Dance, 54n5, 88n6 Social media digital natives, 199, 213, 214, 216 FOMO, 12, 211, 212, 215 JOMO, 220n60 mixed reality, 215 Social turn, 165–167 South Korea, 59 Space, 1, 2, 4, 5, 7–9, 11–13, 23–25, 29–31, 36, 40, 49, 52, 53, 62, 64, 65, 69, 76–79, 81–85, 87, 88n6, 89n16, 91–101, 107, 111, 112, 116, 118, 125, 126, 128, 131–133, 136, 139n7, 147, 149, 150, 152–154, 156, 158, 159n1, 165, 167, 168, 172–175, 182, 185–192, 192n2, 193n17, 194n24, 197–216, 226, 227, 229, 230, 234, 243, 244, 247, 252, 253

 INDEX 

Spectator intimacy and detachment, 209 micro-choices, 212, 213 post-digital spectatorship, 198, 215 spectatorial engagement, 214 spectatorial experience, 198 theatre spectator, 198, 210, 213–215 viewer in visual art, 198, 199, 208, 231 Sperling, Matthias, 100 Street art, 243, 252 Subjectivity, 8, 20, 22, 23, 27, 28, 51, 137, 181, 182, 185, 192, 218n36 Surfaces, 25, 27, 40, 48, 53, 77, 85, 118, 133, 189, 201, 251 Surrogate bodies, 234, 236, 237 Swift, Jonathan, 80 Symbolism, 105, 251 T Technology, 6, 10, 19, 20, 27, 30, 31, 33, 34, 36, 61, 64–67, 98, 153, 210 Television (TV), 9, 25, 32, 59–70, 228 Temporalities, 23–25, 127, 128 Theatre, 3, 99, 125–138, 139–140n7, 149, 159n1, 166, 168, 170, 188, 194n34, 197–216 Therrien, Robert, 9, 75–87 No Title (Beard Cart), 9, 76, 77, 86 No Title (Oil Can), 9, 76–78, 89n16 No Title (Stacked Plates), 9, 76–78, 84, 85 No Title (Table and Four Chairs), 9, 76–78, 82, 84, 86

Time, 3, 9, 10, 30, 32, 46, 48, 53, 60, 62, 64, 65, 67, 69, 78–81, 84–87, 89n16, 94, 95, 98, 108, 112, 115, 116, 130, 135, 149, 150, 152, 155, 158, 165, 168, 180, 184, 185, 187, 190, 194n24, 200, 203, 204, 207, 208, 210, 215, 218n38, 220n60, 225, 239n29, 243–245, 250 Trickster, 235 Turtle, 9, 59, 65, 68, 69 V Video art, 60–62, 66, 68, 70 Video performance, 20 Viewer interaction, 82 role of objects, 7, 63, 76, 77, 89n16, 113 role of place/space, 7, 63, 89n16, 206 Visual art in gallery, 4 outside, 175 Voice/vocalising, 32, 36, 46, 49, 66, 101n1, 106, 175, 190, 249 W Walking, 5, 6, 78, 131, 163–175, 180, 243–245 Whiteread, Rachel, 227, 250, 251 Wilson, Richard, 226, 237n3

265