Moving Images, Mobile Bodies: The Poetics and Practice of Corporeality in Visual and Performing Arts 1527514951, 9781527514959

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Moving Images, Mobile Bodies

Moving Images, Mobile Bodies: The Poetics and Practice of Corporeality in Visual and Performing Arts Edited by

Horea Avram

Moving Images, Mobile Bodies: The Poetics and Practice of Corporeality in Visual and Performing Arts Edited by Horea Avram This book first published 2018 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2018 by Horea Avram and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-1108-1 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-1108-8

 For my parents





CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Part I: Images of the Body The Imbued Agency of Performer Driven Narratives in Telematic Environments ........................................................................ 14 Paul Sermon Presence and Presentness in Performative Media Art: Two Case Studies ...................................................................................... 31 Horea Avram Panoptic Options: Renegotiating the Body’s Social Contract in Public Space and Online........................................................................ 52 Robert Lawrence From Please Turn to “Please Don’t Touch:” Finding the Embodied Viewer in Otto Piene’s Early Lichtballette ........... 71 Georgina Ruff Beyond Virtual Bodies: A New Frontier? ................................................. 87 Rodica Mocan and ùtefana Răcorean Part II: Body and images Mat Chivers: The Establishment and Rupture of Chiasmatic Space and Embodied Spatiality ............................................................... 104 Sozita Goudouna Imaginary Bodies and Scenic Presence: A Phenomenological Approach to Theatrical Practice ............................ 115 Raluca Mocan The Body as a “Secular Sacred” Space in Ritual Theatre........................ 128 Liviu MaliĠa



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Contents

Palaces, Stars and Abeceda: The Body as Indexical Reader in PostSocialist Art by Coro Collective, Cooltnjristơs and Paulina Olowska ...... 161 Ulrike Gerhardt The Body of the Empathic Spectator ....................................................... 181 Miruna Runcan I Have Weight: Rejane Cantoni and Leo Crescenti’s Tunnel .................. 208 Erandy Vergara Vargas Contributors ............................................................................................. 245





INTRODUCTION HOREA AVRAM

The intricate encounters and interplay between image and body, between visuality and corporeality, between movement and mobility are at the core of this collection of essays. There are many meanings attached to these terms and they cover a wide range of problematics, practices and disciplines, from art history to anthropology, from philosophy to media studies. They are also flexible and evolving concepts, or, as the title of this volume suggests, they are moving and mobile entities. Any attempt to pin them down in a comprehensive way is not only beyond the scope of this book, but, I believe, doomed to incompleteness. In the search for common ground for discussion, however, one should note that what connects the notions image and body before anything else is the etymology: “image” means, among other things, “idea”, which comes from the Greek idein “to see” both in the sense of bodily perception and that of acknowledging. After all, images do not exist outside the body: they are light focused onto the retina.1 The main sense of the term image, however—although one that is no less related to the idea of body and perception—is given by the concept of mimesis, with which it shares its root “im.” Hence, the senses associated to the word image: imitation, copy, likeness, statue, picture, phantom, similitude, semblance, appearance, shadow.2 An image, therefore, is something that gives a presence, it re-presents something which is, at least apparently, absent.

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“[Images] do not exist by themselves, but they happen; they take place whether they are moving images (where this is so obvious) or not. They happen via transmission and perception.” Hans Belting, “Image, Medium, Body: A New Approach to Iconology,” Critical Inquiry 31 (Winter 2005), 302. ”Strictly speaking, things are invisible: what we see is not things but light (...) What we witness is instead the becoming-visible of light.” Sean Cubitt, “The Latent Image.” The International Journal of the Image, 1, No 2, (2011). http://ontheimage.com/journal/ (accessed December 2017). 2 “Image.” The Oxford English Dictionary, Second edition, Prepared by J.A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner, Volume VII. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 665.



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Introduction

The status of the image vis-à-vis the object it represents is always a subject of “negotiations”. For Plato, for example, the image is necessarily inferior to the object. For him, “ideas are the ultimate reality” and things are conceived first as ideas before taking practical shape in our world. The objects around us are thus copies of the original, that is, of the perfect ideas. An image of the physical object is twice removed from the idea and thus from reality—it is only a copy of a copy. By imitating objects through images, the artist, believes Plato, presents us with illusions and thus takes viewers away from reality, instead of getting us closer to it.3 In contrast, Jean Baudrillard decries the extinction of all referentiality in images and thus of any relationship between original and copy. According to him, we live in a world of simulations, where models precede and anticipate the “real”. More exactly, we live in “a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal”4 in which images, spectacles and the play of signs replace reality itself. Image, writes Baudrillard, “bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum.”5 Leaving aside the dispute between the different modalities of conceiving the image—as a copy (eikon) or as simulacrum (eidolon)—we can safely assert that the image not only manipulates, but also produces the real. By saying that, I am referring to the ways in which many of the numerous species within what James Elkins calls “the domain of images” directly affect our lives, actions and relationship with reality. Elkins’ list of such visual objects is relevant in this sense: “graphs, charts, maps, geometric configurations, notations, plans, official documents, some money, bonds, patents, seals and stamps, astronomical and astrological charts, technical and engineering drawings, scientific images of all sorts, schemata, and pictographic or ideographic elements in writing.”6 But, beyond the practical impact such rather “technical” images might have in constructing our reality, an image resonates also in a more emotional way. Think about the political impact and traumatic force certain images can have on the way we experience the world and on the decisions we take regarding real-life actions: the photograph of the falling soldier during the

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“So you call ‘imitator’ the maker of the product which is two removes from nature, do you?” “I do indeed.” Plato, The Republic, Book 10, 597e. Edited by G.R.F. Ferrari, Translated by Tom Griffith. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 316. 4 Jean Baudrillard, Simulations. Translated by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman. (New York: Semiotext(e), 1983), 2. 5 Baudrillard, Simulations, 11. 6 James Elkins, The Domain of Images, (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999), 4.



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Spanish civil war by Robert Capa (although a proven fake), Nick Ut's photograph of a young Vietnamese child running from a napalm attack, Charlie Cole’s picture of a man in a white shirt confronting the tanks and blocking their advance in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the images of the falling Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001, or the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published by the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo which provoked a terrorist attack in 2015. Indeed, images attract or repel, fascinate or frustrate, animate or demystify, but—at least some of them—seems to unleash a powerful aesthetic, moral or political energy. Much of the impact and power of these images is due to their mobility: they are well-known icons distributed around the world through various means, over and over again in the last decades. However, the confirmation of the fact that a nomadic image means an influential message came actually long ago, with the issuing of coins that carried powerful political messages such as symbols or emperor’s portraits. At a different scale, and with different means and goals, innovations in printmaking and easel painting in the 15th and 16th century, respectively, turned the image from a static visual object attached to architecture into a mobile and thus more effective visual object. The influence of the image in society was then facilitated by the standardization of communication means in the 19th and 20th centuries and, more recently, by the rapid development of network technologies that have permitted the broad distribution of, and the democratisation of access to, knowledge and art production. These observations need a short clarification which has to do with the very notion of “moving image.” First, moving image can be understood— as we have seen above—as an image that circulates. That is, an image that has the quality of being mobile and locational. Second, moving image is defined by the movement contained in itself: it is an image that changes its morphology, texture, the viewing angle, or the relationship with the context; an image with an extended temporality. With regard to this dimension, Sean Cubitt is right to remark that “time is integral to the image: not just the ontology of a new creation supplementary to God’s; but time as the raw material of imaging today, as space was in the renaissance.”7 Moreover, being fundamentally time-based, moving image goes beyond pure visuality: it is multimodal, multimedial and multisensorial. Third, moving image might be seen as a “plural” of the static image, a succession of sequences that change in time and/or mark the time (perhaps the best examples being the film strip and the video). We

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Sean Cubitt, “The Latent Image.”.

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Introduction

should ask together with Sean Cubitt, however, “How can we describe a moving image, composed of thousands of successive images, as ‘an’ image?”8 There is no short answer to this question and it requires a mobilisation of arguments in the ontological, aesthetic and medial registers; an effort that is not among our objectives here. Nevertheless, what counts for us as viewers or users with regard to the moving image is the experience we have, the impression of movement and transformation, and not the essential nature (or the “essence”) of the medium per se. In fact, if we look closer into the medium of film for example, we should agree with Peter Kubelka’s claim that “Cinema is not movement (...) cinema is a projection of stills.”9 Yet we cannot help to also agree with Bill Viola’s opinion that “a still image does not exist; (...) in fact at any given moment a complete image does not exist at all.”10 Indeed, moving image “is not a medium-specific notion,” as Noël Carroll insisted,11 but a series of very different visual situations that engage the perception in progress. This is why we might include in the category of moving image a great variety of mediums, platforms and instruments, such as magic lanterns (a sort of slide projector with painted or photographic images developed in the 17th century); zoetropes (a 19th century animation device that produces the illusion of motion through a sequence of drawings or photographs); Eadweard Muybridge’s work in photographic studies of motion; ÉtienneJules Marey’s experiments in chronophotography; cinema (on film strips) whose very optical principle is based on motion pictures; television, a medium that displays electrical signals on a screen as moving images (with sound); video, an electronic medium that records and plays back video and sound streams either as a continuous signal (analogue) or as data in a binary format (digital); motion graphics—from mechanical/optical animations to electronic media technology; multimedia, i.e. the various forms of computer-controlled integration of video, photos, graphics, drawings, text, animation, audio, and any other media available on our desktops, laptops, smartphones or other mobile platforms.

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Ibid. Peter Kubelka, “Interview with Peter Kubelka,” in Film Culture Reader edited by P.A. Sitney. (New York: Praeger, 1970), 291. 10 Quoted in Catherine Elwes, Installation and the Moving Image. (London and New York: Wallflower Press), 2015, 5. Viola’s observation applies, technically speaking, mostly to the analogue video. 11 Noël Carroll, Theorizing the Moving Image. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 72. 9



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This simple mentioning of the different forms of moving image—some of them representing indispensable daily instruments—indicates that those who proclaim that, in the last century or so, we live in a world dominated by virtuality, in a society of spectacle or simulations, or within a pictorial turn might be right. However, as W.J.T. Mitchell warns us: Whatever the pictorial turn is, then, it should be clear that it is not a return to naive mimesis, copy or correspondence theories of representation, or a renewed metaphysics of pictorial ‘presence’: it is rather a postlinguistic, postsemiotic rediscovery of a picture as a complex interplay between visuality, apparatus, institutions, discourse, bodies, and figurality.12

It is precisely this complex interplay between various elements which defines our contemporary world or, as I have pointed out above, effectively produces the real by affecting our actions and emotions. The process of imaging which might be identified with this “pictorial turn”, does not, therefore, “double” this world in the image as it creates the world as an image. More exactly, a world performed as an image, since the agency of the body is essential in this process. This is the biological and cultural body, an imaged and imagined body, a body that functions as the catalyst for the image, or rather works as image: positive, negative, symbolic, material, carnal, aesthetic, metaphysical, social, political, etc. Indeed, the body has multiple manifestations and its image, meaning and mission have varied extensively throughout the centuries. The theories surrounding the body are as diverse as the visions about it: the body may be (seen as) the biological framework of a living human (the organic entity in flesh and bones including senses, affects and emotions), it may be (seen as) a conceptual pattern in philosophy, a metaphorical presence such in religious sacraments and transubstantiations, an etalon in visual arts and architecture, the individuality incorporated into the collectivity, or a discursive cultural practice, where culture is understood in a broader sense, from art to politics to identity. So, what is a body, after all? Assuming that I will provide no exhaustive answer to this question we might try to see it in summary from an historical perspective, an approach that will hopefully help us better understand the relationship between corporeality, senses and visuality, and between all these and artistic practices. For example, in pre-Socratic philosophy, most thinkers (either monists or dualists) saw and defined the body loosely in relationship with the soul, associated—from an



12 W.J.T. Mitchell, Picture Theory. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 16.



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Introduction

etymological perspective, at least—with the breath of life. Plato, in contrast, regarded the body and soul as separate entities, with the body as the imperfect container that hosts the immortal soul travelling back and forth to the realm of pure forms. Aristotle considered that the body and the mind exist as parts of the same being, with the mind being simply one of the body’s functions. Augustine, meanwhile, shared Plato’s view according to which the soul is immaterial and eternal while, in contrast, the body is material and mortal. Thomas Aquinas, however, took Aristotle as a model, seeing the body as the matter, and the soul as the form of man. Some centuries later, Descartes, through his famous dictum “I think therefore I am,” defined the body as nothing more than an automaton, a fleshy machine with which we could hardly identify; instead, it was through the mind by which we define and identify ourselves. Lacan complicated the mind-centred understanding of the body even further. He conceived the subject’s corporeality as an accumulation of different bodies sensed simultaneously, and whose entire image can only be recomposed in the mirror (stage). Foucault revisited the old mind-body dualism, overturning the Christian belief by stating that “the soul is the prison of the body.” He thus defines knowledge as a way to escape bodily confinement—the physical disappearance of the body and the social constraints of the mind. Foucault’s idea that the body is both natural and cultural is shared also by Deleuze and Guattari who explained the body in its double dimension: as a limited set of traits, habits and affects, and as a manifestation of virtual potentials (connections, affects, movements); this is what they call (although fail to clearly define) “body without organs.” Feminist theorists such as Judith Butler or Elizabeth Grosz, adopt an antiessentialist, social constructivist approach to explain the cultural formation of the body within a new new materialist context. Another theorist from the same family of thought, N. Katherine Hayles, conceives the body as a construction directly related to the contextual/historical understanding and functioning of technology, culture and embodiment. The end result is a condition of the body that does away with the notion of a “natural” self so as to become no more no less than “post-human.” Equally concerned about the effects technology has on our lives, Marshall McLuhan rethinks the debates about corporeality from a rather positive and constructive perspective, asserting that media act as extensions of the human senses. What is more, writes McLuhan, every technological advancement is actually an extension of the body’s senses, and thus of the body as a whole. As many contemporary theorists have argued, however, is this extension not a way to alienate the body, turning its functions into an artificial construct? Or is it rather a process that leads to what



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postmodernist angst has called disembodiment? Slavoj Žižek provides a somehow cynical but actually lucid answer to this fear when he argues that there is no escape from disembodiment since a direct contact with reality is impossible because we cannot get away from the sensory transformations media cause us. The only way to cope with this situation, believes Žižek, is to act—perhaps paradoxically—so as to embody, to internalize and anthropomorphize media objects. Considering our behaviour, now apparently entirely dependent on technology utilisation and media consumption, one would be tempted to agree with such a view. Aspects of corporeality and embodiment are crucial in the economy of many recent art practices. Unsettling the conventional—static, unidirectional—modes of bodily experience, contemporary art productions of various genres rather take on a corporeality constructed around a subjective, flexible, interactive and contingent—that is—mobile body. Such artistic strategies are most of the times connected with a similar philosophy of image production: instead of displaying a detached, static and unique visual object, these works offer the experience of a networked, open-ended, fluid and multiple—that is—moving image. It is not a coincidence, therefore, that moving images and mobile bodies are the two axes on which the present studies revolve and which give the title of this book. The essays included in this volume raise critical questions and create a discursive field about the nature and significance of these artistic practices and their theoretical frameworks, proposing an interdisciplinary poetics centred on the problems of corporeality and associated visualization processes. The term poetics here describes the various models of interpretation, the ways to understand the perceptual properties of the artistic discourse, its function and effects, how meanings are generated by the artwork and the fundamental principles on which the work is constructed.13 The authors in this volume discuss a wide range of issues centred on the image-body equation and employ different methodologies: from aesthetics to practice-based research, from cultural studies to phenomenology, from media theory to feminism. The first section, entitled Images of the Body, is opened by the essay “The Imbued Agency of Performer Driven Narratives in Telematic Environments” by Paul Sermon. The author identifies and highlights the levels of agency that give rise to the performer role within what he calls “telematic art installations” (art projects using computer mediated telecommunications). In the same way that Lacan maintained that the

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“Poetics”, David Macey, Critical Theory. (London: Penguin Books, 2000), 301.

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Introduction

human psyche is constructed in the mirror - as if on stage in front of us, the author suggests that the method of identity construction in his own artistic practice is taking place on the screen. Sermon concludes that it is in the form of interactive telematic environments and their user determined narratives that we are able to become consciously aware of the performer role we are adopting. Horea Avram’s essay called “Presence and Presentness in Performative Media Art: Two Case Studies” discusses the problem of presence in performative media arts following the relationship between corporeality, materiality and virtuality. By critically analysing concepts such as index, chronotope and liveness, the author demonstrates that in the “video walks” of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller we engage with multiple temporal and representational strata, multiple “presences” that complicate their simple understanding as a live manifestation. This intersection of different temporal levels or presences through the use of media technology builds what he calls “presentness.” That is, a complex manifestation of the live spatial and temporal configuration of the work that equally empowers and undermines each temporal level. In “Panoptic Options: Renegotiating the Body’s Social Contract in Public Space and Online”, Robert Lawrence addresses the problems of video surveillance, media and the new panoptic control systems. In the face of these terms, and in line with emerging Post-Internet approaches to artmaking, Lawrence proposes that the current combination of public physical surveillance of the body and data surveillance of mind, desire and belief, demands a critically engaged art practice that explores possibilities arising from the combination of bodily and virtual forms. His essay presents a number of embodied performances that renegotiate panoptic contracts, including his ongoing sousveillance projects, Tango Panopticon and Horizon, both of which renegotiate modes of seeing the body by incorporating live streaming web-video from metaphorically charged, sitespecific, embodied public interventions. Georgina Ruff’s essay “From Please Turn to “Please Don’t Touch:” Finding the Embodied Viewer in Otto Piene’s Early Lichtballette” investigates the alterations made to an early Lichtballett by Otto Piene and the concomitant impact upon the role, position and interaction of the viewer. Using archival research, first-hand observation, primary sources written by the artist, and the theories of contemporary scholars, Ruff’s essay traces the history of the work Please Turn (1961) to its current iteration. Beginning with the lineage of the Environment art form and the derivation and definition of the “activated viewer,” the essay seeks to explain the intentional positioning of the viewer not as a passive,



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homogenous observer within a space, but rather as an active collaborator in the creation of an environment. The author concludes that Piene’s Please Turn (1961) has undergone significant restructuring to the extent that it no longer reflects the original intentions of the artist. Rodica Mocan and ùtefana Răcorean’s “Beyond virtual bodies. A new frontier?” takes a different approach, proposing the exploration of the extension of the human body through technology, focusing on the impact these extensions have on the mind and human consciousness. The recent emergence of certain systems of artificial intelligence not only undermines the discursive body by redefining notions such as self and identity, but also promises new forms of presence and social life that surpass the existence of the physical body altogether. These are platforms that create an avatar of a person based on his/her lifetime online presence, and which can emulate the person and interact with its loved ones even after that person’s physical death. The essay investigates from an interdisciplinary perspective the implications of this “after-life” in the digital world and how it challenges concepts such as time-distance-space, virtual-real, corporeality and boundaries. The second section of the book, entitled Body and Images, opens with Sozita Goudouna’s “Mat Chivers. The Establishment and Rupture of Chiasmatic Space and Embodied Spatiality,” an essay that investigates the ways in which one structure, originally composed in one medium (drawing), is mapped onto another structure in another medium (new media and dance). The author reflects upon artist Mat Chivers’ experimentations with the correlation between drawing, sculpture, dance and technology so as to understand the ways his aesthetics translates into artistic practice and the ways terms such as “chiasmus” and “bodied spatiality” are expressed in his works. Sensory, perceptual and sensate approaches to Chivers' artistic practice are intended to understand the potential of the symbiosis of the visual, the aural, the tactile, the corporeal and the technological. In her chapter entitled “Imaginary Bodies and Scenic Presence. A Phenomenological Approach to Theatrical Practice,” Raluca Mocan discusses the complicated relationship between audiences’ attention and the artificiality of representation, as well as the role of imagination in creating scenic bodies. Accounts of practitioners belonging to various theatrical traditions (R. Carreri, L. Jouvet, Y. Oida, J. Varley, P. Zarrilli) allow the author to study the extra-daily techniques used by performers to develop their spontaneity and to create imaginary scenic bodies. Husserl’s perspective on kinaesthetic awareness, and on the lived body as a mediator of intersubjective empathy, permits a precise understanding of the



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Introduction

experience actors and spectators share during the performance. From this standpoint, the author provides a description of the actor’s specific embodiment and of the principles regarding scenic presence within a phenomenological framework. Liviu Mali‫܊‬a, in his chapter “The Body as a ‘Secular Sacred’ Space in Ritual Theatre,” explores the radical reforms in theatrical spatiality that took place in the 1960s, provoking a split between the traditional “Italian box stage” and the more radical “living theatre,” where life and representation overlap and converge. The author discusses how the two antagonist, although coexisting, models have transformed the performative weltanschauung: from an ego-centric model promoting individual values and the differences, to another one, more focalized on “neo-tribal” solidarities and, implicitly, on the close connections with the place (Peter Brooke, Arianne Mnouchkine, Eugenio Barba, Living Theatre etc.). The evasion towards other, non-conventional spaces, Mali‫܊‬a concludes, has important consequences at the dramatic level, but also at the broadly ideological and, specifically, cultural level of the spectacle, now including postcolonial discourse and the fascination with the oriental theatre. Ulrike Gerhardt’s “Bodies as Indexical Topographies in Contemporary Art from a Post-Socialist Context” proposes an examination of the role of the body as a corporeal reading tool invested in the mnemonic process of indexical analysis within the context of post-socialist video art and (video) performance practices. Taking into account concepts of indexicality formulated by Peirce, Jakobson and Krauss, the essay discusses the ways in which the body can be conceived as a topographical carrier of indices leading to overlooked and neglected traces of the (post-)socialist past. In addition, it analyses how some specific artists embody letters and words— the most elementary structures of language—in their works for the sake of a performative and spatial “ex-scription” (Boyan Manchev) of cultural processes in public space. The essay entitled “The Body of the Empathic Spectator” by Miruna Runcan analyses, from a combined neurological, psychological and semiotic perspective, the relationship between perception/imagination/ immersion processes and the solitary spectator’s physical reactions to performing arts. The aim is to demonstrate that the conscious/ subconscious dynamics of sequential interpretation and understanding (of any and each spectator) are founded on a more profound ground of personal experience, self-sensitivity and physicality. The author assumes that spectatorship is, at least in cinema and performing arts, not only a cognitive/semiotic, but also a physical experience about otherness as selfperception.



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Erandy Vergara-Vargas’ chapter “On Movement, Technology and Difficult Feelings: Alfredo Salomón’s Infinite Justice” proposes a closer examination of the interactive installation by Mexican artist Alfredo Salomón entitled Infinite Justice (2004). Here, a device consisting of a replica AR-15 rifle and a video camera swings perpetually toward observers, following them around a darkened room and releasing gunshots sounds if they stop moving. The author argues that this case study is a “difficult” work in two ways: the work frames the question of armed violence beyond the victim/victimizer binaries, putting the observer in a conflictive position; this position is bounded up in the observer’s vulnerability to injuries and death. As such, the installation prompts difficult feelings, and although the risk, as the artist maintains, “is nothing but feeling,” in the production of that difficulty emerges the critical operations of the piece. Although opting for a great variety of themes and taking different methodological approaches, all the contributions to this volume assume the main aims of the book: to map a number of relevant contemporary artistic productions centred on the conjunction between body and image and to contribute to the current efforts in the theorisation and historicisation of these artistic practices. Geographical factor plays a crucial role, as the volume includes authors from different countries, backgrounds and cultural identities, thus reflecting not only a variety of aesthetics, but also political idiosyncrasies and sensibilities. Our aim here is, therefore, not only to harmonise all these methodological and cultural differences, but also to capture the actually unstable nature—both at the artistic and discursive levels—of the generic concepts. In other words, we seek to cut across and find the unifying ground between a shifting and ubiquitous image and an adaptable and nomadic body, that is, between what we have called here moving images and mobile bodies.

  



PART I: IMAGES OF THE BODY

THE IMBUED AGENCY OF PERFORMER DRIVEN NARRATIVES IN TELEMATIC ENVIRONMENTS PAUL SERMON

The telematic performer role Jacques Lacan suggested in his early psychoanalytical writings that the human psyche is constructed as a mirror image that we contemplate as if on stage in front of us.1 This metaphor has become significant for the present developments in new media art, as we can observe a similar process of identity construction through a digitally mirrored world in networks and installations. Artists in this field are increasingly experimenting with interactivity as an open system that embodies agency, generative content and what I refer to as a “user-determined” narrative, in contrast to a closed system of finite variables that default back to their original state upon leaving the piece. Likewise, the role of the audience in this context is far more complex and cannot be labelled simply as a “user”. The imbued agency is signalling a performer, actor or creator, often played out through avatars and agents within these environments. Through descriptive accounts of my working practice it is my intention to identify and highlight the levels of agency within these telematic art installations that gives rise to the performer role. In the same way that Lacan suggested the human psyche is constructed in the mirror—as if on stage in front of us—I am suggesting the method of identity construction in my work is taking place on the screen; and it is in the form of interactive telematic environments and their user determined narratives that we are able to become consciously aware of the performer role we are adopting. My work in the field of telematic arts explores the emergence of userdetermined narrative between remote participants who are brought together within a shared telepresent environment. Through the use of live 1

Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience,” Ecrits: A selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York and London: Norton, 1977..

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chroma-keying and videoconferencing technology these divided audience participants enter a video installation and initially suppose they entering a passive space—sitting, standing or sometimes lying within it. Their presence within the space is recorded live and mapped in real-time, via a chroma-key video mixer, with an identical camera view of another participant in an identical installation space—combining two shots of live action by replacing a blue or green back drop in one image with the image of the other. The two spaces which can be any geographical distance apart are linked via an internet videoconference connection, making it possible to link and combine these telematic installations and there performing audiences between almost any locations in the world. This is essentially how all my installation projects function, but what is most surprising for the intended viewer is that they form an integral part within these telematic experiments, which simply wouldn’t function without their presence and participation within it. The audience participant rapidly becomes a performer, or at best an actor within these spaces, by observing their body within a telepresent space represented on self-view video monitors in front of them. The user/actor ascends a rapid learning curve and begins to control and choreograph their human avatar representation of themselves in a new telematic space, in combination with another physically remote role-playing user. My main intension is to allow my audience to view and experience my work in a passive and active role, drawing very different experiences and initial conclusions from them. Whilst in the passive viewing mode the audience is observing the public in what often appears to be a well rehearsed piece of drama confidently played out by actors; compelling viewing, but a complex issue to contend with when it is understood the performers are also audience members merely participating in an active role. Once the audience participant enters this space they immediately represent two dynamic performer roles; consciously as the controller, or puppeteer, of their own avatar performer, yet unaware of their secondary performing role to the off camera members of the audience. Who are themselves awaiting the next available slot on the telematic stage - soon to be sharing in this split dynamic. The Narrative that unfolds here would appear to be self determined by the user, on and off camera. But what is essential in such experiments is the architecture of this installation. As an artist I am both designer of the environment and director of the narrative, which I determine through the social and political context that I choose to play out these telepresent encounters in. This is exemplified in four example case studies that will be described and discussed further in this paper:

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The Imbued Agency of Performer Driven Narratives in Telematic Environments

There's no simulation like home The commission by lighthouse Media Centre Brighton and BN1 to produce this piece came at a time when I wanted to combine many of my previous telematic installations/experiments within one entire fabricated walkthrough environment, staged as a domestic interior of a house. Initially I intended on linking two identical “Show Homes”, which often use identical blueprints for housing estates throughout the UK – ideally enabling me to link and combine the two spaces as one shared telematic environment. As always the concept changed for a number of reasons, including budget, and I started to develop the idea of completely reconstructing a domestic home interior as an entire stage set inside the Fabrica Gallery in Brighton. Consequently this new installation plan allowed more passive modes of viewing the active participants inside the installation to emerge - via surveillance cameras and spy holes. At the time this was certainly influenced by Peter Weir’s “The Truman Show” (1998), whose main character “Truman” (Jim Carrey) unconsciously displays an overacted melodramatic role in his supposed normal everyday private life a personality whose temperament is developed and encouraged by his apparent performer friends and family that surrounded him. It was for the same intension that I chose to enhance and disguise the two modes of viewing and performing in the installation. The result of this division in modes of participation ultimately led me to present these ideas in this paper.

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Fig 1. Paul Sermon There’s no simulation like home, 1999, telematic installation, Fabrica Gallery Brighton, UK; photograph provided by the artist.

There’s no simulation like home was the culmination of telepresent and telematic research since 1992. The exterior of the installation resembled the back of a plasterboard stage set, or as if the bricks of a house had been removed to reveal the back of the inner plasterboard skin. Electricity and video cables were traced and attached all around the surface of the structure, looking like the back of large circuit board. The installation was architectured on the typical floor plan of the English terraced house and by using a walk through narrative sequence, from front door to back door, the audience encounter differing telepresent interfaces in each of the four rooms: the living room sofa, the bedroom, the dining room table and the bathroom mirror. Before entering the installation the audience had the possibility to view the installation through a series of peepholes positioned along the plasterboard exterior. Offering a passive form of viewing other users who were already involved in the process of navigating the installation narrative as an actor within it. Inside the installation the audience were encompassed within a simulated domestic home environment, exemplified in the dimensions of

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The Imbued Agency of Performer Driven Narratives in Telematic Environments

the rooms, the wood-chip wallpaper, the light fittings, skirting board and wall sockets. The living room sofa and television screen formed the first telematic link outside the installation space, where a second sofa and video monitor were located. By using a system of live chroma keying the two separate people, who could have been any distance apart, shared the same sofa on the same telepresent screen. In the bedroom the viewer could lay down on a bed onto which a live video projection was being made of another person, who was located outside the installation space on a second bed. A video image of the combined audiences together on the projection bed allowed the viewers to interact in a telepresent space by touching with their eyes, where a shift of senses occurs through the exchange of sight with the sense of touch - touching with your eyes as if you are touching with your hands. In the same way a blind person will improve and rely on the sensory inputs of sound and touch, the loss of tactile touch on the bed is compensated by the sense of sight. Not unlike the visual sensory input of pain that is often stimulated prior to the momentarily numbed nerve endings in the tissue at the cause of it - the cognitive process of pain taking place via the eyes, regardless of where they are located, or as cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett explains: Blindfold yourself and take a stick (or a pen or pencil) in your hand. Touch various things around you with this wand, and notice that you can tell their textures effortlessly - as if your nervous system had sensors out at the tip of the wand. Those transactions between stick and touch receptors under the skin (aided in most instances by scarcely noticed sounds) provide the information your brain integrates into a conscious recognition of the texture of paper, cardboard, wool, or glass. These successes must depend on felt vibrations set up in the wand, or on indescribable - but detectable differences in the clicks and scrapping noises heard. But it seems as if some of your nerve endings were in the wand, for you feel the difference of the surfaces at the tip of the wand.2

In the case of the telepresent bed the stick or wand being the visual simulation of the body at a distance, placing your finger nerve endings in the telepresent body. The exterior installation space communicated a contrasting image to the domestic interior. Unlike the inside, the technology was very visible - akin to a back-stage environment. The telepresent interfaces located on the outside of the installation, appeared as areas for interaction and observation of the experiment like situation taking place inside the installation. In keeping with the reference to the 2

Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained. London : Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1992, 47.

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user/actor within the space and the observer of the performance outside the installation, video images from small surveillance cameras inside were constantly being displayed on monitors outside.

Fig 2. Paul Sermon There’s no simulation like home, 1999, telematic installation, Fabrica Gallery Brighton, UK; photograph provided by the artist

The dining room table was the third telematic interface to the outside installation. Offering a slightly less psychological complex platform for interaction by identifying different characteristics in user/performer behaviour, introducing telematic interaction in the forms of discussion and confrontation. Again working with a system of live chroma keying between two separate tables the remote viewer was able to sit at the same table in the same telepresent room. The final room and interface the user/actor confronted before exiting out the back door, was the bathroom mirror. What initially appeared to be a normal mirror lacked one essential truth - the viewer’s own image. A momentary illusion that was broken only when the user realised the mirror was in fact a window into an identical room. Whilst the actor become accustomed to accept their existence in telepresent forms throughout the installation they were finally

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denied the most simple telepresent truth they expect from a mirror. As Lacan identifies in his mirror stage by putting the notion of the real and the virtual into question, “We have only to understand the mirror stage “as an identification”, in the full sense that analysis gives to the term: namely, the transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes an image.”3 By representing the domestic reality inside the installation as a fabrication of the technological apparatus outside, There’s no simulation like home attempted to present all realities as a construct of language.

“The visual and kinetic codes of proxemic relations.” Margaret Mores Essential to all the interfaces in this installation is the use of nonverbal communication. By not using sound the user/performer is forced to communicate in a melodramatic style akin to a silent movie - bringing about an enforced use of gesture and body movement in order to communicate with the fellow participant. By restricting verbal communication the participant is further distanced from their telepresent reflected performer role, which allows a far less self-conscious experience in the space. Whilst the silent melodrama was introduced for precisely this reason, it also refers directly to Charlie Chaplin’s comments on the end of cinema when sound was first introduced – highlighting that the inadequacy of a technology is its single most creative potential. The following extract from Margaret Morse describes the process of induced mime and mimicry extremely accurately and has been influential to me in further opening up this discussion around user defined narratives. By not transmitting sound, Sermon has chosen to explore the visual and kinetic codes of proxemic relations, that is, the relative distance of human bodies in private/social exchange, rather than verbal exchanges. A cyberspace couple on the bed can interact in any way gesture allows. The dematerialization of gestures and objects tendered, far from undermining their meaning, makes images and actions naked of anything but symbolic meaning and all the more powerful therefore. Thus, the stage has been set for an exploration of the effect of symbolic acts on the psyche.4

3

Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage,” 2. Margaret Morse, “On Telematic Vision (1993),” Hardware-Software-Artware. Die Konvergenz von Kunst und Technologie. Kunstpraktiken am ZKM Institut für Bildmedien 1992-1997. Edited by Margaret Morse for ZKM / Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2000, 56.

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Specifically with the bed interface, the body has been turned into a visual interlocutor that is not only without the ability to have speech but also dominance, strength, smell and on occasions gender - depending on the clothing and concealed physique of the participant. Without these characteristics the performer is immediately persuaded to accept and interpret communication through touch with an otherwise complete stranger in a highly emotional and sensitive relationship. Morse further explains it: Paul Sermon's experiments with "telematics" or "telepresence" continue research that began in the late 1960's using satellites to link live interaction in sound and image between two or more sites. This strand of experimentation also has predecessors in the closed-circuit video and installation art of the early 1970's. Artists of the time experimented not only with "narcissism, but with temporal and spatial displacements of body and its image that reveal the gap between a body and its imaginary self or "identity." Sermon's work is the site of a collective imaginary, a public "family" reunion, albeit as a surreal composition of bodies without a counterpart in physical reality, akin to the condensations Freud identified in dreams. What the "live" mixture of bodies in Sermon's work exposes is the far from explored field of human relations as they have become inflected with and transformed by technology.5

Hole-in-Space Emotional exchange in the telematic space is highly dependent on location and interface. Whilst I have chosen to use the bed or sofa as a meeting place, other artists in the field of telematic arts have relied purely on the dynamics site specificity. In the seminal telematic installation “Hole-in-Space” produced by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, in 1980, geographically remote public audiences were instantly transformed into performers in the first networked narrative performance in a social context of its kind. What initially appears to be a random choice of locations for this public intervention - from the point of view of the user/actor, becomes increasingly apparent that the artists chose theses cities and locations for very specific social and political reasons, creating a networked narrative within an extremely dynamic context. Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz describe the work as follows. HOLE-IN-SPACE was a Public Communication Sculpture. On a November evening in 1980 the unsuspecting public walking past the 5

Margaret Morse, “On Telematic Vision,” 57.

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The Imbued Agency of Performer Driven Narratives in Telematic Environments Lincoln Centre for the Performing Arts in New York City, and "The Broadway" department store located in the open air Shopping Centre in Century City (LA), had a surprising counter with each other. Suddenly head-to-toe, life-sized, television images of the people on the opposite coast appeared. They could now see, hear, and speak with each other as if encountering each other on the same sidewalk. No signs, sponsor logos, or credits were posted—no explanation at all was offered. No self-view video monitors to distract from the phenomena of this life-size encounter. Selfview video monitors would have degraded the situation into a selfconscience videoconference. If you have ever had the opportunity to see what the award winning video documentation captured then you would have laughed and cried at the amazing human drama and events that were played out over the evolution of the three evenings. Hole-In-Space suddenly severed the distance between both cities and created an outrageous pedestrian intersection. There was the evening of discovery, followed by the evening of intentional word-of-mouth rendezvous, followed by a mass migration of families and trans-continental loved ones, some of which had not seen each other for over twenty years.6

Hole-In-Space relies on the US cultural cliché of the east coast - west coast indifference. Confronting the pedestrian passes-by in New York and Los Angeles and brining them up on a telematic stage to tell jokes “Question: how many New Yorkers does it take to change a light-bulb? Answer: None of your fucking business”, sing songs “New York, New York” and play games – charades on one occasion. Viewers were instantly transformed into performers in an east coast meets west coast soap opera. Focusing on location or stage set we can also consider the work soviet director Sergei Eisenstein. However, not in reference to his films, but of his lesser know theatre productions with the Proletcult Theatre in the 1920’s. This was one of the most influential periods of his career; firstly as a theatre designer and later as director after having studied at the Directors Studio of Vsevolod Meyerhold in 1921. This is where most of the issues relevant to my argument were developed, described in his “Montage of Attractions”; which established a new principle of dramaturgy, producing extremely strong effects on the audience by means of combining posters, slogans, circus, variety show, gymnastics, scenery and theatre effects.7 In 1923 Eisenstein staged Gas Masks, a play about the employees of a 6

Galloway, Kit., Rabinowitz, Sherie (1980) “Hole-in-Space” Telecollabrative Art Projects Of ECI Founders Galloway And Rabinowitz, 1977 to Present. http://www.ecafe.com/getty/HIS/ (accessed October 2017). 7 The essay “Montage of Attractions” originally appeared in the Soviet journal Lef in May 1923under the direction of Mayakovsky.

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gasworks, where he actually moved the play entirely out of the theatre and staged it in the Moscow Gas Factory.8 The play, which depicted life in the gas factory, ended each performance as the new shift came to work— thereby breaking the bounds of theatre in very similar ways to our current experiments with network narrative structures. Although Eisenstein considered it to be a failure in terms of film/theatre realism, his intention to embody the viewer within the performance is entirely that of my own work in which I consider the site-specific nature of the stage set to be of paramount importance in the telematic installation. Eisenstein described the performance in his notes: “In Gas Masks we see all the elements of film tendencies meeting. The turbines, the factory background, negated the last remnants of make-up and theatrical costumes, and all elements appeared as independently fused. Theatre accessories in the midst of real factory plastics appeared ridiculous. The element of “play” was incompatible with the acrid smell of gas. The pitiful platform kept getting lost among the real platforms of labour activity.”9

All the World’s a Screen Eisenstein’s use of the Moscow Gas Factory as a determining social narrative context brings me back to my own work, and one particular installation that I produced in collaboration with Charlotte Gould in 2011, entitled All the World’s a Screen. Similarly to Eisenstein’s “Gas Works” this installation utilised an expanded geographic narrative exploring temporal and spatial experiences. On the evening of Saturday 28 May 2011 participants at MadLab in Manchester’s Northern Quarter and Hangar Artist Studios in Poblenou, Barcelona were joined together onscreen for the first time to create their very own interactive generative cinema experience, complete with sets, costumes and props. The artists created a miniature film set in which the remote audiences acted and directed their own movie, transporting participants into animated environments and sets where they created personalized unique narratives. All the World’s a Screen was a site-specific work allowing the public audiences to engage and interact directly within the installation, merging urban environments with networked audiences, and creating an otherworldly space on-screen where people could interact with others across the two cities, allowing the participants to explore alternative 8

Sergei Eisenstein, “Film Form - Essays in Film Theory,” Translated and edited by Jay Leyda. New York: Harvest Books, 1972. 9 Sergei Eisenstein, “Film Form...,” 16.

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networked spaces. For Charlotte Gould and Paul Sermon this immersive interactive installation represented an exciting new departure from their existing practice. Pushing the boundaries of telematic art and generative cinema, All the World’s a Screen combined the possibilities of telepresent performance with miniature scale-models and animated scenes; through audience participation it explored the way narratives may be revealed through the interplay between artist, audience and environment. With key features of the telematic stage, user generated performances and the dramaturgy of networked communication this project referenced Shakespeare’s infamous line “All the world’s a stage” with seven rooms of a model film set (relating to the seven ages of man in Shakespeare’s As You Like It), thus providing a metaphysical backdrop to steer the unfolding plot. This project was co-hosted by the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona MACBA Study Centre and on-going research and community building took place throughout the project to generate growing public attention around the research and the final development of the installation. All the World’s a Screen was configured and connected as follows: both Manchester and Barcelona venues had a chroma-key blue back drop screen and floor installed in their respective exhibition spaces together with two video monitors, one facing the blue screen from the front and another from the side (stage-left in Barcelona and stage-right in Manchester). Above the monitor facing the screen was a camera, approximately 2.5 metres from the ground. The two geographically remote installations looked identical, however, much of the technical system was located in Barcelona, where the camera image of a participant standing in front of the blue backdrop was fed to a video chroma-key mixer, which replaced the blue area with an image from a MacBook Pro that contained a choice of seven video backgrounds, referred to as “The seven stages of man”. The output from the mixer was then passed to a second video chroma-key mixer together with the live incoming videoconference image of a participant in front of the other blue screen in Manchester. The final combined image of the participants in Manchester and Barcelona, positioned on the background scene from the MacBook Pro was then sent directly to the two video monitors around the blue screen in Barcelona and back via the HD videoconference system to the monitors in Manchester. Members of the audience in Barcelona were able to decide on the context of this interactive telematic performance by using an iPhone app to select between seven different background sets, which consisted of live webcams scenes and animated environments. The participants in Barcelona could then stand in front of the chroma-key blue screen and position themselves within these stage sets to join the “players” in

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Manchester within the dramaturgy of the model set as they journeyed through “The seven stages of man.” This specific section in the All the World’s a Screen offered audiences the opportunity to create the narrative and plot of the complete installation and comprised of a one-metre square table top 1:25 scale model of a house that included seven ground floor rooms connected by doorways and corridors. The audience were invited to place a hand directly into any of the rooms in the model to arrange the sets and interact with participants, appearing on-screen as if the “Hand of God” had intervened in the interaction.10 Four of the rooms contained webcams that were connected to a MacBook Pro via a USB hub. Using custom made software built with Quartz Composer the MacBook Pro could display a full-screen output from up to seven different video sources, which included the four webcams as well as three QuickTime movie animation files. When a participant pressed a key (1 to 7) on an iPhone keyboard app the video output displayed the selected video stream until another key was pressed. This was an offline video display and therefore the video from all sources was uncompressed at full HD resolution. The selected video scene then provided the backdrop to the All the World’s a Screen telematic performance. What happens in the space is intentionally imperfect, a space for imaginings and experiments rather than a faithful cinematic reenactment. The origins of our work with these model room sets is found in the “scenography” techniques developed by Alfred Hitchcock, who often used small-scale models of interlinked scenes and rooms to develop and compose the plots and dramaturgy of his films. The techniques of telematics dramaturgy employed in All the World’s a Screen, and the application of the uncanny cinematic aesthetic was part of the playfulness of the piece, indicating to an audience that this was an experience separate from the “everyday”, this was an otherworldly space, where they could explore, experiment and play and at the same time symbolizing the “topoi” of the movies. In this way the audience could invent, make and edit their own movie. Kristine Stiles and Edward Shanken stress the importance of making a distinction between art and life to enhance the audience’s willingness to participate.11 The identifiable 10 About the topos of the “Hand of God”, see Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka, editors, Media Archæology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications. Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011, 35. 11 Kristine Stiles and Edward A.Shanken, “Missing In Action: Agency and. Meaning In Interactive Art” in Margot Lovejoy, Christiane Paul, Victoria Vesna, eds., Context Providers: Conditions of Meaning in Media Arts, Bristol: Intellect ltd, 2011, 31-54.

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signifiers in All the World’s a Screen, such as the use of a stylized and playful cinematic aesthetics; that of an obvious set, can indicate to the audience that this is a counter-reality and potentially liberate them to feel free to role-play. And by not playing their self-conscious selves their participation becomes uninhibited. Through this project we were able to research alternative ways of using social media and networked culture, which avoids focusing on the self and instead looks to role-play as a way of enhancing interaction between communities. Such interactive installations can offer opportunities for people to experience their environment in different ways; talking to strangers, allowing participants of all ages to play, create meaning and explore communication in order to cross the boundaries of culture and language. Through All the World’s a Screen we explored the potential for triggering ideas for narrative through this open interactive system. We applied past modes of practice in order to inform an application of the latest digital technology to identify new ways of engaging and new forms of interaction within a globally networked society.

Fig 3. Paul Sermon and Charlotte Gould All the World’s a Screen, 2011, telematic installation, Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona, Spain; photograph provided by the artist.

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Occupy the Screen Occupy The Screen by Paul Sermon and Charlotte Gould was a sitespecific work commissioned by Public Art Lab Berlin for the Connecting Cities Festival event “Urban Reflections” from 11 to 13 September 2014, linking audiences at Supermarkt Gallery Berlin and Riga European Capital of Culture 2014. This installation builds on practice-based research and development of previous interactive works for large format urban screens such as “Picnic on the Screen”, originally developed for the BBC Public Video Screen at the Glastonbury Festival in 2009. This new installation pushed the playful, social and public engagement aspects of the work into new cultural and political realms in an attempt to “reclaim the urban screens” through developments in ludic interaction and internet based high-definition videoconferencing. Through the use of illustrated references to site-specific landmarks of Berlin and Riga, audiences were invited to “occupy the screen.” The concept development of Occupy the Screen was inspired in part by 3D street art as a DIY tradition, referencing the subversive language of graffiti. The interface borrows from the “topoi” of the computer game, as a means to navigate the environment; once within the frame the audience becomes a character immersed within the environment. Occupy the Screen linked two geographically distant audiences using a telematics technique; the installation takes live oblique camera shots from above the screen of each of these two audience groups, located on a large 50 square metre blue ground sheet and combines them on screen in a single composited image. As the merged audiences start to explore this collaborative, shared ludic interface, they discover the ground beneath them, as it appears on screen as a digital backdrop, locates them in a variety of surprising and intriguing anamorphic environments where from a particular position the characters can look as if in a precarious situation. Occupy the Screen aimed to include the widest range of urban participation possible and aligns to a Fluxus “Happening” in a move away from the object as art towards the street environment and the “every day” experience. It also borrows from a tradition of early cinema where audiences were transfixed by the magic of being transported to alternative realities though screenings at the traveling fairs. Lumière contemporaries, Mitchell and Kenyon, whose films of public crowds in the 1900’s present a striking similarity to the way audiences react and respond to Occupy the Screen. These pioneering fairground screenings of audiences filmed earlier the same day possess all the traits of live telepresent interaction, albeit the latency in processing, whereby the audience play directly to the camera

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and occupy this new public space by performing to themselves and others when screened later. The position of the urban screen as street furniture is ideally suited to engage with people going about their everyday life, and often the most interesting outcomes are discovered through the ways that the public interpret and re-appropriate culture through what Michel de Certeau calls “users tactics.”12 The interaction is an open system aiming to offer the audience a means of agency, defined as “freedom” to be creative and make individual decisions. Through this research we found that the environment and timing have a large impact on the way that an audience responds. The inspiration was drawn both from the cities of Riga and Berlin, with input from the communities. The area of play was clearly demarked as a space via a blue box groundsheet in both cities identifying a theatre of play, once in the space the participant engages as they wish. In many ways Occupy the Screen broke down cultural and social barriers, both in the local communities, but also between two cities, Berlin and Riga, where new collocated spaces and creative encounters could be founded and occupied.

Fig 4 Paul Sermon and Charlotte Gould Occupy the Screen, 2014, telematic public installation, Public Art Lab Berlin / European Capital of Culture Riga 2014; photograph provided by the artist

12 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, 480.

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A topology of body and space In drawing towards a conclusion now I would like to back track slightly to some of my original telematic interfaces and use a quote from Machiko Kusahara, referring to the topology of body and space in my telematic performance, specifically the bed interface included in There’s no simulation like home which was first realised as Telematic Dreaming in 1992 in Finland. Within this series of works that employ the teleconference mechanism, Telematic Dreaming surely has the most powerful impact because of the dissimilating effect of the bed, a sign shared by everyone. By putting audience participants in that familiar situation from TV drama of getting into bed with someone one has just met, this work drives one, or the member of the audience before one's eyes (the performer), into a state of bewilderment. Members of the audience are placed in the positions of the actor who plays out a bed scene on stage or before a camera, or the voyeur who peeps in on the acts of others. This is a secret act taking place in a public space, and that public space is a virtual space that does not exist in reality. Furthermore, despite the fact that the body is the only means of communication therein, the body of the other party is ghost-like, without substance. This contradictory situation not only confounds the audience, but also, after first releasing them from the logic and restrictions of daily life and dismantling the various elements of signatory identity and the biological environment of the body, it enables experimentation with and enjoyment of the role the body plays in communication. The virtuality of the space enables it to maintain both theatrically and the context of daily life at the same time. In the interstice between material physicality and an informational space in which electronic signals collide, Sermon reverses the meanings and sensibilities tied to daily life and provides us with an opportunity to think about the essence of communication.13

Kusahara highlights the point that the telepresent body is both simultaneously present and yet virtual at the same time. In the context of daily life as represented in There’s no simulation like home we slip back and fourth between the roles of performer and viewer and here we return to Lacan and his mirror stage: “[he] experiences in play the relation between the movements assumed in the image and the reflected environment, and between this virtual complex and the reality it

13

Kusahara, Machiko. “A Topology of Body and Space.” The Museum Inside The Network, Tokyo: ICC/NTT Publishing, 1995, 127.

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reduplicates – the child’s own body, and the persons and things around him.”14

The double consciousness of the performer/user In January 2001, I exhibited Telematic Dreaming at the Wroclaw Media Festival in Poland, for the twenty-first time since its realisation in 1992. Due to certain technical complications I was forced to exhibit the two beds in the same exhibition space, they where placed 25 meters apart across an open gallery space making it possible to have sight of the other bed. This was the first time the two participants/performers where able to see each other in both a present and telepresent state simultaneously. The acute feeling of having two bodies in this installation set up was extremely alarming; by simply placing my hand on a pillow on one bed it was simultaneously placed on another bed 25 meters in front of me. This suggested the notion of a double consciousness that Roy Ascott defines as “the state of being which gives access to two distinctly different fields of experience, or two distinctly different views of the same event, or two separate or remote locations, at one and the same time.”15 Or, we might say, that of being two distinctly different telematic experiences as performer and user.

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Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage,” 1. Roy Ascott, “Gesamtdatenwerk: Connectivity, Transformation and Transcendence,” in Ars Electronica: Facing the Future. A Survey of Two Decades, ed. Timothy Druckrey. Cambridge, Mass. And London, England: the MIT Press, 1999, 87.

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PRESENCE AND PRESENTNESS IN PERFORMATIVE MEDIA ART: TWO CASE STUDIES HOREA AVRAM

Introduction One of the most persistent ambitions of artists who are active in the media arts sphere is to diminish, if not to erase altogether, any difference between their practice and the manifestations of the surrounding everyday world. The reasons for this venture are numerous, as are the means to accomplish it, while its impact on the audience and its aesthetic significance are, accordingly, widely different. However, the common denominator for all these artistic practices is the creation of a dialogical zone situated at the shifting border between reality and virtuality, fiction and ordinary reality, memory and vision, individual input and collective authorship. What is important for understanding the experience of these complex encounters is to acknowledge their sense of liveness and directness, developed in close relationship with the participant’s body and, most of all, with a specific locality. In the new media vocabulary, this (artistic) preoccupation is called locative media. The phrase describes various means of integrating media technology and computing within a specific locality (with all its physical, historical, and human determinants) and the ways of activating the most banal objects of that locality so as to introduce them into a media circuit.1 Of course, this preoccupation is not

 1

For a comprehensive definition of the term “locative media” and its relationship with kindred concepts such as “ubiquitous computing” and “pervasive media,” see Ulrik Ekman (ed.), Throughout. Art and Culture Emerging with Ubiquitous Computing (Cambridge Massachusetts and London: The MIT Press, 2013); Jason Farman, The Mobile Story: Narrative Practices with Locative Technologies (New York and London: Routledge, 2014); Jordan Frith, Smartphones as Locative Media (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015); Drew Hemmett (ed.), Leonardo Electronic Almanac “Locative Media Special.” Vol. 14, No. 3, July 2006; Adriana de Souza e

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entirely new: the historical avant-garde and, especially, the artistic movements of the 1960s-1970s conceived various strategies of “invading” unconventional spaces (that is, the everyday world) with artistic artefacts and/or technological elements. Nonetheless, the emergence of recent digital technologies has not only radically changed and enriched the conceptual and practical means of artistic production, but has also extended, in an unprecedented way, the areas and the scope of artistic intervention, as well as the possibilities of spectatorial implication. This essay will discuss the aesthetic and spectatorial repercussions of these new artistic preoccupations, subsumed under the rubric of locative media, by looking at two representative artworks and taking their visual and performative dimensions as the main analytical framework. I will demonstrate that by facilitating the close intersection of different temporalities (past/pasts and present) and of different spatial dimensions (real and virtual), the works discussed here set forth a different experiential and aesthetic paradigm. I propose the term “presentness” as a means to identify the dimensions of this paradigm change, that is, the visual codes and the mechanisms of signification, as well as the structures that build the spectatorial experience of the artistic productions examined here: Conspiracy Theory / Théorie du complot (2003) and Alter Bahnhof Video Walk (2012) by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. The work Conspiracy Theory is relevant for this discussion, precisely because it involves (and complicates) the relationships between location, memory, technology and spectatorial implication. Conspiracy Theory is part of the series “Walks,” the most important and widely commented suite of works produced by the two artists in the recent years. The work consists of a tour proposed by the artists in and around the Contemporary Art Museum in Montreal. The experience of the walking tour is individual: each participant2 is provided with a video camera and a pair of headphones

 Silva and Mimi Sheller (eds.), Mobility and Locative Media: Mobile Communication in Hybrid Spaces (New York: Routledge, 2015). 2 I employ the term participant to describe the spectator-performer who experiences the “Walks” (or other similarly conceived media artworks). The use of the term participant tries to address the increasingly problematic role of the spectator in contemporary performance, especially when it is based on media technology. Steve Benford and Gabriella Giannachi provide a meaningful description of this transformation: “the traditional audience members of conventional theater are first transformed into being interacting participants or players, and subsequently into being performers into their own right. In large part, this is because the spread of technologies into everyday settings such as the city streets renders interactions publicly visible and so naturally turns them into

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with three-dimensional sound. On the screen of the camera is played a 16’40” video of a tour taken beforehand by the artists; the participant hears Janet Cardiff’s voice in the headphones giving indications about the directions and trajectory to be followed, corresponding with the tour previously walked by the artists. As the participant advances, he/she interacts with the public space, now appropriated by the artists as part of the work: the museum’s hallways (including rooms reserved for the museum’s staff), shops in the adjacent passages and an underground parking lot. The audio indications about the paths to be taken are intermingled with a bizarre story narrated by the same voice about an alleged murder, full of conspiracies, kidnappings and chases. The story is intentionally ambiguous, reminiscent, as the authors maintain, “of a stream-of-consciousness (...) where you wander through a maze while different scenes unfold.”3 Writing about Cardiff and Miller’s “Walks,” media theorist Lev Manovich maintains that “their power lies in the interactions between the two spaces—between vision and hearing (what users are seeing and hearing), and between present and past (the time of the user’s walk versus the audio narration, which, like any media recording, belongs to some undefined time in the past).”4 Manovich’s observation regarding the interaction between the two worlds—audible and visible—is correct, as is that about the interaction between present and past. However, the latter remark is incomplete, since insofar as temporality is concerned, we can actually identify not two, but three levels whose intersection expands our understanding of the work as more than a simple video-based “live” manifestation. These levels are: the temporality of the action in situ, the one of the video recording and that of the narrated story. Their complex interplay may be defined as presentness.

 accountable acts of public performance.” Steve Benford and Gabriella Giannachi, Performing Mixed Reality (Cambridge, Mass. and London England: The MIT Press, 2011), 5-6. 3 Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Artworks: Walks, Conspiracy Theory /Théorie du complot, 2003, www.cardiffmiller.com/artworks/walks/conspiracy.html (accessed August 2017). 4 Lev Manovich, “The Poetics of Augmented Space,” Visual Communication 5, no. 2 (2006), 226.

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Fig. 1. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Conspiracy Theory / Théorie du complot, 2003. Video walk, Duration: 16:40 mins. Curated by Réal Lussier for Janet Cardiff. A Survey of Works Including Collaborations with George Bures Miller (May 23 – September 8). Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. © Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller; Courtesy of the artists and Luhring Augustine, New York.

Performativity, live and liveness In order to explain the intersection of temporalities, we need to understand first the performative nature of the works discussed and then to clarify the meaning of the term liveness applied to them. The phrase “performativity” is understood here in a broader sense, as a means of intervening in reality and transforming it at a given moment. Philosopher John Austin speaks about performative utterances that do not state facts, but perform an action; according to him, words are not just for naming or describing things: they can also do things, effecting change.5 Starting from the definition given by John Austin, cultural theorist Mieke Bal defines

 5

John I. Austin, How to Do Things With Words (London: Oxford University Press, 1962). Quoted in Paul Allain and Jen Harvie, The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance, Second Edition (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), 222.

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performativity as something “that hovers between thing and event” or, to be more precise, a temporally circumscribed event.6 The idea of performativity as a mixed entity/occurrence that takes place in a specific time and space is explored also by performance theorist Richard Schechner, who emphasises the fact that the performative systems “also include incomplete, unbalanced transformations of time and space: doing a specific ‘there and then’ in this particular ‘here and now’ in such a way that all four dimensions are kept in play.”7 I claim that one of the most complex modes—and perhaps most explicit ways—of exploiting the intersection of these dimensions, “there and then” and “here and now,” is media performance. With this rather vague term I refer more specifically to stage spectacles and performative works of the type produced by Cardiff and Miller, which include media technology as an important component. Therefore, I understand new media performance in a sense closer to what theorist Steve Dixon calls “digital performance,” that is, “all performance works where computer technologies play a key role rather than a subsidiary one in content, techniques, aesthetics, or delivery forms.”8 However, to add a nuance to this statement, I would state that new media performance is about performative works that use media technology (and not strictly computer technologies) which creates a certain effect of presence and has a direct impact on the spectatorial dimension and aesthetic outcome of the work. Cardiff and Miller’s work sheds light precisely on these features, as I will later demonstrate. It is evident that regardless of the differences in conceptualising performance and performativity, all these definitions revolve around a central axis: the idea of liveness. The latter is considered by the majority of commentators a defining feature of performance and of the performative act. One of the oft-quoted views expressed in this sense is that of theorist Peggy Phelan, who maintains that “Performance’s only life is in the present. Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented, or otherwise

 6

Mieke Bal, Travelling Concepts in the Humanities. A Rough Guide (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 59. 7 Richard Schechner, Performance Theory (London and New York: Routledge, ([1988] 2004), xviii. 8 Steve Dixon, Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theatre, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation (Cambridge, Mass and London, England: The MIT Press, 2007), 3. For a list of terms employed to describe performance in relation to media and technology, see Maria Chatzichristodoulou, “Cyberformance? Digital or Networked Performance? Cybertheaters? Virtual Theatres?… Or All of the Above?” in Cyposium, edited by Annie Abrahams and Helen Varley Jamieson (Brescia: Link Editions, 2014), 21-22.

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participate in the circulation of representations of representations: once it does so it becomes something other than performance.”9 Moreover, Phelan argues, “performance’s being, (...) becomes itself through disappearance.”10 In other words, for Phelan, what gives it aesthetic and social value is the sense of absence, the status of the fait accompli and not the sense of presence as a (re)production or reiteration. This opinion, although shared by many scholars, is considered obsolete if not quite erroneous, especially when commenting in the circumstances offered by new media. Performance theorist Philip Auslander is one of the most prominent critics of the opinions expressed by Phelan. For him, “the experience of liveness is not limited to specific performer-audience interactions but to a sense of always being connected to other people, of continuous, technologically mediated co-presence with others known or unknown.”11 Auslander challenges the traditional assumption that the live precedes the mediatised. Live and mediatised are in a relationship of mutual dependence, he argues.12 This opinion is correct although we have to see it in a more nuanced way. For Auslander, media in live performance is about mediatisation, understood as a process of reproduction and remediation (such as TV broadcasting or video streaming on stadium screens). In other words, the author limits the relationship between media, mediatisation and performance to the live reproduction and distribution of the performance via mass-media (especially television). For him, “the very concept of live performance presupposes that of reproduction—that the live can exist only within an economy of reproduction.”13 If this might be true for live (TV) broadcasting, Auslander, however, does not take into consideration that the experience of liveness can also be associated with a performance or installation that includes an interactive multi-media component and which neither reproduces nor distributes the image. The forms and development, and in fact the very existence of the electronic images produced in these circumstances are intrinsically related to the physical presence of the performer or the participant, given the interactive dimension of the piece. In this sense, the live can also exist within an economy of interaction. Therefore, Auslander makes—quite convincingly—a political and/or

 9

Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 146. 10 Ibid. 11 Philip Auslander, Liveness: Performance in a Mediatised Culture, second edition (London: Routledge [1999] 2008), 61. 12 Auslander, Liveness, 11. 13 Auslander, Liveness, 57.

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communicational argument but not an aesthetic or ontological one. Even more, his arguments tend to be formulated, as he admits, “against ontology.” A few more clarifications are needed regarding this point. I argue that in order to understand the relationship between live and mediatised (and their confluence) in new media performance, one should see it as an articulation between real and virtual worlds. In other words, it should be seen as an ontological and aesthetic problem. Of course, liveness is a question of perception—live experience involves equally physical bodies and media images, explicitly and implicitly embedded within the performance. However, I argue—against Auslander’s claim— that the difference between on the one hand, body, stage design and objects, and on the other, images and virtual information, in other words, between an immediate reality and a mediated reality, is a question of ontology not of reproduction.14 It is true, perceptual and aesthetic overlapping and confusions between the material and virtual levels might take place (giving the impression, for instance, that an image is almost the real object), since both are live manifestations. But we should bear in mind that a theatre play, a concert, a live TV show, a Skype dialogue, a telephone conversation, a Facebook post using a smartphone in-situ are equally live manifestations but they cannot be considered identical in terms of presence and effect. Therefore, Auslander’s statement that “all performance modes, live or mediatised, are now equal”15 is problematic. The play between temporal levels in Conspiracy Theory argues against this position. More exactly, the physical and the mediatised performative modes might be equal as perceptual experience (as Auslander maintains), but their presence is different: one is manifested in the material world, the other in the virtual realm, one is the mark of an immediate reality, the other indicates a mediate (i.e. anterior) reality. Performance theorist

 14

Virtuality is understood here not as something opposed to reality, but rather as a form of immaterial reality; something that exists in reality but acts without the agency of matter. Theorist Ann Friedberg proposes a consistent definition of the term: “The term ‘virtual’ serves to distinguish between any representation or appearance (whether optically, technologically, or artisanally produced) that appears ‘functionally or effectively but not formally’ of the same materiality as what it represents. Virtual images have a materiality and a reality but of a different kind, a second-order materiality, liminally immaterial. The terms ‘original’ and ‘copy’ will not apply here, because the virtuality of the image does not imply direct mimesis, but a transfer—more like metaphor—from one plane of meaning and appearance to another.” Anne Friedberg, The Virtual Window. From Alberti to Microsoft (Cambridge, Mass and London, England: The MIT Press, 2006), 11. For an extensive discussion on the subject, see Friedberg, 7-12. 15 Auslander, Liveness, 55.

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Cormac Power is right to claim that for many authors, the idea of liveness is concerned with a narrow and rather idealistic notion of unproblematic immediacy,16 as long as in the field of multimedia, performance can create—in the view of another performance theorist, Andy Lavender—an experience in which “the spectator’s own sense of presentness is expanded.”17 This is what the works discussed here provide in the first place. And that is why instead of live/liveness, I shall give pre-eminence in this essay to the terms presence and presentness, considered more helpful as analytical tools for commenting on the multiple spatial and temporal perspectives entailed by new media performance.18 And, with reference to Cardiff and Miller’s “walks,” these terms are instrumental in explaining the intersection of temporalities presupposed by these works.

In situ The first temporal level in Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s work Conspiracy Theory is the in situ presence: this is the presence of the participant’s body, the location and the architectural scenery, to which is added the technical flow of the video camera. In other words, this is the immediate presence in the physical environment. Like in other works generically called “interactive,” here, too, the body is more than a simple addressee; it is also the activator of the work. Not only does the recorded video sequence not work in the absence of the participant, but the entire logic of the artwork is based on how the body advances in space following the artist’s indications, heard in the headphones. I argue that at this level of the in situ presence, location, image and the performative body are connected by an indexical relationship. I refer to the term “index” in the sense proposed by philosopher and logician Charles Sanders Peirce, as “a sign, or representation which refers to its object not so much because of any similarity or analogy with it, not because it is associated with general characters which that object happens to possess, as because it is in dynamical (including spatial) connection both with the individual object,

 16

Cormac Power, Presence in Play: A Critique of Theories of Presence in the Theatre, Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2008, p. 169. 17 Andy Lavender, “The moment of realised actuality,” in Theatre in Crisis?: Performance Manifestos for a New Century, edited by Maria Delgado and Caridad Svich, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002, p. 189. 18 I make this choice totally aware of the various debates and controversies surrounding the issues of presence and liveness in the field of performance. I have intentionally left unaddressed a more extensive analysis of these notions, since such an endeavour would have diverted the main line of arguments.

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on the one hand, and with the senses of memory of the person for whom it serves as a sign, on the other hand.”19 In the works analysed here, video images are the index (or the trace) of the walk the artists took beforehand, while the trajectory of the participant, the movement of his/her body in space is the index of the flow of video images and the artists’ verbal indications. Thus, we can identify a double indexical relationship, each of its components implying a causal rapport: the tour made by the artists in advance in that specific location (during the recording) is the cause of the video sequence, while the movement of the participant’s performing body is both the cause and the effect of the video image, more exactly of the playing tape. Given the complexity of the term “index” employed here, a short disclaimer is in order. The fact that, in this context, I interpret the video image as an index rather than an icon20 or a reproduction is linked to the fact that the video image and reality stand in a mutual dependent relationship, in progress and in situ. The reference of the sign (image) to its object (location), as Peirce contends, is a dynamical spatial connection that involves a certain sense of memory (as we will shortly see when we speak about the narrative level of the works). This is precisely what the works discussed here propose. Thus, what interests me is not the problem of indexicality seen in strict representational (and technical) terms: in other words, I do not aim to see how an image is produced as the direct imprint of light on a chemically sensitive surface, as theorist Roland Barthes shows.21 This is how analog photography was explained, a view that has been widely criticised ever since, especially with the advent of digital technology. What I want to emphasise instead is that, like the digital photograph, the video image that composes the works discussed here is not the “pure index” of the visual reality, i.e. the message without a code to which Roland Barthes refers, but the catalyst for a more complex indexical relationship—a “dynamical spatial connection” as Peirce puts it— developed along the reality-virtuality line. More exactly, this is about



19 Charles Sanders Peirce, Philosophical Writings of Peirce, edited by Justus Buchler (New York: Dover Publications, 1955), 107. 20 Icon is used here in the sense of an image (or sign) whose meaning is directly related to the effect of resemblance to its model (or referent). 21 Roland Barthes writes: “Certainly, the image is not the reality but at least it is its perfect analogon and it is exactly this analogical perfection which, to common sense, defines the photograph. Thus can be seen the special status of the photographic image: it is a message without a code.” Roland Barthes, “The Photographic Message,” trans. Stephen Heath, in A Barthes Reader, edited by Susan Sontag (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), 196.

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indexicality as a mode of relating reality and virtuality to create presence. To explain this point, I will refer to Rosalind Krauss’ discussions of the index, as she provides more nuanced opinions on the issue.22 For Krauss, index is an epistemological instrument which explains the appropriationist strategies rather than the mimetic ones, that is, the ways in which art takes reality into possession by interpreting it, and not the ways in which art imitates and reflects reality with its specific means (in Krauss’s examples, readymade and photography). Seen in this perspective, indexicality is a mark of uniqueness and subjectivity: in our examples, the uniqueness of the place and the moment of action, as well as the subjectivity of the authors and of the participant. The video image and the participant’s subsequent act are not the mark of verisimilitude and authenticity (in the sense proposed by Barthes), but rather a “guarantor” of presence. This is to say, they make present a location by exposing its own image (the video recording of the artists’ walk), which, in turn, is made present through the performative body effectively present in situ (when experiencing the work and activating that image). Thus, I argue, the work equally makes place and takes place—a double articulation that has a performative dimension. I will immediately clarify this argument. On the one hand, by “making place” I understand the operation of taking into possession, of denominating a certain location and all the related objects as a performative matrix. The work captures and presentifies these elements into the field of the work, or—to borrow Krauss’s words—it “isolates a piece of the real world and fills itself with a meaning by becoming, for that moment, the transitory label of a natural event.”23 We might interpret this process as a way to turn the real-world location and the ensemble of related objects into a fictional realm. This is what the Prague School of linguistic theory called the principle of the “semiotisation of the object.” As theorist Keir Elam explains, semiotisation implies showing or presenting the objects to the public like inside quotation marks, and not describing or explaining them (what is important to remember is that the index is not only a “trace” but also indicator: it indicates the object by presenting it). The simple fact of showing the objects on a stage or in the field of performative action transforms their practical function into a symbolical or fictional one.24 The

 22

Rosalind Krauss, “Notes on Index” I & II in The Originality of The Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge, Mass. and London, England: The MIT Press, 1985). 23 Krauss, “Notes on Index,” 216. 24 See Keir Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama (New York and London: Routledge, ([1980] 2002), 7-9.

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objects and the architectural setting with which the participant in the Conspiracy Theory interacts acquire, as it were, quotation marks,25 that is, a specific figurative meaning, similarly to the objects included in a theatre scenery. The sense I give to the idea of presentification (to make the real objects present as in theatre, film or novel, in the sense of fictionalising them) is directly related to this process of enriching the elementary denotation of the sign/object with secondary meanings which are culturally determined and particularised for each specific artistic discourse. In our examples, the museum’s rooms (some of them normally closed to the public), or the passageways visited by the participant during the “walk” are no longer neutral zones as they are in their “ordinary” existence, but scenery spaces, visual and discursive reference points. These spaces host either imaginary conspiracies (suggested by the story told by the artist), or real subjective narratives circulated (literally and figuratively) by and between artists and participants. On the other hand, the idea of “taking place” refers to the real-time corporeal action of the participant in situ. It should be stated that the work consists equally of the spatial configuration (the fragment of the real world now fictionalised), and the act of fictionalising it, together with the subsequent experience of this fictionalisation. In this sense, the whole experience of the work can be seen as an event, understood here as an act performed in the present tense and in a specific location, which evolves in time and has a limited temporal scope. It is important to note that the bodily experience of the work (the event that takes place live and in situ) means, in these circumstances, a dynamic spatial connection between location (including architecture and bodies), media image (the anterior video recording now actualised in the participant’s hands), and the narrative and mnemonic indicators suggested along the walk (through the video images and voice descriptions). In other words, this is the production of a unique moment in space and a particular spot in time at the border between reality and virtuality. It should be again emphasised that the act of making place and taking place in situ—whose epicentre is represented by the participant’s performative body—is directly determined by another temporal level, represented by the mediatic configuration of the video recording. And this is because every action of the performative body in situ is directly generated and makes sense only through the mark of a previous action captured by the video image and sound. In order to analyse this mediatic temporal level, I will discuss another work by the same artists, closely related to Conspiracy Theory. Entitled Alter Bahnhof Video

 25

Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre, 7-9.

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Walk, this work will extend—also on technological grounds—the range of the argument about the conditions of creating a different experiential and aesthetic paradigm.

Fig. 2. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Alter Bahnhof Video Walk, 2012. Video Walk, Duration: 26:00 mins. Produced for dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel Germany. © Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller; Courtesy of the artists and Luhring Augustine, New York.

Mediatic Presence Alter Bahnhof Video Walk (2012) is a work from the same series “Walks” that takes place in the old train station in Kassel, Germany, as part of the exhibition dOCUMENTA (13).26 Participants are provided with an iPod and headphones from a check-out booth, and, like in the case of Conspiracy Theory, they are invited to follow a route according to the indications transmitted into the headphones in Cardiff’s voice. Having entered this “game,” the participant realises that an alternate world opens up, where reality and fiction are strangely fused. As he/she walks, the participant sees various scenes unfolding on the iPod’s screen, such as two brass players and a ballerina who dance on the train platform. The scene seems to take place right in front of the camera, but, as the participant will

 26

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Artworks: Walks, Alter Bahnhof Video Walk, 2012, http://www.cardiffmiller.com/artworks/walks/bahnhof.html (accessed August 2017).

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notice, the characters are in fact not there, in the real world, but only in the video image, shot at a previous date. Listening to the instructions in the headphones, the participant follows the musicians and the ballerina exactly in the places where they were video recorded. By aligning the iPod with the real setting, the video image appears to be seamlessly integrated in the actual surroundings, an overlapping that creates a fusion and confusion of spaces and temporalities. In Alter Bahnhof Video Walk, as well as in Conspiracy Theory, the video recording previously shot by the artists represents a past moment, but one which directly affects the participant’s present actions, as he/she receives indications about the movement and the route they should take during the performance. Therefore, I claim that, in this case, the performance cannot exist in the absence of the media component. This aspect sheds a different light on the way in which the relationship between performance and mediation is generally understood. My argument (which critically reads Phelan’s and Auslander’s views on the issue) will hopefully clarify not only my point here, but also a few aspects of the relationship between media image and performative act, in general. For Peggy Phelan, a work is prevented from being included in the performance category as long as it presents a media component (what I call mediatic presence). According to her, this is due to the fact that the media components—in our case the video and the recorded voice—have a documentary dimension and are conceived as repetitive occurrences. In Phelan’s view, these aspects are not characteristic of performance. Performance, believes the author, should necessarily be ephemeral, in the sense that it becomes performance only through disappearance. On the other hand, Philip Auslander makes his point by discussing the role of media image (photography and video) in performance art, taking as examples Yves Klein’s Le Saut Dans le Vide (1960) and Chris Burden’s Shoot (1971). He writes: “our sense of the presence, power, and authenticity of these pieces derives not from treating the document as an indexical access point to a past event but from perceiving the document itself as a performance that directly reflects an artist’s aesthetic project or sensibility and for which we are the present audience.”27

I consider both opinions exaggerated. While Phelan eliminates any link between performance and its image, Auslander suspends any difference

 27

Philip Auslander, “The Performativity of Performance Documentation,” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 84, vol.28, no.3, September 2006, p. 9.

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between performance and artefact. The two “walks” by Cardiff and Miller demonstrate that the media component of the works neither excludes them from the sphere of performativity, nor automatically makes them performance acts. The performative character of a work, as well as its presentness, is defined not in terms of pure mediality, but considering different spatial and temporal levels, different mediatic and referential levels, among which the acting body and the video recording are, in this case, the key components. It is true that the two works by Cardiff and Miller raise a paradox regarding the situation of being physically present but temporally remote.28 The sense of remoteness is suggested by the media element (video images and sounds) whose content signals another type of presence—or, as theorist Josette Féral calls it, a “presence effect”— situated at an anterior temporal level. According to Féral, “a presence effect is the feeling the audience has that the bodies or objects they perceive are really there within the same space and timeframe that the spectators find themselves in, when the spectators patently know that they are not there.”29 More precisely, this effect is given by the things, persons and activities that the video camera captured beforehand and which are now absent from the participant’s immediate reality, although they are visible on the screen and audible in the headphones. This play between anteriority and present time has a weird effect sometimes during the walk: for example, when the participant hears steps approaching from behind, he/she automatically turn their heads, only to realise that there is nobody there since the steps were heard during the recording. Similarly, at certain moments, the participant sees a person approaching on the screen, although when looking over the device into the real space, he/she realises that the person is not actually present. However, that person was present there some time ago, at the same moment when the steps were there, that is, at the anterior moment of the sound and video recording. Thus, the media component of the works connects real space and media space, the actual and the anterior presence in situ, bringing, as performance theorist Richard Schechner suggests, a specific “there and then” in this particular



28 The expression is employed by Rosalind Krauss to describe the sense of presence in the works of Gordon Matta-Clark, Michelle Stuart and Lucio Pozzi. See The Originality of the Avant-Garde, 217. 29 Josette Féral, “How to Define Presence Effects: The Work of Janet Cardiff,” in Archaeologies of Presence. Art, Performance, and the Persistence of Being, edited by Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye, and Michael Shanks (New York: Routledge, 2012), 31.

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“here and now.”30 Precisely this aspect of the relationship between media image (which essentially presupposes anteriority) and the bodily activity in situ (which presupposes immediacy and direct contact) calls into question performance theories that put emphasis on either one of its dimensions, corporeal or mediatic. As seen above, the performative experience of media artworks takes place somewhere on the middle ground between the two dimensions. This relationship between body and media image allows various temporal and spatial cross-correlations and thus can be seen—and here I borrow a phrase that is particularly useful given its spatio-temporal valences—as a chronotopic practice. The chronotope was defined by the philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin as a space-time, more exactly, as “the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature.”31 As he further explains, “In the literary artistic chronotope, spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole. Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history. This intersection of axes and fusion of indicators characterises the artistic chronotope.32

The chronotope is what makes time a spatial dimension and space a temporal dimension. In other words, the passing of time can be perceived and acquires sense only in space, while the movement in space is always movement in time. Perhaps the most evident manifestation of the chronotope, explains Bakhtin, is the road (or the journey).33 The road interpreted as a sequence of events, facts, ideas, transformations or initiations has an extremely rich symbolic power; the motif of the road or the journey plays a significant role in various representations, from the myths of antiquity to the Bible, to the Middle Ages’ epic poetry and to contemporary rituals or performative actions within the field of art. And what are the “Walks” proposed by Cardiff and Miller if not journeys or chronotopes built on the same spatial and temporal principles as the

 30

Schechner, Performance Theory, xviii. Mikhail Bakhtin, “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel” inThe Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin, edited by Michael Holquist. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), 84. 32 Bakhtin, “Forms of Time,” 84. 33 “In the chronotope of the road, the, unity of time and space markers is exhibited with exceptional precision and clarity.” Bakhtin, “Forms of Time,” 98. 31

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traditional ones, albeit technologically updated? Other artists, too, have been preoccupied by employing the motif of the journey, or the chronotope in their work, within the contexts offered by media technology, a significant case in point being Blast Theory’s performative work. Too Much Information (2015), for example, is an interactive performance that takes place in situ on the streets of Manchester: the user, armed with a GPS-equipped smartphone and a headset, navigates the city while listening and engaging in a “dialogue” with unlikely interlocutors that tell very personal stories about a specific place. Other performative works by Blast Theory, such as Can You See Me Now? (2001), deemed by the group as one of the first location based games, or Uncle Roy All Around You (2003), a work in which the players explore a mixed reality city, are good examples of locative and performative endeavours that represent, like the artistic chronotope, an “intersection of axes and fusion of indicators”34 as Bakhtin describes them - this time, however, within the complex referential framework offered by media technology. Like Cardiff and Miller’s “walks,” these too affect our sense of self-presence and agency, our sense of being present within the real world and the virtual realm at the same time. As we have seen in these examples, the mediatic component is essential to defining the convention of the performance, in these cases, the way to act and the path to follow. The latter verb has actually a double meaning here: on the one hand, to follow means to come after something (in our examples, to actualise or reiterate an anterior action in situ), and on the other, to follow means to obey certain principles and to see what the consequences are (here, to comply with the performative conventions— both corporeal and conceptual—established by the artists and delivered through the mobile interface). Nevertheless, this apparently dialectic relationship between anteriority and actualisation, or we might now say, between the indexical presence and the chronotope of anteriority is effectively and affectively disturbed by another temporal expression: the narrative presence.

Narrative/ Historical presence The third temporal level in Cardiff and Miller’s works discussed here is represented by the narrative and/or historical insertion within the user’s audio-visual experience during the walk. In Conspiracy Theory, the title itself suggests not only the presence of a narrative, but also, the type of

 34

Ibid., 84.

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story the work tells. Once the participant starts the guided tour, the voice of the artist (Cardiff) announces that he/she might be part of a conspiracy. While the voice shares the story of a possible murder that took place the night before, an image with a girl holding a photograph of a man fallen onto the floor appears on the screen of the video camera. This is followed by a video sequence of the same man, this time in an underground parking garage, and a woman who is running beside him. These insertions are abruptly cut and the video stream with the museum’s hallways resumes. At various moments, this main video stream is again interrupted by other video sequences showing short “parasitical” narrative episodes about the same murder, with car chases, gun shots and action movie-type moments. Intrigued by these episodes, the participant normally tries to find a storyline, a sense to this “conspiracy” narrative and to relate it to the proposed trajectory in physical space, although such a link does not exist. The story or the “theory” of conspiracy (quotation marks are needed since there is no theory per se involved here) seems to be only a counterpoint and a provocation to the immediate experience and the normal flow of the walk in situ. This seems to be part of a mechanism for semiotic diversion that complicates the relationship between the linguistic sign (the walking indications plus the imaginary story told at the aural level), the video recorded images (which provide indexical indicators of the route that was followed by the artists and is now to be followed by the participants, as well as sequences of an implausible conspiracy narrative) and the direct experience of the performative body in situ. Somewhat similar to Conspiracy Theory, the work Alter Bahnhof Video Walk proposes the same narrative technique of spatiotemporal dislocation: the video sequence of the walk is interrupted by various video shots showing nature images, portraits of a person who—says the voice in the headphones—is the artist herself, a hand browsing a book, or a man telling the tragic history of the deportation of Jews right from the platform where the participant is situated. However, unlike Conspiracy Theory, in Alter Bahnhof the video insertions are not pure fictional facts (imagined conspiracies). They make reference to real historical moments or personal recollections. Thus, this level of narrative/historical presence becomes a bibliographical journey that activates the old topos of memory as place, in the sense that individual and collective memory is shaped not only through the psychological process of encoding and decoding information, but also through the material and symbolic manifestations of place. Thus, in both works discussed here, the narrative presence (the fictional or historical insertions) points to the location for which the work was conceived and where the participant is situated: it is what I would call a “potentiator of

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the location,” that is, a modality to emphasise and discuss the complex relationship between the built space, cultural substance and social content of a certain location, at different historical moments. In the process of building the narrative presence, an extremely important role is played by the artist’s voice. The latter not only gives verbal indications about the route to be taken by the participant, but also explains and supports the narrative/historical video insertions (with fictional stories in Conspiracy Theory or historic testimonies in Alter Bahnhof). If the (written) language is, as theorist Marie-Laure Ryan affirms, “the medium of absence,”35 which does not normally re-present by creating an illusion of presence to the senses, here the spoken language proves the contrary. The direct address and the warm tone of the artist’s voice, as well as the 3D sound not only presentify the story, but also create a sense of intimacy between the artist and the participant. Hence the acute sense of immersion in the story. Speaking about this aspect, Ryan emphasises that “one of the most variable parameters of narrative art is the imaginative distance between the position of narrator and addressee and the time and place of the narrated events. Spatio-temporal immersion takes place when this distance is reduced to near zero.”36

This is precisely what happens in Conspiracy Theory and Alter Bahnhof: the distance between narrator and participant seems reduced to zero, both because of the intimacy created by the voice and because of the overlapping between the space of narration and the space of the direct bodily experience. It is true that if the effect of spatiotemporal dislocation or semiotic diversion generated by the fictional and historical inserts transports the participant to another discursive level, it also emphasises the immediacy of the experience in situ. Making reference to memory, trauma, oblivion, the works point, at the same time, to the joy of living the moment and to the satisfaction of taking the place into possession. This is, after all, one of the main stakes of the works: to build a perceptual convergence between ordinary and fictional worlds, real and virtual space, location and dislocation, past and present.

 35

Marie-Laure Ryan, Narrative as Virtual Reality. Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 122. 36 Ryan, Narrative as Virtual Reality, 130.

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Presentness I propose the term presentness to define the overlapping manifestation of different presences (i.e. temporal and representational levels) in media performance. In the two examples analysed here, Conspiracy Theory and Alter Bahnhof Video Walk, they are the presence in situ, the mediatic presence and the narrative/historical presence. Before explaining how these temporal levels overlap to define presentness in these circumstances, I should first clarify (although briefly) the nature and the meaning of the term, as it was explained in other contexts. For example, philosopher Stanley Cavell considers that presentness is “what painting wanted, in wanting a connection with reality,” that is, a sense of immediacy based on the presence of the artist’s own self in his/her art.37 In the same vein, although writing from the perspective of media (art) practice, theorists Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin understand presence (and implicitly the idea of presentness) as an attempt to achieve immediacy by ignoring or denying the presence of the medium and the act of mediation.38 Performance theorist Steve Dixon defines presentness in a larger (if not quite relativistic) perspective, considering that “all art is concerned with presence, or presentness, be it painting, poetry, net-art, recorded media, or live performance.”39 My definition of presentness acknowledges (and in part draws upon) these positions, but also critically departs from them. Presentness, as I see it, is the expression of a transversal performative experience where various temporalities and visual elements overlap and intersect. In this sense, I conceptualise presentness as a sort of “interface” in the sense art theorist Christine Ross uses the term with reference to the development of a set of aesthetic instruments specific for temporal investigation. We should explore, writes Ross, “image-making, performance and narrativity as an interface—a surface of exchange of temporal information—even more so as a site of transmutation between temporality and historicity.”40 What makes this “exchange of temporal information” more complex (and fascinating, to be sure) is that the latter is the result of a recurring action—the performance in situ. But the repeated presentification of an anterior experience (artists’ “walk”) through the



37 Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed. Reflections on the Ontology of the Cinema (Cambridge, Mass and London England: Harvard University Press, 1979), 22. 38 Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation. Understanding New Media (Cambridge, Mass and London, England: The MIT Press, 1999), 11. 39 Steve Dixon, Digital Performance, 132. 40 Christine Ross, The Past is the Present, It's the Future Too: The Temporal Turn in Contemporary Art (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012), 5.

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participant’s action is not meant to create a sort of absolute or perpetual present. The performative action required by these works creates presentness—and here I borrow again Christine Ross’ words - “in the sense of freeing the three categories of time (past, present, and future); of complicating their connection; of activating the past in the present and allowing it to condition the future in that very process.”41 And what these works do in the first place is to free and complicate the connection between different temporal levels, past and present. Therefore, can we see Cardiff and Miller’s works as an intersection of the “sheets of past” and “peaks of present,” that is, as an illustration of Deleuze’s theorisation of time-image? The association with Deleuze’s concept is tempting, although problematic. As we know, Deleuze never offers a singular or clear definition of time-image. He ambiguously affirms that time-image is no longer an indirect image of time deriving from movement (like the movement-image specific for classical cinema, in Deleuze’s view), representing instead a “direct image of time.” With this concept, Deleuze assigns a form of temporality that explains the “present/pastness” of the modern film image: “The indiscernibility of the real and the imaginary, or of the present and the past, of the actual and the virtual, is definitely not produced in the head or the mind, it is the objective characteristic of certain existing images which are by nature double.”42 One might find certain similarities between time-image and the experience of presentness since, like modern film, the “Walks” merge the real and the imaginary, the present and the past, the actual and the virtual. Nonetheless, the works investigated here also expose the limitations of Deleuze’s conception by relocating the (idea of) time-image from a purely abstract imagined space to an embodied space, experienced in situ. And, as stated from the beginning, a close relationship between body and location, identified equally in real space and in the media sphere, is what defines these works in the first place. Therefore, can we identify the experiential complexity of presentness with a different visual and performative regime? The latter is defined equally in spatial, temporal, corporeal or mediatic terms since it is produced—and this is an important point in my conclusion—as the process of convergence between the real and the virtual. This different visual and performative regime means neither a defeat of the visual, nor a decline of the performative, but an extension of the two, produced as a

 41

Ross, The Past is the Present, 5. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 69.

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corporeal-visual encounter that is in progress. Furthermore, it is not the abandonment of the “authenticity” provided by the ephemerality of the performative act in favour of the “durability” assured by a perennial image (conceived as a discrete artefact), but rather a redefinition of the privileged relationship performance entertains with reality, this time along coordinates that include technology. Within this regime, performative action presupposes more than extending liveness through the use of media; it is equally a spatial practice (in the sense of making locality a sitespecific component of the work, by adapting the work to the physical, historical, social and cultural dimensions of a location), a mediatic engagement (of visual and aural perception as well as data collection) and a temporal construction (conceived on different levels: actual, mediated and narrative). Presentness is all these and something more: their overlapping and convergence, with a view to defining a different (or perhaps new) perceptual and aesthetic paradigm.

PANOPTIC OPTIONS: RENEGOTIATING THE BODY’S SOCIAL CONTRACT IN PUBLIC SPACE AND ONLINE ROBERT LAWRENCE

“It is by virtue of their mutual inextricability that virtual images are able to react upon actual objects.” Deleuze, The Actual and The Virtual

The Body in Shared Space Re-Regulated by Video Surveillance of the Public Commons In 2013 the British Security Industry Authority estimated there were 5.9 million pubic surveillance cameras in England, one camera for every 11 people. During the course of a day in London the average person would likely be surveilled over 1000 times. Since 2013 these numbers have only increased.

Fig. 1. Willey Reveley, Panopticon, 1791, illustration from Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham vol. IV, 172-3, public domain

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Fig. 2. Robert Lawrence, Tango Intervention, 2007, art intervention on Williamsburg Bridge and at www.tangoIntervention.org, photo by Robert Lawrence. Courtesy the artist.

The watched body is a different body. Research from diverse fields confirms that an observer changes the behavior of the observed. Jeremy Bentham’s proposal for the Panopticon, the ultimate prison, based on the power of vision over bodies and minds, placed an observing but unseen authority in a tower centered between cells in a circular structure. Bentham postulated that, because the prisoners would never know when they were being seen, they would behave at all times as if they were being seen. As Foucault points out in Discipline and Punish: He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.1

Whereas Bentham wrote of an architectural Panopticon, a building in service as a prison, school or asylum, ubiquitous video surveillance of public space that we now live with imposes panoptic structures of power over entire populations. In post 9/11 hysteria there has been a general acceptance of these measures as reasonable and essential to “protect our safety”. Despite the fact that, as psychologist Steven Pinker points out, we are likely living in the least violent age in history,2 sixteen years after 9/11 a general paranoia continues, seemingly a normal part of western culture. With it continues an increasing surveillance of public space, in spite of the enormous costs in tax dollars during times of wide spread municipal fiscal 1

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan, New York: Vintage Books, 1995, 202. 2 Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. New York: The Viking Books, 2011.

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crisis, and the lack of substantial evidence that this ubiquitous surveillance culture has significantly reduced the risk of terrorist attacks. 3 Foucault begins his chapter on panopticism4 referencing a historical policy of the French city of Vincennes to relinquish all civil liberties to address the threat of plague infestation. Substitute “Al Queda/ISIL/whatever the current threat might be” for “Plague” and you have today’s situation, the surrendering of individual rights and freedoms, not of an entire city, but of the entire developed world.

Data Surveillance: ‘Friending’ Surveillance As extensive and menacing is video surveillance of public space, it can be argued that it is relatively trivial when compared to data surveillance, which at this point potentially includes any human communication that is transmitted through any digital device connected to the internet or phone service. All social software user agreements (that we sign but never read) stipulate a surrendering to the corporation of private information. These end user agreements always include polished assurances that “your private information will be protected”. However, Edward Snowden’s release of top-secret documents of United States NSA surveillance programs indicates that governments freely access social media servers’ “private” data to survey, inventory, and analyze personal electronic communication in America and the world. A great deal of electronic communication outside the USA is routed through the United States due to network protocols. Hence, populations from around the world are subjected unwillingly, and generally unknowingly, to surveillance by the United States’ spy agencies. It is now quite clear that regardless of what Google and others say in their user agreements, we can be absolutely certain that the personal information that we surrender via social media will be used in whatever way most benefits the multinationals we surrender it to, including its surrender to governmental agencies who have full access without any subpoena process. Indeed, because this essay has passed through the Internet in various forms, and because it has key words that are on security red flag lists, it is quite possible that the words you are reading at this moment are already stored somewhere on an NSA server waiting patiently should they be needed to serve some purpose in the “war 3

Internal tests by the Department of Homeland Security found that TSA security agents failed to detect weapons or other forbidden items 95% of the time. Eric Bradner and Rene Marsh, CNN, Tue June 2, 2015. 4 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 195-228.

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on terror”, or whatever other conflict Western governments should choose to amplify to continue the elimination of privacy and individual rights consistent with what Agamben calls “a permanent state of exception”.5 The combined effect of in-flesh and online surveillance is a vast reformulation of the public contracts between the individual body and governing and capital agencies. Between the overt visual surveillance of physical public space and the covert data surveillance inextricably woven into our private online communications, it is undeniable that we are now all living in the Panopticon. And… we are delighted about it. Because it does not look like the Orwellian nightmare it is. The panoptic state does not look like this:

Fig. 3. Friman, Inside prison building at Presidio Modelo, Isla de la Juventud, Cuba, 2005. Photograph, Wikipedia commons, public domain.

The panoptic state looks like this:

5

Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception. Translated by Kevin Attell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005, 87.

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Fig. 4. Amalia Ulman, Excellences & Perfections, 2015. Photograph. Instagram Update, 5th September 2014. Courtesy of the artist and Arcadia Missa Gallery.

As convincingly suggested by Amalia Ulman in her online performance Excellences & Perfections, life in the Panopticon looks like an iPhone ad in which we are the spokes models. Our life in the Panopticon is shown to us as a virtual and embodied ecstasy projected through radiating social circles of perfect appearances and embracing joys. While Post 9-11 authorities present the rolling back of privacy and civil liberties as a necessary compromise to gain safety, industry packages our voluntary surrender of liberties and privacy as a tantalizing amplification of individual expression and emotional interconnectedness. And we are delighted about it. We are delighted about the surrender of unlimited details of our private lives into the hands of international corporations who exploit it for profit and then deliver it to governments to assist their ongoing surveillance and our ongoing compliance. It is a tragedy that this has become a given of contemporary life. It is a greater tragedy that we all voluntarily signed up for it… Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Snapchat, and more to come. We have done this primarily as a reaction to perhaps the only contemporary fear greater than that of terrorism: FOMO, Fear Of Missing Out. As Rob Horning said, “What I do is not part of who I am until I know surveillance/social media has picked it up. Google alert is my soul”.6 And, “social media confirms that we are ‘being ourselves’ when we produce data, validating the primacy of documents over immediate lived experience”.7 Indeed, as Jonathan Crary points out in his book 24/7, “The interhuman basis of public space is made irrelevant to

6

Rob Horning. Twitter Post. 19 feb. 2013. https://twitter.com/robhorning/status/ 303954617929179136 (accessed October 2017). 7 Rob Horning, “Hi Haters!”, The New Inquiry, Nov 27, 2012 https://thenewinquiry.com/hi-haters/ (accessed October 2017).

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one’s fantasmatic digital insularity.” 8 Or, as I would revise Alfred Korzybski, “The map is not the territory; the Tweet is.” Emblematic of the flowering of what Jeremy Antley calls the “data self” 9 , this is an order of subjectivity previously not available, a delightfully mutable “I” that we can individually nuance and polish via digital media to make a presentation of self-to-all. While the actual dynamic is “self-to-other”, “other” being any of the limited number of friends or followers any one has, the emotional dynamic is experienced as “self-to-all”, because any posting in social media lays claim to the potentially infinite audience of the web. This is a primary functional myth of social media. Fame is just one post away. And everyone is qualified for it. Of course, like lottery tickets, the more you try, the more likely you will get the jackpot, a dynamic that encourages full participation in a developing post-internet version of the “fictive We.” 10 This is the attraction of social media, and it is most keenly focused in the composition of selfies. Unlike previous self-portraits, selfies can be honed to a seductive finesse previously only seen in advertising—that vast realm of popular culture the practice of which requires zero congruence with actual, lived experience—while simultaneously creating expectations and intensifying our futile desires for an embodied experience that participates in such a myth.

I Am What I Say I Am, and I’ve Posted the Selfies to Prove It Deleuze upgraded Foucault’s society of discipline to a society of control, and currently this condition is thoroughly in effect. More than ever we self-submit to a control based on seduction—certainly a dynamic that is no stranger to visuality’s engagements with the human body. It is disturbing but not surprising that the current seduction social media offers is a self-seduction. I am what I say I am and here are some ‘selfies’ to prove it. This self-broadcasting is ominously resonant with one of the dictums of the surveillance state, if you see something say something. This phrase was initiated by the New York City Municipal Transit Authority 8 Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, London: Verso, 2013, 89. 9 Jeremy Antley, “Ephemerality is a Snap...”, Peasant Muse (blog), february 3, 2013. http://www.peasantmuse.com/2013/02/ephemerality-is-snap.html (accessed October 2017). 10 Robert Stam quoted in David Morley, Home Territories. Media, Mobility and Identity. London and New York: Routledge, 2000, 185.

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and virally adapted by other authorities across the United States, with the obvious connection to historical policies of totalitarian state practices seemingly unacknowledged.

Fig. 5. David M. Goehring | carbonnyc, If you see something say something, 2007. Photograph published on on Flickr. Courtesy the artist.

Now that we have been trained to obsessively self-surveil and selfreveal via social media there seems to be a complete disconnect with any historical link to repressive regimes inherent in this public service announcement, “If you see something say something” is apparently a neutral statement in our current “permanent state of exception.”11

The Body Seen Seeing: Veillance, Sur & Sous Turning to the matter of artists engaging the social issues I have outlined above, I will start with an “If you see something say something” story. Shortly after 9/11, a good citizen in Temple Terrace, Florida saw a 11

Agamben, State of Exception, 87.

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man (artist Hasan Elahi) removing gear from a storage unit facility. Having seen “something”, the good citizen said “something”, to the FBI. The good citizen said, “I saw a man loading explosives out of the U Store It.” To drive home the seriousness of the situation, the good citizen added, “He looked Middle Eastern.” Unbeknownst to Elahi, the FBI began an investigation that eventually led to the artist’s detention and lengthy interrogation at the Detroit airport. From that time after, Elahi’s life became about convincing the FBI of his innocence. It took 6 months of cooperating with regular investigations, including 9 polygraph tests. At some point in the process, Elahi reasoned that if this is what his life was about he should make art about it. Tracking Transience was born. They wanted personal information. He gave them, and everyone, everything. He wrote code to turn his phone into a geo-tracking device that displayed his location 24/7 on his public webpage. He uploaded to this site all his financial information and a constant stream of data and images documenting every detail of his personal life. By 2011 he had uploaded 46,000 images to his website. Despite his being told that he was completely cleared of any possible charges, ominously the log of Elahi’s web server indicates multiple visits from the Department of Homeland Security, the C.I.A., the National Reconnaissance Office and the Executive Office of the President. When I first started talking about my project in 2003, people thought I was insane. Why would anyone tell everyone what he was doing at all times? Why would anyone want to share a photo of every place he visited? Now eight years later, more than 800 million people do the same thing I’ve been doing each time they update their status or post an image or poke someone on Facebook.12

Elahi’s work can be seen as a technological variation of neosituationist artist interventions in public surveillance space often referred to as “Sousveillance”. Surveillance means watching from above, sousveillance watching from below. The Surveillance Camera Players are the best known sousveillance artists, having since 1996 staged a series of performances directed solely to surveillance cameras, beginning with a New York performance of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi. SCP have gotten considerable media coverage, both critical and popular, and have gone on to spawn affiliated SCP cells around the world. A particularly articulate and engaging expression of artist 12 Hasan M. Elahi, “You Want to Track Me? Here You Go, F.B.I.”, Sunday Review/ Opinion. New York Times, Oct. 29, 2011.

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sousveillance is Dennis Beaubois’ In the Event of Amnesia the City Will Recall (1996-7), in which the artist held printed cards before a public space security camera to hold an extended silent conversation with the unseen human controller of the remotely controlled security camera. Over the course of several days, Beaubois held printed cards before the camera to initiate a two-way communication with a system designed to be strictly one way. By performing the embodied image of the surveilled, Beaubois’ work simultaneously highlights and defies the concentration of agency in the roll of the surveillers, while also inventing a proactive role for the surveilled. While working with similar themes, Elahi’s update of the established practice of artist sousveillance was to move components of the work online. The Internet as the current primary medium of authoritarian surveillance is particularly fertile territory for artistic détournement in an updated Situationist mode. I suggest that artistic exploration spanning both physical and virtual media is essential to create a useful creative interpretation of contemporary experience that unfolds in both physical and virtual realms. While Internet Art has been acknowledged in limited ways by various art institutions, it is surprising how little work has been exhibited which explores combinations of online and embodied elements. In the early days of the Internet, and of Net Art, there were fairly clear boundaries between the real and the virtual. Within the broader culture these walls have long since crumbled, indeed one definition of “Post-Internet” could be simply “that time during which embodied and online space have merged”. And yet media forms, communication, social contracts, and behavioral norms are still in many ways distinct within the two realms. As contemporary life becomes increasingly a continuous passage between embodied and online space, it is essential that these passages be examined both critically and artistically. While there have been many publications treating online art, there is much less critical work addressing works that look at the dynamics of the passage between the embodied and the virtual. And yet this seems to be the most promising direction in Post-Internet art. As Rhizome founder Mark Tribe said in a 2013 interview in Art in America: Internet art was a movement that arose in 1994 and waned in the early 2000’s. Post-Internet artists stand on the shoulders of Net art giants like Olia Lialina, Vuk ûosiü, and JODI, not in order to lift themselves higher into the thin atmosphere of pure online presence but rather to crush the past and reassemble the fragments in strange on/offline hybrid forms.13 13 Gloria Sutton interview with Mark Tribe, “Rhizome Unearthed,” Art in America. Volume 101, Issue 9, September 2013.

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This hybrid real/virtual way of working is particularly effective when Internet media tools are used to draw connections between current and historical issues and structures. An articulate example of this is Iosif Király’s recent photomontage series, Open Sky. In these photomontages Király combines images from Google Earth Street view with archival black & white surveillance photographs made by the Romanian communist secret service (“Securitate”) for evidence in political arrests in the years before the 1989 revolution. These somewhat nostalgic pictures of people chatting on the street are seemingly benign, but as Horea Avram notes in an essay in conjunction with a Király exhibition at Paintbrush Factory in Cluj, “…banal as they seem, these pictures are not innocent at all.” 14 The Google map street views show the locations where the adjoining Securitate images were made decades before. In this context the hidden meanings of the archival Securitate images beg the question of what dark secrets are lurking in the “objective” Google street views? Considering the complicity of Google and other social media giants in current governmental public surveillance, the answer is simple and chilling, and lends an ironic twist to the project title Open Sky.

Fig. 6. Iosif Király, Open Sky, Bucureúti, Piaúa Universităаii, 2012. Inkjet print, (32 x 104.5 cm). Courtesy the artist.

Owen Mundy’s online project Give Me My Data (GMMD) is an insightful, incisive intervention in Facebook, that quaking, burgeoning terra (in)firma of online identity construction and distribution. Give Me My Data is an application that allows one to simply retrieve, in a choice of formats, all the data one has entered in Facebook over the years. Our Facebook data is an exhaustive intermedial self-portrait. It is also the legal property of the corporate entity Facebook. Give Me My Data allows you to 14

Horea Avram, exhibition leaflet: Iosif Király - Photography: From Melancholy to Trauma, From Document to Monument. Spa‫܊‬iu Intact, Paintbrush Factory, ClujNapoca, 2013.

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‘steal back’ your identity from its virtual platform. Give Me My Data version 1 was released in 2009, prompted by Mundy’s frustration that Facebook would not allow him to access his data. In 2010 The New York Times and other media mentioned that Mundy’s software was the only way for users to access their personal data because Facebook did not offer that option. Six months after Give Me My Data went viral, in a rare case of art actually accomplishing real change, Facebook released a personal data retrieval utility, but in significantly limited data formats relative to Mundy’s app. There is actually a strategy parallel here with Mundy post-internet Give Me My Data and previously mentioned Dennis Beaubois’ pre-internet work, In the Case of Amnesia. Both Beaubois and Mundy call attention to panoptic structures and then peel back a surveillance cloak and point toward hidden agencies at work. We never see the images we create for public video surveillance, and, before Give Me My Data, we were not allowed to see the scope of the data we create for Facebook. Both artists are creating by making visible what was not visible in structures premised on visibility. Both artists call critical attention to the one-way nature of a visual power structure. In doing so, they call attention to our changing social contracts of public space. Beaubois claims in an artist statement: “To willingly confess to the camera is to disempower it.” Mundy’s action is more proactive and aggressive, and actually yields pragmatic results. First by providing a means for anyone to access inaccessible Facebook data, and in that way shaming Facebook into providing that service themselves. As Mundy maintains, “Ultimately GMMD influenced their choice to offer the service by introducing a utility that should have been, with an aesthetic and rhetoric (the logo, name, statement, etc.) that became part of the conversation about data privacy and ownership.”15 Mundy’s more recent project, I know where your Cat Lives, is a playful but razor-sharp inspection of contradictions inherent in data identity’s warm and fuzzy dystopia. Using the metadata included in postings of cat pictures to online photo sharing sites, Mundy maps a million cats’, and therefore cat owners’, homes. The site is enormously popular as an exhaustive cat snap clearing grounds, but at the same time it asks pointed questions about what happens to information we share online, ultimately leading to a profound meditation on a woefully under-addressed issue of online culture: trust. Perhaps more than our close relations with other people, our relations with pets is an expression of a primal emotional trust. We are in many ways most “our selves” with our pets, emotionally secure 15

Owen Mundy, email correspondence with the artist, September 2015.

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in the knowledge that they will never betray us, because they will never have the agency to do so. When we post our cats online, we post ourselves, and we do so in an extremely vulnerable way. Mundy’s work frames this dynamic and also reminds us of what purpose these ‘selves’ can be put to by anyone with access to the data we ubiquitously surrender. There is an inescapable connection between the agency we have over our pets’ images and the agency of our own identities that we surrender to the corporate/governmental overseers of social media. Like a post-internet Warhol, Amalia Ulman creates a critical examination of pop sensibility by flagrantly indulging in it. In her 3-month performance on Instagram, Excellences & Perfections (see Fig. 4), Ulman recreates herself as a fictional character in a social media soap opera in three acts. The provincial girl moves to the big city, wants to be a model, wants money, splits up with her high-school boyfriend, wants to change her lifestyle, enjoys singledom, runs out of money because she doesn’t have a job, because she is too self-absorbed in her narcissism, she starts going on seeking-arrangement dates, gets a sugar daddy, gets depressed, starts doing more drugs, gets a boob job because her sugar daddy makes her feel insecure about her body, and also he pays for it, she goes through a breakdown, redemption takes place, the crazy bitch apologizes, the dumb blonde turns brunette and goes back home. Probably goes to rehab, then she is grounded at her family house.16

In following her stream of Instagram posts we are invited to surveil a young woman made into a product through a series of selfies contextualized within a mise-en-scene of carefully chosen consumer products and environments. The essential ironies of the fictitious character can barely escape the commodification tropes of their mise-en-scene. They do, though only to those few of her 65,000 followers who understand the project as ‘art'. The “likes” of her clueless followers are sincere, and this is part of the pleasure for her cognoscenti audience. Nothing fuels irony better than misguided sincerity. In this way, the project plays in intriguing ways with twistings of the narrative structures of Author, Implied Author, Narrator, Narratee, Implied Reader, Actual Reader, and it amplifies the conflicts across these categories by placing the Author, Implied Author, and Narrator in the contested position of false protagonist. 16

The narrative accompanying the performance Excellences & Perfections. Quoted in Rachel Corbett, “How Amalia Ulman Became an Instagram Celebrity,” Vulture. Devouring Culture, 18 December 2014 http://www.vulture.com (accessed October 2017).

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Certainly, Ulman’s work blasts a hole in the general assumption of sincerity that powers social media posts. As with the photographs that populate social media, there is a misguided general tendency to receive social media text posts as indexical, while nothing could be further from the truth. The character Ulman’s posted images perform reveal her body as a fictional territory in a metaphor sufficiently ‘extended’ as to constitute an allegory. How the allegory is read is determined by the knowledge position of the reader. Any but the most naïve reading, however, will yield a sense of the precarity of self. My own work engaging the dual panoptics of physical public space and Internet data space began in 2007. Tango Panopticon 2.0 unfolded synchronously in 16 cities on 4 continents on Mayday 2010. Groups of people dressed in black danced tango in public locations that were under corporate or government video surveillance. They also streamed live video from cell phones to TangoIntervention.com. People watching could also download a free app to allow them to stream their own live video. Six live video streams were shown continuously and website visitors could click on the map, or list of cities, to choose which 6 live streams to watch. Tango Panopticon 2.0 was the first worldwide synchronous art event streaming live video from dispersed worldwide locations. I intended it, in a situationist light, as a global détournement. Tango Panopticon 2.0 grew out of a series of public space dance actions, Tango Interventions. These actions that seemed to be flash mobs were critically recontextualized at www.TangoIntervention.org as sitespecific interventions with a political edge. This series was founded on my hybrid practice since 1998 in which every project I did combined physical elements with extensive components on the Internet. The Internet components did not just document, but transformed the gallery or sitebased aspects of the projects with a strategy of expanding the possible interpretations of the physical components, in many cases by overtly contradicting them. This strategy of an aesthetics of contradiction was motivated by a desire to examine the way we increasingly propagate contradictory identities between our Internet lives and our embodied lives. More generally, I am also interested in advancing, in a post-internet context, an aesthetics of contradiction that I see as an under-acknowledged cultural current since the inception of modernism.

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Fig. 7. Robert Lawrence, Tango Panopticon 2.0., Mayday 2010. 16 world-wide synchronous dance interventions under corporate and governmental video surveillance with live event video streaming to www.TangoIntervention.org, detail from website interface. Courtesy the artist.

Fig. 8. Robert Lawrence, Tango Intervention, 2008. Art intervention on Brooklyn Bridge and atwww.TangoIntervention.org, Gayle Madeira dancing, photo by Robert Lawrence. Courtesy the artist.

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Fig. 9. Screen shot of Tangointervention.org on day of Tango Intervention Brooklyn Bridge, 2008. Excerpt from Brooklyn Bridge Surgeons report of accidents and fatalities of immigrant bridge workers. Courtesy Robert Lawrence.

Fig. 10. Robert Lawrence, Tango Intervention, 2007. Art intervention in Ybor City, FL and at www.TangoIntervention.org. Digital print from performance documentation, dimensions variable, Hélène Destombes and Nicolas Kourtellis dancing. Photo by Robert Lawrence. Courtesy the artist.

The project I developed recently entitled Horizon is a series of projects in which people all around the world will stream video from actions directly engaging the horizon line. Each location’s video will be added to a growing virtual horizon line online, where each video will contain links to specific information about each action. Horizon premiered in a workshop format at Live Performers Meeting in Rome in 2013. Horizon will develop slowly with contributions of recorded videos, leading eventually to the one-day world event in which actions around the world will come online as they each start at noon in their respective time zones. Later

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manifestations of the project will include gallery and public screen HD installations. I propose Horizon as a collective global gesture of alternative visuality. It is culturally positioned as panoptic and auto-optic, surveillant and sousveillant, while simultaneously reflecting on these positions.

Fig. 11. Robert Lawrence, Horizon, 2013. Work-in-progress, synchronous worldwide performances live streamed to webpage. Detail from the workshop production for Live Performers Meeting, Rome, Italy, http://www.h-e-re.com/horizon . Images from left to right include video stills from Robert Lawrence, Ghen Zando-Dennis, Selina Roman, Sam Bishop, and Robert Lawrence. Courtesy the artists.

With a more amplified aesthetic of contradiction and in a more overtly political action, Equivalence combines gallery exhibitions of photographs referencing Stieglitz’s Equivalents series, with a web page that identifies these gallery images as clouds passing over the Guantanamo Detention Center. The website also directs to tangible political actions opposing the continuation of this illegal prison camp. In this way, an audience who follows the work from the gallery to the website moves from an essentialist tribute to modernist transcendentalism to hard-edged deconstructivist political action. Gitmo is not a randomly chosen political target for me. It can clearly be seen as a logical expression of the panoptic controlling will that has consumed western culture. Ironically, it is not inconceivable that had artist Hasan Elahi not been such a fanatical selfsurveiller, and thus able to optically evidence his innocence, he might be a resident at Guantanamo now rather than directing an honours program at University of Maryland, College Park. These are the precarious contradictions of our age. Hybrid art that transforms a discourse in a passage through both embodied and virtual space offers a unique opportunity to explore cultural contradictions in their emerging complexities as contemporary life evolves in off/online visualities. In reviewing the works discussed above, one uncovers an aesthetics of contradiction at the core of each of them. Elahi being a victim of post 9/11 panoptic paranoia and yet saved by his own self-surveillance; Beaubois and Surveillance Camera Players creating public actions that contradict the presumed social contract for public video surveillance; Király’s photomontages redirecting the seeming benign valence of archival street images with the harsh political reality of their function within Ceauúescu’s

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panoptic police state, and Király’s deploying this contradiction to further challenge the benign objectivity of Google map images in a Post-Snowden era; Mundy’s I Know Where Your Cat Lives critique of data surveillance wrapped in the soft fuzz and purr of felinophilia; Ulman’s simultaneous indulgence in and critique of social media, consumer fetishization, objectification, and commoditization of the female body, wrapped in thought provoking narrative contradictions of fact and fiction in selfconstruction and representation. Indeed a similar analysis identifying contradictional aesthetics could be done for most post-internet work, or, I would argue, with any significant art of the modern era. I also argue that in the broader cultural realm in our post-internet age of embodied and virtual hybridity such fundamental social functions as identity, agency, self-presentation and selfrepresentation the scale of contradiction is exponentially greater than at any time. Thus, my conviction in the call for an aesthetics of contradiction that offers clearer perspectives on contemporary life.

Possible Conclusions and Post-Panoptic Projections Visual artists and theorists have strong impetuous to address issues of surveillance, “seeing from above,” because their trade is based on visual power. Accepting artistic practice and theory as visual agency we must engage issues of photographic and filmic representation in every cultural manifestation. I have talked primarily about the power of seeing, but equally important is the power of being seen. More than most, we have that power. Post-internet cultural shifts seem to offer the possibility of restructuring the dynamics of visibility along more democratic lines. It is now clear post-Snowden that this promise can be used as bait in a panoptic trap set by agencies that could lead to a new form of totalitarian state. In the face of this contradiction it is of interest to look at historical models of visibility in a political context. This initiates a much broader project than can be attempted in this essay, but I would like to point in that direction by looking at one historical image. This photograph below (Fig. 12) from the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers strike shows a large group of marchers all holding the same sign. It is a mass gesture of unity in defiance of a seemingly much greater power. History tells us that these power relations were eventually transformed. Optical power is not stable, but neither is progress inevitable. Recent race-based police brutality incidents in America—in which seemingly indisputable photographic evidence did not deliver convictions in charges of police brutality— demonstrate that visual agency and human dignity are still very much in

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negotiation. This seems to indicate that as photographic and video images have acquired ubiquity, they have lost power.

Fig. 12. Richard L. Copley, I AM a Man, 1968. Black & white photograph of Memphis sanitation workers strike. Collection of AFSCME Communications Department Records. Public domain.

Reviewing this historical image by Richard L. Copley we must recall that this pictured event occurred in a time when the indexical power of a photograph was largely unchallenged. These are bodies literally “on the line”. These are men risking their lives to collectively make a statement that is real, not virtual. The power of their actions passed directly through the image half a century ago. Is such an optical power possible PostInternet? While social media seems to grant us unlimited visual agency, its very ubiquity yields its precarity. More significantly, what do we give up to get that perceived agency? There is a profound clarity in this image from the Memphis sanitation workers strike, an action against the inhuman contradictions of racism. Is such an action, such an image, such a clarity, possible today? Passing over the gender exclusion of the image for a moment, the image might offer a transformed, but still compelling, message in the face of current Panopticism. I am a person, not a demographic. I am a person, not a data set. I am a person, not a commodity, not a target for international markets. It is impossible to directly compare the consequences of this image and the actions it represents with the bizarre twists of current social image practice—which largely come not from repression, but from an expression of a soulless privilege. However, to not recognize, and act upon, the ways in which we squander our visual agency today and surrender it as fuel for corporate

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profits we risk finding ourselves in a new position of disempowerment that, while certainly not as grave as Blacks experienced in Jim Crow America, is perhaps as tragic because we will have largely brought it upon ourselves. In 24/7, Jonathan Crary asks if we only have the choice of participating in these new panoptic consume/control systems or leaving society entirely. I am convinced that we have to struggle with that question, and I think that as artists and theorists we can do better than we have. One promising way of doing this is to acknowledge and more critically and creatively engage the unique possibilities that arise in the combination of embodied and Internet media. To better understand the hybrid embodied/virtual contemporary experience we must develop methodologies for hybrid embodied/virtual creation and reflection, and criticality.

FROM PLEASE TURN TO “PLEASE DON’T TOUCH:” FINDING THE EMBODIED VIEWER IN OTTO PIENE’S EARLY LICHTBALLETTE GEORGINA RUFF

Simultaneous but not synchronous musical excerpts of Wagner’s “Ring of the Nibelungs” can sometimes be heard through soaring (and colliding) through the northern end of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. When a curious visitor turns the corner to find the source of such cacophony, they are greeted by a room of pedal equipped 1930’s era Volksempfänger—the affordable radios promoted by the Nazi regime for propagandistic purposes. Ten Volksempfänger assemblages, created by Ed and Nancy Kienholz between 1973 and 1976, spill from the walls of the room with snaking electrical foot pedals thrust into the viewer’s pathway. Early on a Friday morning, when the museum is all but empty, the room is quiet.1 The antique radios are dripped over with the Kienholz trademark fiberglass and read as sculptures of archaic and deteriorating technology. Some radios face each other, some stand regimented along the wall presenting dials and speakers to the viewer, while two reign over an army of Mutterkreuz-wearing washboards.2 It happens fairly often that visitors pass through the room with a solely independent visual experience.

 1

I chose to use these works by Ed and Nancy Kienholz because they are currently on long-term installation at the Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin. While they have doubtlessly been conserved over the years, no alterations have been made to their essential structure/mechanisms. Also, due to the generosity of the DAAD (which also supported the Kienholz’s first year in Berlin) I have had the opportunity to visit the installation many times over a period of months in 2013-2014 and to speak with visitors concerning their interaction (or lack thereof). 2 The Nazi Mutterkreuz, or Cross of Honor for motherhood, was awarded by the Third Reich to German mothers who raised four or more children. There were three levels, bronze, silver, and gold, depending on the number of children.

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It requires an adventurous viewer, or a school tour group, to “turn on” the works and unleash the Valkyries. It is either the foot pedals themselves or the prospect of unknown sound that is somehow daunting to many museum visitors, some have admitted that it is the transgression of the normal boundary between viewer and art. Nevertheless, for the works to be complete, to be truly experienced, not only the physical presence but the physical activation of the viewer is necessary. Held in the depressed/on position, and after a slight delay, the foot pedals activate the audio component of the works and the Valkyries ride through the galleries. In the catalog for the 1977 show “Volksempfängers” at the Nationalgalerie, critic Roland Wiegenstein describes how the works shift the foundation of their meaning squarely onto the shoulders of the viewers as the artists abdicate to the complex relations between visitor and history. By mixing various views and attitudes…a certain amount of complication and fiction is set free which in turn can produce an active approach toward the artist’s work. Answers may be given, reflection may be provoked. We are left alone with these objects; that is, with ourselves. Kienholz [sic] who has put us on the trail has disappeared. We have to help ourselves from trouble.3

On a cognitive level, this “active approach” attempts to emancipate the viewer through a process of subjective interpretation and translation as described by Rancière, however as this study will argue, the Kienholz’s Volksempfänger series and similar works also create a physically activated viewer—necessitating corporeal participation with the work of art for completion4 The Volksempfänger works are activated today in the same physical manner that as they were in 1977, an increasingly rare situation for technologically based works over 30 years old. In July and August of 2014, just down the avenue of linden trees from the Neue Nationalgalerie at the Kunsthalle Deutsche Bank, the show “Otto Piene: More Sky” began with the work Please Turn (1961)—a rare opportunity to see one of Piene’s earliest light pieces. Unlike the Kienholz’s Volksempfänger, there are no foot pedals and soundtracks to Please Turn. Instead, the viewer is explicitly asked, in stark white letters painted on the black background of a large disc, to “slowly, extremely slow—please, turn—by hand –.” The other, and perhaps more significant difference between the Kienholz’s radios and Piene’s black disc, is that of

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Jörn Merkert, Edward Kienholz: Volksempfängers Nationalgalerie Berlin. Berlin: Adolph Fürst & Sohn, 1977, 19. 4 Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator. New York: Verso, 2009, 22.

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consistency. Since its creation Please Turn has been altered, such that the instructive inscription is no longer valid—viewers are reminded by the gallery attendant to please NOT touch or attempt to turn the work. In addition, the very functional, practical light fixtures, what Piene referred to as “his searchlights,” have been moved from their original, obvious placement in front of the work to an integrated and attached position in the rear, and have diminished in number, from two to one.5

Fig. 1. Ed and Nancy Kienholz, Volksempfängers (left to right: The Ladder, The Bench, The Wall Icon, The Iron Stand, The Kitchen Table), 1975-77, photo by G. Ruff, Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, September 2014. © Kienholz.

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Otto Piene and Heinz Mack, ZERO. Trans. Howard Beckman. Cambridge, Mass. And London England: The MIT Press, 1973, 148. A photograph of the original iteration of Please Turn, from the 1962 “nul” exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam is available in the photo archive of Manfred Tischer. Image: “piene_ausstellung_sehmela_dato_adam____0009”. http://www.tischer.org (accessed September 2017).

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Fig. 2. Otto Piene, Please Turn, 1961, photo by G. Ruff, Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, August 2014. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2014.

These changes, although seemingly necessary in terms of conservation and logistics, irrevocably alter Please Turn—in appearance certainly, but also in terms of the Environment created by the work and the positioning of the viewer. This study argues that through a deeper investigation of these two alterations, the first being the revocation of the necessity/ possibility of the viewer’s tactile interaction and the second being the relocation and reduction of the lamps from front to back and two to one, the physical location, necessity, and role of the viewer to the work can be

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triangulated. Furthermore, this study asks whether the alterations of Please Turn mitigate Piene’s original intentions and change the nature of the total Environment. The evolution of Otto Piene’s Lichtballette happened during a period when the embodied viewer was no longer a “subject” in the terms of the eighteenth century, or indeed even an “observer” in the terms of Jonathan Crary, but could rather be a participant, an activated viewer, or soon, an interactive viewer. The observer that Crary defines in Techniques of the Observer is simultaneously a product of and a contributor to modernity, a site of corporeal, subjective, visual perception encouraged by contemporary technology which served to “remake the individual as observer.”6 Key to this observer are the multiple positions that might be simultaneously occupied: as a spectator, as a subject, and as a machinic producer of images created from identical, external stimuli.7 The observer is perhaps best understood as a parallel to the industry of nineteenth century modernity, as a living, breathing version of the assembly line machine: a homogenous site of image assembly produced by the rapid social, technological and political advances of the period. In contrast, Piene’s Lichtballette, even in the earliest iterations, assumed autonomous viewers and provided singular experiences free from pre-determined perceptive goals. The earliest “archaic” Lichtballett was performed for one night in 1959 at Alfred Schmela’s Düsseldorf gallery. Piene explained a direct lineage from his earlier Rasterbilder, grid paintings created by forcing paint through screens of holes punched in sheet metal, to these works in which he physically manipulated those same screens before a light source. In the first iteration of the work, Piene stood facing the assembled viewers, holding a metal screen and a hand-held flashlight.8 Following Piene’s gaze and the assumed trajectory of light from the flashlight, the projections occurred somewhere above and behind the heads of the viewers, making it possible to observe only one part of the performance at a time. One’s view of the projection would depend upon location within the gallery—in essence, each viewer individually determined their perception of the work

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Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, Mass. And London England: The MIT Press, 1990, 22. 7 Crary, Techniques of the Observer, 112. 8 The Manfred Tischer archive holds the only confirmed photograph of this performance. Image: “piene_raster_licht-ballett_0002”. http://www.tischer.org (accessed September 2017).

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by their physical location and reaction within the Environment Piene had created. Julie H. Reiss begins her 1999 history of Installation Art by differentiating between the terms “Environment,” referring to works before 1970, and “Installation,” which came into use at the end of the 1960’s. She admits this to be a tricky business, as the terms themselves did not come into common usage until well after many of the works to which they apply had been created. Despite acknowledging significant European precursors such as El Lissitzky’s Proun Room (1923) and Kurt Schwitters Merzbau (1923-1937), Reiss writes of the Environments of Allan Kaprow as the works that concretized the term for art historical posterity.9 In 1958 Kaprow began making works in specific spaces: his Untitled Environment at the Hansa Gallery in March of that year was described by Arts magazine as a construction of “Strips and hangings of translucent plastic and cloth decorated with paint or varied cutouts…arranged in aisles through which one was invited to walk.”10 The viewer, who Kaprow would soon redesignate as the participant, was expected to move through the work.11 By the time of Words (1962), participants were also asked to physically contribute to the Environment, adding slips of paper to the gallery walls. In his theorization of the Environments and his slightly later Happenings, Kaprow wrote “It follows that audiences should be eliminated entirely. All the elements—people, space, the particular materials and character of the environment, time—can in this way be integrated…a group of inactive people in the space of a Happening is just dead space.”12 In Europe, Lucio Fontana had installed Ambiente spaziale a luce nera (Spatial Environment in Black Light) almost ten years earlier, in 1949 at the Naviglio Gallery in Milan. The work was a black-lit room, hung with phosphorescently painted papier-mâché “amoebas” through which the viewer was invited to move.13 Fontana was not as prolific an author as Kaprow and he still referred to the “viewer” when describing the intended effect of his Environment: “Neither painting nor sculpture, luminous forms

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Julie H. Reiss, From Margin to Centerࣟ: The Spaces of Installation Art. Cambridge, Mass. and London, England: The MIT Press, 1999, xxi–xxiv. 10 qtd. in Eva Meyer-Hermann, Andrew Perchuk, and Stephanie Rosenthal, Allan Kaprow: Art as Life. Getty Publications, 2008, 27. 11 Julie H. Reiss, From Margin to Center, 4. 12 In Michael Huxley and Noel Witts. The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader, 2nd. 2nd edition. New York: Routledge, 2002, 264. 13 Roberta Smith, “Slashes, Scribbles and Delirium.” The New York Times 4 May 2012: C30,

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in space—emotional freedom to the viewer.”14 But the work bore a striking similarity to Kaprow’s Untitled Environment in New York, including the expectation that the viewer/participant move through a labyrinthine space defined by hanging sculptural elements. The idea of the Environment, further defined by Kate Mondloch as a work “…meant to be experienced as activated spaces rather than as discrete objects…designed to ‘unfold’ during the spectator’s experience in time rather than to be known visually all at once” was arrived at almost simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic.15 Between 1960 and 1962, Piene’s Lichtballette rapidly evolved from peripheral, experimental works to the central motif of his early 1960’s oeuvre. Whereas the earliest Lichtballette relied on the artist and occasionally assistants to manipulate the perforated screens before the lights and to supply the accompanying music, by 1960 Piene showed three different forms on three successive nights at the ninth Abendausstellung / evening exhibition. After the first evening’s presentation of the Archaisches Lichtballett, Piene debuted Spinnen mit Scheinwerfer (spiders with spotlight) on the second evening. He described the third and final night as “experimental:” the first form of mechanical Lichtballett in which “bei dem Apparate die Spieler ersetzen:” a work in which the apparatus replaced the “players” (1965). From this description, we can surmise that the previous two evenings required animation by either Piene, his assistants, or the viewer. The archaisches Lichtballett had been shown multiple times previously, always as a performance by Piene, with or without additional assistants. But Spinnen mit Scheinwerfer was a new work, and was the only evening of the event known through photographs, which show spidery projections of light that could be manipulated by the viewer via small handcranks.16 By interacting with the work, the physically empowered viewer acted as participant, moved the filtering shades through which the light was projected, thereby altering the luminosity and light patterns of the surrounding space. Without the participant, Spinnen mit Scheinwerfer did not cease to exist, however the positions of the spidery lights remained static.

 14 Pilar Viladas, “Space Man: Lucio Fontana at Gagosian.” The New York Times Magazine. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Aug. 2014. 15 Kate Mondloch, Screens: Viewing Media Installation Art. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010, xiii. 16 Again a photograph by Manfred Tischer is the only known documentation: image: “lichtballett-morsbroich_62-_0005”. http://www.tischer.org (accessed September 2017).

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These years, 1958-1962, were as formative for Piene’s artistic theories as they were for his physical production. Together with friend and studio neighbor Heinz Mack, Piene had formed an association of like-minded individuals; calling themselves ZERO, the group published their first eponymous catalog-magazine in April of 1958, their second in October of the same year, and the final ZERO 3 in 1961. Membership in ZERO was by intellectual agreement rather than formal methods. Piene writes of the “integration of artistic imagination of individual artists from different parts of Germany (and—after some time—from all over the world)” rather than of meetings and manifestos.17 Importantly, in the same historical essay, Piene comments on the importance of two predecessors who also became friends and members of the group: Yves Klein and Lucio Fontana. Piene did not meet Fontana until 1961, although Mack had been introduced earlier through mutual friend Piero Manzoni. Piene describes Fontana’s “encouragement…as mainly a human impulse,” rather than direct influence, however an essay concerning Fontana opened the ZERO 3 publication, and the group would later parenthetically dedicate their contribution to documenta 3 Lichtraum (Hommage á Fontana) (1964). In 1962 only a year after their introduction, Piene and Group ZERO participated in the seminal “nul” show at the Stedelijk Amsterdam. The artists were given two rooms, choosing to install a ZERO salon d’lumiere in the first and to show independent works in the other. Piene placed five Lichtkugeln in the ZERO space to function in concert with two rotating Nagelwerke by Uecker, and several Reflektoren by Mack. Similar in conception to Fontana’s Ambiente spaziale a luce nera of 1949, visitors to the exhibition had no alternative but to become participants in the Environment—as the linear floorplan necessitated that they traverse the darkened ZERO salon d’lumiere to reach the rest of the “nul” exhibition (Stedelijk Archiv). In the next room, Piene upped the ante by placing Please Turn, a work which explicitly requests not only the participation by mobile, embodied viewers, but the physical interaction of an activated viewer. Claire Bishop describes the activated viewer as being “surrounded by and given a role within the work, as opposed to ‘just looking’ at painting or sculpture,” or, one could say, just moving through an environment/ installation.18 The activated viewer surpasses the limitations of Crary’s observer to act as an autonomous interlocutor with the art work, intent on negotiating their own experience or interpretation, to use Rancière’s

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Piene and Mack, ZERO, xx. Claire Bishop, Installation Art: A Critical History. New York: Routledge, 2005, 102.

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terminology. Bishop observes a further similarity between the activated viewer and Rancière’s emancipated spectator in the communicative relations that are engendered by such a work: “[t]his type of work conceives of its viewing subject not as an individual who experiences art in transcendent or existential isolation, but as part of a collective or community.”19 Such sociologically informed shifting positions, from observer to participant to activated viewer, are very seldom elucidated by the artist, and point to the larger scope of my research: a project which argues for the multiplicity of ways in which “ephemeral” installations, which none-the-less use obvious technological apparatuses, connect with the various roles assigned to the viewer. This moment in the middle of the twentieth century in which the participant and activated viewer are subtly positioned by their physical participation with the artwork is critical to that history. While it is tempting to describe works involving an activated viewer as interactive, the term is fraught due to its late twentieth century associations with media art. Katja Kwastek acknowledges that “interactive art” often implies “computer-supported installations for human-machine interface,” despite other and broader definitions that are also regularly used.20 Early cybernetic artists of the mid-twentieth century preferred terms such as responsive or reactive, which is instructive in understanding how they conceived of the relation between the work and the viewer. Whereas Kaprow, Fontana, and in certain instances, Piene and ZERO, sought an integration of the participant with the space and time of the environment, artists such as Nicholas Schöffer and Edward Ihnatowicz created independent works that reacted to their environment, although not necessarily the viewer. Similarly, using the term “participatory” in explanation of the viewer’s expected cooperation with a work invokes Nicholas Bourriaud and Claire Bishop’s conceptions of relational aesthetics, in which The artist is conceived less as an individual producer of discrete objects than as a collaborator and producer of situations; the work of art as a finite, portable, commodifiable product is reconceived as an ongoing or long-term

 19 Claire Bishop, Installation Art, 122. Rancière’s emancipated spectator is very similar to Bishop’s activated viewer: “...‘emancipation’ means: the blurring of the boundary between those who act and those who look; between individuals and members of a collective body” (Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, 19). 20 Kwastek, Katja. Aesthetics of Interaction in Digital Art. Cambridge, Mass. and London, England: The MIT Press, 2013, 8.

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From Please Turn to “Please Don’t Touch” project with an unclear beginning and end; while the audience, previously conceived as a ‘viewer’ or ‘beholder,’ is now repositioned as a co-producer or participant…all aim[ing] to place pressure on conventional modes of artistic production and consumption under capitalism.21

Rirkrit Tiravanija is often cited as an artist who creates participatory works, although Bourriaud includes a long list of others in his 1998 codification of the term. Well-known participatory works by Tiravanija have involved the serving of food by the artist to participants in a museum, gallery, or alternative space. The work is not located in the act: the detritus from the event remains as evidence and instigation for the true work, which is the situation that calls into question everything that one thought was understood about the artwork as commodifiable object. While Kaprow was interested in questioning the art object as such, the Environments (and Happenings) were in no way open ended or unscripted as Tiravanija’s works are. Rather, as Fontana’s Environments, and later Piene and the Kienholz’s installations, the Happenings were a new form of the art object, one that was inclusive of space and time, and required the activated viewer. Piene’s choice to “mechanize” the final Lichtballett of the ninth Abendausstellung in 1960 foreshadowed his innovations of the following year. The Licht-Kugeln and Licht-Scheiben (light spheres and discs) that comprised the Klassische Lichtballett at the Museum Schloss Morsbroich in Leverkusen in 1961 required no physical intervention other than to be turned on; the motorized wheels of the Lichtscheibe and the mechanisms moving the interior spotlights of the Lichtkugel then rotated independently of human presence. Similarly, in his 1999 interview with Dr. Tiziana Caianiello (lead archivist for the ZERO Foundation), Piene describes the practical decision to automate the ZERO salon d’lumiere at the 1962 “nul” show—based on the behavior of children when confronted with the large “switch board” that was originally central to the piece.22 Instead, the ZERO works were plugged to a central timer which played the automated pieces in continuous succession, eliminating the need for an activated viewer. This is the form that all of the Lichtballette were to take by the mid 1960’s; configurations of automated apparatuses controlled by central timing devices, and new versions of the “automatic” Lichtballette were created until Piene’s death in 2014. But before that occurred, Piene made

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Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. Original edition. London; New York: Verso, 2012, 2. 22 Otto Piene, Biography and Bibliography, 30 March 1965, ZERO Foundation, Düsseldorf, 189.

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an interim work in 1961: Please Turn, a piece that explicitly requests the viewer to interact with it, to animate the rotating disc in front of the spotlight “very slowly.” The earliest photographs of Please Turn, showing the work at the 1962 “nul” exhibition at the Stedelijk Amsterdam, depict a perforated black disc with a diameter of approximately 90cm, inscribed in white paint with the words “slowly, extremely slow—please turn—by hand –.”23 These instructions are painted over the cross-brace on the front of the disc, which might also act as a handle. At nine and three o’clock on the circumference of the circle one can see the terminations of the roughly hewn backmounted cross-supports. The other shorter protrusions appear to rotate with the disc, indicating that they might also be used as handles. The disc is affixed to a vertical support, ostensibly on some type of rotating joint, and that support is then secured to a saw-horse. The entire assemblage is painted black. In front of this, at least in 1962, are two spot lights, directed at the surface of the rotating disc. As the viewer turns the disc, slowly, the lights shine through the perforations, creating what Piene described as a “play of light” on the wall behind.24 This play of light is visible in several photos—a web-like projection of light strands no bigger that the disc of Please Turn itself. As the activated viewer turns the wheel, the web of light creeps across the wall in a sort of spidery dance. If the action ceases, chances are that the projected light is also extinguished, as the holes in the wheel must align with the lamp for the effects to occur. For Piene, light had always been the focus of the Lichtballette, his 1961 essay “Paths to Paradise” announces his ultimate goal to be “…the projection of light into the vast night sky, the probing of the universe as it meets the light, untouched, without obstacles…”25 Piene confirmed this interest in a less poetic manner during a 1999 interview concerning the continued conservation of these early works, stating “Der Sinn der Sache war aber das Licht…Die Objekte waren ja sekundär. / The meaning of the thing was but the light…the objects were just secondary.”26 While this interest in light is evident in his works from the 1950’s through

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Curated by Henk Peeters and Willem Sandberg, 9-25 March, 1962. Piene uses the term “Lichtspiele” in a 1962 interview with the Belgian public television station VRT. The interview was recorded during the opening of the “dynamo” show at the Palais des Beaux Artes, Brussels. ZERO Foundation. 25 Piene and Mack. ZERO, 148. 26 Tiziana Caianiello, Der Lichtraum (Hommage à Fontana) und das Creamcheese im Museum Kunst Palast: zur Musealisierung der Düsseldorfer Kunstszene der 1960er Jahre. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2005, 186. 24

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2014, the presence of the projecting apparatus is also undeniable and central to all of the works.27 Of course, the movement of the web projected by Please Turn depended upon just how slowly the visitor turned the disc, but the arrangement of viewer, then lamps, then Piene’s construction, and lastly the projected light on the wall, placed the viewer and the light, which is the “meaning of the thing,” at the furthest possibly distance, while making the origin of the light coincide with the placement of the viewer. This configuration would change sometime after 1964, when Please Turn was reconfigured in such a way that a single spotlight is today affixed to a second rear support, and now shines toward the viewer—the light shines in many ways in their eyes. At last year’s “ZERO in Gelsenkirchen 1963/2013” show and at the 2014 Deutsche Bank KunstHalle show in Berlin, the work was shown with a rear mounted spotlight and was occasionally demonstrated by a gallery attendant. Viewers were never allowed to directly interact with the work (although many “illegally” did, per the seemingly apparent instructions). The practicalities that led to these decisions are unclear, although it was doubtless an interest in the preservation of the work that caused the hands-off regulation. The altered position and number of the spotlights is more of a mystery. Do these changes impact the relationship of the activated viewer to the work? In attempting to recuperate the original iteration of Please Turn, it’s helpful to return to the comparison of the Kienholz’s Volksempfänger. Despite the obvious invitation, visitor are often hesitant to activate the touch-pedal radio works, perhaps because conventional museum and gallery behavior dictates that art must not be touched, but maybe also due to the unknown nature of the result (especially on a quiet morning in the Volksempfänger gallery). Touching an artwork transgresses normal boundaries and alters the relationship between viewer and object, leading instead to what Michael Fried famously criticized as a “theatrical” relationship—one that attempts to eliminate the border between stage and audience, art and viewer. However if the artist is attempting to activate the viewer, then this interaction as described by Kaprow, is mandatory. Moreover, if the activated viewer is to become part of a “community,” as prescribed by Bishop and Rancière, the results of this interaction with the work must be shared in some way. With both the Volksempfänger and Please Turn it is fairly likely that the viewer can predict what will happen

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The Lichtballette were never produced by a hidden apparatus, with the exception of several later “wall works” created in the 2000’s; these later works were shown in conjunction with other Lichtballette free-standing pieces that maintained the centrality of technology.

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when the work is “turned on”—the Volksempfänger gallery is full of radios, one can assume that sound will play, and Please Turn, in original form, included two large spotlights shining from a position just next to the viewer, so the changes in illumination seem imminent. Once the viewer becomes active, the work can be considered complete: the music plays, the spiders of light crawls across the wall. Others present within the space are immediately implicated as part of the created community, as their perceptions of the work are also now complete. In the original iteration of each piece, the work stops when the activated viewer does, the music ends when the pedal is released, the light stops moving when the disc is no longer turned. The completed Environment no longer exists. The altered version of Please Turn revokes this agency of the activated viewer, repositioning them instead somewhere between a participant and Crary’s culturally produced observer, as an embodied viewer who exists in the space of the Environment, but who will receive only the same sensory information as all others who see the work. Similarly, the Environment, once created and controlled by the active viewer, has changed. Should visitors attend the “presentation” of the work (recently in Berlin this occurred daily at 6pm), the aspects of mystery, discovery, and creation were subverted by an informative docent, who fully described Please Turn, Piene’s interest in light, and the history of the Lichtballette as she demonstrated the piece. The instructions were no longer meant for the general public, rather the gloved agent of the KunstHalle and the attention of the viewers was not fixed on the object, or even the play of light, but rather on the docent. As the second photograph below shows, changing the position of the spotlight also altered the visual totality of the piece. The activated viewer in 1961 stood near the work to turn the disc and the light was then projected from the viewer’s side through the perforations and onto the wall behind. At no point could the viewer see the play of light without also seeing the apparatus that produced it. Today, viewers can choose between looking at the light or that which creates it, there is no possibility of looking at both simultaneously, a position which effectively separates the work and its effect, rather than creating a unified environment of light, apparatus, and activated viewer.

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Fig. 3. Otto Piene, Please Turn, 1961, photo by G. Ruff, Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, August 2014. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2014.

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Fig. 4. Otto Piene, Please Turn, 1961, photo by G. Ruff, Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, August 2014. (c) VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2014

Piene, also philosophy student, wrote of the monism of body and mind in “Paths to Paradise,” published in the third and final issue of ZERO (1961). In it, he described his understanding of the human position: “Mind, which is really body, and body, which really exists in mind, do not wish to allow us to treat them as separate entities.”28 In the original iteration of Please Turn, the body of the viewer was engaged in the physical act of turning the disc and one can posit that since the entire focus of both tactile and visual senses were in the same direction as the physical action, the mind was also focused on the Gesamtkunstwerk. However, by “deactivating” the viewer, Piene separated mind and body in the nonactivated viewer: the body instead becomes more hindrance than help as the mind attempts to totalize the disparate elements of apparatus and projected light. Piene’s Lichtballette installations after 1962 evolved in a manner that minimized viewer activation and instead focused on the work’s ability to create mediated spaces similar to those described by Benjamin is his unfinished Das Passagen-Werk. They would reflect Benjamin and Piene’s ideas of utopian spaces that relocate the viewer both physically and sensorially, and which encourage transcendent dreams while maintaining sets of visual cues concerning contemporary reality. Never again would one of Piene’s works explicitly request the activated viewer, or place that

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Piene and Mack. ZERO, 148.

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viewer in a particular spatial relationship to the apparatus of the work. Rather, the physical alterations made to Please Turn herald the role of the viewer in Piene’s later Lichtballett Environments: as an embodied and dualistic participant.

BEYOND VIRTUAL BODIES: A NEW FRONTIER? RODICA MOCAN AND ùTEFANA RĂCOREAN

In the 2014 science fiction thriller film Transcendence (directed by cinematographer Wally Pfister, written by Jack Paglen and produced by Christopher Nolan), Dr. Caster—played by Johnny Depp—is an artificial intelligence scientist who develops a computer program so powerful that it is able to create a technological wonder, a blend between humans and machines. During a violent demonstration by echo-activists, he is poisoned with a substance that will slowly—but inevitably—kill him. Encouraged and assisted by his wife Evelyn (played by Rebecca Hall), the dying scientist uploads his consciousness—seen as an extension of his body— into an artificial intelligence powered program, just before his death. Ignoring the advice of her close friends and collaborators, she immerses herself into this project and provides physical assistance to the computer program through an interface that emulates her husband's image. As Evelyn interacts with the projection of her husband, she develops a relationship with the avatar that becomes increasingly sophisticated and realistic. Two years after her husband’s physical death, she continues to refer to her actions as shared with him: “my husband and I are doing…” This present-tense, continuous reference to her interaction with her husband’s avatar shows that she acts as if she were interacting with her deceased husband, as if he were still alive and able to help her make decisions. It also reveals a disturbed and incomplete grief process that keeps her in a state of continuous denial. Unable to admit that her husband has passed away, she feels guilty when thinking of dating other men. The idea of the extension of human consciousness in forms developed and maintained outside the human body has been extensively explored in literature, film and gaming. This type of scenarios was initially more specific to the science-fiction genre. However, the boundaries between fiction and reality are becoming more fluid today, as the recent advancements in artificial intelligence, bio and nanotechnologies, as well as other types of digital technologies, are getting closer to us.

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The cyborg used to be a figment of a writer's imagination, a character in a novel or a movie. However, they can be real nowadays. Neil Harbisson’s case is famous in this sense. The young man, born color blind, developed a technological device that translated the wavelength of the colour of light into sound, enabling him to perceive colours by “listening to” rather than looking at them. A digital camera mounted on his head “reads” the colours, sending the information to a processing device that sends it back as sound waves to a headphone set. As he wears the device all the time, he has become the first person to receive—somewhat reluctantly—a passport with a “cyborg” picture on it, thus certifying the identity of an individual wearing technology as part of his body. Initially, he wore a regular digital camera and a headphone set and the software ran on a laptop that he carried in his backpack at all times. Today, he uses a technological device that has been successfully implanted in his head, allowing him to hear the sounds directly in his skull. The processor runs on a mobile device. He can receive phone calls directly in his head and he connects to the Internet through Bluetooth, being able to receive direct messages from other phones. Interestingly, Harbisson is also a visual artist and a fervent cyborg activist, stating that he became a cyborg when the union between his organism and his antenna created something that he perceives as a new sense. Another application that aims to extend human consciousness was developed by Marius Ursache. He is a trained medical doctor and a graduate of the Interactive Multimedia Master program at Babeú-Bolyai University, who has successfully turned digital media entrepreneur. As a result of an entrepreneurship workshop at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), together with Nicolas Lee and Rida Benjelloun, he founded a company called eterni.me, whose slogan is: “Simply Become Immortal.”1 The company is built on the idea of collecting everything customers have created online during their lifetime, processing the information through complex artificial intelligence algorithms and making it available for interaction with the loved ones under the form of an avatar. In other words, this platform will collect information from people who subscribe to the project and grant permission to specific persons to access and process all the digital information they have ever produced on the Internet. The platform will create an avatar of the person based on its digital online presence; the avatar can emulate and interact with the loved ones, even after that person’s physical death. In real life, after an individual passes away, his/her belongings are transferred to the loved ones as they were when the person left them. The platform, however, will 1

Eternime: www.eterni.me (accessed October 2017).

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not deliver to the loved ones the mere content of what was left, but will process it through the help of the avatar, with which one can interact, long after that person is gone. It is no surprise that the idea sparked a whole range of reactions. Although, for the public, the project is just a webpage at the moment, many thousands have already subscribed, stating their interest in this facility. During interviews in various media, Ursache defended the idea of the avatar, stating that it does not stand in the way of the grieving process, but rather assists in creating a repository of memories. Still, at this point, we can hardly start to envision the effects such a digital application will have on its users. There are more controversial aspects regarding such a project. One of them has to do with the development of artificial intelligence itself. Other aspects are related to the concept of immortality and life outside the human body, as well as the impact such a product will have on the psychological and emotional well-being of its users.

The promise of virtual immortality In Understanding Media: The extension of Man (1964), Marshall McLuhan wrote: During the mechanical ages we had extended our bodies in space. Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man—the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society, much as we have already extended our senses and our nerves by the various media.2

Indeed, artificial intelligence proves that this development is exponential. Along the same lines, artificial intelligence is seen by Ray Kurzweil as the main engine behind “technological singularity.” He states: “The Singularity will represent the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but that transcends our biological roots.”3 Moreover, he maintains that: “There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between 2

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, Mass. and London, England: The MIT Press, 1994 (1964), 3. 3 Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near: When humans transcend biology. New York: Viking Press, 2005, 9.

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human and machine nor between physical and virtual reality. If you wonder what will remain unequivocally human in such a world, it’s simply this quality: ours is the species that inherently seeks to extend its physical and mental reach beyond current limitations.”4 Of course, Ray Kurzweil’s position might seem exaggerated for some readers; he represents the group of artificial intelligence enthusiasts, being the co-founder and leader of the Singularity University, whose mission is “to educate, inspire and empower leaders to apply exponential technologies to address humanity’s grand challenges.”5 He speaks openly about his optimism regarding humans’ ability to reach a state where technology will merge with the human body to the point where we will not be able to tell the difference between them. From such thinking emerged the concept of transhumanism, a belief which holds, according to the writers of the Singularity theory, that technology can allow us to improve, enhance and overcome the limits of our biology. More specifically, transhumanists such as Max More, Natasha VitaMore and Ray Kurzweil believe that by merging man and machine via biotechnology, molecular nanotechnologies, and artificial intelligence, one day science will yield humans that have increased cognitive abilities, are physically stronger, emotionally more stable and have indefinite lifespans. This path, they say, will eventually lead to ‘posthuman’ intelligent (augmented) beings far superior to man—a near embodiment of god.6 In contrast with these enthusiastic positions, other researchers view artificial intelligence in a less positive light. Three highly reputed specialists in the field of science and technology made very bold statements recently regarding the dangers of the (over)development of artificial intelligence. In an interview aired on BBC in November 2014, the physicist Stephen Hawkins, one of the greatest minds of our time, issued a serious warning regarding the advances of strong artificial intelligence. He stated: “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”7 While being himself a direct beneficiary of the use of artificial intelligence, which enables him to overcome his speech and movement disabilities, he somewhat surprisingly claims that the development of more hard-core artificial intelligence applications could get out of control and pose a real danger to human life. 4

Ibid. Singularity University, About. www.singularityu.org (accessed October 2017). 6 See Singularitysymposium, www.singularitysymposium.com (accessed October 2017). 7 Rory Cellan-Jones, “Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind,” BBC News 2 December 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/technology30290540 (accessed October 2017). 5

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In his turn, Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, expresses his concerns regarding artificial intelligence. “I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence,” Gates wrote. “First, the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well. A few decades after that, though, the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern.”8 Elon Musk, entrepreneur, engineer and inventor, founder of Tesla Motors, is also open about his concerns, as he has expressed them in recent interviews: “With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon.”9 Musk, along with many others, invests his own money in an initiative called Future of Life Institute. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the institute is aimed at “reducing existential risk,” by “catalysing and supporting research and initiatives for safeguarding life and developing optimistic visions of the future, including positive ways for humanity to steer its own course considering new technologies and challenges.”10 Some of the people involved in this initiative are Jaan Talling (co-founder Skype), Stephen Hawkins (Nobel Prize winner), Mark Zuckenberg (founder of Facebook) and many other signatories of “Research Priorities for Robust and Beneficial Artificial Intelligence: an Open Letter.” The letter has been signed by an impressive number of academics and researchers from the world’s greatest universities, all pledging their support for the research priorities regarding the development of artificial intelligence that is “robust and beneficial.” (“Research priorities for robust and beneficial artificial intelligence”) Above and beyond the concerns regarding the use of artificial intelligence, the idea on which eterni.me project is based brings into discussion the very concept of being, aiming for virtual immortality, if we are to believe the slogan.

Cyberspace Pathology Philosopher and musician Kathleen Coessens speaks about the way in which cyberspace redefines the concepts of time, space, virtual and real world, and even identity. Boundaries, writes Coessens, become less clear 8

Brad Reed, “Bill Gates is the latest brilliant person to warn artificial intelligence could kill us all,” Yahoo Tech, February 3, 2015. https://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/bill-gates-latest-brilliant-person-warn-artificialintelligence-154513637.html (accessed October 2017). 9 Matt McFarland, “Elon Musk: ‘With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon.’” In Washington Post, October 24, 2014. https://www.washingtonpost.com (accessed October 2017). 10 Future of Life Institute. http://futureoflife.org (accessed October 2017).

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when physical limitations can be surpassed. Drawing from Michel Serres’s philosophy, Coessens asks: “Where is the ‘I am’ defined? […] Where does my coherence, my identity end?”11 In other words, what is the impact cyberspace has on one’s identity and relationships and how does it influence one’s perception of others when one can have multiple avatars or digital identities? These questions address a number of psychological and ethical implications of the development paths of digital technology. The development and increased accessibility of various forms of “virtual worlds” have revealed a new wave of psychological pathology for the user: identity related disorders, multiple types of addiction (pornography, virtual infidelity, and gaming), cyber bullying (considered to be a growing cause of deaths among adolescents), concentration difficulty or attention deficit. According to Kimberly Young, cited in Mark D. Griffiths,12 Internet addiction has five components: cyber-relationship addiction (excessive use of online relationships), net compulsions (such as online gaming or shopping), information overload (disproportionate surfing the web), computer addiction (pathological game playing) and cybersex (use of the internet for sex or pornography). Excessive Internet use, with or without a sexual component, is time consuming and can have negative consequences on one’s relationships or professional life. Therefore, we are told, a key element in engaging in successful social relationships is to be searching for them in real life, rather than in virtual environments. As regards identity, it is relevant for our argument to bring in discussion a philosophical interpretation called the absolute view, formulated by Bishop Joseph Butler (1692-1752) and Thomas Reid (17101796). In their opinion, a person is distinct from artefacts because persons maintain strict, absolute sameness through change. According to this view, personal identity is absolute, and it is not a matter of convention, it does not come in degrees and it is not partial (unlike an object, which can be changed by replacing its parts). Two of the characteristics of the “I” in this approach are the fact that a person is a unity at a given time and a person is a unity through time. What this means is that different experiences are united as experiences of the same person, being owned and having the identical centre of consciousness, the same “I.” Then again, even if body parts or mental states change, they all belong to the same person, because 11 Kathleen Coessens, “Where Am I? Body and Mind Reviewed in the Context of Situatedness and Virtuality,” International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, Volume 5, Issue 11, 2011, 66. 12 Griffiths, Mark D. “Internet sex addiction: A review of empirical research.” Addiction Research & Theory, 20 (2), 2012, 112.

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they have the same enduring “I.” Speaking about a different model of interpretation, the empiricist views of personal identity, J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig bring the following argument regarding the basic experiences of self: Through introspection, you are simply aware that you are not your body or a group of experiences. Rather, you are aware that you are the self that owns and unifies your experiences at each moment of time and that you are the same self that endures through time. In short, you are aware of being a mental subject that is in your body, that owns and unites your experience and that maintains sameness through change.”13

From this perspective, it is important for humans to have an integrated identity, to hold onto the ability of preserving sameness while experiencing both real and virtual realities at a given time or throughout different moments in time. These are situations we face in real life in certain contexts offered by the artificial intelligence. The eterni.me project is one such opportunity. Aside from its exoticism and the apparent generous promise of a transcendent experience which is appealing to the contemporary tech savvy user, the project raises, nevertheless, many significant questions. How will the avatar—a virtual construction, outside of temporal constraints—be able to hold an identity coherent enough in order to be able to interact with others as if it were the projection of a real person? If successful, what will be the effect of this identity replacement? If communication between humans is largely dependent on feedback, how will the communication take place on the eterni.me platform, where the feedback comes from an avatar developed through artificial intelligence? If the avatar is true to the individual it impersonates, how will it emotionally impact his/her loved ones and the natural grieving process? McBride and Simms propose a grief timeline as a model of processing loss. Even though other theorists of loss (such as Kubler-Ross and Lyckholm) argue against a linear grieving process, considering that people go back and forth between different stages of grief, they all agree that there is a time frame for experiencing each stage, with a maximum of up to 48 months for the complete cycle. If we go back to Evelyn, the character that portrays the wife of Dr. Casper in Transcendence, we notice that she is still in the early stages of grief, as expected after 24 months of interaction with her husband’s avatar. This continuing interaction makes the transition to a normal life - a life in which she would be able to 13 J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. Westmont, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2003, 293.

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function without her late husband- impossible after the loss. Referring to the tasks of mourning described by Worden in 2002, Blevins states that, “without the completion of these tasks, the person can become stuck in their mourning and develop physical, emotional, and mental problems. Often the mourner does not recognise that unfinished grief is at the core of their problems.”14 Processing grief can become problematic when there is a perceived possibility of continuing some sort of a relationship with the departed person. However, there are some instances when having the possibility of maintaining some kind of contact with the loved one after his/her passing away can have a beneficial effect, by creating an encounter in which unresolved things can be said or settled. But again, processing these things will be highly dependent on the type of content the avatar will emulate. Nonetheless, the relationship one maintains with avatars or other types virtual beings (in online pornography consumption, for instance) is also highly dependent on psycho-social profile of the subject and on the context. Referring to the consumption of pornography and how this can remain just an occasional thing for some, although it can become an addiction for others, Griffiths states that Young people, who belong to the so called net-generation, often use pornography quite extensively during a period of time without being addicted, as a substitute for real life sexuality and/or as a way of ‘learning different kinds of sexual behaviours.’ But there is a small group of individuals who are at risk for developing addiction. Usually, they have a very complex life situation, related to vulnerable social, economical, and psychological aspects15

We believe the same principle applies to the situation we are discussing here. For certain people, having the possibility of maintaining some kind of contact with their loved one after his/her passing away can have a beneficial effect, creating an encounter in which unresolved things can be said or settled. Others could take the experience of eterni.me project as it is, as something that cutting-edge technology can offer. But there are people who have vulnerabilities and have less support in real life, and for those people we believe that engaging in such a project can complicate the grieving process and can create further psychological 14

Sharon Blevins, “A Personal Journey through the Grief and Healing Process with Virginia Satir, Dr. E. Kubler-Ross, and J. William Worden,” in The Satir Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2., 2008, 26. 15 Mark D. Griffiths, “Internet sex addiction: A review of empirical research.” Addiction Research & Theory, 20 (2), 2012, 121.

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issues. Our hope is that this project will take into account these types of reaction and educate their users regarding such possibilities, encouraging them to seek assistance if needed.

The extension of the human. Where to? Thinking about the ways in which artefacts and technology are able to extend the life of a person beyond his/her physical body and bodily functions preoccupied various scholars in the modern epoch. Marshall McLuhan famously envisioned the impact of new media technologies on human lives, formulating his “extension theory” in Understanding Media. The Extension of Man (1964). However, he was not the first theorist to make the analogy between technology and the extended body. Almost one century before McLuhan, in Grundlinien, the first book of philosophy of technology, Ernst Kapp formulated a theory describing each technological artefact as the projection of a human organ or an imitation of it. Although he did not use the term “extension” but rather “projection,” he saw technology as a continuation of the body. Also, Kapp considered that, unconsciously, human beings use their own faculties as a standard when designing technological artefacts. Within the same line of thought, McLuhan looked at technologies as extensions and amplifications of the body functions and of the cognitive abilities. In his view, the main extensions of the body were developed during the mechanical age, with the emergence of tools and machinery that could replace parts of the body that accomplished physical functions, increasing power and speed, and therefore resulting in increased productivity. Weapons were extensions of hands, clothing an extension of the skin, the wheel an extension of the feet, and so on. The main difference between McLuhan’s and Kapp’s theories is that Kapp reflects on the physical form of the biological organ which is transferred or imitated by technology, while McLuhan considers the transfer and amplification of the functions of the body. Media is seen as an extension of the senses: radio extends the ears and television extends the eyes and ears, while print and the written word fulfil visual functions. Electric media and the development of new media technologies are compared with information processing functions of the nervous system. In his view, the final stage of extension of the human body functions will lead towards a collective consciousness at the level of the whole human society. David Rothenberg is another philosopher of technology who adopts the extension paradigm when considering the human-technology interaction. In Hand's End. Technology and the limits of nature, published in 1995, he

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describes technology as the tool that extends humanity and human nature. He basically states that technology can enhance all those human faculties as if they were human organs or parts “for which we possess a mechanical understanding”16 However, he maintains, technology cannot extend those functions that are not mechanised, such as judgment, morality, and orientation. Thus, his theory is more about the extension of human intentions than of the human body. Philip Brey takes further his critical analysis of the extension theories advanced by Kapp, McLuhan and Rothenberg, who hold rather determinist positions, in order to formulate his own position, by considering technology as an enhancement of human faculties. He writes: “Yet, it is to be observed that artefacts have both (practical) physical functions and (social cultural) status functions, both of which serve to extend abilities of the human organisms.”17 Brey’s important contribution to the theories of extending the human body is that he sees these extensions at both the physical and the social levels: it is a status that can be performed because of collective agreements regarding it. Whatever the destination and the form of the extensions of our bodies through technology, what is important to acknowledge—and this is something, we argue, the eterni.me platform aims to permanently renegotiate—is to what extent we actually control and direct the effects of technology onto our bodies and minds. If we are to believe McLuhan, the result of the overload of technology and information has a numbing effect on the human body, the results being a form of self-amputation, followed by the need for a new extension. The latter is going to influence the way we perceive and position ourselves in relationship with the environment. Once we create an extension into a new medium (or media), a new cycle starts as soon as the surplus of stimuli numbs us. In his commentary on McLuhan and the extension theory, Stacey Koosel concludes: Almost 50 years after McLuhan explored the effects of our technologies on the psyche, research has yet to move forward significantly, and we are still poised to rediscover the same idea. This scenario would suggest a trend where technology may be infiltrating our lives and sense at a much greater pace than our ability to understand the effects and pressure they place on 16 David Rothenberg, Hand's End. Technology and the limits of nature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, 16. 17 Philippe Brey, “Theories of Technology as Extension of the Human Faculties.” Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Technology. Research in Philosophy and Technology, 19. The University Twente, 2000, 11. http://www.utwente.nl/bms/wijsb/organization/brey/Publicaties_Brey/Brey_2000_ Extension_Faculties.pdf (accessed October 2017).

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our sensorium and psyche.18

This conclusion is essentially not different from the one sustained by Ray Kurzweil in the “law of accelerated returns.”

Technological development and models of human response The question that arises is, therefore, what is our response to the opportunities and challenges posed by these unexpected forms of technological development, in terms of both our bodily reaction and our philosophical stance? Any such answer should start from the premise that the world we live in today is completely different from the world we lived in as children. The ever expanding technologised world facilitates different communicational patterns and different embodied experiences, and this has a crucial relevance on how we see and internalise—and thus how we analyse and theorise—the technological extensions of the body and the probable afterlife of the body within cyberspace. We become more and more aware of and involved in this technological “comfort zone,” in which the established frontiers between the real and the virtual worlds seem to be permanently renegotiated. In a recently published article, Shelly Palmer, tech expert and managing director of the Digital Media Group, makes a bold statement regarding the pace of technological development in our age and the ways we deal with this expansion: ...Here’s how to think about the remarkable pace of technological change and the huge number of people in simple terms: 1) Technology is changing at a faster and faster pace. In fact, today is the slowest rate of technological change you will ever experience in your life. 2) The more people are connected, the more powerful the network becomes.19

Palmer draws his conclusion from various theories on the humancomputer interaction, such as: Moore’s law, The Law of Accelerating Returns and Metcalf's law. Simply put, Moore’s law states that the overall 18 Stacey Koosel, “Surfing the Digital Wave: Digital Identity as Extension,” in McLuhan’s Philosophy of Media Centennial Conference, 2011, 3. https://www.academia.edu/2048738/Surfing_the_Digital_Wave_Digital_Identity_a s_Extension (accessed October 2017). 19 Shelly Palmer, “The tech trends that will change the world,” CNN, January 23, 2015. http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/08/opinion/tech-trends-changing-worldshelly-palmer/index.html (accessed October 2017).

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processing powers of computers will double every two years (although that has been proven by some not to be entirely accurate). Based on the analysis of the history of technological development, in The Law of Accelerating Returns, Raymond Kurzweil20 affirms that technological change is not linear but exponential. If his estimation is accurate, the next 100 years of technological development will actually be the equivalent of 20,000 years, with sometime exponential rates within the exponential growth itself. Metcalf's Law asserts that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users in the system. Even if not all the numbers advanced by these laws are mathematically exact (as some scholars argue), the overall conclusion is mind-blowing: we are living times of unprecedented change and this fact alone has a significant direct impact on our lives, to the point where we can expect to live to see a “singularity.” This would mean a development that will produce a change so dramatic that we cannot envision its consequences in the future within the framework of present-day thinking. According to Kurzweil, The Singularity is technological change so rapid and so profound that it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. Some would say that we cannot comprehend the Singularity, at least with our current level of understanding, and that it is impossible, therefore, to look past its ‘event horizon’ and make sense of what lies beyond.21

Given this rapid pace of development and its unpredictability, one of the main preoccupations of the scholars and scientists is to investigate to what extent we are able to control this process. The inquiry formulated in this essay referring to the new frontier between real and virtual bodies is part of this kind of preoccupations. Andrew Feenberg provides a framework for a bird’s eye view on the various theories regarding the philosophy of technology and the laws that govern the development of technologies. He starts with two questions meant to help define the nature of technology and the relationship between technology and human beings. The first question is: “Can humans control technology? Is technology autonomous or is it under human control?” The second question addresses the nature of technology: Does technology have built-in value or is it [value] neutral? Is there a connection between the 20

Raymond Kurzweil, “The Law of Accelerating Returns,” Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence, Essays, 2001 http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-acceleratingreturns (accessed October 2017). 21 Ibid.

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means (technology) and the ends (values)?22 Feenberg summarises the answer to these questions in a matrix of the four major categories of philosophies of technology. The following table helps us understand the development of technology based on two axes, one of which reflects the relationship with the values attributed to technology and the other to the human ability to control it. The four categories represent the major theories related to technology and its relationship with humans. Can humans control technology?

Does technology have builtin value?

No: Technology is “neutral”

Yes: Technology is connected to the values

No: Technology is autonomous

Yes: Technology can be controlled

Determinism: Technology is the driving force of history to make things better

Instrumentalism: Technology can be used for anything we want, and it does not affect us in any way.

Substantivism: Technology is the driving force of history, but it doesn’t always make things better

Critical Theory: Technology is a driving force of history, but humans can control and reshape both technology and history.

Table 1: The Four Philosophies of Technology, according to Andrew Feenberg (Questioning Technology, 1999, 9) First, a number of scholars believe that technology does not have value in it and that humans are not in control of its development. Known as determinists, they consider that technology is autonomous in its development and fairly value-neutral, a driving force of the development of society and history. If people could control the next level of 22

Andrew Feenberg, Questioning Technology. New York: Routledge, 1999.

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development, they say, technologies would not be autonomous but would fulfil the needs of those who develop them. Determinists consider that society is shaped and even controlled by technological change that models society according to the needs of progress and efficiency. Second, another group of scholars consider that technology has no built-in value but believe that its development can be controlled. Most people today would argue for the view known as instrumentalism, believing that, while technologies help us to achieve our purposes, we can and should control their development and use. In this view, technology itself does not have the power to influence us but the way we use it. Consequently, emphasis should be placed on the use of technology. According to them, guns do not kill people, but people kill people. Third, another category of theorists consider technology to be charged with value. This is called substantivism. One does not choose just a technology to make his/her life more efficient, but chooses a way of life, they say. Once a society engages on the path of technological development, it will be transformed according to its values, such as efficiency and power. Traditional values have a hard time surviving the challenge of technology. Both those arguing for substantivism and those in favour of determinism have a common view regarding the fact that technological development is not under the direct control of humans. The notable difference between them is that, while determinists view this autonomous development as being triggered by positive forces that contribute to the development of the society, substantivists look at the apocalyptic outcomes that can result from the indiscriminate adoption of technologies that have the propensity to engulf us with destructive values. The fourth category of theories, more nuanced and strongly supported by Feenberg, is that belonging to critical theory. While accepting that technology is charged with values (or value-laden), critical theory also considers, much like instrumentalism, that humans have the possibility of control over its development and they may influence the consequences of its use by “devising appropriate institutions for exercising human control over it” (2006, 12). The character of values marks the difference from substantivism. The latter only looks at the values that are intrinsic to technologies, while critical theory extends the notion to include values that are socially specific and thus go beyond efficiency or control. “In critical theory, technologies are not seen as mere tools but as frameworks for ways of life,” argues Feenberg23 And what is the eterni.me platform if not a 23

Feenberg, A. “What Is Philosophy of Technology” in Defining the Technological Literacy edited by J.R. Dackers. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006, 14.

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framework for various ways of life and, what is more, for ways of after life? The platform eterni.me opens up the possibility for reflecting not only on the impact of technological changes to our lives, but also for how we can deal with these changes. More exactly, for how we are able to understand, handle and control its development. In our view, one of the most efficient strategies is offered by the critical theory position and refers to the necessity of devising appropriate institutional instruments for exercising human control over technology. As seen above, the frontier of technological development is moving fast and our bodies are permanently redefined by and for the use of technology. Thus, the mechanisms needed to control these platforms and to reconceptualise these changes should themselves be permanently reevaluated.

Conclusions There is no doubt that the digital technological advancements challenge the ways humans relate to each other and act in the physical world. Time, spaces, and identity (perception of) reality, are all affected by the use of technology and the changing frame of thinking. Ultimately, some thinkers scrutinise the very notion of humanity, while others contend that its very existence is at stake. What is called cyberspace offers humans the space where we may invent virtual bodies and where we can construct new identities that interact with each other, mediated by digital technology. Complicated enough as it is, this space might have yet another frontier that we are about to cross, into a world that enables the physical merging of the human body with an increasing number of technological parts meant to enhance, replace or extend organs and functions of the body or even of human consciousness. It is important for us all to conceive, understand and apply the philosophies that underpin technological development as long as these are responsible for shaping its effects. Some people consider that the outcomes of the technological advancements are impossible to predict, control or regulate, and that technology in itself has no built-in value. Others believe that technology comes with dramatic changes in worldviews and ways of life, so, if we want to control its consequences and benefit from it, humans should be more responsible regarding the directions of this development. Scientists, researchers, inventors, entrepreneurs and philosophers may take either side, investing their mind, time and money in research that supports their respective positions.

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It appears that critical thinking and the ability to reflect upon and channel the possible consequences of innovation and technological advancement are competencies of the utmost importance for the future of humanity and should determine a paradigm shift in how we view education in the digital age. *** “This paper is supported by the Sectorial Operational Programme Human Resources Development (SOP HRD), financed from the European Social Fund and by the Romanian Government under contract number SOP HRD/1599/1.5/S/136077”

PART II: BODY AND IMAGES

MAT CHIVERS: THE ESTABLISHMENT AND RUPTURE OF CHIASMATIC SPACE AND EMBODIED SPATIALITY SOZITA GOUDOUNA

The Perceptual Field The relationship between the eye, the hand and the mind manifest the insight that the body and that which it perceives cannot be disentangled from each other. The sensible (hand), the ideal (mind), nature, the world, and the human body as a perceiving thing are intricately intertwined and mutually “engaged,” and artistic research has attempted to invent innovative modes of depicting these relationships, by finding new ways of positioning bodies in time and space and new ways of creating temporal and spatial interrelations. The essay draws on the work of artist Mat Chivers so as to understand the ways his aesthetics translates into practice and the ways terms such as “chiasmus” and “bodied spatiality” are expressed in artistic practice. Sensory, perceptual and sensate approaches to Chivers' artistic practice are intended to understand the potential of the symbiosis of the visual, the aural, the tactile, the corporeal and the technological. Mat Chivers' aim is to create a chiasmatic “field of perception” by exploring the activity lodged within stillness and the depths of visual latency; the perceptual field that he manages to formulate is primarily guided by the eye and its efforts to see. The artist's ultimate objective is to discover images that, instead of articulating a narrative, will convey to the viewer a profound and complex sense of sensorial perception. The “visual field” becomes a “perceptual field” and like language that has the potentiality of pointing beyond itself to the unsayable, the visual becomes a screen for the senses and for the unseeable.

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Fig. 1 and 2. Mat Chivers, Overlay, 2012. HD digital film, screen, environment, 10:10 mins. Courtesy Goudouna and Chivers.

Mat Chivers' work looks at the relationship between the seemingly polarised phenomena of our subjective and sensorial relationship with the world and that of the universal geometric constants that underlie them, while his oeuvre operates (or oscillates) in-between realities (Night/Day, Darkness/Light, Invisibility/Visibility, Presence/Absence, Movement/ Stasis, Order/Disorder, Past/Present, Political/Personal, Sensual/Mental) and in-between the boundaries of artistic media (drawing/video, sculpture/installation, sound/movement), yet, it focuses on the mediate and chiasmatic spaces that are produced by these seemingly binary notions and media. Chivers focuses on contemporary research in vision and perceptual science and his oeuvre has recourse to technical apparatuses and to graphic devices to make visible to the eye phenomena that are beyond human vision, through the use of different media, he explores and expands the ways of making the hidden reality of appearances perceptible, often through the viewer’s participation.

Overlay, Axiom & Root Sensory, perceptual and sensate approaches to Chivers artistic practice are intended to understand the potential of the synthesis of the visual, the aural, the tactile, the corporeal and the technological. Chivers experiments with the juxtaposition of the sensorial and the technological in his digital film Overlay. The film's moving image is mirrored along a vertical axis and is located within a distinctive framing device that derives from a combination of hand drawn and computer generated layers of geometry that refer to the fundamental patterns and processes that underlie the formation of the geology. The compelling phenomenon of symmetry in flux employed in the film has the potential to induce a state of ambiguity -

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a space where archetypal images surface and play across the viewer's awareness. Overlay presents a portrait of the phenomenal geology exposed in the cliff face near Dancing Ledge at Purbeck in Britain, a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site. Combining an awareness of the art that came about as an exploration of the relationship between humanity and the wider non-human environment during the Romantic period with cutting edge contemporary digital envisioning, the artist's camera tracks the cliff face as the vessel is lifted and turned by the ocean. About 20 million years ago the African tectonic plate began to collide with the Eurasian tectonic plate causing stress fractures to oscillate out into the wider geology beyond the zone of impact. Exposed and eroded over the millennia by the repeated action of wind, rain, sea and sun, the ninety degree faulting that gives the Portland limestone its distinctive appearance is the northernmost manifestation of this momentous event that occurred in the deep geological past. A vintage recording of West African percussionists was played on the boat at the same time as the film was being captured. Shot in slow motion the soundtrack and the film exist in symbiosis with each other, the deep base rhythm of the music slowed to a grinding pulse, subtly alluding to the African source of the physical phenomenon we see in the film. A recurring conceptual thread in Chiver’s practice is the combination and layering of analogue and digital approaches in objects that embody a hybridisation of the past and contemporary envisioning processes. The sculptural installation Axiom that was commissioned by the Mathematical Institute at Oxford University appears to be an entirely synthetic object, built using cutting edge contemporary digital envisioning, processing and outputting technologies, that bears no trace of the human hand in its fabrication. It is however entirely based on a subjective interpretation of environmental phenomena. The root of it is a source object that was made entirely by hand. The artist brings together symmetry in the form of a pure geometric framework and asymmetry as expressed through an entropic event—matter expanding over time and in space until its energy balances with the physical variables that constitute it and the environment in which it was formed and its growth ceases. This dichotomy is conceptually unified by the triangular geometry that threads through every layer of the work.

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Fig. 3. Mat Chivers, Axiom, 2014. Cast aluminium 2.2 x 2 x 1.7 m. Collection of Oxford University Mathematical Institute. Courtesy Goudouna and Chivers.

Digital imaging software uses a mesh of tessellating triangles to articulate the surface of complex three-dimensional structures. According to the artist, as artefacts of the digital envisioning process the selected form is composed of hundreds of thousands of triangles that describe the surface, echoing the physical triangular geometry that determined the outcome of the process in the source object. A programming script has been developed and applied to this data that enables aspects of the data to be physically built using contemporary outputting technology. The overall geometry has been subjected to a radical reduction of the triangles and intentional nuances of the scripting of the software allow some of the original cloud-like scan data from the source form to be retained in the surface of the object providing a visual link back to the handmade object. The sculpture is being built using a combination of five axis routing and three-dimensional printing that is then cast in aluminium.1 The artist integrates a variety of technical media and artistic media like drawing, sculpture, video, dance, sound, however, his main concern is to re-conceptualize the very notion of a fine art exhibition by treating the exhibition as a hyper-medium that establishes a “total work of art.” This 1

Mat Chivers’ artist website: http://www.matchivers.com/ (accessed September 2017).

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all-embracing art form incorporates the still and the moving image, mirroring and framing devices, performance and installation practices so as to produce an original perceiving device.

Fig. 4. Mat Chivers, SYZYGY, 2011. Quinto de Ebro alabaster & Indian black granite 1.9 x 1.4 x 2.6 m. Courtesy Goudouna and Chivers.

The Flower of Life The geometrical pattern of “The Flower of Life” becomes the reflector and the looking glass through which to see Mat Chiver's representational mechanisms. This pattern is created by inscribing a circle with compasses, placing the compasses on the circumference of the circle and inscribing a second circle. The compasses are then placed at the points where the arc of the second circle intersects the first and another circle inscribed. This method can be repeated indefinitely to result in an exquisitely beautiful and philosophically significant tessellating pattern. In his new series of drawings, sculptures, video pieces and performance installations perception opens up, to a process that necessarily includes the work of meaning, which is also always expanded and unconscious like the tessellating patterns of the “Flower of Life.” The interplay of symmetry (in the form of a pure geometric framework) and asymmetry (as expressed

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through an entropic event) alludes to an enquiry into archetypal forms and into the nature of the psyche. Mat Chivers’ experimentations with the correlation between drawing, sculpture, dance and technology are investigated as a research on the interfaces between contemporary visual arts, the human body and public space. In particular, Mat Chiver's art practice is examined in tandem with Traces of Truth and Circles of Deceit: Beirut Entangled, an interdisciplinary intervention by the non profit Out Of The Box Intermedia, that took place in the public sphere at Martyrs' Square in Beirut (during the Beirut: Bodies in Public Project, October 2014), one of the most vexed public spaces in Beirut: the “throbbing heart” of the political life in Lebanon and the ground zero for political sit-ins, demonstrations and protests of the Cedar Revolution in 2005; a place whose identity has changed throughout history and an unrealisable urban architectural project. To identify new and emerging roles for the Martyrs' Square Grand Axis, the controversial private company Solidere that has bought eighty five per cent of the properties of the old centre of Beirut, has had launched a competition for the Martyrs' Square. The challenge for the Noukakis Office architects that won the competition was to envision the new identity of Martyrs' Square within the context of a renewed capital that is overcoming the destruction and divisions of war. The re-emergence of the city's restored historic core as a central meeting point for all Lebanese communities highlights the potential for Martyrs' Square to regain its identity as the place of the people and the premier social arena of Beirut's new downtown. Unfortunately the project has not been realised yet partly perhaps due to political reasons and currently the square is not an actual square where people meet, this is strange because its historical and cultural role has completely changed. The intervention refers to this unrealisable project that aimed to reclaim the historic role of the square and to the film “Circles of Deceit”; a war-tableau that reflects upon the Lebanese civil war by demonstrating both sides of the conflict and the ways the war zone echoes the inner condition of a human being. The intervention consists of a choreographed sound tableau that integrates the pictorial, two-dimensional (static image), the piece is designed by visual artist Mat Chivers (the artist developed this project at Art Professionals In Athens Residency) to create an immersive embodied experience for the viewers, including an expanded walk-around experience at the Martyrs' Square. Developed as a site-specific project, the intervention attempts to go beyond a direct reference to the extraordinary events unfolding in the social and political fabric of Lebanese society and

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instead concentrates on the Square, as a site of union instead of a site of conflict.

Rooted: From Digital to Public The Lebanese dancers Clara Sfeir and Ghida Hachicho have been invited to collaborate in the evolution of Root in response to a geometric pattern known as “The Flower of Life.” Two performers draw “The Flower of Life” pattern on a canvas filled with sand, the two bodies are used as “compasses” (one of the most simple yet sophisticated tools for generating geometry) to describe the “Flower of Life” geometry, revealing the surface of the Martyr's square beneath as the line of the drawing and a trace of the performers' bodies. This seemingly simple act is phenomenally challenging for the two performers and as their meditative movement over the surface of the material progresses—initially interweaving along a central axis of symmetry and then fanning out across the space—the marks they make move from precise to chaotic as their bodies tire. The movements merge bilateral symmetry that echoes that of our own bodies with a subtle asymmetry resulting in traces.

Fig. 5. Mat Chivers, Root, 2014. Performance by Clara Sfeir and Ghida Hachicho at Martyrs Square by Kappatos Athens Art Residency, Beirut: Bodies in Public Project, October, 2014. Courtesy Goudouna and Chivers.

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The performance opens with a sudden and overwhelmingly loud block of sound sampled from recent political demonstrations. Individual voices are only barely discernible. The sound stops abruptly and a new digitally generated sound is heard. Part played and part programmed the sound has the quality of the classical Greek double reed pipe called Avlos. The ensuing composition has a Middle Eastern quality that reflects Yorgos Simeonidis’ exploration of the roots of the modal system that is used in the Arabic countries and Turkey since the 15th Century and is based on a melodic system that dates back to classical Greek music and Pythagoras. The foundation of the composition is a continuous sound derived from the idea of circular movements through sand that echoes the physical movements in space and time of the performers. Developed as a site-specific project, Root attempts to go beyond a direct reference to the extraordinary events unfolding in the social and political fabric of Lebanese society and instead concentrates on what unifies us as a species rather than that which divides. Rooted in the proportions and bilateral symmetry of the human body and the asymmetrical nature of its expression in the world, the work combines elements of the past, present and future in an enigmatic experience that defies a definitive reading. The artist draws from the ambiguity of embodiment and corporeal experience and attempts to stimulate new relationships between art and geometry. The focus is placed on the performers' bodies, as sentient and active “agents” in a reciprocal relation with the work of art. The task of Root is not to resolve questions concerning the relation of movement and sound with the visual arts, but rather to rethink these relations and, through the transformation and displacement of the visual and the performative, to recast the conceptual and aesthetic fields with which the visual arts and performance are inextricably linked. The performing bodies become a point of independent sentience and represent a “rootedness” in the biological present that, to some extent, escapes transformation into the virtual realm. The bodies of the performers insert a more fundamental and intrusive actuality into the field of visual representation, an actuality that charges evocations of bodily presence. The project focuses on the human bodies of the performers Clara Sfeir and Ghida Hachicho as the primary site of knowing the world, a corrective to the long philosophical tradition of placing consciousness as the source of knowledge. Root investigates the ways in which the mapping of one structure, originally composed in one medium (drawing), is mapped onto another structure in another medium (dance). Chivers investigates the nature of the medium of dance by experimenting with the fundamental registers of

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performance like: embodiment, spectacle, ensemble, sound, gesture, situated space, reenactment. This process is related to situatedness, spectatorial encounter and extended spatiality that unsettles the circumscribed spatiality of the “autonomous” visual art form. Attitudes towards the body - its corporeality, subjectivity and “bodied spatiality,” determine the context of this visual writing on the sand. The project becomes a large medial framework that incorporates different media without negotiating the live quality and the intimacy of the presence of the body. Chivers' Root returns us to the body as a space that is both sentient and active. The term “bodied spatiality,” illustrates the aesthetic union between space and the human figure. Root is situated in the threshold between the visual arts and performance practices, having both performative and static features (dancers' bodies, sand traces/drawings). Root is associated with the structuring of various objects and materials to create a complex spatial environment within the exhibition space and entails unique formal and technical qualities intrinsic to this particular type of work that can be characterised as an earth canvas. The site of meaning shifts from an inner, formal structure to the shared presence of work and beholder. Root is also associated with the creation of an almost “architectural” construction that the viewer must enter in order to experience its spatiality from within. The artwork’s “lived physical perspective” describes its spatial orientation to the viewer’s body. Root's temporal unfolding and its compositional methodology lies in the dialectics between duration and instantaneousness that is associated to installation aesthetics and to a durational modality of production and reception. Its temporal unfolding is seen as an equally important component for its composition as its materiality. By composing an “aesthetics of presence” Chivers restricts the dancers in time and space to the point where it is frozen temporally and spatially, like a visual art work.

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Fig. 6. Mat Chivers, Root, 2013. Site-specific durational performance and performance relic, Pentelic marble dust, steel frame, linoleum, digital sound composition. 5 x 4.2 m / 23 minutes. Concept & artistic direction: Mat Chivers, Performed by: Nondas Damapoulis and Christina Reinhardt. Sound composition: Yorgos Simeonidis. Kappatos Gallery, Athens, Greece. © Goudouna and Chivers.

Fig. 7. Mat Chivers, Root, 2013. Site-specific durational performance and performance relic, Pentelic marble dust, steel frame, linoleum, digital sound composition. 5 x 4.2 m / 23 minutes. Concept & artistic direction: Mat Chivers, Performed by: Nondas Damapoulis and Christina Reinhardt. Sound composition: Yorgos Simeonidis. Kappatos Gallery, Athens, Greece. © Goudouna and Chivers.

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Visual articulation is based on the material (dust), the movement of the bodies and spatial presence, the primary articulation of Root’s mise en scène is the performer's body. The choreography focuses the sculptural elements of dance practice, minimalist dance practice techniques present a range of strategies that play with the structure, form, material, image, and production of the art object in its relationship to space and to the spectator. The visual field is composed with sharp dichotomies of black and white. Yorgos Symeonidis sound composition is based on a tune that employs the cyclical interchange of two makam (modes). Short and sporadic phrases lead to this tonal pattern while they increase in duration and frequency. The piece is digitally composed. The tonal patterns are played in real time and the other sounds are programmed. The piece operates (or oscillates) between a sound “tableau” (installation art) and the pictorial, two-dimensional (static image). This collaboration between the artist, the choreographer, the dancers and the musician (Yorgos Symeonides) provides new ways of thinking within media synergies. Root foregrounds a corporeal/bodied spatiality by marking the traces of the body's presence through the drawing of the archetypal pattern of “The Flower of Life.” The corporeal, as a significatory medium, is essential for the analysis of Root that expresses “a writing of the body itself.” The trace of the body becomes a complex drawing on the sand. The piece allows us to see the bodies in their dislocations and ambiguities, their variable modes of embodiment, their traces. Space is “bodied” in the sense of “bodied forth,” oriented in terms of a body that exists, not just as the object of perception, but as its originating site, its zero-point. A complex positionality of watching is staged before the witness of other bodies (viewers). Space and time are primary materials, while the viewer is aware of her/his presence during this process. the choreography is founded on different representational attitudes towards the live body, the human figure, corporeal presence, subjectivity/subjecthood and agency. The choreography focuses on the spatial, gestural and durational extensions of artistic innovation. The aesthetic union and dialectic between space and human body is simultaneously ruptured and established on the “sandstage” while the dancers perform the “writing of the body itself,” a living moving canvas filled with bodily traces.

IMAGINARY BODIES AND SCENIC PRESENCE: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THEATRICAL PRACTICE1 RALUCA MOCAN

“Practice comes before “theory” everywhere and in all times”. (E. Husserl, Hua XVI: 61). “The actor imagines with his body. He cannot avoid gesturing or moving without responding to his own internal images”. (M. Chekhov, 1991: 95) „..a silent actor must still remain a physical presence on both the stage and the rehearsal floor”. (A. C. Scott, 1993: 52)

The living presence of actors gives a phenomenal full consistency to the world on stage. Fluidity of life and credibility of action indicate that the artificial world of the staged fiction is alive. Once communicated to spectators, it is precisely this sense of vitality that can awake and open their awareness to what might happen on stage. Therefore, it is important for the actor to know how to be scenically alive, how to fully become involved in unreal situations. Theatre practitioner’s main challenge is to enliven the truth of the play, to “put himself and the viewer in a state of dreaming, to give an anatomy to the dream: ligaments, nervous tension, joints, blood circulation, blood pressure.”2 Becoming present for the audience is conveying the theatrical effect of life (l’effet de vie) for spectators. The engagement may seem paradoxical: they react to imaginary situations in a credible manner yet in an artificial environment. 1

This essay received “The Gwen Stowers Best Paper Award for a New Member” at the 16th Annual International Conference of The Society for Phenomenology and Media, at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg, Germany. A version of this paper was also submitted for publication to Glimpse, the Annual Publication of The Society for Phenomenology and Media. 2 Eugenio Barba, Brûler sa maison. Origines d’un metteur en scène, Montpellier: Ed. L’Entretemps, 2011, 255.

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Actors’ ability is to repeat and to keep alive precise and credible actions, to which they give precision and consistency. “Where is the secret of an imagination that makes the actor ‘live’ the torments of Prince Hamlet or the misfortunes of Oedipus, incest and parricide?” asks Jacques Copeau.3 Imaginary feelings are not felt at all; they are imagined with one’s whole being. How can spontaneity and formal artistic discipline coexist in one expressive approach? What kind of experience allows performers to discover and repeat night after night credible, real actions despite the conventional artificiality of representation? To answer these questions, we initially focus on learning techniques in the art of the performer taking several examples of exercises used by practitioners, actors and theatre teachers. We will then focus on some practical principles for acquiring stage presence. On a phenomenological level of description, we particularly focus on the joint structures of the living body (Leib) understood both as substrate of habits and as centre of actual will. By situating our analysis in the context of Husserl’s perspective on kinaesthetic awareness, we will grasp what is specific in performers’ imagination and embodiment.

Developing artistic creativity through technical preparation The actor is an unusual craftsman, embodying at the same time the work of art and its material. As a driver taking the public to an extraordinary elsewhere, he must be able to lose his personal body, to discover and to embody for the public other beings than himself.4 Since his/her initial training, the future actor forms a set of verified creative strategies, a personal “comfort zone”. A primary objective of acting trainers and directors is to help performers expand their expressive range.5 Prior to discovering new expression forms, there appears to be an awareness of habits, trends and expressive tics of oneself, followed by the deliberate effort not to accidentally reproduce them. Stable postural balance, symmetrical actions and repetition of the same gesture hinder the development of artistic creativity. To overcome these practical difficulties, 3

Jacques Copeau, “Réflexions d’un comédien sur le ‘Paradoxe’ de Diderot,” Notes sur le métier de comédien, Paris: Ed. Michel Brient, 1955, 33. 4 Oida, Yoshi with Lorna Marshall. (1997). The invisible actor. London : Methuen. 5 See Filip M. Odangiu, Praxis. Exercitiul strategic, Cluj-Napoca: Casa Căr‫܊‬ii de ùtiin‫܊‬ă. 2013, 111-112 and David Zinder, Body Voice Imagination: A Training for the Actor. London: Routledge, 2002, 132.

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trainers propose several learning techniques. Thus, rules for actor training aim at developing a grammar of contrary vectors and of changes in gestures, movements in different directions, alternating tempo, duration, rhythm, amplitude or the expression of different intensities in physical and vocal actions. The first generation of reformers of the 20th century theatre, Stanislavski, Meyerhold, Chekhov, Vakhtangov, Copeau and others developed technical exercises meant to facilitate artistic spontaneity. Actors repeatedly went through these exercises in order to transform inert movements into effective actions, with the purpose of captivating and persuading audience senses. Actors’ purpose is to “live according to the precise form of a drawing” (Meyerhold), to “think-in-action” (Jouvet; Odin Teatret), without having to consciously direct all their gestures. As a second nature, artistic spontaneity requires a long-term practical training, after which intention and action become simultaneous. Through the biomechanical preparation created by Meyerhold, trained actors attain great precision of details and accuracy in movement design. Every kinaesthetic form is dynamic, assuming living coherence and consistency. Let us consider some examples of exercises designed to overcome usual stereotypes. On the one hand, it is possible to dynamically develop actions in space, following threads of forces unfamiliar to everyday life. An example of exercise proposed by Michael Chekhov, actor and trainer of actors, student of both Stanislavsky and Meyerhold: Exercise 1: Do a series of wide, broad but simple movements, using the maximum of space around you. Involve and utilize your whole body. [..] Open yourself completely, spreading wide your arms and hands, your legs far apart. Remain in this expanded position for a few seconds. Imagine that you are becoming larger and larger. Come back to the original position. Repeat the same movement several times. Keep in mind the aim of the exercise saying to yourself: "I am going to awaken the sleeping muscles of my body; I am going to revivify and use them.6

On the other hand, actors can escape the automatism of daily life by inventing equivalences, dynamic structures corresponding to a first physical action, but not identical to it. Actors may also develop resistance by creating oppositions. Resistance amplifies every movement, giving it more muscle tone, more intensity. Actors’ actions become accurate, interesting and understandable for the audience. 6

Michael Chekhov, To the actor on the technique of acting, Harper & Row Publishers: New York, 1953, 6.

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Imaginary Bodies and Scenic Presence It is not the form but the sense, rhythm and intention—the information— contained within the form that determines the nature of my actions and the corresponding change of tensions in my spine. If I push my hands against the sky, it is not important that my arms are stretched above my head, but that they contain the necessary pressure.7

Actors think through a tension of their energy8 Actors’ training is part of a wide spectrum of extra-daily9 activities based on acquiring specific motor patterns, such as, for example, dance, gymnastics, martial arts, and sports in general. Nevertheless, theatrical learning is different from other practices due to the role of imagination in constructing objects, obstacles and unreal situations. It is imagination that allows players to react credibly on stage: “Art is a product of the imagination. [..] The aim of the actor should be to use his technique to turn the play into a theatrical reality. In this process imagination plays by far the greatest part.”10 How is the specific embodied imagination of the performer functioning during the training?

Kinaesthetic imagination and presence: imagining resistance and unreal situations Actors can produce internal or external obstacles, holding the action instead of developing it in space. Imagining resistance forces practitioners to create a dynamic architecture of tension, belonging to the extra-daily realm of theatre. Exercise 3. [..] Your efforts will resemble the work of a designer who, again and again, draws the same line, striving for a better, clearer and more expressive form. But in order not to lose the moulding quality of your movement imagine the air around you as a medium which resists you. [..] Exercise 6. [..] You may wonder perhaps how you can continue, for instance, sitting down after you have actually sat down. The answer is simple if you remember yourself as having sat down, tired and worn out. True, your physical body has taken this final position, but psychologically 7

Julia Varley, Notes from an Odin Actress. Stones of Water, London: Routledge, 2011, 35. 8 Louis Jouvet, Le comédien désincarné, Paris: Flammarion, 1954, reed. 2009, 256. 9 Specific to the performer, extra-daily techniques are ways of using the body “which do not respect the habitual conditionings”. Eugenio Barba, The Paper Canoe. A guide to Theatre Anthropology, New York: Routledge, 1995, 15-16. 10 Constantin Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, New York: Theatre Art Books, 1936, 51.

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you still continue to “sit down” by radiating you are sitting. You experience this radiation in the sensation of enjoying your relaxation. The same with getting up while imagining yourself tired and worn-out: your body resists it, and long before you really get up you are already doing it inwardly.11

Aiming to develop a living coherence between intention and action, actor’s training at the Odin Teatret contains different types of exercises. During work demonstration “Traces in the snow”, Roberta Carreri exemplifies exercises created to destroy daily life automatisms and to acquire scenic presence: “Slow motion is a principle of work that obliges me to move very slowly. I displace my weight centimetre by centimetre. I have to think with the whole body in order not to fall, in order not make a quick movement [..] To move steadily, I have to imagine that the air gives me resistance. As if I was moving in a sea of molasses.”12 Exercise 4.7: Active balance and soft resistance [..] Imagine that you are moving under water. Take giant steps to avoid stepping on the beautiful coral gardens. Use the resistance of the water to inform all of your movements. Direct your energy, move it in a decided way, be precise and keep balance and fluidity of movement.[..] Feel the resistance of the very heavy water and use your body to push against the water; check that your hands are also feeling the resistance. Keep a balance between visualising the fictional landscape and really looking. Think about the oppositions in the body, if your leg is going one way, the arms should be going in an opposite direction; the torso might be going backwards and an arm might be moving forwards. You need to do this in order to keep in balance. There should be no tension in the face. Remember, in order to stand up, the law of opposition indicates that you will first need to find a counterbalance, or counter-direction, in which to move.13

By increasing the effort required to keep the action, actors amplify muscle tension, creating a quality of presence noticeable even in situations of immobility. This proven tension is transmitted to the audience through the image of the performer’s movements. Julia Varley, an Odin Teatret actress, gives an account on several modes of building resistance and on their role: “To create a resistance, I move as through passing through mud, a brick wall, water, a wheat field, a stretch of soft snow, solid air, or as through buffeted by sea waves, gusts of wind, a tennis racket or a 11

Michael Chekhov, To the actor on the technique of acting, 9, 11-12. Roberta Carreri, “Traces in the snow” in Odin Teatret 2000. Edited by J. Andreasen, A. Kuhlmann, Arhus: Aarhus University Press, 2000, 54. 13 Jane Turner, Eugenio Barba, London: Routledge, 2004, 123. 12

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landslide. The element of resistance can also surround me completely and oblige me to involve my whole body.”14 Performers absorb action and restrain its realisation in space by creating an obstacle. “I achieve opposition when I build resistance. [..] When I walk I can place a resistance to my advancing steps, as though something hinders and pushes my feet backward. The double intention - going forwards and being held back - and the resulting contrast in tension clarify the pattern of my movement.”15 Examples from actor training allow us to observe some recurrent extradaily psychophysical techniques: imagining internal or external obstacles, alteration in balance, law of opposition, and continuous movement. As an effect of these various techniques, increased muscular effort is perceivable for the audience. Performers’ amplification of the bodily tensions awakens spectators attention and may engage them in the fictional world of the performance. According to the assumptions of Theatre Anthropology16, building a vibrant stage presence is one of the core principles in performing art. The principle of opposition and opposite directions of movement is also a principle of action unpredictability: to go right, performers first turn left and surprise the audience by suddenly changing direction. To achieve this, a counter-impulse has been created, opposed to the first impulse. I kneel as if pushing my pelvis upwards: I resist the downwards trajectory of my bending knees by striving to keep my pelvis up. [..] Opposition is revealed through divergent tensions: I lift an arm to point up while I kneel down to pick up an object from the ground; I look in the opposite direction to the movement of my head; I begin and action with a counter-impulse in the reverse direction to that which I intend to follow.17

The principle of movement continuity and energy deployment in space and time is stated in Japanese Noh theatre as follows: “Move in your mind to ten tenths, move your body to seven tenths.”18 The result is an increased level of energy, exceeding the energy required for each action. 14

Julia Varley, Notes from an Odin Actress. Stones of Water, London: Routledge, 2011, 31. 15 Ibid., 31. 16 Theatre Anthropology studies the pre-expressive level of human behaviour, the use of psychophysical presence according to principles different from those of daily life, in organised performance situations. 17 Julia Varley, Notes from an Odin Actress. Stones of Water, 31. 18 Zeami, La tradition secrète du nô. French translation by René Sieffert. Paris: Gallimard/Unesco,1960, 115.

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There is a rule in Noh theatre that says that three-tenths of any action should happen in space and seven-tenths in time. Usually, if I want to grasp this bottle, I engage just that energy which is necessary to carry out the action, but in Noh, seven times more energy is engaged, not to carry out the action in space, but to hold it within the actor and retain it (energy in time). This means that for any action, the Noh actor uses more than twice as much energy than is necessary for the action in space alone. On one hand, the actor projects a quantity of energy in space; on the other hand, he retains more than twice as much within himself, creating a resistance to the action in space.19

Learning the art of performing means acquiring an intensified physical presence that needs to be continuously developed. Trained properly, the potential scenic body of the performer is able to produce effective action in situations of organized representation. Precision and attentive movement control allow for artistic spontaneity, but leave no room for arbitrariness. Performer’s actions are always necessary, motivated by chosen objectives. How can formal discipline and spontaneity coexist within the same artistic approach?

The specific embodiment of performers Artificiality and technical constraints make action precise and consistent. The risk of repetition is mechanical acting. Even difficult actions can become habitual and they can be executed without conscious attention involvement. Despite all new elements gradually introduced in training, it will inevitably happen that improvisation tend to settle down, to make performers fall into the same gestures and the same rhythms. Roberta Carreri notices that after several years, training becomes automatic. In the process of habituation with repeated gestures, routine hinders creativity. Constantin Stanislavski was constantly faced with the difficulty of using habits while training actors. His initial solution was based on the psychological theory of affective memory developed by Théodule Ribot (1839-1916). Nevertheless, Stanislavski’s later method focuses on the bodily techniques of learning. In this context, from object of suspicion, habit becomes one of the key principles of the physical action method. “Habit plays a great part in creativeness: it establishes in a firm way the accomplishments of creativeness. [..] it makes what is difficult habitual, what is habitual easy, and what is easy beautiful. Habit 19 Eugenio Barba and Nicola Savarese, A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology: The Secret Art of the Performer, London: Routledge, 1991, 2nd ed. 2006, 84.

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created second nature, which is a second reality.”20 During rehearsal, impulse creates the score21. The reverse happens during actual representation: the score creates the impulsion. As a dynamic core of action, controlled impulse makes the actor effective in his/her relation to spectators. Inheriting Diderot’s doctrine of the second nature, Stanislavski is influenced by discoveries in reflexology in his own lifetime. Therefore, Stanislavski links artistic spontaneity to habit and to repetition: spontaneity is an activity repeated often enough that it becomes automatic and therefore free. Could repetition facilitate free and spontaneous movements? Don’t mechanical gestures and everyday automatic patterns of action hinder learning and creative processes? Stanislavski’s second solution seems less paradoxical, taking into account that his initial distrust was exclusively targeted on mechanical automatism. How can actor-performers preserve the novelty of their improvisations and creative impulses despite countless rehearsals? Having forgotten how to move automatically, actors must also periodically destroy automatisms formed by training or by previous roles. This is the condition for keeping their openness and their capacity to continuously learn alive. Roberta Carreri indicates two technical solutions facilitating the destruction of extra-daily automatism formed by actors’ work: 1) working principles can be replaced by their opposites. For example, instead of making large movements, performers can train to minimize action; 2) segmentation keeps the body still and allows moving a segment after another. Refraining from any involuntary movement, the actor must control all parts of his body. “[An] important thing to remember is that an actor must concentrate on… his whole body… [J]ust as a musician has to exercise his fingers every day, so an actor has to exercise his body almost to the point of overcoming it, that is, being in complete control of it.”22 An actor must surprise the audience and... himself/herself. Therefore he/she should avoid anticipating the score. Acting both as himself/herself and as the person seen and imagined by the audience, the actor is free to create associations between these two levels in his/her own way. This allows him to move simultaneously on stage and in the world of the play. 20

Constantin Stanislavski, Creating a role, London: Methuen Drama, 1961, 62. Score is a term used by theatre practitioners to denote both the visible and the invisible performance material that the actors and director construct for a theatre production, workshop demonstration etc. (See Jane Turner, Eugenio Barba, Glossary). 22 Phillip B.Zarrilli, Psychophysical acting. An intercultural approach after Stanislavski, New York: Routledge, 2009, 4. 21

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Perhaps one of the actor’s best-kept secrets is his ubiquity. The key moments of the score are milestones, memorised and fixed during rehearsals. Theatrical performance includes elements of surprise. The choice of milestones doesn’t have to be logical. Cultivating the spirit of permanent improvisation inherent to artistic creativity means inventing transitions between fixed moments of the score. Creativity is that of the unexpected course between fixed points. Performers’ experience is kept alive and new each time due to reactivity lack of determination in dramatic situations. Genuine spontaneity is achieved when mastering technical precision within action. Faced with actors’ training, Jacques Copeau thinks that technique and the "freedom of feeling" are coexistent, simultaneously present in an actor’s work. Therefore, he denounces their traditional opposition as absurd: “Emotional expression comes out of the right expression. Not only does technique not restrain sensitivity: it authorizes and releases it. It is its base and its backup.”23 Unlike automatisms, habit has its plastic, allowing a living dialogue between actions and reactions. It integrates artistic conditioning and freedom, mechanical execution and spontaneity without conflict. The habit-spontaneity is a learned psychophysical ability to vividly react to stimuli. It allows performers to discover new ways to act and to fix them in their memory while preserving the ability to improvise on their base. In theatre, spontaneity requires change and it needs to be permanently conquered. Habits are a reliable base for the memory of physical or vocal scores. Relieved of the task to focus on remembering the text, actors can react spontaneously on stage. Due to their reactivity in theatrical environment, the route between the fixed points of the score is unexpected. On his/her trajectory, the performer sows moving cryptograms that require deciphering and interpretation. Their task is accomplished when they manage to awaken spectators’ attention and to attract it towards the world of performance. In addition to technical skills, the action must be sincere, authentic, lived. Actors from different traditions reflect a paradoxical freedom found within a formal constraint. From Dalcroze to Laban, from Stanislavski, Meyerhold and Michael Chekhov to Decroux, to Grotowski, Barba, Pina Bausch or Robert Wilson, improvisation within the score alone guarantees the necessary freedom within precision, proper to genuine artistic spontaneity.

23

Jacques Copeau, “Réflexions d’un comédien...,” 17.

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Kinaesthetic awareness and presence. The shared constitution of the world of theatrical performance Actors’ living scenic presence is based on a trained intensified awareness. The latter is typical for a specific mode of consciousness in the living body (Leib), understood both as substrate of habits and as center of actual will. The synchronization of motion sensations is not exclusively organic. “It has the inherent subjective quality of this immanent embodied consciousness that performs all these movements. A moving body rather than an observing subject, I am the embodied consciousness of walking.”24 These body functions are still moments of consciousness. Performed actions are kept in memory by a process called sedimentation. By placing the analysis in the context of Husserl's theory of habituality, we notice the double dimension of habitus, created by both a passive and an active genesis. Habitus is initially sedimented and stored, and then secondly, actively restored. In a phenomenological perspective, habitus arises as a second reality, simultaneously with the completion of each act. It is the double of the present act. According to Husserl, while the subject acts, the genesis of habitus occurs passively. The memory of each experience decays and disappears in the obscure area of the past, undergoing transformations. Under the effect of repetition, perceptual and practical patterns undergo typifications and bring similar characters into general and habitual schemes. Activities that become familiar also belong to the realm of the passive self, thus forming a “second sensitivity.”25 The acquisition of habits is closely related to what is sustainable in the process of learning. Habitus is an effective possibility of action established by past experience. Through association, the present and the remembered are constituted as simultaneous. “In me lies indeed the whole sedimentation of my past life as lived consciously and transformed into habitus—that can be awaken from the present, on the basis of actual intuitions, especially in all that continues to happen ever since.”26 As a result of sedimentation, habitus contributes to the unity of acquired experience. Husserl repeatedly insists on the double movement of habitus: the present perception points to the last encounter with the same object. At the same time, the past 24

Natalie Depraz, Husserl, Paris: Armand Collin, 1999, 44. Edmund Husserl in Analysen zur passiven Synthesis, aus Vorlesungen und Forschungsmanuskripten (1918-1926) Edited by M. Fleischer. Husserliana XI. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1966, 342. 26 Edmund Husserl, Variation et ontologie. Ttranslated by C. Lobo and P. Lang. First edition and translation of the Manuscript K III 12, in Annales de phénoménologie, 5, 2006, 216. 25

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perception points to the present one. As a result of a process, habitus is the organization of the possibility to act, passively constituted. However, the ego’s activity as the living present is spontaneous. Taking into account the lack of determination within the generative structure of habitus, this allows us to conceptualize the plasticity of these structures. The sedimentation of habitus and the history of the subject are alive only if the ego actualises them and gives them meaning. Linked to this activity by the temporal consciousness, habitus can facilitate the present behaviour. But subject’s motivation remains free, spontaneous. Habitual structures can actually be changed and renewed on a voluntary basis. Automatic behaviour is a result of sedimented habits, related to the stability of retentions. It should not be confused though with the creation of active habits through exercise and training. “Doing a complicated operation easily, effortlessly, with little attention, is different than doing it not knowingly and despite oneself. The real automatisms, motor, intellectual or moral, are watched over automatisms. They are even a kind of development of the docile spontaneity. They become active only with the tacit approval and control of latent consciousness.”27 Because of its plasticity and flexibility, habit usually exceeds the automatism model. The later is only a degeneration of habit-spontaneity. Inertia and the fall into automation are explained by the failure to be aware of all lived experiences. Habit formation is an open development process that can be made transparent to attention and to kinaesthetic awareness. The influence of mechanical learning or repetition can be eliminated through controlled inhibitions. Creating obstacles allows monitoring and controlling of automatisms. As indicated by practitioners’ testimonies previously mentioned, constructing resistance causes the emergence of new patterns of action and of new habits. Also, in a phenomenological approach, what distinguishes real bodies from bare images (shadows, images in the mirror, unrealities) is that they have a “force of resistance”. Conversely, unreal objects acquire real object consistency if they show resistance. “External bodies can endure (each of them can), it’s part of their actual mobility. Shadows have no resistance, but I cannot stab, pull, or push a shadow directly etc., and I cannot either, in the manner of the bodies, move it indirectly via the propagation of the shock. Resistance and mobility constitutively go hand in hand.”28 External 27

Paul Ricœur, Philosophie de la volonté. I. Le volontaire et l’involontaire, Paris: Ed. Points, 1950, reed. 2009, 380. 28 Edmund Husserl in Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjectivität.Texte aus dem Nachlaß; Dritter Teil: 1929-1935, Edited by I. Kern. Husserliana XV, N°37. La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973, 652.

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movements are characterized by a deployment of energy aiming to suppress resistance. Made perceptible to spectators, tension and obstacles to movement allow the reconstruction of the weight typical to real objects even if these may be absent. The force of expressiveness and the art of actors alone can reveal invisible objects to spectators. The resistance experience and the effort to overcome obstacles challenge the actor’s living body (Leib) to respond effectively, credibly. It follows that the effect of learning the art of performing should be the development of an unusual and constitutive kinaesthetic style, characterized by constructing resistance to movement. By intensifying the effort to overcome these obstacles, performers amplify their scenic presence and become interesting to watch even in situation of apparent inactivity. “Raising your hands and feet requires energy deployments (divers in different directions). We distinguish between normal movement of the members, which is the function of simple perception, and movement of impact that removes resistance, etc.: this requires an additional deployment of force, an increase in strength.”29 The world of theatrical performance is the result of a dynamic and complex shared constitution (Mitkonstitution) between actors and spectators. Husserl’s perspective on kinaesthetic awareness and on the lived body as a mediator of intersubjective empathy allows a precise understanding of how actors and spectators constitute together the quasi-world of the play. These phenomenological descriptions can perhaps be paralleled with the technical principles identified by Theater Anthropology as used by performers for amplifying tension aiming to prepare the living-body for theatrical dramaturgy. Faced with a practical difficulty and with the effort to overcome it, performers’ kinaesthetic awareness is awakened, intensified, communicating impressions of vitality to spectators. For performers, becoming present is creating and maintaining a connection with the public. Through practice, performers develop the faculty of sensing the public and of adjusting their acting accordingly. An actor is present when he “assembles one thousand eyes”, as the Noh theatre masters used to say. It is through presence that actors open the audience’s awareness, leading them to a state of heightened receptivity. During performance, three layers are simultaneously active: 1) An elementary organic and dynamic level based within the composition of rhythms, of actors’ physical and vocal actions, aiming to stimulate spectator attention, affecting spectators on a

29

Ibid., 653.

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nervous, sensorial and sensual level; corresponds to the scenic presence of performers; 2) A level of narrative dramaturgy that interweaves events and characters, informing spectators on the performance meaning(s); corresponds to the interpretation of subject, text and character by the actor; 3) A level of evocative dramaturgy: “when the entirety of what we show manages to evoke something totally different” the force of the performance to create « resonances » specific to each spectator: corresponds to the personal universe of the actor, made by necessity, discipline, imagination and impulsivity30 Theatrical performance may thus be characterised as an artistic and communicative relation between performers and spectators. The apprenticeship of an actor is a progressive acquisition of skills to respond through real actions in situations of organized representation. The scenic body dynamics is reinforced by extra-daily techniques like altering the balance or creating resistances that amplify tensions. Ease is acquired through training and rehearsals on the basis of controlled automatisms. Surprising in its strangeness, the trained “fictive” body becomes a second nature. This artificially created yet credible body corresponds to a demand of performer’s specific imagination: thinking-in-action is imagining kinaesthetically with one’s whole being. Therefore, in training and in performances, mind and body are working as one. Halfway between effort and playing, the performers’ experience combines repetition and creativeness, illustrating the mutual dependency between technical restraints and limitless invention.

30

See: Eugenio Barba, “The Deep Order Called Turbulence,” The Drama Review, Winter 2000, Vol. 44, No. 4 (T168): 56-66; Jane Turner, Eugenio Barba, London: Routledge, 2004; Julia Varley, Notes from an Odin Actress. Stones of Water, London: Routledge, 2011.

THE BODY AS A “SECULAR SACRED” SPACE IN RITUAL THEATRE LIVIU MALIğA

Experienced by whole generations, the crisis in European theatre appeared to have reached, by the middle of the last century, in the 1960s, a level of paroxysm that heralded a peril of sterility. Important directors and theatre artists reacted through a volley of polemical answers to what they saw as the decline of European theatre, opaque to renewal and bogged down in intensive realism and petty psychologism. A paradoxical way of reshaping the European stage consisted in a return, under a strong Oriental influence, to the ancient mythical sources of theatre.1 Various syntagms have been used to refer to the convergent projects and tandem experiments made by Jerzy Grotowski, Peter Brook, Ariane Mnouchkine and Eugenio Barba, to name just the most outstanding artists: the “theatre of cruelty,” the “theatre of alchemy,” “magic theatre,” “holy theatre,” “ritual theatre,” and so on.2

 1

Christopher Innes interprets this trend of idealising the elementary and the archaic as “an extension of the medievalism and orientalism of the nineteenthcentury romantics,” a neo-avant-garde manner of experimenting with ritual and its patterns. Christopher Innes, Avant Garde Theatre. 1892–1992 (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 3. Typically, studies devoted to the period of the 1950s60s address, under the title of “ritual theatre,” only those events that became canonical and very influential in time and that introduced Oriental spirituality and technique on the Western stage. The poignancy, the echoes and the importance of some of the representatives of this trend give the impression that theatre people were oriented exclusively toward Oriental ritual theatre. There are, however, several trends, phenomena and manifestations of a ritualistic type that tap the preChristian European (Greek) roots, but are not approached in this study. Among them are Viennese Actionism and the Panique Movement. 2 The nuances of these syntagms ought to be made more explicit, since they are not perfectly synonymous. This terminological indecision and the proliferation of synonyms which are difficult to master conceptually indicate a quest—through successive, exploratory approximations and through descriptions from different angles—for something that cannot be comprehensively described except by

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The seduction of the Orient Western modernism characteristically searched for its identity as far away as possible, avoiding the cliché places of its own rituals. Deemed to have been exhausted, European resources were replaced with more exotic, but stimulating ones. Eugenio Barba3 claims that the theatre of the twentieth century is situated somewhere along the drift between the East and the West. Asia, says Bruno Tackels, was “the true compass of the modern European stage”: all the great innovators of the twentieth century “drew inspiration from the wellspring of Oriental theatre.”4 With reference to it, Ariane Mnouchkine stated that she regarded it as an “institute of living theatre.”5 Of course, these emblematic directors of the 1960s were not the first to have scoured the Orient for a way of reviving European theatre. Meyerhold, Copeau and Brecht were among their precursors. The canonical example remains, however, Artaud, “that inspiring madman,”6 as Julian Beck calls him. They were nonetheless separated by a radical difference: while Artaud’s knowledge of the art of the Far East was indirect (he never travelled there), post-war theatre artists journeyed to those lands. The ritual theatre performance he saw at the French Colonial Exhibition in Paris, in 1931, was, as Grotowski said, a “big mis-reading”

 recourse to inevitably insufficient linguistic phrases. At the same time, an attributed convention is important, because based on it we can adjust our expectations and behaviours. 3 Eugenio Barba, The Paper Canoe. A Guide to Theatre Anthropology. Trans. Richard Fowler (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 40. 4 Asia was not, of course, the only area tapped for inspiration. Several competing sources coexisted at that time, some belonging to the Celtic or Scandinavian European background, others evincing a penchant for African, Australian or Central and South American pre-Columbian phenomena, etc. 5 Bruno Tackels, Ariane Mnouchkine Юi Théâtre du Soleil. Translated from the French by Eugenia Anca Rotescu. Foreword by George Banu (Bucure‫܈‬ti: Ed. Nemira, 2013), 101. This excerpt is quoted from Catherine Vilpoux’s film, Ariane Mnouchkine, l’Aventure du Théâtre du Soleil, apud Béatrice Picon-Valin, Ariane Mnouchkine. Mettre en scène. Introduction, choix et presentation des textes par Béatrice Picon-Valin (Arles: Actes Sud-Papiers, 2009), 26-27. 6 For the context in which Artaudian theory was revived in Europe and the U.S. in the 1960s, see David Zinder, “Introduction,” The Surrealist Connection, An Approach to a Surrealist Aesthetic of Theatre (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1976, 1980).

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of Balinese theatre.7 It was, however, a fruitful mistake. What mattered was not what actually happened, but the “latent performance” that Artaud had in mind and that, like a detonator, crystallised his visionary and, at the same time, incendiary discourse about theatre. Starting in the 1960s, the great directors mentioned above travelled, organised tours and conducted research on the theatre of Mexico, Peru, Pakistan, Iran, India or Africa. Their destinations were special and targeted major points of reference on the spiritual map of the old theatre. These were culturally prestigious, legendary spaces, the repository of ancestral wisdom and primordial symbolism, “sacred” spaces renowned for having maintained quasi-intact the numinous force of archetypes. Like magical spaces, they are believed to have had a certain “energetic” seal and a halo that catalysed inner transformations and moulded destinies. The rift with European values was not motivated ideologically, in their case: it stemmed from a crisis of theatrical tools. And yet, although these travels were decisive for these artists’ future conception of theatre, most of them were not based on an aesthetic program and were not, as Grotowski states, “the product of a ‘philosophy of art’.”8 Most often, they occurred against the wider background of existential and spiritual searches, concerned with the “soul” and its resurrection. Theatre pertained to this type of endeavour. The motivations were varied and included biographical aspects, specific to each artist. Although not belonging strictly to the same generations and the same trends, Grotowski, Brook, Barba and Mnouchkine moved in the same circles and went through similar experiences. The attempt at identifying an underlying logic in their theatrical experiments and the research they conducted in areas outside Europe in the 1960s and 1970s leads to several explanatory hypotheses. Apparently, this feverish escapism was motivated by a desire for liberation, for fleeing away because of dissatisfaction, but also because of a perpetual restlessness triggered by the vertigo-like mirage and exploratory excitement that had been made possible by the relinquishment

 7

See Jerzy Grotowski, “He Wasn’t Entirely Himself,” published in Les temps modernes (Paris, April 1967) and in Flourish, journal of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre Club (in the summer of 1967). The article is reproduced in Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre. Edited by Eugenio Barba. Preface by Peter Brook (New York: Routledge, A Theatre Arts Book, 2002), 120-121. 8 Jerzy Grotowski, “Towards a Poor Theatre,” in original in Odra (Wroclaw, no. 9/ 1965), republished in Cahiers Renaud-Barrault (Paris, no. 55/ 1966) and Tulane Drama Review (New Orleans, vol. 35, 1967), reproduced in Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre. Edited by Eugenio Barba. Preface by Peter Brook (New York: Routledge, A Theatre Arts Book, 2002).

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of the old epistemic model of space and by the virtual implosion of distances. However, it was not (only) the neoromantic fascination for exoticism, nor ethno-cultural diversity that drove these theatrical explorers but, above all, the myriad forms of ritualistic manifestation. The transgression of spatial limits entailed a breaking of the confines imposed on theatre in the European tradition and an openness to those other spaces that was sufficiently large for theatre to disburden itself from the old existential, cultural and artistic prejudices. Furthermore, without directly drawing their sap from here, their nonEuropean quest was coeval with the anti-colonial thinking that was emerging in the West, prepared by the Beat Movement and reaching paroxysm with the youth “countercultures” of the 1960s. Of course, one could not yet speak of neo- or postcolonialism, in the strictly technical sense of the concept, as it became structured as a field of academic research. What was still missing was the restorative ideology and the militancy that were to be practised in the decades that followed, when postcolonialism attempted to make reparation to the cultures that had been oppressed by the white race, driven by an imperialist impetus to exterminate, voluntarily or not, or at least to minimalise the colonial Other. There was, however, an active movement for recuperating the East. As Edward W. Said noted, the 1960s represented another “cycle of enthusiasm” about it. The West began to “unlearn the inherent dominative mode,”9 cultivating a general tendency of condemning the excesses of colonialism, disavowing the abuses it had committed and pointing out the guilt and responsibilities of the East towards the former colonies. These creators were obviously not interested (with the exception, perhaps, of Ariane Mnouchkine) in the political life and the resurrection ethos of Eastern societies. They turned to the Asian world of the Far East as if it were a still active realm of spirituality, from which they could receive spiritual solutions (ultimately integrating several levels of human existence, including the corporeal one) for the resurrection of their own theatre. It is interesting to note that the critique and disavowal of the West, the feeling of alienation from ultraindividualist capitalist society, came amidst a period of exacerbated faith in the inexhaustible spiral of accelerated development. This optimistic view of progress was denounced by various thinkers of the counterculture. In a seemingly paradoxical way, in a society of the abundance and consumer goods, the “postmaterialistic society” (to use the phrase coined by Ronald F. Inglehart), with spiritual

 9

Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin Classics, 1978), 126.

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concerns, began to emerge. As A. Potter shows, countercultural rebels believed, somewhat intuitively, that the East was a “magical key” that could free us from the prison of modernity. Even though they failed to produce a coherent vision of a free society and, much less so, a political program of change, they did not give up on these “utopian energies,” however ineffective they may have been, true phantasms that they were.10 The directors invoked above, whom Georges Banu calls “disgruntled rebels”, had in common with these postcolonialist trends a certain disillusionment with western capitalism, which commodified interhuman relations and turned every type of experience into a commodity. In their journeys of “initiation” into the East, they searched precisely those places and communities that tended to be economically underdeveloped. They did so, however, not because they had been wronged by western imperialism and unjustly suppressed, nor, as a corollary, out of a desire to reduce the degree of distancing to the maximum, but because of an authentic fascination with them. They exalted the anthropological and spiritual wealth of those civilisations, which had kept unaltered various forms, practices and means of oral transmission and were capable of communal solidarity, including at the level of social organisation. As the testimony of an archaic unity that is lost today, the myth of participation was imbricated with all their theatrical experiences. Conceived differently by every director, several means of rallying the participation of the public were used. They were intended to restore the communal unity of the group, while reaffirming the cultural identity and the profound consent that kept the individual and the collective united. The two movements—political and cultural-artistic—revealed a shift of the Weltanshauung: from a self-centred model that promoted the values of the individual and of difference and from the ethics of competition, to a model focused on the “neo-tribal” solidarities. Therefore, these creators partook of the countercultural phenomenon not by adhering to the activist politics of anticolonialism, but by pursuing the path of interiority, in a search for the self.11

 10

Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, The Rebel Sell. Why the culture can’t be jammed (Toronto: Harper Collins, 2005), 263. 11 Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter (see Chapter 9 “Thank you, India,” The Rebel Sell, 262) show that, in the 1960s, the West had already been using the East, for several decades, as a background for self-discovery. More and more people believed they could discover here paths of authentic spiritual liberation from the pressures of the alienating Western society. The phenomenon is described as a revolution of consciousness.

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“Holy theatre” or “Ritual theatre” was, however, the strongest motivation for these insurgent creators’ interest in the East. More precisely, the trans-European experience provided them with answers as to how one could ensure the impact of outmoded artistic contents in one’s own culture. Thus, Peter Brook’s attraction for primordial spaces (visible in Orghast) fed on the belief that the expressiveness of theatre could reach the highest intensity only when performed under such circumstances. He was to use this experience, as well as that of Chinese theatre and of the Peking Opera in order to find the modern correlative of Shakespearean “wonder.” Grotowski and Eugenio Barba chose Indian theatre because it allowed a detachment from the principle of mimesis and a return to the primitive ritual functions of theatre, albeit not necessarily also a return to older forms and means of expression. Before embarking on his “professional” travels to India, Barba read studies and research on myth by Jung, Durkheim, Levy-Bruhl, Marcel Mauss, Levi-Strauss, Caillois, Bachelard and Mircea Eliade. Long commented with Grotowski during Barba’s Polish period (1961-1964), these writings opened their eyes and encouraged them to use myth as the “dynamic centre of the theatre performance.”12 The return to the archetypal13 gave them access to a huge reservoir of ancestral patterns and techniques, activated in their own theatrical creations. As regards Ariane Mnouchkine, in her dialogue with Béatrice Picon-Vallin, she described her extra-European adventure through a pun on words: “In the syntagm Far East, what I’m looking for is not the east, but the far.”14 This statement sheds light on the seismic nature of these cultures, in which refinement coexisted with existential provisionality and extreme cruelty. These directors’ recourse to extremes15

 12 Jerzy Grotowski, “He Wasn’t Entirely Himself,” see supra; reproduced in Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre, 121. 13 “We were attracted by alchemy, shamanism, trance, rituals, misterium tremendum et fascinans,” as Eugenio Barba confessed in Pământ de cenuЮă Юi diamant. Ucenicia mea în Polonia urmată de 26 de scrisori de la Jerzy Grotowski către Eugenio Barba. Trans. Diana Cozma (Bucure‫܈‬ti: Ed. Ideea Europeană, 2010) 86. 14 Béatrice Picon-Vallin, “Une oeuvre d art commune, rencontre avec le Théâtre du Soleil,” in Théâtre/ Public, apud Bruno Tackels, Ariane Mnouchkine Юi Théâtre du Soleil, 93. 15 “We must accept excesses, wasted energy, pure waste, exaggeration, enormity...,” she confessed to Bruno Tackels. See “Întâlnire cu Ariane Mnouchkine ‫܈‬i Anatoli Vasiliev,” in Bruno Tackels, Ariane Mnouchkine Юi Théâtre du Soleil, 181.

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had an undeniably amplifying, intensifying impact on their aesthetic conception. Two seemingly contradictory aspects appear to have attracted Ariane Mnouchkine to Oriental theatre: on the one hand, vitalism and the ritualisation of the quotidian, and, on the other hand, formalism and the high degree of codification, as well as the striking artificiality of Hindu performances. An antithesis can be detected, therefore. If, politically, the counterculture rebels’ phantasmatic attraction to the Far East was a serious impediment to the development of a concrete progressive agenda,16 the theatre artists’ fascination with the Orient served as the impetus for a resurrection on the aesthetic level. Their creations inspired by/ from Oriental theatre, considered exemplary and germinative, ensured their long-term success. But how can their success be explained? Sharing the frenzy of the counterculture representatives, but leaving aside (outside their interest) the fantasies of social revolution and the utopia of political change, which constituted the essence of the counterculture movement, they focused on theatrical issues and, hence, on an aspect of creation; more precisely, they analysed and studied Oriental acting techniques. Searching for a solution to the crisis of European theatre on the stage of the origin of religions, they clearly outlined what they sensed as a blatant absence in European theatre. They used, in other words, the East’s contrast value. Thus, unlike the counterculture movement, which failed on the whole, succeeding only insofar as it elicited strictly individual answers, theatre artists managed to find genuine solutions for their art. They took elements of ritualistic practice and efficiently placed them in the service of their own art, transforming the hermetic codes of Asian theatre into systems that were accessible to Western spectators. Even if they did not go there taking with them a theatrical project, but rather pursued an existential path, their travels to the Far East became a kind of Wanderlehre,17 to use Goethe’s term, “discipleship journeys,” which helped them to build (also) a theatrical identity. They all invested the Far East with overwhelming importance in their artistic creation. It became a pool of creativity for them, a compass that provided them with

 16

Cf. Heath and Potter, The Rebel Sell, 223. See I. “Wanderlehre: travelling to learn,” in Eugenio Barba, The Moon Rises from the Ganges. My Journey through Asian Acting Techniques. Edited, introduced, with an appendix by Lluis Masgrau. Photo selection and captions by Rina Skeel. Translated from Italian by Judy Barba (Holstebro, Malta, Wroclaw, London, New York: Routledge, 2015), 43-83. 17

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existential, ethical, mythical and, ultimately, artistic bearings. In turn, theatre itself became a major venue for the search of identity. * It should be pointed out that these creators’ relationship with oriental ritual theatre was different. Each of them took over and processed a particular aspect of what fascinated them. Their European background (education, training and mental pattern) compelled them to make certain conceptual delimitations, which were not of concern to the practitioners of Oriental theatre. However, their discursive approaches to the theatre to which they aspired were not always characterised by accuracy and consistency, as their stakes were not primarily theoretical. The new they were looking for was defined by dissociation from the existing theatrical practices and forms. It resided in an area of indeterminacy, in a space of neither... nor... Following in the footsteps of the avant-garde, they affirmed their specificity mainly by negation. That is why their peculiarities, marked by inaccuracies and inconsistencies, can be deciphered better in the partitions they proposed. We shall further discuss three of those divides: The nonand the anti-aesthetic, The empty ritual and the “Secular holiness”.

The non- and the anti-aesthetic The way in which these directors approached the aesthetic was marked by a fundamental ambiguity, which permeated their entire (trans)artistic vision. None of them defined their program in aesthetic terms, which they deemed to be unacceptably restrictive. “Beauty” was, for them, either an obsolete, old-fashioned concept, or, at best, a product that was adjacent to theatre. Their explicit intention, visible even at the level of their lexical choices, was to go beyond the category of the aesthetic. In the relativistic context of generalised dissolution of the twentieth century, “some theatre artists,” says Eugenio Barba, “felt the need to find a different dimension for their profession, not just to please the spectator, nor just to achieve an aesthetic or technical quality. They wanted to find value [emphasis ours] in what they were doing.”18

 18

Eugenio Barba, “Theatre as Empty Ritual. Performance Aspects in the Ritual and Ritual Aspects of the Performance.” Unpublished article consulted by courtesy of the author.

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They all believed in the resurrectionary force of Oriental theatre, which ostensibly allowed them, through its transformative experiences, to overcome the crisis by overstepping the limits of the aesthetic and propelling the theatre performance into the sphere of the more-thanaesthetic. Freeing theatre from its traditional aesthetic purposes, “the visionaries of the twentieth century,” as Eugenio Barba called them,19 invested the theatre performance with higher stakes. It was imperative that they should place theatre in the area of the vital20 and grant it existential value. For Grotowski, as Peter Brook notices, “theatre is not a matter of art. [...] Theatre is an ancient and basic instrument that helps us with one drama only—the drama of our existence—and helps us to find our way towards the source of what we are.”21 Reformulating the purpose of theatre in an anthropological key, from the perspective of the present, Barba maintained it, actually, within the ontological horizon: theatre was to accomplish a “form of being.”22 These directors invested theatre with multiple tasks and assigned it several roles, all of which impacted the sphere of life. Thus, using Artaud’s biography as an argument for “the idea of salvation through theatre,”23 Grotowski defined the performance, in “The Theatre’s New Testament,” as “a form of psycho-social therapy,”24 which contributes, by the “discarding of masks,” to “the revealing of the real substance,”25 and to “a totality of physical and mental reactions,” as well as to reaching an improved, elevated state of being. Georges Banu calls the therapeutic function of theatre: the “utopia of possible repair.”26

 19 Eugenio Barba, “L’essence du théâtre,” in Les chemins de l’acteur. Edited by Josette Féral (Québec: Éditions Québec Amérique, 2001), 24. 20 For Ariane Mnouchkine, “theatre is more vital, more urgent than everyday life.” Judith G. Miller, Ariane Mnouchkine (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 36. 21 Peter Brook, With Grotowski. Theatre is Just a Form. Edited by Georges Banu and Grzegorz Ziolkowski (Icarus Publishing Enterprise, 2009). 22 Barba, “L’essence du théâtre,” 24. 23 As Grotowski says, “This man gave us, in his martyrdom, a shining proof of the theatre as therapy.” Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre, 125. 24 Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre, 46. Jerzy Grotowski’s “The Theatre’s New Testament” is an interview dating from 1964, introduced by Eugenio Barba in his book Alla Ricerca del Teatro perduto (Padova: Marsilio Editori, 1965). 25 Jerzy Grotowski, “Statement of Principle,” in Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre, 255. 26 George Banu, “În loc de postfa‫܊‬ă. Lupta cu absolutul,” in Jerzy Grotowski, Spre un teatru sărac, second edition (Bucure‫܈‬ti: Ed. Univers, 2009), 147.

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The attempt to produce a theatre based on the alternative model of cohesion and co-participation clearly had a polemical component in relation to contemporary individualistic society, which was rigorously institutionalised and alienated/alienating. The idea was to find a way of organically reconnecting to it, in a manner that was specific to the tribal life-style, based on ritual, initiation and integration, according to the holistic principle of transcendent experience. Through a significant shift in emphasis, tribal culture was not seen as a form of primitivism, but as an ideal model of social communion.27 The realisation of theatre’s trans-aesthetic purposes led to changes of means and expectations. On the whole, the aesthetic effect was replaced by the actor’s force of persuasion. The actor’s ability to trigger the audience’s violent reaction guaranteed the success but not the aesthetic quality of the play and/ or the performance. The attention granted to actors and their work was of crucial importance. It is exciting to note that, although they explicitly spoke against subordinating the theatrical performance to the aesthetic objective, these creators privileged the form, like their “aesthete” rivals. “The form,” Barba concludes today, “is fundamental in theatre.”28 Their conceptual platform was, however, different. They did not understand the form in an aesthetic sense, as artistic refinement, but from a perspective that was close to the ritualistic one and involved an extremely rigorous bodily and spiritual discipline, the only one able to shape a precise and efficient artistic behaviour. These creators could thus distance themselves from the crisis of art, which also implied a sort of formalism, as well as a special emphasis on aesthetic refinement. They believed to have left behind the Alexandrinism of Western culture, including in the sphere of theatre—without ignoring formal performances, but using them to reforge and deepen the human dimension. The option to leave the area of the aesthetic and cross over into the realm of existential effects was not definitive, however, for these creators. There were also a few exceptions. One of these was, without a doubt, Ariane Mnouckine, who firmly declared: “I believe in wonder. I believe in stimulation through beauty, light, hope, joy, laughter, tears.”29 Judith G. Miller notes that in her interviews from the 1980s-90s, Ariane Mnouckine spoke ever more

 27 See Michel Maffesoli, “Tribalisme postmoderne,” Sociétés 2011/2 (no. 112), 716. 28 Barba, “L’essence du théâtre,” p. 24. 29 Josette Féral, Trajectories du Soleil: Autour d’Ariane Mnouchkine (Paris: Editions Théâtrales, 1998), 16, quoted in Miller, Ariane Mnouchkine, 27.

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insistently about the “beautiful,” confirming, thus, “the earliest attraction to beauty [...] to highly stylised forms, awe-inspiring materials, oversized and majestic costumes, precision choreography and music, radiant colours, and warm lighting...”30 Peter Brook has also confessed that, at the core of everything he does, is “pleasure.”31 In his case, aestheticism is visible in the way in which it has turned every one of his theatre performances into an artistic work of the highest refinement. We also encounter aesthetic concessions in Eugenio Barba’s case. In order to reinforce the definition of the theatre as art, as opposed to religious ritual, he resorts to the concept of divertere.32 The aesthetic dimension is reinstated whenever theatre’s professional status (its specificity as art) needs to be reconfirmed. In an interview he gave me in 2014, he talked about “beauty” as Novalis saw it and stated: “For me, a performance should radiate an aesthetical seduction.”33

The empty ritual Expressing the need for the purification and renewal of contemporary European theatre, the option for the formula of ritual theatre or what Grotowski calls “magic theatre” made it imperative for these directors to delineate themselves from truly mystical experiences. Eugenio Barba is reluctant to accept the association between theatre and religion. Declaring himself an agnostic, he emphasises, whenever he has (or creates) the opportunity, that he makes theatre and not ritual, although, admittedly, his is a theatre of “transfiguration” and “transmutation.” In his opinion, the fact that ritual is seen on the stage in his or in Grotowski’s performances is either a matter of the specious language of theatre critics, who are interested in classifications and eager to come up with memorable phrases, or of the spectators’ perceptive limits. “Those who speak about the ‘religious resonances’ of our performances,” Barba revealed in 1967, “speak about their own religious propensity, which they refuse to acknowledge and project into the

 30

Miller, Ariane Mnouchkine, 35. Peter Brook, “Etre prêt,” propos recueillis par Georges Banu, décembre 1983, in Les voies de la création théâtrale, XIII (Brook) (Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1984), 345. 32 See the discussions that followed his conference in Berlin: “Theatre as Empty Ritual,” in 1998. Eugenio Barba, “Theatre as Empty Ritual,” consulted in manuscript form, p. 15. 33 Eugenio Barba, “Eros Which Does Not Vanish,” an interview with Liviu Mali‫܊‬a, in Studia Dramatica, (LIX), no. 1 (March)/ 2014, p. 279. 31

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Rorschach test we propose to them.”34 The counter-argument is that, in the same performance, other spectators identify “materialistic” values. Using Grotowski’s notion of the theatre of “mockery and apotheosis,” Eugenio Barba stresses the dialectical approach they both have assumed. Grotowski also tried to dissociate himself from religion and mysticism. As he declared in 1967, “We did not intend to resurrect religious theatre. What we made was an attempt at performing a secular ritual.”35 In an interview he gave in New York, in December of the same year, he was even more categorical. The actor, Grotowski said, “must give himself totally […]. But there is no answer to the question, ‘love for whom?’ Not for God who no longer functions for our generation. And not for nature or pantheism. These are smoky mysteries.”36 Such statements led Christopher Innes to speak, in his case, about “an ambivalent attack on the sacred, the breaking of taboos and the exaltation of the body.”37 The possible similarities between theatre and ritual were not, however, ignored. Commenting on the experiments from the Theatre of 13 Rows in Opole, Barba emphasised Grotowski’s dual approach: on the one hand, he preserved “the very essence of primitive theatre, i.e. the engagement of all persons present,” and, on the other, he “eliminated the religious characteristics, substituting them with ‘secular stimuli’,”38 so as to elicit the spectator’s active participation. What theatre and ritual have in common is, therefore, the power of the actor’s presence (comparable to that of the shaman) to conjure up images and to transport spectators, using their imagination and not their faith, from their everyday life into an extra-mundane realm. Both ritual and theatre rely on an exchange of energy between the participants. The energy, the actions and the precision in the performances staged at the Odin Theatre are comparable, says Jane Turner, with those of the actions

 34 Eugenio Barba, “Étrangers dans le théâtre” (interview, 1967), in Tony d’Urso et Ferdinando Taviani, L’Etranger qui danse. Album de l’Odin Teatret 1972-77 (Maison de la Culture de Remmes et Odin Teatret ApS, 1977). 35 Jerzy Grotowski, “Teatru ‫܈‬i ritual,” in Jerzy Grotowski, Teatru Юi ritual. Scrieri esenаiale. Translated from Polish by Vasile Moga. Foreword by George Banu (Bucure‫܈‬ti: Ed. Nemira, 2014), 140. 36 Jerzy Grotowski, “American Encounter,” extract from an interview he gave in New York, on 1 December 1967, published in The Drama Review (vol. 13, no.1, Fall, 1968); article cited apud Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre, 246. 37 Christopher Innes, Avant Garde Theatre. 1892–1992, 7. 38 Eugenio Barba, “Expériences du théâtre-laboratoire 13 rzedów,” in Théâtrelaboratoire 13 rzedów (Opole 1962), 5.

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in rituals, the only difference being that in theatre there is a divorce from the system of faith.39 It is precisely “because it is not usurped by doctrine”40 that theatre is “an empty ritual.” One might think that the directors who practised Peter Brook’s formula of “holy theatre,” including Grotowski, detached themselves from Artaud (whose work they read, in any case, at a later time)41 and did not share the metaphysical and supernatural dimension of his project. A closer reading indicates, however, that they firmly disavowed a more traditional and conventional (Judaeo-Christian) model of institutionalised religion, associated with the status quo, without refusing, in art, any form of authentic holiness. It should be noted that, sometimes, in spite of their contentions, what they described as the hygiene of European theatrical practice operated, in fact, as a far more ambitious program: the retrieval of a secular substitute of mystical soteriology. The fact that these reformers of theatre attempted to address, in one and the same experience, both the more general crisis of the sacred in secularised contemporary society and the subsequent crisis of theatre is laden with ambiguity. They also tried to unify somehow the solutions for overcoming the two crises. Despite their reluctance to use the specific terminology, most of them acknowledged that theatre had a higher, “invisible,” even sacred dimension. Some actually said that, in a technological, secularised and desacralised society, the only redemption that we could expect was to be found in theatre—the new temple of these troubled times. Ariane Mnouchkine, for instance, sees theatre as the last bastion of the sacred in the twentieth century.42 “She intimates,” says Judith G. Miller in the monograph she wrote about Mnouchkine, that “theatre moves us to a transcendent realm, to an undefined but felt metaphysical space, a place that holds life’s forces rather than displaying the products of a materialist culture.”43 “From 1980 on,” as Judith G. Miller states, “we will hear her

 39

Jane Turner, Eugenio Barba (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), 9. Ian Watson et al., Negotiating Cultures: Eugenio Barba and the Intercultural Debate (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 255. Quoted in Turner, Eugenio Barba, 9. 41 According to Raymonde Temkine, one of his biographers, Grotowski claimed he did not know of the Théâtre Alfred Jarry or The Theatre and Its Double before 1964. Raymonde Temkine, Grotowski, Trans. Alex Szogyi (New York: Avon Books, 1972), 144. 42 Béatrice Picon-Vallin, Ariane Mnouchkine..., apud Bruno Tackels, Ariane Mnouchkine Юi Théâtre du Soleil, 105. 43 Miller, Ariane Mnouchkine, 35. 40

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speak of a vision of theatre that recalls more pointedly Artaud’s quasimystical aesthetic.”44 The nostalgia for the metaphysical, which he does not define, but actively structures artistic behaviours in his work, is also detectable in Peter Brook’s case: “As fewer people retain the will to avail of the inspiration of traditional piety, the arts must celebrate their latent sacramental ability.”45 In his terms, “the theatre is the last forum where idealism is still an open question.”46 The one who carried further the spiritual quest, ultimately becoming preoccupied with it as an experience in itself, was Grotowski.47 Belonging, together with Craig and Artaud, in Georges Banu’s view, to a “triad of pilgrims of the absolute,” Grotowski was interested in a theatre which “exceeds mundane reality and makes violent use of its final resources.”48 Remembering his youth and his Polish period together with Grotowski, Eugenio Barba attests to the fact that the latter’s efforts to renew theatre included a dimension of holiness: “I was influenced by Grotowski’s experience at Opole, where, in 1961, I witnessed the invention of a new identity in theatre, which sought to replenish the lost holiness of theatre.”49 In The Empty Space, Peter Brook calls Grotowski “a visionary [who] has a sacred target”: “Grotowski’s actors offer their performance as a ceremony […]. This theatre is holy because its purpose is holy; it has a clearly defined place in the community and it responds to a need the churches can no longer fill.”50 Of all, Eugenio Barba has consistently maintained a deliberately assumed anthropological position on the matter of ritual theatre, keeping, therefore, a scientific distance from it. However, his writings contain a few lines in which he makes allusions and references to the sacred, understood in the sense of Otto Rank’s numinous and in a participatory manner, as a personal relationship with the transcendent. He speaks, for example, about the entwinement between an agnostic attitude and a quasi-mystical,

 44

Miller, Ariane Mnouchkine, 35. Shomit Mitter, Systems of Rehearsal. Stanislavsky, Brecht, Grotowski and Brook (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 99. 46 Peter Brook, The Empty Space (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), 50. 47 It is known that, for Grotowski, theatre was only a stage in a vaster, transaesthetic and spiritual process, an estuary towards some transformative experiences (consonant with New Age spirituality), which could foster a radical mutation of the human. In the 1960s, however, like the others, he drew on the sacred in his own art. 48 George Banu, “În loc de postfa‫܊‬ă. Lupta cu absolutul,” in Jerzy Grotowski, Spre un teatru sărac, 145-146. 49 Eugenio Barba, “Il viaggio delle identita,” in Il Patalogo diciassette Teatro, coordinamento Renata Molineri (17/ 1994), 5. 50 Peter Brook, The Empty Space, 72. 45

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inexplicable calling. As Barba confesses, “it is true that some forms of Asian theatre and some of their artists move me deeply […].. Through them I find again the culture of faith, as an agnostic […]. I rediscover a unity of the senses, of the intellect and of the spirit, a tension towards something which is both inside and outside myself. I find again the ‘moment of truth’, where opposites merge.”51 He learned to safeguard, over the years, this mystery of theatre, to surround theatre with an enigmatic wall and maintain for decades its “secret”: a fascination with the fact that theatre is not transparent enough. Religious intention is not, in Eugenio Barba’s case, a target formulated as such; on the contrary. Judging by the way in which it permeates his performances, we cannot, however, rule this out. Even when he claims that religious experiences are entirely on the part of the spectator, Barba knows that, in fact, the director orients the performance and induces them in the audience, both through the way in which he trains the actor (who is forced to have recourse, under his baton, to the discipline of ritual) and through the content itself: mythical scenarios and archetypal situations staged in such a way as to evoke, sometimes, “the hieratic gestures of some religious rites or of ritualised Oriental theatres.”52 The actors’ twofold action, seeking to reach that origin—that living and germinative core from which religious impulse/ sentiment springs, on the one hand, and the spectator’s special experience, triggered by this foray into great depths and by this (self-)revelation, on the other hand—is the reason why Eugenio Barba creates an analogy, be it out of scientific scrupulousness, as he himself confesses, between theatrical and religious experience. The fact is that all these passionate practitioners of transitive theatre were on a search that excluded the established, institutionalised forms of religion (be it Judaeo-Christian, or of any other extraction). They had embarked on a quest that exceeded the bounds of secular Western humanism or trans-humanism. In any case, the saving solution appears to have been embracing the sacred of archaic world. More specifically, they adopted its ritualistic forms of manifestation, decoupled, however, from any assumptions of a transcendent nature. It can be said, conclusively, that all these visionaries shared the aspiration to reconnect theatre to that common archetypal (“energetic”) fund, which ensured the so-called “transcendent unity of all religions.”

 51 52

Barba, The Paper Canoe, 7. Barba, “Etrangers dans le theâtre” (1967).

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“Secular holiness” Their search for holiness and spirituality in a post-materialist society was only apparently paradoxical. They aspired to return to a derived form of the sacred, devoid of supra-naturalistic assumptions. Grotowski, whom Georges Banu suggestively calls “a heretic mystic,”53 talked about the “psycho-social” need to substitute religious consciousness with a secular one. The manner imagined by him to contribute to this transition was “the possibility of creating a secular sacrum in the theatre.” The concept he proposed was paradoxical, oxymoronic. He added to it the notion of the “holy actor.”54 In both cases, Grotowski emphasised that his perspective was secular and his language was metaphorical. However, there persists a certain ambiguity, maintained by vague terms (also adopted by commentators), such as: “force,” “life-giving force,” “integration,” “totality,” “fullness,” “wholeness,” “total act,” and so on. It is true that the phrase “secular holiness” becomes a tense combination only insofar as we identify holiness with religiousness. This was not the case of Grotowski, nor, as seen above, of the other theatre artists, who replaced this term with that of “spirituality,” specific to modern times. Moreover, they warned about the risk of a diffuse conceptualisation. However, a certain semantic shift persisted, as they did not completely reject the equivalence of holiness to spirituality (in itself an unresolved semantic game). Even in regard to the phrase “holy theatre,” advanced by Peter Brook, an explanation is required. The meaning of the word “holy” or “sacred” is, here, generic, inclusive. It should be understood as a transfiguring approach. The experience concerned is spiritual, but non-religious. The term is used in various expressions, such as “sacred family ties,” emotional bonds, or “horizontal sacredness.” This is the sense in which it is used most often by Ariane Mnouchkine. The terminology remains fluid in the case of Eugenio Barba, who entrusts theatre with the task of “overstepping the bounds of the performance as a physical and ephemeral manifestation and to attain a metaphysical dimension,” the word metaphysical being equated through the non-synonymic series: “political, social, educational, therapeutic, ethical, and spiritual.”55

 53 George Banu, “În loc de postfa‫܊‬ă. Lupta cu absolutul,” in Jerzy Grotowski, Spre un teatru sărac, 147. 54 Jerzy Grotowski, “The Theatre’s New Testament,” in Towards a Poor Theatre, 49; 34. 55 Barba, “L’essence du Theâtre,” 25.

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Things started to get complicated when attempts were made to shed light on this matter. When asked, for instance, to explain what he understood by the phrase “holy theatre,” which he had coined, Peter Brook limited himself to stating: “the essential thing is to recognise that there is an invisible world which needs to be made visible.”56 However, his salutary concern for distinctions and his insistence on separating the concept from the sphere of religiosity gave birth to a paradox. This was also found in the explanations he provided. Wishing to distance himself firmly from the European tradition of the twentieth century, whose theatre was familiar solely with psychological invisibility (which, in his opinion, “has nothing to do with sacred theatre”), Peter Brook stated that he was not referring to a natural—psychological or even psychoanalytical— “invisibility,” but to a supernatural one. The expression was, however, (deliberately) metaphorical. He referred to this type of meta - or transpsychological invisibility through ambiguous terms, such as “mystery”, “secret,” etc., which did not state explicitly, but merely suggested an ontological split.57 In any case, what might be the perspective “beyond psychology” from which we could understand the term “holy” (in the syntagm “holy theatre”) as indicative of a certain type of qualitatively superior (non-religious) experience? The answers tend to be inconclusive. This indeterminacy persisted in Grotowski’s case (the prototypal example). For the necessary renewal of European theatre, he proposed a very significant project, which was to some extend predicated on a transcendent purpose. However, he saw “transcendence” as a dual term, which oscillated between surpassing (in psychological, existential terms) one’s own human nature (by working through limits and taboos and by discarding any “masks” in order to reach the authentic core of the human) and having a spiritual, quasi-religious experience.58 Grotowski called, thus, for a transgression of the individual self into some sort of trans-consciousness (a state of elevation of being; a sort of



56 Peter Brook, There Are No Secrets: Thoughts on Acting and theatre (London and New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 1993), 58. 57 Peter Brook, There Are No Secrets, 75. 58 This ambiguity is also present in the commentators’ texts, including the most sagacious ones. For instance, in the chapter devoted to Grotowski in Systems of Rehearsal, Shomit Mitter builds the largest part of his analysis and explanation on the first sense of the term “transcendence” (overcoming the limits of the human), only to show, towards the end, that Grotowski’s failure was due to the absence of myth. At this point, unprepared for a demonstration, Grotowski’s exegete takes a metaphysical turn, talking about the “numinous,” the “transcendent,” etc.

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pure, generic, trans-individual consciousness), a mutation that was not only psychological, but also ontological and was accessible to anyone who had the strength to experience it consistently. He appeared to indicate an impersonal transcendence, from where he could tap a kind of diffused holiness, seen as an invaluable reservoir of energies and fundamental situations, which deserved to be reactivated on the stage. His project coincided with various lines of thought that were influential in the 1960s, with points of confluence between trans-humanist psychology (opposed to excessively Freudian approaches, but close to neurobiological sciences) and various mystical traditions or spiritualist philosophies, of mainly Oriental extraction, such as Hinduism, Taoism and, above all, Zen Buddhism, which exerted a quasi-general fascination on westerners at that time.59 Approaching the human being from a holistic perspective, all these currents of thought evinced an openness to the exploration of depth psychology and affirmed man’s capacity for self-transcendence. The theoretical support for the idea of a non-religious transcendent existed at that time. It was endorsed not only by theatre artists, but also by sociologists and philosophers. Moreover, this was a period in which the border between theatre and psycho-therapeutic methods had faded considerably. In his inventory of the meanings of the term “[self]transcendence,” Abraham Maslow identified no less than thirty-five different senses.60 Some of those meanings (such as Transcendence of ego, self, selfishness, ego-centering, etc.; Transcendence in the Taoistic fashion; Transcendence of dichotomies; Transcendence: to live in the realm of Being; Transcendence of human limits, imperfections, shortcomings, and finiteness) cast light on the possible semantic content of the striking syntagm “secular holiness,” which is similar, in terms of its oxymoronic structure, to that of “meta-humanity.” In effect, the term “[self]transcendence” is understood as a way of detachment from the empirical self, in order to reach a global, integrative outlook on the universe, to experience extra-mundane (ecstatic) states, which can reveal the archetypal invariants (in the Jungian sense) of human nature. In short, a process of transmutation and purgation, a shedding of the external layers pertaining to the empirical self, which becomes one with a more expanded self and reveals the quintessence of being.

 59 For the possible philosophical and mystical sources, see James Slowiak and Jairo Cuesta, Jerzy Grotowski (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 43. 60 A. Maslow’s article, published in 1969, was entitled “Various meanings of transcendence”: http://www.atpweb.org/jtparchive/trps-01-69-01-056.pdf Accessed on 12 August 2017.

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Transcendence refers to the most elevated levels of human consciousness, behaviour and interaction, which are also the most inclusive and holistic, and are taken as ends in themselves rather than as means to those ends. A “transcendent self-actualising man” or an “awakened person” may have the opportunity to actualise, for a moment, ephemerally, the entire “potentiality of human nature” (in A. Maslow’s terms). Such a privileged state of “enlightenment,” which can become an everyday practice, occasions a shudder of emotional affectivity, so the person can feel “perfect,” just like a god: holy, as it were. In those moments, the individual incorporates both the real and the possible, cancels and harmonises dichotomies, surpasses mechanicist bonds (of the stimulusresponse, or of the “here-and-now” type) and emphasises hyper-inclusive links. The supreme form of transcendence resides in “the holistic perceiving of the cosmos as a unity.”61 Without a doubt, the cultivation of a cosmic consciousness (reminiscent of the Freudian “oceanic feeling,” as well as of cliché slogans of New Age spirituality: “the highest vibrations,” “the highest self”) was meant to counteract the sense of an alienated/ split consciousness and the feeling of rejection and non-belonging that are specific of late modernity. It should be noted that the new discourses maintained the religious connotations (albeit clandestinely, in the subtext). Ideas got mixed up and lost their distinctiveness. Concepts that had a clear source in Oriental mystical traditions were smuggled into scientific discourse. Several Grotowskian themes and motifs were congeneric with these ideas: the inner journey, self-discovery, trans-spirituality, the focus of his theatre research on the actor’s “self-penetration,” or various extreme, extra-mundane experiences, ostensibly shared by the actor and the spectator. These were similar to (quasi)religious experiences and were meant to galvanise certain constant components of the human spirit. These invariants were not limited to content and symbols, but activated complex psychological mechanisms that could trigger altered states of consciousness. In the spirit of the transcendence advocated by the new psychology, Grotowski dreamed of the true self, which one could only find, paradoxically, if one bypassed the psychological ego. The oscillation between religiosity and psychology was clearly present in Grotowski’s thinking. He claimed to have granted a neutral meaning to the term “spirituality,” which designated any fundamental search related to the purpose of one’s life and imparted an aura of value to one’s subjective experience. By appending the qualifier “secular,” he wished to make clear

 61

Maslow, “Various meanings of transcendence,” 60.

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that he had no religious commitments and that he would discard the narratives, doctrines and dogmas underpinning certain rites. And yet, Grotowski remained in love with the radical nature of the cultic and religious project, which served as a benchmark and as a model. He insisted that he had envisaged a more radical sense, that an alchemical process was truly underway, and that access was granted to a level of consciousness in which the very distinction subjective / objective collapsed and appeared to be positivistic, naïve. Although it aimed to overcome the dialectic of opposites, Grotowski’s oxymoronic formula, used for naming something “unnameable,” could possibly define holiness itself: universal and mystical. A genuine dilemma emerged: accepting the mystical perspective carried the risk of cancelling out the specificity of theatre; in fact, the psychological explanation had to be rejected, because it was reductionist. The state of self-exaltation and self-elevation envisaged by Grotowski could not be equated to a purely subjective individual experience without excessively diminishing the scope of this issue. This theoretical deadlock had consequences for theatre praxis. Grotowski and, later on, Eugenio Barba instilled actors with confidence in the system of sacred Oriental art, promoted, at least initially, as a model. A series of actor-training Oriental techniques and exercises, contingent on the religious tradition, were adopted by European actors not just for their novelty, but also thanks to their proven efficiency. A contradiction arose from the recommendation to take over these “techniques of interiority” but without the existential and theological commitment that existed in the East, and even without the complex cultural codes that accompanied and contained them; in other words, without any attachments to any religious belief or aesthetic doctrine. The intention seemed to be that of capturing the “energies” that the religious (the numinous, to be more precise) held, but not its substance, or its foundation. These theatre artists were interested in retaining the combustion force of religious ceremonial, but also in hijacking its original purpose. In other words, they wanted “holiness without the holy.” In the name of this oxymoronic desideratum, they activated some mechanisms that traditionally pertained to religion and mysticism (to magic, to be more precise), but treated them as if they were some loan stores, from where they could borrow the necessary props at no cost at all. And yet, a complete divorce was out of the question. They could not ignore the blatant fact that, in their originating tradition, the series of exercises that make up the training of Oriental actors was not a simple manual of techniques, but only the visible expression of a sacred

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conception, grounded in a spiritual covenant that placed the human being in harmony with the universe and with divinity. There are, therefore, serious doubts that the Oriental techniques and processes in question could really be decoupled from their religious content and separated from their magic background. Both Grotowski and Barba warned that a strictly instrumentalist approach would be a sure path to failure. Such techniques could not be practised and executed without triggering a mutation in the ontology of the performance, or without ultimately absorbing the ritualistic pact that had generated them. A simple import was not what was desired. On the contrary, the transfer was to be carried out in such a way as to pacify this potential conflict. Grotowski and, later on, Eugenio Barba, Peter Brook and Ariane Mnouchine disconnected the Oriental actor-training techniques from their religious roots, but not from their spiritual halo. They managed to instil in actors emotions associated with the sacred. In a manner that is difficult to analyse theoretically, but was very functional, the transcendent dimension was not simply rejected, but substituted with something else: a kind of “a-metaphysical” spirituality. Grotowski called it that “something we cannot name but in which live Eros and Caritas.”62 They did not know, therefore, how to define this new spirituality, but they knew for certain that it consisted in the need for faith/ belief in a supraordinate something that was neither the subconscious (the transcendental self, as in Camus), nor exclusively the metaphysical transindividual. They were concerned not so much to explain this “faith” that was uncoupled from the referent, but to instil in actors—through sheer exercise and through the training to which they were subjected—the need for faith, for that emotional state of “trust” (emotional reliance). It is really difficult to explain how exactly an actor can have quasireligious psycho-somatic experiences, in the absence of religious faith as such. One suggestion may be found in anthropology. Starting from a document of “exceptional value,”63 Claude Lévi-Strauss evokes the case of a sceptical sorcerer, who committed acts of experimental magic in spite of his lack of belief in the higher forces. Comparing various magical practices, he persuaded himself that he could distinguish the more efficient ones (those belonging to his own tradition) from the others, even if they

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Jerzy Grotowski, “Staement of Principles,” in Towards a Poor Theatre, 257. A fragment of an indigenous autobiography collected in the Kwakiutl language (in the region of Vancouver, Canada) by Franz Boas, from which he gave us the side-by-side translation. Apud Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology. Trans. from the French by Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf (New York: Basic Books, 1963), 175. 63

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were all false. Having drawn up a hierarchy, he concluded simply that his technique was more proficient than those of his competitors. From that moment on, he suspended his disbelief in shamanism, continuing to practise magic most successfully, but without acquiring any faith. His comparative endeavours revealed his pragmatic propensities, which fuelled an act of symbolic transfiguration. This case may throw into sharp relief the condition of Western actors, who became truly committed to the system of Oriental ritual theatre because of the very fact that they did not remain spiritually faithful to it, but replaced the religious faith pertaining to its structure with the profane, yet equally strong trust in a system (in this case, a foreign one) that they considered to be more efficient. The presumption that these eminent European theatre directors, who mediated the contact with the East, facilitating an exchange of vision and attitude, were more scrupulous in their practice than in their statements legitimises the following attempts to decipher the possible meanings of the contradictory concept of “secular holiness/ spirituality.” A first hypothesis might be that it was a purely contextual and rhetorical phrase. The term “holy” may have been used as a kind of reminder, because it came closest to the new form they wished to explore. It had nothing to do with religiosity. It was just an attempt to make their unique approach intelligible, by provisionally resorting to some categories that were already validated historically and culturally. These theatre directors used this formula faut de mieux, making a methodological and didactic compromise, but kept the specific difference: the qualifier “secular” was meant to emphasise that the transgression was aimed at an exploration of the deep self, albeit by removing the mystery of transcendence. In other words, we could speak, at most, about a rhetoric of holiness. The sacred itself was put between brackets. What really mattered was the resuscitation of a sense of the sacred, which actors could instil in the audience. Even when they did not resort to psychological means to “inspire” spectators, actors still explored that level of emotional sensitivity. Even in a “state of grace,” “in the culminating moments of the role,” a “psychic illumination” could emanate from the actor.64 However, the most common interpretations, provided by the authors concerned, targeted the linguistic level, more precisely, the inadequacy of language. The issue was addressed by Grotowski and Barba as the problem of double language. Referring to Grotowski, Barba notes that he

 64

Joseph Kelera, “Monologues of Ryszard Cieslak as the Constant Prince: steps towards his summit,” Odra XI, 1965, in Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre, 109.

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used different languages: one for working with the actors and the other for outside the rehearsal room, where the intention was to reflect and theorise. In his opinion, the former language was efficient and accurate, leading to successful artistic performances and genuine renewals, while the latter relied on the paradox, oxymoron and metaphor, being, therefore, difficult to explain.65 Grotowski himself spoke about the existence of a “working terminology,” which he saw as a specialised language, inapplicable outside of the context of origin.66 Conversely, Grotoswki believed that, sometimes, during the actor’s training, language itself was not only ineffective, but also inappropriate, because it diverted him from the act of creation.67 In any case, switching from a pragmatic to a conceptual language was nothing short of an alchemical process: “In one’s work,” Eugenio Barba states, “certain words shine like lightning on water. When they are written down, their nature is dangerously changed. […] We write with the precision of a good craftsman and then, incredulously, reread our texts, which are now far removed from the tensions that generated them. […] What happens to our words when we speak of technical experiences? They began as simple or ingenuous words which flew effectively when we used them during our work. Taken literally, they become leaden and fall on top of us.”68 The theory of double language is invoked to justify the inability of conceptual discourse to capture the actual theatrical experience in an explanatory language. Something that is “very palpable from the point of view of the practice” can become, “much more difficult to define,” says Jerzy Grotowski.69 The actors’ actions, for instance, are signs that can sometimes be perceived, even if they are not understood: “I cannot define it, but I know what it is.”70 Eugenio Barba concludes: “if the words seem imprecise, it must mean that what they describe is also imprecise.”71

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Barba, The Paper Canoe, 151; 141. Jerzy Grotowski, “Statement of Principles,” in Towards a Poor Theatre, 259. 67 Jerzy Grotowski, “PERFORMER,” a conference that was first published, with an explanation by Georges Banu, in ART-PRESS, Paris; in Jerzy Grotowski, The Grotowski Sourcebook (New York: Routledge, 1997), 376-380. 68 Barba, The Paper Canoe, 135; 139. 69 Grotowski, Teatru Юi ritual, 122. Jerzy Grotowski’s “Acting Techniques” is an interview he gave Denis Bablet in 1966, in Paris, where Le Théâtre Laboratoire staged The Constant Prince at the Théâtre des Nations. The interview was first published in Les Lettres Françaises (6-22 mars 1967). 70 Jerzy Grotowski, “Skara Speech” and “American Encounter,” in Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre, 235; 245-246. 71 Barba, The Paper Canoe, 38. 66

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There are, however, at least two categories of beneficiaries of meaning. First of all, the actors, for whom words are reminders of privileged experiences. Then, the spectators, whom the experience of the performance can help to unravel ambiguities and identify more precise, more enlightening meanings, enabling them to recognise the concepts behind various obscure expressions and passages in the discourse of those reforming directors. In any case, the ineffable experience made possible by ritual theatre can only be approximated, Eugenio Barba believes, through metaphorical language.72 Echoing a quote from Grotowski, he acknowledges the insufficiency and imprecision of language and admits using certain words for their poetic sound: “Personally, I must admit that we do not shrink from using these ‘quack’ formulas. Anything that has an unusual or magical ring stimulates the imagination of both actor and producer.”73 Barba’s role model appears to have been Meyerhold, whose theatre lessons, he says, quoting E. Eisenstein, his disciple, were like the “songs of sirens.”74 They knew, therefore, how to preserve the mystery, the enigma of theatre. It is a lesson he learned, too: “L’essentiel ne peut etre que muet...”75 Postulating the unspeakable nature of experience is, in any case, a commonplace of mystical traditions. An ironic paradox comes to the fore. Using the syntagm “secular holiness” in their attempt to emphasise the divide between theatre and religious or mystical experience, these postwar directors resorted, in fact, to a process that was also used by the mystics themselves: they denounced the inability of language to be a seat of divine revelation. This paradox reinforced, however, a fundamental impasse. Grotowski coined the oxymoronic phrase “secular holiness” to describe an innovative experience, unthinkable for traditional formal logic. That is why he was forced to turn to the “paradoxical logical system.”76 When he realised, however, its failure, he acknowledged the transcendent nature of the phenomenon he was concerned with. In Grotowski’s particular case, the semantic content of the term “transcendent” appears to have slipped ever more visibly towards a mystical meaning in the following decades (1970s-1980s).

 72

Barba, The Paper Canoe, 151. Barba, The Paper Canoe, 150. The quotation is from one of Grotowski’s interviews, entitled “The Theatre’s New Testament.” 74 Barba, The Paper Canoe, 51. 75 Barba, “L’Essence du Theâtre,” 26. 76 Grotowski, “American Encounter,” in Towards a Poor Theatre, 248. 73

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Therefore, in theoretical terms, the emblematic Grotowski-Brook project of overstepping psychic phenomena and acceding an uncertain (non-religious) holiness failed: in spite of the transgressive nature of discourse, the perspective remained secularised and the psychological tier was (omni)present. Viewed in terms of the lack of agreement between what they did and what they claimed to do, their approach can be labelled self-sabotage.77 Perhaps what they intended to rescue from the sacred was a certain radicalness of experience (in the sense attributed to pure experience by Georges Bataille, for instance), liminal, transgressive experimentation, overcoming the prosaic nature of everyday life through a scintillating authenticity. They aimed to reach, through experiences of flux, that stream of energy and creativity inherent in those psychic contents and impulses that society relegates to rituals. We cannot rule out the possibility that the project of “sacred theatre” could be defined more accurately using the tools of phenomenological analysis. Explosive actors, whose stage experience drives them beyond the limit of lucid awareness, emerge out of themselves and offer their flesh and blood to the spectator, through a pure act. It is such a radically innovative experience that Grotowski believed the syntagm “ritual theatre” would insufficiently capture its essence, because this phrase evoked a well-determined semantic sphere and could not capture its index of novelty. The only solution, he said, was to invent a new terminology for this new art.78 Still, the issue of typological accuracy remained of secondary import. The victories of this project in theatrical practice, where it contributed to shaping a new acting technique, and its innovative aesthetic effect proved that “secular holiness” was not an impossibility. These directors’ artistic success defied their conceptual inaccuracies and epistemic confusion.

A theatre with several rituals Not all the directors animated by the encounter with the East followed the same path, even though they all marched under the same banner. The fact that there was not one Encounter, bur several encounters with the East was predictable and noticeable. It was noticed by Georges Banu, for instance, who spoke about the exceptional ability of these creators to

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Shomit Mitter believes the failure also occurred in theatrical practice (Systems of rehearsal, 75). 78 Grotowski, “Teatru ‫܈‬i ritual,” in Teatru Юi ritual..., 145-146.

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transform Oriental theatre into a productive utopia. Their spirit remained free enough “to be able to travel from one world to another” and to reinvent, on their own, the “classics of others.” The East thus became a “territory of transaction,” which, through the process of exchange, facilitated “birth.”79 Therefore, in view of their subtle capacity to assimilate and transfer creative contents, avoiding eclecticism, heterogeneous elements and traditions, their art cannot be seen as “Orientalised,” except at the risk of a dangerous reductionism. Grotowski was among the first who described the experience of the East and of theatre ritual as a form of confrontation, which “combine[s] fascination and excessive negation, acceptance and rejection [...], profanation and worship.”80 However, this experience comprised various types of encounters, depending on each of these theatre directors’ artistic temperament, training and horizon of expectations. In a sense, which confirms those discussed above, Grotowski’s project appears to have been the most radical. His powerful exhortations (of transgression, desecration, passion, incarnation, transfiguration) eschewed references to the aesthetic intentions of theatre and proposed spiritual therapy goals. The internal consistency and rigor of his performances revealed his affinities with Indian or South-Eastern Asian ritual theatre, to which he did not stay loyal, however. Eugenio Barba claims that Grotowski’s conception of sacred theatre had nothing to do with any form of Asian theatre, which did not exert any significant influence on him.81 He turned to the Oriental resources as stimuli for catalysing his own vision of “spiritual resurrection.” Several differences are detectible, but the major distinction concerns the manner in which they approached the sign. As James Slowiak and Jairo Cuesta emphasise, it would be a mistake to confuse the Grotowskian theatrical signs with the mudras of Kathakali Indian theatre.82 To Grotowski, signs can be permeated by “obscure pure impulse,”83 which belongs to the vital flow of primordial drives (culturally non-mediated). These signs are created by the actor; hence, they are subjective. As he

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Georges Banu, L’Acteur qui ne revient pas. Journées de théâtre au Japon, nouvelle édition revue et augmentée (Paris: Galimard, 1993), 83. 80 Jerzy Grotowski, “The Theatre’s New Testament,” in Towards a Poor Theatre, 43. 81 See Eugenio Barba, “The influence of kathakali on Grotowski and me,” in Eugenio Barba, The Moon Rises from the Ganges, 77-78. 82 James Slowiak and Jairo Cuesta, Jerzy Grotowski (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 50. 83 Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre, 18..

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confessed, Grotovski rejected “alphabetic”84 theatrical signs because they were hyper-codified and did not reveal human personality. One’s very being faded behind the symbols one interpreted. On the contrary, Grotowski wished the actor to produce by himself a system of fixed signs, which could jam the social convenience elements in order to unlock vital impulses and original spontaneity. The result was to be self-revelatory: a trans-personal psychology, with a propensity towards the archetypal—an ontologically enriched psychology. His conception shed light on the paradoxical relationships pertaining to the discipline vs. talent dialectic: to stimulate creativity, one needs to resort to fixed, artificial gestures, to shake off the actor’s everyday automatisms, professional routine and the prosaic nature of his human behaviour, encouraged by social conventions, and to lead him into a state of creative spontaneity. As noted by Dick McCaw,85 unlike in encoded theatre, Grotowski’s conception is a theory of the expression rather than one of communication. Grotowskian theatrical signs are different from the “hieroglyphics” of Artaud. Connected to the cosmos, the actor’s body is invested, according to Artaud, with maximal values and a major power of signification and expression. Without losing its concreteness, the body fades away behind the symbol: its materiality is sublimated into a signifying image. Keeping its expressive force untainted, Grotowski lays emphasis on the body’s capacity for self-transcendence. In lieu of a body fastened in effigy, he displays the body in the act: a body in a toilsome, but failed process of transfiguration. Peter Brook’s and Ariane Mnouchkine’s experiments with unfamiliar theatrical forms attested their intercultural artistic sensitivity. Their penchant for encoded ritual theatre (for the masque, in general) condensed the core of an aesthetic conception. Interested, as he himself has stated, “not in a style of his own, but in a particular language,”86 Peter Brook integrated the African experience with a view to unifying, and rendering simultaneously present, these opposites: East and West, the playful and the serious, the ceremonial and the banal, sagacious discourse and gaping, yet meaningful silences, material reality and symbolic unreality, the “void” and the “full,” etc. In this way, he

 84 Grotowski defined and rejected what he called “alphabetic theatre,” where ‘[e]ach gesture, each little motion is an ideogram which writes out the story and can be understood only if its conventional meaning is known.” In J. Kumiega, The Theatre of Grotowski (London: Methuen, 1985), 116. 85 Dick McCaw, Bakhtin and Theatre. Dialogues with Stanislavsky, Meyerhold and Grotowski (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), p. 205. 86 Peter Brook, “Etre prêt,” in Les voies de la création théâtrale, XIII (1984), 344.

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created a vast and intoxicating theatrical universe, “a field in which ritual and what one calls outside reality completely overlap.”87 There are suggestions that, in his case, the appeal to Eastern thought (to Zen philosophy, to be more precise) fostered a poetics of simplicity.88 For Ariane Mnouchkine, the East—which, by reference to a seminal quote from Artaud, she considers “le berceau du théâtre,”89—served as an integrative model, facilitating the invention of new synthetic forms.90 She stated, for instance, that she approached kabuki as an imaginary theatrical form,91 but that she modified it according to her own creative interests and to her own aesthetic conception. Thus, she used not authentic, but recreated elements of kabuki theatre. In Richard II, she combined elements of samurai costumes or kimonos with Elizabethan costumes, achieving a seductive impurity. “For Mnouchkine,” Georges Banu concludes, “it’s more of a fiction than a loan, a utopia rather than a mode of usage. [...] Adaptation precludes the possibility of recognition.”92 The same critic is of the opinion that her strong originality stemmed from her reinstatement of Beauty in theatre: “a beautiful Unreal.”93 Viewed from the perspective of postmodern aesthetics, this eulogy may seem inadvertently condescending. In fact, Georges Banu’s statement conceals the paradox that, in the best of her productions, “the beautiful” did not dampen, but, on the contrary, it amplified the awesome impulses and passions enacted on stage. The value of this beauty was intended to shine through against a

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This is Peter Brook’s expression, with reference to Genet, in Peter Brook, Plays and Players, February (1964), 21. Quoted in Christopher Innes, Avant Garde Theatre. 1892–1992, 131. 88 A “rhetoric of vacuity” (“obsession with a return to zero”), as Martine Millon calls it, “Shakespeare: Source et Utopie,” in Les voies de la création théâtrale, XIII (1984), 108. 89 Josette Féral, Rencontres avec Ariane Mnouchkine. Dresser un monument à l’éphémere, Collection Documents, p. 18. Ce livre est disponible uniquement en version numérique. “We look for a basis for our work in Asian theatre because that’s where the very origin of theatrical form is.” David Williams (ed.), Collaborative Theatre: The Théâtre du Soleil Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 1999), 93. 90 Miller, Ariane Mnouchkine, 40. 91 Georges Banu, Actorul pe calea fără de urmă. Zile de teatru în Japonia, revised Romanian edition. Afterword by Jean-Jacques Tschudin. Trans. Mircea Ghi‫܊‬ulescu (Bucure‫܈‬ti: Editura Funda‫܊‬iei Culturale Române, 1995), 86-87. Original edition: Georges Banu, L’Acteur qui ne revient pas. Journées de théâtre au japan. Nouvelle édition revue et augmentée (Paris: Gallimard, 1993). 92 Banu, Actorul pe calea fără de urmă, 88. 93 Banu, Actorul pe calea fără de urmă, 87.

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background of despair and apocalypse—strong categories which, in a way, it sublimated and validated. The utter freedom with which Arianne Mnouchkine approached the art of Oriental theatre, privileging the imagination over accuracy, drew biting critiques of her works. Some were charges of infidelity: “(She has been blamed) for misrepresenting venerable Eastern theatrical traditions,” in which “she has not been immersed” sufficiently.94 Another reproach was that when it was not featured as a mere exotic item, Asia was used as a metaphor for contemporary problems (wars, above all). Other performances were disparaged as “naïve,”95 while others, such as Indiana, were vilified for proposing sterile forms of innovation.96 In addition to these, some productions were criticised for echoing certain forms of Asian theatre too intimately, to the point of sheer overlap.97 Finally, some reproaches bemoaned a certain proneness to excessive formalism.98 Most of the charges were rebutted with critical intelligence.99 It is noteworthy that these accusations diverged to such an extent that they eventually cancelled each other. The angle of attack was not always chosen astutely, revealing a backwardness of reception in relation to the creation itself. Critics appeared to ignore the novelty effect stemming from cultural distance and the change of perspective (very stimulating from a creative point of view). The author and the critics were situated on different loops of the cultural spiral. While other directors were interested in translations from one theatre (Oriental) to another (European) or in augmentations and intensifications of their own creative matrix, Eugenio Barba’s perspective is deliberately anthropological. At its core lies a process of synthesis and fusion. Eugenio Barba has for a long time explored the porous boundaries between West and East, which, he believes, are osmotically entwined. He is, in good faith, a mediator between them and a facilitator who always knows how to build bridges across their divide. In effect, the position he has assumed is

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Michael Issacharoff and Robin Jones (eds.) Performing Texts (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), quoted in Miller, Ariane Mnouchkine, 58. 95 Patrice Pavis, Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture. Trans. Loren Kruger (London: Routledge, 1992), 198, quoted in Miller, Ariane Mnouchkine, 58. 96 Peter Brook received some degree of criticism for Mahabharata. See Patrice Pavis (ed.) The Intercultural Performance Reader (London: Routledge, 1996), 81, quoted in Miller, Ariane Mnouchkine, 58. 97 Miller, Ariane Mnouchkine, 59. 98 Anthony Tatlow, The Formalist Accusation, in Miller, Ariane Mnouchkine, 59. 99 See Denis Salter, “Hand, Eye, Mind, Soul: Théâtre du Soleil’s Les Atrides,” Theatre Magazine 24(1) (1993), 59-74.

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evinced by his dual role in the process of appropriating the East: on the one hand, his role is institutional, primarily given his establishment, in 1979, of ISTA (International School of Theatre Anthropology), the organisation of workshops, fruitful exchanges and other joint actions of trans-cultural cooperation; on the other hand, his own theatrical creativity is at stake. Eugenio Barba has managed to build an international context of cultural exchanges and, without making this an end in itself, to promote Indian theatre in and for itself, as well as to replenish European theatre by virtue of his confidence in this fertile commingling. To achieve that, he came up with an inspired strategy, which involved several steps. First, he had to unravel the notion that Oriental acting techniques—purposely placed by their admirers in a position of authority in relation to decadent and devitalised European theatre—had to be appropriated, “domesticated” and adopted as accurately as possible. He then launched a process of clarification (for the correction of inaccurate information), followed by one of transference of valid and valuable data into a system of representations that were comprehensible to European spectators, in a cultural-artistic context familiar to them. The final, creative stage, entailed dynamic exchanges between the experts of different traditions. In Barba’s opinion, the East is just a stylistic reference,100 being truly useful in the actor’s preparation work, at a pre-aesthetic level. Reconstructing its largely anthropological values, Barba has been seeking, in fact, a common ground for European and Asian theatre, which are artificially separated today. He places the dialogue of the two traditions (European and Asian) in a holistic perspective, in which the truth of Theatre emerges from such contacts that do justice to both cultural heritages. The goal is not just a beneficial encounter, but a re-coupling of the parts of a once functional whole, a reunification. Of an unprecedented scale, his project promotes a genuine Myth of Euro-Asian Theatre: “a sort of dreamed Arcadia”101 or “a common country,”102 as he describes it. On the level of theatrical creation, his atypical quest for that lost original unity is opportunely tempered by the thoroughly learned Brechtian lesson. His performances do not aim to reinforce the old illusion: on the contrary, their purpose is to dispel it systematically, albeit from within.

 100

See Barba, The Paper Canoe, 19. Eugenio Barba, “A dreamed and reinvented Arcadia,” in Eugenio Barba, The Moon Rises from the Ganges, 100. 102 Eugenio Barba, The Moon Rises from the Ganges, 237. Eugenio Barba first published this text, entitled “The steps on the river bank,” in The Drama Review, 38 (4) (1994), 107-19. 101

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The Body as a “Secular Sacred” Space in Ritual Theatre

We could ultimately say that what was of the highest interest to all these directors, regardless of the variations that set their own conceptions of theatre apart, was the creation of a new theatre with a new type of actor. The promoters of Oriental theatre aspired to change the European actor, using techniques taken from or inspired by the East. The theatre climate itself was transformed in order to determine the actor to alter his professional and human condition. By comparison with the traditional image of the European actor, with a strong personality, this new actor— bearing the imprint of Oriental spirituality and possessing specific techniques of self-control—was a “depersonalised” figure. A figure with which, it needs to be stated, the director could work incomparably better. The fact that the emphasis was on the actor and on corporeality fostered a new form of theatrical seduction and produced a mutation in the very ontology of the performance. In light of this overview of the interconnections between the two great theatrical traditions, Oriental and European, viewed from a western perspective, I believe we can accept Georges Banu’s sensible conclusion: there is a “European idea” of theatre, and it could not be annihilated (or even substantially compromised) by the Eastern influence, which produced only some “adjustments,” some “grafts.”103 Some who these generated, in any case, a radical change. In Europe, after the 1960s’ adventure, theatre ceased being made as it used to.

Conclusion. The aesthetic continuum Viewed through the lens of the experiments undertaken in the 1960s and evoked here, it seems that theatre’s aesthetic crisis found a solution in the preference for the trans-aesthetic. The new aesthetic (insofar as we can speak about such a thing) was predicated on transgression and indistinction, on systems of interaction and mutual transformation. The trans-aesthetic was how art stepped into postmodernity. In the case of ritual theatre, the question remains, however, whether this was just a transaesthetic movement or it was also post-artistic, in spite of the fact that its practitioners believed in primordialist reveries? The answer is far from straightforward. On the one hand, it should be noted that the aesthetic intentions of theatre tended to be disregarded, in favour of some spiritual purposes. As noted above, the promoters of ritual theatre intended to detach art from the

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Georges Banu, Les voyages du comédien (Paris: Gallimard, NRF, 2012), 39.

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familiar body of culture, suggesting that they propelled it unto “something else,” which was not sacred in itself, but had all the makings of holiness. And yet again, the explorations of theatre’s archaic sources remained, essentially, aesthetic. These priests of “secular holiness” did not endorse, in fact, a mystical and religious quest, as their searches were of a cultural nature. They did not aim to return to an obsolete past, but rather to what Freud called the process of “working through” (Durcharbeitung). We can therefore acknowledge that the practitioners of “ritual theatre” were not looking for an osmotic immersion in rites. On the contrary, their interest in (Far)Eastern theatre was neither (just) anthropological, nor metaphysical, but artistic/ aesthetic. They intended to reconnect European theatre to the primary sources, which they deemed capable of relaunching it—as theatre, as art. In any case, the least we can say is the fact that these directors used those sources in an activity destined for the public and on stages that preserved the characteristics of theatre. The crucial experiences they went through during their wanderings through the East and elsewhere became a means of expanding their own art. Regardless of what these directors alleged, they did not relinquish the primacy of aesthetics (with the exception of Grotowski, perhaps) in order to truly put themselves in the service of the sacred. It appears that their return to the pre-aesthetic, to the tribal communion that myth ensured, was based on the recognition of theatre’s limitations as an autonomous art. The fact that these creators were attracted to ritual was a sign of their nostalgia and regret that the aesthetic could not achieve the powerful cathartic effect of ritual, particularly if preference was given to the rational and the psychological in the theatrical creation. To overcome these limitations, they sought a way out of perceptive, not to mention “discursive” frameworks. Theatre was to facilitate access to transgressive experiences (difficult or impossible to represent), to achieve a regressum to pre- or anti-mimetic modes of representation (could they still be called “representations,” since they were no longer mediated by any concept?!), by consubstantial fusion, by magic, or by contagious participation. The dream was that of a return to what western art had repressed, in order to assert and impose the privileged status of the aesthetic.104

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And still, how should we interpret the intention of ritual theatre to regress in an area of the pre-cultural? Could this fascination for the effectiveness of ritual manifestation express an interest for the “Dionysian” side of classical civilization and for its elemental force? Peter Brook wonders, albeit rhetorically, whether “Artaud in his passion dragging us back to a nether world, away from striving, away from the light—to […] Wagner; is there even a fascist smell in the cult of unreason?” Peter Brook, The Empty Space, 64.

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This was, we must admit, a truly paradoxical undertaking: theatre hovered in an anaesthetic sky, seeking to draw its sap from a more clearly ontological soil. This daring foray into the sphere of the extra-aesthetic was made, however, with aesthetic tools and concepts (“theatre,” “actor,” “stage,” “performance,” and so on) that were so radically renewed that they appeared to have reinvented themselves. The syntagm “holy theatre” is to be understood, on the one hand, as a regression to origins, and on the other hand, and as “ascension.” These directors searched for a common denominator of theatre and other pre-theatrical manifestations, which became, inevitably, post-theatrical. The goal was not to find a way out of the aesthetic, but to expand the concept to meanings that exceeded (without excluding necessarily) the traditional notion of an “analysis of the beautiful.” Should Grotowski’s argument about Artaud’s “fruitful mistake” be turned against him and the other “ritualists,” particularly if we consider that, in their performances, the aestheticisation of the stage could reach a level of paroxysmal intensity that is found only in artistic masterpieces? In effect, the revolt of these brilliant representatives of ritual theatre was a (specifically modernist) attempt at liberation from any constraints, forms and patterns. The consequence was, again, a characteristic trait of this era: the yearning for a new form, at any cost, be it a form of liberation.

PALACES, STARS AND ABECEDA: THE BODY AS INDEXICAL READER IN POST-SOCIALIST ART BY CORO COLLECTIVE, COOLTNjRISTƠS AND PAULINA OLOWSKA ULRIKE GERHARDT

In an interview with curator Adam Szymczyk, artist Paulina Olowska states that her main interest concerns the study of “degraded things” and the “beauty of dubious origins.”1 Obviously, this is related to her experience of the Cold War and the post-socialist transition. In an interview, she explains why she sometimes felt inconsolable after the fall of the Iron Curtain, living in Warsaw: Because it was a really tough time. With sensitivity you could not get further, everything was about tackling, getting along, about mastering the future. Then it became my aim to save this idea of a collective creativity into a new era and to preserve the undervalued modernism and its architecture. Gentrification had started and the cities’ districts began to change drastically.2

1

Paulina Olowska, Adam Szymczyk, “I lived Around the Corner from Modernism. Paulina Olowska in Conversation with Adam Szymczyk,” in Paulina Olowska, edited by Lionel Bovier (Zurich: JRP Ringier, 2013), 81-88 (here 81). 2 Original quotation in German: “Weil es eine wirklich harte Zeit war. Mit Feinfühligkeit kam man nicht weiter, es ging um Anpacken, um Zurechtkommen, darum, die Zukunft zu meistern. Mein Ziel war es, die Idee einer kollektiven Kreativität in die neue Zeit zu retten und den unterschätzten Modernismus und seine Architektur zu bewahren. Die Gentrifizierung hatte eingesetzt, Stadtviertel änderten sich schlagartig.” Holger Liebs, Julia Decker, “‘Ich kann Ihnen die Handlung Seite für Seite erzählen...’ Die Künstlerin Paulina Olowska über das Wesen ihrer Arbeit und das Konzept dieser Edition 46,” Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, no. 46 (November 2009): 32-42 (here 34).

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Many observations of post-socialist cities would lead to this very point: the “drama of privatization,” as philosopher Boris Groys calls it.3 Ignoring civil rules, this phenomenon caused a huge societal disorientation and demoralization in the early 1990s due to high unemployment rates, speculative transactions and growing corruption. But not only the “drama of privatization” has produced remarkable changes in nature of public space. In her exhibition and book project The Renaming Machine (2010), Art historian Suzana Milevska points to a phenomenon which is just as symptomatic for all post-socialist countries. Milevska recapitulates how— after the state of Yugoslavia broke apart—“the renaming apparatus” radically wiped out and signed over most traces from the Tito era. Since the ’90s, the original semantics of dozens of street names, linguistic styles and even words successively started to blur or disappear.4 The transformations of public space were thus closely related to the renaming of institutions, individuals, ethnicities, languages and even political states: a systematic overwriting of socialism’s left-behind “mental and symbolic territory.”5 Hence, these radical changes of the cities’ visual landscape and the people’s habits are precisely the “drama” that took place, erased and chaotisized the socialist “indexical topography”.6 In her statement above, Paulina Olowska describes her experience of the transitional period in the ’90s which was undoubtedly marked by insecurity and a strategic nullification of the past via renamings and excessive rejuvenations of the domestic, urban and rural landscapes. This situation of change usually started with renovations and renamings as first actions in the process of appropriating and “erasing national, cultural and personal identities,”7 and has inspired many artists to respond with reinterpretations of early avant-garde practices. The takeover of former

3

Boris Groys, Art Power (Cambridge, Mass and London, England: the MIT Press, 2008), 165. 4 Suzana Milevska, “In the Wake of Renaming: The Concept and Context of the Project of a Whole,” in The Renaming Machine. The Book, ed. Suzana Milevska (Ljubljana: P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute, 2010), 8-12. 5 Boris Groys, Art Power, 166. 6 Georges Didi-Huberman characterizes the relationship between drama and index as a consequential one which has significant effect on the “splotch, the disfiguration, the stain” which constitutes the final product: the index. See Georges Didi-Huberman, “The Index of the Absent-Wound,” October, no. 29 (summer 1984), 63-81 (here 68). 7 Suzana Milevska, “In the Wake of Renaming: The Concept and Context of the Project of a Whole,” 11.

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socialist identities by “the renaming machine” forms an experience which the last generation of direct witnesses of the socialist everyday life has made in the ’90s. Especially younger artists, who were born in the final throes of the Cold War, acknowledge and investigate the indexical value of these material residues from socialism and produce physical and linguistic reactivations. Therefore, the reading and revivication of indexical signs in post-socialist conceptual practices can be understood as a strategy to counteract the effects of “the renaming apparatus”. Artists involved with the socialist experience and its aftermath often engage in linguistic processes, in experiments of continuously setting and liberating language and in the reading of indices like Soviet modernist buildings, historical files and names, or avant-garde books. Philosopher Jean Luc Nancy proposes to replace the notion of the body, as a fictitious whole, with the notion of the corpus, an “ectopic topography, serial somatography, local geography”8 encompassing human and non-human entities, their residues and excrements. In this context, I propose to analyze the body within post-socialist video art, video performance and performance as a key element for reading external “indexical topographies”, populated by opaque and nonfigurative clusters of signs, words and objects triggering memories of the post-socialist experience. Besides a work by artist Paulina Olowska, pieces by artist collectives CORO Collective and Cooltnjristơs will be my sample material for this paper. My thesis is that within these works, the body takes shape as a corporeal reading tool invested in the mnemonic process of indexical analysis—and hence as a corpus as theorised by Nancy.

Indexical Reading In what sense can we actually speak of reading an index, and what position does this practice have in art history and theory? In 1987, the editors of October underlined the central role of the index in the introduction to their first anthology: Almost from the outset the index [...] appeared to us as particularly useful tool. Its implications within the process of marking, its specific axis of relation between sign and referent, made of the index a concept that could work against the grain of familiar unities of thought, critical categories

8

Jean Luc Nancy, The Birth to Presence, trans. Brian Holmes et al. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 207.

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Palaces, Stars and Abeceda such as medium, historical categories such as style, categories that contemporary practices had rendered suspect, useless, irrelevant.9

In order to understand the index as a formula located in the interstice of art and history in a more general and abstract manner, one may look at the following dictionary definition of the term: An index is a sign which would, at once, lose the character which makes it a sign if its object were removed, but would not lose that character if there were no interpretant. Such, for instance, is a piece of mould with a bullet hole in it as sign of a shot; for without the shot there would have been no hole; but there is a hole there, whether anybody has the sense to attribute it to a shot or not.10

Looking closer at this definition, which clarifies that the index is physically connected to an object or event that resides in the past and therefore is not accessible anymore, it becomes apparent that the reading of an index always borders on its “non-iconic, non-mimetic nature.”11 The basic constitution of the index can be explained with the help of Charles Sanders Peirce who states that everything that raises our attention is an indicator (or index)—as long as it is connecting two physical stages, cause and effect. Following Peirce, a terrifying bang can indicate that something remarkable must have happened, without giving information on what it was, instead just relating the event to the inaccessible cause.12 Thus, the index depends on a “supplemental discourse”13 to explain the reason behind the “bullet hole” in the given example. Consequently, indexicality always deals with something already past, something which is absent. Art historian Lisa Saltzman describes the importance of the index for the purpose of “making memory matter”: “[...] it becomes clear that the index, even if emptied out of its semiotic function, emerges as a compelling form

9

Annette Michelson, October: the first decade, 1976-1986 (Cambridge, Mass and London, England: The MIT Press and October Magazine Ltd., 1987), x. 10 James M. Baldwin, Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, Volume 2, Le-Z (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1998), 527. 11 Georges Didi-Huberman, “The Index of the Absent-Wound,” 68. 12 Charles S. Peirce, “Was ist ein Zeichen?” in Kulturwissenschaft und Zeichentheorien. Zur Synthese von Theorie, Praxis und Poiesis, ed. Elize Bisanz (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2004), 39-63 (here 44-45). 13 Rosalind Krauss, “Notes on the Index: Seventies Art in America. Part II,” October, no. 4 (autumn 1977), 58-67 (here 59).

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for concretizing and commemorating loss, for marking and memorializing absence.”14 This connection to the past and to the commemoration of loss explains why indices have a “status as trace and imprint,”15 which necessarily requires an interpretation or “reading” of these reminiscences last but not least to recreate the physical relationship between the mark or trace and its cause. I am employing Rosalind Krauss’ theory of indexicality for analyzing a specific historiographical and mnemonic approach present in the works of contemporary art, an approach which disrupts the familiarity with “our” language and environment because it exacerbates certain aspects of the indices’ physical presence. Indices are relevant dramatic elements in narrative and visual structures which also tragically fail to narrate because they are related to a set of aesthetic conventions, a buried past and a discarded future. Indexical reading does mostly happen in performative and languagebased artworks. There is a large variety of contemporary art practices from the post-socialist context that experiment with the “pure” physicality and materiality of language and touch upon the relationship between grammar and meaning, words and sentences, as well as between words and letters. As official speech acts during the socialist period were mostly disconnected from their semantic content, the body did not stand in a mere opposition to language—rather, body and language were chiasticly intertwined. Now, thirty years after the rise of body art, and in the middle of the performative turn in the cultural studies and humanities, artists of a younger generation are rechallenging the instrumental chiasm of body and language established during socialist times. Although now we live in times of post-socialism, linguistic and poetic experiments continue to characterize the contemporary art of a younger generation from CentralEastern Europe and the former Soviet republics, though with a different focus that is due to their investment in the reflection of the transition period. The linguistic approach already has a historical tradition and plays a significant role in the art during the communist systems according to curator Massimiliano Gioni.16

14 Lisa Saltzman, Making Memory Matter: Strategies of remembrance in contemporary art (London/Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006), 20. 15 Annette Michelson, October: the first decade, 1976-1986 (Cambridge, Mass and London, England: The MIT and October Magazine Ltd., 1987), x. 16 “These works show a hate/love relationship with words, an attraction to their power, and a scepticism about their sincerity and capacity for communication. These works disassemble words and language, piece them back together, even

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Whereas this tradition is strongly related to literature and art dealing with the “authoritarian discourse” or “authoritarian speech act”, in which the text had the same relevance as the action, and where sign and reference, language and gesture, word and action collapsed into one17, the socialist experience of the younger generation is so distanced that the memory of socialist everyday life has almost faded. Rather, it is the postsocialist transition and the semantic and visual processes of the renaming machine’s erasures which have left a deep impression. Still, a tendency to examine the physicality and materiality of language as well as to probe the readability of signs, letters, words and objects persists—especially now, where we can observe so many monuments, sites, buildings or documents appearing like “ambassadors from far-away stars.”18 Deriving the idea of reading from Nancy who emphasizes a type of reading “beyond decoding” which embraces the “materiality of language”19 and, to think it further, the materiality of the index, I will look at three examples where the index is the main communicator of the recent past and former collective utopias,— locating the readable inside the “unreadable”.

chew them up and spit them out until they are bent to new communicative ends.” Massimiliano Gioni, “Ostalgia,” in Ostalgia, ed. Jarrett Gregory et al. (New York: New Museum, 2011), 24-30 (here 27). 17 During ideological speech acts the structural interwovenness of language and body was one of the key characteristics. See Sylvia Sasse, Texte in Aktion. Sprechund Sprachakte im Moskauer Konzeptualismus (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2003), 14. 18 See Gal Kirn, Robert Burkhardt, “Yugoslavian Partisan Memorials: Hybrid Memorial Architecture and Objects of Revolutionary Aesthetics,” Manifesta Journal, no. 16 (2013), Link: http://www.manifestajournal.org/issues/regret-andother-back-pages/yugoslavian-partisan-memorials-between-memorial-genre# (accessed: June, 2017) 19 Jean Luc Nancy, The Birth to Presence, 336.

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On Palaces and Stars. Vocabulary Lesson by CORO Collective and Kosminis darželis (Space Kindergarten) by Cooltnjristơs

Fig. 1. Cooltnjristơs, Kosminis darželis (Space Kindergarden), 2012. Video Still, Single-Channel Video, Stereo Sound, Colour, 07:53 mins. Courtesy the artists.

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Fig. 2. Cooltnjristơs, Kosminis darželis (Space Kindergarden), 2012. Video Still, Single-Channel Video, Stereo Sound, Colour, 07:53 mins. Courtesy the artists.

The video work Vocabulary Lesson by CORO Collective and the documented performance Kosminis darželis (Space Kindergarten) by Cooltnjristơs explore the materiality of letters and words. The CORO Collective’s20 2009 video Vocabulary Lesson starts with three women, the artist themselves, dancing in front of the former Palace of Concerts and Sports in Vilnius, an impressive example of Constructivist architecture, built in 1971. Their dance references the vogueing style—which became famous through the ballroom culture of the African-American, Latino, gay and transgender community in Harlem, New York City, in the 1980s21, while they are performing alphabetic letters through physical movements.

20

Lithuanian artist group consisting of Eglơ Budvytytơ (*1982), Goda Budvytytơ (*1984) and Ieva Miseviþinjtơ (*1982). 21 Though vogueing has already entered mainstream pop culture, it used to be an emancipatory and community building practice for non-privileged, minoricized people who adopted and affirmated codes and styles from Celebrity culture and the

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However, vogueing is not the only style evoked by the aesthetics of their movements, as certain elements of early avant-garde movements such as DADA, Constructivism, Bauhaus, and postmodern fashion can also be discerned. The movements are underlined with a self-composed and engaging electronic music soundtrack, over which the male narrator is spelling the letters and words condensated from texts and lyrics by Gertrude Stein, Miles Davis and Frank Zappa, which simultaneously are interpreted through corporeal styles by the dancing women. After the narrator announces “I’ll tell you a secret—I can read words of one letter!” he encourages the viewer to listen to “his voices” which are constructed as female and get imaginatively attached to the performers, establishing a paradox. The paradox consists in claiming the ability to read “words of one letter” as, in the usual understanding, a letter constitutes a word and has no meaning in relation to this very word: “[...] it is a-sƝmos, it is without meaning.”22 The word itself is not present in any of the letters. It is the letter that introduces a shift to the stabile meaning of a sentence, thus the claim of the video’s narrator can be understood as an endeavour to read the “unreadable”. CORO Collective uses the letters’ non-significant identity to form a collage of appropriation of distinct forms-of-life, movements and aesthetics ranging from vogueing to modernity. At the beginning of the video, three female voices pronounce the episode Letters I in the background: “L walks like a lady, D is so detached, P’s practicing her perfection, F is effective only after, T is it time for a break?”

fashion industry. For an insight into this subculture, see the documentary “Paris Is Burning” (1991) by Jennie Livingston. 22 Paul de Man, The Resistance to Theory (Minneapolis, London 1986), 89.

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Fig. 3 CORO Collective, Vocabulary Lesson (Part I), 2009. Video Still, SingleChannel HD Video, Stereo Sound, Colour, 10:36 mins. Courtesy the artists.

On the visual level, one can see the performers’ movements in a modernist architectural setting emphasizing the “pure”, performative power of the letters and spoken words (“L walks like a lady.”), dressed in costumes of recycled Russian Constructivist forms. In Vocabulary Lesson, the alphabet becomes an pseudo-systematic, abstract tool for an indexical reading of the modernist “ambassador”: the former Palace of Concerts and Sports. In this video work, the former subcultural “Western” form-of-life is appropriated and used both as a technique to raise awareness for the body being “a historical situation”23 and a site of possibilities. The site where the eccentric embodiments take place, the staircase, the roof, the interior and the plateau in front of the former Palace of Concerts and Sports in Vilnius, is an integral part of this work and adds to its complexity. Rejected during the period of Post-Soviet amnesia of 1990s, the architecture of the Soviet period from Central-Eastern Europe has only recently re-entered the debate on “local modernisms” after years of being “invisible”. The reasons for this problem reside partly in missing identification (the stigmatisation of modernist architecture as “foreign” and “brutal”)—but also in that which art historian Zdenka Badovinac calls

23

Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution. An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” in Theatre Journal, No. 4 (December 1988), 519-531 (here 521).

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the unfinished self-historization of Eastern European cultural producers and institutions.24

Fig. 4 CORO Collective, Vocabulary Lesson (Part II), 2009. Video Still, SingleChannel HD Video, Stereo Sound, Colour, 05:56 mins. Courtesy the artists.

The performers’ annexation of one of Vilnius’ most iconic modernist buildings can be understood as a transmodern strategy, which uses linguistic, popcultural and historical elements to study modernist architecture, in contrast to “Soviet life” experiences. The dancing is taking place outside and inside the Palace where the embodied letters as active agents walk through the corridors and literally transform this public building into a former ballroom in Harlem. It can be interpreted as a hallucinatory “conquest” of this building by impersonated letters that once had the authority to form the public ideological discourse via cultural events. Although, as we could see in the short quote from the script, the textual dimension of this video work is not directly addressing the postsocialist experience, it is the fictional mise-en-scène of the materiality of the index via the body, the former Palace of Concerts in Sports, which enables a transhistorical reading of a post-socialist, architectural topography.

24

Zdenka Badovinac, “Contemporaneity as Points of Connection,” in e-flux, no. 11 (December 2009): 5. http://www.e-flux.com/journal/contemporaneity-as-points-ofconnection/ (accessed: June, 2017)

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To demonstrate the particular role of recorded words, I will now introduce the video performance Kosminis darželis (Space Kindergarten, 2012) by the anonymous women artist group Cooltnjristơs (founded in 2005), which reflects the urban renaming processes in post-Soviet Lithuania. Here, four people in white coveralls discover a playground reminiscent of Art Nouveau architecture in the Karoliniškơs district of Vilnius shortly before its demolition in July 2013. One of the notable characteristics of the playground from 1978, and the district, built between 1971 and 1976, were its street names having been related to the socialist project of the exploration of outer space, in all probability selected by the district’s architect Kazimieras Balơnas. Taking a cue from that, four female performers in “Kosminis darželis,” inspect the kindergarten playground near the Television Tower in Vilnius, acting like astronauts discovering the moon accompanied by an original soundfile of the trolleybus station’s announcements.25 This video performance refers to the renaming apparatus, since the names of the streets were changed in 1990 and their only residue is the footage of the recorded public transport announcements. Coupled with the performative action on video, the historical announcement gets used as a voice-over; the erased and almost forgotten names of bus stops and streets like Menulio (moon), Kosmonautu (cosmonaut), Zaibo (lightning), Viesulo (whirlwind), Perkuno (thunder) or Zvaigzdzin (star) are introduced by a female speaker, include a short melody and the sound of a running trolleybus. With their amateurish “dance” on the hilly playground mimicking the name of each station as it is announced, the performers comment on the complex and ideologically charged semantics of this indexical soundfile influenced by Soviet space culture. After the Americans landed on the moon in 1969, the Soviet cosmic enthusiasm between the late 1950s and the late 1960s started to die out; the heroization of the astronaut was followed by the disillusionment of a generation born in the 1960s, facing the “ruins of utopia.”26 In the

25

The building of the “cosmic” playground at the Karoliniškơs district kindergarten started in 1978. It was a project by architect Vikror Cholin who designed it as an environment for children with speech problems. The name of this kindergarten is “ýiauškutis” (which means “chatterer/ chirper/ twitterer”). The architect closely collaborated with his young daughters, who were of kindergarten age, and draw inspirations from their drawings and talks. He believed in the therapeutical and educational power of art. 26 Svetlana Boym’s generational experience is crucial because it illuminates the linking of the “glorious future” of communism with the Soviet space programme

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1970s, the cosmic discourse and the optimism for the future made way for a huge disappointment with the Soviet cosmic project until the 1980s when, in the years of perestroika, space travel and its utopian myth finally became obsolete: “Cosmic paraphernalia now appears like memorabilia from another civilization, like those rusting rockets on the urban playgrounds.”27 It can be said that, at the end of the Cold War and with the renaming of the “cosmic” streets in the 1990s, the final goodbye to the future of communism was set in motion, and the street names can be added to the growing corpus of nostalgic “cosmic paraphernalia.” Cooltnjristơs explore the materiality and causality of the indexical footage by staging it in a doomed architecture waiting for its demolition. Using the aesthetics of a low-quality homemade video, the mise-en-scène of the former “cosmic” street names’ announcements is a performative analysis of this soundfile’s materiality releasing its increasingly a-semantical power and “meaningless meaning”28. Wearing astronaut costumes, making erratic, slowed down movements and stepping on a ruinous architectural topography like “stepping on the moon”, the female performers bodies’ literally hover between the early 20th century cosmic fascination and the denial of such “memorabilia” that influenced their generation’s childhood in the 1970s. Laima Kreivytơ, an art critic and curator from Lithuania and a member of Cooltnjristơs, proposes to explore Soviet architecture as a memory landscape. Detecting three types of transformation of the modern cityscape—semantic, functional and personal—she relates the personal transformation to an obligatory “reinvention of a fictional past” from today’s perspective, claiming the past to be, from today’s perspective, per se fictional.29 Bordering on Zdenka Badovinac’s call for the re-evaluation

and Soviet society’s “cosmic discourse”—against the backdrop of her personal memory. Svetlana Boym, “Kosmos: Remembrances of the Future” in Kosmos. A Portrait of the Russian Space Age, ed. Adam Bartos (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001), 82-99 (here 84).; see also Asif Siddiqi, “From Cosmic Enthusiasm to Nostalgia for the Future. A Tale of Soviet Space Culture,” in Soviet Space Culture. Cosmic Enthusiasm in Socialist Societies, ed. by Eva Maurer et al. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 283-306. 27 Svetlana Boym, “Kosmos: Remembrances of the Future,” 84. 28 Rosalind Krauss, “Notes on the Index: Seventies Art in America. Part I,” October, no. 3 (Spring 1977), 68-81 (here 78). 29 Laima Kreivytơ, “The Meeting. Stolen Past,” “The Meeting. Stolen Past,” in The Meeting. Stolen Past, ed. Joseph Everatt et al. (Kleipeda: Kleipeda Culture Communication Centre; Kaliningrad: The Baltic Branch of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts, 2013), 28-29 (here 28).

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of socialism as a special project with its own globalization and its own modernity30, this argument elucidates both CORO Collective’s and Cooltnjristơs’ staging of still-to-be-discovered, indexical architectures of Lithuanian local modernism as well as Paulina Olowska’s poetic experiments with avant-garde sources as artistic reevaluations and reinventions which will be analyzed now.

On Abeceda. Alphabet by Paulina Olowska Paulina Olowska in her artworks often applies former socialist aesthetics, which she mixes with gestures, forms and motives from literature, fashion or pop culture. In her paintings she frequently features the confident, working and fashionable woman in socialist everyday life— whilst the gestures, the looks and the personal environment of these female figures refer to important protagonists of female culture such as Virginia (Woolf), Charlotte (Perriand), Nina (Hamnett), Djuna (Barnes) or Vanessa (Bell). In her sculptural work, she investigates the display as a stage by creating theatrical spatial effects that not only enable a different sensation of the body but also stage the display as a quasi-physical space. In her collaborative, narrative settings, she adopts dated societal aesthetics by drawing inspiration from the experimental puppet and marionette theatre from Poland, which since the post-socialist transition had remained largely unacknowledged. In most of her exhibitions, she uses the display as a derivative of modernist formal language for broadening the iconographical conventions of 20th century’s life plans. Developed in modern age, the socalled display is related to the aestheticized presentation of commodities in shop windows around 1900, hence with the production and visualization of desires. Thus, Olowska’s spatial mise-en-scènes take into account displays and their changes within cultural practices as well as their varying architectures and temporalities. They make an effort to connect contemporary display practice, the body and the (post-)socialist afterlife.

30

Zdenka Badovinac, “Contemporaneity as Points of Connection,” 1.

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Fig. 5. Paulina Olowska, Alphabet, 2012, performance, MoMA, New York, Photo © Werner Kaligofsky 2012.

In her project Alphabet (2005/2012), Paulina Olowska takes a historical work from 1926 as point of departure: Karel Teige’s book Abeceda (Alphabet), one of the most well-known masterpieces of Czech modernism and a composite of experimental poetry, modern dance, graphic design and photo-montaged typography that was republished in 2010. The Czech constructivist, poet, collagist, photographer, typographer and architectural theorist Karel Teige juxtaposed a cycle of poems from 1922 by VítČzslav Nezval with Constructivist photomontages by himself; integrating photographs of the dancer and choreographer Milþa (Milada) Mayerová (1901-1977) who was forming the letters of the alphabet with her body. The pose of Mayerová has been interpreted as a “triumphant step of an emancipated “modern woman” in the parlance of the time,” an impression intensified by her modernist and emancipatory costume: a dark top and shorts with a stripe on both sides, completed by a swimming cap.31 Mayerová, who studied in Hamburg with dancer and choreographer

31 Matthew S. Witkovsky, “Staging language. Milca Mayerová and the Czech Book Alphabet,” Art Bulletin, no. 1 (March 2004): 114-135 (here 129).

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Rudolf von Laban, austerely embodies the alphabetic letters and the poetic text in a frontal choreography. Alphabet was one of her key presentation pieces on stage between 1926 and 1927, of which the photographic record in the book only gives an incomplete feeling. Art historian Matthew S. Witkovsky analyzes the discourses and specificities of those years shortly after the end of the First World War when the Czech art collective DevČtsil (1920- ca. 1931) was active, of which Abeceda became a symbol. During a time when artists wanted to create public, reproducible art and experimented with language a shapeable, sculptural material, Mayerová appeared as a “new woman” and “expressive dancer” not only embodying the letters but also encoding social and identitarian transformations.32 Czech surrealism and the surrealist interregnum (1945-1948) have received the highest recognition in Paris before and after World War II and the interregnum is known as the “last utopia” in Central-Eastern Europe before in the early phase of the Iron Curtain. In its threefold juxtaposition of poetry, typography and dance, Mayerová’s dance imagery is characterized by its conflictualness and simultaneous openness: Mayerová’s performance makes Alphabet a key commentary on the ABC era. Her body as a “sign of difference” disrupts the book’s utopian character, because rather than projecting a holistic system, it accommodates competing, incomplete meanings. Mayerová communicated onstage in a ‘language’ that was contradictory, context-bound and only partly hers to control.33

Paulina Olowska reactivated Mayerová’s performance on two occasions, in 2005 in Berlin and in 2012 in New York. In its first iteration, the Alphabet project (2005/2012) was staged for Galerie Buchholz, with her three collaborators Joanna Zielinska, Daniel Yamada and Josef Strau performing on the roof of the Galerie Merrettich (a tiny glass pavilion of the Volksbühne theater, built in the 1960s at Rosa Luxemburg Platz in Berlin) in parallel with a reading of short poems by Josef Strau, Frances Stark and Paulus Mazur. Curving and stretching their bodies into twentyfive letters, from A to Z, they constructed linguistic body images, connecting poems and movements via the text’s semantic content. In 2012, Olowska re-enacted this performance for her choreographed piece Alphabet at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in the context of the Words in the World performance program, curated by Sabine Breitwieser,

32 33

Ibid., 116. Ibid., 129.

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which was hosted in conjunction with the gallery exhibition Ecstatic words/ Heaps of Language by Laura Hoptman. In this context, three professional dancers (one man, two women) from the Wooster Group transferred this piece into a heterochronic present, transgressing singular histories and temporalities. Wearing red dresses with a double button placket in front, Olowska’s dancers’ outfits seem inspired by the prozodezhda, or “production clothing” of the Constructivists, and especially by Luibov Popova’s designs for the Fernand Crommelynck’s play The magnanimous Cuckold (1921), and by the women’s dress reform in Europe and America between the latter half of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century. Furthermore, the female dancers’ blue stockings recall the Blue Stockings society, a social and educational movement of Bourgeois women in the mid 18th century England. This variety exemplifies how Olowska’s Alphabet constellates things and styles which got abandoned in the course of history and how the performers blatantly juxtapose the Blue Stockings society, the women’s dress reform, Popova’s Russian constructivist textile designs and Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights video34from 1978. But where does Paulina Olowska’s alleged interest to recur to modernism come from? Boris Groys states that the Futurists, Suprematists and Constructivists never used the term avant-garde because they considered themselves as “being already situated in the future.”35This means that the avant-garde artists, who strived for an “identity between life and art, between artist and artwork, between spectator and art object,” believed that the past had already taken place.36 Olowska, who at the beginning of this paper, bemoans the radical change of post-socialist cities like Warsaw, does obviously have a huge interest in the legacy of modernism and, thus, in the forms, artefacts, styles and recurrences of this failed utopia. Her performance Alphabet can be understood as an actualization of Karel Teige’s historical book Abeceda, an index of the Czech avant-garde, and as an experiment to recast light on “female role patterns [...] in paintings and graphic works, especially from the first half of the 20th century.”37 Olowskas Alphabet recalls the dancers’ bodies as momentums between women and machines, between graphic letters and human extremities, and last but not least subtly quotes the “new woman”

34

See Claire Bishop, “Paulina Olowska: Reactivating Modernism,” Parkett, no. 92 (May 2013): 146-161 (here 149). 35 Boris Groys, Art Power, 154. 36 Ibid. 37 Lionel Bovier, Paulina Olowska (Zurich: JRP Ringier, 2013), 157.

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and “expressive dancer” Milþa Mayerová, Luibov Popova’s androgynous costume designs, women’s dress reform heroines like Amelia Jenks Bloomer or Anna Muthesius and pop singer Kate Bush. Thus, Alphabet cannot be understood merely as a simple actualization of Abeceda, it also excavates other outmoded concepts and ideas of the future: it is retroutopian.

Fig. 6 Paulina Olowska, Alphabet, 2005, 1 of 26 coloured cards (one for each letter of the alphabet), Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne/New York

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Outlook Philosopher Boris Buden describes the term retro-utopia with reference to Inke Arns and her analysis of the Slovenian art scene of the ’90s and their passion for the art of the early twentieth century: “Their retro-utopia is no longer interested in utopia’s negative totalitarian past, but focuses on the emancipatory and visionary potentials of utopian thinking like in the myth of space travel. The gaze of the retroutopians is directed towards the future but takes a detour across the past to reach this future.”38 In fact, Cooltnjristơs, as witnesses of the “cosmic enthusiasm” and Soviet ideological education, and Paulina Olowska, as an archaeological pathfinder affirming the former aesthetics of socialist applied arts, can both be described as artists who are taking this “detour across the past” Boris Buden speaks of. And even CORO Collective who most likely only remember the daily rituals of Soviet kindergarten, and who surely have much more experience with their parents’ struggle for a new orientation in the ’90s, with the millennium’s rave culture, or the wave of educational and economic emigration from the post-socialist countries, have decided to take this step from the past into the future by way of the index. Thus also in post-socialist art of today, one can find a growing retro-utopian interest in the heyday of modernism; “pOst-Western” artists are engaged to pose the question “what if?” not only to the future, but to the past as well.39 Thus, the index can be a very helpful formula for an analysis of contemporary art produced in the face of the post-socialist transition and for bypassing notions like trauma, nostalgia or post-socialist amnesia, because it enables grasping any material residue of the socialist past in a less biased manner. Within the given works of art, the body as an indexical reader critically analyzes and interprets the overlooked, neglected and retrieved traces of socialism. Through these performative and aesthetic reactivations, the indices receive a historiographic meaning and become important findings in the course of the ongoing “archaeologies of the future.”40 The theory of indexicality can be a helpful technique to raise a

38

Boris Buden, “Another Past is Possible,” Phantasma and Politics event series at Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) (Berlin 2013). Link: http://english.hebbel-am-ufer.de/ media-center/texts/past-boris-buden/ (accessed: June, 2017) 39 Ibid. 40 See Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future. The Desire called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (New York: Verso, 2005).

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deeper understanding of our post-socialist contemporaneity and to meet the interests of future “horizontal art histories.”41

41 See Piotr Piotrowski, Art and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe (London: Reaktion Books, 2012), 35.

THE BODY OF THE EMPATHIC SPECTATOR1 MIRUNA RUNCAN

Introduction and Working Hypotheses Have you ever looked, really looked at your child (or any other child) fascinated by a theatrical performance or film, in the theatre hall or at home? And, most of all, have you seen him/her post-withdraw from the state of concentration prompted by the fictional action? By the time their exposure to performances becomes a constant form of social rite (or a current practice in the case of television), children’s recurrent reaction to what they see is mostly an active one. When the robe of spectatorship is removed, children feel the almost irresistible need to “be” the character with whom they have identified temporarily, by reconstructing the climactic circumstances. “Mommy, look, I am Spiderman!” Their latent energy, required by the observational concentration, is “released” kinetically and mimetically. Without being aware of it, children want more than just to be watched; they want not ONLY to get the others’ attention: on the contrary, they feel the instinctive need to embody and to live on their own the experience of alterity, previously assumed as “observable.” Philosophically speaking, children feel the inherent need to turn the fictional narrative nucleus, hic et nunc, from object into subject, from otherness into personal identity. Of course, ritualised social practices progressively “teach” them (how) to repress the physical expression of their active “mimetic” instinct: past a certain point in time, all the emotional-cognitive processes activated by their spectatorial immersion will usually take place, albeit equally dynamically, only in their mind and memory. According to the research carried out over the past few decades and to the theories developed in its wake, regarding the way in which the body is perceived and mapped by our brain, the condition and the parameters of understanding our spectatorship have undergone fundamental changes. For example, since the theory of embodied 1

A shorter version of this essay was published in Caietele Echinox, Volume 29 / 2015. “Utopia, dystopia, film”. Coordinator: Radu Toderici.

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simulations2 is proven to be a valid one, the small child’s kinetic-mimetic, post-spectatorial reaction could follow an essential pattern relating to the physical release of the observational “imprint” of the performance. Certainly, we, the adult spectators, have “learnt” to stifle this spontaneous mimetic reaction. However, the embodied simulation resides— instinctively—in each of us, fuelling the cognition processes which fictionally/associatively produce our joy of experiencing alterity. The hypothesis of this paper is that the assumption of the spectatorial condition is not only a way of “knowing” - passively, fictionally and associatively - the real or fictional others’ existential experiences that we find foreign or inaccessible; it is also a way to perceive our own corporeality, in safety conditions: that which is alive within us. In other words, following other phenomenological and neurological studies,3 I assume that spectatorship is, at least in cinema and performing arts, not only a cognitive/semiotic, but also a physical experience about otherness as self-perception.

The (Personal) Body in Our Mind A (more or less) non-symptomatic entity What do we know about our body? How do we know it? How do we control it? How present is it for us? To what extent do we “possess” our own bodies? We seldom ask ourselves these questions. As we grow up, as we age, in direct relation with our experiences and traumas, we are somewhat coerced into noticing the external or internal parts of our organism whenever something does not work quite properly. We do have, of course, some kind of general, scattered sensation regarding our body; something “decipherable” mainly at the tactile/haptic level, via skin sensors. If we pay attention (which we do not, usually), we can perceive the volumetric “threshold” between us and the surrounding air. Excessive cold, wind or heat stress this limit, as it is stimulated externally. Muscular motions are also signals we understand at least through the sensations linked with their control. When we swim, we perceive our body by a sensory intensification of our “tactile” margin, which experiences the 2

Vittorio Gallese and Alvin Goldman, “Mirror neurons and the simulation theory,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2 (12) (1998): 493–501. 3 See, among others, Laura Marks, Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002 and Luis Rocha Antunes, “The Vestibular in Film: Orientation and Balance in Gus Van Sant’s Cinema of Walking.” Essays in Philosophy: Volume 13, Issue 2 (2012).

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environment/water and transfers it to us evenly, by the same motion. When we float on our back, our eyes closed, we “see” ourselves swimming, we objectify ourselves, and pleasure extends in our entire body in action. (Hence the conceptual/metaphoric success of the notion of “immersion,” used to describe our interactions with live performing arts, films or video games.4 Otherwise, our corporeal image is an obvious construct based on watching and mirroring. Through reflection, we become aware of our overall aspect, checking with our own eyes what we “look” like in the eyes of others. We study our image, we mark, measure, question it, and sometimes we act in such a way that it adjusts to our expectations of it. But our mental image, reflecting the mirror reflection, is not the body as such, but a “vision”: one that requires constant control and inspection by the other senses. In fact, a healthy body is usually an absent body. We “feel” it only by contrast with the external stimuli. Neurologists call this type of perception Exteroception. When in good function, a healthy body is, consciously, “non-existent.” Our body does not send signals for comfort, but only for discomfort (pain, itch, hunger, cold etc.) or pleasure. We perceive our body in symptom situations, or in ecstatic/satisfaction situations. Being alive and well is a not a physical feeling, but a mental/imaginary construct, usually founded on the constant neglect of our corporeal/physical presence in our routine activities. In reality, however, any accident that disturbs this subtle and quiet mechanism (of the “non perception” of comfort), any aggression or any pain pushes us to focus on parts of or on the entire body, seeking the causes and the remedies of the dysfunction. At the same time, it forces us to note the steady presence of the organ, the limb or the entire organism, as a concrete, material and, to some extent, “objective” entity, unknown to our “ethereal” mind. It is as if our self were enclosed only by our “visions” and our body were something distinct, at least to some extent. Countless philosophical, religious or artistic works have stemmed from this apparent “absence” of our healthy and living body, which reveals itself only in the case of some trouble affecting its irksome materiality.

4

See Tim Recuber, “Immersion Cinema: The Rationalisation and Reenchantment of Cinematic Space,” Space and Culture; 10/2007, 315.

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Mechanisms of perception and the configuration of one’s own body Nowadays, even if the map of the areas where our brain processes the relationship with specific parts or with the entire body is more comprehensive and more accurate than, for example, fifty years ago, the cerebral mechanisms of association among perceptions, signals and their conscious awareness remain (the fruit of) theories rather than positively established conclusions. Technological progress has spectacularly advanced the study of how the brain works, but the scope of our knowledge is still remote. Theories as such rely both on the empiric study of dysfunctions and on the topological association between function and dysfunction: the thing is that, because it is applicable to different persons, dysfunction could show contradictory symptoms. For the time being, the “classic” dichotomy that accounts for the way in which the brain perceives and analyses the body is the one that opposes, dialectically, the body schema and the body image. If we rely on the most complex descriptions provided by Paillard5 and by Gallagher,6 we can define the body schema as a sensory-motor map underpinned by selfperception. On the other hand, corporeal image is a complementary mechanism, founded on the concrete vision the individual has of his own body (and of parts thereof), as perceived from the exterior. Furthering and deepening this basic dichotomy, Milner and Goodale7 propose a different one, centred on functionality and on behaviour: the one between the “visual pathway for perception” of the body to the brain, and “the visual pathway for action.” A newer version of this latter actionist dichotomy, one that comes closer to contemporary computational languages, is proposed by Carruthers.8 Thus, the brain’s mechanisms of corporeal exploration could be classified as online knowledge (“The body as it is currently,” controlling action) and as offline knowledge (“The body as it is usually,” as a synthetic representation/image of one's self).

5

J. Paillard, “Body schema and body image—a double dissociation in deafferented patients.” In: Gantchev GN, S. Mori and J Massion (eds). Motor control, today and tomorrow. Sofia: Academic Publishing House, 1999. 6 S. Gallagher, How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 7 David Milnerand Melvyn A. Goodale, The Visual Brain in Action, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. 8 Glenn Carruthers, “Types of body representation and the sense of embodiment,” Consciousness and Cognition, 17 (2008): 1303-1316.

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In a complex critical reconsideration of these dichotomies, Berlucchi and Aglioti9 boldly suggest a stellar pattern, which should convert the dialectic visions into some sort of matrix web, whose connector terminal is ostensibly situated in the insular cortex (thus reinforcing Craigs theory from 200910). In a very simplified formula, the perception and codification mechanisms regarding the body intersect with those that order the postures, functions and tasks of the perceptible organs11, remixing them in the anterior area of the insula, in a coherent format that allows acknowledgement. Subsequently, this “terminal” is responsible for the overlapping of data obtained by mapping, image, action and adjustment to its purpose, in an isomorphic and coherent image relating to our own body.12

Types of investigation and of perception of the body Summing up, the brain processes the entire body by systematising a series of active functional schemas, images and reactions, trying to semanticise and to “translate” the significance of the information obtained. In the last century, neurologists managed to reach a consensus on the three large types of self-investigation. According to them, the brain obtains the information, submitting it to constant systematisation. On the one hand, the information is gathered by the aforementioned exteroception: our neural terminals, particularly at skin level, perceive and respond to exterior stimuli, reading them consciously as heat, cold, humidity, wind, vibrations etc. In other words, for our brain, the body is an interface with the environment. On the other hand, interoception denotes our capacity to perceive and interpret the stimuli received from within the organism, when an organ or a limb sends messages regarding its inappropriate or deficient operation. In general, we consider a recurrent signal (pain, itch, burn, etc.) coming from the same area to be a symptom, and we try to identify its cause. Finally, the most complex and most obscure self-investigation procedure is proprioception: it relates to our capacity to perceive and interpret, most of the times unconsciously, the information regarding location, position, orientation and motion received from within the 9

Giovanni Berlucchi and Salvatore M. Aglioti, “The body in the brain revisited,” Expanded Brain Research, Springer-Verlag, 2009. 10 A.D. Craig, “How do you feel-now? The anterior insula and human awareness.” Nat Rev Neuroscience 10 (2009): 59–70. 11 But not with those that manage the functions of the internal organs, operating independently, imperceptibly in the brainstem. 12 Berlucchi and Aglioti, “The body in the brain revisited,” 31.

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organism. Discrete/unconscious and important in the formation of an overall “vision,” the cerebral areas that store proprioceptive information are also responsible for our sensations of possession relating to particular parts or to the entire individual body. In other words, proprioception plays a capital role in the process of perception of a limb or of an organ as being ours, rather foreign to us (in this sense, there are countless revealing examples, in case studies of cerebral lesions).13 Conjunctively, the three types of self-perception make the somatosensory system that produces somaesthesia, the syncretic capacity of experiencing our own body. “Interoception works along with proprioception and exteroception to provide the brain with complete information about the rest of the body, and its cortical representation in the insula is thought to be part of a system for emotional expression and selfconsciousness.”14 Here, we could go back to the introductory remark on swimming and to the complex corresponding feeling of pleasure relating to one’s own body: the experience joins all the three types—exteroception, interoception and proprioception—in unmatched synaesthesia. However, whether they agree or not with the new theories (particularly with the theory of embodied simulations) advanced after the discovery of mirror neurons at the beginning of the 1990s, neurologists do admit that an essential part of knowing one’s own body is obtained by the human being, from the earliest (pre-verbal and pre-motor) age, in association with visual and acoustic observations regarding the bodies of other human beings. The first observations/ data emerge in relation with sounds and smells, but mostly with the faces of the dear ones, with their expressions and aspect: the mother, the father, the grandmother, the siblings who take care of the child during his first months of its life are, first and foremost, sounding faces.15 Later, in the fourth part of this paper, we will look at the centring of interpersonal and artistic communication on the human face. With the development of its motor capacities, the child accumulates first observations regarding the remaining parts of the body, initially regarding the limbs, and operates the first gestural associations. At about one year, children will also react for the first time to their mirrored image, recognising themselves and playing with their own image in the mirror. 13

Here, for a simple, coherent and touching reading, see Oliver Sacks, A Leg to Stand On, N.Y:Touchstone Books, 1984 14 A.D. Craig, quoted in Berlucchi and Aglioti, “The body in the brain revisited,” 27. 15 Andrew N. Meltzoff andM. Keith Moore, “Imitation of Facial and Manual Gestures by Human Neonates,” Science, New Series, Volume 198, Issue 4312 (Oct. 7, 1977), 75–78.

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However, such mechanisms and experiences are also likely to be involved in the ability to perceive and know the structure and movements of the bodies of other individuals, in order to understand their actions and to interpret their gestures for social communication. One can thus postulate the existence of a cognitive category for the human body whose components include one’s own body as well as the bodies of other humans.16

Separately from the theory of embodied simulations we will discuss below, another finding of these recent years is particularly important in our attempt to relate the performer’s corporeality with the spectator’s. At the beginning of the millennium, a multinational team of researchers17 found, by applying fMRI procedures, an area in the right lateral side of the occipital-temporal cortex, which reacted coherently and constantly to visual exposure to images of human bodies or of parts thereof, with the exception of the face. Following a compelling number of experiments conducted in laboratories in various countries, the area was called extrastriate body area (EBA). The meaning of the finding is all the more important as it confirms former hypotheses that various brain areas are responsible for visual reactions and the analogous representation regarding the head and the face, on the one hand, and the other parts of the body, seen jointly or separately, on the other hand. However, it is already clear that, apart from the mapped presence of our autoscopy mechanisms, careful observation of others (daily or in the framework of mediated and artistic communication) plays an essential role in the corporeal knowledge of the self.

Yours is mine. The body of the performer in the spectator's mind The mirror neurons Mirror neurons were revealed, for the first time, at the beginning of the 1990s, through experiments with electrodes implanted in macaque brains: the electrodes took over the electric signals from singular neurons and translated them into amplified acoustic signals. These neurons could be

16

Berlucchi and Aglioti, “The body in the brain revisited,” 25. P.E. Downing, Y. Jiang, M . Shuman, and N. Kanwisher, “A cortical area selective for visual processing of the human body.” Science, Volume 293, issue 5539 (2001), 2470–2473. 17

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found in the premotor cortex.18 This totally unexpected discovery has triggered an avalanche of studies, findings and theories over the past two decades, not only in the field of neurology, but also in many other related or cross-disciplinary fields. “Mirror neurons are premotor neurons that fire both when an action is executed and when it is observed being performed by someone else.”19 In simpler terms, the mirror neuron activates, with similar strength, both when the monkey sees another monkey or when a man picks a peanut, and when the monkey itself performs the same action. Subsequent experiments have shown that this behaviour, present in a limited number of neurons, refers not only to visually perceived actions, but also to action perceived only acoustically. At the same time, they have revealed that, at least in apes, mirror neurons activate only with focused (purposeful) actions. Certainly, the situation is more intricate when we approach human beings, first of all because it is extremely difficult to study freestanding neurons in the human brain. Nevertheless, non-invasive comparative studies, mainly via magnetic resonance imaging, have established neuronal areas with a similar behaviour in man, in the lower frontal lobe and the superior parietal lobe and, more recently, in the medial temporal lobe. Lately, researchers have reported experiments with electrodes that have localised freestanding mirror neurons, in subjects who agreed with this research being done in parallel with preoperative testing, in extreme cases of epilepsy.20 The same studies remarkably reveal neurons that work to inhibit imitative action, but react to witnessing it. The numerous essays on mirror neurons written by the Parma group and by other research groups all over the world have very quickly triggered an abundant series of concrete or theoretical developments: inevitably, every particular field of medicine, psychology, behavioural or social sciences that has ever dealt with the dilemmatic relationship between observation and imitation could be involved to some extent. With good reason, both the Italian group of scholars (very active in the experiment and the polyvalent development of their initial observations into a parade of hypotheses and applications), and many other teams or 18

See Giacomo Rizzolatti, Leonardo Fogassi, Vittorio Gallese, „Neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the understanding and imitation of action,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Volume 2, Issue 9, 2001, 661-670. 19 Vittorio Gallese, Luciano Fadiga, Leonardo Fogassi and Giacomo Rizzolatti, “Action recognition in the premotor cortex.” Brain, Volume 119, Issue 2, 1 April 1996, Pages 593–609. 20 Christian Keysers, John Kaas, Valeria Gazzola, “Somatosensation in Social Cognition.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience Volume 11, issue 6, (2010), 417–428.

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individual researchers could perceive the revolutionary potential of this finding. But even before the empirical data on the presence and action of mirror neurons in the human brain became consistent, the Italian group predicted the usefulness of this discovery for understanding the multiple mysteries surrounding imitation and empathy: Action observation causes in the observer the automatic activation of the same neural mechanism triggered by action execution. The novelty of these findings is the fact that, for the first time, a neural mechanism allowing a direct mapping between the visual description of a motor act and its execution has been identified. This mapping system provides a parsimonious solution to the problem of translating the results of the visual analysis of an observed movement—in principle, devoid of meaning for the observer—into something that the observer is able to understand.21

Simply put, the presence of mirror neurons could explain the biological, unconscious, instinctive roots of our capacity to experience other people’s emotions and (perhaps) intentions, in other words, “to put ourselves in their shoes.” However, this capacity would vary among individuals, depending, on the one hand, on one’s innate sensitivity and, on the other hand, on the complexity of interpersonal and mediated experiences to which one is exposed.

The embodied simulation theory Apart from the strictly medical applications of the studies that resulted from the discovery of mirror neurons (on which neurologists are yet to find a consensus),22 in our opinion, the most interesting are theories relating to empathy. In fact, the implications of empathy in the visual, musical or performing arts provide substantiate any type of aesthetic judgment, from Aristotle to this day (let alone the complex Indian “Rasaesthetics.”)23 On the other hand, particularly in the twentieth century, the concept of empathy was at the heart of many controversies, given that the concrete mechanisms through which it is obtained or produced have always been mysterious. From the perception of one’s “corps propre” 21 Vittorio Gallese, “Mirror Neurons, Embodied Simulation, and the Neural Basis of Social Identification,” Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Volume 19 (2009), 519–536. 22 P.S. Churchland is the best known objector to the hypotheses concerning the dysfunctions of mirror neurons in cases of autism. See "6," Braintrust (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011. 23 Richard Schechner, “Rasaesthetics,” The Drama Review, Volume 45, Issue 3 (2001), 27-50.

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(own body) theorised by Merleau-Ponty24 to the haptic perception of film images approached by Laura Marks25 or the multisensory and vestibular systems analysed by Antunes,26 the spectator’s physical/empathic experiences seem to become an ever more consistent field of investigation. From this point of view, the Parma group of researchers suggested, from the beginning, that mirror neurons could represent (which, in effect, they do) some kind of essential link between our perception systems and the transfer of the information obtained through empathic reactions, in our own bodies. Vittorio Gallese, one of the most prolific and determined supporters of this point of view, has found a name for these processes: embodied simulation. Our capacity to pre-rationally make sense of the actions, emotions and sensations of others depends on embodied simulation, a functional mechanism through which the actions, emotions or sensations we see activate our own internal representations of the body states that are associated with these social stimuli, as if we were engaged in a similar action or experiencing a similar emotion or sensation.27

No wonder that this theory has quickly found supporters in fields ranging from general linguistics to aesthetics and fundamental neurology research (with dedicated followers, such as the group led by Marco Iacoboni, the group headed by V. Ramachandran, or the very prolific pair of scholars Christian Keysers and Valeria Gazzola). Ultimately, each of us has had, since our young age, incontrollable reactions of simulation: yawning when we see someone yawn, swallowing when someone else eats in front of us, etc. We rarely or never ask ourselves, for example, why we are so engaged in the careful observation of a relative or of an employee, when they try to perform a complicated manual operation, for instance, repairing a household item; we seldom ask ourselves where our barely repressible need to take over that action comes from, or how come we need to make an effort to inhibit our irrational feeling that we could do it better...

24

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1945. 25 Laura Marks, Touch, 2002. 26 Luis Rocha Antunes, “The Vestibular in Film: Orientation and Balance in Gus Van Sant’s Cinema of Walking,” Essays in Philosophy, Vol. l. 2012. 27 David Freedberg and Vittorio Gallese, “Motion, emotion and empathy in aesthetic experience,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Volume 11, issue 5 (2007), 198.

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Gallese claims—and he is supported by his collaborators’ and competitors’ experimental developments—that the system of embodied simulation is innate. This could be proved, first of all, by the mimetic, facially centred reactions of the child in the months prior to the development of motor coordination, reactions such as smiling or frowning, the imitation of sounds or gestures, etc. This system develops, however, according to our intra-family and social experiences, in direct relation with the development and refinement of the motor cerebral zones, depending on the complexity of our existential and observations interactions.28 For example, complex and compelling experiments have proven that, in adulthood, the activity of mirror neurons is considerably more dynamic when the observer who studied piano at some point in time, or has practised a sport, follows another pianist’s finger movements or another sportsman’s performance: in the observer, the muscles involved in the execution of that performance are, most of the times, also excited, simultaneously with the performer’s actions. As Keysers maintains, “Our mirror system is thus not fully determined at birth, but can be augmented by experiences that change the way we perceive these actions in others.”29 Of course, we would be wrong to believe that the discovery of mirror neurons—whose existence is not necessarily denied by other researchers,30 even though they may approach these as a mere adaptive functional change of regular cerebral neurons - is some sort of miraculous key to unlocking all the previously closed doors, which could lead to an explanation of mimesis, empathy and social practices of negotiation and violence reduction. It must be emphasised that mirror neurons are not ‘magic cells’. Their functional properties are the outcome of the integration they operate on the inputs received from other brain areas. What makes the functional properties of mirror neurons special, though, is the fact that such integration process occurs within the motor system. Far from being just another species of multimodal associative neurons in the brain, mirror neurons anchor the multimodal integration they operate to the neural mechanisms presiding over our pragmatic relation with the world of others. Because of this reason they enable social connectedness by reducing the gap between Self and others.31

28

Keysers, Kaas and Gazzola, “Somatosensation in Social Cognition”. Christian Keysers, The Empathic Brain, London: Social Brain Press, 2011, 60. 30 See Cecilia Heyes, “Where do mirror neurons come from?” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 34 (2010) 575–583., 31 Gallese, “Mirror Neurons, Embodied Simulation...,” 522. 29

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Nevertheless, in live performing arts (theatre, dance, performance etc.) and in film or video arts, video games included, perhaps even to a greater extent than in static visual arts (painting, sculpture, photography approached several times by Damasio32, in now famous works), the theory of embodied simulation is capital. Audience surveys and studies on the spectator, the performer and the relationship between them are, therefore, compelled to keep up, as much as possible, with the theoretical and applicative developments of neurosciences. In this respect, a recent study with a complex structure was made by a multidisciplinary group of neurologists from Tel Aviv, using combined fMRI scanning, ECG and retrospective emotion rating. The group compared the cerebral emotional and cognitive reactions of 43 adults, correlating the results from three cortical and sub-cortical areas: the embodied simulation zones, the “theory of mind” zones and the limbic system networks. The subjects of the experiment had to watch two tenminute excerpts, presenting the tragic separation of a mother from her children: one from the film Stepmom (1998) and the other from Sophie’s Choice (1982). Particularly - and to our knowledge, unprecedentedly - we found the dynamic patterns of connectivity of these circuits to be associated with empathy experienced under realistic situations. Furthermore, our data indicate a growing interaction of these circuits with a set of subcortical limbic structures during the intensification of empathic engagement. However, these findings also evince a context-dependent dissociation between empathy-related brain processes, suggesting that emotional sharing is based on the interplay between ES- or ToM33-related processes, which may alternatively dominate empathic engagement.34

Even more interestingly and relevantly, the results of the experiment appear to confirm that our empathic experiences, at least in dramatic 32

See, for example: A.R. Damasio, Descartes’s “error”. Emotion, reason and the human brain, (Quill, 1994); or, more recently: A. Damasio, K. Meyer, "Behind the looking glass". Nature (1994), 454. 33 Theory of Mind, or ToM: “… ToM relies on cognitive rather than interoceptive representations of another’s state. These representations allow for a top-down inference of another’s mental state by attributing certain beliefs, thoughts, motivations and desires to that person.”(Gal et alii., 2013, 31) 34 Raz Gal, Yael Jacob, Tal Gonen, Yonatan Winetraub, Tamar Flash; Eyal Soreq; and Talma Hendler. “Cry for her or cry with her: context-dependent dissociation of two modes of cinematic empathy reflected in network cohesion dynamics,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neurosciences, Issue 7, (2013), 35.

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situations, have at least two different kinds of personal sympathetic engagement: A systematic examination of the cinematic factors that induce increased ToM-related processing in Stepmom and ES-limbic integration in Sophie is yet to be conducted. However, a key thematic distinction between the clips, which is related to agency, may readily be considered relevant: both films introduce a theme of separation of mother from child, but in Sophie the loss is presented as a real-time probabilistic event whereas in Stepmom the loss is presented as a determined fact, which cannot be changed by intentional action. In Stepmom, the mother and children discuss the separation as a given fact, while Sophie and her children face an unfolding act of separation. Therefore, it is possible that Sophie triggers a ‘firstperson engagement’ wherein the film viewer and the cinematic characters share an increasingly integrated activity of the ES-limbic circuit responsible for viscerally based sensations during a real-time action. On the other hand, in Stepmom, when the loss is primarily simulated as a distant and objective event, ToM-related processing, facilitating a flexible representation of non-actual states, may mediate empathic engagement.35

Thus, while empirical data strongly confirm the theory proposed by Gallese and his collaborators, there are at least three essential reasons to revisit newer or older notions relating to spectatorship and artistic communication, be they aesthetic, sociological or philosophical: x What we used to call “mimesis” (for ages) is, above all, the brain’s innate (pre-human) system of environmental adaptation. Konrad Lorenz and his teams observed and documented that abundantly on many species of animals. But what would Aristotle have to say about it? x We are born spectators and then we become (social) Actors/ Performers. Still, both spectatorship and acting are founded on the same brain/body mechanisms. x Goffman’s intuitive/observational theories about everyday “theatricality,” so influential in sociology and anthropology, appear to have neurological foundations.36

35

Ibid., 37. See: Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, London: Anchor Books, 1959; Erving Goffman, Frame analysis: An essay on the organisation of experience. London: Harper and Row, 1974. 36

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Embodied simulation and the mediation/transfer between the performer’s and the spectator’s bodies Mediation, semiosis and transfer From a semiotic/pragmatic and psychological viewpoint, any theatrical and/or film communication relies on a concurred stability, preceding the installation of convention, between the watched and the watchers. Both the watched and the watchers abandon their ordinary identities in order to be able to engage in mediated communication, irrespective of the theme, topic or aesthetic structure of this communication. For the former and for their expressive activity - the activity that structures an artistic discourse on sight (in real or recorded time), Umberto Eco proposed an ostensive definition which encapsulates one main global characteristic: the capacity of all the elements of discourse to show/to expose themselves37 as fictional realities (independently, but also in a syncretic-syntactic order). Thus, in time, they generate a general and coherent flow of signification. In other words, even when, for example, the stand-up comedian pretends to be talking about himself, in fact he forsakes his everyday identity, “showing up” in the role of the actor of his own discourse—thus gaining symbolic value. As for the spectators, the correlative of the ostensive definition of the performer’s condition is a conscious emptying of the daily self, in other words, a temporary disturbance of contacts (including those of immediate memory) with the outer setting38 Freed from the worries and concerns of everyday reality, spectators deconstruct and reconstruct the conventions on which the dramatic context relies (undertaking the fictional chronotope, a here and a now of the performance). Next, they dive into the artificial universe they embrace as an autonomous reality, in which they seek an identity transfer - either as such (a character with whom they will identify), or a situational, strictly emotional or conceptual identity.39 The semiotic perspective on the performer/spectator relationship must be correlated, in any case, with a psycho-neurological one.40 The triad 37

Umberto Eco, “Semiotics of Theatre Performance,” in The Drama Review, no. 21 (1977). 38 Miruna Runcan, Signore Misterioso. O anatomie a spectatorului [Signore. Misterioso. An Anatomy of the Spectator], Bucharest: Unitext, 2011, 33-34. 39 Keir Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, London and New York: Methuen, 2012, 38-40. 40 Vivian Sobchack, The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1992.

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designed by objectification, subjective physical and emotional/cognitive response deserves to be explored. We see that we are acted upon and we know that as part of this dialogical contract of inter-inanimation we too are doing the acting. (…) Here, then, that which is looked at also acts upon that which does the looking, the ‘object’ equally exerts tensions upon the ‘subject’ in turn objectifying that subject. The performer in looking back at the spectator equally objectifies them such that perception between the two is marked by a lack of a singular direction. In seeing acting we are also acting seeing.41 The embodied simulation theory reinforces, from a more profound viewpoint, the semiotic conclusions regarding the mechanisms of daily interrelation and interpretation (as put forth by Goffman, these interrupt the strip of perception in order to frame a situation that catches our eye),42 and the mechanisms of identification and semiosis in our spectatorial experiences. Laura Marks’ notions of flow and haptic images and Antunes’ analysis about the vestibular quality of framing and editing in cinema seem directly related to the embodied simulation capacities of our brain. This reinforcement is important, first of all, because it induces one essential difference between the procedures of Goffman’s everyday drama and the practice of artistic communication in performing arts and cinema. And this difference relates to the deliberate control of the embodied simulation. More precisely, in our everyday life, ruled by layered behavioural conventions and by social role practices, our decisions of framing and interpreting the situations we face (of keying, according to Goffman)43 are made accidentally. They prompt—unconsciously and consciously—our embodied simulation reactions, whose main aim is to familiarise us with the other’s intentions, for the purpose of more or less efficient social communication and insertion. In other words, when, voluntarily or not, “we put ourselves in others’ shoes,” we do it, in fact, in order to understand who they are, what they want and, last but not least, in order to control our reactions and responses to the observations we have gathered; to be able to play adequately our role in the communicational action. Every day we are (alert) spectators, in order to be able to be (good) actors.

41 Anna Fenemore, “The Pleasure of Objectification: A Spectator’s Guide,” Performance Research. A Journal of the Performing Arts, “On Objects” Volume 12, Issue 4 (2007), 4. 42 See Goffman, Frame analysis, 10-11 and 22. 43 Ibid., 44.

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On the other hand, spectatorship is not the exploration of an adequate response; in many different ways, it is similar to a transfer of identity/personality. In this respect, we may correlate the seminal book of Murray Smith (1994), who suggests that the character has several levels of emotional and cognitive engagement, and the complex experimental research undertaken by Gal et alii, who demonstrate at least two kinds of empathic response: “being in the character” and “being with the character.” In fact, “The screen is a space in which viewers can identify with an image that is not of them—the screen is not a mirror—but confirms their existence and reflects back on them.”44 In performing arts and in film, embodied simulation is (almost) simultaneous with careful observation and regularly interferes with the processes of semiosis and the production of symbolic signification. The spectator wants to become, and becomes, for a specific time, the very character created by the performer (through the mediation of the performance in progress, with a narrative and an aesthetic and/or emotional back-up). His identity, released from his existential context, is refilled with a fictional identity: that of the character. But fictional identity has a “real” significance as long as it is embodied by a performer/actor (or his substitute, in the case of puppetry or animations), whose experiences and sensations can be corporeally simulated. In short, unlike our situations of role observation, framing and insertion in daily life, which are mainly adaptive, when we are spectators we undertake - voluntarily and deliberately, by transfer - another body, another face, or another existential identity. Or even several of these, successively. Moreover, as spectators we are anchored physically (again, via the simulation mechanisms) in the space-time of the plot: Depth perception is a habit of movement. When we see one object at a distance behind another, what we are seeing is in a very real sense our own body’s potential to move between the objects or to touch them in succession. We are not using our eyes as organs of sight, if by sight we mean the cognitive operation of detecting and calculating forms at a distance. We are using our eyes as proprioceptors and feelers. Seeing at a distance is a virtual proximity: a direct, unmediated experience of potential orienting and touches on an abstract surface combining pastness and futurity. Vision envelops proprioception and tactility (...) Seeing is never separate from other sense modalities. It is by nature synesthetic, and synaesthesia is by nature kinaesthetic. Every look reactivates a

44

Marks, Touch, 25.

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multidimensioned, shifting surface of experience from which cognitive functions emerge habitually but which is not reducible to them.45

Body, frame, space perception For reasons of space, I will not approach exhaustively, in this essay, the differences in the reception of performing arts (as live experiences) and film/video. They are rather matters of tone, as demonstrated by Phillip Auslander. For the time being, we do not have empirical neurological studies that could document such differences concretely. Still, we can assume, for the moment, that actual artistic spectatorship in both film and performing arts is, basically, a practice founded on: a) The possibility to change the everyday chaotic and meaningless “strip of perceptions”46 in a controlled ritualistic syntax (“narrative strip”), full of meaning and engaging emotions about our being. b) The “need” to experience Otherness (story, personality, body, etc.) in a secure environment/context. c) The individual’s possibility to actually feel and take possession, by empathic transfer, of their own (bodily) existence. In this respect, if we are to consider the relationship between the spectator’s body and the fictional space of the performance/film, we may launch at least two slightly divergent hypotheses: First of all, the space of live performance (theatre, dance etc.) seems to be a (more or less) exteroceptive-interoceptive experience: when an actor drinks tea on stage, our body simulates the actor’s actual spatial context (we immerse ourselves in the imaginary room and feel the distances between objects, we can “touch” them, measure them, etc.) and we can simulate even the taste of that tea. The motor imaginary is easier to stimulate, by association/analogy with the materiality of the actor’s proxemics, as observed in his own space.47 Space in a film is, by contrast, more closely related to proprioception and interoception than to exteroception: we easily transfer our body into the (conceptual) “filmic eye”, and then we reconstruct and embody the 45

Brian Massumi, “Sensing the Virtual, Building the Insensible,” Architectural Design, Volume 68, Issue 5/6, (1998), 32. 46 See Goffman, Frame Analysis. 47 “We see that we are acted upon and we know that as part of this dialogical contract of interinanimation we too are doing the acting. In seeing acting we are also acting seeing” (Fenemore, 2007, 2)

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holistic reasonable perspective on space, from outside the frame.48 Even unconsciously, our embodied simulations have to “work” harder, and exteroception has to be stimulated/innervated by other factors (usually, the most important factor, in this respect, is the soundtrack space-design, nondiegetic soundtrack, which serves also as a support for the time/rhythm dimension of our perceptions).49

Case studies. Face and Body: Let’s experience our own reactions! Commonly, our face-centric natural focus seems to be more stimulated and somehow easier to mediate the transfer in film—and that is why the use of portrait close-ups was a real revolution in silent movies. By contrast, theatrical or non-theatrical live performances appear to offer, in many ways, a more holistic body-to-body sensorial and emotional experience. I will use some visual and narrative examples of simulation transfer, all of them drawn from three renowned films. For the sake of a more fluent argumentation—insofar as the live performance illustrations would imply a direct and common live experience of both the author and the readers of this essay—I prefer not to use examples from theatre. In Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), one of the most famous scenes of the film is, undoubtedly, the cutting of the protagonist’s hair before her execution. The scene opens sometime around minute 59 and is made through a cross cut technique that opposes the outer space (where the people gathered at the fair frenetically await the virgin’s execution) and the inner one, where the film frame focuses on Joan’s close-up. The scene begins with two exterior frames, where a supporter who cries “Long live Joan!” is beaten in the crowd by English soldiers and then thrown into a puddle at the periphery of the town. The second frame 48 “I infer that remaining still in a chair does not diminish our capacity to engage with a film in an embodied, and particularly vestibular, fashion. In a nutshell, the vestibular sense can help us understand the generation of meaning derived from the embodied relationship between the spectator and the film, between the mind and body, and between the self and the outside world.” (Antunes 2013, 526) 49 In this respect, we note Laura Marks’ reflections about the erotic effect: “Haptic images invite the viewer to dissolve his or her subjectivity in the close and bodily contact with the image. The oscillation between the two creates an erotic relationship, a shifting between distance and closeness. But haptic images have a particular erotic quality, one involving giving up visual control. The viewer is called to fill in the gaps in the image, engage with the traces the image leaves.” (Marks, 2002, 13)

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looks only at the soldiers’ and the victim’s reflections in the water. The bodily impact is represented, only for a few seconds, by throwing the immobilised peasant into the dirty water. The next frame is already an interior one. It describes a piece of floor and the legs of a chair, while cut hair falls onto the ground. Without any linking transfer, the next image focuses on the supersized upper part of Joan’s face, slightly tilting to the right, while the jailer’s gigantic hands cut the rebel locks of hair. The frame is intersected, ironically, with an exterior one, in which two soldiers march through the crowd and carry a barrow with the steaming bowl of lunch for the priest-judges. The dialectics of the editing technique induces a tension born from the double space-orientation of the spectator. On one hand, the filmic “objective” eye on the outside chaotic-aggressive world; on the other hand, a nearly steady, and septic, inside space, installing the subjective engagement into the character’s condition. At the same time, the editing dynamics is meant to unbalance this tension, augmenting the empathic identification with the heroine’s body, in both proprioceptic and haptic conditions. [O]ne of the benefits of the audiovisual film medium is to align the rhythmic nature of our perception with “the thread of the world” and to place us in a time window that offers motor action without fatigue, danger without damage, and mood alignment without self-judgment (...)). At the base of the multisensory lies precisely the principle of optimisation, where sensory information is combined to save energetic costs and to produce the best possible perceptual outcomes.50

Again without a transfer, we see the frame that, by applying the closeup procedure, halves the heroine’s face to emphasize the tactile impact of the scalp; now, the jailer is cutting the hair from her right back side. This time, the head of actress Renée Jeanne Falconetti is acquiescently tilted to the left, while the scissors advance toward her nape, and the jailer’s arm and elbow reach the centre of the image. A new and very brief intersection gets us out, where the awaiting citizens are watching a jester’s dance. It is only then that Joan’s face reappears, this time fully, occupying the centre of the entire screen: her head is tilted slightly to the left, her eyes halfclosed and her lips open. An utter expression of fatigue and selfabandonment. While the jailer cuts the last locks at the nape, Joan’ tearful eyes open pleadingly/exasperated to the sky. Everything happens in only 53 seconds. 50

Antunes, “The Vestibular in Film,” 524.

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Fig.1. Renée Jeanne Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer. Film still. Paris: Société Générale des Films.

When we identify ourselves with the heroine, her face sticks involuntarily onto our own face. Her expressions are ours; her gestures unconsciously induce reactions of embodied simulation. We experience nearly electrically the metallic touch of the scissors against our head; we can perceive the dull noise of hair locks falling to the floor. Even without a diegetic sound, accompanied only by illustrative music, we can hear the jailer breathe closely and each clattering sound the scissors make. The tear that fell on the cheek of each of us is about to fall from our chin and we want to wipe it off. In Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976), there are several scenes where the filmmaking strategies and Robert de Niro’s acting converge not only in the transfer of identity between the character and the spectator, but also in an interrogative, disturbing shock, relating precisely to the (nearly pathological) strength of this transfer. The first one is the legendary scene of the mirror, grown into a “meme” of popular culture: a scene that introduces the well-known “Are you talking to me?” sequence. The scene begins with a frame of the hero’s right hand, practising shooting; there is a mirror in the background. It is a typical western close-up, completely

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inappropriate given the time and place of the plot. Then, from an opposite perspective (from the door frame, on the same wall with the mirror), a short American shot, in which the hero puts on his military coat, his chest still naked: the spectator is astounded to find that gun slings are strapped onto his naked body. Here, the proxemics and vestibular role of the spectator’s engagement is, I think, capital. On the one hand, our vestibular perception is dynamically instigated to turn around the character, but we are also “touching,” “scraping” the multiple angles of the horrid small room. On the other hand, our embodied simulation system focuses on the hero’s body and especially on his face, in some kind of subjective strike against spatial distance. In Antunes’ words, [T]he film aesthetics becomes a direct result of a dynamic relationship between the camera and the effect of orientation and balance. It is not a matter of recording the contents that convey a vestibular sensation, but in fact of creating a meaningful relationship between the continuous interactions of the camera with the bodies.51

Next, the frame fixes for longer than one minute, in a “long take” (plan sequence) that clips the face of the hero, whose chest and shoulders are seen: of course, a perspective from the mirror that reflects Travis Bickle’s practice of his new vigilante attitude and posture. Because the actor looks straight into the camera, the distance between the protagonist and the spectator is reduced to the minimum, and gestures have an instantaneous, hallucinating effect of complete superposition. The murmured, challenging, offensive sentences gain amplitude and vigour, suggesting an imaginary training conflict. The character does more than play with his gun sleeve; he also exercises shooting and assumes, in the end, his new aggressive identity. A very interesting aspect is that the hero’s face is not at the centre of the image; instead, it occupies some of the right side, leaving room, in the background, for his dirty chamber, where we can see the front of an improvised kitchen and, on the perpendicular wall, the small mirror above the sink. Scorsese and his cinematographer, Michael Chapman, wanted to create, through this apparently asymmetric structure, a spatial pressure that allows us to experience the contradiction between the character’s presence and controlled showy movements, and his oppressive, everyday living environment. The fact that we involuntarily reproduce De Niro’s face and his “theatre in theatre” gestures, as if they were our own expression, is 51

Antunes, “The Vestibular in Film,” 526.

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marked, again discrepantly, by the end of the long take: the actor can be seen in a three-quarter view, as if his peripheral gaze observed the reflection of his back: our simulating, subconscious sensation is that, when we are placed in the mirror perspective, we are both the hero and his imaginary enemy, we are both beholders and beheld.

Fig. 2. Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver (1976). Directed by Martin Scorsese, 1976. Film Still. Los Angeles: Columbia Pictures.

However, this time, the portrait meant for the spectator’s transfer does not end with the close-up. The previous long take is followed by a montage during which the character’s voice-over “exercises” the writing of an explanatory letter, meant to justify his terrorist action. The monologue letter is an ideological statement, which, eventually, should induce the use of a sequence marked by ideological editing. Scorsese, however, opts for a very trimmed and sudden ideological “pseudomontage,” which focuses on the relationships between Travis’s body and the stifling space of his own abode. It starts with a full shot, where the hero is placed to the left, seen three quarters from the back, hands on his chest, installed in his new condition of an “angel of justice.” From this position, he is contemplating the wall near the bed, a wall on which there are posters of Palantine, the candidate for the office of Mayor of New York. During the first words of the monologue, the camera turns to the mirror perspective, and Travis is again seen from his profile, at the right side of the frame. The offensive words in the beginning of the letter are blocked, repeated, and the protagonist’s turn

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toward the mirror is also reprised with a stutter, three times, as if the hero were rehearsing his discourteous rhetoric. All of a sudden, without any transition, as the monologue sentences are installed, the camera looks for the first time solely at the hero: he is lying in bed, but now he is seen from above, suggesting a completely unexpected “objective” perspective. Travis is fully equipped, but he is lying on his back. While the voice-over renders the words in the letter “There is a Man who stood up!,” the character turns, paradoxically, on one side, folding up like a child, powerless, in a foetal position. Going imperceptibly from his arrogantly aggressive “role construction,” focused on his face (hence, on intentionality and ideology), to the exterior, indifferent perception of a defenceless body, and withdrawing instinctively in that intrauterine position, the path of the reception is complex, contradictory and integrating. In two minutes, our mechanisms of embodied simulation cover the entire spectrum from maximum, nearly “athletic” control, generated by his new role (exteroception centred on the face and on the arms), to the perception/proprioception of his entire body, seen in its ultimate vulnerability. There are, however, frequent situations where dramaturgically opposite characters engage in an empathic exchange that shifts the direction of the plot and overturns the general significance of the discourse in a play or a film. In this case, the spectator also has to change, unsuspectingly, the conventional procedures of identification, both at the semiotic level and at the level of the embodied simulation that unconsciously sustains the transfer. A convincing example is provided by one of the climax scenes in Blade Runner (1983), directed by Ridley Scott. The scene opens in half-light, on the roof of a skyscraper in the city of a future imagined by Philip Dick and reinterpreted as mise-en-scene by Scott. It’s night-time and it is raining. From the background, the hero’s silhouette (investigator Deckard—Harrison Ford) approaches us. He is at the centre of the image while, to the right and to the left, the black blades of huge fans are spinning and, from the rear, the roof platform is crossed regularly by spots of control floodlights. The hero runs to the corridor between the two fans but stops suddenly, in a very brief close-up. In a reverse shot, at the same size (head and half of his trunk) comes the antagonist, the rebel replicant Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer). Again, we have to concentrate here on the double effect—vestibular and haptic—of the set design and of the “mise en scène.” The entire film tells the story from Deckard’s point of view, so the spectators are profoundly engaged in a classical first-person form of identification. Their

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multisensory perception system is bombarded with combined visual and audio information meant to produce empathic physical reactions: the exteroceptive sensation of cold and dampness, induced by the rain and by the rotating fans, or the attempt to regain body balance while running on a slippery roof. In a new reverse shot, Deckard turns and starts running in the rain, while the Vangelis music enhances the suspense. From the shadow, the antagonist follows him. We find that, unlike Deckard, he is fully unclothed and the rain falls straight onto his skin. The next frame includes his perspective and follows the investigator in an absurd leap, as he attempts to jump from one building to another. Equally quickly, the next frame focuses on the end of the jump, with Deckard hanging on a steel bar from the neighbouring roof. The camera is close to the horizontal level of the bar and moves in a tracking shot, insisting on the hero’s arms and face. Our empathic perspective centres physically on the desperate movement of the shoulders and of the arms that slide on the wet metal surface, struggling frantically to sustain the weight of the body. We can experience the steel, the sting in the hands, the quivering movement of the shoulder muscles and bones. The spectators are experiencing, unconsciously, a classical situation of extreme stimulation of their embodied simulation (interoceptive) reactions. At this point, the empathic simulation “in the character’s body” reaches its peak. In a low-angle shot, the next frame sees Roy coming from a water tower on the neighbouring building. Fast cut. Now the frame shows him in “plan américain,” his back against Deckard’s building, and his face strongly illuminated by the recurrent floodlight. He is close to the centre of the image, with a stately appearance, holding a white dove in one of his crossed hands. Although vaguely artificial or mechanical, his symbolic posture is completed, in the final seconds, with the expression of a decision: a sudden 180° turn of the body, followed by a relaxed leap over the abyss, onto the opposite roof. The replicant’s body thumps, just a meter away from Deckard’s head, destabilizes the latter, just when he managed to lean his upper arms on the metallic bar. The next frames are quick, edited shot-reverse images, in high-angle, filmed from Roy’s perspective, and in low-angle, filmed from Deckard’s perspective. They focus on the gradual sliding of the latter’s hands and, respectively, they become oversize in close-up, against Roy’s fully lit face, with an expression of sad and scorning curiosity. His reply “Quite an experience to live in fear...” acoustically overlaps Deckard’s failed attempts to keep his hands on the bar. These attempts hyper-sensitise our own hands.

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Fig. 3. Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner (1983), directed by Ridley Scott. Film still. Hollywood: Blade Runner Partnership (Jerry Perenchio and Bud Yorkin) for Ladd Company in association with Shaw Brothers (Sir Run Run Shaw) and Warner Bros.

When the fingers of the hero’s left hand slide away from the bar, in the very brief expanse of the fall, Roy’s hand (perforated by a nail, as we can now notice) catches Deckard’s arm; the camera insists on the two arms tensed by the lifting effort. We continue to experience the extension of the hero’s shoulder and his body weight, but we can also perceive the strange skill with which the antagonist lifts him in the air and throws him onto the roof. The fragment is achieved by editing two brief shots, the first one in reverse shot of the two characters’ bodies, the second one of Deckard’s fall, seen from the rear, while Roy faces us, at the centre of the background. The exhausted hero’s crawling withdrawal is continued in an opposite shot, which includes, to the left, Roy’s approaching legs and right hand. The frame is extended until the withdrawing body reaches the corner of a wall and leans against it. At the climax, Roy’s lower part of the body stops and, astonishingly, the character begins to sit down. The frame changes again, following in reverse shot, from Deckard’s perspective, how

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the antagonist’s body (faceless up to that point) gains volume and his face is revealed, as he is sitting down calmly against the light. The dialogue filmed in shot-reverse sequences is continued with a focus on the two tired faces that are studying their respective reactions. The spectator is already puzzled, oscillating between the two oversized faces, one barely breathing with fatigue and amazement, the other one keeping its statuary size and sad sarcasm, despite the effort and the bleeding wound.

Fig 4. Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner (1983), directed by Ridley Scott. Film still. Hollywood: Blade Runner Partnership (Jerry Perenchio and Bud Yorkin) for Ladd Company in association with Shaw Brothers (Sir Run Run Shaw) and Warner Bros.

The following scene, deservedly one of the most memorable in filmmaking, is Hauer’s one minute monologue: “I’ve seen things...” The montage overlaps Ford’s expressive reaction only twice, each time for three or four seconds. For the remaining time, the camera stays fixed on the antagonist’s face, whose forehead slightly exceeds the frame, so that our entire reactivity is anchored in his gaze and his mouth (intensifying the tension of the verbal message). Our mechanisms of embodied simulation are promptly shifted from the hero to the antihero, and our empathic perception is extreme: we experience fatigue; we can feel water running over our skin. The reply "Time to die!”, which precedes the character’s death, is sharp and its tragic simplicity is augmented by the subtlety of the vibrant musical theme by Vangelis.

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In lieu of conclusions It seems clear that many fields of research, such as studies on audiences of performing arts and film, spectatorship analysis, or the more general cultural/theatre/film studies can and will definitely benefit from the recent findings on the “body in our mind.” The theory of embodied simulation is only one of the sources of this valuable knowledge exchange between the medical sciences and the humanist and artistic research and experiment practices. Based on such combined (ES-ToM-Limbic) scanning experiments as the one made by Raz Gal and collaborators, we can already anticipate that the processes of mapping “the body in our mind” could soon offer us a deeper foundation for understanding empathy not only as a way to interact with (real or fictional) otherness, but also for understanding ourselves. Theatre and film theory/criticism—and particularly reception studies—have to incorporate, somehow, these new scientific data and perspectives: observing and interpreting our bodily interoceptive and proprioceptive reactions, as we have tried to demonstrate in the case-studies above, can lead us to reconceive the relationship between the artistic object and the spectator’s participation/experience. As long as our body appears to be a silent, apparently “non-existent” instrument in its during stages of health and routine practices, , our participation as spectators in an artistic communicational action is justified (consciously or unconsciously) not only by our thirst for knowledge about the experiences of others, but also by our (empathic) prospect of experiencing our body through observational transfers. Thus, the aesthetic experience is revealed to be an existential one. Talking about someone else offers us the paradoxical chance of experiencing our own body, in a controlled and secure manner, through fictional immersion and of being reassured that we are alive and well.

I HAVE WEIGHT: REJANE CANTONI AND LEO CRESCENTI’S TUNNEL ERANDY VERGARA VARGAS

When I write “the body,” I see nothing in particular. To write “my body” plunges me into lived experience, particularly: I see scars, disfigurements, discolouration, damages, losses, as well as what pleases me. Bones well nourished from the placenta; the teeth of a middle-class person seen by the dentist twice a year from childhood. White skin, marked and scarred by three pregnancies, an elected sterilization, progressive arthritis, four joint operations, calcium deposits, no rapes, no abortions, long hours at the typewriter—my own, not in a typing pool—and so forth. To say “the body” lifts me away from what has given me a primary perspective. - Adrienne Rich

In their installation Tunnel (2010), Brazilian artists Rejane Cantoni and Leonardo Crescenti invite people to walk through a six-meter long passageway that moves and requires people to adjust their balance to compensate for that motion. Spectators can interact individually or collectively; in both cases, the experience of the piece varies from one individual to another, because the weight and particular forms of body comportment of each subject imbue its motion with unique qualities. In every case, the embodied encounter with Tunnel produces metallic sounds that can be delicate, chaotic, or harsh, depending on people’s interactions.

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Fig. 1. Rejane Cantoni and Leonardo Crescenti, Túnel (Tunnel), 2010. Installation, dimensions variable. Méduse, Quebec City, Canada. Top view of the wave-like movement of the piece. Photo: Leonardo Crescenti.

Questions of embodiment and movement lie at the heart of Cantoni and Crescenti’s work. Since 2007, the artists have produced a series of human-scale structures that adapt and distort themselves in response to people’s movement and weight. As an extension of this research, they developed Tunnel, which was driven by one central idea: to create a passageway that would move differently when different kinds of bodies walked on it—light and heavy, small and big. Cantoni and Crescenti took two years to accomplish the precision required by the piece to enable different qualities of movement. So why this rationale behind this piece? When I walked through Tunnel and saw other people interacting with it, it became clear to me that the simple logic of the apparatus—a movable passageway—drove attention towards my body by challenging my sense of balance.1 1

Adrianne Rich’s quote is an inspiration to write in the first person throughout this text. Here, I write about “my body” as opposed to a general “body” unless I refer to a specific subject. When I write my body, I refer to my experience as a biped subject who generally does not struggle much to move about the world. Regarding discourses of abilities and disabilities, I can describe my body as “neutered” in the sense that it “is devoid of physical and mental impairments” (Rob Imrie,

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The work consists of a translucent six-meter-long passageway formed by ninety-two aluminum frames of 1.5 x 2.5 meters. The frames are bolted together onto a steel structure fixed to the floor. 184 springs placed under the frames enable their motion. Together these components form a spinal structure that moves in a wave-like fashion and sounds like a click-clack throb of clashing metal when people walk through it. The structure of this piece means that my weight activates the piece when I walk through it. What’s more, my weight produces imbalance. It is in this sense that Tunnel disturbs my state of bodily unawareness. This means that I am generally unaware of certain properties and processes of my body despite the fact that I am an embodied subject. Notably, my sense of balance is largely an unconscious process that I take for granted, but when I walked through Tunnel, I could not help noticing my own body in the process of adapting to the moving apparatus. The process was simple: my weight produced the motion troubling my equilibrium. I was conditioned to feel the movable metal pieces under my feet and to see and hear such motion reverberating throughout the piece. Furthermore, because of the piece’s upward tilt, I had to rapidly assess the surface where I stood and engage my body to maintain its balance. It is in this sense that Tunnel made present my sense of balance, that is, a central aspect of my embodiment that I experience as relatively “absent.” The kind of absence this text explores draws from philosopher Drew Leder’s book The Absent Body. Considering the Latin roots esse (being) and ab (away), Leder mobilizes the concept of absence to explain diverse ways in which the body can be “away from itself” in daily inhabitancy.2 Absence then refers to those circumstances when we—embodied subjects—pay little attention to physical sensations, body regions, and so on because our attention is directed away from our own embodiment. This notion also refers to internal organs and bodily functions we simply cannot feel (such as the viscera).3 “Disability and discourses of mobility and movement.” Environment and Planning A, vol. 32, no.9, Sep. 2000, 1644). However, I do not claim this neutered sense is stable. Recent problems in my hips and knees constantly remind me that my body deteriorates and my faculties can be reduced. 2 Drew Leder, The Absent Body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990, 22. 3 It is important to stress that, for Leder, the sense of bodily absence is fragile. He makes the point that under different physiological or social circumstances, our bodies demand our conscious attention. For example, when learning new techniques like dancing or walking with a prosthesis, our bodies reclaim attention. Our bodies also demand conscious awareness in negative instances (i.e. because of anxiety, hunger, illness, or malfunctioning). According to Leder, when the body experiences a problem and demands attention, it is felt “as a force that stands

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Considering Leder’s phenomenological and philosophical approach to the body, I investigate how Tunnel throws into crisis the tendency to forget the body when spectators walk on the unstable apparatus and lose their equilibrium. Following Leder, I read this instance as a “deficient” mode of embodiment because it momentarily breaks the ordinary state of corporeal absence and instead re-orients the spectator’s attention back into their own bodies.4 I also posit that movement is foundational to the sensorial deficiency the piece activates. Here I investigate the productivity of such a deficiency. I situate Tunnel’s specific terms of embodiment in a critical stand point from Latin America toward more embodied and situated aesthetic experiences. In addition, I consider Cantoni and Crescenti’s insistence on embodiment as an effort to reclaim the body as phenomenologically, culturally and historically grounded. In other words, Tunnel reclaims the body that, in Western conceptions of subjectivity, has been downgraded to make space for what Donna Haraway calls the “conquering gaze from nowhere”—that is, the normative (white, male) gaze that has claimed the power to will his body away while he has insisted on the body of the Other to justify different forms of inequality, oppression, and violence.5 In addition, Tunnel reclaims attention to my body through a visual effect produced on the aluminum frames. The piece is translucent because there is a 5-cm space between each frame. I can see through it. When I walk outside the piece, I can see the reflections of other participants moving within Tunnel. This is what I call the piece’s kinetic-optic effect. Importantly, such effect does not allow me to disassociate what I see from

opposed to the self” (Leder, The Absent Body, 4). In such instances, the self can no longer live her own embodiment in a relative state of unawareness because her own body interferes. At the same time, the encounter with other people can make the self bodily aware. Indeed, depending on social and geo-political situations, certain subjects have their bodies—abilities, race, gender, ethnicity, and/or sexuality—called into question more often than others, and therefore it is difficult to talk about bodily absence given that social discrimination is in fact based on the body. I make this point below. 4 Drawing from Leder’s reading of Heidegger, “deficient” here signals modes of experience that demand the subject’s “self-presence”; modes that “thematize” diverse aspects of the body—surfaces, viscera, senses—as well as modes that depart from ordinary perception and motility, and instead involve a “suspension” of the body’s orientation away from itself (Leder, The Absent Body, 19). 5 Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies, vol. 14, no. 3 (Autumn, 1988), 581.

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my own body because the effect is contingent upon the angle my body provides, and even a slight move of my head alters the effect.

Fig. 2. Rejane Cantoni and Leonardo Crescenti, Túnel (Tunnel), 2010. Installation, dimensions variable. Méduse, Quebec City, Canada. Lateral view of the piece's kinetic-optic effect. Photo: Leonardo Crescenti.

Although Cantoni and Crescenti did not plan the kinetic-optic effect when they designed the piece, I examine it because this feature has the same impact as the experience of imbalance: it disturbs my state of bodily inattentiveness. What matters about the visual effect is that it makes me aware of my body in the process of seeing; and of all senses, vision is the sense that Western patriarchal societies have historically used to claim disembodiment. Drawing from Leder’s formulation, I consider Tunnel’s kinetic-optic effect a deficient mode of seeing because of its insistence on embodiment.6 6

For example, the video entitled “Entrevue avec Rejane Cantoni et Leonardo Crescenti / Mois Multi 2013” shows a female spectator—I refer to her as Sara— who slowly walks through the passageway with her feet close to each other and produces calm sounds or paused them. We can also see Sara’s reflections, which from the camera’s point of view, appear ahead of her. In the next scene, however, the camera is positioned outside Tunnel, approximately 30 degrees from it, and from that angle the reflections appear behind her body. This is an example of the

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The Argument Tunnel has been presented at shows in the cities of Sao Paulo (2010; 2012); Porto Alegre (2011); Linz (2011); Ghent (2012); Quebec City (2013); Petrópolis (2013), Río de Janeiro (2014); and Belo Horizonte (2014). In Quebec City, this piece was exhibited at Méduse from February 14 to 28, 2013. My discussion focuses on the exhibition in Quebec; I use this exhibition to explore how the piece draws attention to aspects of my body that generally escape my attention. First, by producing imbalance, and second, by reclaiming vision as always embodied. My argument is that, through these two deficient modes of experience, Tunnel momentarily fractures my ordinary state of corporeal absence and instead reclaims attention back onto my own body. I use Leder’s formulation as the theoretical ground to examine the paradoxical absence-presence of the lived body that comes into play when people interact with Tunnel. I read both the experience of walking through the passageway and seeing the kinetic-optic effect as deficient modes of experience because they render present aspects of my embodiment that I ordinarily experience as absent. I examine the role movement plays in both instances. I divide my study of Tunnel into two parts. In the first part, I discuss how visual experience contributes to the body’s absence and examine how Tunnel counters such absence through the kinetic-optic effect. I also explore how the modern, anti-tactile regime of art history supports the idea of disembodied vision by privileging the frontal view of a fixed and unchanging image or object. I examine how Tunnel asks me to notice my own body in the process of seeing through movement, by moving the head or walking around the exhibit. In the second part, I argue that balance is often absent from bodily awareness. The sense of balance is primarily used to “stand upright and move through space” and to prevent subjects from falling.7 When I keep balance without much struggle, I might not even be aware of keeping balance. Balance emerges in its fully embodied significance—because it keeps me from falling—when it is something I no longer have. I claim that Tunnel brings my balance into awareness as by kinetic-optic effect and it demonstrates the relational movement of what I call the “observing body”—the subject seeing the work from outside—and the “traversing body”—in this case, Sara. 7 Grace M. Gaerlan, P.T. Alpert, C. Cross, M. Louis, S. Kowalski, “Postural Balance in Young Adults: The Role of Visual, Vestibular and Somatosensory Systems.” Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners, 2012 Jun; 24 (6), 1.

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creating a feeling of disequilibrium. I analyze video documentation of the piece. I also consider my own experience to examine how, when my sense of equilibrium is troubled, I must make a quick effort to retain balance, and I am forced to rely on the referents that my own corporal mass provides regarding my own body and its relation to the ground where I stand. I advance the claim “I have weight” to signal this tangible feature of my body that the sudden loss of balance forces me to notice because my weight activates Tunnel without requiring me to do anything in particular. This claim is an affirmation that my weight grounds my body on earth. But because as a biped, I predominately sustain my weight in a vertical posture, the claim also indicates the orientation of my body in relation to gravity. In other words, it comprises both my body mass and how I carry it. It indicates my body and the perspective from which I encounter the world.

Orientations: Why My Body Matters In Tunnel, movement demands spectators to become consciously aware of their bodies and the foundational operations that they can easily take for granted: seeing and maintaining postural balance. Tunnel’s provocation to reflect on embodiment matters for two main reasons. First, the ideal of corporeal absence conceals the crucial role the body plays as support in our relations with the world and our dependency on supportive actions and infrastructures.8 Second, the culturally sustained sense of disembodiment obscures our societies’ tendency to discriminate against subjects precisely because of bodily features (for instance abilities/disabilities, skin colour, ethnicity). To make the point about the body as support, I consider the work of feminist scholar Vivian Sobchack who writes about the body as “enabling absence”, in the sense that as embodied subjects our body is “common ground that enables all of our thoughts, movements, and modes of expression”9 I also consider performance scholar Shannon Jackson’s 8

See: Judith Butler, “Rethinking Vulnerability and Resistance.” XV Simposio de la Asociación Internacional de Filósofas (IAPh), 24 June 2014, Instituto FranklinUAH/IAPh, University of Alcalá. Alcalá, Madrid, Plenary Presentation, www.institutofranklin.net (accessed November 2017); Shannon Jackson, Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics. New York: Routledge, 2011; Vivian Sobchack, “Choreography for One, Two, and Three Legs (A Phenomenological Meditation in Movements).” Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy, vol. 24 no. 1 (2005 – 01), pp. 55-66. 9 Sobchack, “Choreography for One,...,” 65.

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revision of the etymology of the term “support” to signal what sustains the subsistence of both non-living and living things. It is in relation to these approaches that I propose to read Tunnel’s contribution to discussions of oriented movement. This insistence on embodiment brings me back to my body as a support of my experience and my dependency on a set of supports: including designed built environments, prosthetics, tools, and such mundane supports as the ground itself. In Tunnel, what happens to the ground then becomes of central importance because it requires the spectators' corporeal adjustments and recalling of the balance they lose. It is only then that the body-on-support, taken for granted, comes to the fore. The second point has to do with Cantoni and Crescenti’s emphasis on embodiment. I propose that the artistic duo reclaims the body because their point of departure, when they designed Tunnel as well as their other pieces, was that there is no such thing as bodiless experience. Indeed, Tunnel was carefully designed to respond to diverse bodies and qualities of movement.10 Cantoni and Crescenti were particularly interested in this matter due to a previous experience with another artwork. Floor (2007) is a twenty-meter aluminum plate in which visitors produced a wave when they stepped on it. This motion is produced when a mechanism installed under the plate slowly lifts it in a wave-like manner; the wave runs along the twenty meters and it lifts the bodies of the spectators who walk on the plate. The first time Floor was exhibited, the artists received a call from the education staff of the SESC Paulista (Sao Paulo), explaining the impact this kinetic work had on a group of people: The staff had received a group of people on wheelchairs who requested “to be in the work” (Cantoni). They put them on it, and they were amazed to experience the moving apparatus. According to the artistic duo this feedback inspired them to refine their pieces to welcome all kinds of people and to respond qualitatively to the uniqueness of each body.11 In the kind of embodiment 10

Maxine Sheets-Johnstone’s phenomenological methodology of the moving body serves the analysis of this case study. The piece brings up the primacy of movement; it enhances the corporeal changes movement brings about and my capacity to notice my own movement qualitatively; it demonstrates that selfmovement shifts attention on and off. (See Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, The Primacy of Movement. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins University Press, 1999/Expanded second edition 2011). 11 Cantoni and Crescenti spent two years producing Tunnel. They devoted meticulous attention to the design on each component—base, frames, screws, springs, and so on—to ensure the piece’s movement reflected the quality of people’s bodies and interactions. They defined the piece’s width considering people in wheelchairs (1.50 meters), while their referent for height was human upright posture. The artists’ attention to detail does not simply mean adding people

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Tunnel solicits, I see a remarkable difference with other interactive pieces that solicit spectators’ bodies. This case study brings up the discrimination that is tied to the body because it recognizes that not all bodies can easily forget themselves. My aim is thus to disclose the politics of Tunnel’s insistence on the body. I suggest that noticing my body requires me to take responsibility for the components that ground my experience and give me “a primary perspective.”12 Importantly, my point about the political value of embodiment rests on the piece’s open formal and symbolic structuring. It is not specifically addressed in the subject matter of the installation and many spectators do not even make this connection. Yet, in the conceptual space Tunnel opens up by reclaiming spectators’ bodies, I find its capacity to reveal what is at stake when it is assumed that the body can be absent: a perspective from the West, from white European and North American able bodies who claim the right to disappear. I investigate how Tunnel is made not so much of metal and springs as it is of each body’s weight and movement. The text unfolds as follows. First, I discuss a series of examples of spectators’ interactions with Cantoni and Crescenti’s piece. Second, I focus on the anatomy and philosophical understanding of visual experience to argue that Tunnel stresses the embodiment of vision through the kinetic-optic effect. Third, I explore how Tunnel uses the spectators’ weight to produce imbalance and invite corporeal awareness. I mobilize the claim “I have weight” as recognition of my tangible relationship with the world. The final part explores how the piece overturns the absent and taken for granted body by disturbing its balance and reclaiming vision as embodied.

Moving Bodies In 2013, Tunnel was exhibited in Quebec City at Méduse’s Salle Multi, a multipurpose space used to present multidisciplinary performances and installations. The exhibition context was the Festival International d’Arts Multidisciplinaires et Électroniques Mois Multi, held at Méduse from February 14 to 28, 2013. Black velvet curtains divided the Salle Multi into two rooms; Tunnel was installed at the centre of the second room at a on wheelchairs to the list of potential audience members. Although Tunnel does not question the capacity of bodies to move, it denaturalizes the able body’s capacity to maintain equilibrium and to stand, because balance is the skill that prevents bipeds from falling. 12 Adrienne Rich, “Notes toward a Politics of Location.” Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations. W.W. Norton, 2001, 67.

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slight angle in relation to the dividing curtains, so that when visitors walked in the room, they had a full view of it.

Fig. 3. Salle Multi, Méduse. Floor plan showing Alexandre Burton's Impacts (2012) and Tunnel. Original image: Recto-Verso.

In Quebec City, I saw that people did not get into Tunnel right away but rather walked around it and saw other people’s interactions. They also observed attentively the kinetic-optic effect. Although the premise of the work is a moving passage that people physically engage with, I noticed that many spectators needed some time to accept Cantoni and Crescenti’s invitation. The fact is, Tunnel is not truly an inviting piece. Its sounds can be intimidating. Some people I interviewed felt the sound of clashing metal was loud and even frightening. Some of them also expressed a fear to walk on unstable ground.13 The initial distance that people felt toward 13

Some people expressed that they were scared because Tunnel reflected the electric arcs of the work installed in the first room of the gallery. As previously explained, Salle Multi was divided into two rooms: Alexandre Burton’s Impacts was installed in the first one and Tunnel in the second one. Impacts consisted of a completely darkened room with a series of Tesla coils—devices that produce lightning—fitted with a glass pane suspended from the ceiling. A series of cameras distributed around the room detected spectators’ positions and when they got closer to the devices, the work activated a set of sounds and electric arcs. When people entered the Salle Multi gallery attendants advised them to walk carefully

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the piece drew attention to the reflections of moving bodies unfolding outside it. Although Cantoni and Crescenti did not plan the kinetic-optic effect when they designed the piece, such an effect is part of the experience of the work because people spend as much time seeing it as they do on the passageway. This section focuses on the formal aspects of Tunnel. It considers the installation in Quebec City and its impact on how people engaged with the work. Here I also examine video documentation to give a sense of the kind of interactions with Tunnel. The premise of this section is that movement is at the centre of the spectators’ embodied experience when they walk around Tunnel and see the kinetic-optic effect. Movement is also foundational when people walk through the passageway and adjust their bodies to compensate the imbalance their bodies produc. At Salle Multi, two main elements impacted how people engaged with the work: lighting design and the work’s placement in space. While lighting conditions enhanced the optic effect, the piece’s spatial position in the room incited observation and oriented bodies to first walk around the piece. Regarding lighting design, the room was darkened and only two spotlights were fixed to the ceiling’s grid: one spotlight was installed directly on top of the structure where it made the aluminum shine with strong intensity; the second spotlight was angled at approximately 45 degrees towards Tunnel where it cast light on the spectators’ bodies and heightened the visual effect.

and to avoid getting too close to Impacts’ electric devices. Due to the electric arcs and sounds, Impacts did not invite proximity. According to two female visitors I interviewed in Quebec City (here Nicole and Marie) the fact that they could not get near Impacts kept them away from Tunnel. They told me that when they saw Cantoni and Crescenti’s piece, they assumed they could not get close to it and they did not want to anyway. (Nicole and Marie. Personal interview. 14 February, 2013).

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Fig. 4. Rejane Cantoni and Leonardo Crescenti, Túnel (Tunnel), 2010. Installation, dimensions variable. Méduse, Quebec City, Canada. Installation shot showing lighting conditions at Salle Multi. Photo: Leonardo Crescenti.

Tunnel faced the dividing curtains perpendicularly so that when visitors walked in the room they had a full view of the structure. Such a position oriented spectators to first walk around the passageway and then traverse it. Tunnel incited observation of the visual effect as an initial form of engagement with the piece, while the experience of imbalance tended to take place afterwards.14 In order to give a sense of the kinetic-optic effect and what walking onto Cantoni and Crescenti’s unstable structure might be like, I discuss video documentation I recorded the night of the exhibition opening at Méduse. One of the videos I recorded shows people traversing Tunnel and the visual effect. In the first part of the video, the camera looks on one entryway where we can see two spectators: a young white man, Ivan, standing further away from the camera, and a young white woman, Lisa, who steps into Tunnel and walks forward. While Lisa walks 14

On the opening day at Méduse on February 14 2013, I noticed that spectators tended to walk around Tunnel and to traverse it using the entryway further away to the room’s entrance. This meant that they walked 180 degrees around the piece to traverse it despite the fact that the other entryway was near the room’s entrance. In fact, that evening nobody changed that orientation to engage with the work. I also attended Méduse on February 15 2013 and the orientation was the same.

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cautiously, Ivan stops and sees the aluminum frames tilting upward and downward as both Lisa and Ivan walk. On the piece’s ceiling, the steel cable tying together frames and plastic couplings sways; Ivan’s gaze is fixed on the ceiling. To test how the piece responds, Ivan stands with his left foot behind his right foot, legs apart from each other and he balances his weight, constantly bending his torso and legs back and forth; Tunnel accompanies Ivan’s balancing as a rhythmic click-clack. Meanwhile Lisa adjusts her movements. When she first steps into Tunnel, she walks on the right side of it and thus the piece moves subtly, but soon she puts her feet widely apart and starts balancing her weight on both legs, thus enhancing the sound and motion of the work. Both Ivan and Lisa walk out of the passageway, but the former stays near to continue seeing how the piece moves when people walk on it. Tomy, the third spectator, walks with his legs close to each other, arms across his chest and attentively looks at the floor. After a few steps, however, he looks at the ceiling and starts walking with feet apart, balancing his weight on both sides. Halfway through the passageway, Tomy relaxes his arms and walks, slightly balancing his body. The sounds he produces are as quiet as his movements. By contrast, when the fourth spectator, Alex, steps in, Tunnel shakes violently and the sound is loud and harsh. Alex is approximately ten years old and he walks hurriedly with feet widely apart to reach both sides of the Tunnel. With each step, he stomps, raising his feet and then letting them fall brusquely as though he wants to produce a stronger impact on the moving ground. Despite the boy’s thin body, the entire structure trembles and the frames clash stridently (fig. 5).

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Fig. 5. Rejane Cantoni and Leonardo Crescenti, Túnel (Tunnel), 2010. Installation, dimensions variable. Méduse, Quebec City, Canada. Lateral view of the piece's showing Tommy (grey shirt and khaki pants) and Alex (black t-shirt and red pants). Photo: Leonardo Crescenti.

This first fragment of the video demonstrates how spectators’ weight and the quality of their movements produce their experience of the piece. The video also shows how Tunnel sounds different depending on the subjects’ unique ways of interacting with the piece and their decisions about making their weight have a stronger or subtler impact. Spectators “play” Tunnel as one would play a musical instrument and inflect it with individual qualities. For instance, in the video the sound is different when people like Alex stomp or when they walk timidly as Tomy does. The second fragment of the video shows the work’s kinetic visual effect. When Alex, Tomy, and Lisa are still in the passageway, the camera moves toward the left side, and from this perspective their images appear fragmented in the void space between each aluminum frame. As the video plays, the camera continues to move toward the left, revealing these subjects as they alternately disappear behind pieces of aluminum that alternate between seeming thin or thick. Depending on the camera’s point of view, the same aluminum pieces produce different reflections of the same objects. Thus, the video shows how the kinetic-optic effect unfolds and changes in

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relation to the movement that the observing body performs outside of the piece. Each spectator who experiences Tunnel engages with the piece using their body. As the video shows, when people traverse it, the work is made as a result of their weight and body comportment. But even outside the work, the spectator’s body and position in space are also fundamental to what they see. Further, in both instances—on the structure and outside of it—movement is a central force shaping an embodied interaction with the work. With these examples in mind, I move to a discussion of the experience outside Tunnel where spectators can see the kinetic-optic effect.

The Absence and Presence of Visual Experience When I walk around Tunnel, I constantly generate and update the kinetic-optic effect I see. Such an effect results from the combination of the embodied relationship between the apparatus itself, people walking through the passageway, and my own body when I am outside the piece and see the reflections of moving bodies on the piece’s frames. As such, the kinetic-optic effect belongs uniquely to each subject who walks around the piece and optically produces it. The prevalent form of engagement here is seeing, but in a deficient mode. What matters is that such deficiency targets vision, the sense that most easily supports the idea of bodily absence, but that in this case study is asserted as being lodged within the body and inseparable from other senses such as hearing and proprioception (internal perception primarily connected with the position and movement of the body). In the first part of this section, I explore the physiological and anatomical operations of human vision and explain how they support the idea of absence. I also focus on cultural aspects: I investigate how visual experience reinforces the Cartesian conception of subjectivity as disembodied (according to Leder). In the second part, I examine how Tunnel insists on the embodied nature of vision. Although my focus here is on seeing, I move beyond the primacy of the visual in art and art history and suggest that Tunnel’s kinetic-optic effect unsettles such primacy. This orientation derives from the aesthetic thread of kinetic and optic art artists from Europe and South America strongly pushed to the fore throughout the 1950s and 1970s. My suggestion is that Cantoni and Crescenti’s piece continues this tradition because of its emphasis on embodied vision.

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Seeing as Absence Leder proposes the term absence to refer to the general ways in which the body “recedes from personal apprehension.”15 Additionally, he uses the term disappearance to discuss certain phenomena that never reveal themselves because of the human body’s anatomy and functioning.16 The notion of disappearance then refers to that which does not appear to the conscious awareness of the lived body. For instance, disappearance explains the sense of bodily transparency involved in seeing. Concretely, Leder signals five features of seeing that support the disappearance of the body. First, Leder situates sight along what he calls the surface body, that is, the organs of reception and motility embodied subjects use “to perceive and to act upon the world.”17 According to him, the surface body is forgotten in experience “precisely in the act of revealing what is Other.”18 Concretely, perceptual organs such as sight disappear because the body uses them to focus on the perceived rather than on the organs that enable perception. The second point is the seemingly effortless experience of vision. Sight involves “little or no experience of physical effort or forceful interaction” between the subject and perceived phenomena.19 Third, “the eye leaves its object of exploration unchanged,” which means contact is unnecessary.20 The fourth point has to do with movement. Movement usually acts as a reminder of the body but it is not activated in the case of the fixed gaze.21 Fifth, visual experience can take place relatively far off from the observing body, and as such neither contact nor movement is required. These anatomical aspects of seeing are relevant to this study of Tunnel because they explain how visual experience itself supports the idea of disembodied vision that this piece disturbs. What’s more, these five 15

Leder, The Absent Body, 4. Leder, The Absent Body, 27. 17 Leder, The Absent Body, 15, 53. 18 Leder, The Absent Body, 22. 19 Leder, The Absent Body, 15. Sight therefore enhances the sense of bodily disappearance that other senses such as touch prevent, where body and object call attention to each other’s co-presence, or taste where the perceived is actually “incorporated” into the body of the perceiver (Leder 15). 20 Leder, The Absent Body, 118. 21 As Leder put it, in the case of the fixed gaze “a vast spectacle presents itself without any perceptible movement of my part.” This point is in fact complex, for as Leder explains, motility is always tied to perception, even in the case of sight, for instance, in order to see, we turn our heads, raise our eyes, and even walk to get closer to observed phenomena. See Leder’s section on Motility (17-20). 16

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aspects of seeing help explain how, in the act of disclosing what is seen rather than the corporeal processes enabling vision, sight itself prompts the disappearance of the body that art history and other disciplines have used to claim the disembodied gaze of the white male. This gaze, as Donna Haraway points out, “is the gaze that mythically inscribes all the marked bodies, that make the unmarked category claim the power to see and not to be seen, to represent while escaping representation.”22 The question of disembodiment in art history thus asks us to interrogate not only the emphasis on vision but the model of subjectivity it claims. Bodily forms of disappearance activated in seeing have to be linked to Descartes’ conception of subjectivity as disembodied and separate from the external world. Here I draw from Leder to examine how vision helps sustain this division. This framework will help me situate Tunnel as an artwork that disturbs the importance of vision in art history by reclaiming the body and engaging other senses such as hearing and proprioception.

Descartes and Seeing For Descartes, the body is a “place of error” that has the capacity to distort what the subject perceives, and to introduce confusion and deceive the mind. In turn, the mind is an immaterial thing through which truth and knowledge is revealed and deduced.23 As Leder points out, while Descartes did recognize the central role of bodily perceptions in guiding and preventing the subject from harm, he considered them irrelevant to reach the “scientific truth concerning the essence of external objects” that he was concerned about.24 What is relevant from Leder’s approach to Descartes is that his aim is not to debunk Cartesian dualism but to expose the different ways in which the body itself disappears, and in so doing strengthens Descartes’ view of subjectivity as disembodied. Two points are central here: First, the Cartesian dismissal of the body is based on the fact that the normative body often reveals itself more strongly at times of disruption and thus blocks the subject’s “understanding and will.” Moreover, as a distracting figure, the body appears as alien to the self and thus invites negative associations.25 Second, the fact that the body is taken for granted when functioning well

22

Haraway, “Situated Knowledges,” 581. Leder, The Absent Body, 131. 24 Leder, The Absent Body, 130. 25 Leder, The Absent Body, 132-133. 23

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(in its normative mode) further sustains negative epistemics.26 Importantly, in the Cartesian model, vision plays a central role. Indeed, Descartes compares vision to the intellect because in a way vision supports such view. Leder writes: [Vision] gives us in a glance a more comprehensive survey of the surrounding world, more detailed information of any particular object, more knowledge concerning the stable attributes of a thing, than does any other sense […] The ‘mind’s’ knowledge of a stable, copresent, external world is, indeed, largely derived from the eye. Thus in a model such as Descartes’s, which emphasizes the epistemological subject and regards truth as involved with definiteness and permanence, visual experience will be attended to above all others. It emerges as the ‘noblest and most comprehensive of the senses.’27

In this passage, Leder makes it clear how sight privileges a sense of disembodied experience and sustains a sense of disconnection between the body and the surrounding world, one that informs and even supports Cartesianism more than any other bodily sense.28 This is essentially because seeing does not seem to affect or be affected by the world. Seeing also helps supports Cartesianism because it provides information on objects extending far beyond the body, allowing its removal from the observed phenomena. The emphasis on vision that continues to inform some theoretical junctures in art history aligns with Cartesian conceptions of disembodied subjectivity. Further, artworks produced within the framework of the modern tradition promote a visual experience that is isolated from other senses and thus from everything that might touch or be touched by spectators’ bodies. When the body becomes salient, however, the Cartesian model of subjectivity is troubled. This is the framework in which we have to read Tunnel’s insistence on embodied vision. I claim that Tunnel forces spectators to disturb the disappearance of the body. Further, it is precisely through movement that the body is revealed as a support for seeing, and it 26

The case of abstract thought is here of central importance, for it represents the “road to truth” that is interrupted when the body reclaims attention (Leder 133). For example, when we are ill, our ability to concentrate on work-related tasks can be disturbed; such rupture of bodily transparency is often experienced as alien to our willing selves, because we would rather focus attention on something else than experience ourselves in crisis. This is the sense of otherness to the self that in a way backs up Descartes’ dualism. 27 Leder, The Absent Body, 117. 28 Ibid.

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is also through movement that the Cartesian model of disembodied visual experience—and subjectivity—loses its ground.

Fig. 6. Rejane Cantoni and Leonardo Crescenti, Túnel (Tunnel), 2010. Installation, dimensions variable. Méduse, Quebec City, Canada. Detail of the kinetic-optic effect. Photo: Leonardo Crescenti.

Tunnel: Seeing as Embodied Presence While Tunnel’s kinetic-optic effect incites seeing, it moves on from art history’s emphasis on vision. As art historians and museum studies scholars have pointed out, the primacy of visual experience shaped the foundational writings of the discipline of art history, notably Alois Riegl, Heinrich Wölfflin, and Erwin Panofsky. Furthermore, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the legacy of these thinkers was used to support contemplative approaches to spectatorship and the idea of a disembodied gaze. As British museum studies scholar Fiona Candlin signals, the emphasis on vision runs parallel in the work of three influential theoretical junctures developed in the UK and the US in the last century: social art history (T.J. Clark); visual culture studies (Norman Bryson; Stephen Melville; W.J.T. Mitchell), and the post-structuralist art history represented by the founders of the American magazine October (Rosalind Krauss). Concretely, Candlin posits that these three perspectives

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have three operations in common: 1) remaining faithful to Riegl, Wölfflin, and Panofsky, and at the same time using their respective ideas to legitimate their own; 2) tracing “apparently logical and solid lineages” between the founders of art history pioneers and themselves; 3) reinstating the hierarchy of vision to the detriment of other senses like touch and smell.29 Considering these theoretical threads, my aim here is to investigate how Tunnel’s optic effect uses seeing but pushes beyond the hierarchy of vision in art history. Since the kinetic-optic effect results from particular viewing situations and involves at least two bodies in motion— the observing body and traversing bodies—the data to examine this aspect of the work is limited. Here I consider interviews I conducted in Quebec City, video documentation, and my own experience to pose three central contentions. First, the visual effect is a deficient mode of seeing because it redirects the spectators’ attention back into their own bodies. Tunnel incites viewing but it blocks the view of the Other. It is in this sense that Tunnel enacts a deficient form of embodiment, because it can only render deceiving and fragmented reflections that serve to redirect attention back to the observing self. Second, movement is foundational to this deficiency because it generates and at the same time alters part of the kinetic-optic effect. Indeed, people I observed in Quebec City engaged playfully with the piece by slightly moving their heads or walking back and forth to see how their movements changed the reflections they saw. That is, they noticed that their movement informed what they saw. Third, in Tunnel, seeing emerges as inseparable from other senses such as hearing and proprioception. The piece’s metallic sound is a central part of my experience as it provides precise information about people’s location in the passageway, and it tells me what my eyes cannot tell me: the quality of people’s interactions. Through sound I have a sense of whether moving bodies are behaving rashly or carefully, slowly or quickly. The visual effect, entangled with the piece’s sound and my own sense of kinetics when walking around the piece, then invites my corporeal awareness. Overall, Tunnel’s optic effect disallows the disappearance of my body. I cannot disassociate from what I see because my own moving body interferes. In short, my body reveals itself as enabling and also troubling my vision. In this way, Tunnel’s kinetic-optic effect can be compared to a set of Optical Art (also known as Op Art) pieces produced in the 1960s and 1970s that solicit willing and conscious movement from the spectator to produce visual effects. The pioneering work of Hungarian-French artist 29 Fiona Candlin, Art, Museums And Touch. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010, 23.

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Victor Vasarely (1906-97) is a case of kinetic-optic effects. As one of the forerunners of Op Art, Vasarely argued for an expansion of traditional boundaries of painting in terms of concepts, materials, processes, and spectatorship. Particularly, he was invested in creating works that solicit and orient the attention of the spectators towards their bodies in the process of seeing. This novel approach to painting characterizes what is known as Vasarely’s Black and White period, which runs from 1954 to 1960. A remarkable example of this period is Citra (1955), which consists of a black-and-white series of regular and irregular forms to create the impression of a dynamic surface. Here, a round three-dimensional form seems to emerge from the two-dimensional centre of the painting. Citra relies on the displacement of the spectator to “recreate” the work. The framework of this painting is the notion of “multipliable work” that Vasarely developed to refer to paintings that spectators recreate at a distance in many ways. Here, the notion of multiplication involved the spectator physically and mentally, and it solicited the spectators’ attention to produce optic effects. Tunnel’s kinetic effect greatly contrasts with Vasarely’s Citra. Indeed, the support and formal qualities of these works are completely different. My point, however, is the temporality of the elements that produce the optic effect. Whereas Vasarely’s optic effect emerges from a set of stable pictorial elements (for example, forms and colours) combined with the spectators’ movement, in Tunnel, all elements involved in the optic effect are in motion: the piece moves, people move back and forth through the passageway, and people outside of the work move as well. The fleeting temporality of Tunnel’s optic effect then becomes the site for exploring the body in the process of seeing. Venezuelan Jesus Rafael Soto is another forerunner of Kinetic and Optic Art who sought to actively render the process of seeing salient. The core of his research was to investigate the relationships an artwork gives rise to. Based in Paris, he was one of the most influential artists of Optic Art in Europe. His Metamorphosis (1954) is a remarkable example of the way in which this artist moved from a study of pictorial elements toward an exploration of the relationships between elements. The painting consists of the superimposition of a plot of small black squares over a yellowish square of almost the same dimensions formed by the plot; on top of these patterns, a third square of Plexiglas sheet painted with white dots creates a sense of displacement when the spectator moves, and at the same time, seems to merge in her vision. When Soto recounts this painting’s story, it is clear that the visual effect he experienced himself as an “accident” had a strong impact on the kind of paintings he developed from the 1950s

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onward. With Metamorphosis, Soto explains, “I discovered a phenomenon that left me floating on air for almost a week: when I superimposed the plots, luminous nuclei appeared, rotating and moving whenever I shifted my position in front of them.”30 He continues: Observing the superimposition of the dots, I realized that something new was happening, and so I tried to animate and give movement to what was happening there. Finally, I decided to separate them [the dots] by about five centimetres, thus introducing real space and obtaining a movement that I still hadn't achieved with Metamorphosis, which led me to White Dots on Black Dots of 1954.31

As Soto explains in this passage, while he was painting a series of plots (Metamorphosis), he realized that an optic effect of motion emerged when he moved in front of the painting. This experience led him to experiment with other materials and forms because he wanted to recreate the same effect he had seen on other spectators; the result was White Dots on Black Dots (1954). Soto stands out among other kinetic artists because his work pushed the limits between stillness and movement. He also went beyond Vasarely and other artists who inspired him such as Malevich. Whereas Vasarely’s and Malevich’s work focused on pictorial composition (forms and surface), Soto moved towards dynamic works where the central element was the relationship between pictorial elements and the spectator and not the elements themselves. As Austrian artist and scholar Peter Weibel notes: [Soto] quickly recognized the laws governing apparent movement, whereby precisely the relations among the elements, as opposed to the elements themselves, are crucial to the generation of illusory motion. He therefore spoke of ‘virtual relations’ and extended these relations from the surface within a room into the ‘environment,’ at the same time drawing the viewer, too, into the work of art.32

Around 1958, Soto produced a series of optical vibrations with wire and metal rods placed against striped backgrounds. This disposition creates optical effects of the de-materialization of the metal rods. Indeed, against the striped backgrounds, the materiality of the threads seems to 30

Jesús Rafael Soto and Ariel Jiménez, Conversaciones con Jesús Soto Conversations with Jesús Soto. Fundación Cisneros, 2005, 60. 31 Soto, Conversaciones, 62. 32 Weibel, Peter. “It is Forbidden Not to Touch: Some Remarks on the (Forgotten Parts of the) History of Interactivity and Virtuality.” In Media Art Histories. Ed.Oliver Grau. Cambridge Mass. and London England: The MIT Press, 2007, 33.

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lose its rigidity and to change as spectators move; in short, the nylon threads seem to “dissolve into vibrations.”33 Take for example Soto’s Cardinal (1965), a work in which the suspended wires mounted against a surface appear to shift in relation to spectators’ spatial position.34 In this work, neither the background nor the shapes of the metal rods have meaning in and of themselves. Instead, Vibration is “a surface, not on which things move, but which is itself in perpetual dissolution and transformation.”35 Importantly, it is the spectator who animates the piece’s transformation. Even a slight movement of the spectator’s head creates a sense of change and movement. What’s more, spectators cannot help but notice such changes are related to their spatial position and movement. Tunnel continues the aesthetic thread traced by Soto because of its emphasis on embodied vision. However, Cantoni and Crescenti’s piece pushes Soto a step further. For Soto, the important thing was the relationship of elements and this allowed him to move from painting to three-dimensional space (installations) easily. In Tunnel, however, the elements creating the idea of movement (optic effect) are not even stable: they emerge in relation to light in the room, the apparatus, and the movement of people. In Tunnel when I am in the room, I am not there to see a “fixed” or “stable” image; I rather see myself seeing a visual effect that keeps changing before my eyes.

Optic-Embodied Orientations. It is not surprising that many artists from South America led the “corporeal turn” in Europe and South America in the mid-twentieth century, especially those associated with the international trends of Kinetic and Op Art, as well as Brazilian Concretism and Neo-Concretism. Soto is only one example, but there are many others, including Lygia Clark (Brazil). Carlos Cruz Diez (Venezuela), Lucio Fontana (Italy-Argentina), Horacio Garcia Rossi (Argentina), Gego (Venezuela), Gyula Kosice (Argentina), Julio Le Parc (Argentina), Helio Oiticica (Brazil), Abraham Palatnik (Brazil), Lygia Pape (Brazil), and Francisco Sobrino (Argentina). These artists expanded the experience of art, initially working within the

33

Guy Brett, Kinetic Art: The Language of Movement. London: Studio-Vista, 1968, 74. 34 Tate, Art and Artists, jesus Rafael Soto, Cardinal (1965), Wood on chipboard, metal rods and nylon threads, Object: 1562 x 1060 x 254 mm. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/soto-cardinal-t00793 (accessed November 2017). 35 Ibid.

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two dimensions of painting and later taking the actual space to activate embodied encounters between spectators and art through art installations.

Tunnel: My Weight and Moving Body in Relation to a Moving Ground In its insistence on the carnal roots of seeing, Tunnel follows the tradition traced by many artists from South America, and pushes beyond the optical encounter that art history has traditionally ascribed to the spectator. In Tunnel the experience of imbalance functions as a tactical perturbation of my state of corporeal absence as a bipedal subject who does not struggle much to stand and move about. What is unique about this piece is that by producing imbalance, it solicits attention to my usual postural balance. Drawing from Leder, balance is here considered an embodied and learned task “enveloped within the structure of the takenfor-granted body from which I inhabit the world.”36 This section explores how by producing imbalance Tunnel disrupts such a structure of taken-forgrantedness. The reason why this disruption matters is because it targets the core operation that prevents the collapse of the two-legged body. Within a physiological framework, postural balance enables the upright posture; it keeps bipeds like me from falling; and it is the basis of most bipedal tasks, ranging from the most basic ones like standing still or moving forward, to more complex ones like dancing or running.37 In this section, I introduce the basic anatomy of the balance control system. I begin with the three main systems involved in balance, namely, somatosensory, vestibular, and visual. I suggest that postural equilibrium enacts an “enabling absence” because in positive circumstances I forget it even though it supports my “I cans” as a two-legged subject. Finally, I examine how Tunnel fractures the state of corporeal absence by producing imbalance. I mobilize the phenomenological claim “I have weight.” Since my weight is the raw material activating Tunnel, this section explores how I activate my weight to interact with a piece that throws into crisis the balance that sustains me vertically and keeps me from falling.

36 37

Leder, The Absent Body, 32. Gaerlan, “Postural Balance in Young Adults,” 3.

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Balance Balance is used here to describe “the dynamics of body posture to prevent falling.”38 It involves a correlation of bodily and environmental factors in which different forces pull and push to sustain the body’s equilibrium. Kinesiologist D. A. Winter maps out the challenges to sustain this posture: The fact that we as humans are bipeds and locomote over the ground with one foot (walking), no feet in contact (running), or both feet in contact (standing) creates a major challenge to our balance control system. Because two-thirds of our body mass is located at two-thirds of body height above the ground we are an inherently unstable system unless a control system is continuously acting.39

As Winter points out, the standing posture literally supports the body in a position that is essentially unstable because the legs carry double their weight (head, arms, and trunk). Moreover, whether the body is still or in motion, it is always actively engaged in maintaining equilibrium. The human sense of balance relies on three sensory systems: 1) vision is essentially engaged in inspecting the environment to plan mobility and evade obstacles; 2) the vestibular system is situated in the inner ear and its main function is to sense “linear and angular accelerations” to coordinate movement; and 3) the somatosensory system comprises proprioception as well as cutaneous and joint filaments; its role is to “sense the position and velocity of all body segments, their contact (impact) with external objects (including the ground), and the orientation of gravity.”40 Together, these three systems sense postural reactions and provide information on the body’s position and movement through space as well as sensorial information on support surfaces. The somatosensory system is of central importance to this study of Tunnel because it concerns the relationship between the body and external objects, a relationship we are drawn to notice when walking through the piece. Neurologist Thomas Mergner and astrophysicist Thomas Rosemeier explain that the interpretation of the somatosensory system is required to establish: (a) body geometry; (b) body areas that carry the weight; (c) the quality of the body’s contact with the surface support, as well as the characteristics of such support; and (d) 38

David A. Winter, “Human Balance and Posture Control during Standing and Walking.” Gait and Posture, Volume 3, Issue 4, 1995, 194. 39 Winter, “Human Balance...,” 193. 40 Winter, “Human Balance...,” 194.

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the independent motion of the ground and the body, that is to say, “the kinematics and kinetic state of the support and the body.”41 Under regular circumstances, however, I hardly notice that my body works hard to maintain balance because I have acquired such skills. Leder clearly explains how bodily awareness shifts when I acquire novel skills. Whereas early learning stages demand a high degree of attentiveness, more advanced stages do not. Out of repetition and training, attention shifts away from the body as novel tasks “sediment into fixed habits.”42 In other words, there is a stage when I perform an action without thinking about how I do it.

I Have Weight Par mon poids, je sais où je suis. - Bonnie B. Cohen

I weigh 120 pounds, I walk fast, in a rough manner, and slightly leaning forward; each time I moved through Tunnel, my weight and body comportments became salient because I had to adapt my gait to the piece’s movement. My first contact with the piece made me alert because the ground conditions changed: prior to walking in the passageway, the ground was firm, but I did not notice its firmness until I sensed Tunnel’s upward tilting. This experience invited me to notice the sense of balance I tend not to think about. Tunnel also allowed me to sense the movement of other people. I visited the show with a friend and when we moved close to each other, I could feel his motion under my feet. I found, for instance, that the sense of imbalance was more intense when he stomped than when I did. In other words, when I maximized my movements, I felt less offbalance than when my friend moved the piece and forced me to adapt to that motion.43 I claim that in Tunnel the experience of imbalance offers me the possibility of noticing “I have weight” and particular aspects of my 41 Mergner, Thomas, Rosemeier Thomas. “Interaction of vestibular, somatosensory and visual signals for postural control and motion perception under terrestrial and microgravity conditions—a conceptual model.” Brain Research Reviews, 28, Nov. 1998, 123. 42 Leder, The Absent Body, 30. 43 Here, it is relevant to recall Maxine Sheets-Johnstone’s focus on self-movement (as opposed to the prevalent focus on the body’s movement in relation to external stimuli (i.e. Edmund Husserl). This novel perspective on self-movement makes Sheets-Johnstone’s formulation central to my discussion of Tunnel. The focus is the experience of unbalance, an operation that spectators feel within their own bodies and that is relational to the piece: a moving body in relation to a moving structure.

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embodiment.44 The “I have weight” claim summarizes the tangible body mass that grounds my body on earth and enables my living as biped; the vertical orientation of my body; and the operations that provide the security that I will not fall (including bodily operations and gravitational forces). Finally, this claim concerns the ways in which I sense my own body mass and readjust it when I interact with Tunnel. Videos I recorded on the opening night at Méduse’s Salle Multi show how each spectator activates his or her “I have weight” with unique qualities. It is relevant that in all instances sound functions as a marker of the interactions with the piece. That is, spectators play Tunnel as one would play a musical instrument; even if the instrument is the same, each body infuses it with specific qualities that are tied to the “I have weight.”

44 Such aspects involve the visual, vestibular, and somatosensory inputs I receive when my weight activates the piece. For example, I can sense the piece’s upward tilting; via the vestibular sense, I can control my movements without falling; I can also hear my interaction with the piece and use this information to guide my interaction. If I am attentive, I can identify those body areas bearing my weight (i.e. heels or tiptoes). I can also sense the surface where I stand: for instance, I can feel both extremes of the blocks are more “sensible” to my weight than the centres. Even if I walk through Tunnel several times and my sense of imbalance lessens because my body becomes habituated, I can feel the quality of my body sway because it results in different experiences of the piece.

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Fig. 7. Rejane Cantoni and Leonardo Crescenti, Túnel (Tunnel), 2010. Méduse, Quebec City, Canada. Observer activating the piece. Photo: Leonardo Crescenti.

Fig. 8. Rejane Cantoni and Leonardo Crescenti, Túnel (Tunnel), 2010. Installation, dimensions variable. Méduse, Quebec City, Canada. Lateral view of a group of teenagers activating the piece. Photo: Leonardo Crescenti.

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For instance, video Tunnel-01 shows how Sara’s slow pace and calm gait produced subtle sounds. In this video, Sara’s experience was uniquely marked by the fact that she walked on one of Tunnel’ sides with her feet close to each other, often putting her weight on while walking on tiptoes. Given that the springs producing imbalance are on the sides of Tunnel, her body’s swaying was calmer and the piece’s sounds were subtle. In contrast, Video Tunnel-03 shows the interaction of a group of six teenagers walking rapidly and close to each other. The result was that the aluminum frames bumped violently against each other and sounded like unbridled crashing metal. This group of spectators definitely moved Tunnel and turned their “I have weight” into a collective and loud statement. These examples demonstrate how the experience of this piece invites people to make the conscious decision to notice central aspects of their bodies. This opportunity to be attentive to something as mundane as people’s body mass and sense of balance is one of Tunnel’s most significant contributions. And yet, this does not mean all spectators do become attentive. The potential, however, is the aesthetic possibility of throwing people off-balance as a means of breaking a sense of bodily absence. Indeed, a young man I interviewed at Méduse’s Salle Multi vaguely became aware of the piece’s imbalance while walking on it. Yet, he reported that when he was no longer on the passageway he experienced “sea legs.” In his own words: Inside, it did not impress me that much. I did not feel really something. I would say that it was afterwards. […] Not really 'on' the work, but once outside, walking is different. We could say that you have the same feeling when you have been on the sea. When you arrive on shore after feeling the waves all day, and you lie down, and you still have the feeling of movement. That is what I felt.45

The lived body of this spectator came to his attention when he came back to solid ground and not while moving inside Tunnel. Interestingly, what this means is that even if he “did not feel really something” when he traversed the piece, his body did feel something and that the effect was strong enough to alter his perception when he put his feet back onto solid ground. Cantoni and Crescenti’s orientation toward embodiment in general, and their use of human weight as a means of interaction in particular, engage with the work of other European and Latin American artists who have aimed to undermine the contemplative role of art spectators by activating 45

Alex. Personal interview. Québec, 14 Feb. 2013.

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corporeal experiences. Particularly, their work is connected to the series of installations that have engaged with the notion of instability since the second half of the twentieth century.46 Throughout the 1960s, many artists activated both visual and proprioceptive regimes of perception by directly involving the experience of unsteady structures and other precarious apparatuses to force spectators to change body comportment. Here, I compare Tunnel to other contemporary works with the objective of better understanding the nuances of bodily movements in Cantoni and Crescenti’s piece, and the original contribution of the piece in studies of how contemporary installations can work to make spectators aware of their weight and oriented movement. A remarkable early example is Julio Le Parc’s Sol instable (Unstable Floor), an installation from 1964, where spectators walk on a series of movable blocks to try to reach an inflatable rubber ball hanging from the ceiling.47 Thirty-six black wooden blocks are arranged together in a square surface of 328 cm2 placed beside a wooden box with stroboscope lights; the wooden slabs tilts upward and sideways with the spectators’ weight and force them to adjust their bodies to keep balance. The experience is playful, but it aims toward agency. Sol instable aimed to recall spectators’ bodily awareness. Sol instable’s use of the spectators’ weight to produce imbalance contrasts with Tunnel in two fundamental ways. First, in Sol instable, each one of the blocks forming the ground moves independently. This means that I only move those slabs under my feet. In Tunnel, there is a chain reaction: the motion I produce propagates and makes the contiguous frames move. Second, the Sol instable pieces are large and the quality of their motion does not vary with each foot because the surface where each foot rests is the same. The metal and aluminum pieces forming Tunnel’s blocks are narrow (6.5 cm each). This means that spectators can have each one of their feet pressing on two or three blocks at the same time. On each block, they can sense a different quality of motion. For instance, I walk in a rough manner and lean slightly forward. This means that my knees and my toes carry more weight than my heels. If I am attentive when walking on Tunnel, I sense that the blocks closer to my toes sink more than the blocks where my heels rest, because the pressure is on the front part of my 46

For an excellent analysis of the notion of instability in the history of art (mainly in Europe), see Pierre Arnauld, “De l’instabilité: perception visuelle/corporelle de l’espace dans l’environnement cinétique.” Les Cahiers du musée national d’art moderne, no. 78, Hiver 2001–2002, pp. 40–69. 47 See: Daros—Latin America, Collection, Julio Le Parc. https://www.daroslatinamerica.net/artwork/sol-instable (accessed November 2017).

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foot and not on the heels. In Sol instable, I cannot sense in detail which areas of my foot momentarily carry my weight. What’s more, when interacting with Tunnel the quality of my movements will be reflected in the sound. All in all, both pieces aim to disturb the sense of corporeal absence by producing imbalance, but it is the quality of the imbalance that differentiates them. Tunnel also differs from a series of pieces by American artist Robert Morris presented in a 1971 exhibition at the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain).48 One of the show’s sections consisted of objects that moved and altered the spectators’ balance. Two structures from this section particularly resonate in their use of people’s weight to produce imbalance. The first structure consists of a wooden platform oscillating on a roller. The second structure pivots on a ball. In both cases, spectators had to adapt their body and motion to maintain equilibrium. Spectators can experience this work collectively or individually. Morris saw in this exhibition “an opportunity for people to involve themselves with the work, [and to] become aware of their own bodies, gravity, effort, fatigue, their bodies under different conditions.”49 These two pieces throw spectators off-balance. Its use of people’s weight also departs from Tunnel in the quality of the motion and sensory inputs. Another central difference is that Tunnel orients the spectators’ bodies through a six-meter passageway; the experience of the piece has a linear orientation. In contrast, Morris’s pieces can be “entered” from any angle and people can move about and walk away as they please. The most striking difference, however, is that Tunnel was carefully designed to allow many different bodies to move and to respond to diverse qualities of movement with more refined (or precise) movements and sounds. All and all, the meticulous use of people’s unique weight and movement to activate an upward tilt is what distinguishes Tunnel from Sol instable, the GRAV’s Parcours, and Morris’ pieces. Cantoni and Crescenti make the notion of “I have weight” matter. As I have explained, the piece’s reverberating movement and sound are informed by how each subject moves, and by the movement of all people in tandem. How each body uses her weight to interact with the piece is reflected in the quality of the apparatus motion and the sound. Compared to the 1960s and 1970’s 48

See: Tate, Research-Research Publication. Performance at Tate: Into the Space of Art: Jonah Westerman, Robert Morris, Tate Gallery 1971; Bodyspacemotionthings, Tate Modern 2009. http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/performance-attate/perspectives/robert-morris (accessed November 2017). 49 Quoted in Candlin, Art, Museums And Touch, 168.

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pieces, both Vasarely and Soto’s Optical Art paintings, as well as the early installations by Le Parc, the GRAV, and Morris, Tunnel uniquely incorporates a questioning of both the visual and proprioceptive systems on the same apparatus. It merges the effects of optic art and the experience of imbalance to reclaim the spectator’s embodied relationship with the world through a re-oriented attention. The last example I want to bring here is another piece by Cantoni and Crescenti entitled Solo (Soil in English). Created in 2007, this work consists of forty aluminum plates (1 square metre each) connected to one another with metal bars similar to door hinges. A metallic platform fixed to the floor and a series of springs makes it possible for each plate to move independently, while the hinges connect the plates’ motion to one another. In this piece, the spectators’ weight and the orientation and force of their steps make the metal squares move. Interestingly, when a subject walks on Soil, her movements reverberate radially throughout the entire platform. At the same time, people can sense the movement produced by other spectators. As is the case with Tunnel, Soil also uses people’s weight to produce movement and experience a relative sense of imbalance. However, what is remarkable about the latter work is that the plates forming the movable ground are tied together and people walking on the platform can feel the weight of others. The major difference, however, is that in Tunnel I can only sense the interaction of other people if I am very close to them, if their bodies are much more heavy than mine, or if they behave rashly; in Soil, the point is to feel the interaction with others through the platform. As Brazilian curator Christine Mello observes, Soil points toward a collective experience and if it targets bodily awareness, it is precisely in relation to the awareness of other bodies. Mello writes, “the vital force of Soil resides in the gesture of translating personal experience into collective. Calling attention to the multiplicity of bodies participating in the game. In it, the interactor experiences his own movement learning to modulate himself in an overlaying of places.”50 Developing on this theme, Mello continues: The political importance of the project stands out: the real sense of agency. In this direction, the emphasis is on both the capacity of the subject to realize significant acts (and consciously observe the outcome of her/his choices and decisions), as well as on power dynamics, the tensions, the difficulties of living together in the informational space. One can have the 50

Christine Mello, “Soil: Fluctuating, imprecise and collective signal.” Solo/Soil, Capela do Morumbi. Museu da Cidade de São Paulo, 2010, 2.

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feeling that all the ground is under the control of the self, as well as perceiving that collective actions generate unexpected effects on the self and on the space.51

In this statement, Mello points out how Soil uses the individual’s weight to move the platform but only to make the individual motion reverberate into the collective. Weight and movement are the elements of proprioceptive and sensorimotor connection that Soil activates. In comparison, Tunnel does not seem to have the collectiveness of Soil; the spectator becomes aware of her weight only in proximity/intimacy with other spectators. Still, Tunnel disturbs the sense of equilibrium and activates an awareness of one’s “I have weight.” As the examples above demonstrate, the experience of imbalance becomes an opportunity to sense my body areas engaged in the gait, and those body parts carrying my weight and making contact with the piece. Such an opportunity to be attentive to my body in relation to the piece emerges when my sense of imbalance is challenged.

Orientations Tunnel’s insistence on embodied vision and its enactment of imbalance orient the subject’s attention toward the self. That is the point: to alter my body’s state of absence and bring up foundational operations—seeing and maintaining postural balance—that have been used to naturalize social conflicts and tensions that revolve around social constructs tied to the body. For example, seeing can create social conflicts when used to render transparent the body of the spectator (subject) and to stress the visibility of the body of the observed (object). Postural balance can also be used to justify different forms of discrimination when it functions to naturalize biped subjectivities and two-legged tasks, because such subjects (and the tasks they can perform) become the norm against which all other bodies become abnormal. In both cases, a hierarchy divides bodies between those who can be absent and those who cannot.

My body as Support and My Dependency on Supports In her essay entitled “Choreography for One, Two, and Three Legs (A Phenomenological Mediation in Movements),” Sobchack narrates how the amputation of her leg shifted the attention from goals and tasks onto her own body. As she explains “[b]efore the amputation, like most people 51

Ibid.

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going about their lives, I just moved in the direction of my intentions without thought of the movement and without access to the inhuman secret of the bodily mechanism that got me there.”52 The amputation of her leg, however, brought to the fore the “secret” operations that allow her to move. Additionally, she became aware of the systems that support or fail to support her actions: architecture, infrastructure, instruments, prostheses, and tools. Overall, the novel conscious relationship Sobchack developed with her body and the space around her lead her to reflect on the “supportive function of the body.”53 Precisely because such fundamental function generally escaped her attention, she formulated the idea of the body as “enabling absence,” that is, the “common ground that enables all of our thoughts, movements, and modes of expression.”54 Sobchack’s formulation of the body as support pushes Leder’s argument a step further because it insists on the following: the body that some of us tend to forget is actually the means of our existence. While Leder recognizes that embodied subjects need to experience the body as absent to keep going about life and focus on other tasks, Sobchack’s formulation ties in this idea with the notion of support, the body as support and the body as dependent on a set of supports. This point is central to discuss Tunnel’s use of my weight to throw me off-balance. The basis of this case study is a structure that fails to support my balance and makes me notice that in order not to fall, I need a solid ground and solid infrastructures. Scholars writing in the fields of performance and disability studies have argued that the body requires support even in the most mundane actions. For example, writing about the infrastructures that non-normative bodies require to organize demonstrations in public space where they feel safe, Judith Butler posits: We cannot talk about a body without knowing what supports that body, and what its relation to that support—or lack of support—might be. In this way, the body is less an entity than a relation, and it cannot be fully dissociated from the infrastructural and environmental conditions of its living. In this way the dependency on human and other creatures on infrastructural support exposes a specific vulnerability that we have when we are unsupported, when those infrastructural conditions start to decompose, or when we find ourselves radically unsupported in conditions of precarity.55 52

Sobchack, “Choreography for One,...,” 55. Sobchack, “Choreography for One,...,” 63. 54 Sobchack, “Choreography for One,...,” 65. 55 Butler, “Rethinking Vulnerability,” 8. 53

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What is central according to Butler is thus the mutual interdependency of bodies and infrastructures. The extent of the dependency is such that the vulnerability of all living bodies is exposed when the supports fail. This dependency is in fact a central aspect of the notion of support. Considering definitions of “support” from 1382 and 1686 respectively, performance studies scholar Shannon Jackson identifies a fundamental shift. A dictionary from 1382 suggests a “metaphorical” rather than “social” approach: “To bear, to hold up, to prop up; To endure without opposition or resistance; to bear with, put up with, tolerate.”56 In 1686, the definition takes on a social orientation, and emphasizes the dependency of living organisms: “The action of keeping from falling, exhaustion, or perishing, especially the supplying of a living thing with what is necessary from subsistence; the maintenance of life" (Oxford English Dictionary57). As Jackson points out, the second definition goes beyond “the literal pull of gravity” and instead involves a living being that needs “a range of supportive actions”; what Jackson identifies then is a slight but relevant “formal expansion in what the support includes here, opening up from a stably static entity—one that quite often sustains from below—to a more dynamic, lateralized series of supportive actions.” Furthermore, there seems to be an acknowledgement of the fragility of the thing held on to in the latter definition, in which it is clear “what would happen if it was withdrawn.”58 It is in relation to the latter definition of support as what is needed for subsistence that I propose to read Tunnel’s contribution to discussions of oriented movement. Concretely, the claim “I have weight” engages the notion of support in two important ways. First, it relates to my body as the support of my actions. Second, the insistence of embodiment brings me back to the dependency of all living bodies on supporting acts and systems: providing aid to others, designed built environments, prosthetics, tools, and such mundane supports as the ground itself. First, the supportive function of the body is clearly activated in the standing posture. Since the upright stance is the basis of the postural balance previously discussed, here I briefly expand this point. The process whereby the body persistently works with the earth’s gravitational forces to produce points of equilibrium led German phenomenologist Erwin Straus to describe the upright posture as an orientation “against gravity.”59 In a passage focusing on the role of gravity, Strauss wrote: “The earth that 56

Quoted in Jackson, Social Works, 30. Quoted in Jackson, Social Works, 31. 58 Jackson, Social Works, 31. 59 Erwin Straus, “The upright posture,” Psychiatric Quarterly, 26(1), 1952, 536. 57

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pulls us downward is also the ground that carries and gives support. The weighty man signified by his dignified gait that he carries a heavy burden but sustains it well. Upright posture as counteraction cannot lack the forces against which it strives.”60 What I want to underline from this passage is that the forces against which the standing posture combat—the ground, gravity, as well as the human anatomy and body weight—form what Strauss defines as “invisible partners” that sustain and support the body. These partners support the standing posture, but also the tasks and projects I can perform when standing. Concretely, my body supports my experience and central bodily operations such as standing and maintaining balance. I claim that Tunnel renders visible the supportive role of my body that I activate when I stand. My experience of losing balance provides the grounds for me to notice. That is, I sense when I am off balance and when my body is actively engaged not to fall. Second, all bodies depend on the built environment, though such an environment is not built to support all bodies. As disability scholar Rob Imrie points out, architects, urban planners, and transportation planners alike support the domination of “nonimpaired corporalities” because their designs are made for such bodies. In so doing, they render the environment built for non-impaired bodies transparent, and reinforce the idea that able bodies are non-dependent subjects while disabled bodies are dependent subjects.61 This is why it is important that Tunnel renders salient my need for a stable and firm ground. Because as a body who can move without much struggle, I can easily forget that in order to enact my mobility and perform my “I can” as a biped, I need a solid ground and solid infrastructures. Shannon Jackson points out that road signs inform drivers of failures in the public infrastructure. Importantly, Jackson argues, “it is only when there is a break in their service that we register their presence [the infrastructure’s presence].”62 By producing imbalance, Tunnel functions like a road sign, in the sense that it informs my body of the support I need and which carries me. In Tunnel, what happens to the ground then becomes of central importance: spectators find themselves traversing an unstable structure requiring bodily adjustments. It is only then that the body-on-support, taken for granted, comes to the fore. It also makes space for the recognition that not all bodies can keep balance because their own bodies or the built environment fail.

60

Ibid. Rob Imrie, “Disability and discourses of mobility and movement,” 1651. 62 Jackson, Social Works, 7. 61

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Always From My Body In what regards the orientation of Cantoni and Crescenti’s emphasis on embodiment, I argue that the artistic duo reclaims the body simply because their point of departure when they designed Tunnel—as well as their other pieces—was that there is no such thing as bodiless experience, though the artists themselves have not made such a claim overtly. Their ongoing research on embodied encounters has moved toward more refined pieces that qualitatively favour interactions wherein each body’s uniqueness triggers unique responses. I have discussed extensively how Tunnel does it; I have also provisionally discussed how Floor (2007) and Soil (2010) do it, but a more recent example will further support my point. Melt (2014) is a kinetic surface designed to functionally distort the weight, position, and movement of people. The work consists of a 70meter long, semisolid carpet that elastically sinks when people walk on it. As in Tunnel and Soil, the spectators’ weight, as well as the quality of their movements, make the piece bend and shake. What’s more, each body’s impact on the piece reverberates on the nearby plates, instigating collective as well as individual experiences. My discussion of Tunnel and the aforementioned examples help to disclose the politics of Cantoni and Crescenti’s insistence on the body. The way I see it, by producing imbalance and insisting on the embodied nature of vision, Tunnel requires me to take responsibility for what I see and experience always from my own body. I propose to read Tunnel’s reclaiming of the body as a way of countering the Western sense of corporeal transparency. Tunnel’s insistence on the body denies the right white European and North American able bodies have traditionally claimed to efface their own bodies to justify different forms of discrimination, inequality and violence.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Horea Avram Department of Cinema and Media, Babeú-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania Horea Avram, PhD, is Assistant Professor at the Department of Cinema and Media, Babeú-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. PhD in Art History and Communication Studies from McGill University, Montreal. He researches and writes about new media (art), representation theory and visual culture. His recent publications include “Augmented Reality” in Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); “The Visual Regime of Augmented Space” in Theorizing Visual Studies: Writing Through the Discipline, edited by James Elkins, (New York: Routledge, 2013). He publishes essays in: Cultura: International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology, M/C Media and Culture Journal, International Journal of Arts and Technology, Kinephanos, Ekphrasis. Images, Cinema, Theory, Media, Idea. Art + Society, Arta, etc. He has curated numerous exhibitions, most notably at Venice Biennale in 1999. Research fellow of the New Europe College Institute for advanced study in the humanities and social sciences, 20172018.

Ulrike Gerhardt Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany Ulrike Gerhardt is a cultural studies scholar and writer on art and cultural theory with a special focus on cultural memory in video and performance art, PhD researcher within the doctoral research group “Representation Visuality - Knowledge” at Leuphana University Lüneburg as well as an associate member of the doctoral school at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg (HFBK). Her writings are published in: 11th Istanbul Biennial: The Guide (2009), 12th Fellbach Triennial (2013), Camera Austria (2014), Art in the Periphery of the Center (with Ana Bogdanoviü, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2015), Art Margins Online (2016) and Out of Time. Skulptur Projekte Magazine (2017), among others. She is the co-editor of

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the volumes: Post-Studio Tales (co-edited with John Beeson, Daniel Falb and Friedemann Heckel, Hamburg: Textem, 2015) and The Forgotten Pioneer Movement—Guidebook (co-edited with Susanne Husse, Hamburg: Textem, 2014).

Sozita Goudouna New York University, USA Sozita Goudouna, PhD, is an art theorist and curator. She is the author of Beckett's Breath: Anti-theatricality and the Visual Arts, published by Edinburgh and Oxford University Press, 2018. She taught at New York University as the inaugural Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow at Performa New York, the leading arts organisation dedicated to exploring the critical role of live performance in the history of 20th century art and to generating new directions for the 21st century. The curator was a consultant for the Onassis Festival NY 2016 at the Onassis Foundation USA. She also taught the MA Postgraduate Programme “Management and Promotion of Cultural Goods and the Environment” at the University of the Peloponnese 2017. She holds a PhD from the University of London on the History and Theory of Modern and Contemporary Art that is regarded as the first monographic survey on Beckett’s Breath (Onassis Scholarship 2003-7) and has studied Philosophy, Theatre and Directing in London (BA, MA, Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) & Kings College London 1996-2000). She is developing an arts project in Abu Dhabi with UNICEF and has curated a program for “The Parliament of Bodies” documenta 14 Public Program with the participation of artists including Karen Finley. She was elected as Treasurer of the Board of Directors at International Association of Art Critics AICA Hellas and as Member of the Board of Directors at the Hellenic Centre of the International Theatre Institute Unesco.

Robert Lawrence University of South Florida, USA Robert Lawrence is an artist and theorist who engages contradictions at interfaces of the Internet and embodied space. He approaches film and electronic art as social sculpture and is interested in the ways that digital technologies can reformulate formerly restrictive roles of media producer

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and consumer. All his work is developed in two complementary streams: in the physical world, and in the virtual world. Through this hybrid practice he engages ways contemporary life is lived, and identity is continually reconstructed, through our contradictory self-narratives in the embodied and virtual realms. Lawrence chaired in New York the first CAA annual conference panel on hybrid post-internet art. Lawrence’s work has been awarded over 30 grants, including Fulbright and support from the Jerome, McKnight and Rockefeller Foundations. He received his MFA at the University of California at San Diego and BA in Humanities (Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa) at the University of California at Berkeley. Lawrence is Associate Professor of Art, at the University of South Florida where he has served as Director of Electronic Media, MFA Coordinator, and as Coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Center for Arts and Technology.

Liviu Mali‫܊‬a Babeú-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania Liviu MaliĠa, PhD, is Professor of Aesthetics and Theatre Studies, Dean of the Faculty of Theatre and Television, Babeú-Bolyai University. Literary critic and historian, he also specializes in the history of theater, art theory and aesthetics. He researches and writes about drama theory, censorship, psychoanalysis in theater and theater aesthetics. He was member of Equinox journal group and is a member of the Writers Union of Romania. He is a member of the Center for Research and Creation in Theatre, Film and Media “Vlad Mugur”. Relevant publications include: Theatrical space. A synthetic look (2013); The Extremes of Art (2010); Paradoxes of Aesthetics (2009); Romanian Theater under Communist Censorship (2009); Nicolae Breban. A Monography (2001); The Other Rebreanu (2000); I, the Writer. The Condition of the Writer between the Two World Wars in Transylvania (1997).

Raluca Mocan Université Paris-Est Créteil, France Raluca Mocan, PhD, is Assistant Professor in philosophy at the University Paris-Est Creteil (UPEC). She writes and researches about phenomenology, imagination and theatrical experience. She co-edited the volume La Perception, Entre Cognition Et Esthetique [Perception

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between cognition and aesthetics], with Adinel Bruzan, Jean-Marie Chevalier and Roxana Vicovanu; Paris: Classiques Garnier Multimedia, 2016. Other publications include: “On Becoming Present to the Spectators: A Phenomenological Approach to Theatrical Performance”, Université Paris-Est Créteil, EA LIS Archives Husserl, ENS-CNRS, 2017. “The perceptive phantasy at Husserl and in the theatrical experience. Elements for a phenomenology of spectator and actor’s consciousness,” Studia Universitatis Babeú-Bolyai Studia Europaea, LV, 3/2010 and “Body awareness and learning. A phenomenological approach to the experience of the performer,” in STAPS, nr. 98/2012, Eds. Boek University, Brussels. Rodica Mocan and ùtefana Răcorean Babeú-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania Wheaton College, Illinois, USA Rodica Mocan, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of digital media and ViceDean of the Faculty of Theatre and Television, Babeú-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca. Her current research interests are focused on emerging media, interactive documentaries and digital interactive performance. She is the author of Critical Paradigms in Interactive Digital Performance (Cluj University Press, 2017) and Emerging media genres - New Media Documentary (Cluj: Risoprint, 2013). ùtefana Răcorean is a psychologist working as a marriage and family therapist and trainer. Former psychotherapist and director of training at at DIANOIA Institute of Family Therapy and Systemic Practice, Timi‫܈‬oara. ‫܇‬tefana has a BA in Psychology and an MA in Psychological Counseling and Psychotherapy. Currently she is pursuing graduate studies at Wheaton College, Illinois, USA. Her fields of research are family therapy, psychology of religion and trauma.

Georgina Ruff University of Illinois at Chicago, USA Georgina Ruff is a PhD Candidate (ABD) at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her dissertation, Beyond Light and Space: How the Lamp Changes Everything turns the focus from the phenomenological effects of post-war light art to the contemporary technological means of the work’s production. She was a recipient of the UIC Dean’s Scholar Award and her

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research was previously supported by a DAAD Fellowship. During the course of her PhD program, Georgina has received a Mellon Fellowship to the Seminar in Technical Art History at the NYU/IFA Conservation Center, interned at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, been Assistant to the Curator of the Jane Addams Hull House Museum, and has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois State University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Miruna Runcan Babeú-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania Miruna Runcan, PhD, writer, semiotician and theatre critic, is Professor in the Department of Theatre, Babeú-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca. Head of the Doctoral School in Theatre (2009-2014), and a member of the International Association of Theatre Critics. She is a founding member of the editorial board of the academic journal Studia Dramatica. She has published essays in edited volumes such as: Das Rumänische Theater nach 1989 edited by Alina Mazilu, Medana Wiedent, Irina Wolf (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2010) and Theatre After the Change, edited by Maria Mayer-Szilagy, Atilla Szabo, Joanna Krakowska (Budapest: Creative Media, 2011). Her authored books include: The “Theatricalisation” of Romanian Theatre. 1920-1960 (Cluj: Eikon Publishing House, 2003), For a Semiotics of the Theatrical Performance (Cluj: Dacia Publishing House, 2005), and The Skeptical Spectator’s Armchair (Bucharest: Unitext Publishing House, 2007).

Paul Sermon University of Brighton, UK Paul Sermon is Professor of Visual Communication at the University of Brighton. His practice-based research in the field of contemporary media art centers on the creative use of telecommunication technologies. He studied BA Fine Art under Professor Roy Ascott at the Newport School of Fine Art from 1985 to 1988 and completed his MFA degree at the University of Reading in 1991. He then went on to be awarded the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica award in the category of interactive art for the hyper media installation Think about the People now, in Linz, Austria, 1991. He produced the ISDN videoconference installation Telematic Vision as an Artist in Residence at the ZKM Center for Art and

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Media in Karlsruhe, Germany and received the IMF Sparkey Award from the Interactive Media Festival in Los Angeles, for the telepresent video installation Telematic Dreaming in 1994. From 1993 to 1999 Paul Sermon worked as Dozent for Media Art at the HGB Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, Germany. During this time he continued to produce further interactive telematic installations including Telematic Encounter in 1996 and The Tables Turned in 1997 for the Ars Electronica Centre in Linz, and the ZKM Media Museum in Karlsruhe. From 2000 to 2013 he worked as Professor of Creative Technology at the University of Salford and from 1997 to 2001 he was Guest Professor for Performance and Environment at the University of Art and Industrial Design in Linz, Austria. In September 2013 he joined the University of Brighton as Professor of Visual Communication.

Erandy Vergara McGill University, Montreal, Canada Erandy Vergara, PhD, curates, investigates, reads and writes about contemporary and media art. She earned a MA at Concordia University, Montreal and a PhD in Art History at McGill University, Montreal. She has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Société et culture. Her main research interests include feminism, global art histories, curatorial studies, postcolonialism, and critical race studies, with a particular interest in recent remix cultures, the strengths and downfalls of science and technology, decolonial uses of media, critical histories of virtual reality, and the aesthetics and ethics of participation. Her writing has been published in books and journals including: The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies (2014) and [Ready] Media: Towards an archeology of Media and Invention in Mexico (2013). She has also curated and produced a number of exhibitions in diverse institutions ranging from media art museums (Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico) to alternative spaces (Manchester Digital Laboratory, U.K.).