I'm writing in my prospectus about performance and performance studies because the research and the work that I am doing is about the performance of plays, the performance of research/scholarship, and the performance of home.
As I work, I encounter other scholars and thinkers on the topic. Particularly, in this moment, Peggy Phelan, Joseph Roach, and Diana Taylor. If I'm being complete, we're talking Taylor's summation of several views on performance before she cements/introduces/extrapolates her own unique take on the subject. I find related points communicated elegantly: "Performance's being . . . becomes itself through disappearance." (Phelan) and performance as "coterminus with memory and history" (Taylor explaining Roach's view) (5). All these ideas in just the introduction to her views. For example: "Its very undefinability and complexity I find reassuring. Performance carries the possibility of challenge, even self-challenge, within it. As a term simultaneously connoting a process, a praxis, an episteme, a mode of transmission, an accomplishment, and a means of intervening in the world, it far exceeds the possibilites of these other words offered in its place." (15)
It is this multiplicity that I also find reassuring.
I like the ephemerality, coconstitution, and challenge of the performances we both create and perpectrate. Perfomance is fertile. I often find myself afraid and it is the biggness of performance which reassures me. Perhaps in its acceptance of the possible rather than the completed. Performance like Della Pollack writes is the thing that can be done a million times, repeated until it is new in its repitition. It is a vehicle of knowledge and and expressive dying explosion of growth that imprints and galvanizes the participant and the observer.
I gush and idealize.
Performance to me is movement and action. It is the doing and the sharing. How can I explain?
I cook. I don't bake. I cook and, while I can admire the skills I have used, I am always excited for, desirous of, the completion of the act in the audience who participates with my act. My partner is a terrible audience most of the time. He simply eats it. But once in a while he responds to what's there, in the bowl, in front of him.
My friend and I had an argument at the DIA this week. There is a series of ovals in the contemporary wing which are meant to be placed in odd locations around the gallery to invite museum goers to observe the space and see how the objects change that space, "energize it." The first, most visible, object is a slim oval mirror placed about 4 feet off the floor on a wall near a corner of the furthest northeast room. She looked at it and scoffed: "Well that's dumb." I immediately responded that it wasn't, that the invitation to the performance of art was important, whether or not she liked it. She retorted that it took no effort to put a mirror on a wall and call it art, that the artist should not get the recognition of a museum like the DIA. I argued that the performance of that piece, regardless of intent or effort, was important due to the challenge instigated by its presence in the gallery and its inclusion alongside other pieces with clear and visible craft and "effort."
Effort is not always visible in art: my partner tells a story about a man who wanted to watch a painter at work. The painter was hesitant and under much pressure admitted the man to observe his work. The man arrived and the painter had a bowl of flowers, his subject for the day. With great anticipation, the man settled in to watch the painter, who stationed himself in front of the bowl of flowers and looked at it. He looked at it and looked at it and looked at it. The man was at first confused, but worried to interrupt the process. After several minutes, the painter shifted position. Ah! Thought the man, now he will begin. But the painter simply moved to look at the bowl from another angle. Half an hour passed before the man worked up the courage to ask: "When will you begin?" and the painter with an exasperated breath turned around and said, "I have." "What are you doing?" asked the man. "I am painting these flowers."
Our country and culture are often driven by product oriented viewpoints. We want to be able to see and hold outcomes, but performance by its very nature is ephemeral.
In Slings and Arrows, one of my favorite Canadian television series. The first season ends with the festival's traitorous business director, Richard, being blown away by the opening performance of Hamlet, as seen from backstage. He asks how anyone can "deny what happened here tonight?" to which the director responds "What did happen here tonight?" Richard can't say, but it was important. Words are unable to encapsulate performance or it's importance. It leaves you speechless and full of thoughts and feelings.
As I work, I encounter other scholars and thinkers on the topic. Particularly, in this moment, Peggy Phelan, Joseph Roach, and Diana Taylor. If I'm being complete, we're talking Taylor's summation of several views on performance before she cements/introduces/extrapolates her own unique take on the subject. I find related points communicated elegantly: "Performance's being . . . becomes itself through disappearance." (Phelan) and performance as "coterminus with memory and history" (Taylor explaining Roach's view) (5). All these ideas in just the introduction to her views. For example: "Its very undefinability and complexity I find reassuring. Performance carries the possibility of challenge, even self-challenge, within it. As a term simultaneously connoting a process, a praxis, an episteme, a mode of transmission, an accomplishment, and a means of intervening in the world, it far exceeds the possibilites of these other words offered in its place." (15)
It is this multiplicity that I also find reassuring.
I like the ephemerality, coconstitution, and challenge of the performances we both create and perpectrate. Perfomance is fertile. I often find myself afraid and it is the biggness of performance which reassures me. Perhaps in its acceptance of the possible rather than the completed. Performance like Della Pollack writes is the thing that can be done a million times, repeated until it is new in its repitition. It is a vehicle of knowledge and and expressive dying explosion of growth that imprints and galvanizes the participant and the observer.
I gush and idealize.
Performance to me is movement and action. It is the doing and the sharing. How can I explain?
I cook. I don't bake. I cook and, while I can admire the skills I have used, I am always excited for, desirous of, the completion of the act in the audience who participates with my act. My partner is a terrible audience most of the time. He simply eats it. But once in a while he responds to what's there, in the bowl, in front of him.
My friend and I had an argument at the DIA this week. There is a series of ovals in the contemporary wing which are meant to be placed in odd locations around the gallery to invite museum goers to observe the space and see how the objects change that space, "energize it." The first, most visible, object is a slim oval mirror placed about 4 feet off the floor on a wall near a corner of the furthest northeast room. She looked at it and scoffed: "Well that's dumb." I immediately responded that it wasn't, that the invitation to the performance of art was important, whether or not she liked it. She retorted that it took no effort to put a mirror on a wall and call it art, that the artist should not get the recognition of a museum like the DIA. I argued that the performance of that piece, regardless of intent or effort, was important due to the challenge instigated by its presence in the gallery and its inclusion alongside other pieces with clear and visible craft and "effort."
Effort is not always visible in art: my partner tells a story about a man who wanted to watch a painter at work. The painter was hesitant and under much pressure admitted the man to observe his work. The man arrived and the painter had a bowl of flowers, his subject for the day. With great anticipation, the man settled in to watch the painter, who stationed himself in front of the bowl of flowers and looked at it. He looked at it and looked at it and looked at it. The man was at first confused, but worried to interrupt the process. After several minutes, the painter shifted position. Ah! Thought the man, now he will begin. But the painter simply moved to look at the bowl from another angle. Half an hour passed before the man worked up the courage to ask: "When will you begin?" and the painter with an exasperated breath turned around and said, "I have." "What are you doing?" asked the man. "I am painting these flowers."
Our country and culture are often driven by product oriented viewpoints. We want to be able to see and hold outcomes, but performance by its very nature is ephemeral.
In Slings and Arrows, one of my favorite Canadian television series. The first season ends with the festival's traitorous business director, Richard, being blown away by the opening performance of Hamlet, as seen from backstage. He asks how anyone can "deny what happened here tonight?" to which the director responds "What did happen here tonight?" Richard can't say, but it was important. Words are unable to encapsulate performance or it's importance. It leaves you speechless and full of thoughts and feelings.
