'This
is a Solo' it's my last
workbook made within the frame of MA SODA (Solo, Dance, Authorship)
2010-12, promoted by the Hochschulubergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin/Inter-University Center for Dance Berlin (HZT).
Ana Monteiro is a scholarship holder from Fundaçao Calouste Gulbenkian (Portugal) for her participation in MA SODA programme.
It regards, in particular, the 4th semester's final performance presentation: SHOWCASE-I do it myself together, necessarily enformed by wider issues and questions concerning my artistic practice.
Ana Monteiro is a scholarship holder from Fundaçao Calouste Gulbenkian (Portugal) for her participation in MA SODA programme.
It regards, in particular, the 4th semester's final performance presentation: SHOWCASE-I do it myself together, necessarily enformed by wider issues and questions concerning my artistic practice.
PLACING. DISPLACING.
MISPLACING
During
my engagement within MA SODA, I've been interested on approaching
choreography as experimental practice which lead to reflection upon
the ways one perceives and does things, in other words, to a
practice that deals with modes of production and perception as a
point of departure for artistic expression.
Exploring
issues related with representation, subjectivity, context and
collaboration through a multitude of activities, I have been
pursuing an investigation towards differentiation of artistic
practice, not easily identifiable by standard criteria through
proposing a proliferation of interests and experimentation,
attempting to complexify, question and deterritorialize the
choreographic field.
The
way I have chosen to develop a practice within the frame of MA SODA
tries to defy conventional ways of considering development, as in a
straight line or coherent hole, by proposing a constant (re)framing
and questioning process that resists dwelling in favor of
confirmation of a certain way of doing things, instead taking the
opportunity and daring to explore and try out different angles of
what choreography might mean or do.
This
approach lead me to an understanding, for the time being, of my
artistic practice as a 'being-in- relation', in which creation is
approached as a means to create singular relations that become a
frame for attention both for the makers and for the beholders in
multiple yet specific ways which points to a relational and process
oriented activity.
In
this sense, I am interested in a practice of 'being-in-relation'
which involves a looking at and reflection upon the conditions and
frames within which one dwells, intrinsically as extrinsically and
the attempt to take agency in choosing creative ways of approaching
those.
In
this sense, part of my final presentation at MA SODA could not not
have been a response and an attempt to reframe the frame within
which it was produced since I consider that my artistic practice
cannot only exist isolated in itself but it's also always a response
to, a 'being-in-relation' to: myself, others, spaces and time
passing and therefore it keeps changing and shifting depending on the
singular constellations within which it unfolds.
In
this regard, I consider that the performance SHOWCASE-I do it myself
together is my take on the notions proposed by the course of Solo,
Dance and Authorship.
Along
this lines, my claim would be that this performance proposes a
specific understanding of solo as product of multiple relations based
on collaborative procedures for creation which imply a relational
understanding of authorship and non conventional approaches to the
ways of production and perception of performance.
SHOWCASE-I do it
myself together
The
starting point for the project SHOWCASE was triggered by the
awareness that the final presentation for the 4th semester
of MA SODA had, as one of the criteria, a performance presentation
of, at least, 45 minutes of length.
This
information ignited a proliferation of questions:
What
are the assumptions behind a specific time frame considered as
standard in a given context?
What
does it say and do in terms of modes of perception and partitions of
the sensible?
Are
standard time frames for performance presentation already inscribed
within a certain understanding of what performance-making and
performance-spectating should be and should do?
Curious
to investigate the notion of autonomy, understood as the creation of
one's own conditions of engagement inside the given contexts, it was
proposed a set of four solo performances of approximately twelve
minutes each. The creation of each solo would be autonomous from one
another, exploring different logics of production and non causal
relations yet interdepend they would be presented side by side in
the same evening in a showcase like display.
What
would the spaces in between the solos do?
Which
unpredictable relations will emerge out of such conditions?
What
perceptions of time and space would it generate?
In
relation to juxtaposition as a compositional strategy of the work,
the idea was to investigate non causal relations between materials as
a way to question linear or conventional ways of perceiving
development or conventional dramaturgical approaches by proposing the
presentation of multiple relations, of 'things speaking to each
other.'
This
set of questions in relation to the conditions of the production of
the work, constituted the starting point for the research of the
SHOWCASE project as a way of inquiring different possibilities of
organization within the choreographic field by pointing to multiple
ways of preceiving and of 'being-in-relation'.
In
order generate differentiation in the process of creation of the
solos, I decided to engage on a series of collaborations which
proposed their own specific medium and procedures for production.
This series of
collaborations was thought in terms of the invention of the notion
of joint-creation which would be a collaboration between me
and others within the frame of the four solos based on procedures
that would enable two creative processes to unfold and intercept each
other at given points (joints) allowing the articulation
collaborative process.
Mentoring:
Siegmar Zacharias, Pirkko Husemann and Anja Muller
Special
Thanks to Ivo Serra and Carlos Monteiro
CONTEXTUALIZATION
Modes
of Production and Perception of the Sensible:
Modes
of Production and Perception of the Sensible:
Representational
Mode and Procedural Mode
The
Showcase project inscribes itself within a multitude of so-called
experimental and process oriented performing practices in which an
important axis of work resides in dealing with its own modes of
production. Projects developed by thinkers and makers such as: Alice
Chauchat, Miranda July, Harrel Fletcher, Jan Ritsema, Ezster Salamon, Bojana Cvejic
among many others can be included yet not limited to such
categorization.
In
the last century the acknowledgment of the impossibility to separate
art from the way in which it is produced and that the working methods
will not only determine the stage aesthetics, but also create
opportunities for ideological production and meaning, lead to a
re-conceptualization of the role of the artist as a political and
critical agent.
My
understanding of a political and critical approach here, proceed
along Foucault's lines which points to exposing frames rather than
taking a judgemental stance or position: 'A critique is not a
matter of saying that things are not right as they are. It is a
matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of
familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the practices
that we accept rest.' (Foucault, 1988: 228)
I
am interested in thinking choreography as an activity that seems to
be inevitably connected to politics for both deal with modes of
organization and composition of elements. Politics and choreography
are necessarily busy with the order and place of things, with which
Jacques Rancière calls le partage du
sensible : 'J'appelle partage du
sensible ce système d'evidences sensibles qui donne à voir en même
temps l'existence d'un commun et les découpages qui définissent les
places et les parts respectives' (Rancière, 1998: 12).
In
works that are committed in investigating modes of production and
perception of the sensible, the question of 'How?' comes necessarily
to the foreground of the research. In this sense, 'How' becomes the
'What' and the 'How' is constituted by the set of relations
necessary to bring something into existence. According to Petra
Sabish relations are not describable as fixed or signified objects,
rather, they are subtle and changeable.
The
question of 'how' one engages with the creative process
itself is intrinsically linked with the question 'What can
Choreography do?' which point to a permanently open field of inquiry
rather than a set of predefined or established assumptions of what
Choreography should be, implying an attempt of an ontological
stretcht: 'Focusing relations means to allocate singularity of a
choreography not to its ingredients, but to account for the event of
qualitative transformation within the relational assemblage of
choreography.' (Sabish, 2010: 8)
Thus,
the perspective in which I was interested in pursuing the Showcase
project relies on approaching the choreographic field from an
experimental and procedure oriented take rather than what I would
call here a 'representational mode of production'. It seems crucial
to clarify the distinction between what I am considering to be a
'representational mode of production' and a 'procedural mode of
production' drawing largely from the critique of representation
coined by authors such as Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze.
By
'representational mode of production' I am referring to ways of
creating based on the desire to convey or/and control the reception
of a particular meaning or aesthetical experience through what is
(re)presented or symbolized on stage, which involves a more or less
evident narration based on causal relationships between elements: 'It
may now be less figurative, less lucidly realistic. But it is still
assumed that a work of art is content. Or, as it's usually put today,
that a work of art by definition says something. ('What X is saying
is...'; 'What X is trying to say is...' 'What X said is'....etc,
etc)'. (Sontag, 1964: 5)
Representation
literally means 'to stand in the place of' or in Wikipedia's
definition: 'Representation is the use of signs that stand in for and
take the place of something else'.
In
this regard, the 'representational mode' is always related to the
process of interpretation, here not understood in the sense of the
inevitable individual projections from the spectators upon what they
are witnessing in the performing frame, for instance, but as a
specific and prescriptive way of looking at and dealing with the
process of signification: 'Of course, I don't mean interpretation in
the broadest sense, the sense in which Nietzsche (rightly) says,
'There are no facts, only interpretations'. By interpretation, I mean
here a conscious act of the mind which illustrates a certain code,
certain 'rules' of interpretation'. (Sontag, 1964: 10)
By
a 'procedural mode of production', I am referring to ways of creating
that result from a series of operations or as Deleuze calls it,
'falsifications', which mediate the relations and negotiations
between the elements involved in the production of something.
Here,
the idea of mediators seems to be crucial for they act as enablers of
expression and even if always already present in all human activity,
to which Agamben calls of apparatus, to work with and from
mediators, constitutes, I believe, a pivotal difference between the
procedural mode of production and the representational one.
In
works that depart from a 'procedural mode of production', the
author's subjectivity is mediated through a set of conditions or
protocols.
In
terms of authorship, the author is not considered as an authentic,
truth and self contained entity but rather he or she produces her own
autenticity and truth through the ways she chooses to mediate the
artistic process and creation.
This
notion of author is related to the problem of subjectivity developed
among others by Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault. The frame of
this paper does not allow me to go into this fascinating problem,
but nevertheless I believe it is relevant to point out Foucault's
proposition in which there's no subject as a substance or essense,
only processes of subjectivation, meaning the relations and practices
through which the subject constitutes itself.
So
maybe I can mention here a working ethics that, while not relying on
the desire of expression of the subject, is grounded on the opening
of a common space constituted precisely by his disappearance through
'Enunciating the Barthesian
assertion
that authorship
is in the process of being displaced as the central paradigm of
Western artistic creation.' (Schneider, 2005: 26)
Generally,
it seems to me that the 'representational mode of production' comes
from an aesthetical intention, meaning the desire to produce a
specific kind of sensible experience, whereas the 'procedural mode
of production' comes rather from an ethical one, for its primarily
busy with the way things are done instead than what that production
means in terms of representation.
Thus,
these are works that are interested in what they do and how they
operate rather than what they stand for or, maybe one could say,
they stand, primarily, for the ways in which they are made and here
resides perhaps the possibility for ideological meaning to be
raveled.
The
last aspect I would like to mention, regards the modes of reception
of the works that are based on 'procedural modes of production'.
Since the 'representational mode' corresponds to the conventional
and hegemonic one, in Wikipedia's definition: 'convention is
understood here as 'a set of agreed, stipulated or generally accepted
standards, norms, social
norms
or criteria, often taking the form of a custom.' , what seems to
become crucial in relation to the presentation of the work, regards
the framing of the expectations of the audience.
Coming
from the awareness of one's social, cultural and historical
conditioning on the ways things are preceived, works that aim to
question those same modes of perception through the ways and means in
which they are produced, have necessarily to take into account the
conventional expectations involved in performance presentation.
In
this regard, the manner in which the work is articulated to the
audience becomes of considerable importance. Not in the sense of
defining it or telling the beholders what to see, but rather in the
sense of (re)framing their expectations in relation to how to look at
or engage with the experience and experiment they are being invited
to.
In
short, if we accept representation as a given on stage and if
representation is not the main focus of the work than, the question
becomes precisely in which ways to articulate and frame that issue
through the relationship and the invitation that's being proposed to
the audience.
Hence,
the notion of hospitality, generally meaning the relationships
between guest and host seems to become of great significance.
Hospitality
seems to imply a certain degree of reciprocity, nevertheless also
conveying an economy of violence for, in welcoming the other, the
host imposes certain conditions upon the guest and at the same time,
the host's self has the opportunity to become interrupted, in
Derrida's words: “We thus enter from the inside: the master of the
house is at home, but nonetheless he comes to enter his home through
the guest—who comes from outside.' (Derrida, 2000: 54)
Solo
as Multiple: Being-in-Relation
SHOWCASE
project attempts to propose a specific
understanding of solo as product of multiple relations based on
collaborative procedures for creation.
In
my perspective, SHOWCASE suggests a way of looking at solo work as an
assemblage as the Free Dictionary definition proposes: 'a collection
of people and things, a gathering or a fitting together of parts, as
those in a machine'.
The
will to work with and in relation to, has as backdrop the desire for
differentiation. I am understanding differentiation as an act of
love along the lines of Michael Hardt's lecture 'About Love' in which
love is approached as a political concept, not as a passion but as an
action, in which creation means nothing without the creation of
difference, the creation of singularities.
The
way I decided to engage in 'experimenting with differences' was both
to work in collaboration with various individuals and through the use
of different mediums and approaches.
The
engagement with different mediums and approaches can be understood in
relation to a practice of solo that underscores an unbecoming which
is present in a proliferation of examples in contemporaneity: a
dancer becoming an opera maker (Meredith Monk); a painter becoming a
dancer (Jackson Pollock), an artist becoming a musician (Yoko Ono)
etc.
This
slippages of boundaries may be seen as symptoms of an accent of the
artist as an active agent of undoing which points to a paradigm
shift of the artist's practice which becomes anchored on a constant
undoing his artistic identity rather than a constant reenactment of
his self expression: 'Thus, these artists become agents or actors
(the emphasis on the active) by deploying gestures that seem to
resist (or undo or unbecome) the very media through which they emerge
and, often, by or through which they are recorded.' (Schneider, 2005:
41)
The proposal of solo as
multiple or a series or assemblages of collaborations has an agenda
of differentiation in which the questions 'How can I speak through
others and how can others speaks through what I am proposing? and
'What relations will emerge in the 'in betweeness' of those
agencements?1
, became pivotal, in order: 'to reach, not the point where one
no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any
importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves. Each will
know his own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied.' (Delleuze,
Guattari, 1987: 3)
Agencement
designates the priority of neither the state of affairs nor the
statement but of their connection, which implies the production of a
sense that exceeds them and of which, transformed, they now form
parts.
REFERENCES
Agamben,
Giorgio (2007) Qu'est-ce qu'un dispositif?
Éditions
Payot & Rivages
Delleuze,
Gilles; Gattari, Félix (1987) A Thounsand Plateus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia
University
of Minnesota Press
Derrida,
Jacques (2000) On Hospitality
Standford
University Press
Foucault,
Michael (1988) Technologies of the Self, 'Ethics,
Subjectivity and Truth'
ed.
Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton
Rancière,
Jaques (1998) Le Partage du Sensible: esthétique et politique
La
Fabrique Éditions
Sabisch,
Petra (2010) Choreographing Relations: Practical Philosophy and
Contemporary Choreography
ed.epodium
Schneider,
Rebecca (2005) 'Solo, Solo, Solo' in After Criticism: New
Responses to Art and Performance
Backwell
Publishing
Sontag,
Susan (1964) Against Interpretation and Other Essays
Picador:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
About
Love , lecture by Michael Hardt on the European Graduate School
(2007) viewed on January 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioopkoppabI
Representation
(Arts), viewed on January 2012 Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representation_%28arts%29
Convention,
viewed on January 2012 Wikipédia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention
Assemblage,
viewed on January 2012 The Free Dictionary by Farlex:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/assemblage
NOTES
Context
and Framing
The perspective in which
context is approached in Showcases's process of research is not of a
fixed and predetermined set of conditions which point to conventional
notions of readability, linearity, stability and positioning but
rather to a dynamic activity of framing as an activation which
enables shifts of perception of the context itself.
The
activity of framing proposes an open field for the display of
multiple and unstable relations and the exposure of a multiplicity of
frames as well as the observation of how they sit side by side and
what do the relations between them speaks about.
Thus the action of
framing points to the context by enhancing one aspect or the other,
by bringing awareness to certain aspects while necessarily
disregarding others, through disclosing, revealing 'naturalized' or
self evident frames, through pointing at, through bringing light to
specific issues.
Lights
I
displace here a text that I wrote in response to a request of my
collegue Yair Vardi asking to recall a specific light event:
'I only got aware of the
light coming from the outside because of the glass doors reflecting
the lights from the street lamps, houses and christmas
decorations
This light, made by an ensemble of lights, each with it's own specific purpose, became welcomed by-products of the place where things were to happen.
This constellation of lights was already there and could change configuration at any moment: someone leaving the flat, someone coming into a flat, a bird crashing into a street lamp causing a short circuiting event, a TV that goes on nearby a window, blowing candles at a birthday party...
And this was when something like this crossed my mind: 'maybe I'll take them as my background collaborators, this time there will be no protocol, no negotiation, each one will do their thing.'
This light, made by an ensemble of lights, each with it's own specific purpose, became welcomed by-products of the place where things were to happen.
This constellation of lights was already there and could change configuration at any moment: someone leaving the flat, someone coming into a flat, a bird crashing into a street lamp causing a short circuiting event, a TV that goes on nearby a window, blowing candles at a birthday party...
And this was when something like this crossed my mind: 'maybe I'll take them as my background collaborators, this time there will be no protocol, no negotiation, each one will do their thing.'
