SHOWCASE2


'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.

 

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:

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.'