Thursday, June 12, 2014

meeting w/laura (12 june 14)


look at: tim infold ; lines, how they intersect, twist go apart come together; double helix-y.  this work is like that, can visualize like that--two strands come together and converge and wrap and unwrap and go in different directions and converge again, etc.  the two sides of the spell-desire equation, sometimes it works together iike they were both together, but even when they are in their own 'domains' they still speak to each other.
next work, next project, talked about the outline of an idea posted in my last blog.  
thinking now to have 1 media projection w/no performers, 2 performers w no media, 2 performers w media.  test to see how spell and media work together, how trance works for each performer.  media enters into image and imaginary, i said oh this is about seeing, but what about hearing and she said, look at that french guy again, voice and gaze as objects of drives. look at what zizek says about this, the orifices of the face, the shadow
also note to self : look at laura's thesis again, on gaze and voice 
lacan's word: exstimacy - inside and outside come together (in voice and gaze)  

--focus for next part, again it's the presenting, how to present, be more willing to experiment in all of this, the presentation of the documentation (geoff's seminar on exposition will help articulate this, the mila kunst exhibition will be good practice for the practice, haha, a pun)

and thinking forward to the last project: she suggests i do something already written, removing myself in all the variables til the last, which will see how this works in a text that is not written for them.
this next work is going to be massively written for these particular performers and their particular abilities in trance.  
so the last one will be how this method might work outside of this context.  mm hm. mm hm.
yes.
on fire,
c

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

may-june: whispers & mirrors (11 june 14)

a little early, not too early, a little ready, not too ready.
bittersweet residency, some sad things, hidden under the tongue, they slip out, a little late, not too late.

start over.

dear diary,
i finished my rdc2 submission, and i like it.  i think the argument is there, finally, i didn't know what i was arguing for the longest time, but i think it's there.  this lacan, how desire functions in us (problematic us, i don't agree with ideologies that say us, or are spelled us, but spiritually, there is always the us at the beginning and the end, oh, that's such a problem, but it's not my problem), this afro-caribbean thing, how spells function, what trance does when accompanied by a proper (don't look into that word very far, i don't mean what i think you think it means) spell, they are similar, very similar, and can do things to performers in a state of trance, things that i want to talk about, but not here, not in an rdc2 way, not in a lit review way, in the methodology sections way, that's later, that's still coming, but the argument, i think, the argument is there, i think, and i know i like where it is.
so i'm waiting to hear if it reads the way i think it reads (it never will, but there are linguistic blueprints--how can you be saussure?--haha my favorite joke--there are blueprints of how we know things through words, and this writing, not this one here, the rdc2 one is the this here, this writing might fit with that in a way that makes sense to someone trying to decipher whether or not this is on the level).
too many ways to say what i want to mean.  what i think you want me to say.  what i want to want to say.  to say what i want to say.
oh but this: what i want: i don't want to pass, i don't want a degree, i want to be challenged, and earn a degree in the process (more precisely, i want to change my identity in the process, to learn how to think differently about what i do when i am making art, talking about art, learning about art). so far i am challenged very much so, yes, very much so, and i love this.

part 2.

dear diary,
i'm leaving on the 24th of june to spend four & a half weeks exploring europe with my mom and my daughter.
i'm packing and arranging a life here to move it there, but so much of it is left here.  that's how it is when you are in between places.
on august 6th heather is coming from paris to berlin.
this means that everyone at transart will get to meet the three most important women in my life.  i am very excited.
i am going to miss my dog, jake the dog.

part 3

dear diary,
we finished the show that makes up part three of the studio work.
the production was solid, but there were lots and lots of problems.  things that made it almost impossible at times to focus on the trance work.  i don't know how it worked, because i haven't interviewed the performers yet, that's still coming.  i don't know if i'll have interviews when i leave, they might have to be captured across borders, wirelessly.  but the audiences responded as if something very large and mysterious was happening, and i got to talk about my phd work in the press. we'll see how the rest of it turns out when we all get to talking about how the trance worked for them this time.
oh but there were some large problems that were beyond my control.
i can't talk about all of that here.
personal things about persons who are not me.
you know.

part 4

dear diary,
i am thinking about the next project.
not much, or not much that i have access to.  images and dreams and things that i don't quite have access to.  a room that's too dimly lit, where spirits are working out details for me, before they turn the light on.
i think brecht is right, people need to be able to smoke cigars and drink inside the theatre.  (i don't drink though, i tried it once and it went on for 20 years and was sort of messy, but you can drink, if you're lucky it's very nice, i wasn't so lucky).
there are inklings of the next piece though, and they are like this:
first, i have a production in seattle in october, and one in tempe in november, so i don't know when this will work, but i know it has to work somewhere in there.  that's a big part of my thinking about the next project, the logistics of time and schedules.  i wish it weren't so much about time and schedules, but oh, i don't want to have to keep rushing things like i have been.
i see a series of stations.  maybe this won't be in a theatre this time.  a remote location out in the middle of the desert would be best, but hard to do here, not for lack of space, but because there are too many people with guns in those spaces.
it's obvious that we have to do something about those people with guns.
so maybe this is in my house, and outside my house, where there are stations, not like stations of the cross, but stations that number 5 (because of oshun), 5 stations where there are 5 groups of performers, some groups of 2 or 3, some groups of one (the word group is not correct for a group of one, but language is all that we have, or rather, interpretation is all we have, based on desire, how we hear what we want to hear, how we hear what we think they want us to hear, based on magic, how words make things when they are put together in certain orders).
the 5 stations perform an act, or a scene, continuously, so that the spectators can walk through them in whatever order they choose, and end with an incomplete vision of the whole.
one station with media only where a narrator puts the viewer into a state of trance.
one station where performers interact with media, a film about their experience.
3 stations that are only performers, these performers are in a deeper state of trance than we've done so far in this monsters of the sea.
all stations are performers reflecting on an experience, an experience with some basic components: a restless night. an argument between a heart and a head.  falling into exhaustion finally and waking up hearing the dead singing.
this is about seeing, looking to see the world of the invisibles, and seeing something else instead.
an ecstatic rite that begins and ends with dancing.
that's all i can see right now.
love.
c




Wednesday, June 4, 2014

april-may: stutters (14 may 14)

this update is reporting on two things: like usual, writing and studio practice.
writing wise, i have finished the second draft of the rdc2 chapter, and am working on draft 3 of the rdc2 report.  will have notes etc from my advisors in the next week or two, and am planning on submitting by the end of may.  the chapter, losing the glossary and taking the form of a play, was a good idea, i think, it opened up everything for me.  it also helped me to put my advisors’ comments in a (dialogical) context, and i saw something in my writing that um i don’t want to talk about out loud but because i don’t want to i will.
i wrote a lot of words without saying anything, and see now that the first draft was in large part me thinking things through, but not very thoughtfully haha.  and it took all of this upfront work (which i didnt think at the time was work i wouldn’t use) in order to get to where i could articulate the main things i’m trying to articulate, that is: lukumi spells, palo charms, lacan’s desire, when put in place, in action, in rehearsal, have effects on the performers that seem very similar.  this i’ve said, but not so much in terms of how.  which part of the charm is like the subject, or object, etc etc., and suddenly i am seeing why some have had trouble understanding what i’m talking about, because i am not articulating what i know, but i didn’t know what i wasn’t articulating, and now i know.
so i am learning how to write.
in terms of the studio project.  yikes.  i formed a new theatre company with friends, and am not directing this time, so i can focus on the ritual parts of this, getting performers into trance, putting them under oshun & yemaya spells, etc.  however, the director tore a ligament and a tendon, lengthwise, and had to have surgery, and so i got to direct for a bit again.  and the actors have had staggered schedules so tonight is the first time we’ll all be together in the room at once.  and this: the space, we have a perfect space, but suddenly can’t get in touch with them, and they’re not answering any questions about moving in next week to open, so, we are not sure we have a space after all (this has not happened before, i’ve worked with this space lots of times and think the people are lovely), so.  these complications have meant that i’m not focusing on ritual and trance with the performers but am doing many things at once.  not ideal, but i suppose it never is, and, this one is focusing on the psychoanalytic mind, and a deep trance is not necessary, just a lightness of consciousness, a light state of otherworldliness and lots of discussion of projections and mirrors,  it will work, but not with as much documentation in the process as i wanted.
i’m guessing i’m not the only artist-researcher who has been frustrated, but at the time that it happens, it sure does feel like you’re the only one in the world.  we get to work through these things and find out what we found out after it’s all over and not a moment before xo

march-april: this is not here (16 apr 14)

This update is preoccupied with the things this update is writing about.
There is the work, the written work: oh this has already been written about, however, in the last 2 posts.  But.  To summarize, or rather, highlight:
I am reading two new books, The Claude Glass (history of the Black Mirror) and Phantasmagoria.  The latter is interestingly laid out, a structure for looking at the ‘more things in heaven and earth’  (wax, ether, air, etc.); the former seems to have a link for my methods, where the black mirror is something that catches the gaze (not in JL’s sense of gaze, to be clear), and the act of looking is power, so to take it away from someone is agency and authority and all those things.  I’ll write more on that later, I’m sure.
I have some new methods for collecting subjectivities (in a jar, haha), and my favorite one, the one I’m looking forward to, is interviewing analyst-style, not face to face.  Looking forward to seeing what I find, and next Sunday I start rehearsals for project #3.  Oh this is a busy month, mm hm.  But I know it’s been rough for you, too.
Next, dropping the idea of a glossary for the lit review, almost altogether but not quite, almost dropping Cortazar but not quite, and instead taking the form of a play, a dialogue between directors in a play, so that the discourses can argue amongst themselves, so that there is a fluidity and elasticity between them.
I finished draft 2 of the RDC2 report, and am in the middle (beginning of the middle, say, like on the early end of a beat) of writing draft 2 of the lit review.  Oh, this, these things, all with a very very big debt, I had a lot of help, a very big debt to my advisors.  Yes, very much.
Oh, and I have plane tickets to Europe.  This is all happening too soon, but exactly soon enough too.
xo
c

supervisory meeting p2 of 2 (11 apr 14)

met with Laura today on Skype.  Very fruitful.  The big questions centered around form and structure, I’m looking for central metaphors to guide this work, central metaphors that could dictate the form and structure of the work.  The Nkisi is still in my mind as a guiding poetic object, but the form that lets the reader in is Performance.  I’m still thinking through this in terms of how the rest of the chapters are laid out, but the literature review, instead of a glossary, will be a play.  I’m already writing in voices, and the problem I’m having is how the voices need to be able to speak to each other, and a play solves that.
The idea of a Rehearsal Director being the central narrator (which fulfills the same role the Lecturer does in Malcolm Ashmore’s The Reflexive Thesis).  Two assistant directors, a Santer@/Paler@, and a Lacanian.  Aha.  This will work.
In the next week I’ll be writing a revision to the RDC2 report, and in three weeks a new draft of this chapter, to allow for another round of revisions for a May submission.  Yes.
Other points:
To include my footnotes, I can’t use Harvard style, but, Laura suggests, Harvard style makes better writing, because we’re forced to focus.  I will do that then, because the form is playful enough to allow for side trips, but it needs to take the reader on a journey that’s not frustrating to follow (at least, not at the outset).
Also, need to include Mulvey (of course).
And more theatrical and other artistic sources throughout.  Again, the play format, where the setting is a rehearsal with a dialogue about the research questions, will make this not only easy, but really essential.
Finding out that so much of this writing is learning how to say what I know but haven’t spoken because it’s so much a part of my world that I don’t think to articulate it (but without these articulations, it doesn’t communicate what it really is).  And also finding out that so much of this is unknown, what is happening and what will happen when these notions are put to the test in the laboratory of art.

supervisory meeting p1 of 2 (4 apr 14)

The nature of these meetings I understand is to have everyone meet at once; in this case, I’m working on my RDC2, and need to be able to work toward a very rapidly approaching deadline, so, I’m meeting with my supervisors separately, because of complicated travel and teaching schedules, and also because there’s a lot of material to cover (60 pages or so), and individual conversations are necessary (but everyone is talking to each other, we’re all conferring in loops so that eventually we’re all participating in the same conversation).
This morning I met with Debbie, and had a wonderfully illuminating discussion of the report and the first chapter.  We’re discussing the structure of the whole; I have a Cortazar-like  (and a little of Barthes) glossary to begin, and am thinking of how this might manifest into thinking about the thesis as a whole.  A document that’s based in a structure, Debbie is suggesting, found somewhere in Lukumí oral tradition.  So I’m thinking about the Odu, the Ifa corpus of oral knowledge, and how that structure might suggest a structure that could guide this whole thing (and it would, by nature of the Ifa corpus, lend itself readily to post-structuralism, because it is already post-structural).
The intro (which I have a draft off, but not a draft I like yet) would in part explain the reasoning for the structure, in order to help the reader along, but also to position the work philosophically in an African-based and art-based system, which already has political implications which with I am very comfortable, because it is a subversion of traditional academic thought from the get-go.
We also discussed the interview process with the performers, and I’m thinking of ways of capturing their words on video and audio, according to psychoanalytic theory (by that I just mean setting the stage so that they are not looking me in the eye, like on the analyst’s couch, so that they are more likely to speak as if speaking into a mirror).
The mirror.  She suggests I look at two books, Marina Warner’s Phantasmagoria and Maillet’s The Claude Glass. I ordered both.
Yes, things are rolling along very nicely right now.  More after the conversation with Laura next week,
tschussie!

february-march report from the trenches (16 mar 14)

Oh my gosh.  This one is not going to be very illuminating, or very long.
I’ve been working on the written part of my RDC2, have an intro, first chapter, and a bibliography; and drafting the RDC2 report.  I have written a lot of words and all of them are in an unusual order so that, when read together, it sounds like something I would say.
Oh, you’ll have to read it to understand more, I can send it to you if you like.
In terms of the practice, we secured a space downtown, a nice 50-seat theatre, for 2 weekends of performances in May.  This is for MOTS3: end of play.  Have the director, most of the actors, going to go into rehearsals in a couple of weeks.
All is well here.
(except my cat has gone missing).
(but the world outside is perfumed with orange blossoms, and it’s a ridiculously lovely time of year to be living here.  please feel free to visit.)
xo
C

january-february: into the trenches (21 feb 14)

Back home from the residency.
These things always get me recharged, and this one was particularly electric.  This next month I’ll be working on the text for my first chapter (I already have 8,000 words, but still have a lot of ground to cover–so I’m planning on writing like mad for the next week or so, and spend a week editing what I have down–I thought I was done with writing workshops, but it turns out that Klaus’ seminar on Academic Writing opened up doors in a most useful way), as well as a draft of the 3,000 word document for the RDC2.
That’s the future, now going back….
Most of January was spent on getting my presentation ready, editing a few hours of video of myself, as well as video of the last performance.  I hated seeing myself for so many hours of the days, but, I have to say, I loved doing this.  Editing video for performance is something I rather like, but I’ve never edited video so that it would work like academic writing.  It was much more labor-intensive than writing, but I needed the writing to perform, and it seemed like the best way to make this work.
A conversation with my supervisors left me wondering about documentation in a big way.  Discovering that my performance videos don’t communicate much, not without contexts.  So.  It took some fighting with my own ego to work these issues through, in order to realize that I’m not presenting work, I’m becoming a researcher, so I had to force myself to start seeing my work as raw material for research, and this felt like a breakthrough.  And the meeting with Laura and Debbie in Chicago sparked my enthusiasm for this, and I’m excited to take their notes to heart and work with a larger idea of documentation for the next project.
It is a central issue, I think, the issue of documentation in ethereal art forms (and I’m not sure it matters if I’m doing theater or performance art, since I have my feet well soaked in both of these, so that whatever this work is, it’s always going to be a little bit of both….and even more to the point, after I got home I read an article where Vito Acconci was talking about how Marina Abromovic’s work has become much less interesting the more she repeats herself, and he suggests that performance art isn’t something one can do for long, it’s a way of getting out of the habits of work in order to make room for a new kind of work, and I feel like I’m there, making that work now).
The residency peaked for me in the presentation, of course, because it’s the event that had the most personal pressure.  I appreciated the comments very much, very encouraged, and also challenged.  I like to be challenged.  And it did remind me that, even though I wish we were at a point where colonial intentions weren’t suspect, the political climate in the world at large (inside my own state, which just passed a law making it legal for businesses to discriminate based on religious beliefs <which will target the LGBT populations, as well as those outside the fundamentalist Christian mainstream>, inside the U.S. with racially-motivated murders where the murderers get off, and outside the U.S. where police are killing citizens in the streets or Cossacks are beating Pussy Riot members with whips in front of cameras) suggests that there is, as yet, no equal playing field, so.  I have to position myself within this work explicitly, even though it might seem implicit to me.   I like Godard’s notion of making work politically, rather than making political work, and that kind of work doesn’t always show its ideology on the surface, so I’m working on articulating that ideology (the idea that no one is free until everyone is free has always been central to my thinking, because of what my parents taught me, and I understand this may not always be apparent in the discourse.  Trials by fire are wonderful ways to find the knots that need to be untied.
Of course, I’m at a point in this work where so much seems implicit to me, and this is the best time to be writing my lit review, because I’m discovering that these things I thought I had already articulated are still unspoken, and I get the chance to speak it (with citations and footnotes).
Overall, then, my response to the residency is a very positive one.  I would prefer New York City to almost any other place in the U.S. (because of the energy of the place, as well as the possibilities of making artistic connections), but I also liked the chance to be in a place where the energy of the surround was focused in academia.  I wish I had been more prepared to take advantage of the conference, because those connections are ones I’d like to start working in order to start positioning myself for a university career.  Oh, but I also really wish we could have the big, planned meals in more reasonably priced restaurants.  The night at the Thai restaurant was great fun, but the night before was a little bit dreadful (and I was so hungry afterward).  I also liked the opportunity to connect with the PhD cohort, and after going through a couple of trials together, I am looking forward to spending more time with them in the residencies to come.  I’ve always wanted to blur the lines between MFA and PhDs at Transart, because I think we feed each other in remarkable ways, but I also am much more in line with spending residency time doing PhD-related workshops and events.  We need each other to get through this, it’s stimulating and intense, and I’m learning that the experience of a PhD student really is a very different beast.
The workshops, then, were really just fine, interesting and engaging and relevant to the work at hand, and I wish there were more of them.  To reiterate some of what we’d discussed together, I would like more mini-sessions, where we can spend time learning things that are more specific to our haptic experience (Voodoo Pad, citation, and issues of documentation, all of these I’d love to be part of).
Overall, I’m very proud to be part of this, working with interesting people, students and instructors and administrators, and doing what feels like essential and necessary work while having some lovely conversations along the way.

december-january: a little calm before… (16 jan 14)

That month went by so very fast.
Next up, I am working on my presentation for the RDC2 in Chicago, just starting to write the first chapter, and getting all the things in line to start on the next project (performers, and uh, the script, too).  Lots of things to work on between now and the next update.
But here, I’d like to write a little bit more in terms of de-briefing and reflection from the last piece.  And I’m realizing now, as I’m getting my thoughts together, that it might make a lot more sense to write the reflection before asking anyone to watch the piece, in order to comment on how it works with my research questions.  My bad.  I forget how important context is for all of these things…
So first, there’s this note from the program, this is what the audience read before the show so they had an idea of what was going to happen:
This project is part of a PhD for Transart Institute in Berlin, in conjunction with Plymouth University in the U.K.  I’m studying trance, looking at ritual states of consciousness, and how they work in performance.  I’m looking at trance through the eyes of Afro-Caribbean spiritual traditions (Lucumí and Palo Monte, to be precise), and also through Lacanian psychoanalytic ideas.  We are working in states of trance.  I can explain more, but I won’t try here.
 This is a story you know, told in a way that you might not recognize outside of your dreams.  
You’ll recognize some of the characters.  There’s Romeo & Juliet, of course, and Mercutio, Romeo’s best friend, and then there’s the Nurse, and Susan, the Nurse’s daughter.  Susan is mentioned in the original script a few times.  She died when she was very young, so while the Nurse raises Juliet, she has a ghost of a daughter with her.  And Rosaline is also here, you don’t really see her in the original, but she’s the one who had Romeo’s heart until he saw Juliet.  Hahaha, he thought he would never love again.  These stories are repetitions of things that happen to us. 
This was made during a gorgeous and stormy time.  The loss of my father, and meeting the love of my life, all happening at the same time.  So if you feel a little lost, just keep in mind that this is about love and grief.  And if you’re not lost at all, it’s still about love and grief.  Or maybe love covers it.
Thank you for coming.  
There was an overwhelmingly positive response to this work, and, in part, this is something that’s more likely to happen when you’re inviting people into your home to see something, rather than soliciting responses from random audiences in a more public space (I think I would like to try the next one in a more public space, because although I love the intimacy that is possible in a closed setting, I can learn more about how these trances and charms work when it’s taken into a less controlled context).  There were theatre professionals in every audience, but there were also outsiders, friends of actors, or students who had heard about it from professors, and there were some houses where the audience was largely made up of people who were not necessarily interested in experimental theatre, trance or ritual.  The responses from all of these audiences were much the same, that they found the experience to be entirely captivating, and took them into a mysterious place.  There were three responses in particular that stood out for me, the first two illustrate the ritual intentions of the piece worked well, and the third is more personal.
Quan, a Vietnamese refuge who is now working in Phoenix as a teacher and healer of traditional medicine (he is also the teacher of my girlfriend–oh, now fiancé!–who played Susan in the show), told me that he felt as though he were the subject of a peculiar kind of magic.  He later told me that the magic felt like something he had not experienced in his travels and teachings, and would like to have conversations with me in the future about my own (spiritual) practice.
One of my friends, Isis Costa McElroy, who teaches Brazilian literature, posted this comment after seeing the show: “stunning! congratulations to all involved! this is pure NKISI to be decoded and cherished.”  She is perhaps the most well-informed spectator, having written about Afro-Caribbean ritual and spiritual practices herself.  Her use of the term Nkisi is particularly apt, using a term from the Bantu for a spirit object that is wrapped.  The show opens with Susan, in the center of a circle, being unwrapped, like a charm, and closes with her being wrapped like a charm, and then the Nurse (played by me) wraps the entire cast to close the spell.  It’s important to mention that as she is being wrapped and unwrapped, she says, “Am I going back?”  These were the last words my father spoke on his deathbed, so this was intentionally quoting and also invoking traditional Kongo ritual, and also consciously addressing the spirits of the dead.
This needs unpacking, and further reflection, but it strikes me that I am working on both quotation and invocation here.  I think that it’s likely that somewhere in this space, between quotation of a ritual and actual invocation of the ritual, there is something where the distance between performance and rite gets blurred.  There were further references to this idea of wrapping (wrapping is one of the translations of the Bantu word, “Kanga,” which is sometimes mistranslated as spell, but they may be the same thing) throughout the play.  Characters get wrapped up, tied, and there are dozens of verbal references to wrapping and tying in the script.  This was also intentional, where I was trying to set a groundwork for a piece of theatre that was, in itself, a charm.
The last response that was particularly powerful was from my mother, who, when she heard the words in the opening scene, gave me a look that I can’t describe but can’t ever forget.  For her, and I think now, for me, this was a play that was about grieving, a public act of grieving disguised as theatre.
But that very personal meaning is something that I’m not sure of, not sure how to write about.  It’s personal for me, and not meant to translate to anyone else, except for the very few who were there when my father died.  I think that’s problematic, methodologically speaking.  However, I am one of the subjects in this process as well, so I just wanted to remark in that in this semi-public forum.
I haven’t interviewed the performers yet, and will have these done before the month is over, so I have the data for the first project before I start the second project.  At that point, I’ll have more information to offer in terms of how they experienced this, and have some particulars on moments where the sense of being under a spell, or in a trance, was more pronounced.  For now, though, I can say that from group discussions and de-briefings, they all felt as though they were performing in an altered state of consciousness throughout the performances.
In rehearsals, we would begin by going into a deep meditative state, where they would find an aspect of their own psyche, an aspect that would be willing to take over for the duration of the rehearsal.  I developed a technique for this while we were working together, and so far it seems to work well.  We also worked on developing a shorthand so that we could access this state very easily, but more importantly, leave the state when the rehearsal was over.  We applied this same technique to the performances, so that each of the six shows was performed in a state of trance.  This notion of trance is one that I’m going to speak to very specifically in the presentation in Chicago.  People have expectations when they hear the word “trance,” and I sense that it may be something much more acute (with writhing on the floor and shaking and trembling) than what we’re working with.  I also sense that I’ll learn more when I talk to each of the performers in more depth, and am hoping to find some keys to developing methods of going deeper.  And I also need to be aware that there are performers who don’t want to go deeper, that there is sometimes fear surrounding these things.  So it’s my intention, then, to build works and environments where they can feel comfortable, as much as possible, and then find out where the work takes them.
As I keep discovering, the biggest knot in all of this is in regards to questions of documentation.  Participating in the work is the best way to see it (at least for the purposes of this research), seeing the show live is the next best way, and watching a video is a very distant third.  But it’s what we have.  I am certainly curious about how I might present this documentation in order to demonstrate what the research is uncovering, and I’m going to play with some of these thoughts (the ones Laura and Debbie shared with me in our conversation yesterday) for the presentation in Chicago.  I’m hoping that will open up some new channels of thought in how to construct the documentation in a way that’s useful and engaging, but also can offer a chance to see the work from distant locations.  It may well be, however, that outside of the experience of the live event, any experience of the event would be as an ethnographer, looking through an ethnographer’s frame.  I am curious about how it might be presented, then, toward such a frame, and think that there are exciting possibilities there.  If that dividing line between performance and rite is really very thin, then perhaps live theatre, when it’s presented as an artifact, needs to be presented in the same way that rituals are presented for a camera.  And I need to keep in mind that this is much like that, with videos that serve as the rough footage, the rough footage that contains the performance.  And rough footage needs unpacking.  And I hope this entry serves as a beginning for some of that unpacking.

nov-dec: the work (ii) (24 dec 13)

The main thing for this month’s report is this:
This link is to the video of the last show, that show being ‘romeo&juliet/VOID’ or, part 2 of Monsters of the Sea.
The video is taken from 3 shows, but the bulk is from Thursday, December 12th, when we had both a camera operator and cameras that were fully operating.  Um.  One thing I want to tell you, the music during the dance bits (there are 2 of these) is not the music from the show, but a short clip I put together on Garage Band so I could upload this without violating any copyright laws.
So, I’ve been working on that this month, it closed December 14th, so pretty much all of this past month’s work was spent in rehearsals.
I’ll have more next month in terms of reflection and writing.
I’m starting to get ready for the 1-hour presentation in Chicago for my RDC2 talk, and am also just starting to hammer out some thoughts on how to structure my lit review for the written part of the RDC2 (I’ll have a draft of that sometime around the Chicago conference, too).  Also, I’m starting to think about what to do next, what part 3 will be.  I’m thinking more about the idea of being in love, and how that is also some kind of a spell, so the next work will be focusing in on that part of spells/trance/kanga.
In the meantime, I’m going to wish you all a lovely lovely holiday, and hoping for wonderful things and lots of magic for us all in 2014.
xo C

oct-nov: into the laboratory (16 nov 13)

Ok, so there’s video.  I’m uploading a 6-minute section which includes some shots of early rehearsals, along with the most productive and interesting de-briefing we’ve had so far.
The bulk of my time is in this project, in the studio, making this new work.  It goes up in a couple short weeks, so I’m thinking that the next blog here will be a lot like this one: not much to say in terms of new writing, but lots of work in the laboratory.
The collaborative process here has been very smooth, the staging has been easy and exciting.  There are some issues with altering work schedules, and a very loud and affectionate puppy (who is really large and has sharp claws and teeth).  Sometimes I cage the dog (they say that dogs like it, so far they are not correct), and schedules are getting more regular as we get closer to opening.  Either way, I’ve decided to make dog sounds a part of the mediation practice, and if someone comes in late while we’re lying on the floor getting trance-y, it’s not very disruptive.
I’ve been worrying about that for awhile, how disruptions might get in the way.  Except.  I’m working on defining a ritual consciousness, one that takes in the circumstances of the surroundings, while being able to focus on ritual and intensity of experience, and so.  Such disruptions are, I think, rather fortunate circumstances, because they are helping me to test my theories.
So far, so good.
In other news, Death still hurts, Love still rules, and everything is ok.
:) Happy happy fall!

sept-oct: same love, same death (16 oct 13)

Oh, but it’s not the same, not the same at all.  The people are the same, though, but it keeps changing.  In terms of grief, it’s been a wild and wicked month, of course…a memorial for my dad, where 200 people showed up, all from different parts of my past, growing up, high school (some friends, and my best friend’s parents from the West Indies), and the present, my ex and her boyfriend and my daughter, family and extended family, and Heather sitting with me in the front row with my mom and brother…putting together a slideshow of my dad’s life, and giving the eulogy, all very heavy and the whole thing just beautiful…odd thing, the eulogy, it was easy and impossible to write, and I wanted people to know my dad’s sense of humor and give them space to cry, too…all of this puts me in a space where I want to start writing where people might understand what I’m saying…which feeds into this…
Talks with Laura and Debbie to get a plan of work together for the fall and winter, and a talk with Sarah about ethics, and this thing has really begun…the second work, this one called ‘romeo&juliet/void,’ a lot like I described in the last post, but it’s changed already in ways I did not suspect.  First, this Heather, she’s in the project, and we’re also in love, and it’s a love spell I didn’t make up but fell into, and would like to be here for a very long time, so…ethical issues aside, we talked about how to make it so that this project doesn’t interrupt the love story, and for the first time I can remember I’m finding myself keeping art and life separate, and I’m not confused about which is which, and have no real desire to confuse them on purpose…so we don’t talk about rehearsal outside of rehearsal, for one…and instead of her and I playing a love story in this project, she is Susan, and I am her Mother, the Nurse; she can trace things in her character’s journey about her own healing work and coming to herself in her new identities, and I’m seeing how I can trace my own feelings about my own daughter, Elli, now 14, Juliet’s age in the play (and the age Susan would have been if she lived)…
I had about 20 pages of script written, but the morning after my dad’s memorial my computer crashed utterly, and it got sent away to apple-land, and they told me the hard drive would need to be replaced, so the work was lost…this a week before we started meeting to read the script…so…a hard week of solid writing, putting together something all new…when my computer came back, it had the hard drive, so all the old script was there…so it was a process of putting the two together…in all of that, a lucky accident or so, perhaps, this story takes place in the land of the dead, out of time, but for all of that, very linear, with secrets and through lines and threads, again, this is new for me, I don’t usually write in any kind of straightforward way (this blog post a fine example of that), and my art has not been like that very much either, ever, but it makes sense for this work…especially the idea of threads that weave through it, because it is working very well, metaphorically, in regard to Bantu philosophy (Bantu being the origins of Palo Monte), and the way thread, literal thread, works in kangas…
So we’ve been working on the script.  It’s in really good shape right now, and the performers all claim that they’re very happy with what they’ve got to work with, and I can’t wait to start getting into the staging parts of this (next week)…and the ritual parts are very much under way…last night I had the performers all bring a request, something that they would give to Oshun & or Yemaya, and with these requests I am constructing charms or works for them so that they have a connection to the spirits that are in the house, which means that the spell is on, really on, for the whole room (and the spell seems to be working for my new dog, Jake the Dog, who is crazy and likes to chew on us when we are working, because she is either possessed by Kongo spirits herself, or perhaps just because she is a puppy)…
The script, even though it is linear, does have many layers, and there are multiple spells being enacted within the story, and I see an arc of events in the story where they all (the spells) build and multiply on top of each other…very nice, just as it should be, and I’m sometimes convinced that Fellini’s ghost is somewhere close, watching…
In my own speaking subject position, I’m seeing myself playing multiple roles, in complicated ways…as a writer, I need to make sure they don’t give me so much authority, because the script is really secondary, and as a director, I need to have their confidence and trust…as a ritual guide, they need to trust me, too, but I also need to have a healthy sprinkling of doubt, a sense that I might be a charlatan, so that they do not buy into the religious and spiritual system from which I’m drawing, but instead buy into the process, which is one that can allow any system, or no system, and still produce interesting results, and performances that work with their own subjective definitions of altered state of consciousness, but still with a common idea that we’re all working toward a ritual state of consciousness together.
More on that: I met with an old friend, Boyd, who is currently visiting professor at the University here, teaching the media courses, because I wanted to get his participation on helping the media to work seamlessly, and also get some help in editing the projections.  He said yes, but after we had a long conversation about the idea of working with art and ritual in the same room…interestingly, we had a lot to talk about.  He grew up in a spiritual tradition with missionary work and proselytizing (this is also true for two of the performers), and left this tradition (same with the performers), and has a certain ambivalence about anything where people are working together in a common belief system.  It was good to articulate my intentions, and the conversation dovetailed the ethics conversations, and in fact put a nice bookend on these conversations.  It was like a test run of the discourse, and I was happy it worked out well, now…now…now I get to start testing how it works in practice, next week, when the performers have charms in their pockets, and the spells they enacted for themselves will start to work or not work, and then we’ll get to see how that plays out in the room.
Next time, I’ll have video of the rehearsals, right now there’s no video, since it’s just been us sitting at a table and reading, but starting tomorrow I’ll need to start keeping the work documented, and will start posting bits of that here.  Yes.  Have a lovely Halloween Season. xo C

august-september//month of love and death (21 sep 13)

Ok, so first: this is not a love story.
Hahaha, it is, actually.  I mean, really.  I mean, Real-ly…..
Decompressing from the TI residency was short, if it happened at all.  I don’t think it really did.
During the residency, the month in Berlin was filled with Love and Death.  Not the same thing as Eros and Thanatos, but the parallels are worth looking into, especially for this next project (right now the title is: Monsters of the Sea II: romeoandjuliet (void).  In Berlin, there were two things constantly on my mind: the day before I left, I fell in love with this woman I knew from long ago, but met again at a coffee shop.  She had to talk to me because she was having visions.  When we met, she told me about these visions, all of them filled with images of Oshun, and she didn’t know who that even was, but started looking into it, and decided that we needed to look into that.  It was like someone put a love spell on her, and then put the same spell on me, and the whole month of Berlin, we were writing back and forth and fell into a very lovely love spell that isn’t a spell at all, but something that seems to be real, not in Lacan’s sense, and it also seems outside of Lacan altogether.  Hm.  The other thing, my father was getting sicker, going on morphine, and then eventually hospice.  From what everyone was thinking, he might only have a year to live, and maybe less.  So there was that.
Every morning, I would wake up and read messages from Heather, the woman from the cafe in Phoenix, or from my mom, about my dad’s health and mental state.  I would go to the gallery, crying on the metro, crying because the world was beautiful and tragic.
When I landed at the airport, Heather picked me up, and we started what seems to be far, far beyond any imaginary that might have been playing in our heads, and seems to live comfortably outside of language (pre-verbal, or post, does it matter?  Everything that is matter matters, ok, true).
She met my father, and even rubbed his feet.  He was lucid, and he loved meeting her, and loved it that I was happy.  It was lovely.
A week later, he was not lucid, and a few days after that, he was not any longer at all.
She was there in the hospital room with me, and everyone in my family got to meet her.
Three days later, my brother went into the emergency room from an accidental overdose.
It’s been a very rough month, and it’s been a wonderful and beautiful month.
I want to write more about the night I spent in the room with my father, seeing spirits dancing around the place, and sensing that I was seeing something real (here, I do mean in the Lacanian sense of the term), and there are things I don’t want to forget.
This next work, a version of Romeo and Juliet, will be about the first moments of falling in love, told from the perspective of all of the characters in an underworld, where death has already happened, and the stakes are obvious.
I have the cast together, and we get to start in just a couple of weeks.  I have to write most of the text, still, but I can already hear it and see it in my head, so that part will be easy.  The characters are Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio/Benvolio (folded into one), Rosaline (the inaccessible Other), the Nurse (the ritual leader, I’ll play that), and Susan (the Nurse’s daughter, the void of love, love unrealized, the unrealizable hunger for love).  I’m not using any sitcoms this time, and the tone won’t be very funny, I’m going for something much darker, to be honest to my own recent experiences.
In my research, my friend, Isis, a santera, priestess of Ochosi the hunter, and a scholar from Brazil, gave me this book: http://www.amazon.com/Kongo-Graphic-Writing-Other-Narratives/dp/1439908168.
We met one night because her father died earlier this year, and we had things to discuss.
I’m working my way through this book, that takes the stance that Kongo signs are a form of writing, a real honest to goodness language, and uses the idea of the Charm as a metaphor for how these signs work.  It’s exactly how I’m working with this material, and I’m excited that it’s published right now, it’s perfect.
In the meantime, my godfather came through town, moving from San Diego to Macon, Georgia.  He’s a priest of Oshun, and he took Heather and I to the river for some ritual work that opened me up, and healed a lot of things.  And we all did a spirit cleaning at my mom’s house, and right before he left, we refreshed each other’s heads.
I still need a few weeks to get my spirit calm, but I’m sensing that starting work on this next project will be important, and I’m imagining the themes of grief and love will play a bigger part in everything as this fall starts to fall on us.
It’s been very hard, but also amazing.
I feel the spirits of Fellini and Kantor, very close.  My father, even closer.  And Heather, ha, she is really right here, in a material form.  I will be ok.  And all, all of this, all shall be well.
Sending blessings and kind thoughts from Phoenix–
cfd

some links (13 jul 13)

reading diary (10 jul 13)

Cox:
Busch – art as knowledge production, commodification of that as art as commodity slinks back into the background…
art as research is interesting to me, because of the appeal/seduction of the meta.  as a different form of knowledge (would like to hear more about her notion of Foucault’s notion of knowledge as power esp. in relation to this; particularly, less about ‘…showing the invisible, than showing the invisibility of the visible in the invisible.’); intermediary zone, the impossible.
Holert – the old question ‘is it art’ being replaced with ‘is it research’ ; art needing autonomy, developing its own epistemology
Lesage – a theme here (as in the last) that works of art, works of art as knowledge-productions in themselves, will come to create the definitions toward which we can build an ontology (wc?) of how art research operates within an inter- trans-disciplinary context.
what is the bolognia accord? (i can google, of course, but i’m curious to hear what it is without the pomp&circ.)
Steyerl–aesthetics of resistance — peter weiss (same one who wrote marat/sade?) — this needs a second read; very very useful.





Bowdidge:
For these readings, I’m reconstructing my idea of form, and have my best questions when walking in Berlin…some of these are more useful than others, but only because I’m applying them to my own self-centered fixations of my own project, all of them are useful.  The question about how to present my thesis, what form, and what can I do to push the limits of those forms in order to present the work I want to present, has been eluding me; mostly because of a problem in context, in how to understand the questions in a way that is useful (again).  These readings have made that useful, or, at the very least, made the usefulness apparent as something that is on its way… so, some quotes and questions…

Consider a musician
raising a finger during a piece of music and saying ‘that is high-C’.5 This is an example of a spatio-temporal gesture of pointing to an intangible ‘object’. In these examples we see not only the logical limitations, but the extent to which the phenomenally substantiating gesture can encompass metaphorical ‘pointing’.
QUESTION of how to translate this into writing and viewing video (and live performance), where is the space where the high c is communicated, when it’s not something as effable as a note (is a note effable?)  (c-able, haha)
Of greater consequence is the identification of fully-visual concepts. These do not require conventionalised representational grammars such as engineering drawing to facilitate their interpretation. They are unusual because they can be reliably interpreted by contextual reading. They demonstrate fuzzy boundaried concepts and generality. As a result, they expose the inability of ostensive definition to function normatively
Biggs vr
I GET THIS I THINK–QUESTION HERE OF COURSE IS THE NOTION OF ‘RELIABLY INTERPRETED’ BUT I THINK THAT KIND OF QUESTIONING IN THIS CASE WOULD JUST GIVE ME A HEADACHE…LANGUAGE IS IMPERFECT BLABLA YES WE KNOW THAT IT IS INCOMPLETE…

Three principal types of experiential knowledge are identified: explicit, tacit and ineffable. Explicit content is expressed linguistically. Tacit content has an experiential component that cannot be efficiently expressed linguistically. Ineffable content cannot be expressed linguistically. It would therefore be necessary to prove that practice-based research only generates ineffable content in order to substantiate the argument that practice-based research necessarily demands non-linguistic modes of argument and communication. This idea is rejected.
GOOD.
We can translate the problem of experiential content into one of representation.
YES, I LIKE THIS VERY MUCH.  I WANT TO TALK ABOUT METAPHORS AND ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT METAPHORS.  I WONDER IF WE CAN ONLY FIND VALUE IN OUR WORK AS CREATING METAPHORS IF WE FIND THAT REALITY, OR LANGUAGE, IS STRUCTURED THROUGH METAPHOR, IN WHICH CASE, WE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF MAKING ALTERNATE MAPS, AND ARE EXCITED TO SHOW THE MAPS TO SOMEONE ELSE IN HOPES THAT THEY KNOW WHAT WE DO WHEN THEY SEE THEM…

The fact that experiential content is represented by experiential feeling is actually an advantage. A representation is some sort of translation where we step away from what we are trying to conceptualise and describe it in an alternative form, for example a landscape painting allows us to see connections that may be less apparent when confronted by the actual landscape itself. Because we have accepted the possibility of representation we can accept alternative representations.
THIS IS EXCITING TO ME, BUT I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE THE NOTION OF EXPERIENTIAL CONTENT UNPACKED.
His distinction is between knowing-how and knowing-that. (Gilbert Ryle)
YES.
Ineffable knowledge cannot be put into words. Experiential feelings are ineffable; but in practice-based research we are concentrating on experiential content, and because experiential content is only represented by feelings it is not a necessaryconsequence that practice-based research is ineffable.
Biggs lfe
OK I LIKE THIS BUT I AM ALMOST LOST, ALMOST THERE AND ALMOST LOST.  EXAMPLES OF EXPERIENTIAL CONTENT?


“Where does the legitimation come from?”
YES
Picasso painting is not showing what I was looking for but what I found.
Into. Through. For.
YES ALL OF THIS YES.
Freyling


In arts and humanities, both questions and answers, both issues and how they are addressed, are more volatile. They are what I would describe as ‘culturally determined’
The issue of what constitutes ‘the solution that works’ depends on the perception of the nature of the question by the audience
Biggs solution
THIS IS HUGE, AND RELIES ON THE QUESTION OF WHETHER OR NOT THE NATURE OF THE AUDIENCE IS SOMETHING I CAN POSSIBLY IDENTIFY.  THE U.K. SYSTEM, OR MY DOS, OR PEOPLE WHO TAUGHT ME WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER OR THE ONE I LOVE OR ETC…?  ITS FOR A SYSTEM, A UNIVERSITY SYSTEM, OF COURSE, AND ALL OF THE OTHERS, BUT HOW TO DEFINE THAT OR EVEN UNDERSTAND IT…CAN WE PERFORM FOR A CULTURE WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND (I.E., POLISH-IRISH-AMERICAN PERFORMING WRITING AND PERFORMANCE FOR U.K. SCHOLARS)



Estevez:
I read these texts, and most texts, really, like walking in a new city. Or a familiar city for the very first time all over again. The pace is constantly shifting, and I try to avoid writing anything down until later, because when I’m writing I’m missing the experience entirely, even though I know that if I don’t record something it might go away forever. That’s kind of all right. The small details that seem to suggest little worlds that are trying to open, I make little notes, and put them somewhere that I’ll find later. What I remember without writing becomes a ground zero of impressions, ground zero in the sense that it’s a base, but I understand the base is already filtered through my own interpretation, because I’m always getting into impossible knots when I forget that these things are filtered through my interpretation.
Peace Pilgrim, I’ve worked in a dozen bookstores and sold a few dozen copies of her book. The people buying it always had this interesting spark in their eye, they’d seen something and wanted to keep seeing. I’m not entirely sure why, maybe it’s because I’ve been thinking about seeing a lot lately, but reading her words, it struck me as enormously visual. This idea of being, a methodology of being in the world, that leads to this radical (rooted) path, comes from an inner vision (oju inu) that is enormously compassionate. What strikes me here is that in her case, the inner vision isn’t one that’s helping her to cope with the world out there, but one that’s refreshed by it, constantly, so that it’s a system that is always feeding itself. I’m thinking about those mystic insights that start off interestingly enough, but then fade away in a little time, when it becomes apparent that notions like “we are all one” are not at the forefront of everyone’s mind (thinking specifically about Arizona politics, for starters). But her method/methodology is one where there is a loop that is constantly affirming the sense that people are decent at their core.

I’m terribly impressed at how little she is concerned with whether or not she might seem crazy. This kind of faith at the core, one that is really at odds with the usual structures that make people behave so cautiously, is terribly interesting to me. It seems radical in that particular country (in those particular places), in that particular time, and I wonder about a city like Berlin, where it seems to me that the bar that dictates aberrant (sic) behavior is considerably higher. And I would like to think that a cultural core that has gone through devastating genocides would be more prone to permissiveness, and that’s not the case at all where I live, at least not yet, and I think about this a lot…and have questions about this…because the politics of difference here does not seem to be yielding in any direction, and I wonder about what kinds of actions are possible, ones that don’t have inherent dangers. And I can’t help but think about privilege along all the categorical lines (I will be considered a fool, or ignored, in worst case scenarios, for public art actions, and maybe even come close to physical danger, but that line, physical threat, is further away for some than for others….)
I think at the heart of these, my initial impressions, relate to the idea of how our thought determines reality, that attitude is everything, coupled with this Marxist cynicism that point of view is easier to manipulate when one is not living at variance because of want or class gender race etc.
–the walking guide is useful, I don’t have questions about it, just looking forward to this, and interested in how this is changing my mind about what I think is possible in art residency, (suddenly more grant opportunities seem open). :)
Borges: I really want to hear about why this is included in these readings, before I say why it worked so well for me. Ok I’ll tell you first. The city, this city, Berlin, New York, Phoenix, is a complicated text. In one part there is a historical awareness that is very sure of itself, the place where the descendants of the victors read and write epic poems about themselves. And over here, under the ground, is something that contains everything. We don’t know who we are, and the roots are under the ground, and those have been transplanted from somewhere else. This small thing that contains everything, is contained somewhere here, and it’s a replica of something else somewhere else.
Dérive: this is interesting especially when taken in with Borges’ Aleph, moving into a sphere where the political and the metaphysical mix. I can’t quite articulate how they fit, but they do….thinking of the dèrive in relation to Phoenix, this becomes a city that feels suddenly very different, but it’s impossible to have the time to try it out before I leave. But the wedge in thought is there. I’m terribly curious how it will be in Berlin (a city I love and hardly know). Vs how it will be here when I get back home.
Also I remember when I first started riding a motorcycle about six years ago, and how this changed the city entirely. Might be what Debord is talking about. Knowing a city by the temperature and the smell gives contours that you can’t necessarily see. This is where there are tortillas and detergent from Mèxico. This felt like a Deleuzian line of flight, an escape route thru which I could always see something else that is already always there. And I also think about Foucault’s haptic & optic.
Lockwood:
Lorde p 7: she mentions black women & black men having a joint set of defenses & joint vulnerabilities /& the only other community with this kind of system is the Jewish community. Unpack? I’m not sure how that works.
“…rape is not aggressive sexuality, it is sexualized aggression.” (This articulates what a lot of writers are trying to say right now; which points out a very disturbing idea here, that her ideas are applicable to contemporary rape culture <does anyone miss the time when Peter was the first Tosh we thought about?>and that the power dynamics very similar to what they were in the last generation).
“…caught between the racism of white women and homophobia of their sisters.”
“But our future survival is predicated upon our ability to relate within equality.” (Only difference allowable in public discourse is that between women and men, and we need more acknowledgment of more difference, in discourse that does not come from the oppressor )
Kant studies 1 starry heavens above and 2 moral laws within. Relating geography and anthropology.
Rousseau nature out of nature, l homme naturale et l homme de l homme, out of nature is when language becomes necessary.
–this essay is excellent, and useful. It’s convincing power is all in the beginning, what Kant does with Rousseau, but the subsequent proof is a micro history of the intellectual construction of racism, which is still central, like an elephant in the living room, to public discourse on race (particularly in the conservative parts of the US, from my experience and observation, I don’t know how this works in the EU and am looking forward to learning).
…”we became centered in our own experiences…”
Decolonization and unsettling the Euro bias in post colonial thought are very exciting ideas for me. My knee jerk response to some of these ideas is, ah so Deleuze’s deterritorialization is out because he is French (and an analysis of why my knees would jerk in such a defensive way would tell about my own colonized mind–it is colonized, I know,because I have Polish and Irish ancestors, live in a part of the world that has been historically Navajo and Hopi longer than Spanish, but I speak English, haha); but I also wonder how it might be possible to link African influence to continental philosophy, or if that’s missing the point entirely?
Negritude and Garvey and tracing a European lineage (Paris and Harlem) is entirely fascinating, in this regard, and already I am reconnecting dots in my head about these stories, genealogies of diaspora and migration…
Fong Ling.
“…my practice explores the notion that one performs in order to ‘disappear.’ ”
Auslander: theatrical. Staged for the camera. Documentary staged for the audience and then the camera.
“‘authenticity’ fluctuates in the interpretive gap…” Drawing vs video as reproduction of the event.
This is very exciting to me, for a number of reasons. I’ve worked as an artist model in a number of classroom and studio situations, and the politics of subject and object are very interesting to me. Because of the question of nudity, which still seems terribly packed, unresolved. Nudity is just another layer in the equation, but it’s the layer that brings the gender politics into focus, it seems to me.
I have been in uncomfortable situations, where I’ve been dating the older sister of one of the high school students I’m modeling for, or trying to pinch my thigh surreptitiously, to keep from nodding off because the Vicodin was making me sleepy (I cut off the end of my thumb a few years ago and spent the better part of two years after taking drugs for the pain). And these situations keep inspiring this yet undone performance, where the artist model is also the art teacher, so there’s a naked figure in the center of the room, yelling at the students. I don’t know if it would read to anyone but me.
And I’ve done performance work where I’ve been nude and the collaborators have not, and the ideas for this may have been interesting once (male nude instead of female to shift the gaze, undoing some performance art tropes where a central male artist surrounds himself with women willing to be naked when he’s just half naked), but what disturbed me the most was a comment my ex once made, when I was presenting my work at a conference in New Orleans: she said that the last thing I did seemed to her like just another version of me getting naked in front of some nubile young partner.
It was terrible to hear, because it was true. The other things were also true, shifting the gaze and asking questions about power, etc., but what she said hit a nerve to where I started doing work without partners for awhile, and tried to unpack the question for myself. I don’t have an ultimate notion, finally, of what’s possible in this situation, except to keep thinking about gender, reading about gender, and be willing to be judged for being naked or not naked. However. What’s most interesting to me about work that questions gender and power is here in the video, the model taking video of the artist. Having read and taught from Blocker and Jones, the subject and object relation is the most fascinating construction in art theory, because it speaks to gender, race, class, phenomenology, linguistics, and African magic. All of my favorite things.
I have a hundred questions then that cannot be articulated. And some that can be. Mostly they run along the lines of things like: how to convince the daughters of the next generation that the power of the gaze is still determining structures of relations, and that revealing the mechanisms of power doesn’t diminish it, but makes it more accessible (or renders it subject to resistance)?

may-june: in between looks (17 jun 13)

(The following is an excerpt from an interview for Le Monde, translated from the French by Anna Karina; please note all the excellent word play is entirely lost…)
I: (continued from an earlier segment, also lost) I don’t know off hand what an arab strap would cost in euros…
C: Good, those things scare me, to be honest.
I: But I do understand there is some talk about the illicit things you’ve been doing during the rehearsals for ‘Monsters of the Sea…’
C: Yes, good, I’m glad to hear there are some rumors flying around.  But again, to be honest, there’s not very much to say about what we’re doing, really, in that regard.  No one is getting possessed, and all the kinds of sex contraptions we wanted for this show turned out to be too expensive.  Instead, we’ve just been working on the show, and sometimes we sit around and talk about porn afterwards. Sometimes we go out for tacos.
I: Lovely.  And I’m assuming that ‘tacos’ is a euphemism for…?
C: Nothing, really, except for the idea of the taco itself, as an ideal, there really isn’t anything metaphorical or metonymic going on.  But there are several of us who are very particular about tacos.  We know our way around these things.
I: So there hasn’t been any deviant acts, no drug use, or no experiments in altered states of consciousness?
C: Altered states, sure, of course, but those other things, I don’t think so, unless they happen on the breaks, but I can’t keep track of everybody.
I: What kinds of altered states?
C: Well.  There are lots of things that can constitute an altered state.  I mean, if you slow your breathing down, you know, as an exercise in concentration, there’s some kind of trance going on.  And we have been doing yoga before we begin on most nights, in the same way that Grotowski used it as a form of subtle and useful trance for performance.  Early on, I tried some basic exercises in inner journeying, the way that a lot of the new age shamans play with these things, and some of the performers were very excited by it, but there were some who felt it was very intrusive…and personally, I find that kind of work to be a bit easy and essentialist, and ultimately not very useful, so I switched to other kinds of techniques.  Leading them through inner spaces to find aspects of the self, dead selves, or selves not yet born, and we were working to bring those selves back to life.  Treating your Other–really more in the Jodorowsky sense than in anything more formally psychoanalytic–as if it were a corpse, grieving for that body, and then resurrecting it to have it as a spirit familiar.
I: That still sounds a little new agey to me…
C: I suppose, sure, but it’s not easy to avoid it, and in these circumstances, really impossible to avoid.  The performers seem to be very comfortable in that space, I mean, Jodorowsky speaks to actors, you know?  And this is an experiment in finding vocabularies for work that we do together further down the road, on the next project.
I: There’s always something else on the horizon, isn’t there?
C: I guess so, yes.
I: Perhaps it’s just a sardine can.  (And she laughs, and laughs, but he doesn’t get it, so she transitions to something else…)
(There is some incomprehensible singing and laughing for a few minutes…)
I: That’s an incredible story, and really, I think could be the heart of the breakthrough you’re onto right here, but I don’t think the recorder caught it, can you repeat the last part?
C: No.
I: All right, then, I’m wondering if there was anything mysterious going on during any of these rehearsals?
C: For the most part, nothing of an occult nature, if that’s what you’re asking.
I: That is what I’m asking.
C: For the most part, no.
I: But there was something…?
C: All right.  There was one evening.  About three weeks ago.  Before the actors got to my house, I was preparing scripts in my room, when I heard this very odd sentence, one I couldn’t make out, but it was definitely a male voice, and it was laughing, but almost menacing, angry.  I decided to put it out of my mind.  And we started working.  When we were about to do some simple yoga exercises, after which we would be playing with metronome beats and try to find our way into an altered state, as you call it, everything stopped when we all heard a horrible sound from downstairs, from the same place where I’d heard the voice before.  It sounded like someone dragging a chest covered with chains across the floor.  I ran downstairs, looked all over the house, and looked outside, but there was nothing, nothing at all.
I: That sounds like you were raising ghosts.
C: I don’t know.  And truly, for the purposes of this research, it really doesn’t matter.  I’m not chasing after ghosts, not in any supernatural sense, although I am chasing some metaphorical ghosts, and they might even turn out to be the same ghosts, but the metaphorical ones are more useful.
I: Why?
C: Because those represent psychological mechanisms, which can be repeated, and can also be used in the spaces of performance.  I mean, real poltergeists, or whatever they might be, if they are real, and I think they are, but so what? they are also unpredictable, and unreliable, and not interesting to me for this.  Not yet.  I mean, we’re not performing seances in my home.  Not yet.  But either way, this idea of ghosts is very useful in terms of looking at the desire of the performer, that desire to see something unusual, that desire to enter into another realm, and that to me is valuable.  So I was very pleased that we were all hearing things.
I: Because the collective desire is strong enough to make something happen.
C: Yes.  But it gets even more interesting.  After rehearsal, two of the actors were waiting for a ride from their mutual friend.  This mutual friend called from his phone, inside his car, outside, because he didn’t want to come in.  He told them later that while he was waiting outside, he saw a phantom walking around outside my house, and he thought he might be seeing things, but when he looked into his rear view mirror, there was a face staring back at him.
I: That’s a little creepy.
C: We’re all a little creepy, I suppose.
I: So you are chasing real ghosts.
C: No, not at all.  In fact, later that night, I talked to my Kongo spirits at their altar, and told them to keep these things away.  And they told me to light a candle to them from that point on, and everything would be smoother.
I: And did that work?
C: Yes.
I: I’m not sure I understand why you would send them away.
C: For the same reason you send anyone away during a rehearsal.  Because we have work to do, and they’re interrupting.  If these manifestations are supposed to be a part of the performance, they’ll come back, but if they’re just there to say hello, well, they said hello.  That’s enough.
I: I’m still not following why you wouldn’t want these things in the room.
C: Well, they are in the room, always, of course.  Everyone has ghosts, things that follow them around, and some people understand them in spiritist terms, while others might accept them as projections, but everyone has their own ghosts they carry, and I’m more interested in how performers perform with all of that, and I’m wondering how we might learn how to make those things work for us to create a space where our–spectator and performer–projections can come in and start to play with us.  I guess in spiritist terms, then, I’m creating spaces where multiple projections are possible, and everyone is entitled to their own perspective on their projections.  I’m not interested in manifesting one particular spirit who can talk to us, and so on and so forth, because that’s already been done.  It’s religion.  And this isn’t religion, although it may have some religious overtones, in the strict sense of the term, that thing that re-links.  But not in the Jungian sense, where the ideal is to reach a space of collective understanding, but really and truly in the Lacanian sense, where we can see that our perceptions are constructed from a lifetime of profound misunderstandings, looking for fissures and cracks, stutters and slips, that might reveal some of our symptoms.
I: Hm, well, it sounds like a lot of work ahead.
C: Yes, fortunately.
I: And it also sounds like you have some symptoms that you’re investigating, some very personal things.
C: That’s true, but that always happens.
I: Is this different than what you’ve done before?
C: Very much so, yes, it’s much more structured.  And I’m staying out of the way, to let the script, that thing that’s in the video, the words we speak, and the rituals in between these things, I’m watching to see what connections might come up.  In the past, there’s been a lot of hidden attempts to confess something I needed to say, but this time, I’m not really confessing, you know, a secret love for this person, or an ongoing secret relationship with that person, but really more focused on finding out what this piece is really about.
I: And what are you finding?
C: That it is entirely personal, ultimately, but not what I expected.  There are all these things going on with my father, this past month I’ve been in the hospital with him even more, there was this other surgery, which was radical, and it revealed some very sad news about his health, which is not very positive.  And in this piece, there are all these metaphors for death, with Orpheus and Eurydice, a story about losing someone absolutely vital to you, someone who connects you to the world in ways that are biological, as well as spiritual and mythic.  So for me, this is about that.  It’s about coming to terms with that impending loss.  But at the same time, what we’re making, it’s more like a love story, a story of lost love, and exploring how our perception of the Other changes when the Other has to go somewhere else.  But I’m sure, in all of that, I’m wrong, that I don’t really know what it’s about, that there are these fissures and spaces in between, where the Real story lives.  And I tell the performers–and myself–that this is what will be revealed when there is an audience here next week.  But I also deeply suspect that this isn’t true, not at all, that we might never even know what it is that we’re doing here.  But we’re all terribly driven to do it, so something very important is happening under the surface, and that thing that’s happening will only reveal itself partially, in cracks in video image, in cracks between words, like traces of a ghost who keeps on interrupting.
I: And perhaps it’s not so important what the message is, so much as it’s about the act of interrupting.
C: What?
I: The fact that there are these ghosts who are interrupting, that they feel compelled to interrupt, is more important than what they have to say.
C: Yes, because whatever they might say will be mistranslated.
(End of interview.)