Post 6: Avant-Garde 180s (featuring GATZ)

Greetings, all--

This post covers not last week (Mardi Gras/Keyword) but the week before last (the avant-garde stuff). So much avant-garde performance sounds utterly stupid, almost a parody, when taken out of context. A woman just sits all day at a table staring at whoever sits down across from her? Get a job, loser! Or: A whole movement based on blurred images? Huh. Half the pics I take are Futurist, and I never even new it!

One of my favorite moments in undergrad classes are when I get to witness students doing a complete 180 in their opinion of a work. They hear about some experimental or avant-garde performance, mock it, and then hear (usually from me) a deep retelling/reframing/explanation of that performance. Then they're silent.

One of those moments happened yesterday in my capstone class. Students were writing about what kind of company they'd like to work for in 10 or so years. One student named Elevator Repair Service. He talked about their current big show, GATZ. GATZ, as you may have heard, consists of a live reading of The Great Gatsby. The whole thing. It is eight hours long.



The class groaned.
GATZ at The Public Theater TRAILER from ERS Theater on Vimeo.

Dr. Fletcher swoops in! Funnily enough, my friend in Scranton (the same friend who invited me up to talk last week) had just seen GATZ. He described it briefly. I groaned. Then he told what it was like to watch it. I'll rely on his retelling here:

The show starts with a guy in an office cubicle, trying to load something onto a PC. We see a projection of his screen. It crashes. He grumbles, sighs, tries again. Bluescreen of death. At this point, my friend said, it's like ten minutes into the show. You wonder if the whole eight hours will be like this. Frustrated, the man rummages around his office clutter and pulls out a book: The Great Gatsby. He starts reading.

As he goes on, office life continues behind him, people coming and going, making copies, chatting. Then, at certain points, characters in the office begin saying lines from the book as the reader comes to them. They seem accidental, natural coincidences at first. Then they become more frequent. Gradually, the life in the office seems to take on features of the novel--or vice versa. It's riveting, moving, dreamlike, exciting. Finally, forty-five pages from the end, the man puts down the novel, looks directly at the audience, and recites the entire final section from memory (apparently the actor used to do this as a party trick).

By the time I finish telling this to my capstone class, they're silent, absorbed. "So often," I tell them, "we go to a two-and-a-half-hour show that feels like it's four hours long. Imagine going to an eight-hour-show that feels like just an hour or two."

They seemed sold on that.

For this post, share a story of some kind of experimental or avant-garde performance you've seen or heard of that went (for you or for others) from That's so dumb to OMG what a great thing.

Post by Tuesday (March 3)-ish. Comment on this post about someone else's post by Friday (March 6).

Post 5: Not-Me, but . . . No, It's Really Just Not Me (Or, You Can't Prove You're Not a Bot!)

Part of the mind-bending fun of the simulation argument or Jean Baudrillard's notion of simulacra involves exposing ourselves to the fundamental leap of faith at the heart of our daily life: we don't know for sure that we're real, that our perceptions of the world are accurate--but we continue on as if they are from day to day. We're real enough.

Part of the chilling unpleasantness inspired by deepfakes and other modes of falsity online involves realizing that, sometimes, we really do want to ground ourselves in a reality against which we can check and discredit unreal images of ourselves. Thanks to the ambiguity of internet, it can be hard to establish a negative: I'm not that image. I didn't do that thing you see me doing. I didn't say/type/tweet/post that thing you read in my name. I didn't buy that stuff my credit record says I did.

Maybe we aren't real enough, at least for those who aren't physically around us 24/7.

That doesn't mean people don't try to establish a "real me" online.

For this post, find, share, and reflect on some means of performatively establishing a real identity. What performance techniques do people use to establish a trustworthy connection between real them and digital them? Alternately, how do they break or discredit links between real them and (deep)faked them?

Here's an example to get you started. There's a subreddit called "Roast Me" (r/RoastMe) in which people post pictures of themselves, sometimes with a brief description ("unemployed, live with parents, 32"), asking redditors to "roast them"--use wit or meanness to cut them down, insult them, etc.

 

It is not my cup of tea. But I do find it fascinating that those wishing to be roasted must post an image of themselves holding up a sign that explicitly says "Roast Me"--preferably with their Reddit handle there. The idea, it seems, is to prevent nonconsensual roasting. You can't just post a random picture of someone and invite the internet to mock them (well, of course you can, but just not on r/RoastMe).

Obviously, this isn't foolproof. Photoshop could easily manufacture a pic of anyone holding some sign like that. But it is an attempt, at least, to establish a link between real-space human and digital-space activity.

For what it's worth, there's another subreddit, r/ToastMe, which is the same thing, but it solicits only encouraging messages for people in need of support. Much more my speed.



(This poor guy's caption is "Girlfriend of 3 years just left me. I'm completely broken." Toast him if you'd like.)

What other means of reality-checking people can you think of? Are there artists playing with this kind of verification? Share!

John

Post 4: Presence, Attention, Performance . . . and Nigel

This week's readings all had the common theme of paying attention to people. For the most part, this attention aligned with notions of sight. We watch. We oversee (the episcop in episcopal). We observe ourselves and present (for others' eyes) selective bits of us depending on our situation.

Among our discussions this week, we wondered if and how we behave differently when we know we're being watched. Now, on one level (as discussed last week), we're always being watched thanks to surveillance capitalism. So ubiquitous and dispersed is that watching that we often cease to notice it. That pervasive attention becomes the background noise for our living in 2020.

Bogart, Goffman, Orenstein, and Kirby all in their own way suggest that something else happens when we submit ourselves to others' live attention, when we present or perform ourselves in front of other people. Suddenly all of our actions, reactions, and inactions unfold as if there were a picture frame floating around us, highlighting our bodies and faces and words and deeds with a special significance. We alter our behavior in relation to that frame (or that matrix, as Kirby would say, if we're on stage). We present a different self, suppressing some acts and accentuating others. Unless we're Manny. Manny is the same in public, on stage, at home--constant as gravity.

Something Kirby points out, though, is that this Frame of Added Significance (where we're taken as not just being but representing) doesn't necessarily happen just when we want or as we want. If I accidentally walk onto a stage during a performance, I might be taking as part of the mise-en-scene, whether or not I'm actually aware of the matrixed frame or not. Or consider a "hot mic" moment, where I'm not meaning to broadcast my words or sounds to an audience, but they get broadcast anyway. Most of us have also had one of those moments where we hit "reply all" rather than just "reply"--creating a larger performance than we had intended.

Conversely, I can think of times where I'm performing my heart out, presenting a particularly special version of me for an audience I'm sure is there--only to find that in fact no one was watching/listening. Think of the impassioned rant you just spewed out--only to find that the call had dropped three words in. Think of how many stunning YouTube masterpieces of self-expression languish with zero views.

Or think of Nigel, a gannet (a kind of bird) that fell in love with a concrete statue of a gannet. He devoted himself to this statue--wooing it, dancing for it, singing for it, forswearing all others.  And then he died, alone, having given all his heart all his life to a lover that could never respond or recognize his adoration.

 

What do we--what would Kirby, Orenstein, Bogart, or Goffman--say about Nigel? Can you think of other situations where the attentional feedback cycle between audience and performer and audience seems rich and amazing and full of mutual life but in fact turns out to be a completely one-sided affair, a fundamental misunderstanding. Does this matter? If so or if not, how?

John

Post 3: Looking Back at/within the Attention Economy and Surveillance Capitalism

Given the pervasiveness of surveillance capitalism in an attention economy--we're always watching and we're always being watched--what's a performer to do?

In class, Manny talked about the possibilities that panoptic culture might grant to those who "hide in plain sight," who seek out and find spaces of resistance to the discipline of surveillance.

His suggestion brings to mind a few artistic interventions into/responses to surveillance culture. Consider, for example, the Surveillance Camera Players:

Throughout the late nineties and aughts, this group staged various pieces--from individual signs ("Just shopping." "Minding my own business.") to full-length adaptations of plays like 1984 or Waiting for Godot. They published maps of surveillance cameras in New York City.

They're no longer around, their founders moving on to other projects. One wonders, also, where and how they could perform nowadays since surveillance isn't even a matter of knowing where the cameras are. We carry the recording devices around with us. Even with the camera and mic switched off or taped over, companies track our movements. We're recorded even when we're not being audio-visually recorded. Avoiding cameras is next to impossible.

In such a world, another response might be to present a false face. Masks are nothing new, of course, but some artists are taking that to the next level, designing wearable projection masks:

One wonders how these kind of masks may interact with fake-face technologies such as deepfakes. The potentials for creative-productive innovation and criminal exploitation are equally ripe.

For this next post, then: show and tell a creative performance response to the attention economy and/or surveillance capitalism. Explain and explore how that response works in and around the disciplines it exists within. Where is the intervention's resistance effective? Where is it less so?

I'm eager to see what you come up with.

Post 2: Performativity!

From performance to performativity and back!

Some mind-bending stuff this last week, no?

We read about a performative act as an expression that does or accomplishes something beyond describing or referring to something else.

We read about how performative utterances aren't true or false but felicitous or infelicitous--they work or they don't work based on the context, the person uttering it, etc.

We read, finally, about how performative acts--the conscious and unconscious habits and actions we do every day--can help to create a sense of self, a sense of gender, a sense of identity. From "It's a girl! Let's buy pink" to "Ladies don't sit like that" to "You make me feel like a natural woman"--our sense of who we are (masculine, feminine, queer, straight, bi, trans-, cis-, Methodist, Hindu, Atheist, Vegan, ginger, whatever) comes from a lifetime of repeated acts that performatively consolidate a sense of gender identity and sexuality.

But, Butler says, if identity is based on performances, then that opens the possibility that we may perform differently than expected. We can change or alter (or, to use the verb form, we can queer) performative acts in ways that undermine or subvert how they're "supposed" to be performed. She links this performing-differently to performances of citizenship, such as the instance of protesters singing the USAmerican national anthem in Spanish.

For this week's post, I want you to describe or link to an example of someone tweaking a performative act or utterance to mean/do something other than it's originally supposed to. If I pledge allegiance to the American flag, that's one thing (I pledge allegiance by reciting the words, "I pledge allegiance..."). If I recite that pledge, however, as I salute--say--the flag of the evil Galactic Empire from Star Wars--then I'm doing something else, perhaps suggesting that the U.S. is like the Galactic Empire (note: I'm just using an example here, not actually making that suggestion. I could just as easily use the flag of Equestria from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic).

Something similar happens if I tweak (queer?) a famously patriotic action captured in art, like Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima (as the pics I've included here do). Note how these tweaks could be taken in a number of ways: funny, clever, disrespectful, or offensive.

Aside from your standard "reflect/discuss stuff from this week," give me the example of a performative act/utterance intentionally performed to mean something else. Then explain your example. Reflect on if/how that intentional misperformance could be interpreted in contradictory ways.

Post by Tuesday.

See y'all in class!

JF

Post 1 Prompt: Theatre vs Performance

For your first blog entry for the class, I want you to provide, explain, and defend a distinction between theatre and performance. Obviously, there's a lot of Venn Diagram-type overlap here. But, if performance is the big umbrella, then perhaps theatre is a subset of activities under that umbrella. How do I know if I'm looking at theatre rather than performance in general?

Your answer (about 500 words) should cover at least the following grounds:

1. You should give me your quick-and-simple distinction between theatre and performance.
2. You should explain your distinction.
3. You should provide some examples, walking me through an explanation of how your distinction helps us discriminate between, say, a football game and a play.

Now, it's possible you feel strongly enough that no such distinction is possible. If that's the case, make that argument as persuasively as you can.

How important is it, really, to make a distinction between theatre and performance? For whom is that difference important and  why?

Aim to post a response to this prompt on your blog by Tuesday, 1/21. Post a comment about a classmate's blog post here by Friday 1/24. (Ex: "I looked at Kaitlin's blog. She says that theatre is exclusively the purview of muppets, which seems extreme. I'd at least allow sock puppets, not just muppets...")

Contact me if you have questions or concerns.

John