5 Dec. 2014
Last semester
while taking my Theory and Critical Thinking course with Professor Amy
Schiffner and many other graduate students of dance, I remember quite
distinctly class and after class discussions on what is real, what is reality,
and the relationship the latter has to performance. Names from past and present like Plato,
Derrida, Marx, and on to Judith Butler and Susanne Langer with her work “From Feeling and Form: Virtual Powers” and
finally Gerald Siegmund’s work “Aesthetic Experience” that references Deluze
come to mind and I start to remember my intense grappling’s with ideas about
what it means to perform, represent something through art, reproduce work and
emotions in a piece and make something from something else. What is this “thing” that is made? What is its relationship to other “real”
things and reality and on and on...and I take a breath and relax my chest a
bit. It will be OK.
Fast forwarding my
life to this semester with introductions to ethnology, ethnography, performance
theory and dance documentation I had neatly place my grappling’s with real and
reality to bed for a time only to find that in a new context and setting they
were waking up and my conversations must continue. One of our class readings and discussions was
centered on the work of David MacDougal and his work “The Corporeal Image:
Film, Ethnology and the Senses, Meaning and Being” and while preparing for
class I read a passage that left a strong imprint in my mind as it states:
What is
extraordinary about it is not its transmission of reality but its creation of a
new mechanical image of reality. If we
simply wanted to see reality, it is all around us, but seeing a film presents
us with a strange apparition, a photochemical imprint of the world...The
resulting image does not so much transcend reality as produce an alien
perception of reality, sensitive to unknown qualities. The surrealism of the
film image lies precisely in making us aware of a reality beyond out knowledge.
(17)
Descriptions like “Mechanical Image of reality,” “apparition” and “photochemical imprint” left me feeling settled as I reflected on my previous dialogue about real and
virtual. Again, I began to see that binaries of either/or and real/virtual were not sufficient in my mind and that as we
create work whether in film, dance, theater or photography that hybrids and new
realities are created and sometimes it can be a little everything. This became my focus for my final ethnology
project: new reality placed near photochemical reality in a new space
transformed and happening in time.
As
I contemplated the steps of my project and the performance that would unfold I
knew that space would be crucial. I
needed to recreate a space that allowed darkness and transformation in a short
amount of time. In her book The Place of Dance: A Somatic Guide to
Dancing and Dance Making Andrea Olsen states that “[s]pace shapes the body,
and the body shapes space…[f]rom a dancers perspective, space becomes place
when you inhibit it with attention” (104).
Space and place have always played distinct and important roles in my
life and for this project space and place remained key components. I needed the space to have an intimate relationship
with both the dancing bodies and the dancing bodies on the screen. Yet, during
my beginning phase of this project the only intent I had with space was that of
intimacy and darkness to provide an atmosphere for the dancers to move with a
screen behind them. They needed to frame
the space and allow the viewer to see both at the same time so that my
investigation of the two forms side by side could occur and a new hybrid
reality could emerge and take the space provided it.
One
day while discussing the project with my sister, Charla, she suggested I look
into Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and sent me a video. As I considered the meaning of the cave and
the subjects who could only see the shadows on the cave wall in front of them
as their reality I was struck by the beautiful profundity and images I could draw from. One of the subjects who had been a prisoner his entire life is able to leave the cave and experience reality outside the cave and eventually return and visit the
cave again with new perspective and experience.
I found great inspiration for my installation and decided that I would create
a cave-like atmosphere for my showing and also make references to the fire
behind the prisoners that allowed for the shadows before them so that I could
also refer to the source of the projection (i.e. shadows). Following the allegory entirely was not my
intention but to implement the essence of key aspects as I created a space for
reality and hybridity/photochemical reality to interact and be present in the
same space.
With
footage of dancers compiled and material hung throughout the mundane space we
use daily for lectures I was beginning to feel
the makings of hybridity juxtaposed with reality and I was feeling the making of art.
My process was taking physical and tangible form, my research was going
to be visible through my performance and the documentation of my process. In this particular work my process was my
performance--an experiment put on “stage.” Exploring and investigating were fused with performance. I realized after the class showing that this was quite a big step
for me and that the completed parts were my transformation space and place and
the photochemical reality on the wall.
My finished product was the environment I created and it was made for
the exploring and investigating on real, reality, realism and their
intersections with hybridity and perception.
My
process performance left me many things to consider as I rework and recreate
and I’m grateful for the space and the safety to share my questions and
creative designs with my classmates. As
I consider my recent work and my process I think I’m starting to understand the
meaning of and importance of performance studies and the work Dwight
Conquergood. In his article, Performance
Studies: Interventions and Radical Research”
he states that:
[t]he promiscuous
traffic between different ways of knowing carries the most radical promise of
performance studies research.
Performance studies struggles to open the space between analysis and
action and to pull the pin of the binary opposition between theory and
practice. This embrace of different ways
of knowing is radical because it cuts to the root of how knowledge is organized
in the academy” (146).
He goes on to describe the
difference between empirical observation and hands on active
participation. The latter became very
important in my work for this class and I found that the intersection of theory
and practice were constant as I considered my process, my investigations, the
reasons for representing components of my piece and how I approached
performance. Finally, this project and
the contents of this class further opened a space that is growing within me to
accept and embrace the myriad ways of knowing, perceiving, seeing and
being.
Works
Cited
Conquerwood, Dwight. “Performance
Studies: Interventions and Radical
Research”. TDR (1998) Vol. 46,
No. 2 pp. 145-156. The MIT Press, 2012.
Olsen, Andrea and Caryn McHose. The Place of Dance: A Somatic Guide to
Dancing and Dance Making.
Wesleyan
University Press, 2014.
MacDougal, David. The Corporeal
Image: Film, Ethnology and the Senses. Princeton University Press,
2006
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