This is the follow-on text from The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader, which has been the key ... more This is the follow-on text from The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader, which has been the key introductory text to all kinds of performance for over 20 years since it was first published in 1996. Contributions from new and emerging practitioners are placed alongside those of long-established individual artists and companies, representing the work of this century’s leading practitioners through the voices of over 140 individuals. The contributors in this volume reflect the diverse and eclectic culture of practices that now make up the expanded field of performance, and their stories, reflections and working processes collectively offer a snapshot of contemporary artistic concerns. Many of the pieces have been specially commissioned for this edition and comprise a range of written forms – scholarly, academic, creative, interviews, diary entries, autobiographical, polemical and visual.
International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 2007
Abstract This paper examines the concept of interaction with an audience in live and telematic pe... more Abstract This paper examines the concept of interaction with an audience in live and telematic performance, exploding the myth of interactivity as a postmodern, digital device. The author draws upon her experiences of performing in Pigeon Theatre's The Rehearsal (physical space) ...
This paper examines the concept of interaction with an audience in live and telematic performance... more This paper examines the concept of interaction with an audience in live and telematic performance, exploding the myth of interactivity as a postmodern, digital device. The author draws upon her experiences of performing in Pigeon Theatre’s The Rehearsal (physical space) and Steve Dixon/Paul Sermon’s Unheimlich (virtual space) to prise apart some of the characteristics and categories of interaction. Deleuze and Guattari’s distinction between ‘smooth’ and ‘striated’ space is coupled with De Certeau’s definitions of ‘tactic’ and ‘strategy’ to propose an ontology of interaction, aiming at radically reorienting the language we use to address what we now do and call ‘interactive’.
Using the phenomenological and paleoanthropological arguments of Merleau-Ponty (1962, 1964, 1968)... more Using the phenomenological and paleoanthropological arguments of Merleau-Ponty (1962, 1964, 1968), Husserl (1999), Scarry (1985) and Sheets-Johnstone (1990), this paper explores modes of embodiment and perception and refers these to the experiences of spectating. Through an analysis of and reflections on the ‘visceral-visual’ work of choreographers Meg Stuart (specifically Highway 101, 20002) and Felix Ruckert (specifically Secret Service, 20023) this paper isolates strategies used by these practitioners for moving spectating bodies and interrogates notions of the moved body. The paper acknowledges the unproblematic performing experience of being moved, and goes on to argue that such an experience can also be activated in spectators, whereby they can experience performance through bodily negotiation, rather than through primarily visual or discursive consumption.
This paper proposes that ‘space’ is bound up in lived experience, in the social activities and in... more This paper proposes that ‘space’ is bound up in lived experience, in the social activities and interactions between ‘objects’, not as passive receptacle, but as active agent (in terms of function, structure, and intention). An object, therefore, is not only defined by being something that is acted upon or intended towards by a subject, but as a phenomenon that can also be acted upon or intended towards by space itself. Here, then, the link between subject and object is fragmented, or at least brought into question. This paper explores how in looking at contemporary performance, spectators are always looked back at by performers, such that both groups are acted upon by the tension and space between them, and are thus constituted as objects. This is not just through being acted upon or intended towards by a subject, but also by being acted upon by space itself. The spectators’ positions as objects are moulded and formed not just through subjectivity, but by space (theatrical, aesthetic and architectural). As spectators we see that we are acted upon and we know that as part of this dialogical contract we too are doing the acting. Drawing on de Certeau’s distinction between ‘space’ and ‘place’ and between ‘map’ and ‘tour’ (1984: 115-130), this paper argues that the act of spectating is a fundamentally spatial act, and proposes a speculative guide to the pleasures of performative and spectatorial objectification in performance practice. Using the author’s own site-specific performance practice with Pigeon Theatre, this paper argues that space itself might be responsible for the construction of performers’ and spectators’ bodies as objects. From this position it provides a reading of Pigeon Theatre’s The Heist Academy whereby the spectating body is philosophically, pragmatically and artistically spatialised as object. In this way, Pigeon Theatre’s work might be seen to challenge, whilst working within, normative frameworks of seeing.
This is the follow-on text from The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader, which has been the key ... more This is the follow-on text from The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader, which has been the key introductory text to all kinds of performance for over 20 years since it was first published in 1996. Contributions from new and emerging practitioners are placed alongside those of long-established individual artists and companies, representing the work of this century’s leading practitioners through the voices of over 140 individuals. The contributors in this volume reflect the diverse and eclectic culture of practices that now make up the expanded field of performance, and their stories, reflections and working processes collectively offer a snapshot of contemporary artistic concerns. Many of the pieces have been specially commissioned for this edition and comprise a range of written forms – scholarly, academic, creative, interviews, diary entries, autobiographical, polemical and visual.
International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 2007
Abstract This paper examines the concept of interaction with an audience in live and telematic pe... more Abstract This paper examines the concept of interaction with an audience in live and telematic performance, exploding the myth of interactivity as a postmodern, digital device. The author draws upon her experiences of performing in Pigeon Theatre's The Rehearsal (physical space) ...
This paper examines the concept of interaction with an audience in live and telematic performance... more This paper examines the concept of interaction with an audience in live and telematic performance, exploding the myth of interactivity as a postmodern, digital device. The author draws upon her experiences of performing in Pigeon Theatre’s The Rehearsal (physical space) and Steve Dixon/Paul Sermon’s Unheimlich (virtual space) to prise apart some of the characteristics and categories of interaction. Deleuze and Guattari’s distinction between ‘smooth’ and ‘striated’ space is coupled with De Certeau’s definitions of ‘tactic’ and ‘strategy’ to propose an ontology of interaction, aiming at radically reorienting the language we use to address what we now do and call ‘interactive’.
Using the phenomenological and paleoanthropological arguments of Merleau-Ponty (1962, 1964, 1968)... more Using the phenomenological and paleoanthropological arguments of Merleau-Ponty (1962, 1964, 1968), Husserl (1999), Scarry (1985) and Sheets-Johnstone (1990), this paper explores modes of embodiment and perception and refers these to the experiences of spectating. Through an analysis of and reflections on the ‘visceral-visual’ work of choreographers Meg Stuart (specifically Highway 101, 20002) and Felix Ruckert (specifically Secret Service, 20023) this paper isolates strategies used by these practitioners for moving spectating bodies and interrogates notions of the moved body. The paper acknowledges the unproblematic performing experience of being moved, and goes on to argue that such an experience can also be activated in spectators, whereby they can experience performance through bodily negotiation, rather than through primarily visual or discursive consumption.
This paper proposes that ‘space’ is bound up in lived experience, in the social activities and in... more This paper proposes that ‘space’ is bound up in lived experience, in the social activities and interactions between ‘objects’, not as passive receptacle, but as active agent (in terms of function, structure, and intention). An object, therefore, is not only defined by being something that is acted upon or intended towards by a subject, but as a phenomenon that can also be acted upon or intended towards by space itself. Here, then, the link between subject and object is fragmented, or at least brought into question. This paper explores how in looking at contemporary performance, spectators are always looked back at by performers, such that both groups are acted upon by the tension and space between them, and are thus constituted as objects. This is not just through being acted upon or intended towards by a subject, but also by being acted upon by space itself. The spectators’ positions as objects are moulded and formed not just through subjectivity, but by space (theatrical, aesthetic and architectural). As spectators we see that we are acted upon and we know that as part of this dialogical contract we too are doing the acting. Drawing on de Certeau’s distinction between ‘space’ and ‘place’ and between ‘map’ and ‘tour’ (1984: 115-130), this paper argues that the act of spectating is a fundamentally spatial act, and proposes a speculative guide to the pleasures of performative and spectatorial objectification in performance practice. Using the author’s own site-specific performance practice with Pigeon Theatre, this paper argues that space itself might be responsible for the construction of performers’ and spectators’ bodies as objects. From this position it provides a reading of Pigeon Theatre’s The Heist Academy whereby the spectating body is philosophically, pragmatically and artistically spatialised as object. In this way, Pigeon Theatre’s work might be seen to challenge, whilst working within, normative frameworks of seeing.
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Papers by Anna Fenemore