RE: [-empyre-] poetics...

["Dirk Vekemans" <dv@vilt.net>]

 Kenneth,
In this context perhaps the word 'innovation' stands out as a misfit. If,
like Aliette seems to suggest, you take the idea of progress out of what's
going on, you're left with a differentiation of realities, a procedural
braiding of alternate fictions each on an equal status but not leveling,
ruling each other out (add Sally's 'usual rhetoric' here). If anything, what
is happening, the performance, is the ultimate, shared reality, that is: a
process of inventions taking place in time, a continuation of the same
differentiation process. "Innovation" draws the newness up front as if it
was a quality (the same can only be new or it wouldn't be the same, Deleuze
has written 'Difference et repetition' on these paradoxes). "Invention"
would be a correct referrent to the act of belief involved in these ancient
traditions (Wallcott), something coming in because you let it... 
 
Equally the metaphor of a database for the source narrative might be dictate
of our present conditioning: the way any source narrative arrives in a
performance is imho less like a sequential weaving of narrative kernels,
more a compilation of (corrupting, active) code,  the adding of performance
time to the memorised time, unfolding memorised time that is present in both
spectator and actor in a shared performance. The way we tend to deal with
narrative sources is one of deadening it to objects, code that our compilers
can handle, make presentable in a spectator-actor configuration that is
still deeply stuck in a structuralist communication model allowing for the
recuperation of the capitalist modernistic notion of enriching the audience.
Dumping the computational metaphor for the real: there is no database to
access, nothing to be gained, only a river to dive into, believing its
reality, becoming a part of it (its absence)so that the river can be seen
(shown). Hence the enormous task of our poetical undertakings to construct a
computable river? How to build an absence that can create?  What if there
was no information to be gained, if the catharsis was all about keeping the
balance, a release of (the burden of)memory, a giving of the indivual to the
common good of what is most brilliant, our common field of resonance, the
moving part in what's going on? Or perhaps i'm just rephrasing your
objectives in my own obscure 'parole', the more clarity we want, the darker
it gets elsewhere...
dv


> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> Van: empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au 
> [mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] Namens Kenneth Newby
> Verzonden: zondag 8 januari 2006 21:00
> Aan: soft_skinned_space
> Onderwerp: Re: [-empyre-] poetics...
> 
> Sally,
> 
> Yes, the situation in which the same story is told and retold 
> again and again, with variations, seems to be a key component 
> of the example.  
> The source narrative is not unlike a huge database of 
> narrative elements, with indigenous elements woven in to give 
> cultural grounding (the punakawan, old friends, or "clowns" 
> and further localized on the micro-level of the specific 
> conditions of a particular performance.  
> That's an interesting feature of cultures of oral-emphasis 
> like this.  
> One learns by imitation and absorption of what was done 
> before while at the same time adding new details and 
> innovations that reflect the here and now of place.
> 
> Performance provides the advantage of an open invitation to 
> reinterpretation.  Works of cinema tend to become 
> authoritative due to the immense concentration of resources 
> poured into their production, with remakes few and 
> prohibitively expensive.  Performance requires the remount if 
> any work is to persist and represents a powerful river of innovation.
> 
> Another nuance here might be the distinction that Schechner 
> makes, in his articulation of a poetics of performance, 
> between social drama and aesthetic drama.  Social dramas are 
> more variable, open and inclusive of their participants while 
> aesthetic dramas are marked by the separation of the audience 
> from the act of performance.  Social dramas, in the form of 
> rituals of many kinds, tend to be focussed on transformations 
> of the participants.  The Wayang also partakes of elements of 
> the social drama in its ritual contextualization.
> 
> Our work, Leaf, which Aleksandra and myself made a couple of 
> years ago might be worth describing in this context.  Leaf 
> was an interactive public artwork that was placed in a 
> neighborhood in Vancouver that is somewhat of a singularity.  
> To quote the Downtown Eastside Community
> Website: "It's been described as the poorest postal code in 
> Canada, and its problems with crime, homelessness, and 
> substance misuse have been topics of national discussion. But 
> the Downtown Eastside is also a community rich in history, 
> architecture, and diversity."  One of the most troubling 
> events in the recent history of this neighborhood is that 
> over the past 10 - 15 years dozens of women have disappeared  
> from this neighborhood.
> 
> http://www.missingpeople.net/vancouver_missing_women.htm
> 
> We were offered an opportunity to present our work in a 
> gallery in the center of this neighborhood.  It immediately 
> became clear that it would inappropriate, or perhaps 
> irrelevant is a more appropriate word, to present any kind of 
> work that did not directly engage with the community that 
> hosts this gallery.  We were told that the community is 
> typically skeptical of many presentations at this gallery 
> finding little that spoke to their personal concerns.  As a 
> consequence they rarely if ever entered the gallery itself.  
> Our response was to project video on the large 
> floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the streetfront of the 
> gallery.  One of these images was a physical model of autumn 
> leaves continuously falling, swirling, gently to the ground 
> from the top of the window frame to the ground at sidewalk 
> level.  We focussed a camera at the sidewalk directly in 
> front of the window/screen and watched for passersby.  When 
> someone would walk by the leaves would spiral up in a virtual 
> wind which also included names drawn from the appallingly 
> large list of missing women.  Given that the persons walking 
> by the window were so close they would often be unaware of 
> the wind generated in their wake.  Only those who paused to 
> look realized what was happening.  Across the street is a 
> small "park", a triangular slab of asphalt with a couple of 
> trees and a series of benches for sitting, several of which 
> faced the gallery windows.  Most of the day and night these 
> seats are occupied and they became points from which to watch 
> and comment on what was going on of the sidewalk across the 
> street.  The response from this aspect of the exhibition 
> alone made it clear that the dynamic quality and clear 
> relevance to the personal histories of the community achieved 
> by the work were of value to this community.  Local street 
> people would gather in front of the window and point out the 
> names of friends and lovers as they appeared in the "wind".  
> It made "sense" for that community.  It would not have made 
> sense in nearly the same way in any other community due to 
> how situated it was in the local history, in spite of the 
> fact that everyone in the city (and well beyond) knows the 
> story, it being so widely reported in the texts of media reportage.
> 
> Thanks for you insightful comments Sally,
> 
> Kenneth.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 8-Jan-06, at 3:34 AM, Sally Jane Norman wrote:
> 
> >  I'd like to know Aleksandra how much importance you  
> attribute to the 
> > Ramayana and Mahabarata epics as narrative threads sufficiently 
> > commonly understood to allow for the high level of "localised"
> > adaptation, reappropriation, improvisation that you mention 
> - and also 
> > as eminently literary threads from Sanskrit which work/ed their way 
> > into  Balinese theatre.
> >
> > Many experts consider that while wayang theatre forms long predated 
> > Hindu influences, and while latter Javanese creations 
> drawing on the 
> > Hindu epics are very clearly localised, at the same time there are 
> > forms of sanskrit used amongst dalangs that refer to literary links 
> > not to be overlooked - without trying to undermine 
> multidisciplinary 
> > "braiding" we're talking about, but without eclipsing ostensibly 
> > literary strands for fear of their dominance.
> >
> 
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