[-empyre-] Narrative, and speaking traces

[Hana Iverson]

Hello all,

I would like to respond to some things that Johannes as well as Sarah  
have posted.  There is so much, that I will just select a few issues  
to address, as they relate to the work that I do and know best.

> I certainly think that all movement is inherently story telling and  
> telling. And naturally so, it is also always also lying, no?  it is  
> fashining our selves as movement characters
> in the stories we invent and retell ourselves and others every day,  
> faking it, and being also quite serious about that.
>
I would like to say that it is my experience that not all movement is  
inherently story telling.  I think much of the work of Merce  
Cunningham and Trisha Brown for example, consciously attempts to be  
devoid of "narrative" and focus instead on the sense of architecture  
in space.  To say that all people (and therefore their bodies) are  
inherently inscribed with social values is true, but in the case of  
professionally trained dancers, as opposed to the non-dance body, we  
are talking about very different bodies.  In the same sense that  
Sarah's performers are bodies with disabilities, these are very  
specific bodies, they are inscribed with social constructions but  
they are not all necessarily related to the gaze.  One could say that  
the social construction of bodies is related to place, as place  
defines much of the cultural definitions that write that social  
inscription.  So, the place of the stage, for the purpose of  
performance, creates a heterotopic space, to borrow from Foucault,  
where perhaps these bodies find another (third?) space and therefore  
can be looked at in terms of their artistic shapes and values, in  
conjunction with the social values that we, as audience, impose on  
them.  So, in this case, the gaze is the audience and again, that is  
a variable that rests on the individuals of the audience and is   
affected by place.

> and how a behavior or performance performed can critique
> the gazes (which are all differentiated), and how such differencing  
> works.
>
So, I agree that we are in some muddy water here when we are asking  
if a performance can critique social values that are perhaps not part  
of the place where they are located.  Placed within a staged context.  
and  augmented by technology that allows them to write lines and  
shapes that come from gestures related to the performers unequal  
lengths or limited range of motion.  So, one is assuming that the  
audience is placing social values on these bodies, more or in a  
different way, than one would place a social value on the bodies in a  
Merce Cunningham performance.  I think it would be very interesting  
to see Sarah's performers engage in this interactive performance  
within the context of public space, the every day city.  To have the  
movement traces projected on a public wall.  For me, these writings  
in public place might have more of the political effect that we are  
referring to, as the place is infused with social values that the  
traces then refute and/or rewrite.

and then the notion of the trace as walking is something i came  
across this morning, in  preview of Richard Long's new exhibit at the  
Tate (Heave and Earth) in London, and the preview mentions the  
walking/ tracing in the landscape as a motion leaving shadows or foils

And since, in the context of walking, we are referring to Richard  
Long, then we have segued to the link between the performance body to  
the walking body in a non-performance context, and we are speaking  
more in terms of locative practice, into which the work of Teri Reub  
is situated.  So, I will respond to that work in Sarah's post.

Best,

Hana

Hana Iverson
Media Artist,
Neighborhood Narratives Project,
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
New Brunswick, NJ
hiverson at rci.rutgers.edu; hanaiver at gmail.com
http://www.neighborhoodnarratives.net





On May 29, 2009, at 11:08 AM, Johannes Birringer wrote:

>
> hello all
>
> thanks to Sarah and this discussion that has been springing forth --
>
> i was really interested by your emphasis on narrative, and hope we  
> can come back
> to asking more questions about "narrative"  (different narratives)  
> in relationship to voice (sounding/sound making/
> vocals/music) and movement, and in relationship to  body movement   
> and gesture,
> and following the last statements you made, also in regard to the  
> interactional design
> you describe in some of your examples (the narrative in design is a  
> tricky issue, i would
> suggest, since working with interactivity, in my mind, is always  
> counterintuitive and
> abjective.
>
>>>>
> Her movement was counterintuitive in the degree of learning and  
> control
> required to manipulate her wearable accelerometers to achieve a  
> specific
> graphic quality.  Practicing was about finding the movement that is  
> both
> expressive in itself and also "draws". Lezlie's performance was highly
> controlled, highly choreographed, and was about control in some sense.
>>>
>
> i am not sure now how to address the many issues related to control  
> and control systems
> (in such interactional settings of performance), but initially, i  
> thought, the discussion was
> heading somewhere else, when you began to recount your work with  
> Lezlie.
> I didn't understand what "normative embodiment" is, I also don't  
> know what
> "fear of ephemerality" is.  I always consider it a joy (ephemerality).
>
>>>
> The "challenge to normative embodiment" may rest in Lezlie's body  
> presence and movement themselves,
> in terms of the role of the gaze in the social construction of the  
> body with dis/abilities,
> paralleling postmodern theories  of the gaze in the construction of  
> the female body.
>>>
>
> I think you perhaps would have to talk more about what you assume  
> such constructions to be like (gender -specific?
> age-specific? culture-specific? abilities-specific?), and how a  
> behavior or performance performed can critique
> the gazes (which are all differentiated), and how such differencing  
> works.
>
> I am in rehearsal and cannot fully find the space to reflect and  
> think of examples where i might have been confronted
> with : "existential anxiety" about the functioning of the body  
> being seen, and by extension,
> the body of the viewer [my body?] , and "aesthetic anxiety"  
> generated by fears of bodily difference in a society "with a quest  
> for 'supernormal bodily perfection'."
> I would like to hear others respond to this challenge.  I don't  
> recall aesthetic anxiety, unless you assume that we all are  
> insecure about
> our "lack" or or difference from some assumed "norm"  - i don;t  
> think there are any norms that anyone believes in except of course  
> on the surface
> of consumption and sexual selection display.  Or are you also  
> including "religious anxiety"?
> well, there is so much to say now.
> I hope we can come back to  the question of movement narratives.
>
> I certainly think that all movement is inherently story telling and  
> telling. And naturally so, it is also always also lying, no?  it is  
> fashining our selves as movement characters
> in the stories we invent and retell ourselves and others every day,  
> faking it, and being also quite serious about that.
>
> In the everday sense [i would also think there is no everyday, but  
> that we tend to live under constant or increasing stress symptoms  
> and in symptotopographies, and so the question of anxiety is of  
> course real, a kind of performance anxiety, and we smile now  
> because that too is institutionalized and rhetorical now,   
> cliché) , the movement through our environments is something i  
> assumed you'd be also addressing,
> when i think of walking or audio walks (Janet Cardiff and others),  
> they sound is voice is oral culture of whispered and shouted  
> memories or associations,  i love to listen to audio art and radio  
> dramas,  they are rich to me and full of e/motion...
>
> and then the notion of the trace as walking is something i came  
> across this morning, in  preview of Richard Long's new exhibit at  
> the Tate (Heave and Earth) in London, and the preview mentions the  
> walking/ tracing in the landscape as a motion leaving shadows or  
> foils,  i never saw the term foil before,  and apparently it refers  
> to hunting vocabulary and the track that might be left by some legs  
> or feet when they touched the dawn of the grass and its wetness, as  
> first sunrays fall across the land.
>
> I remember viewing DV8's "Cost of Living" and wondered how they  
> wanted to foil me into taking it, feeling confronted by it?
>
> What's a movement worth? £5 for a plié, one performer suggests in  
> this piece. With arms  that's a tenner, add some emotion you double  
> the fee. "
> Heard you can do  some tricks", another man pesters a dancer. "Do  
> that thing with your leg. I can pay you,"
> I wondered how such critical work (if that is what it is, or is it  
> exploitational? experimental? anxietal?)  is received by different  
> communities/audiences, and how you narrate the work  
> organizationally when you produce software interaction design with  
> abled and differently abled performers in company or in schools or  
> therapeutic environments;
> I noted recently also the work of Petra Kuppers (The Tiresias  
> Project , an Olimpias Disability Culture Production), featured  
> recently in TDR, with a stunning photograph of one of her  
> collaborators on the cover.  It is certainly the case, i think,  
> that methods are altered when dis/abilities are involved as a  
> conscious /acknowledged fact.
>
>
> regards
>
> Johannes  
> Birringer<winmail.dat>_______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre

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