The Theatrical-Reverse. The Origin of Empathy and its Transformation in Performance Art (original) (raw)
Gilles Deleuze is convinced that art and philosophy go hand in hand as far as the transformative power of their concepts is concerned. After all, they can both be a crowbar in causing upheaval to the representative paradigm: 'La recherche de nouveaux moyens d'expressions philosophiques fut inaugurée par Nietzsche, et doit être aujourd'hui poursuivie en rapport avec le renouvellement de certains autres arts, par exemple le théâtre ou le cinéma' (Deleuze, 1968, p. 4). A considerable number of performers rose to meet this challenge in the twentieth century and were aiming at an active, often participatory spectator who would be forced to think, to provoke the mind to further action. It was not 'common sense'-this 'dogmatic image of thought which takes recognition as its model (Patton, 1997, p. 3)-which was addressed, but a creative or nomadic thinking 1 , aiming at a fundamental encounter with the unknown or unfamiliar. In this participatory theatre, the spectator had to be active at both a mental and even physical level. Deleuze's rhizome ontology 2 provided inspiration for the interactive theatre which would stimulate creative observation and thinking, with attention paid to corporality alongside the reasoning.
This paper will emphasize a series of negotiation and renegotiation strategies for the corporeal-cognitive relationship between the actor and the spectator in contemporary experimental theatre. To this end, I have chosen two performances with totally different narrative and performative structures (a verbal one and a nonverbal one, both staged by the same director, Eugen Jebeleanu and his team Compagnie 28: Don’t Cry Baby, starting from a play by Catinca Drăgănescu, based on the typologies/situations in Charles Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood, and Hotel, a free adaptation on F.X. Kroetz’s Wunschkonzert. The paper mixes the descriptive analysis of Jebeleanu’s performances with theoretical and applied perspectives from the fields of cognitive psychology and neurosciences, as well as of semiotics and pragmatics.: The hypothesis we are trying to establish is that experimental shows performed in small spaces combine the corporeal-empathic and the cognitive challenges exerted on the spectator, sometimes turning the experience of the latter into a participatory game that involves an enhancement of one's proprioceptive internal sensations, a stronger perception of one's own being alive and a feeling of participatory attendance.
Actors and the Art of Performance : Under Exposure
2016
Special thanks are due to the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) for generously funding the translation of this book, which was originally written as part of the FWF research project "Generating Bodies. Corporeal Performance" (TRP 12-G21/2010-2013). I am currently undertaking research within the framework of the follow-up PEEK project, "Artist Philosophers-Philosophy as Arts-Based-Research" (AR 275-G21/2014-2017). I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the philosopher Arno Böhler, the instigator and director of both these FWF research projects. My heartfelt thanks go to Laura Radosh, who, with careful attentiveness to the polyphonic layers of my book, has provided an English translation with a skill and sensitivity that do justice to the various philosophic and artistic references at play. This was surely no small feat. The translation was commissioned and supervised throughout by Alice Lagaay, without whom this book would not be available to English readers now. Alice's philosophic and multilingual competence, her dedication, and the infectious enthusiasm of her spirit made working on this project a real pleasure, for which I am immensely grateful to her.
The Sensational Body, 2019
At the end of the 20th century, the three genres circus, burlesque, and freak show were revived after a long period of decline. Seemingly something in the genres still has a strong appeal to the spectators. The revival brought with it a new framing and a realignment to contemporary values and beliefs, but the core of the genres is still the sensational bodies on stage. The aim of this dissertation is to explore the attraction of these genres by focusing on the spectatorial experience of the bodies on stage. The questions that guide the exploration are what experiential meanings do the bodies create, how does the meaning appear to the subjective consciousness, and how is the experience informed by the situation and the context. Starting from an embodied understanding of phenomenology, as the body is the place from where we experience, the focus is on the meaning created through the experience, both as thoughts and emotions. Using a method of performance analysis and autoethnography shifts the focus from the performance to the experience of the performance. The experience is then discussed from three approaches: the cognitive approach, focusing on the meaning created intellectually; the embodied approach, focusing on how the meaning appears in and through the body; and the relational approach, focusing on the experience of intersubjective relations. The first chapter focuses on experiences from contemporary circus. By approaching the cognitive experience, the first theme is about entertainment and how attention is kept by balancing novelty and familiarity in the acts. This is followed by an exploration of the political, and the potential of utopian moments. Approaching the embodied experience, the first part is about feeling motion through kinesthetic empathy. Elements of risk are then discussed through the sense of suspense and surprise. From a relational approach, the contact with the performer is considered using the concept of phenomenological empathy. The second chapter explores the experience of contemporary burlesque. From a cognitive approach, the popular is reconsidered. The focus then turns to aspects of subversion as beauty ideals and norms are challenged by bodies on stage. From an embodied approach, laughter is discussed, followed by the experience of desire by challenging assumptions of a male gaze. The relational approach focuses on the experience of being in the audience and the sense of community. The third chapter focuses on experiences from the freak show. From a cognitive approach, the first focus is on the staging of the acts and how they create curiosity. The following theme is liveness as an essential quality of the spectacular. From the embodied approach, the visceral feeling of disgust when the unwanted comes too close, and the uncanny with the uncertainty of the familiar and the strange, are discussed. Finally, the relational approach focuses on the experience of the ‘Other’ and the self. By focusing on the embodied experience of meaning, both as thoughts and emotions, and relating them to the situation and a broader cultural context, the study shows how the spectatorial experience is intricately intertwined with previous experiences, societal norms, and cultural images that are circulated throughout our culture. The study shows the significance of the spectator’s experiences and reveals the potential of using the experience as an analytical tool to broaden the understanding of theater and performances.
The argument, the premise and the objectives of the study: The research presents a complex analysis of the performative/theatrical practices in which the performing artists try to establish an intimate relationship with the otherwith a spectator or, in rarer cases, with a non-human alter. The study's fundamental focus is the theorization of the "intimate" experience in performance art on the background of the well-known drift in postmodernity of some humanistic values such as subjectivity, identity, authenticity, and presence. It is commonplace that postmodernism questions an essentialist perspective of relating to these fundamental conceptual pillars for understanding the encounter with the other in artistic practices. The theoretization of the "intimate" in performance art is in correlation with a theoretical reflection on these key concepts for understanding the "transformative experience" of the encounter between the artist-performer and audience. Therefore, if these notions are understood through their heterogeneity and dissolution, the conceptual framework of the "intimate" can no longer be comprehended from an essentialist, idealist perspective. The polemical discourse that I propose questions a teleology and an ontology of this affective process connected with authenticity, immediacy and the "live" presence of the performer, but also with other immutable coordinates that would constitute the nature of this psycho-affective complex. In contrast, I demonstrate the complementarity within the structure of a performance of the apparent opposites that the relationship with another entails: theatricality-authenticity, presence in corpore-mediated presence, physical proximity -emotional distance, aesthetic immersion -aesthetic distancing, oneto-one encounter-collective participation, authentic self-disclosure-fictionalized disclosure, biographical self-performed self, self-reflexivity intersubjectivity, private self -public self, etc. The premise around which the present study is built is that the fundamental aspects of an intimate relationship in performance art must be seen in congruence with theatricality and alongside structures of physical, psycho-affective, but also aesthetic, phenomenological and ontological distance in interaction with the other. During this approach to relating to another under the influence of theatricality, I refer to two contexts through which we can correlate theatricality with the so-called "intimate" performance. First, I take into account the theatricality of the performative event that works, often according to the practices of dramatic representation: strategies of documentation, repetition, and rehearsal of the (partially) fictionalized reality. Second, I refer to the theatricality of the performer who acts through practices of narrativization of the self, of representing and embodying (even) his multiple personas, his internalized selves that he later brings into the present. In this situation, performing the self is attached to the fictionalization of life -which is necessary for the performer to enter a dialogical state, in a possible emotional closeness to the public. Regarding a discussion on the mechanisms of distancing, theorists, and practitioners -especially those who work in "one-to-one" performance -understand the territory of the "intimate" in opposition to aesthetic distancing and in opposition to a physical, psychological, affective distance that may occur between the performer and the participant. By contrast, the present study highlights how the structures of physical, psycho-affective, but also aesthetic, dramaturgical distancing can offer emotional proximity in the intersubjective space between the performer and the spectator. From one typology of performative experience to another, I have demonstrated how physical proximity cannot ensure an immediate deep emotional closeness in the spectatorial dialogue. A relevant example is that in the "one-to-one" performance, the relation with another can be one of dominance, due to the (abusive) overcoming of the limits of proximity between the performer and the public. In this research on openness to alterity, in autobiographical works, I discuss the distance that the performer takes from an alter-ego in his interiority, to narrate himself and to (empathically) represent the other in the audience. In the final chapter, focused on the analysis of the eco-performance, I approach distancing from the perspective of the phenomenology of encounter between two different alterities: that of the human subject and that of the non-human other-from another species. As for the objectives of the present study, they are in correlation with the research questions that shaped each individual chapter. At the beginning of the analysis, the objective was to answer the following question: "To what extent would a theatrical event built according to the norms of classical theatricality offer a 'less intimate' theatrical experience, unlike a performance, in which the physical proximity between the performer and participant would also determine an affective closeness?" The question was framed in the following context: researchers of "one-to-one" performance interactions relate to this typology of performance as facilitating an "exigency" of intimacy, of shared personal emotions, in contrast to the (supposed) distant and impersonal character of the relationship between the stage and the public in classical theatricality. Then, in the second chapter, I pursued two questions that offered a new perspective for understanding the relationship with the other in the "one-to-one" performance. First, I ask: "How is the experience of the "intimate" performed outside of the association of this concept with the affective principles of the in corpore presence, the co-presence (in a here-and-now), and authenticity?" Another question I pursued is: "How do the artists of a "one-to-one" dialogue perform the personal encounter for one spectator, given that the "one-to-one" interaction also involves receptivity in front of a collective audience?" In the third part of the research, the fundamental objective was to question the experience of the performer of connecting with his (inner) other or with the otherness of the spectator in autobiographical works. How does this experience of (inter)subjectivity take shape (seen as a relational space of truthfulness, authenticity, and self-transparency), given that the identity of the performer is fictionalized, and the emotional vulnerability is expressed in front of the audience through dramaturgical structures of interpretation and simulation of an "authentic" confession? In the fourth chapter, in which I have discussed the Romanian performative context in the '70s-'80s and in the post-revolutionary years, the objective was to argue that, precisely because of the isolationism (personal, artistic, institutional) in which these artists were active, their performances took form through an openness to the otherness (of a spectator-observer or a collective otherness). Therefore, these were the questions that guided this chapter: "How does the interaction with the other develop, in contrast to the association of the "intimate" sphere as dependent on the private space, in which the Eastern artist would perform in a solitary self-referentiality?"; "What are the performative strategies that the artists use, so that that supposed bodily (and identity) self-censorship also implies an addressability towards another? At the end of this argumentation, in which I have discussed the connection (physical, affective, ontological, performative) with the natural environment in eco-performance practices, I have considered two issues: "How can the ecofeminist performance be interpreted outside of an intimate encounter seen as holism, in which the corporeality and identity of the performer are put in consubstantial connection with Nature?" and "How does an ecological connection with the other-of-another-species emerge through distant proximity (on a psycho-physical, cognitive, ontological, performative level ) in the works in which non-human agents perform themselves? "
Towards Embodied Spectatorship
2015
The article discusses the cognitive approach to spectatorship. There are different aspects that interest theatre scholars in the field of spectating research, for example, how audiences perceive the process of acting, how emotions and empathy work, and how spectators create meanings. The main premise for the cognitive approach to spectating is that the engagement of the audience in the performance is foremost corporeal. The article analyses the roots of this standpoint and poses a question concerning the possibility of measuring the impact of theatre. Further, the statement that for spectators the most significant engagement with a performance is emotional is considered. The concept of empathy and kinaesthetic empathy in particular is discussed. The article suggests that the crucial specification for successful audiences’ embodiment is embodied acting and trained body-mind that in fact means coherence within and between the mental and emotional systems. Proposing that most reliable ...
Performance Paradigm, 2017
This issue of Performance Paradigm, focusing on “Performance, Choreography and the Gallery,” takes the 2016 Biennale of Sydney (BoS20) as a starting point. The Biennale featured scores of performances that ranged across of a variety of genres (one-to-one, live art, theatre, dance, opera, installations, walks, talks, and tours) and a variety of sites (libraries, galleries, post-industrial halls, inner city streets, and harbour islands). The Biennale’s artistic director Stephanie Rosenthal and two of her ‘curatorial attachés’, Adrian Heathfield and André Lepecki, have been working at this intersection for years, along with curators such as Pierre Bal Blanc, Catherine Wood and Mathieu Copeland. So too have scholars such as Claire Bishop (2012; 2014), Shannon Jackson (2011), Amelia Jones (1998; 2012) and Susan Bennett (2009). We will not attempt a survey of that field here, suffice to say that the research presented in what follows refers to much of this seminal work. This collection of articles and artist pages seeks to engage with the performance dimension of a sprawling, international art event and related work outside the Biennale, along with the associated field of literature. The articles proceed primarily through female case studies such as Alex Martinis Roe, Shelley Lasica, Noa Eshkol, The Brown Council, Mette Edvardsen and Julie-Anne Long, and link the work of such artists to major themes circulating in this field. Of the many themes covered in this writing—including practice, choreography, labour, ethics, discipline, collaboration, visuality, power, spectatorship—we choose materiality, attention, agency, sensation and instability to frame this introduction.