Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 14:28:10 -0400 From: NZ <pretzelworld-AT-gmail.com> To: deleuze-guattari-AT-lists.driftline.org Subject: Re: [D-G] theater performance practitioners? "theater preformace practitioner" is like a palette for coloring your life. bread and puppet (and extended punk-puppet family) are the most obvious D-G practioners. you really get a sense of "that idea" growing into a community, that is growing like punk hakim bey's autonomous-zone Its incredibly problematic to agree on lowering the bar to the fourth wall without declaration (let alone the safety-net of Heraclitus's soul-death). That seems to be a real zone of play. I recently watched two movies that packed a similar punch, mtv's "Election" with reese witherspoon, and season one of "Strangers with Candy" with amy sedaris. Both from 1999, dealing with overachieving "girls" with brilliant performances by both leading ladies. So brilliant infact that they manage to walk me through an amazingly complex "destratification process" that dumped me out at the end in mental shambles. (kinda like reading pvirillio for the first time.) "Election" mainly concentrated on demolishing personal moral law with the calculated prescion of a counter-intelligence Psy-ops think-tank of the sort responsible for fox's "oil storm" (my word! what is a Deleuzian to make of that?) But anyway, "Strangers" really is much better, going all the same places "Election" went, and then even deeper off the deep end. For example, where "Election" stops to prostelytize about the mtv's version of lesbianism as an option for thoughtful girls, the "Strangers" version of the lesbian falls in love with a guy who turns out to be her son. Of course, she still wants to have sex with him. "Election" is also interesting in terms of the narrative motion from 3 to 4, the problem is that it just never gets around to ever happening - the holding back, that ultimately ends up in NYC of all places(?). In "Strangers," co-writer Dinello repeatedly "holds back" the flowing narrative by using the clever rhetorical technique of disagreement followed by repeating that with which was originally disagreed.... as a demonstration of power (whew... know what I mean?). I just saw Dinello on NYC public access doing a man-on-the-street performance show. He would "accidentally" drop a $20 bill on the sidewalk and film whoever picked it up to see what they would do next. Not everybody called out to him and returned the money, of all the various people only men-wearing-suits would stuff the money in their pockets and walk briskly ahead, very funny tv! But aside from discussing movies, it's the performative aspect of theory that is interesting. Like ionesco's "rhinosaurus" that practically demonstrates foucault's "horizontal control" theory of power. There are also the vienna actionists who in my opinion amount to little more than a pre-rock'n'roll era "fear factor." During my free time in NYC I have had a chance to be a part the performances of ortho.... see video, statements, etc... http://www.ignivomous.org/projects/ortho/index.html Their particular take on the performative aspect of theory is that it sucks and have found (in 8 years of trial and error) alternatives to dealing with the problem. The main problem is that the audience does not necessarily "get" the statement. this is so much an issue that ortho does not deal with just the statement alone but instead deals with that zone of difference between statement-ideal and statement-actual as a creative space (similar to vienna actionists sence of intent) Ortho relies on simple narrative structures (such as: man flies to moon, returns as an alien) that are often disturbed by anachonistic symbolism and most often by the destruction of technical equipment resulting in total noise and confusion bracketed within the performance setting. my favorite ortho shows were during the phi-phenomena tour sept.2001. Phi-phenomena are phenomena that move so slowly that they cannot be experienced. - - - "Shambles" comes from the Saxon "Fleshammels", which means, "the street of the butchers." _______________________________________________ List address: deleuze-guattari-AT-driftline.org Info: http://lists.driftline.org/listinfo.cgi/deleuze-guattari-driftline.org Archives: www.driftline.org
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