Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 13:00:56 +0100
From: Ruth Chandler <R.Chandler-AT-ucc.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: 16!
>>> <ma-AT-panix.com> 09/26 10:44 pm >>>
Ruth wrote:
> nevertheless, as an side, i think the broader point about
> some distinction between enteratinment and performance stands.
entertainment
> is a kind of performance and one which takes slaves as its principle- let
me
> entertain you-please, please!
This may be an aside, but it interests me far more than discussing the
merits
of stuttering or of faulty sentence structures. To put an aside within an
aside, I have always found it puzzling why Deleuzianism gets associated with
a cult of "stuttering". Is there anything in Deleuze's writing that even
vaguely resembles "stuttering"? Can you quote me a stuttering Deleuze?
the last thing i would argue for is a cult of stutters. all that would do is
attempt to universalise my own singularities. Deleuze's own writing is
beautiful. stuttering is always to be alien in one's own tongue and,
occasionally, to invent new sounds and assembalges, or whisperings, within
the major sense making paradigms. however, the main strength is not written
at all- because sense making apparatus has been channeled through other
routes, aural and gestural signs, for example.
the performative utternaces of stuttering are a kind of minor literature,
like a mobile logic scrambler which occasionally turns up with something
interesting in the turn and return beyond the experientially given but,
admittedly, works best with people who write and think well. new allinaces
of sickness and health thats all.in the section on smooth and straited space
( A Thousand Plateaux) Deleuze and Guattari call for the intervention of
illterate nomadic becomings as a potential break within the (political)
distribution of multiplicities ( broadly Euclidean and Riemann
multiplicities). so, no i am not arguing for a super race of stutters but
arguing for productive transversals between stutterers and non-stutterers
which mutate both kinds of thinkers. anyhow, i don't want to talk about
myself anymore. i have got too used to friendly working relations, i
suspect, and just found the encounter with majoritarain prejudice
distressing.
To get back to the primary aside: yes, all performance is an attempt at
seduction, a seduction into a mutual engagement. What else can it be?
agreed. but then the question is how seduction and mutuality are to be
arranged. one of the things about one kind of seduction is that it
swiftly evaporate if the audience gets what it wants, the 'scene' of of
honorable mutual engagement is precisely the cliched fact that desire can
not be satisfied and remain desire. as your familiarity with Brecht will
allow, cathartic theatre depends on glossing over the deception, the
problems of comedy writ large whereas N's tragic pessimism laughs within the
errors and betrayals of performance. Orlon ( a performer whose prosthetic
act is live plastic surgery ) is perhaps the only tragic artist this century
has produced. alternatively, something like Forced Entertainment performs by
rubbing the audiences nose in the machinic grind of flat repetition ( 24
hours of what can only be termed sensory assault) it is a perfomance that
singularly fails to entertain but performs effectively by taking even the
concept of cliche off its hinges. its 'honour' involves taking avantguarde
dishonouring of theatre conventions into cliche until there really is
nothing left to be said.
i am not a situationist but definitely draw many of my influences from the
plotocal blurring of art and everyday life. i am also a little spoilt with
experiemental research so quite often, am not aiming for the audience to
like the work, it would be just as interesting, if not more so, if they
threw tomatoes, a truly Brechtian reversal re the distancing of the writer.
for example, the last piece was an attempt to make an objectile theatre, it
was a rounded space with no fixed front view and the writing emerged
co-extensively with the choreographer's morphogenesis of form and i burnt
it afterwards. in this respect, the performance was a supplement to the
performativity of making the piece, the critical writing surrounding it a
study on duration and mnmetotechics. in this specific piece, the audiences
were deliberately not the exteriority towards which the performativity of
the performance aimed but whose molecules changed it on each occasion. the
ausience did actually enjoy it but it was not made for enjoyment-it was made
to see how far some forms of movement could be moved. for me, performance is
not just something you go to see. as D points out in the Fold, the (
relative) sum of the socious issues from an elsuive performativity 'between'
practices,arts etc. arguably, entertianment is one kind of practice.
Whether you formulate your hook in terms of "let me entertain you -- please,
please" or "I hereby undertake to entertain you -- see if you can resist
me",
or some other terms, it is always a hooking.
true, poeple have to want to come, i suppose, and the perfomance needs
baiting accordingly. but how many fishers have kept the promise of their
bait?
Ruth.C
A challenge thrown to the
audience, challenging them to be hooked or to refuse to be hooked --
however one wants to play it. And the other side of the proposition,
whether
spoken or not, is always "And if you find that I haven't entertained you
properly, you can always throw tomatoes, start a riot, try to boo me off
the stage, or use any other means at your disposal to squeeze out of me
the entertainment I've failed to provide. Is it a deal? OK, let the
wrestling match begin." If this is not how you see it, how do you see it?
What other model can there be for a mutually honorable engagement between
performer and audience?
-m
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