Writing Performing/A Performative Text

...some rhetoric that insinuates that the internet will make people smarter and more literate.... Daughter, sister, niece, lover, bitch, victim, whore, student, single woman, employee, rebel, leader, group member, client, businesswoman, avatar, burlesque performer, American, white chick, bisexual, ummmmmmm are you guys just going to sit there READING about my secret identities and say nothing? What if I tell you that I am... I, not the previous I but a new I… Is there a right way of doing this? I want to understand exactly what's going on and make conscious choices throughout whatever this work is. OK, that is totally reasonable AND… I don't want to be vulnerable if I don't know where its going.

to understand exactly what's going on, and make conscious choices... are these thoughts that we all have not in direct contradiction to, and of, vulnerability? this vulnerability, for which the faceless internet gives us such an opportunity, even in the face of the abject control over our words, our appearance and physicality, over our presented identity that this technology affords us? that vulnerability of collective authorship, subsuming ourselfs within the digital pangloss, where we might hope to find ourselves... absolute control over precisely where it is that we lose control ourselves? leaves us all, maybe, superegotistical?

WS718...

thanks! we've been talking about how to push back as well... how to make the space do what it's not used to doing... one idea was to create a web of connection between posts and threads that usually only communicate within themselves... to produce resonances among the variously floating ideas, sentidos, affects, symbols. your performative text has a life here that is challenging, and it is a life that is not what it was performed in your classroom space... the image of the board shows the traces of process, like the mystic writing pad's scratches in wax... there are layers, evidence of something having happened there. But what of the chalk dust in the air, the coughing, the smell of bodies, the sounds of rubber soles across the floor, the sweat, the anxiety...

i was out of town last week. the group met without me and talked about affect, they drew diagrams on the white board, they mailed me the images...

we are thinking about performance and ethics this week, seems a heady topic, yet it is deeply informed by emotion and by the charge of "not the upper chackras, but the lower ones." There's a lot of 'feeling' going on but is that not already "territorialized" by the sense of 'what one should feel' or even the sense-making of 'what one does feel?'

then there's the realm of activism, of street protest. the flows one experiences when one is among others facing off a line of advancing police-bodies, wondering when they will charge... and this among the intermittent teach-ins or council structured strategy meetings or theory filled debriefings between actions (not to mention one constant calculus of 'what happens if i lose my job over this?')...

yes, thanks. and let's keep pushing at the boundaries of this and other spaces. . .

We meet on thursday's 3:30-6:30... maybe we could rig a connection that would link us and you and newsvine and try something again in 'real time'

On the note of ethics of performance, what are the particular ethics of this space? I've noticed that a word I chose, deliberately, to use was censored (as it was in the case of one of my classmates), ultimately altering, on whatever level, the nature of our performative text. This strikes me as odd when "bitch" is allowed on both radio and television.
-Laurel

Just wondering what happens here in this SPACE if I want to talk about my @!$%# or myself as a @!$%# or maybe call you one? Doesn't the meaning of my performance/message change if a "taboo" word is removed from my text?
- Angela

what is @!$%# means??????
-nahyun

OK, so we made the above post and know that Newsvine must have a list of "unacceptable terms" because my word was automatically replaced with "@!$%#" It makes me wonder about who is being protected from what and why certain words are apparently considered not appropriate to the kind of discourse that is "supposed to be" happening in this space. (In case, you are wondering about my word choice...it was C**U**N**T C U Next Tuesday.
- Angela

You say: Create a performative text. This has proved difficult for some and not for others. One wonders what brings on this paralysis… is it cultural, is it gender based, is it learned, is it about ego, about the fear of being crushed by others who are stronger than us? Perhaps all of the above.

I am just finishing an awesome article on the ethics of performance....an interview of Peter Sellars in PAJ that your question seems to resonate with. Sellars mentions that culture, in the sense of the images that it gives to people, can transform people towards "destruction" or "resurrection." It seems to me that knowing how to use images and representations to move others to transform towards more life, more awareness, more inclusion, more collaboration and cooperation is key.

Sellars notes that in Greek antiquity, democracy was dependent on the power of acoustics..... and that Greek theater was a listening space. Sellars advocates that we make efforts to make sure that voices are heard, included and recongnized. We need to ask ourselves in what ways can we create and sustain spaces where a diversity of voices are present.

Sellars says that in using language (as in creating your performative text?) artists may have to first re-imagine the vocabulary of debates that are taking place, thereby re-energizing the debate itself. I really like this. When apathy is present, how can we mobilize interest, emotion, thought, in ways that engage and allow for a variety of voices?

He goes on to describe the content of his work for the last 10 years as being very directly open to the spiritual. I also really like this. He sees theater as a space where humans acknowledge what the nature of their spiritual life really is (not theological, spiritual). Of course, this may entail coming to some kind of idea of what the spiritual is. In the thesis I just completed, I used an ancient Greek definition of spirituality as "that which brings awareness back to the joy of living."

The last point that Sellars makes that I really liked was empahsizing a move from the position of critique to one of creation. Moving from negative critical analysis to creating momentum, empowerment and positive forward motion. He says that critical studies has been important, but that setting oneself up as intellectual critic may not be what the world needs at the moment. I couldn't agree more. It seems this is where all the artists in the world can help us now.....(it seems that you are mobilizing the creative forces in this direction). For this he seems to think that a shared future should be addressed....asking ourselves what is shared in our culture.

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So when it's time to post, Newsvine asks: news, other? I had to pick "other" the first time. And whenever I do post on Newsvine (post-the first time) I continue to post under "other"—like I do sometimes on forms, even though my attempt at things like affect (as an art historian wanabe trying things other than formalism, *gasp*) IS news. So what is this? It's definitely "other." But other what? I signed up for a seminar, not a studio class. And I'm not an activist who likes actively acting—and disrupting things, like this space or the flow of texts. There are reasons I do NOT take studio classes. I suppose there are going to be critics for this.

I have no idea what to write. How about "Per4mative"? A number instead of a letter. That involves FORM. (I think I'm having performance anxiety. That involves the lower charkas, right?)

Sorry about lateness. I know Doug et al. had hoped for responses from P&P for Monday's class, but I've been busy reading Edward Said's "On Late Style" for my performance paper. And I was learning about Beethoven. Reading about performance. Apparently he was late for stuff, or something like tHAT. And so this is where my life and per4mative text (art?) intersect. Lateness seems appropriate.

What else…

Serendipity. Do you see that ad above? The way it is now? It keeps changing. It's a virtual paper doll with clothing options to dress it. Then it'll be the bed ad it was before, again. Or maybe another ad. And then the Zwinky ad again, maybe. (Newsvine has money to make, you know.) Hopefully, it'll be the Zwinky ad again when you read this. As the ad says now: "Drop and drag to create your own Zwinky." It's an ad that adds to this per4mANTS. It'S nEXt to Kitty's entry. Kitty says she has a Hungarian identity and a US identity. If you "click here" (above), you can give Zwinky her identity. Too bad there are only a few options for dressing Zwinky. And too many ads.

Now if you would be so kind, please click below: