Performance: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies Vol. IV

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PERFORMANCE

Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies

Edited by Philip A uslander

Volume IV

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I ONnON ANIl N I W ye lI(~:

CONTE NTS

VOLUME IV

ix

JI ck l1owledgcmenl-l'

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Idcntity and the self Fir,l pllblished 2001

by Routlcdgc

2 Park Squarc, Milton I'ark, Abingdon, Oxon, OXI4 4RN

Simllltancollsly publishcd in lhe USA and Canada

by Routlcdgc

270 Madison Ave, Ncw York NY 10016

RoUlledge is all

imprin/

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/. / n1(~ pClforming sel/

IUCIIA RD POIR1 ER

Tay/or & f'í-Imcis Grollp

Transfcrrcd to Digital I'rinting 2009

3

M~ The performing self

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Presenting and re-presenting the self: from not-actiog to acting in African performance

Edilorial matler and selection ~) 2003 Philip i\uslandcr: individu,iI olVners rclain copyright in lheir o\Vn material

22

I'RANCES IIARD1NG

Typcscl in Times by Graphieraft Limitcd. Ilong Kong A/l rights rcscrvcd. No part 01' lhis book Illay he reprinled or reprodllccd or uliliscd in any forl11 nr by uny e!cclronü.:. nlcchanical , 01' other means. now knOWH or hcrearter inventcd. induding photocopying and recording. or in any inrormation storagc or rctricval syslem , withoul pcrmission in writing from the publishcrs. Bri/ish Lihrury Ca/a/oguing il1 Puh/ica/ioll J)a/a ¡\ catalogue record for this book is availablc frol1l ¡he Britis h Libnlry U/mil}' or COl1gress Ca/(¡/ogin[: il1 PlIhlim/;ol1 J)a/a A catalog record ror lhis hook has becn n:qucsted

ISBN 0-415 -25511-2 (Set)

ISBN 0-415-25 5 15-5 (Vol lime IV)

/.2 l'erjórming idenlily 42

711 Ooiug difference CAND AC L \VES... ANI) SU SA N FE N STLRMAKL R

71

74

Prologue: pcrforming blackness

KIMBERI.Y W . BHNSTON

72 Pcrl'ormativc acts and gender constitution:

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cssa)' in phenomeoology aod I'cmioist thcory

97

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74 Pcrforming lesbian in the spllce of technology: part 1 SUE-EL LI ~N

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X4 "The eye l'inds no tixcd poin! on which to rest ..." C IIA N rA L PON TBllIA ND

C ASE

X5 l.istening to music: pcrformances and rccormngs

Visual art and performance art

163

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.l..? Pel/ór/11ll/lCe a/'ld lech/1.% gy

X6 Negotiating presence: performance aud neWtechnologies

165

75 Art and objecthood 76 The ob.iect of performance: aesthetics in the seventies

188

the space of tcchnology 2.2 Pel.!ór/11al1ce arl

381

MA 'I I' IIEW CAU SllY

X9 Thc art of interaction: intcractivity , performativity, 77 Performance and theatricaJi ty: the subject demystified

206

JOSETTE FÉ! R AL

and computers

395

DAVID '!.. SAL'!''!,

218

78 British live art

41 1

lndex

NICK KA YE

79 Performance art and ritual: bomes in performance

228

ERIKA FIS C lI ER-Ll C HT E

80 Women's performance art: feminism and postmoderuism

251

JE A NIE FORTE

81 Negotiating deviance and normativity: performance art, boundary transgressions, and social change BRITTA B.

365

STEYE T1LLlS

XX The screen test of tlle double: thc uncanny performer in

I lJi NR y SA YI{E

351

ANDRE W MlJRf'I-IIE

X7 Tlle art of puppetry in the age of media productioD

MIC II AIl L FR I ED

269

W IIJ.i EL W~

IJART 3

289

Media and technology 3. / Media lll/d m ediatizaÚol7

291

82 Fílm and theatre ::;U SA N SO NT¡\li

306

8] Thc prc."cncc of mc.'tIialion \(0( ;/' 1(

332

TIIEODORE GR ACY K

IJART 2

2./ Visual

323

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vi

VII

ACKN OW LEDGEMENT S

TIJe Publishers would like to thank tbe fol1 o wing for permission to reprint lhcir material: Oxford University Press for permission to reprint Richard Poirier, "The pcrfor1l1ing self", in TITe Perf{mning Scfl ( New Yo rk: O xford University Press, 1971), pp. 86- 111. The Massachusetts Institute of Teehnology Press for permission to reprint Frailees Harding, "Presenting éln d re-presenting the sel!': from not-acting to acting in Afriean performance" , Ti) R: 111C Jou/"I1af o/ Per/ormuncc SIl/di('\" 13(2) (1999): 11 8-135. © 1999 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Sage Publications for permlsslon to reprint Candaee West and Susan Fenstermaker, " Doing difference", Gender (f/1{1 So!:ielv 9(1) (1995): 837. f) 1995 by Sociologists for Women in Society. Taylor & Francis Ltd for permission to reprint KimbeTly W . Benston, " Pro­ logue: perfor1l1ing blackness", in Pel,!órming B!ackncss: Enaclmenls o/Af/-ican­ American Modernisl1l (London : Routledge, 20(0), pp. 1- 21 . © 2000 Kimberly W. Benston. The Johns Hopkins University Press for permission to reprint .Judith Butler, "'Perfor1l1ative acts and gender eonstitution: an essay in phenomenology and fClllinist theory", Thealre Journal 40(4) (1988): 519- 5 31. © 1989 by The .Johns Ilopkins University Press. The University of Chieago Press ror permlSSlon to reprint Susan Leigh Foster, '"Choreographics 01' gendcr" , ~'';¡gl1s 24( 1) (1998): 1- 34, © 1998 by The 1!niversity of Chieago . 1I 1

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T lle Johns I-Iopkin s Universil y Press rO l' pcrl1l ission to reprint Suc-El1en ( 'ase, " Pcri órm ing Icshian in lhe spal.!c ur I c~ lirlll ln gy : Part 1" , Thmlrc .!ollrnaf '-17( 1) ( I'N'; ); 1 IX, (,'1 1\)\)5 hy l he JIl1lllS Il llpk ins 1! ni vcrsi ly Press.

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ArrForul// ror pennission to reprint Michael F ried , ";\rt and objecthood " , ArtForum 5(10) (1967): 12- n. T he autbor and The University of Geo rgia for perrnissio n to reprint Henry Sayrc, "The object 01' performance: aesthetics in the seventies" , The Georgiü Re view 37(1) (1983): 169- 188. © 1983 by The University of Georgia. Mo dern Drama for permission tl) reprint Josette Féral, " Performance and theatricality: the subject demystified ", translated by Terese Lyons, M odern Drama 25( 1) (1982): 171 - 181. Taylor & Francis L td (www .tandf.co.uk) for pennissi on to reprin l Nick Ka ye, "B ritish Jive art" ["Live Art: D efiniti on & Documenta.tion"], Conlem­ porary Thell tre Re view 2(2) (1994): 1--7. Cambridge Univer sity Press for permission lo reprint Erika fischer-Lich te, "Performance art and rit ua l: bodies in performance", Thea lre Resmrch I nler­ l1ariol1ul 22(1) (1997): 22·-37. © 199 7 International Federation for Theatre Rescarch , published by Cambridge University Press. The Johns H opkins University Press for pcrmission lo reprint Jeanie Forte, "Women 's performance art: feminism and postmodern ism", Thealre Journal 40(2) (1988): 217--235. «J 1988 by the John s Hopkin s University Press. Canadian Scholars Prcss ror permissioll to reprint Britta .B. W heeler, "Nego­ tiating deviance and normati vity: perfomlance art, boundary transgressions, and social change", in Marilyn Corsianos and Kelly Amanda Train (eds), Inrerrogatillg Social Juslice: Po!iúcs, Culture, anc! !dentity . (Toronto: Cana­ dian Scholars' Press , 1999), pp . 155- 179. © 1999, the editor and contributors.

K NOW 1. 1':1)(; r M EN TS

The Massachusclts Institute of T echnology Press for permission to reprint Steve Tillis, "The art of puppetry in the agc 01' media production", TD R : T he .Iol//"/wl uf Per/"ormance Sil/dies 43(3) (1999): 182- 19 5. © 1999 New Yo rk ti nivcrsity and the M assachusetts Institule of Teclmology. The .Iohns Hopki.ns University Press for permission to reprint Matthew ('ausey , "Screen test of the double: the uncanny performer in the space of tcchnology" , Thealre ] ourna! 51(4) (1999): 383-:194. © 1999 by Thc Johns Ilopkins Universi ty Press. Blackwell Publi shers for permission to re print David Z. Saltz, " T he aft of interaction: interactivity, performativity, a nd computers" , The Journa! o/ /lesrhetics and A rt Criticism 5(2) (1997): 117- 127. © 1997 T be America n Society for Aesthetics.

Disclaimer The publishers have made every effort to contact autllOrs/copyright holders 01' works reprinled in Per{ormante: Critica! COl1cepls in Lilerary and Cultural ,.. '. ruclies. This has not been possible in every case. however, and we would we1come correspondence from those individuals/companies who we have bl:en unabJc to trace .

Note Photographs induded in the original books I articles have not been reprinted I1cre.

T he f)ram a Rel'ieH' for permission to reprint Susan Sontag, " Film and thea­ tre " , The Drama ReJ'iew 11(1) (1 966): 24 ~ 37 . © 1966 Th e Drama Review . Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology Press for permission to reprint Roger Co peland, "The presenee of mediation '" Tf)R: The Journal of Per/órmance S rudies 34 (1990): 28 ~ 44.~) 1990 New York University ami lhe Massachu­ setts Lnstitute of Technology . Moc!ern f)rama ror permission lo reprint Chanta J Pon tbria nd , "T he eye finds no fixed poin t on which to rest . . .", translated by C. R. P arsons, Modan f)rama 25( 1) (1982): 154 - 162. Blackwell Publishers for permission to reprint Theodore G racyk , "Listening to music: performanees a nd reeordings", The Journal qf Aeslhelics Clnd Ar! Crilicism 55(2) ( 1997): 139- 151. © 1997 T he American Sociely for Aestheties. Luton University ror pennission lo reprint ;\nd rew Murphie, "Negotiating prescn cc: perfo rma nce ¡,¡nd ncw lcdlllo logic~ ", in Ph ili p Ilaywa rJ (ed.), Cu/­ rl/r('. "[á/molo.'!,\' ,,~ ('/'I'a ¡¡" llirl'. ( LonJ~IO ' John Lihh"y, 1'.1990 ), pp. 209 226. 1/" )\)1)0 Jol1 11 Ubl1l'v IIIU.I ( 'tllllPOl IlY I tJ . \1



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68

THE PERFORMING SELF

Richard Poirier S""l n~: Richard Poiricr. Tlle Pe~/ormillg Selj; Ncw Yo rk: O x:fo rd Univcrsily Prcss. 1971 , pp . X(, 11 '1.

111 illustrating what I mean by " the performing self " 1'11 be coneerncd m ostly with Robert Frost, Norman Mailer, and Henry James. I could almos! as prolitably consider the se\f as performance in Byron, in Yeats, or in Law­ Il'lICC, and 1'11 have something to say about Andrew Marvell as well as Thoreau . So that I'm less sure of the signifieance of all three 01' my principal illustrations bcing American than of the faet that each of them is of an l::\trcme if different kind 01' arrogance. Whether it be confronting a page of Ihcir own writing, an historieal phenomenon like the assassination of Robert Kcnnedy. a meeting with Khrushcbev, or the massive power of New York ( 'ity - all three treat any occasion as a "scene" or a stage for drama tizing the sdt' as a performer. I can ' t imagine a scene of whatever terror or pathos in which they would not at every step in their accouot of it be watching and 1l1casuring their moment by moment participation. And their participation would be measured by powers of rendition rather than by efforts of under­ standing: since the event doesn't exist except in the shape they give it, what dse should they be anxious about? I t's performance that matters pacing, ccnnomies, juxtapositions, aggregations of tone, the wholc condllct of the shaping presence. Ir this sounds rather more brutal than we imagine writers or artists to be, then that is becallse performance partakes 01' brutality. As hlwin Denby points out, dancing on points is an extraordinarily brutal - he uscs the word savage- business, regardless of the communicated effect of gracc and beauty. We can \carn a great deal "bout art by telling the dancer frorn the dance. Dancers thcmselves do; and \vriten, are always more anxious Ihan are their critics to distinguish between writing as an act and the book nI' pllem . Indccd . h Nl'l t '

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anyone have a good time with what it cost mc tun 1Tl1lch agony, how could thcy? W hat do I want to communicate but what a he/! 01' a good time I had writing it? T he whole thing is performance and prowess and feats 01' associ­ ation . Why don 't critics talk about those things- what a feat it was to turn that that way, and what a reat it was to remember that. to be reminded or lha t by this? Why don ' t they talk about that? Sco ring. You've got to SCo re. T hey say not but you 've got to score, in all the rea lms- theology, politics, astro­ nomy, history and the co untry Jife around yo u." In his list of " realms" wherein poetic " prowess" or "scoring" is exercised , there is cOIl SpicUOllsly a division rather than any confusi o n among them, and this self-restraining kind of discrimination extends even to a di visio n between the etTect ofthe poem a nd the efTect ofw riting it. IJ t he poem expresses grief, it also expresses- as an ac[ , as a co mposition. a performa nce, a " mak ing."­ the opposite 01' grier; it shows or expresses "what a he!! of a good time I liad writing it." This is a difficult distinction for /110s t critics to grasp, appare ntl y. It is what Yeats means when he says that "Tlamlet a nd Lear are gay"- " Ir worthy their prominent pan in the play, " H arnlet ami Lear, either on the t heatrical stage or the historical one, "do not break up their line~ to weep, " F rost would not have needed Yeats since he had Emerson, who could write in "The Poet" that "a n irnaginative book renders us rnuch more service at first, by stimulating us through its tropes, than afterwards when we arrive a t the precise sense 01' the autho!". " This is the sarne Emerson whose co mments on human suffering were sometirnes tougher than anything even F rost could sayo Ernersonian idealizations ofhuman power and energy in action , like any fascination for the purity 01' human performa nce, tend to toughen artists far more, 1 suspect, than we'd like to believe. " People grieve and bem oan themselves," he writes in "Experience," "but it is not halfso bad with lhem as th ey sayo There are rnoods in which we court suffering, in the hope that here at least we shall find reality , sharp peaks and edges oftruth. But it turns out to be scenepainting and counterfeit. The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallo\V it is. That , like all the rest, plays about the surface, and never introduces me into the reality, for contact with which we \Vould even pay the costly price 01" sons and lovers ." I\n equivalent toughness, along with some of Eme rson's faith in huma n enterprise, informs a letter from Frost to an obscure American poet named Kirnball Flaccus. A n indifference, even a disdain for any preoccupation with social conditions, co-exists in the letter with a concern for the pri macy 01' personal perforrnance. It is significant that Frost at the same time recognizes that nothing he can do as a " perfolmer" can have much relevaoce to th e shapc 01' society. His seeming callous ness, like Jamcs's persistent relish for the " pi ct uresque" (orten mea nin g h uma n misery unde r gla-;s). is in parto at least, der ived fro m a feeling abo ut the essc ntial irn: lcvancc or litcrature lo the mO Vl:lllenls 01" uaily li fe , ll1Ul.: h k ss those 01' Iil l'}''': :;l)l'i :t1 lll'gil lJislIlS. Wh ic h la kes me lúr a mOf1ll: nlln a Iil o re llellera l rOill l. llill ll l'l 'y 111:11 li ll!rary tl::Ich t!rs 1,

,i ll': I'I: R H )H.MINCl SEII '

:lnd cntlcs sh ou ld stop flatteri ng the illlportance 01' th eir occu pations by hreast beating about the fact that literature and th e hUlllan ities did not sOlllehow prevent, say, The Bomb or the gas chambers. They had nothing to do with either one, shouldn't have, couldn't have, a nd the notion that they did, has been prompted only by self-serving d rea llls 01' the power of literature or of being a literary critic: the drea m of the teacher who g radually confuses Iris trap ped audienee of students with the general public. The value of a leHer like Frost 's is that jt helps clea nse us of pretensions ami vulgarities abo ut the political power 01' litera tu re, eveo whilc affirming the personal power that can be locked into it. "My dear Flaccus: The book has come and I ha ve read you r poems first. They are good. They have loveliness- they surely have that. They are carried high. What you long for is in them . You wish the world better th a n it is, more poetical. You are that kind of poet. 1 would rate as the other kind.1 wo uldn' t givc a cent to see the world , the U nited Sta tes or even New York much better. I want them left just as they are for me to ma ke poetical on papel'. I don 't ask anything done to them that 1 d on't d o to them myself. I ' m a mere selfish artist llIost orthe time. I have no quarrel with the matt;rial. The grief will be simply ir I can't transmute it into poems. I don ' t want the world made sarel' for poetry or easier. To hell withit. That is its own lookout. Let it stew in its o wn materialismo No, not to hell with it. Let it hold its position while r do it in art. My whole anxiety is ror myself as a performe.r. Am I any good? That's what l'tI like to know and all 1 need to know." Frost's distioction- between those poets who want to make the world poetical and those like himself who are content to reform it only on papel' -suggests why ht calls Marx a " polemical " and not a " poetical" Jew for "working up the metaphor" that transformed the political life 01' the twen­ ticth century. As a poet, Frost comments on the "poetical strangeness" of Marx not having been "overawed by the metaphol' in voglle," and this is , not accidentall y, what Frost often felt about his own eareer. But the analogy hetween Frost and Marx would hold in Frost's mind only for comparative pcrformances, not at a ll ror comparative res lllts. You do no{ "score" in o ne rl'alm by "scoring" in another, and the presumption that yOll do may mean tlrat you truly " score" in none at all, as sorne 01" our currently distinguished topical novelists \ViII eventllally discover. This tough self-knowlcdge makes Frost watchful 01' himsclf as a performer in his poetry and wry about himself as a sage for the world- as someone who can rest on the reslllLs 01' perform­ ance. Leavin g the world to stcw in its own materialism doesn ' t mean that he won ' t use the world; it means that he sees no way it might use hirn . llenee, his rdiccnce ami contempt, his playfulness about worldly wisdom or even other­ wllrldl y wj::¡Jo m. In Iris sKcrt.icisrn ,tbOUI lhe pOWCI 01' lil crature and his delight in his pn lWI!~S as .1 wrilCr. Fnl~ 1 rcrn':s\" l\ I:o. iI l'Ll lll plil:at ed aspl'ct 01' the sel f as a Iwrl'p nll l: 1 wlt id l call be I'lII' lltL:1 1.:111\.' 1":11\· L N l 'I'I' y "N I> 1'1 11 ' SI' I ¡:

and with A ndrcw Ma rvdl aJld by t11cl1 contrasting all thrcc to a type differ­ ently illustratcd by Norman Mailer and I kmy Ja mes (1 take it as understood that 1 am trying to describe insta nces of a problem rather than trying to write any kind of as yet recognizablc literary history .) Frost. Thoreau, Marvell , Mailer, James-a1\ of them are preoccupied with the possibl e conjunc tions of ads of poetic with acts of public. sometimes even political power. But in MaiJer we have the case 01' a writer who rea lly beLieves that when he is " working up the metaphor" he is involved in an act of historical as well as o f self-transfonnation. " 1 am imprisoned with a perceptioll ," he has told US, "which wil\ settle fo r nothing less than making a revoluti on in the conseious­ ness of our time," and it is ind ica ti ve of wh at I' m saying about him here th at he is not " imprisoned in a perception ," for so a mere mortal would ordinaril y put it, but "with " one, both lodged in a prison lhat must be as la rge as it is mysterious in its location. In his desi re to literaüze his own hyperboles, Mailer is lcss a twen lieth-cenluly than a Renaissancecharacler, a Tamburlaine. a Coriol a nus. even Milton's Satan. As Thomas Edwards lucidly demonstrates in h is ncw book Imagina­ tion (lnd Power, all these figures have some d ifficulty distinguishing the energy of their personal performance as shapers of a world in words from that energy we might call God, the difference being that God got there firs t and is stabilized in forms called rcality, naturc, the world. To help distin­ guish between Satanic performers, on lhe one ha nd, ami performers Iike Frost, on the other, think of the matter of staging. For the one, all the world is literally a stage ami all the men and women mercly players o r, if you're a writer of this disposition, directors. Some critics are 01' this disposition , too. speaking o f al\ things as flction s and thercby questioning the legit­ imacy of di sting uishing novels from history , as if history were eq ual\y ficti ve. F or the other, the type of host, Thorcau , or Marvell , the world amI its people do not as often seem a specie 01' fiction; they seem , to use an old­ fashioned word , " real " . and even when they do seem no more than fiction s then the fictions are of a different status than those endowed by literature or by writers. At the very least Frost's kind of writer wants to make a distinction between the stage which is the world and those other stagcs that take up some space on it , with cUI·tains amI covers, under the names of plays amI poems amI novels. Marvell is especially sophisticated abollt these matters. He announces himself as an actor and scene-maker within a poem dcsigncd also to excite the envy of those actors trying to " ma ke it," in quite another sen se of lhe term , on lhe stage orthe world . He seems to say to them: since you are looking for "the palm , the oak , or ba ys," unl ess of course I take you too litcralJy (or you take yo urselr loo Iitera ril y). come to lhe ga rden, whc re yOU Gél n fi nd a ll these and mo re. " \JI' cOllccptualizing gender within the burgeoning literature on the topic: 11) ;IS Sl!X dillerellces. (2) as sex roles , (3) in relation to the mínority status 01' \\ "IlI~IJ. and (4) in rclation to Ihe caste/class status of women. H ochschild .,/l"C I VCS Ihat cach (JI' these conccptuali1.ations Icd to él differen t perspcctive 11 11 I he hdla víors ul' womc n and mc": W h; 11 is In lype I

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1,Icial catcgories is considerably more difficult than noting the e/ea,.

"illlllf..!ical dif(erences distinguishing females from males ... \Vomcn

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In p utti ng forth this pcrspcctivc, \Ve ho pe to advancc a nc\V way 01' think­ i ng about gendcr , race, and class, namely, as ongoing, methodical, a no situated accom pli shments. W e h ave tried to d emonstrate the usefulness 01' thi s perspectivc for unoe rstandin g how people expe riem:e gender, race, class simultaneously. We have also tried to ill ustrate the implications of this pcrspective fo r reconceptualizing " the prob lem 01' di ffere nce" in fcmin isl theory. What are the implications of our ethnomethodological perspective for a n understanding of rela tions among gender, race, émd class? F irst and perha ps most important, conceiving of these as ongoing accomplishments means that we can llot determine their releva m;e to soci al aclion apart rrom the contexl in w hic h lhey a re accomplished (F enstermaker, W est, and Z immerman 199 1; Wcst .,"tI Fens termaker 1993). Whil e sex category, race category and class categoryare potentially omnirelevant to social lite , individual s inhabit m any differcnt identities, and these may be stressed or muted , depending on th e situalion. F or example, consider the following incident described in detail by Patricia Wi lliams, a law professor who, by her own admission , " Ioves to shop" and is known among her students for her "ncat clothes":1 4

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11'\1, salicllce, C1nú center shin ('rom in tcrad ion to interaction, but al1 operate 11 Jt ~' 1 dependen tly .

())' l'llllrSe, this is on1y the beginning. G ender, race, and c1ass are only three 11I\'ans (although certainly very powerful ones) of generating difference and

Looking specifica lly a t American fami ly Ji fe in the nineteell tb centLlry. Bonnie Thornton DiII (1988) slIggests that being a poor or working-'ocie/y 6: 30 I - 12. SonIa Clara Valle.v. Ithaca , NY: Cornell U niversity Press. Langston , Donna . 1991. Tired of playing monopoly? In CllOnging ollr pOll'er: .4n I ,illlmerman. Don H. 1978. Ethnomethodology . American Sociulogi.I·1 IJ: 6- 15. inlrodl/clio/1 lo Il'OlI1e/ú' sll/dies, 2d eJ., edited by Jo Whiteh o rse Cochran , Donnél I.inn, Max.ine Baca. 1990. Family. feminism and race in America. Gender & Socie/v Langston , and Carolyn Woodwa rd. D ubuquc. lA : KendalI- ll unt. 4: 68 82 . Linton . Ralph. 1936. Tlle sludy ofman . NeVv Yo rk: A pplcto n-CcnlUry. / iTlIl. M axine Raca , Lynn We ber Cannon, El izabeth Tligginbo th am , and Bonnie Lopata , Helen a Z.. and Barrie Thorne. 1987. 00 lhe terlll "se.' r" lel> .. Slgn.l' · ./011/'11(/1 Tho rnlon Dill. 1986. T he costs 01' exclusionary practices in women's studies. Signs: o( WO/l/('// ill Culture amI Soóel y 3: 718 21. ./O/lfll((1 WOII/('II in Cullure (lnd ..'>"";('/.1' 11: 2l)()- 303 . M,,"I;I)!.II.

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I first heard this Dick Gregory tale \Vhen growing up in Chicago in the I 960s. Now, Gregory told the sto ry to our p redominantly black high school audi­ ence with an undertone of sardonic bittemess al its implil: it dicholomy of blackness and Iiteracy. At the s(lmc lime (lnd no JO ll h t ( , lqWI)' had this too in milld \.Ve recogni zed hu mor in the dclicil1l1s ¡roo}' \1 1,1 vil'''' IJillrn p h \l yc r

lit,' ¡lIlCllatill g lI.:cllllol\lgy 01' orlicialdol\\: 111\: Iricbter \w er the chump, the 11I psl e l ()Ver the Man . W ith pcrhaps too IiUle appreciation 01' Gregory's Ulllt iOlwry tOlle (or 01' his a ppended maxim: "Get from the playground to the I'lIlvillg-gro und " ) the tale made the sandlot rounds for many months, and "VCII ir \Ve used to speak 01' Earl-the-Pearl and Chet Walker instead 01' Midlacl Jordan, i( answered exultantly to some rebellious need we all felt a s WI.: lTawled our \Vay through the labyrinthine nightmare of u rban educatiollal Ih:cay. We imagined that its strategies of indirectioo and displaeement were 11~

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As if deli berate1y reversing the iUusi o nary. demate ria lizi ng movement of humanist metaphysics - that movemen l of cancellatio n and co ncealment by which an irreducible expressive open ness is emptied out ¡nto an essential pro priety - EUison irollicaUy displ aces "whi le mytbology's" fable of the ori gin witil a story of the beginning-as-bl ackness. A t that begi n ning, the passage suggests. we fi nd enacted a ser ies ol' com plex differentes and disloca­ tions , first im1 apparent. I\nd yet, one is cOl llpd l ~'tI (¡l live in a world in which 1.'\'lIdl'" cl lllslilulC' univocal signific r:-.. ill \\ 111111 1'~' l\der is stabi1ized, polarized, 1¡'I Hk ll:d discrcte and inl r ccdu rc, all J huye ch';¡r1 v hl.' l1, ' IiI ~tI !'mJ1l 111\):)1.: arl a l y~~'·. My " Idy \:\l IlCCrn is lhal

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sex ual di 1fl·...CIICl' 11Ilt bccnll1c a rdlicatiol1 whidl uJ1wiltingly preserves a hinary rcstriLlillll on gender identity and S and 1'01' the seU'.. lahdl'd . I l'iulsvc r:;dy h ui urgc ntl y rcprescntational placarded body of del1'lo/1­ sl/'alio/l. " In otller words. the "livc" body is performativc when "self-placarded Iinl dl'nHJIlstration ." Tlle hard-woll "visibility" of ¡\CI UP demonstrations ha s spurred critics such as Scdgwick to account for such activism by \\'riting theories dependent 011 some not ion 01' the subculture. Sedgwick's sense of the " self- placarded" admits agency and the visible , while semiotizing it. To those famili ar with the standard praeticcs 01' agit-prop theatre , or the Brechtian notíon of " distanciation ," ¡\eT u p's strategies and Sedgwick's representa tion of them do not secm to diverge from nllmerOllS historieal models . The Breehtian Iradition of political thcatre has long regarded any modes of suturing as cmpathetic st ructures that retain mystified c1ass relations. thus rendering cvery performing body a placarded demo nstration of social gesture- either complicit with dominant praetices, oro in Brechtian Epic practices, a chal­ Icnge to the status quo. However, what Sedgwick identifies as the qucer­ specific mode 01' performativity is one catalyzed by "shame ," distinguishin g it from those propelled into representation by other mechanisms 01' oppres­ sion, such as dass relations in the Brechtian model. Unlike the material rclations of dass. the catalytic relation of "shame" to "performativity" estab­ lishes a bridge betwecn interna l dynamics and the order 01' the visible. This crossing of the internal/external divide may pro vide the key contriblltion 01' "queer" to "performativity" which has made the compound so inviting to theorists in recent years. Diana Fuss, in he r introduetion to the inftucntial anthology, inside/out, mark s this relati on as the signatllre of new critical practices 7 We will see, in a later discllssion. just how this works along the contested borders of the visible and wrilin g. Yet Sedgwick only passingly admits demonstrations into her discussion. She ultimatel y settles upon Henry .Iames's Prefaces in the New York Edition of his work as the prime site of ¡x:rformativity. Before addressing the consequences of Sedgwick 's return to writing, I want to inculcate Butler's use 01' " queer performativity" to explore just how reading amI writing have been made to overtake traditional notions of per­ l'onnance . In "Critically Queer," Buller emphasizes that " there is no power. l'l)nstrued as a subjeet, that acts , but only a reiterated aeting that is power in ils persistence and instability."g Butler's Illission is to evaeuate notions ofthe \ uhjcct/agcllcy from within the systelll ofperformativity. She emphasizes that "Perfonnativity . then. is to be read not as self..expression or self-presentation, huI as the ul1anticipated resignifiabi1ity of highly invested term5. "9 Butler l'Ol1tinues , wúr king from J. L. Auslin . to locate such performativity within :;tudics of spccch acls, assc rting thal : " pcrt'onnative aets a re forllls ofauthor­ il a live "pcol.:h." Rcframin g Ihe operalilllls 01' "qucer" wi thin th ose 01' " per­ l,um 1" force ami oppositioll 01 ~ ( . l yllb i li(y and va riahilily , lVi/hin perfonnativity.1O The term "queer," opcrating within these paramelers provides the solution to earlier conundra Butler identified in her in fl uential article " Imitation and Gender Subordination ," in which she problem atizes the rubric "Iesbian theory. " "Lesbian ," as connoting sexual practice causes her: To install myself within the terms of an idcntity category [which] would be to turn against the sex uality that the category purports to describe; and this might be true for any identity category which seeks to control the very eroticism that it c1aims to describe and author­ ize , m uch less "Iiberate" .... For it is always finally unclear what is mcant by invokin g the lesbian-signifier, since its signification is always to some degree out of one's control. but also bccause its specificity can only be demarcated by exclusions that return to di s­ rupt its c1aim to coherence. '1 For Butler, " Iesbian ," as an identity, is overdetermined by hcterosexuality. It is actual1y produced by homophobia , articulates the (by definition) unarticulable in its c\aim to scxuality, is both "o ut of contro\" for those rea­ sons, and oppressive in drawing exc\usionary borders of specificity. "Queer" evacuates the fulsomc problema tic of "Iesbian" to operate as an unmarkcd interpellation, thus avoiding that exc\usionary speciticity. "Queer" occurs within "performativity" which Butler, in the earlier artic\e, defines as evacuating "performance" by denying "a prior and voli­ tional subject." In fact, as she would have it, "performative " "constitutcs as an cffect the very subject it appears to express. "12 O nlike Sedgwick's sense of performativity, Butler's sets out to contradict traditional agit-prop or Brechtian theatrical strategies that encourage actors and spectators alike to imagi ne themselves as an agent of change. Butler gives over that agency to a "reiteratcd acting that is power in its persistence and instability. ... a nexus 01' power and discourse that repeats or mimes the discursivC' gest ures 01' power."" She insists that the subject is merely a product 01' such iterations: Where there is an "1" who utters or speaks ... there is first a discourse which precedes and enables that "1 " . ... Indeed , I can only say '"1" to the extent that I have first been add ressed, and that address has mobilized my place in speech; paraJ ox i..:al1y , the Jiscllrsi\'c eondi­ ti on of social recogni tion ¡Jrf'{'ede,\' {/l1d con di/ ¡/11I,I' I he fOl'lna Iion nI' the su bjccl. 14

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What happens when critics of "Iive performance" attempt to accommodate this new sense of perfonnativity and its privileging of print culture? Posi­ tioned at the intersection of the realm 01' the visible with the "live," \Vithin a lradition that roregrounds the body and resists recording technologies. such as the camera or print, perrormance seems unable to partake in the strategies 01' performativity. In aooressing perrormativity, the critics of " live perform­ ance" oetail a clear axis of oependencies along the notions of " performativity ," "quecr," ano the realm orthe visible in relation to that ofwriting. They must discover a \Vay in which to rio the " live" 01' the contamination of " presence" ano install writing at the scene of visible action . Not all performance critics have becn seduced by queer performativity , Janelle Reinelt, in " Staging the Invisible: The Crisis of Visibility in Theatr­ ical Representation ," ioentifies one danger inhcrent in these operations of performativity. Reinclt challenges Hutler' s arguments for their extraction 01' visibility ano ioentity politics from theatrical prodllction . Moreover, she concludes that Butler' s only notion 01' political action , to pcrturb the system, is a oangerous onc. She argues that the notion of subversion , by aboicating any clear program for change, offers what secms to be a subversi on 01' the dominant order, but in fact lea ves hegemonic cooes of visibility in place. Reinelt deems the subvcrsive strategy "theological ," operating on the " blind raith " that once the dominant system is perlurbeo , the hold of the hcgemonic will somehow give way and the lot of oppresscd people in the system will be improveo. Reinelt qllotes one example of Butlcr's leap of raith: "Subversive­ ncss is not somethin g that can be gaugeo or calculateo . In raet, what I mean by subversion are those effects that are incalcLllable ." 2~ In oroer to illustrate her point to the contrary , Reinelt describes ho\V a cross-genoer, cross-racial casting 01' the character 01' Betty, in Caryl Church­ ill 's Cloud Ninc, serveo to reminize markers of race in challenging those 01' gcnder. Reinclt oescribes the audience's laughter when the colonial, white C1ive kisses thc African-American male actor playing Betty, as celebrating 1he reminization of the African-American man in white, colonial practices . 1n t his case, perturbing gender roles by cross-gender casting does not destabilize tltl~ genucr and racial markers; instead , it reinscribes the negative way in wltieh markl'rs 01' genoer and race are used against one another in dominant practil'cs. In spilc 01' pcrtw'balions 01' the system. the traoitional codes reas­ snt thcmsclvcs. Likewise, Reincl t a rg ucs, Butler':; ana lysis of the fil m P ari.l' ;.1' /lllfl/;I/g, whidl ló c lIscs 0 11 Vcn uo; Xl ra vaga ni'a as a subjcct who "repeats and tllillteS k ¡.!il im aling lI ()rms hy \V ll u.: h 1I tl sdl' has hccn ucgraueJ, " actual1y

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The lingering problem for H a rt, which had been abandoned by the textual rctllrn effected by Butler and Sedgwick , is in the realm of what is seen- the " mea!" (JI' the matter. Hart is stilllooking at live performance. I-I o wever, she linds that such visibility " risk(s) rein stating a melaphysics of substance in urder lo maintain él political perspective that can be referred to as lcsbian. "25 '·S ubstance. " once the base of a materialist critique in contradietion to an csscntialist one, no\\', associated with visibility and identity, ri sks csscnti­ alislll by turgidly resisting the psychoanalytic strategy of positing "sexual suhjectivilies." Han would not "see" the eontarninaled meal 01' lhe material, nor ils d o uble, identity, y Cl she will con tinue lo look ln rcm a in a spí:cta toT. 1r sI l!: will not risk lhe sig hl 01' Icsbian idl'l1 fify , w ba l I.'oll ld -;111': ... ce? F o llow ing in lhe Bll ltcri an llIoJe, Ilar l aclua lly ma ll ;¡gcs 1\1 ,(:~, II I¡' hilla ry Ihe stash Ih e nule lhal mns Ih lllllgh Sha w anJ WI.':lvl: 'l.; 1111 [( 1I11 ~'lI l1 tll.' tn h.- pla yill g.

BuLd1/ku llll( is 1111 hlllgt'r a way lo llIakc " h.-sbian " visihle, with its markin g nr \:xpericm:c alld hislory; ralhcr, 1'01' J lar!, bulch/lCmme performance pro vides a "challcnge lloJ the conslruclion 01' the heterosexual/homosexual binary , adultí:rating the first term and foregrounding the productioll 01' the second tcrm."26 Putting it another \Vay , lesbian visibility gives way to lhe visibility 01' the production of the binary. The spectalor effects seeing the strllctllration of relalionships. This new brand 01' structuralism , coming full circle from the kind 01' cssentialist charges once levelled at its tradition (think of Claude Levi-Strauss 's \York on face painting in Triste Tropique and the reception of it as essentialist), reorganizes the visible. Valiantly , while arguing with visibility politics. H a rt resists the term " queer. " Oscillating between the two strategies 01' lesbi an visibility and queer per­ formativity, Hart's argument slips through several posi tions, as she pro poses "lesbian desire," the ability of spectators to "see lesbians," and " lesbian subjectivity." Ha rt finally arrives at lhe solution in retaining both thc visible, the live, and its evacuation in the notion of a " hallucination " of 1csbian within the "s pecular econollly." What Hart has accomplished by the revision is this: subjective processes have been empowered to absorb the realm of the visible. Hart resolves the initial dilelllma between visiblelidentities and inter­ nal , discursive functi o ns by empo\Vering the latter to swallow up the former. Once firmly on the ground of slIbjectivities, through the notion of hallucina­ tion, Hart can actually "see" Shaw and Weaver prod uce the binary . Finally free of the axis of visible/identity/body/live through her unique blending of Lacan with Butler, Hart can writ e abollt a lesbian performance. Withollt recourse to a written text for the move, that is. withollt reading a playscript, but remaining tllned to five performance, hallucination all ows Hart to textualize what seems to " mean " outside 01' linguistic systems. She can employ the master narratives of writin g -·the internal "o ut" available within psychoanalytic discoursc. Hart can then make the return to writing that Sedgwick and Butler effccted in their notions 01' performativity, whilc seemingly retainin g a focus on live performance. Hart has overcome the way in which perform a nce has traditionally per­ lurhed the interpretive powcr of print. After a]] , critics 01' theatre, dance, and mllsic are familiar with th e lon g, precarious tradition of writil1g arts criticismo Yel , within current critical debates, the contestation between lhese two orders seellls lo have overrlln the borders 01' the traditional dispute. The obsession with thc performative aspect of writing, from within many critical qllarters, marks a reconfiguration of strategies through which print may once again claim thc produetion of meaning for the reallll of the visual and the active. hlah1ishing writing as performativc both admits its limit amI reestablishes its dominallce. In terms of performance, it becomes the victory of lhe speetator ovcr lhe pcrformanc\! lhe o lJ id iom " heauty is in the eye of the beh older" beco llles cOlIslil\lli ve and all-cl1l bmcinj? in I.his new formula . Performance is m atk lo yield l/l is precise poi lll

1'10

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In contrast to Reinelt 's skepticislll ahollt polilics witholll prograllls, or outside referents, Lynda J lart 's recent work seeks to reconcile lhe notions 01' pcrforlllativity \Vith the vi sible reaJIll of " Iive" performance. The terms queer amI performativity offer a direct challenge to Hart, who, p reviously, ha:; written within a tradition 01' critica.! aecounts 01' "performing lesbian ." While she does nol evacuate the term " lesbian, " she does attempt to Illove it !'rom its traditional context ofvisibility politics to function more like the term "q ueer " in regard to performativity. Yet the retention of "Iesbian " causes an oscilla­ tion between the two systelllS that Han cannot quite resolve. Her solutionlies in adding Lacan to the formulation. Ha rt begins her artide "I dentity and Seduction: Lesbians in the Main­ stream" by addressing the tra ditional question: how does a lesbia n look or aet like one? In a consideration of a butch/femlllc performance by Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver, the performing duo that has catalyzed most theoriza­ tion in the field, Hart aligns the term " Iesbian" with the polities ofvisibility, as tainted by essentia.!ism. Yet, rather than situate "queer" as the correction to this traditional sense of " Iesbian visibility," Hart posits psychoanalytic theory : According to such responses, Weaver and Shaw were unsuccessful in presenting thelllselves as lesbians. But what is this "something-to­ be-seen " that is presumed to be so crucial to the political project? Why do we always assume that visibility always and everywhere has a positive sociopolitical value? Visibility politics, the dominant agenda of gay and lesbian aetivislll, dashes with psychoanalytical con­ structions of sexual subjectivities. The former 's assertion of identity politics is unraveled by the latter's destabilizing identificati o ns . ~4

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Wh¡; rl:as slIch lh:ha ll:S o ve !' w r i 11111' '' I .. h; 11 1 1q!l ll d 111 pl:1f'ormalll'l: m ay rcside in lhe subtcxt 01' thl: aho ve crilics, I'cggy l' lil' lulI . 111 Ihe chapkr (JI' hl:r book Ul1l11orked.. cntitlcd "The O nlol ogy 01' I'crfll rtl lancc" din.:clly adurcsscs this struggle. After sctting out lhe familiar dlarges: "Performance implicates the rcal through the presence ofliving bodies" ami " Jive performance plunges into visibility,"27 Phelan situates these critical problem $ with performance at the sitc of writing. First , she notes that "To attempt to write about the undocumcntable event of performance is to invoke the rules 01' the written document and thereby alter the event itself. ,,18 She then reverses the direction of the critique, however, to lead her argument back to writing as performative:

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The sllpp tel11enl is Ihe gazc , wh ich is constil lll eu l hllllll, ll c:l sl ration and the invisihle genilals lit' 11l\' llI o tlle!'. As P hclu ll !lllt' 11 , ~L'l'i ll f' is lhe Ica r 0 1'

hlillu tless: 1'111\11.llillll. ThwlI glt a L.acalliall m. Yllllll'l)nic lúrlllulation . sight, tlll.': bod y. anJ perlúnIlance bccol11e the silc rOl' loss.lack. and disappearance: 12 As Ihe hudy atlains subjcctivity through the promise of disappearance, the allxiolls cyc wriles perl'ormativity - securing for writing that same promise of uisappcarance, freeing it from its fetters as a recording device. Likewise, the critical/political role Phclan assigns to performance is that 01' "radical negativity."'l As she sees the blindfolded An gelika Festa hang from the pole 01' the binary. effectively resistin g being "absorbed by history" and the affects 01' representation , Phelan 's writing "mimics" that contingency and negativity , promising a fulsome discursive marking of the " unmarked. " 130th writing and the booy actively access their incapacities, mediated by "articulale eyes"14 whose enunciations are, as Butler would propose, " sub­ verted." Phelan celebrates the endstations orthe engines ofwriting and seeing, otTering up. a political and performative, blindness and the unmarked. what Reinelt has pointed out in Butler as " blind faith " in the eff'ects of subversion as a radical potential. Phelan thus distinctly addresses the issues emanating from the contestation between performance and writing. Yel she shifts con­ testation to homology , "rnimicry," insisting writing is both unlike and like performance, when caught in the Symbolic web of Lacanian principIes. By dis-abling both, she retains both in terms of one another. Accordingly , " queer performativity" and its concomitant charge 01' essen­ tialism serve to bring together several different orders of isslles and to reflect anxieties around several diffen:nt key points: self.. referentiality has overcome an argument that .vould set determiJling referents outside its O\\'n syrnbolic system , identity and visibility politics have been replaced with unmarked interpellations into sueh sym bohc systems. and the body and the order 01' lhe visible have been subsumed by writing ano the order 01' prinl. "Queer per­ l'ormativity," in withdrawing from these arguments has not only evacuated the sites for certain debates but has successfully isolated the various elements from one another. Accompanying these absorptive strategies, is the alteration in the critical st udy 01' performance rrol11 a perspective based on the practice to one based on its reception. Hart, Phelan , and others, actually write out the position 01' Ihe spectator. For those versed in the history of critical writing on perform­ ance in this century, the shift is a crucial one. The early exemplars of perform­ ance criticism were written by practitioners, with an eye toward produclion: Antonin Artaud 's Theulre uml/ls Douhle , Peter Brooks' s Thc Emply Spu('c, (irotowski's J/1e POOl' Thealer , Herbert Blau's 111e ImfJossihlr: Thealer , and 01' course. the critical works of Bertolt Brecht and Heiner M üller. Each prac­ litioner imagined Ihe ground of the theatre in terms of how it embodied the agonislic positions. appearances. and gestures of their communities or 01' llu.:ir hislo rica l. social m oments. Artaud went in sean;h 01' collective enaclmen ts lo l1a li nese a lld T arahuma ril IlI dian ri tual prHclices in order to discover the tllas,",s lll' Ihl.' ago ll hc twccn 1111.' P\!fccpl lhlc ¡¡ nd Ihe imperceptible: the theatre

15

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Thc challenge raised by the ontological c1aims 01' performance for writing is to re-mark again the performative possibilit ies of writing itself. The act of writing towa rd disappearance. rather than the act of writing toward preservation, must remember that the after-effect of disappearam:e is the experience 01' subjectivity itself. 29 The use ofperformance, then. is to challenge writing to become performative. The contradiction between performance, as mutable and non-reproductive , and writing, as stable and reproductive, motivates writing to somehow perform "mimicry" and " to disco ver a way for repeated words to become performat­ ive ulterances ."w Not surprisingly, J. L. Austin does not follo\\' far behind. These new strategies 01' writing follow on lhe heels of deconstruction , a strategy linked to the role 01' writing. They seek a way to extend writing to those whom it had previously dispossessed. While Phelan never writes "lesbian " or "queer," she does situate the performance of writing in terms of gender, deploying the category of "women," andfinally "mother" as the dispossessed , as body. How can writing finally accommodate them? Once again, performance enters the scene as that which insists upon the body and c1arifies the problem: For performance art itselfhowever, the referent is always the agoniz­ ingly relevant body ofthe performer. . . . In performance. the body is metonymic 01' self, ol' chamcter, of voice, 01' "presence." But in the plenitude of its apparent visibility and availability, the performer aetllally disappears and represents something clse- dance, move­ ment , sound, character, " art. " . .. Performance uses the perfonner's body to pose a question about the inability to secure the relation between subjectivity and the body per se; performance uses the body lo frame the lack of Being promised by and through the body- that which C(lnnot appcar without a supplernent. "

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anJ its lIlet a-Jollhl \!. BI;¡u prtldll ~·(.·d lit,' 1....1 liS slagillg 01' Wllitillg .tiJl' Godot in San QU\.!l1tin lO be ac tcd hy all Il1vest\.!d cOlllll1l1l1ity. Brc\.!ht in­ ven ted the geslUs--d evelopeJ stagc positiollS, crosses and proximitics as maps of social re1ations . The crucial JilTercnce these works hold against performativity resides in the assignation of power into agonistic roles - lhe Jeliberations of its partitions through characters and spatial rc1 ations anJ the a bsorption of it into the arena of the spectator-- the singular envelope to which it is addressed. As the agonistic collective fades away , in its performance traditions and in critical reception , the rise of the individual may be seen as part of the victory of advanceJ capitalism and its market strategy. Private property is celebratcd in a new way. Rather than individual ownership, in the traditi onal sen se, of something olltside oncsclf, the self has been amplified across the terrain of what was once an " outside " to tlna11y encompass a11 property within its subjectivity. In the rise 01' the individual as the theatre, and the conAation 01' audience member with performer, the private individual has become the arena 01' the publico For example, the desire for the new-individualist stage is manifested in the prominence orthe work of Anna Deveare Smith.lndividual performance representing diffcrent ethnic communities in crisis secms to be the form most acceptable to contemporary audiences for those debates. Thesc inversions of social values regarding performance reinstate several materialist concerns. Does this intimate that it is a capitalist project to locate the book as performative? Are corporate, institutional structures of owner­ ship marked in the "unmarked?" Do categories such as "queer" protect corporate forms of profit-taking by emulating them'? To wafd a ,.etm-fe-V;S;Oll

II S III ¡\N IN 1'11 1, SI'¡\('t: 01; 11 CII NOI.O( ;Y

Ihe page. 11t1s IwclI slipped out fWIll under it llnto the network- the e1ectronic spaee 01' new eapitall'ormations. Againstthis electron ic. corporatc backdrop, then , hopefully, a retro version (Ir "performing lesbian " can better work to revivify the dying political "body." Fulsollle, rathcr than empty, with substance. situatcd within the material , rc-con nccted to outside rcferents, quivering in a new version of " Iive" Aesh , rec1aiming the visible, and set on a course in sync with political activism, this conjllnction may press on past the attack of the queer performative into a consideration that admits its virtual , electronic ground. But nrst, as is its tradition. some sense ofthe historical moment orits demise amI displacement may c1arify what must be accommodated in order to reconstitute itself. The critical anxiety set off by the fall of the wall , whieh capped the erosion of the grounds of the M arxist, or postMarxist materialist critique dispatchcd several strategies into exile. While eurocommunism, particular1y in F rance, continued to be ratified in intellectual circ1es, Althusser, Baudrillard and Foucault could argue for continuing adjustments 01' the notion 01' the subject as within the Illaterialist critique amI its social, activist movement. When the framework of such a dialectic fell a\Vay, when the terms 01' the debate were no longer ratified bccallse of the seeming failure of such a critique in the historical moment of the late 1980s and early 1990s, strategies concerning the subject sought to distinguish their critical, political operations from the failures ofsocialist , Marxist practice. An ambivalence, an anxiety blocked the bridge between theoretical, critical systems and activism- a bridge that had been mandated in Marxist/materialist systems. Withdrawin g the rem nants of postMarxist theory from the nov,'-collapsed practice , the deploymen t o outside referents collapsed into se1f-referentiality. In his " Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies ," StLlart Ilall poignantly traces of the coJ1apse 01' such a bridge out 01' the system and continues to insist upon it:

Sti11 too young to play the blind Tiresias, too butch to accept the role of the dumb Cassandra , too self-critical to produce critique as prophesy , and too wary for blind faith , I remain unpersuaded by these latter day uses of queer performativity that semiotic sublations ol' the material and historical , written across bodiless , discursive representations of sexual practicc better serve what used to be called the politica\. Further, the return of the repressed contradicts the very move to discourse. For writing, empowered by these stratcgies , is only emphatic in the dying scene 01' print culture - the melo­ dramél 01' the psychoanalytic. Despitc its Senccan stagings, writing is giving way to the rcgime 01' the visible within the its very engine--- its own techno­ I(lgy . As writing splays across the computer screcn , the realm in which new rorms ofcorporate, global economies inscribe thcir logos, its script is admitted illto the reprcsentational space through ü.:onic windows. Wi thdruw ll from snl:iul signiliers in to its own na.rcissisl ic aeross Ih e t\!ChIl OSl:reCIl 01' va lue and virtual sm:iu lily As wriling has lu rn¡;d in 011 il sd r, exer ll.!d ils prowcss agai ns t Ihe li ve lI lId 111(' IIlal\!rial. ils gw unu. o nce

Similarly, rcminist critical theory began to withdraw from its 1970s neces­ sary link lO grussroots , activist agcm.1as, wh ich, if not ideological1y ma terial­ ist. wc rc engageJ in social cha ngc . Lcshian theory , on its way to quccr theory, ~iIl ll ght lO d isli nguis h itsc1f rmm lInOs Icshi' lll rcmin ist a gl:nJas, with thcir idcnt ity óllld visi hil ity p~)liti es. '1 JI!.: dló ll .·~· !lf cssl'lIlialislll bl ocked thc majO!'

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What decentered and dislocated the sett1cd path 01' the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies certainly , and British cultural stLld­ ies to sorne extent in general, is what is sOl11etimes called " the lin­ guistic turn " : the discovery of discursivity, 01' textuality . ... unless and until one respects the necessary displacement of culture, and yet is al\Vays irritated by its failure to reconcile itself with other ques­ tions that Illattcr, with other questions that cannot and can never be fully covered by critical textuality in its elaborations, cultural studies as a projcct. an intervention , remains complete.'s

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IlIwlIgll wlIy r nm l 11I1:\)ry lo wllal Ia; ,d hll" 1..'1111.11111 1\'" as pra ~ li ~c . Imllill)'; IhcorCIical a rg u IIlCII Is lO sI ra Icgics I 11 ~I!tIl .rh: .1 i ii 111 '> UI'II as o Vl: rJclcnnina IiOIl or excess. Positing c~onOlllic clmdililms sudl as dass o p prcssio n bccalllc impossible to accommodate , as they call et.l ror lhal rdercnl nulsiJe lhe system . Capitalism could not, dTectivcly, be introduced as a concepl. In Maleria!isl Feminism amI lhe Pvlilics vI Discourse, Rosemary I-1ennessey traces this withdrawal through the effects of Foucau lt, Laclau a nd Mouffe. ami the charge of essentialism. Yet, she notes that the very project crea tes strategies in consonance with global capitalism. installing

n: lI1a in IIl1 lcslt:d A s lile .:ritiqlll: wilhd ra ws I'mlll !1ot;ons 01' cOllllllunities, slIhcllllllI'CS illlll sCllliotizcd slippagc arnong market slrategies. it often becomcs wllal il sccks to critique . As illustrated in thc preced ing argulllents, there is an axis along th e abandonment 01' the terlll "lesbian " in its currency, in its dass operations, in ils il1lperialist uses, and the body, as a subject-susped, whieh must be deaned away by words. "Queer perforlllativity" thus runs the " race into theory " a\Vay from the site 01' material intervention. Sagri Dh air yam, in "Raci ng the Lesbian , Dodging White Critics" notes that

a decentered , fragmented , porous subject .. , better equipped for the heightened alienation 01' late capitalism's refincd divisions of labor, more readily disciplined by a pandemic corporate state, and more available to a broad nexus 01' ideological controls. '6

lhe rubric 01' queer theory , which couples sexuality and theory and collapses lesbian and gay sexualities, tends to effect a slippage of body into mind : the monstrously feminized body's sensual evoca­ tions 01' slllelL fluid , and hidden vaginal spaces with which the name resonates are deanscd , descxua lized into a "queerness" where the body yields to intcllect. and a spectrum ofsexualities again denies the lesbian center stagc. lR

One of the signature structures of lesbia n feminism, as of the Marxist tradition, was the eollective. 80th posited a challenge to capitalist structures through notions of eollective ownership and social practice. 11' the east bloc fell to successful global capitalism, lesbian rood collectives, bookstore collect­ ives, living collectives, theatre collectives have fallen to traditional capitalist practices. New "postmodern lesbian " or queer articles trace the way in which capitalist projects have appropriated such abandoned terriLories for their own uses. Sasha Torres's sen se of the " prime time lesbian," and Danae Clark 's " Commodity Lesbianism" describe the media's and market's uses of the terms. Whilc I would contend that this commoditication is the result of the queer retreat. sorne of the postmodern protectors would , as Robyn Wiegman has done, fault identity politics for it, arguing that "it is along the modemist axis of self-assertion and visibility that both a lesbian consumer market and a marketed commodity repeatedly named leshian has been achieved.'»7 Yel. in the face of such high capitalist aggressivity , these authors can offer only celebrations of commodification , 01', as above, isolated strat­ egies 01' subversion. In particular, " subversive shopping" has been formulated as an apt action within the commodified realm, It is difficult to perccive, finall y, wh at is subversive in buying the semiotized version oflesbian that ad campaigns have developed. Thus, the critique ofthe commodified lesbian , cut offrrom any program of change--in isolation- - actually promotes commodification . The evacuation 01' the outside referent has effectively coupled the body and thc materialist critique only to give them over to , as Reinelt has pointed out. the hegemon ic practices that endurc in the codeso The new "queer dyke" thus appears as commodity felishist- the dildoed dy ke who Illakes 01' her:-;clf an ad as pol­ itics. Wha t rcmains is mapping Lhe exact ro ulc o f' Ihe rctrca l Ih rough decon str ucti ve c ritiq ues. Mc,U1 wh ilc, lhe COll ll S i \~1 1 Wil lll'l \ll!al GlpilalisL uses 01' slIch slra lcl.!.ics. as notcd by Il c n n~ssy ¡¡ b\IVC (1 1 0 1 1I:al ill tlal a ).!.cn da~, sli ll l 'lfl

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The challenge of the " live" body needs to be deaned up by the semiotic cfficiency of theory. 8ut ho\V do all 01' these theories happen to conjoin with the rise 01' global capitalislll, the new tcchno-era and the cOllling supremacy 01' the computer screen?

The end of print culture Tho contest between two orders, previously perceived as alpha be tic a nd visual, but technologically represented by print and the scrcen has run through­ out the twentieth century. Print and the screen have organized their own cultures- their own virtual communities. The two technologies produce their own structures of value . In fact , one could trace cultural production in lhe twentieth century through a history of their relationship, through Dada and Puturislll , Benjamin and 8recht, feminist critical theory and film. Th e Narne o/ lhe Rose, by the serniotician Umberto Eco , could be read as lhe narrativization 01' this current print/image struggle, masquerading in the robcs of medieval monks. Whereas these two orders have traditionally run Iheir separate courses, challenging one another by differcnce, the coming dominance 01' the computer as the new engine of writing has finally assigned print to the screen. The victory of the screen , accompanying the victory of glohal capitalism and the new virtual construction 01' social and economic practiccs yiclds a variety of consequences. !lce screencu. the manners of print culture are forcgrounded: "ri n l rc prcsc nls a Jccisill ll pI' 'iCVC rc abstractio!l and su btTaction. AII nonl ill c;1I sil!.l1als tire fillcl\:d OUI: ~;llh )f is ban ncu for seri o us texts;

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lypograph ica l \.:Pllsl:tllls a 1'1': ri gc)I ()II ~ l y ~' lIl n l u 'd. S il 11 lid is pros\.:ribed ; evcn lhc taclilily 01' visual clahOfi.llion is llU II:lwL"lL !'rilll is an ael 01' perceptual self-Jenial. ... Nol the lea sl irn pliealioll ofdcctronic text for rheto ric is how the implicit self-Jeniab 01" thc p rill t conlracl are being renegotiateJ .-\9 Not surprisingly, then , the attributes of print culture suit those of the various strategies JescribeJ above. The panic con\.:erning the role of writing since Jeconstruction , on the one hand , and French feminist theory , on the other, involves tbese many different kinJs 01' values. If one plat:es writing abou t writing against this challenge by the screen, the ground of the debates is changed , In fact , it seems to be somehow emulating those very attributes it has exciseJ from its culture. Writing has been deconstructed by writing itself as a way to keep writing. Some deconstructive writing sought to enhance its culture by encouraging experiments which would illustrate spatial coincidences in writing, reading, and the academic performances of both. lacques Derrida, in many 01' his works, such as C/as, or "The DOllble Session." in DissemilJaliolJ, plays with the black/white register of print, its spatial organization and performance:

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Luce l riga ray CI iliqllcs nol ol1ly the linear elreel orwri ting, but the organ­ i/alion 01' pages. amI lhe play 01' vertical and horizontal as inseriptions of gendcrcJ , hetero-social constructs. In "The Power ofDiscourse," she calls for lhe disruplion of the "recto-verso structure that shores up common sense," asserting that: we need to proeeed in sueh a way th at linear reading is no longer possible: that is , the retroactive ¡mpael of the end of eachword , utteranee. 01' sentence upon its beginning must be taken i.nlo con­ sideration in order to undo the power ofits teleological effect. .. . Thal would hold gooJ also for the opposition between structures of horizontality and vertieality that are work in language.42

Your mission, should yOll choose to aecept il, is to learn to read wilh your ears. In addition to listening for the telephone. you are being asked to tune your ear .. . to the inflated reserves of random indetenninateness ... stay open to the static and interference that will oecupy these lines .... At first yO Ll may find the way Ihe book run s t.o be disturbing, but we ha ve had lo brea k up ils logic Iypographically.... T o cra ck open lhe clos ura l sovc rc ign ly 01' lhe Boo k, \vc ha ve I"cigncd s ilencc an d disco nllccl ioll . . , , /JI/' 1'l'!c-pllOl1e [JI/ok rclcascs Ihe d k l.!l (11" an clcctn1nic-lihid !llal n o\V II s¡ Uf tYPl)­ Itnl phy lo Inmk Illl' in ilialioll ul' IIl lc rn l "'\:~ "

While these authors were leaJ from the nature of their critique to the material production of print, radical alterations in the teehnology oC writing itself, caused by the widespread adoption 01' the eomputer, have encouraged authors and publishers to experiment in print forms closer to the functions of data and print management which these new engines ofinseription perform .'ll The multi-colored , icon-ridden print of MOlldo 20()(): A User's Cuide lo lhe NelV Edge simulates the interactive sereen. The new praetice of co-producing a print text with a hypertext , as in l a y David Bolton's Wriling Space, or George P. Landow's H yperl exl, encourages either the page [o emulate the computer's sereenic funetions in print, or the print forms of pages and t he sequential development of ideas on the computcr. This play between the sequential and multiple, branehing arrangements of information is now being staged on the eomputer screen. The printeJ page. by the nature ofits technology, enforces the sequential dcvclopment 01' ideas; while the computer screen offers multiple arrangemcnts 01' data, allowing the reader to form the development of material s in a multitude 01' ways. kon mandalas at the beginnings of hype rlext novel s, as in Stuart Moulthrop's Viclory Carden , (illustration) olTer a topography 01' episodes, whieh the reader may link in several Jifferent patte rns . Readin g this electronic novel resembJes, more, wandering in a maze than adhering to the sequenee of pages. GendcT and sexual praetices, has Irigaray has noted , have long been in­ scribed in the seq L1ential architccture of meaning. The linear prescription was ali gned wilh gcnderdifICrence and the institution ofheterosexual marriage as ~~a rly as the myth 01' J\riadne and the minotaur. Ariadne's thread translated the maze into lhe line. leading both to the conquest of the minotaur and her ownlll ll rrillge. What was th e Minotaur, part animal, part human, but a ki nd (Ir scx-rad ia ting eyho rg'? T he laby rin th . 01' maze, a mappin g enabled by and !lll)rC u ppr~)pria lc lO \.:om putc: r wr ilin g lhan lbe c11lulation of pages. th us, h rin g.s liS haá Iu Ihal ca dy M illO,lll Ih n;;'11 ilI' O the r, eivi lized by the linear 1 I.'l:hll \lI \l).!i l..:~ 11 1' 1l11':tning.

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These ron the recto pagel quotations on the blackboard are to be pointed at in silence. So that, whi1e reaJing a text already written in black and white, I can count on a certain across-the-boarJ inJex standing a1l the while behind me, white on black .4l' The interplay between new technologies and the "alphabetic culture" (as Grcgory Ulmer terms it) 01' philosophical traditions has brollght innova­ Iions to print by such authors as Avital Rone1l , who, upon writing on the plrilosophical contiguities 01' te1ephone, the precursor of online virtualit­ ics , arranged her print in varying columnar, diagonal, spatial relatio.ns, 1'1I!'lhe!' eomplicated by various styles of print, print sizes, line spacings, etc. A:; Ihe "textual operators" instruct, in the opening page of Tite Te/eph une /look:

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Wllal is prolllpl~U by Ih is Il'dI 1l1 1Iog> I~ 11 dli lll pl' ill lile l~rl1ls nI' politica l analysis rrom tllose 01' time, wllich Jct\!rtní lll: l ile h istorie:!1 critiquc. lo llwsc of s pace what is callcu th e Hew geog rap hy u r lile lopological critiquc. As I havc noted elsewhere. gcncratíonallllodels do not serve the lesbian agenda. Homosexual, a considera tion ofsa meness, may lend ilselfbe tter to n o tions 01' s p ace than time. Certainly , as som e late r French Marxi sts argued , includin g Henri Lefebvrc and Michel F o ucault, the correction ofthe crit iq ue fro m time to s pace s uits th e new politics of urba n planning, space exploration, ami , finall y, 1 would ad d th e c o m ing of virtual reality. Ins isti ng upon " performin g lesbia n ," then . mi g ht b e constituted as with in the regime of th e visible, a certain occupation o f space, within the politics 01' space- a scree ning d ev ice that somehow rctains th e bod y, the flesh , the " 1ive" in tandem with tcchn o logy , a nd c1aims visibility through its unique operations. [Part " of thi s cssay will appear in Theatre J o urnal Oclober, 1995.- E d.]

Notes The Ba nana Republic ud was re printcd in thc a rticle "Lesb ian chi c: the bold, brave ncw world of gay women," NC:lll Y()rk 26 (May 10. 19(3): 33. The K. D. Lang cover appea red in Vanily Fair 56 (Aug ust 19(3). 2 Teresa de Lauretis, "The Essence o fthe Triangle o r, Taking the Ri sk 01' Essential­ ism Seriously: Feminist Thcory in h a ly. the U.S .. alld Britain," DiJlerel1ce.l': A j(Jumal of Feminis/ Cull.urol S/udie.\· 1 ( 1989): 4- 5. 3 Ibid ., 12.

4 Ibid ., 32.

5 Eve Koso fsky Sedgwiek , "Q ueer Perforrniti vity : Hen ry Ja mes's The Au 0./ lhe

No\'el." glq: (J j ou/'Ilal a./ leshian ((/1(1 gay s/udies I ( 1993): l . 6 Ibid ., 2. 7 See the inlroducti o n lO InsideIOu/ : Leshiol1 T/¡cories. Cay Theories, ed. Diana Puss (New Yo rk and London: R o ull ed ge, 1(9 1).

8 Judith Butler, "Critieally Queer," glq 1(1993): 17.

9 [bid ., 28.

10 Ibid. , 18.

II Judilh Buller, " Imitation a nd Gender Insubo rdin a lio n," Puss, 14 - 15 .

12 (bid .. 24.

13 Butler, "Crilica ll y Quee r," 17.

14 (bid ., 18.

15 Aristotle, AletaphY.I'ics. Th e Bl/sic Works Aris/o/le. ed. Richard McKeon (New

York: Ra nd om H o use. 194 1). 1071 a 14- 18. 16 (bid .. [072b 19- 22 . 1074b 34- 36. 17 Butler, " Imital ion and Gcnder Insubo rdinat ion ," 28. 18 [bid .. 24. 19 Butler, "Critically Quee r," 29. 20 'The body you want." interview with Judith Butler. Art/t) rUII1 31 (No \'cmbe r, 1(92) . 21 See Larissa Mac Farquhar, " Pu tting the Calllp Back inh' \ ; 1111 p us," LiIlJ.!,//o ¡ ;¡'(///('{/ 3 (Scpt.-Oct. 1(93): li ~l.:wi sc a C~l lr c til'all y 1.:'( 11 ,1I 1l.'O I I·; 1 dld no l yc l

The meaning in this context of"the condition or non-art " is what 1 have been calling objecthood. \t is as though objcethood alone can, in the present circumstances, secure something's identity, ir not as non-art , at least as ncither painting nor seulpture; or as though a work ofart- more accurately, a work 01" m o dernist painting or sculptllre- were in some essential respect nol (/11 ohjecI. Therc is, in any case , a sharp contrast betwcen the literalist espousal 01" objecthood- almos1, it seems, as an art in its own right- and modernist painling.'s self-imposcd imperative that it dcfeat or suspend its own objecthood Ihroug h the Im:diulll ofshapc. In rac\, from lhe perspective ofrecent Illodern­ isl pa in lin g., Ihe lilcralist position (>vinccs a sensibility not sim ply al ien but alllil hclicall() ils ow n: as th ollgli . fru l11 Ilral perspective , the demands 01" art allJ Ihe cllll dilioll'\ 0 1" objec lhnod ;m: in dir cd cnnllict.

IN lI rp riscd even the Illuseum, hmvCVCI . is Ihe p~)wc r lhcse dOI'lIlIIl.'I1 I .. "1:\.'11 1 lo pm;s\!ss, IH)( \lI1ly in lhe

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Pllhlic il1lilginu lillfl h uI IlVl~1 1111' IIlI hl'\ 1I 11 I h~' II'. wllld l has h,:c ll rncl a lllor­ phúsiL.cd hy Ihcm inlo SOlllClhillg ICSCIl l bl lllf : 111 , ltl'll ~lIl(l g il.:al Jeposilory. The inlrusion 01' the photographil.: d ()~uJllcn l illll' I he pailll ing amI sClIlp­ ture collcclions of the maj or museums ha:; helpcJ . in rad , lo make cxplicit a transformation that has been going on since alleast Abstract Expressionism. In a gesture that ca n be seen as the impetus for the acsthetic devclopments under discussion here, the Abstract Expressionists recognized that the Action Painting itself was the mere record of the series of moves which was the action 01' painting. The " work " as activity is privileged in this way over the "work " as product. A museum might well have purch ased a Pollock. but it could never purchase the action 01' Pollock painting--the event itself, the real work. When we begin to approach paintings in an art museum, cspecially in a modern art museum , in the same way that \Ve approach , say, the arms and armor collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art--that is, when we approach tbem as relics- we are at the edge 01' admitting a profound shift in our collective attitude about the nature 01' art. Art is no longer that thing in which full-fledged aesthetic experience is held perpetually present; art no longer transcends history; instead , it admits its historieity, its implication in time. But J said that \Ve are at the e(~~e of admitting this transformation beca use the aesthetics 01' presence has a final line of defense- the audience. The audience has the privilege of ignoring the art\Vork's eontingent status as a kind 01' documentary evidence; in fact, the audience knows first that it is experiencing art (it has come to the m useum in order to do so), and the real presence 01' the one experience (the audience's) quite literally masks- and paradoxically depends on--the absence 01' the other (the artist's) , Even the documentary status 01' the photograph can be altered by the audienee. When it approaches, ror instance, the photographs 01' Tinguely's HO/11age or Vito Acconci's 1971 Seedbed (the famous image 01' a solitary woman, hands in jacket pockets, standing in the Sonnabend Gallery on the ramp beneath which Acconei was purportedly masturbating), it sharcs precisely the same direct, ocular vision which the photographer, eye pressed to viewfinder, witnessed at the scene , What the photographer knows for having seen, the audience knows. His presence becomes their own. They contemplate with his eycs. And the museum, of course, does everything in its power to foster the audience's sense of presence by creating exhibition spaces which bring antiquity into the present. Thomas Hoving, when director of the Metro­ politan Museum of Art, was something of a master at this. From his first exhibition , the tellingly titled 1966 "In the Presence of Kings" (which drew together most of the objects in the museum associaled with royalty in order 10 achíeve él st ri kingly reg'dl atmosphere). 10 t h~ ncw 1 d unan wing 01" the nlllSClIll1 (wh ich esscntia lly repl icares Lch nl:1 n's hPlllc ,lI1d which a llows olle nol mcrc1 y lo cX [1cricllcc arl nul tll C\pC ll elll'~ Wll il l il 111 liS! have le ll

It ke lu he I \,; 11 11 1111 1 allJ ,111 '/1 il) , lhe flId alll\ll'phusis which lhe dOclllllcnt/ \lhjc!,;1 wrcak cJ 111)(,,111 lhc IllllSeU I\l, lran sfonning it inlo él mausoleum. is l'ulIllll~rL'd lhrough éln :tudicllcc in Wh0111 the dead pas! is seemingly broughl hack lo life_ (iranted. this audicncc is l11anipulated in that its experience of presence is Ically the experiem:e 01' what Sontag has called a kind 01' " pseudopresence"; llL'wrlhclcss, it seems clear to me that by the sevcnties the site 01' -presence in (lrt had shifted frol11 art's object to art's audience, from the textual or plaslic to the experiential. Art/órul1I magazine, which clearly attempts to stay dosely attuned to currents in contemporary art , inaugulaled the eighties with a nolllrio ll s "tulk-pocms" as ;1 \~,¡ v I d II ~·~'IIII'. Ihe lIótu tional :'\VS ll'llI 11'11 /11 ¡¡ "l:o nvell lIPll ali/cú" sl ylc "whid l 11,1 ': IWi 111 111 (1 /'I cid l,hsLl clc

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lo adlicvi llg a lly lhill g al all inlanguagc" bccau sc ils paragraphing, capitaliza­ lion, and hi crarchical logica l markcrs al1 rcpress " real talk." Traditional Illltalion has Ihe "appearance 01' a language nobody talks. " and since Antin's ]luclry is lalk , he callnol use it.' ~ Rothenberg in effect uses the text as a \vay lo Illake it possib1c ror the 01' , aC l!)J'!cSli, and d irl!c lorll:ss illli'o !I! ('(// U ('(/!ill '. Ind cl!d , pcrfnfm;lllt,;\· '1\'\: 11 '" lit be ultcm pti ñi! lo

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wa y thal il is intcrcsted more in (In actoion as it is being produced than in a lin ishcd product. Now, what takes place on stage comprises f1ows, accumula­ tiollS , anJ conneetions ofsignifiers that ha ve been organized neither in acode (hl~ncc the multiplicity 01' media ami signifying languages that performance IIlakes use 01': bils 01' representation ami narration and bits of meaning), nor in strllctures permitting signification. Performance can therefore be seen as a nlachinc working with serial signifiers: pieces of bodies (d. the dismcmber­ lIlent and Icsionism we have already discLlssed), as \Vell as pieces 01' meaning, rcpresentation , and libidinal f1O\vs , bits of objects joined together in m uJtipolar l'IlIlcatenations (cf. Acconci 's Red Tapes and the fragmentary spaces he moves ahout in: bits ofa building, bits ofrooms , bits ofwalls, etc.). i\nd all ofthis is without narrativity . The absence 01' narrativity (continuoLls narrativity, that is) is one of lhe dominant characteristics 01' performance. 11' the performer should unwittingly 1'.ive in to the temptation of narrativity, he does so never continuously or l'onsistently, but rather ironically with a certain rcmove , as if he were quot­ ing, or in order to reveal its inner workings . This absence lcads to a certain rrustration on the part 01' the spectator, when he is confronted with perform­ ance which takes him away from the experience oftheatrieality. F or there is lIothing to say about performance, nothing to tell yourself. nothing to gr74),57 . 2 RoseLee GolJbcrg, Pcr/im1/ancc: Lil'c Art, IVOY lo 1/1(' Prc.\"('/Il (N(~ w Yo rk , Il)7(». 3 Lueiano Inga- Pill ~ ay s this in his prefacc to the pho to album on pc rforl11i:1l1cu. Per/ímnan(:e.l', J-Japfienings, AC/ion.\', Erenl.\', Aclil'ilies. Jllslallaliolls (Padua, 1970). 4 By wrapping up diffs and entire buddings in their natural sunroundings, Christo isolates them. He thus sirnultaneously ernphasizes their gigantie sÍ2e and negates it by his ve ry project, and estra nges his objects from the natural setting frol11 which he takes them (cf. Photo 11 0 . 48 in the illustrations to Inga-Pin). 5 The performances ofthe Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch were inspired by aneient Diollysiac ami C hrist ia n rites adapted to a modern eontext designed to illustrate in él praetical fi:lshion thc Aristotelian notion of eatharsis through fear, terror, 01' cornpassion. Ilis Orgies. Mys leries, Thealre were performed on nurnerous occa­ sions in the scventies. A typieal performance lé1sted several hours. 1t began with loud rnusie followed by Nitseh ordering the cerelllonies to begin. A lé1mb with its throat slit was brought into the midst ofthe participants. Its earcass was crueified , and its intestines removed an d po ured (with their blood) over a naked rnan or woman lying beneath the animal. This praetice originated in Nitseh ' s belief th a t humanity 's aggressive instincts had been repressed by the media. Even ritual animal saerifiees , which were so eommon alllong primitive pcoples, have tot a lly disappeared frolll modern experience. Nitsch's ritual acts thus represented a way of giving full rein to the repressed ene rgy in mano At the same time, they func­ tioned as aets of purification and redemption through suffering. (Thís description is based on Ihe diseussi on found in Goldberg, p. 106.) 6 These notions are borrowed fr om Juli a Kristeva, La R évol/ltion da !angage p oétique (Paris, 1974). 7 " Lesionism " refers to a practiee whereby the bod y is represented no! as an entity or a unitcd wh ole, but as d iv idcd into P,HtS o r fragments (cL Inga-Pin , p. 5). 8 lnga-Pin , p. 2. 9 Stephcn Koeh , Rich a rd Foreman , et al. , " Pelformance. A Conversation ," Arlfárum, ,1 \ (Deeember 1972), 53 - 54. 10 Richard Schechner, El-says on Perjórr/'la/'lce Theo ry. 1970 /976 (New York, 1977), p.147. 11 Koch ,54. 12 Michael Fried , " Art and Objecthood ," Arlfárwn (Junc 1(67), rpt. in Minima! Arl. ed. Gregory Battcock (New York , 1(68), p. 139. 13 Ibid. , pp. 139 141. 14 Peter Brook , Tll e Emply ,'>'p({ce (Ncw York , 1(69), p. 16. 15 Allan Ka p row , A.\'semhlage. Enl'iro/lmenlS a/'le! Happenings (New Yo rk, 1(66), p. 190, quoted in Pnjrmnallce hy Arr¿\'IS , ed. A. A . Bronso n and Peggy Galc (Toronto, 1(79), p. 193. 16 See Jaeques Derrida, La Vérilé 1'11 peil1lure (Paris, 1978). 17 Ro land Barthes, "Baudelai,re 's Theater," in Critical Essays, transo Richard Iloward (Evanston , 1972), p. 26. 18 See Donald W. Winnieott. P!ayil1g (//1(1 R ('a lily (New York, 1971). 19 Schechner develops the idea 01' "selective inattenti on" in his discu ssio n 01' Wilson ' s Tlle Lije a{u! Times of.fosepll Sla!in (Schechner. pp. 147 - 148):

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l"1l1l1l:l\1porary stage IIsually 1>11'.111111: 11 ,lIl\1 lh ~·t "pan: Willy Lom un's liv ill " 1Olllll, ror instance, or lhl: mad whc l \: I )Id l u nLl 1 1.. 111,'11 Olllall\ n:h:l­ encc ill Ihis cOIIIl.:xl d{,c:,¡ hel" ¡¡ Jissc rvice. 35 IbiJ .. 160. 36 See Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and N arrati ve Ci nema ," Screen 1(,: 3 (1975). 37 lbid., 158. 38 Ibid, 158. 39 Elwcs, " Floating Feminity," 172. 40 Ibid ., 172- 173. 41 Ibid. , 173. 42 A nnie Leclerc, Parole de Femme (Paris: G rasset , 1974), 42. 43 Jane We instock , quotcd in Maureen Turirn, "What is Sexual Diffcrence'.'··

81

N EGOT 1ATI N GD EVI A N CE

A N O NORMATIVI TY

Performance art, boundary transgressions, and social change

Ajierlmage 12:9 (1985): 5. 44 Mil.:hel FoucaulL " W hy Study Power: The QlIcstion of the S lIbject," in ¡'.fichel FOllcalll/: Beyond Srrucruralisl1I ({/Uf lJermel1l'lIlics, ed. Hubert L. Dreyfus anJ Paul R abino\V (Chicago: Univcrsit y 01' C hica go Press, 1982), 21 1.. 12. 45 T eresa de Lauretis, "Feminist StuJies: Reconstituting Knowleoge ," Unpublishcd m::;. (Spring 1985). 46 R emark madc on a panel discussion ofperformance art, October 23 , 1987, Harnp­ shire Collegc. Amherst, Massachusetts. 47 Linoa Burnharn , " Performance Art , High Performance ano Me," Tite Drama Rel'ielV 30: 1 (1986): 36. 48 Remarks rnade in various interviews or conversations with the author: Anderson ano Monk , 1983; Green ano 0leszko, 1987. 49 As Dolan notes, F inley "does llot offer hcrself as a passive object ... shc oesecr­ ates herself as the object of[rnalc] Jesire." See 161 ·-63. 50 As recoun ted by Mark R ussell , producing director of Performance Space 122 , Ncw Y ork, October 1987.

)(,X

Brilla B. Wheeler

Sourcc: Murilyn Corsianos and Kclly Amanda Train (cds), lnlerroga /ing ."ocial JlIs/ice: Poli/ir,\', CI/I/lIre, and Idemi/y. Toronlo: Canadian Scholars ' Prcss, 19')'), pp. 155 179.

Introduction Contemporary art explores identity and challenges taken-for-grantcd as­ sumptions about self and society. These practices come from the tradition of Ihe avant garde and promote social jllstice through art, which often uses provocative and direct modes of representation to enact difficult subject Illatter and to call attcntion to social problems. Thc history and practice of avant garde art, specifically performance art, relies on the use of disjunctive and contradictory images, boundary transgressing methods and shock tacties lo subvert status quo ideals and institutions. Thus contemporary avant garde artists and their work are often known , construeted, labelled, and stigmat­ il.cd as deviant by those who do not understand or disagree with these art world 110rmS. Deviance is, however, contextual- in the eye of the beholder­ determined not by inherent qualities in the aet but by the power to label and Ihe power to enforce the label (Backer 1963; Erikson 1966). But a paradox cxists in the realm of art: rule-breaking behaviour is thought to be preserved against sanctions imposed on common sociaJity because of its context inside Ihe art frame. and it is conversely labelled and sanctioned as deviant by those lIutside of the art context who find it a real threat to more conventional lIotions of social and artistic decorum. Cutting edge contemporary art is intcn­ Iionally dcviant; pushing lhe limits of accepted boundaries, on one hand, and Ihe victim 01' bci ng la belled Hnu sanctiollcd as such, on the other. Thus, hecause 01" the work 01' contem purary pl!rfn nnan ce él rtists , the contradiclions 't,')

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cm bci.hh:ú in thl' 1\Olioll u l' wlwl is IWIIII:!I alld good (Inl WII OlIl, w lll.: n:, Ullt! when) becomc increasingly visibk as the: slakcs o ver lhe sI l ugglc lo d ct illc normality heighten when artists challen ge non11S nf' acccpt able rer rcsent ­ ation and a conventional status quo ideal 01' art amI pu blic cx prcssiVII. In this chapter, I discuss the ways performance artists produce sOl:ial change by experimenting \Vith and confronting social and personal boundaries, thc limitations imposed by these and thcir con struotions. F irst I describe the works o f m o re radical performance artists and their uses 01' artistic con tem and form to in voke social change. Then I talk about the resista nces to artiSlS' \Vork by a conserva ti ve bal:klash in a controversy ovcr US government fund­ ing for the arts . ,In lhis public crisis, divergent groups competed over author­ ity to define core societal values and the symbolic represcntation of these. Finally I show how artists use pedagogical strategies to accomplish smaller social and politica l ehanges alter tb e outery against radical art. I use data from field \York, in terviews a nd public reeords of performance events and con troversics.

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Performance art pro vides a creative locale where art making and socio­ political concerns mergc because of thc open-ended natlire of thc art form, its historical basis in radical intention , its anti-aesthetics, and low-tech require­ ments. Performance artists are interested in broadening traditional moral boundaries a nd oppressive a ssumptions about marginal members of society and hold the possibility 01' creating a :>ociety based on an overall acceptance of difference rather than an either/or, good/bad set of definitional assump­ tions. They creatc ritual art and performance art that cross the boundarics between art and Iife and resist traditionally confining definitions of identity, providing space where alternative realities are examined and presented . By doing this they contest deflnitions ofmarginal identities, including that ofthe artist as irrelevant to the regular mechanisms of society . Performance art intentionally plays with the Iines bctween art and audi­ cnce , content and formo Artists may confront audiences \Vith work that docs not fit convcntional definitions 01' beauty. The artist may bring the audiencc into the art work by directl y confronting thern or making the work on the street 01' in other non-traditional artistic venues. This work poses more of a threat to social norms than art that provides more 01' a distance between art and real lite or art and audience beca use it refuses audiences role as passive observer (see Wheeler 1997 for a discussion of aesthetic distance and contem· porary art). Thus, the use offormal techniques , perhaps those that asscrt the oppositc oftraditio na l aesthetics, works also to subver l mt world hierarchies. Avant garde performance art rejects of the separatiol1 M a rt ("ram society an d c haUenges lhe institution 01' art that promo tes lh is di vision be tween lhe aesl hetic 1¡¡~c in perr(lrmance spaces and with ACT-tJP/I.A. IlIlc!!rali ng his slagcd work wil h (' Ihc\' lili.: wl)rk s. Miller's performance art Ipo k Ihc t'mlll ()I" m ga ni7in l' lbl ,',ily \;ol11 lT1 uni ty, asscrting the social a nd

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Ilirsch , P. 1'J72. " l' n1l'cssiJlg I:ads aJld I'a slll llll" AH O lfl.I Jll/atillll se.t i\ u;tlysis 01" Cultural Indllstry Sy~ tcI1lS." / //I/('ri("(/I/ ./111//"1/(/1 o/' S " l"iolo,l!.I' 77: h.l'> (5 1) . Kclly . D. 11. (Ed.) 1993. Devil/It/ Bc/(((vior: A J"x/-Uc(/t!a ill /lIc .S'ociologl' uf Dl'l'i­ allce. Ne w York: St. Martin's Prcss. Kistenberg, C. 1995. Al DS. Social Change anrl 1'hl'a/er. New York: Garland PlIblish­ ing lne. Lipman, S. 1989. Say No to Trash. N elV York Times. New Y ork. June 23, 1989. Marsh, A . and J. K e nt, (Eds.) 1984. Live Arl: Aus/ra!ia (flld Arnerica. Adel a idc: i\nne Marsh and Jan e Kent. Nehring, N. 1993 . Flowers in lhe Dus/hin: Culture, Al1archy, (/nd Pos/lvar ¡';¡¡gllllld. Anll Arbor: U niversity of Miehigan Press. Pfohl , S, 1994. !/I1oges (Jl De vial/ce (//ul Social COl/lrol: A Soóologiml His/ory. New York: MeGraw-Hill. Phelan, P. 1993. Unmarked: T/¡e Poliúcs oI Pe/jármonce. London: Routledge. Ridless , R. 1984. Ideology and Ar/: TheoriesoIA1ass Cullureji"1JI11 Wal/a Bl'njamin/o Umher/o Eco. Nc\V York: Peter Lang. Schncider, R. 1997. T/¡e Explicit Bo!!y in Performance. London: Routlcdge. Sellill. T. 1938. T/¡e Co/!/lic/ o/ Conduc/ Norms. A Reporl o( /he Suhcolr/l/1illee 011 f)elinqul'l1cy ofllle CO/llll1illee 011 Per.\{)/lolily and Cul/ure. New York: Social Science Rcsearch Council Bulletin. Surnner, C. 1994. T/¡e Sociology 01 Deviance: An OhilUO/y. New Y ork: COlltinuurn. Turner, V. 1969. Tile Ritual Process: Structure and Anli-S/ruc/ure. Chicago: Aldinc. Wagner-Pacifici. 1986. Tlle AIo/"() ¡'I/!omli'.)! Play: TerroriSII1 amI Social I)ruma. Chi­ cago: U niversily of Chicago Press. Wheeler. B. B. 1997. 'Thc Perforrnance 01' Distance and Ihe Art 01' Catharsis: Per­ fonnance Art, Artists and Audience Response. " Tlle .!ollrlllll olAI"/.\· Monoge/1/en/. Lml", 01111 Soóe/y Vo!. 27 (No. 1): ]7- 49. Wojnarowicz. D. 1989. "Poslcards frorn i\rnerica: X-rays from Hel!." Willlesses Exhihiliol1 Catalogue. New York: Arti sts' Space.

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Part 3

MED IA A N D TEC HN OLOG Y

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FILM ANO THEATRE Susan Sontag :'\Ulm:c: nI('

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The big question is whether there is an unbridgeable division , cvcn opposition , between the two arts. Is there somelhing genu­ incly "theatrieal," difrercnt in kind from what is genuincly "cincmatic'''1 Almost al! opiniorr holds that there is. A commonplace of discussion has it that film and theatre are distinct and even antitnetical arts, each givi,ng rise to ils own standards ofjudg­ ment and canons 01' f0n11. Thus Erwin Panofsky argues, in his celcbrated essay "Style and Medium in the MOli o n Piclurcs" (1934, rewritten in 1946), that one of the criteria fo r eva luating a movie is its freedom fr o m the impurities 01' th ea t ricali t y. To talk about film , olle must ¡irsl define " Ihe basic nature of the Illediu m ." Those who th ink prescriptively about the nature 0 1' live dra ma , less confi de nt in the future 01' their (lrt Ihan the cinéphiles in thcirs, rarely takc a comparably cxclusivist lineo

TI\(; history of cinema is often treated as the history of its emancipation 1'1'0111 theatrical models. First of all from theatrical "frontality" (lhe unm ov­ in/-', camera reprod ucing the situation of lhe spectator of a playnxed in his ~ca t), then from theatrical acting (gestures ncedlcssly stylized, exaggerated­ IIccdlessly, becallse now the actor eOllld be seen "c1ose up"), then frorn theatrical rnrnishings (unneeessary "distancing" of the alldienee's ernotions, disregard­ ing the opportllnity to irnmerse the alldience in reality). Movies are regarded ;I~ advancing frorn theatrical stasis lo einernatic f1uidity , from theatrical ;lItiliciality to cinematic natllralncss and immediacy. But this view is far too :,illlple. S lI ch owr-si l11 p li(jc~lli o n l est ilil:s lo I h.: a mbiguous scope o f the camera ,,: yc . Uccausc Ih e cilml.! ra {'(/II he uscd lo JlI ojcct a relati vely passive, lIllselective kll lll t\f visi un as wc ll as I h ~ 1t1 ~'l\ l y 'IdeClive (··cuitcu") visi o n gcncra1\ y H} I

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l'i n~ m !l is ¡¡ "lI lI'd ""II" as WI.; II ;I ~ al1 a rl, 111 the scn ~~ lh a t il can cncaps ula lc ally 01' li te pCI'I 'unrllllg alls and IC IHJcr il in a li lm lranscriplion. (T his " medi um" or non-a rt illipccl ~ )I'lilnl attaineJ ils I'outinc incarnation with the advenl 01' le1cvision. T herc , l11 ov ie~ them sclvcs hecamc another pcrforming art lo be transcribed , miniaturized on film.) One ("([n film a play or ballet or opera or spo rling event in such a way th at fil m becomes. relatively speaking, a tra ns parency, a mi it seems correet to say t hat one is seeing the event filmed . But thea tre is never a "medium ." T hus, becau$e one can make a movie " of" a p lay but not a pla y "of" a movie, cinema had ao carly but, I should argue, fortuitou!:i conoection with the stagc. Some of the earliest films were film ed plays. D use and Bernhardt and Barrymorc are on film- m aroo ncd in time, absurd , touching; there is a 1913 B ritish film of Forbes-Robcrlson playing J lamlel, a 1923 German fil m of Olhelfo starri ng Emil Jann iogs. More recently, the camera has "preserved" llelene Weigel 's performance of MOlher Couruge with the Berliner Ensemble, the Livi ng Theatre production of The Brig (fllmed by the Mekas brothers), and Peter Brook 's staging of Weiss 's Marat/Sade . But from the beginning, even withi n the confines of the notion of film as a "medium" and lhe camera as a " recording" instrument, él grea t deal other than what occurred in theatres was taken down. As with still photograph y, sorne of the events captured on moving photographs were staged but others were valued precisely beca use they were no{ staged- - the camera being the witness, the invisible spectator, the invulnerable voyeuristic eye. (Perhaps public happenings , " news," constitllte an intermediate case between staged and unstaged events; but film as " newsreel" generally amounts to llsing film as a "medium. ") To crea te on film a documenl of a transient reality is a conception quite unrelated to the purposes ol'theatre. l t only appears related when the "real event" being recorded is a theatrical performance. And the first use of the motion picture camera \Vas to make a documentary record of unstaged. casual reality: Louis Lumiere 's films ol' crowd-scenes in París and New York made in the 1890's antedate any use of film in the service 01' plays. The other paradigmatic non-theatrical use of film , which dates from the earliest activity of the motion-picture camera, is for the creation of il/usion , the constructi on of fantasy. The pioneer figure here is, of course. Georges Mélies. To be sure, Mélies (like many directors after him) conceived 01' the rectangle of the screen on analogy with the proscenium stage. And not only were the events staged; they were lhe very stuff of invention: imagin a ry journeys, imaginary objects, physical metamorphoses. But this, even add in g the fact that Mélies situated his camera "in front oC" the adion and ha rd ly moved it , does not make his films theatrical in an inviJio us sense. lo lhcir trcatmen t of pe rsons as lhings (physieal objects) a nd in thelr Jisj Ullclivc presentation of time a nd space, M6lies' lilmstll'c q u il1 l CS~c l1 t ¡ally '\.:incrn alic" so Car as there is slIch a lhinS.

Ihe conl ras l bl'lww l1 Ihcalrc ami /ilm s is IIsu all y takcn lo lie in the rnah:rials Icprcscn ted DI dcpictcJ . Bul exactly whcrc docs the dillcrence Jie?

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1I's tempting lo draw a crudc boundary. Theatre deploys artifice while vinclIl and casuallooking), él movie muy be altered from onc projection to Ihe next. Harry Smith, when he runs ofThis own films , Illakes cach projeclion an unrepeatable performanl.:e. And. again , it is not lruc that all theatre is only about written plays whieh may be given a good or abad production. In Happcnings and other recent thea tre-events, we are precisely being offered "plays" identieal with their productions in lhe Same scnse as the screenplay is identical with the film . Yet. a dilTerence rcmains . Beca use the film is an objeet, it is totally manipul­ able. totally calculable. A film is Iike a book. another portablc art-objeet; making a fi lm. Iike writing a book , mcans constructing an inanimate thing, cvery element 01' which is determinate. Indeed . in films , this determinancy has 01" can have a qua si-mathematical form , like Illusic. (A shot lasts a certain number of seconds, a ehange of angle of so many degrees is required to "match " t\Vo shots.) Given the total determinacy of the result on eelluloid (whatever the extent of the direetor 's conscious intervention), it \Vas inevit­ able that sorne film directors would want to devise sehemas to make their intentions more exaet. Thus, it was neither perverse nor primitive of Busby Berke\ey to ha ve uscd only one camera to shoot lhe who\e 01' cach of his mammoth dance numbers. Every "set-up" was designed to be shot from only one exaetly calculated angle. Bresson, working on a far more self-eonscio us level of artistry , has dedared that , for him , the director's task is to find th e single correct way of doing eaeh shot. An image cannot be justified in itselr, according to Bresson; it has an exactly speeifiable relation to the temporally adjacent im ages, which relation constitutes its " meaning. " But the theatre allows only the loosest approximation to this sort offormal concern . (And responsibility . Justly, French critics speak 01' the director of a f11m as its "author ." ) Beea use they are performances. somelhing always " Iive," Iheatre-events are nol subject to a comparable degree of control , do no1 admit a comparably exact integration 01' effects. It would be foolish to conc\ude that the best films are those which arise from the greatest amount 01' eonscious planning: lhe plan may be faulty ; and with sorne directors , instinct works bettcr than ány plan. Bcsides, there is ddi ni tivc 11l'cau se il is lhe mosl inclusive. Jhis is 111l' hasis lit' Ihe JC'llllly f,JI Ihl'¡¡l l\' hcld l) ul by Wag nc r. Marinctt i, 1\.1 :IIId J ollll ( ' ¡t ~\! all ,' l"whoI11 \'lI\i~ a l'.l' Ihl'ull'ca!o\ II l)th ing k ss Ihan a lOla l :11 1

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jlJ\'SI:II I 1:lirlOr FlIChs, in an essay Cll lltkd "\' ICl-ol'IIl:l' alld lhe Rl.:vc nge uf W lilin ~." argues that: "Since the Renaissa nl: In lli..:a th\.:otc Wllliallls' A( '/ (1970). A ecrtifiably schlzo phrcnic charadcr na mcd Matlricl~ decla res. ") was picking up tv programmes in my heau like a Jew 's )Ja rp. [ ... ] cvery time) kisseu Perowne ) \Vas forced to desalivate beca use of coursc PcrOWlI (! didn't want David Niven's slyle ofkissing" (1970: 61 ). Baudrillard, in his essay "The Ecstasy of Commu nicati on," sees sch izo­ phrenia as the inevitable result 01' our current situation in wh ich the booy becomes an extension ofthe teJevision screen. Telecommunications, ironil;all y, are loo present. Baudrilla rd speaks of

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this state of terror pro per to the sch i7.ophrenic: too great a p roxi mity of everything, lhe unc1 ean promiscuity 01' everything which toucbes, invests and penetra tes without resistance, with no halo of private protection , not even his own body to protect him anymore [ ... ]. lt is the end ofinteriority and intimacy, the overexposure and transpar­ ence of the world which traverses him without obstade [ ... ]. He is nowa pure screen , a switching center for all the networks 01' intluence. (1985: 132- 33)

Presencc and the visual arts So the critique of presence \Ve find in the work of Derrida and Baudrillard would seem to hinge on the eoncept of representation. Pure presence thus implies nothing les s than the defeat 01' representation. Significantly, one of the most influentiallate-'60s manifestos on behalf of pure presence also ealled ror the defeat of theatrieality. I refer to Michael Fried 's highly polemical defense of modernist painting, " Art and Objecthood": "1 want to claim th at it is by virtue of their presentness and instantaneousness that modernjst painting and sculpture dereat theatre," dedared Fried (1968: 146). (Theatre ro r Fried is synonymolls with- among other evils- temporality or duration ; modernist painling is presumably experieneed in a moment of pure presentness: " It is as though one's experience of [modernist painting] has no durati on­ not because one in ract experiences a Noland or Olitski [ ... ] in no time at al1 , b ut bccause at every moment the \York itsclfis whol1y manifest" [1968: 145]). Stanlcy Cavel1 in 7/¡c World ViClVCd o ffe red a valuable gloss on Fried 's essay. Generalizing about the formalist painting that sclr-eonsciollsly aekno",ledgcs its two J imensionality, Cavel1 maintained that " its ftatness , together with its being of a limited extcnt, mean s that it is totally there, whol1y open to yo u, absolutely in front of your senses. of your eyes as no other form of art is." Flatness is essential to this sort of presenee because " total thereness can be taken as a denial of (physieal) spatiality, of what three-dimensiona l crca tures \Vho normal1y walk or sit or turn mea n by splltiality. What is in tlJrcc­ dimensional space is not al1 there to the eyes, in the :.enst! n:vcalcd" (1971: 1(9).

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This Íl1\ plil:'t tb .ll1\o hlllllal1 hoillg ccrtainly mI pcrformcr wil1 ever h(~ as as a ro rmalist painting by F rank Stel1a or Morris Louis. By l'ontrast , \1Iinimalisl scul pture according to rried is tainted by thcatric­ ality becausc its "quality of havi ng an inside" makes it " a lmost blatantly al1thropomorphic" (1968: 129). Clcmcnt Greenberg, who sired this obsession wilh lwo dimensionality , aJso uses an a ntitheatrical an al ogy to sum IIp the dilfcrences belween c1assica1 and modernist painting:

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From Giotto to Courbet, the painter's first task had been to hollow out an il1usion of three dimensional space 011 a ftat surrace. One looked through this surfaee as through a prosccnium into a stage. Modernism has rendered this stage shall owcr and shal10wer until now its backdrop has beeome the same as its curtain which has now become al1 that the painter has left to work on . (196 \: 136) The curtain functions as a metaphor ror the process of alternately revealing and concealing- " now you see it and now you don 't" whereas modernism is envisioned as in aet of " uneoncealment. " Of course, the theatre has traditionally considered it a strength rather than a weakness to coneeal as much as it reveals. Hamlet artieulates a tr uth about al1 great drama tic characters when he declares, " 1 have that within which passeth show. " It's a funetion orhis psychological complexity tha t he's no! all there, spread out on the surface, Iike a modernist painting. ("You wo uld play tlpon me; you would seem to kno\\' my stops; you would pluck out the hea rt of my mystery," eomplains Hamlet to Rosenerantz and Guildenstern.) By contrast, Frank Stel1a affirmed his own commitment to Grecnbergian (and h'iedian) presenee when he said ofhis paintings that " only what can be seen is there" (in Glaser 1968: 158). Fried's coneeption of presence is antitheatrieal in another sense as wel1: it deplores the reciprocity bet\Vecn performer and audience whieh figures so prominently in theatrical definitions ofpresencc. "Theater has an audience­ it exists for one- in a way the other arts do not. In raet, this more than anything else is what modernist sensibility finds intolerable in theater gener­ ally, " notes Fried (1968 : 140). Again , accusing ccrtain modes or minimalist sculpture of " theatricalily," Fried writes: [Such] \York depends on the beholder, is incomplete without him ; it has been waiting ror him. !\nd once he is in the room the work refuscs, obstinatd y. ~o lel him alone---whieh is to say, it refuses to stop (;on rrv nt ing hil1l. Ji st;¡ ll\;illt' him , isolating him . (Such isolation is not solit udc ;my IIH II(' 111;1 11 '; lld l cnn rrontati on is communion). (1968: 140)

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h'it:u cuuld 01" COUISC he lu lkiJ lg a ll(1111 lhe I 1\ 1111' I"IIC:ll rc in I'({ milis/ ' NIIII ' where the perforJners olkn re l"u~oo lO lakl! no lol a IIl1l1 swcr, where lhey rel "used to stop eonfron ting (an d no dOll bt , in Illally cast:s. 1I1linlentionally J ista nciflg and isolating members 01' the audience). And ror f ri ed , this is the ver y anti­ thesis 01' presence.

Tbeatre oC mediation So it's far from dear that theatre ever was the so1c or essential reposito ry al' presence. And as we've seen in recent years , the very oo tion 01' p resence. whether in Artaud's "speech before wOl"ds," or Stella's attempt to banis h "content "- and thus representation- fro m painting, has come under attack. Indeed , in the age of Derrida and Baudrillard , Greenberg and Fried have become men the art world loves to bate. Presenee, purity, instantaneousness. anti-illusionism have all beaten a hasty retreat. Now there's a high premi um placed on mixing the visual and the verbal. the spatial and the temporal. (One need only think of Jenny Holzer's verbal aphorisms snaking their way across e1cctronic billboards.) But has a body of work appeared that embodies what Thomas K uh n (1962) would call a paradigm shift in regard to the centrality of presence in the arts? Certainly in the visual arts, the doctrine 01' "simulationism" is reflected in a wide variety of wOl"ks ranging from Sherrie Levine's appropria­ tions of Walker Evans or Edward Weston to Mike Bidlo's meticulous copies of Picasso. Peter Halley's "neo-GEO" recycles geometric motifs from the formalist paintings of the 1960s and redeploys them i,n a "representational" manner. These are art works that, in Baudrillard's terms, have been "already reproduced." But in the theatre, the assault on presence is best illustrated by one 01' my origin al examples, Foreman's Whal Did He See, where the use 01" mi Gro phones and Plexiglas reflected a fundamental and over increasing facl of contemporary life: its mediation by media. Similarly, Mabou Mines' Wrong Cuys (1981), a theatrical dissection 01' male bonding in hard-boi1cd detective fiction, also utilized body mikes for purposes ofmediation rather than amplification. Laurie Anderson's "vocoder" is an e1cctronic filter than transforms her light, flat voice into a variely vocal personae that indude a deep, throaty raspo The resulting Is-it-live-or-is­ it-Memorex uncertainty creates an ambiguous form of presence that secm s both spontaneous and prereeorded at the same time. In the Wooster Group's ROl/le J & 9 (1981) two white actresses dialed telephone calls to what sounded like actual restaurants, and--in broad, Amos n' Andy accents-cl aimed they \Vanted to order fried chicken ror a birthday part)'. The a udi enc..:e had no way of knowing whether these conversations werc live or prcrecorded (lo/" that matter, whether th ose 0 11 the other ellu 01" lhe lilll.! wcrc unrehcan¡ct! cmplo yees of an ac tual resta ura nt o r a rcprcscnla tion . In \Hder Ilmt I1lctlia tion op.:ratc wilhin Ihe fn ln lcwol'k 1)l' pérl'ol m ancc, it mlls t he II ndcrsll)otl ill Ihe Mduh a n sense liS anl:,\tc.:I1SI11Jl .. 1 !lll' hmly an d 01' Ihe 11 1~ " liS 1)1 pcrccplll lll I'vkd ia I ion is esse n I iu lIy I 1¡1I1 ,,1"' 11I1I1 1il) 1I 01 d ispl acclllClI l

q l' e ncrgy alld slIccessio ll 01' inh:nsitics. It is an inscriplion in prcscnt time: pc rl'onnancc actuali zcs materi al within prcsent time. The repetition which l:haractcrizes rcproduclion actua lizes, restores Üs presence , its present time. In a pe rfor mance \>vhere various modes of presentation and reproduction are used, there is an interplay of clements between and among themselves which crea tes an interference. The collision o f elements produces a source 01' energy which in itself casts doubt on Fried 's peremptory judgement on mllltidisciplinarity. Ir there is a factor which can act in favour of a source 01' energy in contemporar)' art, it is indeed t his half-way position , this in-hetween position , vehelllently rejected by Fried. W hat interests m e in modernity is the mobi1ity of instances 01' discourse, that at any moment the addresser becomes the addressee and vice versa; the fact that there is continuallinking, a continual displacement between these instances, and that the receiver/addressee is in continual movell1ent, displacement , or repositioning. This condition ill1plies that if the position of the receiver is multiple, the object is also divided and multiple (e .g ., the attempts 01' the futurists and cubists in this direction). Performance is circumstanti a l, taking into account the performer. the situation (the here and now) , a nd t he pu blic. This la:>t point, the q\lestio n 01' the spectator, is the most radical issue in p erfo rma nce . Benjamin stipllla tes in the essay cited that a consequence 01' cinema has been a dccpening 01' a ppcr­ ception: cinema shows LIS the real as never be fo re. In comparin g Ihe cinema to psycho-analysis, he maintains that cinema (thererore olso 77), cspcc c:lll y his chapler 011 Benjamin, p. 1 37. 10 Ibid .. pp. 238-239. 11 Ibid., p. 239. 12 1bid .. p. 240. 13 Ibid , p. 243. 14 Richa rd Foreman, " O ntological- H y ~teric Manifcsto 11 (Jul y, 1974)," in P/ays ami Mal1if'e.l'IO.I', cd. Katc D avy (New Y ork , 1976), p. 135. 15 Ibid., pp. 135-136 16 Ibid., pp. 143,145. 1)

Notes \Valter Benjamin, "The Work 01' Art in the Age 01' Mechanical Repro ducti o l1 ." in 1//umil1l1!iol1s, ed. Hannah Arendt. transo Harry Zohn (Ne\\' York , 196R), p.224. 2 Miehacl Fried , "Art and ObjectfiJOod ," in Arljórum (June 1967), rpt. ¡\Ilinima / / 11'1. A Crilica/ Anlll%gy, ed. Grego ry lJatteoek (New York , 1961;). pp . 139- 142 . 3 Benjamin , p. 243. 4 (bid. , p . 225. 5Ibid. , p.223. 6 Roland Barthes, " Baudelaire ' ~ Theatcr:' in Crili('({/ E.\·.WlVS, transo R ichard I lo wu rd (Eva nstoll, 1972) p. 26. 7 F or él discussioll ofthe cOllcept of k ofl , iIlCk:x , alld sylllht)1 ill Ihe Iheatre, se!! Kc ir F.lam , Tite Scmioli(',I' o!, T ltcalrc alf(l !)rll/I/( / (1 \1 11t111I1 , II)XO), pp. 21 :!()

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85 LI ST ENIN G TO M U SI C Perfo rmances and recordings Theodore Gracyk Sourcc: TI/e .!ou/"Ila! o(AeSlhel ics I1nd I1 rt Criticism 55(2) (1997): D9 15 1.

I Kathlcen M . JI iggin s is one 01' the few philosophers to calI attention to th e fa that in contemporary society " it is only in the w i ll~ Lilpl: ¡';l1l1 l p\l'>I I II'II'>. I h ey CUllt1nt r~gu rJ sllld i(') recordings as aulhe nlic insla nlial ions 1ll" ully 1hm!:l h v Ikc tllU vctl or Wug ncr.'u To stretch a f;uniliar concept, slIch arg ulllcnls against "protllll:CU " rcco rd­ ings rest on technol ogical p hilistinis m. By techno lo gical phili:>tinisl11 , I mean the tendency to approve of on ly those tech nologica l conlribulions lhat a re contingently familiar or conve ntionaL FllrthemlOIe, any argument based on an o ntological position sidesteps the qllestion 01' whe lher él world fllled wilh recorded m Llsic is aestheticall y poorer. To take a brief detoLlr. consider E dmund Gurney ' s reason :. for accepti ng musical Platonism. The essence 01' a musical work . he contcnds , is its melod i and harmonic combinations. Any timbre or "colour-qllal ity" experien ced in performance is "enlirely distinct from musica l form " or the wo rk proper. 21 G urney offers two reasons lo believe this amI not. say, liberal Platonism. F irst, musical works are " reproducible in memory wit h the very minim um 01" realisation ofany actual sound-quality." Thc timbres \Ve have heard during a performance "can be dispensed with " or even changed (substituting a better sound) Y Secondly, it is only " by foregoing special rights as lo colour that al! sorts 01' bcautiful music ... can be brought horne to people's own firesid es. and made a fea t ure o f ordinary domestic lif'C. " Given the infrequency with which audiences get to attend performance o f any g iven work , it is largely through " the clear monochrome of the pianoforte" or even a "cheap har­ monium " that most people get any chance to arrive at a "t rue appreciation " of oratorios and symphonies. 23 In other words, Gurney starts with lhe means of music retrieval available in Victorian England , in light 01' which musical works cannot be stored " Iike pictures, contained in a national gallery which can be walked round once a week. " 24 Since neither human memory nor the available technology of nota­ tion amI parlor piano orfer access to a composer's intended perfolmance means amI attendant timbres, Gurney concludes that only features that re­ occur in ordinary circumstances can be counted as features of musical works. In short, he is a technologieal philistine, building prevailing practices and technologies into his ontology. It did not occur to him that this situation was an historical contingency soon to be challenged by composers such as Debussy. In saying that recordings do not give us music, Ferguson similarly down pla y:. the contingency of the technologies available for delivering musical works to audienccs. Atnrst blush , one might respond that liberal Platonism does quite the opposite. acknowledging the contingency 01' technology by lin ki ng instantiations of a musical work to the technologies in place al the time the work was eomposed . But I am not persuaded; in telling us that specific tech­ nologies are necessary elements of certain works , to be mani pulated in cir­ cumscribed ways, it tells us that anything clse violales lhe rules o rthe gatne as traditionaJl y undcrstood. But is this nOI wh a l is al issll L!? G ive n lhe rreque ncy wilh which people listen lo recü rd ings, w hy n:scrvc (llIr accolad es ror okler lcc hn o hwjcs')

( 'ollsid l!1 cllk , 11 ('odlo vitch's cX LO disappear illlO Ihe audio-rimal .\pa('e o/a 'glohal culture ' !11odelled on a c1osed-circuit l!Jeory. 14

Such tendencies are indeed visible in the work of groups such as Japan'$ 'Dumb T ype', who consciously elide their cultural difference in the belieftha t the differences between Tokyo and other major cities of the world are rapidly disappearing. Other performers such as Sha Sha Higby arrive at this point from another anglc. Her dance performances rescmble nothing so mllch as an inter-cultural costume change which comes pcrilously dose to a fashi on display - borrowing appcarances as if the differences betwccn whole cultures and ethnicities were no longer significant, as if the differences no longer existed in any significant way. Indeed , much of the debate in performance at the moment seems to centre around the political am biguities of such borrowings, trying desperately ­ after the ract - to determine whether it might be possible to rewrite ethical considerations faster than artists can protlt from colonising third world cul­ tures and crossing sex and class divisions. The more we can observe advanced technologies and a metropolitan consciousness ruling our perception , Úle more technologically framed and determined ideas about cities \ViII come to dominate whole cultures. As Birringer emphasises, such ideas would be mistaken , it 'is él scenography that also speaks 01' the failed replacement of History; the audio-visual space of mass media , however dominant, cann ol quite sublimatc the exclusionary boundaries of class and race ... ' For Birringer. the theatre. as opposed to the mass media, 'is more revealing in its limitatio ns since i t does not operate in a virtual space. It has always becn closely COD­ nected to a historical space' .IS

RecJamation and re-inscription Recent wo rk with older lechnologies ha:; bcen la rgely dcrived rrom the Fu lu r­ ists. who idolised machi n~ for lhcir visi ble src:cd and ror lheir ability ll) 1';(

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l"alal ysc ¡: IIIIIII ~ II t(O a pcrtllanenl slale (lr Illarkd expansion. I" Whilc lhe visual aud ;llIdial I!j/i'C'ls lIf lh~ l1ew lechllologics are orlen spectacular, thc techllologi.:s Ih':lIlsdves are largcly invisible. Thcy ofTer no visual manifesta­ lion such as that which inspired lhe original ltalian and Russian Futurists, yet they have still sho\Vn an ability to catalyse culture with a speed which would blind even Marinetti . This difference in visibility also effects perform­ ance. In many ways the purpose 01' performance no longer seems to be Úle valorisalion of new technologies but rather their interrogation. Performance seems increasingly moved to educate its audiences back to a point where the new technologies become visible and accessible. In ¡[his way education about technology is inevitably going to destroy postmodern illusions about tbe lack of technology's limits. much as the sudden experience 01' World War One shattered a number of Fulurist iUusions . In this educative and interrogative project Lauri e Anderson has been a brilliant pioncer. The work of Jill Seott and Derek Kreckler has also moved in similar ways, building bridges between blind faith or abjection in the technoscape and reinstating the remnants of a memory 01' a human culture in contact with the body and landscape. Crucial to the work 01' these three artists and indeed the project in general, has been the relationship between video and the body. When video becomes the basis for the structllre of the wholc performance (or when the performance is recorded and played back as a 'performance video'), it is hard to see this project as ' performance' any longer. This is so, even though it may rely, as sorne recen t French dance does, on the (cleverly edited) physicality of the performers. Jt may be 'Video A rt' but the basis for its approach to bodies, objects and their interaction is not what we might call 'gravitationallanguages' but rather e1ectronic languages, the signal and post production techniques. Yet sorne of the best perfonncrs hure moved ioto video production during the last decade - Jill Scott for example. When Scott was asked in an interview whether her shift to video work represented a renuneiation of the physicality 01' performance. she replied Nol al a/l. /'111 slill doing il, hui il's fór Ihe camera. !t's enúrely Iral1.\/erred. Whal! re>ally l/sed lo hale Iva.\" nol having conlrol. For a lime! rea!!y Iiked Ihe lV170le risk componenl. Thel1 e/jier a while, ! pro vee! al! IIUlI, Ihal ! could take lhose risks. Now /'1/1 much more inleresled in conlrol perjórf11at/ce jór lhe camera . .. The elemen/ oj" con/rol can be played Wilh in lhe pre-produclion leve/. nol (lnly in Ihe posl-prodllc/ioll. 11

Video Art asitlc. I h~rc ,Irc 1lI:1t1y illSlanCl!S where video is neither lhe basis of lhe re rforlll. Charaeler Shop, Ine. , The 1997. . Cray, Richard 1997. Pe rsona l eorresponde nee wilh author. 8 September. Disney Studios 1996. " James a/1(1 Ihe GiW!l Peach. " The Pl/ppelry .louma/47, 4: 4 -6. Duncan, Jo d y 1997. " On lhe Shoulders o fGianls." Ci/lelex 70: 72-109. Kaplin, Slephen 1994. " Puppetry into Ihe Next MiI1e nni um. " Puppell'y II1/('rnol;onal 1: 37-39. Lassiter, John 1995. Toy Slory. Walt Disney Pietures. Levenson , Mark 1992. " Memorandum re: Puppetry in Other M ed ia. " U npublished paper presenled to Ih e Futurism Conferenee, San Luis Obispo, CA , 15 May. Luskin , J onat han 1997. " Protozoa and the FlIlure 01' Performanc'C Animation" Innova/ion, SUlllmer: 48,-51. Pixar/Walt Disney Pietures 1995. "'[he Toy Story." Th e Puppelry Jounza/47, 2: 6 - 8. Po lhemus, Ine. 1997. < http://,,,,ww.polhe mus.eom/>. Pourroy, Janine 1997. "Basie Blaek. " Cinelex 70: 15 - 44, 155, 166. Seliek , Henry 1996. .Ial11C's 0/1(1 lite Gianl Pe(/c/¡. Walt Disney Piel Uf cs. Siheo n Gra p hies, lne. 1997 . . Sonnenfeld , Barry 1997. Atel/ il1 Block. Alllblin En tertainment. Ine. Spielberg, Slephen 1997. Tll e Losl ~Yo rld: .lurrasic Park . Amblin Entertainment. Ine. Tillis, Steve 1996. "The A cto r O cc1l1ded: PlIppet Theatre and ACling Theory." Th ealr(' Topics 6, 2: 109- 19. Touehstone Pietures 1994. "Stop-Molion Animation-Then and Now ." The PUjJ­ pelr)' .Io/lfIllI/45 , 3: 4 -- 6. - - 1993 . " The Ni~hlmare Belore C!trisllIlas." The PUjJjJelry .!oumal 45, 2: 2- 4. Weissberg, Jed 1996. " The Art 01' PlIppelry in lhe Age 01' Digital Manipulation.· · Puppelry Il1l erl/aliolla/2: 39- 40.

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88

T HE SC R EEN TEST

OF T H E DOUBLE

The uncanny perforrner in the space of technology

Ma tthew Causey Sllurcc: T/¡e(llre .louma/ 51(4) (1999): 383 394.

Your rcality is atready half video hallueination . Soon it will becolllc tOlal hallueination. You ' re going to ha ve lo 1ca rn to I,ive in á ver)' strange, new world. Dr. Brian Oblivion, Videodrol/1e l And ir 1 am anything in the picture, il is al\\'ays in the form 01' lh e se reen , wh ich 1 ear1ier ealled the stain . the spo!.'

Question regarding thc virtual and the real There is nothing in cyberspal:e and the screened technologies of the virtual that has not been already performed on the stage. The theatre has always been virtual , a space ofillusory immediacy.' Yet the contemporary discourse surrounding Iive performance and technological reproducti on cstablishes an essentialized difference between the phenomena. The difference is furth er com:retized in the critical writings 01' theatre and performance studies that ignore such pcrformative mediatcd forms as film, television, radio, and mul­ timedia. Slavoj Zizek, in the introduction to Mapping Ideo{ogy, writes that it is a commonplace assumption that "virtual or cyber-sex presents a radical break with the past since in it actual sexual contact ,vith a real other is losing ground against masturbatory enjoyment, whose sole support is the virtual other." He dismisses that assumption by suggesting that "Lacan's thesis that there is no sexual relationship mean s precisely that tha structure of the real sexual act (of the act with a ftesh and blood partncr) is already inherently phantasmic- the real body 01' the other serves only as a support ror our phantasmic projeclions. "4 Laca n's argument thus challenges the as­ su mptio ns inhcrent in the construded bini:lry of the Iive and thc virtual, and 5 1hcrcby Jisp ll f ill g f h e daims of imml!diacy lI nd p re:;ence in Iive perrormancc. \/·;1

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Bul il wOllld he a 111istake lu im agin!.: fll!rI wll.1I W\: ¡';XJ'lC I il' tll,;I,: ill 1 1t ~ IIIca tl!' ami recorded media is the sa me cXp¡;ric llc,;c. 1I is Iln: sa IlH.!. ulll y di I'kTCII l. The debate regarding the ontol ogy oC pérf'olm rm cc íl nd the nal urc ¡)r liveness has been well rehearsed. 6 Peggy Phd an argues that pe rfo rm a nce 1" defined through its non-reproduci bi lity. Thc IUlture of perfo rmance dctt: ri nr­ ates as it is enfolded in teeh nological reproducti on , Phil ip Ausla nder co unte n; tha l the live is an artifaet of reeording media, Liveness exists 110t as a priO I eondition , but as a result o fm ediatization, Ye t both a rg uments are problem ­ atic . Phelan disregards any effect of tech no logy on pe rfo rm a nce and d raws a non-nego tiable, essentialist border between the tw o media. A uslander draws out a sop hi sticated legal argument whose d ynamic materialism o verl ooks the most material manner o f ma rking the live, namely death. Disputing lhe argument of Phelan and a mending Auslander 's 1suggest tha t the ontology 01' performance (li veness), wh ich exists before and after mediatiza tion, ha s been altered within the space 01' technology. Hu t, how?

Question regarding performance and mediatized cultur e Three basic argllments comprise the contemporary theory 01' subjccl con­ struction in mediaÜzed culture' and help shape the aesthetic gestures of contemporary performance: l. The material body and its subjectivity is extended , chal1enged , and recOfl ­ figllred through technology. 2. The te1evisual is the primary modality of contemporary technological representation dominating manners 01' thought and communica tion. cultural and subject constrllction . 3. There exists an unavoidable convergence of the human and maehi n\:: wherein the "slave" machine dominates the " master" human subjcct. The performance work of the c1assical post.modernist Woo ster Grour (us), The Desperate Optimists, an expatriate Irish compan)' working in Ihe UK (Irc1and/uK), the altered medical body of O rlan (France) , the obsoletc body 01' Stelarc (Australia), and the post-colonial cyber-performance aTtists Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Roberto Sifuentes (Chica no-American) are al1 in the process 01' embodying mediated subjectivity and articulating, rep reso enting that experience in performance. The developing art forms o f wcb­ based performance, interactive installations, aud virtual enviro ll ments .Irl' extending the boundaries 01' the theatre and our notions of wha t consti tu tcs a performance. How do we understand the processes of pe rfo rmance which converge \Vith mediated technologies 01' representation and represen l am.l enact m ediated su bjectivity? I wa nt he re to answe r my two questioll s by iJ:i()la ting iI cri tical l11 0rncnt in new m ed ia pe rformance wOrks spccifk ally "nd ~I i ril ; " c ltlllIrc in genera l.

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whCll lltc Pll·... l·lIl\· 111 Ihe f),'lIhlc: i ~ pl \:"~' llh:d 1" llIlIi,. l l l l1l;dill l~d d ll fll llCu l ll ll l. Illl.:di¡¡h:d ollI i.: 1 th nll lg h tire tcchllologics 1I1' rq)I'oducti(.)Tl. I will ~u ~¡.!l.!s t Ihal lhe I.!XpCriCIlL'l· (JI' (he se ll as otller in the spacc 01' 'l cch no logy can hl.: rl.!ud as un um:unny cx pc ricllcc. a making material of split subjectivity . W hal l wil1 arg uc is that Lhc inclllsi oll uf lile tclevisual screcn in performa nce, a nd the practil.:e 01' perfo rmance in (h l: screened world o l' virtual environments, con sli tlltes the staging 01' the p riv­ ilcged object of the split subject, that which assisls in lhe subject's divisio n, ca pturing lhe gaze, enacting the subject 's annihilation , its noth ingness, wh ile presenting the unpresentable approac'h of the real through lhe televisual screens. Part psychoanalytic reading (Fmud and Laean), part textual anal ysis (Beckett and Genet) , part film sludies (Lynch and Weir), this paper focuses on the material object wherein and upon which these performa nce phenom­ ena take place, both in the nowhere of the psyche and the li ved space of the s body: the screens. The goal of this tripartite strategy is to demonstrate how questions of virtuality and the real are being played out in both live and mediated perfo rma tive work and across a variety of historical contexts. The critical issues of li ve performance are converging with the critical issues of mediatized culture and each is informing the other. II! \: c;impk 1IIIllllCIII when a livl.! ild ~)f ~P II11 \l111 ~ hCI

At the tone, please leave a message Avital Ronel1 , in The Telephone Boo!e writes of IF reud's notion 01' unheimlich , or the uncanny, and how this phenomenon recurs through the subject's experience of displacement within technology. She remarks that "the more dreadflllly disquieting tlling is not the other or alil alien: it is, rathcr, yourself in oldest familiarity with the other, for example, it could be the Double in which you recognize yourself outside of yourself."9 The confrontation with the DOllble, the recognition 01' yourself outside of yourself through the echo­ ing voiee on Ihe telephone, the anamorphic projection on the telcvision in freeze-frame, slow-motion , fast forward , and reversc, through " a kind 01' '' being in cyberspaee \Vith morphing identities that exist within the fragility of the digital hypertext, prescnt the teehnologically triggered uncanniness of contemporary subjectivity. The experience 01' the uncanny within the space of technology seems easily constructed. The first time your computer screen displays a message, a q uestion " how a re you?" from an a nonym o us chatroom participant, the experience is palpable. Who is it behind the text, on the other side of the screen? It is whol1lever 1 want. The pulsating cursor, like a heart beat, anticipates the streaming text that foll o ws, unencumbered by the ap­ pearance of the body , offering a flat screen ideally suited to project our own desires, our desiring phantasms. The audio samp1ing 01' our voices (" al the tone, please ¡ca ve a message" ), the black a nd white su rwil1a nce vid eo capt ures of our irnages ("is that h o w 1 lo ok in line at the ba nk?") are now common­ p]¡lI..'e. bu t some how unscUling. WhV" In llttt!mpr illg lo l1ul li nc an aesl hctic 0 1"

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the um;an ny "rc lld notcl! scvcrallikrill y C\lIlll l'k~ I hal Wllllld t.:Iidt . 111 C\I1Cri­ ence of the Llnca nny. Freud wri tes. " t hi s 1I 11C..1I111 Y is ill rea lily lIoth ing ncw or alien, but something which is familiar ami okl-eslablished in the mi nd alld which has become alienated from it only through lh e process ofrepressio n." ltI The ego does not believe in the possibilüy of its death. The uncon scious th inks it is immortal. The uncanny experience ofthe double is Death made m aterial . Unavoidable. Present. Screcned. Thc screens ofmediated tcchnologies, now ubiquitous in live performance, like the dolls. mirrors and automatons which F reud suggests bring fort h experience, construet the space wherein we double ourselves and perform él witnessing of oursclves as other. The uncanniness 01' mediatized culture is a technological uncannincss. David Lynch's TlI'in Peaks: Fire Walk ¡vil/¡ Me. the feature prequcl to the television series, works through these issues of technological uneanniness. It is February the sixtcenth at 10:10 A . M . when Speeial Agent Dale Cooper enters the office of I'IlI Regional Director G ordon Coleo The establishing shot of the FJl1 Building begins with an upside-down shadow ofthe Liberty Bell panning up to the actual Bell, which is then echoed in a print 01' the Bell in Gordon's office. " 1 was worried about today because ofthe dream I told you about," Cooper confides, kneeling at Gordon's desk. Gordon nods. Cut to: an empty office hallway with a single surveillance camera hung from the ceiling pointing away from the viewer. Special Age nt Cooper enters the frame, stands in front ofthe surveillance camera and waits. Cut to: Close-up of the surveillance monitor with Cooper looking. Cut to: Medium shot of the hallway as Cooper walks out. Cut to: Medium shot of surveillance control room where a security guard watches three video mon­ itors. The middle monitor displays Cooper just exiting the ha\lway as he enters the frame ofthe film and into the control room. He studies the monitor. Nothing. He repe.ats the sequence. Still , nothing on the monitor. The editing works to unsettle the eye between monitored video space and the real filmic space. An elevator door opens. Pause. Philip Jeffries, a long ,Iost federal agen l walks up the hallway toward Cooper, who is again looking into the survei l­ lance camera . Cooper walks back in the control room and is astonished to see himself on the live monitor and that Jeffries is walking past his image. I-Ie calls out anxiously , " Gordon! Gordon! " Seeing himself see himself creates él startling chain of events. Jeffries, now in Gordon 's office, speaks in a haltin g voice about an L1nknown Judy. The video noise orthe dead TV ehannel , which later proves to be the sighting of the father as killer, fades in and out, su per­ imposed upon the scenes. It is through the technological that \Ve enteT lhe dream space of T win Peaks with its patented reverse speak. When Jeffrics vanishes it is as ir he does so along the electrical wires ami through videa ted spaee as quick inserts of cabling and telephone poles are flashed. Th e fro nl desk of FIJI headq uarters sa ys Lhat Jeffries wa:; ne....er therc. Cole a nd Coopcr confirm Jeffries presen ce and Coo per's vis ual JCHlbling by revi ewin g lile video. The video is ¡he only evide nce 01' prc:;cll\:e. 1101 1I r1l ikc lhe dlanl lhal

\wnl ¡lul JIII Íli!' lllally protl'st marc hes cOllcerni ng lile l{oJ ncy K illg vCl'dict. "Ihe vid¡:tl d llCsn ' t lie. lhe video doesn ' t lie!" The uncanny and vidcatcd douhling nI' ( 'ooper is lhe signal. the crisis point, wherein the dream space of fraglllentation via technology invades the real space. The issues of televisual a nd simulated culture are now commonplace Hollywood script fodder, depicting either the anxiety or desire that my life is, or should be, ¡v. The Truman Show and Edlv ll are recent examples. Both fill1ls offer a Ba udrillard for Dummies. a PirandelJo for those who missed 11l0dern­ ism, th ro ugh a dramatization of the theory of simulations. Plea.\"(/I1I"ille I 2 is a film whose twisted ideology narrates an attempted reconstruction of the televisual as f1esh through a slow process of colorization. 1f \Ve are tra pped in the television , if our world has beco me televisual, then why not make the television our reality? Tho designing of simulated wars for political gain is played out in Wag ¡he Dog,I J eerily reflecting what many thought was the cynicism that lay behind Cl inton's militarism in 1998-99. Why this ubiquity of challenges and confrontation 01' the real and the te\evisual , the organic and technological in popular culture'! The use of the technology of the screcn in these films is telling. There is always a person behind the curtain , behind the sereen or two-way mirror who can be isolated as the cause of the mediated invasion. The Director in The human ShOlV, the TV repairman in Pleason(ville, the media specialist in Wag [he f)vg, are the "men " behind the curtain. This recurring narrative device 01' a motivating cal1se that can be revealed rrol1l behind the screen is a distinctly modern notion. Zi zek, in an analysis 01' l1lediated technologies , writes that "modernist technology is 'transparent' in the sense of reta ,i ning the illusion of an insight into 'how the mach ine works· ; that is to say, the screen ofthe interface was supposed to allow the user direct access to the machinc behind the screen." He goes on to suggest that post­ modern technologies deliver quite the oppositc with an " interface screen [that] is supposed to conceal the workings orthe machine. " The problem is that "the user becomes ' accustomed to opaque technology' -the digital machinery 'behind the screen' retreats into total impenetrability, even invisibility. " 14 The growing opacity 01' the mediated screens require 01' the user a certain trust. The ideology 01' capitalism operates in this manner looking to obscure under­ standing as to " how things work" while encouraging acquiescence to "things as they are." The television reqLlests that we please stand by, and some do.

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Ir theatre , performance, film and ne\\' media studies seem to share similar concerns and aesthetic gesturcs rcgarding the collapse ofthe real into the virtual and the constrllction 01' identity in the space 01' technology, are there common t.liscoun;es to undcrstand these p ro blems? Lacan 's wri tings o n the scopic drive a nd modero drama's work in g throllgh 01' the reality versus illusi on qlll~ s li on :t I C Iwo l110dcb I will pll l lúrlh .

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The lTla lería lisl el il i4 ue nI' Laca lIialt alld I I\; IIl h .1I1 I ~'iyc hua Ila l}! ic pa rildigl ll~ in fil m ::;l uJie~ asserls tbal many nI' 1he I1lOtkls (11 il'i di'iUlll rse are lola Ii/.i ll g. idealistie and ahistorieal, relying 011 sexual d ilferencc lo artieulalc its IheOl)' é11 the expense 01' raee and dass differcnliations. 15 Nonetheless, performance the­ orists continue to mine Laean 's oeuvre to help cx plicate lhe fic ld and several notions eoneerning the sereen and the seopie drive from Lacan's Semimlr XI will help focus my argument. 1ó 1try here to employ these works not asaulhor­ itarian truth but as metaphors , or even "as if" they are dramatic texts, not lO extend the psyehoanalytie discourse, but to tease out structures 0 1' subject con­ struction in mediatized culture that reflect upon contemporary thea lre practice. The imaginary play ("The Scopic Ori ve ") which 1 construct from Lacan's texts regarding the drama ofthe self and subjectivity plots a division between the gaze 1í and the subject 01' representation, the gaze and th e eye, the subjtct a nd the other. The mediators between the two sets are the image and the screen. T he action of the plot follows two paths. The Arst concerns how the subject doub1es itself as a result of the nature of being, being split l8 and the fasci na· tion that grows for the determining factor in that divi sion. Lacan \.. .Tites, "the interest the subject takes in his own split is bound up with that which deter­ mines it- namely, a privileged object, which has emerged from some primal separation, from some self-mutilation induced by the very approach of the real. "l~ The deterlllining factor of split subjectivity in mediatized culture is rightly sensed as technology . The televisual screen is that privileged object that emerges from th e separation of the se1f, but is also the technology of tbe self-mutilation revealing the appearance of the double as the approach of lhe real. The question ofthe drama is not one ofrepresentation, ofthe thing and its reflection , but of the splitting 01' subjectivity. The second story of the plot concerns the nature of the screen and its manipulations at the hands of the subject: "Only the subject- the hum an subject , the subject 01' the desire that is the essence 01' man---is not, unlike tb e animal. entirely caught up in this imaginary capture. He maps himse1f in it. How? In so far as he isolates the function of the screen and plays with it. Man , in effeet, knows how to play with the mask as that beyond which there is the gaze. The screen is here the locus 01' Illediation. " 20 The screens are isolated , played with , a nd materialize as pictures to map visions of ourselves. T he screens are the technologies used to reconfigure ourselves and to see ourselves as what we are: pictures, screens. Orlan's recent works in digital photography and facial reconstruction resonate here. 21 The manipulations of the screens are manipulations of our subjectivity, whether \ve are in control or no1. T be mediated screens in live performance are both the opaque border of th e representable object trapping the gaze 01' the perceivin g subject befo re it apprehends the object and the sitc wherein and upon which the s ubject places its phan l.asm ic projections whiJe seeing itself see itself. The lclcvisual screcn determines the split 01' lhe subject an d becomes lile lrap for the gaze 01' Lhc subjecl app rehendi ng its d oubli ng.

II IIW d(llll lll l' III I'0LIIY Ihealn: II ll tl pcrrurllwnce arlisls :.tuge lhis drallla ? Pt.: rl OrlllcrS J p pCUI II vc JIHI vid eatcd silllultall\::o usly. O nc image in lhe pro· \.'I.!SS ol'living, bcing-ulIlo-dealh, onc ¡muge hc1d in uhcyance. virtually prcscnt. I'hl~ dDubling occurs when Ron Va wter crea tes a lip sym; to his own visage on Ihe video Illon itors and takes on the voices for all the "g uests" on a recrcation 111'" nude talk show in a type oftechnological-ventriloq uist act in the Wooster ( irnup 's" Frank Dell's Last Temptation ofSt. Anthony.'>12 The videated inter­ vicwces from the Oesperate Optimist's deconstruction of Synge's Playboy 1If' Ihe Weslern World in which ind ivid uals Are gU11s 011 video which have "rcal" stage effects of exploding blood bags on the actors creates a uni fied lic1d 01' the televisual and the stage. W hen O rlan's pe rrormative surgeries a re video-conferenced to galleries across the globe, or Stelarc's body is offered up ror manipul m e lile ~ l llll,;a:;(s lll" lile

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il's awfully hol. Oid yo u hear? Make some sbade for Madamc , and be quick about il. Said kicks Le ila, Ivho approaches Ihe screen and, l'ery s/owly l/mI ('urejúlly. draws wilh green chalk a magnificen/ pa/m free. The Vamp: (admiringly): Oh ! P aJm s!

Th e Son (to Leila): Make a little breeze fo r Mad ame ....

With her 1110Ulh, L eila simula les {he sound oI lVind in Ihe branches and wilh her skir/, /he rush o/airo Thank you: I told you so: there are sorne The Vamp (blandly): lovely ones among the 10L Not everything 's rotten. Those , for example, (poinling lo Said und Leila) they're no doubt SLlpporters 0('" ours.'J

The Vamp: The Son (to Said):

The French colonialists in the characters of The Vamp and The Son demand that a world be painted for them on tbe eternal screens. Said and Leila readily submit th eir skills for the comforts 01' the ruling class. Why haven 't they used those skills to better their o\Vn lot? The stage is composed of screens upon which are drawn the material objects that a re struggled over and negotiated between ruler and colonial other. Genet's material screens, like the projection screen in Film, are the primary element 01' the mise-en­ SCfl1e ; they are used to stage the stage. ln the narrative the s.c reens are con­ trolled by the AIgerians through the demands of the French. The screens are a place, a location , wherein one can exit or enter, hide behind 01' be revealed. They are in essence each a tiny theatre with curtains and prosceniums where a world is created through the pictures drawn on their surface. The screens are each a sign of constructed subjectivities and personalities. They are sometimes opaque, translucent , breakable. Genet's play stages the world tha! is created through representations, which is the only world we' ve gol. The colonial soldiers understand the power of doubling, 01" mirroring, to crea te the illusions of v01ume. One soldier should equal one million: " Let every man be a mirror to every other man o A pair of legs must look at themselves and see themselves in the pair of legs opposite, a torso in the torso opposile, the mouth in another mouth, the eyes in the eyes .... ",4 The co lonia l power is looking to control difference , to kili the other, through the replicat ion of the screens as mirrors retlecting their o\Vn subjectivity. The colonialist wi ll no t see who sta nds behind the Sl: reen, who m OVCli th em, 01' who paint!) them . T o acknowledge their contribution is 10 shu re powe r and gran! subjecth ood . 190

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T lle SI,; I l!"'\I~ 111 \., c lld's pl ay also dcman;alc lhe spacc hetwecn llw livin g alld lhe by, rol' cxalllp lc. :tllcl ing its rh ythlll s a mI tem po, p icking Uf) on a m i moJiry ing mcllldic li nes, ele. W hih: tlll~ pmgram is vt::l'y rcspol1sive, its beha vior is impossible to predid, eVCIl h'l r Lcwis himself, both because of the complexity of the rules lhe progralll cmploys and the t::lcmcnt of randomness that pcrmeates its algorithm s.'7 Now it is ccrtainly possible that someo ne playing along wirb Voy ager could ad opt él mimetic attitude, ima gining, for example, th al Voyager was a huma n being. IlIdecd , the impulse to anthropomor phizc such a program is ha rd lo resist. Bul slIch an attitude is not necessary in order for the work to be perCormative. Pl~()ple \Vho impro vise with Voyager , focusing all tbe wh i1e 011 the real it y of Ihe sitllation , marveling al the ability of the algoritbm to produce interesti ng responses, marking the ways that the program reflected lhe musical lastes allu idiosyncrasies of its ma ke r, are still an intel:,'Tal part of the performance. active collaborators in the making 01' the music- in their own pereeption . as well as in the pereeptions of a ny spectators externa! lo the interaction.

IV The purposc 01' this brief examination 01' real and hypothetical cxamplcs of interactive computer artworks was to learn something about the relationship between performativity and computer interactivity, especially participatory interactions. We can now draw t\Vo conclusions: l. Some, but not all , kinds of participatory interactions are performative . 2. More significantly, a participatory interaetion is performative when the

interaction itself becomes an aesthetic objcct; in other words, partici­ patory interactions are performative to the extent that they are a/)oul their own interactions . ' ~ Up until now, my objective has been to highlight the continuity between interactive computer art and the traditional performin g a rts. Insofar as inter­ active computer art is performative, that continuity is deep ami important. There is, ho\Vever, a crucial differencc between the role that perfol1llance plays in works 01' interactive computer art ami in the performing arts. In nearly all Western performing art forms , and many non-Western ones, pe/'­ formers pcr/orm lForks. Actors perform plays; musicians perform music; dancers perform dances; Shamans perform rituals. The work (play, musical eomposition , dance, ritual) is a direct object. It is what the perfo rmer dacs. In " doing the \Vork ," the performer brings an instance of the work into the world. Thc work is él type, amI its pcrformance is a token of the type.19 This type/token logic breaks down in the case 01' interactive comp uter a rt. T o inte raet with él work of interaclive computer art does not produce él token ofthe work tbe way performing a dramatic or m usical work does. Even whe n a work of interactive ~Om p L1 ICr art is pcrformat ivc. tite work rllncl ions as un ·104

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illd ll\!cl r. II I1\,:1 Iklll a dirccl Ilbjccl 01' lh\! pcrlúnllcr's aclilllls. '1'0 intcract wit 11 (J an ill '.; )'lIl'l'i(' Wa/('/¡dog, Co urchesnc 's Fal1lily Por/rai/s, or Lewis 's VO.l'uger is not to pcrrorm Yuppie Watr:!ldoK. Family Portrai/s, or Voyager , but to perrorm lVil/¡ lhe works. T he artists here do not define performance types, but create interactive performance envirol1mell/s. Plays, musical compositions and dances define a series ofaclions to be perfonned; interaetive perfo rmance en vironl11ents provide contexts within which actions are pe rformed. An apparent exception might be the practice, hardly unknown among computer l11usicians, of creating a composition for a live musician ami a como putero In this case, the composer-programmer writes a score 10 be performed exclusively \Vith a specific interacti ve system , and designs the system to func­ tion exclusively wilh a musician playin g that scorc. An example 01' such a piece is " Hok Pwak ," a piece of l11usic for "solo voice a nd electronics" by Zaek Settel. In the case ofworks such as Settel's, the interactor docs produce a token ofthe type by interacting with the system. " H ok Pwak" functions as a d irect object of the performer's aetions: the singer pcrjórm.\· " Hok Pwak "­ though she cannot do so by herself, but only Ivilh /he computer. The situation here is analogous to that of a violinist who performs a violin concerto with an orchestra. "Hok Pwak ," however, is not a genuine counterexample to the principIe that interactors do not perform work s 01' interadive compu ter art. since "llok Pwak " is not , properly speaking, a wo rk ofinteractive com puter art. lt is a musical work that incorporales an interactive com pu ter en viron­ ment. That is to say, the musical work combines (1) a score for a mllsician , with (2) a specification that the score be played in lhe context 01' él spec ilic interactive environment. As Sette! himself s uggests, "Since the electronicl:i a re live, the computer is used here as an instrument"2°- albeit an extreme! complex instrument custom-designed for just this one composition- and an instrument is not to be confused with the mllsic performed on it. Playwrights ami choreographers might similarly create plays ami dances to be performed in conjunction with an inleractive system, and in these cases, too, what the performers are performing, the play or dance , remains logieally distinct from the interacti ve system itself, which might funetion as performer, prop, set, or any eombination of these .21 By contrast, works such as Yuppie Wa/chdog, F{¡mily Portrail, and Vo y ager, which exist separatcl y from plays or musical seores, are inextricable from the interactive systems that comprise thell1. The artist presents the interactive environment as a work of art in its o\Vn right.

v What aCCOllnts for the eurrent fascination with interactivity'? Why does interactivity matter? This question IS espeeially pu:aling in the case of staged interactions, that is, when the performer rather tha n Lhe audie nce is the inter­ actor. An enormous amount of effort goes into creatin g elaborate interactive syslc1l1s wil h which danct::rs can dallee amI mll si cian s can play. W hy'? W hile ·10 ~

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This attitude is con~ istcnt with a semiotic vie", of aesthetic perception: works 01' ar!. includ ing performances, are signs, and what matters is what those signs repreSel/l , !lot the reality underlying the signifiers. Sueh a view of acs thetic perception is incomplcte at bes1. !\esthetic properties are not limited to wha l we ean sce a nd hear; they are vitally influenced by what \Ve know and believc?' T hc reality 01' an interactive system such as Lewi s's Voyager does not cncompass only lhe internal workings of the program, but, erueially, the t~lcl that the syslem is reaeting to the human intcractor in real time. Aeeord ­ ing lo Nelson's logie, this reality should be of absolutely no interes1. AII thal sllllUld matter to llS are the visual appearanee and the acoustic properties 01' Lcwis's performance. But th e reality does matter; indeed , the quality 01' lhe music plays (Jnly a minor role in the fa seination this \York holds . Lewis's pcrformance wilh Voyaga can be most captivating when Voyager's output is the least appealing, and we sense Lcwis's attempts to urge lhe system int mm \! satisfying Illusical territory. The interest here is in hearing the system alld Ihe live performcr adapt to each other's performanees, in observing the dc vcl opment 01' a un iq uc relationship between system and human. In oth er w~)rds, what is most interestin g is precisely the feat itself, the aetion, the eVell l. r he prú p()si tion that in leracti vc cOll1puter aft is a ki ncl of co nceptual art, wlllch I rcjectco iJl lhe first rart 01' this pupe r, ma y Iurn out to ha ve a n c lCIlICll t nI' Iru lh In it .. I'ter HI L Lho ug h ror di rfi.: re JI I rC'1SOIlS rro lll (IJUse T a rll hl yll ¡llId Binkky SLlP P()ScJ. In a p O S l mnOl!1 JI k d lnll logica l age, perhaps

c/!/ p el r\' f' 1I1íllln ' is a killd 01' CtlllCé ptllal ar!. Philip !\lIslander has slIggesl ed tha Ilhe lllltiol\ uf " Iive perrormance" is currently in a sta te 01' crisis, as evim;ed by lhe ~candal that ensued in 1990 wIJen the duo Milli Vanilli \Vas Jiscovered merely to be lip-sYl1ching Juri ng their eoncerts·- and not even to their own voices, since they had 110t supplicd the vocals for the recordings attributed to them. As A uslander observes, " most 01' the eomrnentary was adamantly opposed to the practiee, though virtually all of it also adrniued that the main alldiences for the performers in question , mostly yo ung teenagers, Jidn 't seem to care whether their idols actually sing or no1. " :4 The scandal, then, represented a reaetion by nostal gic baby boomers- \Vho according Auslander, were playing into the hand s of a media industry with a vcsted interest in maintaining the cult of the individual superstar- to a rapidly spreaJing epidemic of indifference toward live perfonnance in postmodern culture. Since Benjamin 's seminal essay on "The Work of Art in the Age of Me­ chanical Reproduction ," \Ve a re inelined to associate teehnological art \Vith reproduction and simu.lacra. Perhaps the current fascination with interactive technologies is, in fact. part of the reaction agail7sl postmodern alienation , a nostalgic revival of the modernist quest for presence and immediacy. In the 1960s, this desire for presence became an end unto it self. Actors in companics such as the Open Theater and Performance Group aeled , at lea st in large part, for themsclves, and often rcsisted public performance as long as poss­ ible. Such companies celebrated the process over the product. Part ieipatory theater and happenin gs represented an attem pt to invite audicnces inl~) lhe proccss, but rarely was that aetuallY possible. As R ichard SchecIJ ner, a k.ey pi ayer in this movement, himsel f noted in retrospcct, the gap betwecn l hl! performers - whose relationships and performances had dcvelopcd ovcr él long time- ami the "o utsiders " was often too great to overcom c. 25 Particir­ atory interactive computer art, rather than marking the bcginning 01' a new era, marks a renewed attempt to real ize the 1960s goa l of a participatory environmental theater. If that is , in faet , the goal, is it doomed to rail? Could partieipato ry computer interactions succeed where participatory theater fail ed? There are reasons to think that it migh!. Participato ry interactions have at least two potential advantages over participatory theater. While trained aetors often have difficulty truly opening up to strangers and letting them into their ra nks, a computer will welcome anyone into its circle and give each person its complete attcntion . I ronically, the computcr's very laek of sentience makcs it, in sorne respects, a better actor, that is to say, a better interactor, than a sentient human bein g. The computer will nol become "stale" (one mi ght say that its perfo rmance is "always a lready stale"); it will never anticipate o ut of habi1. W hen people perform a seq uence of actions repeated ly. those actions bcco lllc easier, increasingl y " automalic, " seeo ml nall1 rc. ~(' Thi~ process of habi tuatilln is hard-wircd into people. \t mUllt be prograllll lh:d illto a com pu ter. !\ nd wri ting a prouram that Icams rrom its

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1 CW I!'. hus ill viuxl othcl II I11 S IÓ ;III N 111 " llI y wil" ' ·!lr(/).:('/', I,c 1I111Sll y Ihe pwgralll hilllSclf, anu rn:qucn tly p Cl l III"JlIS JIl public wilh the programo 11 he 'iim ply likcs Ihl~ Illus ic that the progralll cOllles up with, why tlOl~s he 11 01 jusI rcwrd J. {)}'(/ga's output on a particularly good tlay and use lhc tape in conccrt'J Lcw is is \Videly recognized as one of the world's greatest living tJ'()Jnhone playcr~. Surcly he could effectively sim ulate él sense of spo ntancity ir Ihal were all that was rcq ttired. Does anyone ca re whether Lewis is playin g alon g with a record ing or is real/y interacting with a computer in rea l time? M uch 01' the rhetoric surrounding the new technologics suggests no!. As rar hack as 19RO, approx il1lately a decade before virtual reality becamc a ho uscholJ word , Theodo r Nelson wrote that U I.' U I ¡!C .J'>CS

Ihc central concern of interaetive system design is what I call a syslelll 's virll/alily . ... I use the term "virtual" in its traditional sense, all o pposite 01' "real. " The rea/¡Iy of a movie includes how the scenery was painted and where the actors were repositioned between shots, but who ca res? T he virlualily of the rnovie is w/Ufl semIs lo be ill il . Thc rC'(//i/.l' 01' an interactive system includes its data structure ami what. languagc it's programllleu in- but again. who cares? The importan! coneern is, IVIUlI does il seem lo be?22

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Notes Christine Tamblyn, "Co mputer Art as Conceptual A rt," / 11" .101//'110/49 (19 90 ): 253 - 256; and Timothy Binkley, 'The Quickening of Galatea: Virtual Tools ()T Media," Art ]ourlw/49 (1990): 238. 2 This \Vork has been installed at a number 01' sites . M y description here is based o n an installation at the Kitchen Video A nnex at Thread Waxing Space in N ew Yo rk City , January 13-February I\. 1995. 3 1 discuss Ihe application of the type/token distinclioll lo th ealer in depth in "Whon is the Play the Thing?: Analytic Aesthetics and Dramatic Theory," Thealre R"­ search Illlenwliol1o/ 20 (1995): 266 276. 4 Thi~ dcfinitjon is relativcly informal. A rigorous definilion would nced . al the ve r)' lease to u n rad Ihe cxpressi(ln ~ " real-lime," " translales ," an d " sy~ lclllaliL'al l y related lo Ih.:: in pUl. "

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