The search for the meaning of what is happening on stage is the act of demeaning what is happening on stage.
ideas
The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. –Linus Pauling, chemist, peace activist, author, educator; Nobel Prize in chemistry, Nobel Peace Prize (1901-1994)
156 points!
and the eyes have it.
A bunch of blind spiders creeping around
Having a diverse cohort has its advantages and disadvantages. An advantage is that people from different backgrounds can see my work in a new light from a different perspective and offer me feedback from that perspective. A disadvantage is that they do not know as much as I do about my tools/genre, as I know little about theirs.
By having such surface knowledge about their media, I am not able to push them more in their direction. Yes, I can offer “lay” opinions in their work and shift their progress(maybe) but if we all are continually helping shift each other, will we be able to get anywhere or will we just cover the same ground erratically?
A bunch of blind spiders creeping around the same dusty shoe box? Milling about getting nowhere…
Does this continual redirection prevent us from progressing forward in relation to ourselves not just in relation to the opinion of an outsider?
Fear the Obvious
Why do we fear the obvious? I would postulate that the current machine of contemporary performance bans the obvious. Too banal, this might be too obvious, too simple was a refrain I heard during the Erasmus Intensive. But obviousness is in everything. And everywhere. Everything ever performed on stage could be stated to be completely obvious. Unless you were looking at a life form composed of unknown elements that you have never encountered and you weren’t sure you were asleep or you were on shrooms and all you know of reality was short chunks of time and your personality had dissolved and all you knew was that you were not in a vertical position and rings of colored morphing spinning shapes circled around you. This is what the Mayans saw you scream to yourself in your head. I understand everything. It is all so obvious and I love it. I see the leaves and I know that they are leaves and that they are the source of food and breath for the trees.
But then why do we fear the obvious? Is it because we are not satisfied with what we have now, with the information that our senses give us? Is our fear of the obvious our desire for God, for a mechanism that operates outside of our understanding and creates something satisfying? If I understand the operation, if it is obvious and apparent to me does the beauty disappear. If I understand the metabolic pathways that convert sugars to alcohol do I get any less drunk? If I know that looking at my daughter causes a surge of oxytocin in my body, do I love her any less? No. I love and embrace the obvious. I love the obviousness of sweating, curving, spiraling, weighted bodies. I love unison, I love shit my mind has gone blank and the inspiration for this composition that was improvised in the pattern of typing with thumbs has dried up. Maybe I should have stayed on the tram and gone with the flow, ride the current and improvise within the composition until it ran out.
The two paragraphs above are the answer to the questions that are below. The questions are from Boyan Manchev, a philosopher who has been working with us at the HZT. The short versions of my answers appear after each question. I read to above paragraphs to my cohorts while walking around the tables that we all were sitting at.
Do you fear that your work is obvious, that the meaning behind it will be too readily apparent? Fear people won’t enjoy the obvious
Is fear ever a good thing? Yes for survival, but not for the artistic process/sharing
Are you improvising when composing? Do you formally define patterns of composition? -yes and yes
What I forgot to write/say is that the unobviousness is in the intention of the person creating the obvious events. It lies in ourselves when we try to understand that motives of another human being.
S.O.D.A Assessment 101 Feedback
Below are the feedback discussion points I received from my performance of The Range of Acceptable Outcomes as part of my MA dance studies. The text for the piece is here and the framing statement for the piece is here. I added the numbers for clarity when referring to those specific points.
I am confused by points 5, 6, and 7. I thought a “sense of assuredness, certainty, demonstration of expertise”(point 5) was a good thing in a performer, especially one that is doing a performance lecture.
I also do not understand how “control…of material prohibits interaction”. The piece, though a lecture, was also a performance. Interaction in the proscenium format is inherently limited. This could, though, refer to mental interaction. But then again, I refer to the lecture aspect of this piece. The point is to disseminate information is a clear(ish) manner that people can think about during or after the event of dissemination. Maybe I was so engaging that my performance inhibited all thought. I wish that were the case. With that skill I would take over the world!
And point 7 – “too few moments of fragility” Why would I want fragility in a performance lecture? It is not an emotional event, it is a lecture.
As those three points were on the list of discussion points and from my reading, negative, I assume that those were part of the reason I did not get a perfect score. Maybe if I had written a better framing statement, I would have received a better grade. But as those points refer to the performance aspect not to the relationship with the framing statement.
Also point 11 – the piece lost “momentum” and stayed in the “same frame of reference”. I admit that my performing lost steam. A question of craft, that. But, as I understand the “frame of reference” that I was referring to – a lecture – always stays in the same frame. People sit behind a table, a desk and speak with the same tone and energy for the whole lecture. Every lecture I have seen so far during the S.O.D.A. program has been in the same energy and tone. Maybe the lecturers did not lose momentum, but they stayed in the same register.
Maybe with this, too, I should have been more explicit in my framing statement.
ahh, the learning curve…
Andrew Wass
Grade: 2.5 Very Good
Assessment 101 Feedback Discussion Points:
1- Appreciated humor and mental ability (word plays/associations)
-2 Are you aware of historical precedence of the ‘style’ of performance – the rhythmically structured
talking? Is this an attempt at “Leading audience indirectly?”
3- What is your context of investigation of zero point?
4- Categorization of parts brings attention to what is not there – experience of own choices not
evident
5- Sense of assuredness, certainty, demonstration of expertise makes presentation not easily
accessible (as audience we feel tricked, or that there was riddle we were meant to solve..)
6- Too much control in manipulation of material prohibits interaction
7- Too few moments of fragility
8- Improvisation vs choreography – in what way is this important?
9- Need to go into more ludic quality of text to enter into profound relation with these issues
10- Art is assertion of form – formal takes over – Form doesn’t support gathered matters of concern
11- Performance loses momentum, stays in same register (no cracks) stays in same frame of reference
12- Need to sharpen own perceptive tools with how improvisation can be developed
13- Freedom and constraint – the relation of these two need to be more thoroughly investigate
14- Some clear questions presented in framing statement –for example: “how much audience needs to
know to enjoy the work?” “individual parts don’t last but whole remains in memory”
Examiners: Prof. Rhys Martin, Prof. Kattrin Deufert, Litó Walkey
Protocols of Hierarchy
From the New Yorker October 31st, 2011 review of Margin Call by David Denby –
“It’s about corporate manners – the protocols of hierarchy, the difficulty of confronting flagrant habits of speculation of truth.”
Makes me think of contemporary dance.
The protocols of hierarchy – famous people can get away with crap non-famous people would be booed off the stage for.
Speculation of truth – how nobody calls anybody on their so vague as to be meaningless and therefore inaccurate contextualisations of work.
A pessimistic view?
Art is a creation of the creator’s limitations.
Sol LeWitt
According to Lord Polonius which statement is true?
1. Sol LeWitt wore heels.
2. Sol LeWitt was short.
3. Sol LeWitt had small feet.
please explain your reasoning
