How to do things with performance - research project presented a 3-hour collaborative session at the SAR Conference Please specify! University of the Arts Helsinki 28-29 April 2017
Proposal for Collaborative Session
From “How to do things with performance” post-doc research group:
Annette Arlander, Hanna Järvinen, Tero Nauha and Pilvi Porkola
Theatre Academy of The University of The Arts, Helsinki
Contact: teronauha@gmail.com
https://howtodothingswithperformance.wordpress.com/
What Is Given?
This proposal relates to the research project “How to do things with performance.” The session approaches the theme of Specificity by asking “What is given?” in performance: in the conditions, that allow knowledge to become comprehensible? The session aims to create conditions for a specific investigation on the given in and for performance. How do the given conditions specify a relation to / with things in the world.
We ask what is given in performance, in terms of context, relationships, history and reflection. The collaborative session proposes four approaches on the topic, presented by the members of our research group. Each part is presented by the members including a participation or an action with the workshop participants. We have invited the visual artist Karolina Kucia to create a specific spatial arrangement for the session.Thus the workshop is not a paper-panel workshop but rather a demonstration of four different aspects on the topic of givenness.
The session questions the givens of performance, in that the performative elements question their own making. The performances thus specify the discussion and participation allocated in the structure of the session.
One part, led by Annette Arlander, will relate to the question of the given in terms of the context via a) Gregory Bateson’s (1972) idea that the unit of survival is organism + environment (action + context); b) Félix Guattari’s (1989) further critique, which claims that an action can rupture or transform its context; and c) Karen Barad’s (2012) challenge of the idea of organism and environment as something given.
Hanna Järvinen discusses what is 'given' about a historical work of art, specifically in relation to her recent collaboration with choreographer Liisa Pentti on what remains of a 1913 choreography, Jeux, by Vaslav Nijinsky, a work only performed nine times but canonized as a masterpiece of modernism in dance. What emerges in re-imagining in performance, with dancers, the bodies, movements, and ideologies of a century past?
In the performative part of Pilvi Porkola, The Laundry Case she aims to understand the relational conditions of matter and humans. The performance asks how to adapt the questions of new materialism in everyday life.
Tero Nauha approaches the question of givenness as regards positionality of thought and performance, being conditioned with ‘descision’. The decision marks a position for a thought, bodies and spatial relations. The given of the the position is located in the decision. My question is to ask the difference between the decision and position in thought and corporeal activity in performance? If thought with given measurement, such as articulation, are already part of the apparatus of thought, bodies and spatial relations, what are the methods in performance to approach this apparatus? Why and how we create differential positions, in order to create knowledge in artistic research?
Bios
Dr Hanna Järvinen is a dance historian and performance studies scholar, docent in dance history at the University of Turku. Since 2011, she has worked as a Lecturer at the Performing Arts Research Centre of the Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki whilst conducting research on dance, historiography, and performative writing. She is the author of Dancing Genius (Palgrave 2014) as well as articles in journals such as Dance Research, AVANT, and The Senses and Society.
Annette Arlander, DA, is an artist, researcher and pedagogue, one of the pioneers of Finnish performance art and trailblazers of artistic research. She was professor of performance art and theory (2001-2013) and professor artistic research (2015-2016) at University of the Arts Helsinki. Her research interests are artistic research, performance-as-research and the environment. Her artwork involves performing landscape by video or recorded voice. For publications, see https://annettearlander.com
Tero Nauha is an artist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. He defended his doctoral research on schizoanalysis at the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki in January 2016. In 2015, he published his first fiction novel Heresy & Provocation for the Swedish publishing house Förlaget. His performance art projects have been presented at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, and the New Performance Festival in Turku, among other venues. http://teronauha.com
Pilvi Porkola is an artist and postdoctoral researcher at Uniarts Helsinki. She is a participant in the Finnish Academy-funded post-doctoral research project ‘How To Do Things With Performance’. Her performances have been presented in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany and New Zealand. She is a co-founder and ed-itor in chief of Esitys magazine (2007-2017) and ICE HOLE – Live Art Journal.
Introduction by the moderator (Annette Arlander):
How to do things with performance?
In this Academy of Finland funded four year research project, we ask what can be done with performance - what actualises when a performance takes place, when it is documented, and when it is written about. Through these epistemological questions, we address the ontology of performance: in what ways can we understand 'performance' today, as a new materiality, as presence, and in the international, multilingual context where words, documents, and practices connote differently but are shared in online environments. We seek to update the theory of performativity vis à vis new materialist theories of agential realism and non-philosophy.
How to Do Things with Performance? brings together four views on artistic research in performance. By asking what can be done with performance as research, the project partakes in recent discussions in artistic research, in performance philosophy, and performative and performance writing as well as in the emergent discussion of performance studies in Finland.
Through performing research, artistic research defines what is the context or the world where this performance takes place. Hence, a critical attitude towards the political, social, economic, and philosophical premises of research is inherent in the process – not as given, but as produced and articulated in and as the acts of research. Moreover, artistic research does not produce only postulations about the world; rather, its processes and performances will actualise in the world as real and material events.
By focusing on such material-discursive practices, the project tests and develops further ideas related to the agency of matter and to performance, refuting the separation of the material and the textual-discursive. The project therefore continues the critique and rethinking of the meaning of performativity developed by Karen Barad in the tradition from Foucault to Braidotti, albeit with a focus on practical investigations and experiments as well as texts and academic performances. An inherently collaborative project, the project seeks to enact changes in the institutions in which the project takes place: in academia, in art, in archives and museums, in public spaces like libraries, and in relation with the larger socio-economic changes, such as migration and labour. The practical working method of creating performative writing (in the expanded sense) together will lead to joint presentations as well as solo work, to performances and workshops as well as academic publications and symposia.
What is Given?
The session today, originally conceived by Tero Nauha and then developed collaboratively, approaches the theme of specificity by asking “What is given?” in performance: in the conditions that allow knowledge to become comprehensible? The session aims to create conditions for a specific investigation on the given, in and for a performance. How do given conditions specify a relation to / with things in the world? We ask what is given in performance, in terms of context, relationships, history and reflection. The collaborative session proposes four approaches on the topic, presented by the members of our research group. Each part is presented by the members, including participation or an action with the workshop participants.
We have invited visual artist Karolina Kucia to create a specific spatial arrangement for the session. The workshop is thus a demonstration of four different aspects on the topic of givenness. The session questions the givens of performance, in that the performative elements question their own making. The performances thus specify the discussion and participation allocated in the structure of the session.
What is given is, for instance, is this space for gymnastics, that Karolina Kucia has transformed for us, as well as other things that each individual researcher will point at. We will have presentations or collaborations with various opportunities for participation, first by Porkola and then Järvinen, then a short break, followed by two more, Arlander and Nauha, and we will end the session with a discussion.
We are going to document this session for our research and hope you are ok with that. If you do not want to be documented, please let us know, so we can remove you from the clips…
Presentations before each section:
Pilvi Porkola is an artist and postdoctoral researcher at Uniarts Helsinki. She is a participant in the Finnish Academy-funded post-doctoral research project ‘How To Do Things With Performance’. Her performances have been presented in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany and New Zealand. She is a co-founder and ed-itor in chief of Esitys magazine (2007-2017) and ICE HOLE – Live Art Journal.
Dr Hanna Järvinen is a dance historian and performance studies scholar, and a docent in dance history at the University of Turku. Since 2011, she has worked as a Lecturer at the Performing Arts Research Centre of the Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki whilst conducting research on dance, historiography, and performative writing. She is the author of Dancing Genius (Palgrave 2014) as well as articles in journals such as Dance Research, AVANT, and The Senses and Society.
Annette Arlander, DA, is an artist, researcher and pedagogue, one of the pioneers of Finnish performance art and a trailblazer of artistic research. She was Professor of performance art and the-ory (2001-2013) and Professor of artistic research (2015-2016) at Uniarts Helsinki. Her research interests are artistic research, per-formance-as-research and the environment. Her artwork involves performing landscape by video or recorded voice. For publications, see https://annettearlander.com
Tero Nauha is an artist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. He defended his doctoral research on schizoanalysis at the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki in January 2016. In 2015, he published his first fiction novel Heresy & Provocation for Swedish-speaking publishing house Förlaget. His performance art projects have been presented at the Frankfurter Kunstverein and the New Performance Festival in Turku, among other venues. www.teronauha.com
So, this is the scene. A pile of laundry and Homo Sapiens.
This is a proposal for a performance in the context of new-materialism.
I have few suggestions how to view this scene.
1.1. What do you see here?
2.2. The main actor here is the laundry, the pile of clothes. The human is not a protagonist but just a supporting character, meaning this character is in relation to the matter. Supporting characters reflect for protagonist needs, as they say. Supporting characters are often named as nicknames. So, if the human is a sidekick here we could call her Hummy.
The laundry doesn’t need a name, I think. It would not call itself with a name. We can respect it as giving some space to it, some time and attention. How does this sound to you?
3.3. What about conditions here, in this scene? Are the human, Hummy, a condition to the matter? Humans produce matter, they use it, they sell and buy it, they gather it, they fancy for it and they throw it away. Here, I guess, the matter is used and washed, used and washed again. Or does the laundry create conditions for Hummy? Something that she needs and something that makes her to act. She gathers the laundry, she wash them, she is the one who use them, dress up, undress, sort, select, carry, pile and so on. The laundry makes her to act. So, how to understand agency here?
4.4. What is the experience of the pile of laundry? Can we know anything about it? What does it mean to us, experience of matter? If it does, why? If not, why not?
5.5. What is the history of this scene? The history of the laundry, the clothes, where do they come from, where they are going to? What is her role in this history and in the future?
6.6. What is happening here, just now, in your opinion?
7.7. What will happen next?
8.8. Are the words needed? Are they too dominant?
9.9. What about the basket, is it just a prop?
1010. So, what do you think? What do you see?
