Research Proposal - January 2008

Activating the Body of a Tech Performer

Embodiment theory is used across the performance spectrum to develop performance personae and devise content. Applied to performers whose work involves the use of technology (e.g. live camera, VJ, electronic sound artists,) some of these ideas could be a starting point to develop active “tech performers” as opposed to the more traditional, passive “tech operators.” The first embodiment concept of interest is that the individual’s mind and body are inseparable since they are both part of a single entity. Ruth Zaporah’s Action Theater and Guillermo Gomez-Peña’s Pocha Nostra are two techniques that draw on this notion to develop a performer’s “presence” outside the traditional notions of representational theatre. The second concept is that the individual is part of a larger system. This “larger system” includes other performers, audience, performance space, and community, as described in accounts of the Happenings during the 1960s and 1970s and advocated by artists such as Richard Schechner (Govan, 2007.)

Guillermo Gomez-Peña has a pragmatic description of the distinction between perfomance art and traditional acting in his essay "In Defense of Performance, XXII Time and Space” (Gomez-Peña, 2005.) Performers must develop a sense of “presence” as opposed to “representation”; “being here” in the space as opposed to “acting” (ibid, p.39.) In performance art, the audience is up next to you, interacting with you. "Every detail and every small gesture makes a statement." (ibid, p.126.) Gomez-Peña’s strategy for developing a performance “persona” is deeply rooted in embodiment theory. The development of a persona draws on a performer’s experience and personal contradictions and is then “activated” through the exploration of actions that "contain the flesh and bones" of the emerging persona (ibid, p.127) and begins to communicate the hallmarks of the performance persona. Finally, the body is transformed into “performance mode” starting with transforming the face and expression, down through to the feet until the persona inhabits every pore of the performer.

Ruth Zaporah’s Action Theater offers performance strategies such as “the improvisation of presence” (1995) and “embodied content” (2007) which stem from her background as a dancer and an improvisor. To gain full performance presence, the body is tuned through a series of exercises that break down the performer’s actions to the most elemental states*. An accutely detailed awareness of and fascination with both physical and psychic states at all times is key to developing a performance because all content will arise from this presence. As Zaporah puts it, these “sensory details are the signs and arrows that point in the direction of your next move.” (Zaporah, 1995. p.109) Through this process, an active performer emerges ready to trust that every experience that arises from the body will create a stimulating performance.

Gomez-Peña and Zaporah both believe that all performances start in the body** and also stress the importance of positioning the individual performer in the larger system to draw content from and feedback into. They join the wider chorus of artists who believe that involving the larger system in performance is inevitable because performers simply are part of a wider context (Zaporah, 1995.) A notable voice in this chorus is Richard Schechner who comments that “in performance art the ‘distance’ between the really real (socially, personally, with the audience, with the performers) is much less than in drama theater...” (Gomez-Peña, 2005, p.38) Contemplating this distance can provide performers with rich ground to develop performances from and also affirms the need for acute, detailed awareness of the performer’s body that both Zaporah and Gomez-Peña advocate for.

I plan to use the aspects of embodiment discussed in this proposal as a lens through which to reconcile a couple of issues that interest me as I strive to become an active video-based “tech performer.” The first is to consider my physical presence in the performance, the relationship between my body, the camera and other performers, and ultimately what this communicates to the audience. This challenge arose in both Shahar Dor’s Improvideo and Kelli Dipple’s Intimacy and Recorded Presence workshops that I participated in this fall. The second issue is a personal challenge to return to a basic, no-frills definition of technology that I can apply to my video work–technology as a tool to allow the body to do something it cannot do on its own. Referencing work of body-based performers such as Gomez-Peña and Zaporah will continue to be useful as I explore these issues in my practice. I need to locate performers who I believe have successfully achieved the goal of active “tech performer” as a next step in my research.

I also see a need to elaborate on the relationship between individual and technology in my research. In his foreword to Performa: New Visual Art Performance, Hal Foster claims that the performance art of the 1960s and 1970s was a reaction to the increased mediation of art. He goes on to state that 30 years on, performance’s relationship to media has now been reconciled (Goldberg, 2007.) However, after attending the conference Intimacy across visceral and digital performance (2007), it is clear that there are still a large number of performers and scholars who have not reconciled or actively reject technological mediation of live performance. At the conference, embodiment theory was used on both sides to simultaneously argue that the presence of technology dilutes the impact of the live act and that it heightens emotional communication (e.g. camera close-ups) and can be an extension of Self (e.g. online avatars (Sermon, 2007.)) There is an opportunity for me to enter into this debate through my proposed research. In keeping with embodiment theory, I see possibilities of the “individual and technology” relationship working on many different levels. At the moment, I consider this relationship as part of the exercise of the individual to integrate mind and body into a moment of presence during the performance. Technology might also be used as a catalyst to bridge the explorations of the individual performer to the different levels of the larger system.

Footnotes:
* This description is based on my personal experience of the technique as a participant in a 10-week workshop conducted by Action Theater practioner Kate Hilder during the fall of 2007 in London.

** My system of thought tends to be both emotionally and corporeally based. In fact, the performance always begins in my skin and muscles, projects itself onto the social sphere, and returns via my psyche, back to my body and into my bloodstream, only to be refracted back into the social world via documentation. Whatever thoughts I can't embody, I tend to distrust. Whatever ideas I can't feel way deep inside, I rend to disregard. (Gomez-Peña, 2005, pp.30-31)

... [we] tend to act with our attention ... in the function, intention, or language of an action. We deny the body its role as collaborator....In the perfect moment ... there is only congruent action–the body, the expression of the face and eyes, the state of mind, the voice, and narrative are all inseparable, spontaneously arising moment by moment from the same source of imaginative awareness. (Zaporah, 2007. p.12)