Baudrillard

Baudrillard's idea of the hyperreal was one of the most interesting concepts we explored this fall. Baudrillard believed that there were four types of reproduction: 

1) Reflection of "reality"; 2) Perversion of reality; 3) Pretense of reality; 4) Simulacrum. 

I haven't quite digested the full significance of these ideas but I'll share some of the thoughts that have been floating through my mind these past weeks. 

As a good Jesuit educated fellow, I spent some time studying St. Thomas Aquinas.  Aquinas explored three types of law: eternal law, natural law and civil law (man-made law). The ruler of a community dictates civil law to insure the well ordered functioning of his community. The just ruler determines these laws through the use of his reason by which he puts himself in tune with Natural Law. In other words, just human law is a reflection (Baudrillard's 1st type of reproduction) of reality. Unjust law on the other hand, is a perversion (Baurdillard's 2nd type of reproduction) of reality. This distinction between human law and natural law had a profound influence on Martin Luther King Jr. But what is natural law? Everything in nature, according to Aquinas, reflects the Eternal Law - i.e. the order by which God directs them through their nature. Things derive their proper acts and ends according to the law that is written into their nature. A tree trees. A bird birds. Human beings are unique the the world in that we alone have reason and free will. In short, Natural Law, as it applies to human beings, is itself a reflection of the Eternal Law. 

Eternal Law > Natural Law > Human Law

What is most important here is that for the ancients and medieval, reality was always a reflection or a reproduction of something "more" real. One could almost say that the reality of the real was grounded on the belief that ultimate reality existed somewhere else. 

In the modern era, the developments of science and philosophy threw this world view into question. Thinkers began looking for new "originals" from which to safeguard reality. Again, in the realm of law, all sorts of "state of nature" theories develop. With Thomas Hobbes, the natural state of mankind is one of perpetual warfare. The role of the ruler is not therefore to make laws in accord with man's nature but rather to protect mankind from its own violent tendencies. For Rousseau, the natural state of man was one of blessed freedom and natural compassion. He believed that the society within which he lived was a perversion of this natural goodness. Although both thinkers have radically different ideas about what is "natural," both continue to appeal to some underlying original.  

In Baudrilliard, we see a totally different conception of reality. The simulacrum is not a copy of the real but becomes the truth in its own right. In other words, simulacra are copies of things that had no reality to begin with. 

A question that I have not quite figured out concerns the meaning of reality. If the reality of "the real" depends on its derivative quality, and if the formal "originals" (i.e. God, various "states of nature," etc) never existed, then what are we even talking about when you use the world reality? 

Color-blind Casting

One example of color-blind casting that did not work well was the National Theater's production of Frankenstein. Victor's father, Alphonse was played by an African actor with a strong accent. For me, it was very difficult to believe in the relationship. Now, this may have had more to do with the acting and the strong accent then race. 

The RSC's production of Romeo and Juliet from 2010 is an example of color-blind casting that at least in my mind, worked very well. I don't have anything specific to say about this production, other than the fact that the actors all seemed to be existing in the same world. 

This idea of knowing the "world of the play," is in my mind very important. I didn't believe in the relationship between Victor and Alphonse because the two actors seemed to be in different worlds. Again, this may have been due to the strong African accent of Alphonse. The African actor who played Romeo for the RSC, however, was totally in the world of that play. As was the African actor who played Tybalt. 

Empathy

According to Hamlet, theatre holds a mirror up to nature. What is nature? For most of Western civilization, it was assumed that the structure of human society was "natural." In other words, societal norms were thought to be reflective of a natural law which was itself reflective of a supernatural law. Viewed through the lens of this paradigm, theatre reflects a human nature and a human society that is unchangeable.

Augusto Boal however, believed that theatre should be a mirror in which one can reach in to change reality. The societal norms which we take for granted as "natural," are often in fact systems of oppression. According to Boal, most of Western theatre has been used as a tool for those in power. Echoing Brecht, he criticizes the Aristotelian tragi-drama in that it perpetuates the continued political dominance of a privileged few. Boal's experiments in theatre (Image Theatre, Invisible Theatre, and Forum Theatre) were geared towards evoking change. As Maggie says, in Boal's approach "the lines between oppressor and oppressed were a bit muddy." With his "cop in the head" technique, he makes the average person ask, "Why didn't I do anything?"

For true change to occur in society, a growth in human empathy is essential. Maggie asks, "what is the next step theatre must take in order to create new dialogue, initiate change, and hopefully combat age-old issues of oppressors vs. oppressed." I don't have any specific ideas about the particular forms that theatre might utilize. I do however, think that the overall aim of theatre should be to create empathy. The great acting teacher Michael Chekov once said, "Compassion may be called the fundamental of all good art because it alone can tell you what other beings feel and experience." If humanity has any hope of evolving beyond what Maggie classifies as the "age-old issues of oppressors vs. oppressed," it will be because of empathy. It is only when I cease to see other human beings as "Other," that true human community becomes possibly.

Maggie also asks if there ever becomes a time when theatre stops being the answer. I don't that theatre is ever "the answer." I think that theatre is one tool among many. Some forms of theatre will be more effective than others depending upon the particular issue.

Activism is something that has always troubled me. From my experience, most protests (both from the right and the left) never get beyond the surface level of certain policies or issues. Instead of protesting various symptoms by haphazardly making signs and chants, perhaps it is better to first ask: “What is the true foundational disjointedness of our society?”

If I were forced to pinpoint this disjointedness, one area that I would want to examine is consumerism. As Baudrillard says, consumption is the axis of our culture. Consumption has laid hold of every aspect of human life leading to the commodification of our culture. Americans, who never cease to pride themselves on being “the land of the free,” are in truth enslaved to a tyrannical system whereby human meaning is codified by the level of ones consumption.

How then would I protest this current state of affairs? One of my concerns with most protest is that they are often nothing more than reactions against aspects of the culture while still remaining within its overall system of self-understanding. People have been protesting things for centuries, only to have their causes reabsorbed into the collective. For instance, a group of people cry out for food that is not poised by pesticides and preservatives. A few years later you get Whole Foods. Yes, it is good to be eating healthier but now this has become subsumed under the aegis of capitalism. A larger example can be seen with the hippies. The hippies claimed to be "counter-cultural." They sought to bring about a new way of living onto the earth. Hippie ideology however, which sought to create a lifestyle whereby one could fully "express" themselves, quickly accommodated itself to consumerism. I now express myself by buying certain items. Today, most ex-hippies own suburban homes with two car garages and drink grande mochas from Starbucks five times a week. Quite the revolution!

I admit I’m pessimistic about our society and of the possibility of changing it. Nevertheless, if I were to attempt this it would require nothing short of a radical re-organization of my lifestyle. How would it be possible to protest consumerism while still being a slave to its ideology? The horizon within which I understand the world is rooted in the dominating ideology of capitalism. Our current economic system is so insidious and we have no way of knowing how much of our lives are controlled by the ceaseless craving for “more.” “Homo economicus” is the dominating myth of our day and to break out of one’s current myth, is nearly impossible. To step outside of our self-understanding may be as difficult as it would have been for a 12^th century peasant living in England to abandon Christianity.

To honestly protest a way of life which the collective experiences as “normal,” one must choose to be “abnormal.” In other words, one's abnormal way of life would itself become a protest. What would this life/protest look like? Perhaps this would take the form of living a life of austerity or simplicity shared with others of a similar mindset. Perhaps it would manifest itself in a radically different relationship to nature. Perhaps it would it would mean weaning oneself away from dependency upon institutions. To fully carry this out would require intelligence, discipline and true self knowledge.

Ashley asks how time and pacing help reinforce the “reality effect.” The “reality effect” “explains that something that seems unmediated seems and, therefore, becomes more ‘real.’” 

To examine this question, I again want to refer to Eugene Minkowski's quote: “the essence of life is not a feeling of being, of existence, but a feeling of participation in a flowing onward, necessarily expressed in terms of time, and secondarily expressed in terms of space" (from Bachelard's The Poetics of Space). A piece of artwork becomes more “real” therefore, when this “feeling of participation” is shared between the performer/s and audience.

Last night I watched the HBO documentary “the Artist is Present.” "The Artist is Present," was a 736-hour and 30-minute static, silent piece, in which Marina Abramavic sat immobile in the museum's atrium while spectators were invited to take turns sitting opposite her (wikipedia). We have discussed this is class and so I won’t bother giving a deeper explanation of her work. What I would like to highlight is something that occurred two months into her performance. One day in late April, just as the museum was closing, Marina decided to do away with the table that stood in-between the two chairs. She said later that this removal made the connection between her and the people sitting opposite her, more vulnerable and immediate.

I thought about this documentary as I read Ashley’s post. Most of us live lives mediated through meaning. It is very rare that we share in an immediate participation in the flow of life. I would argue that "art" in its purist form, attempts to break through these layers of mediation in order to bring one face to face with the mystery of existence. How is this possible?

In the Twitter plays, the point is to accurately re-produce life “real-time.” Twitter theatre can reproduce a more thorough realism because “the means by which one observes and interacts with characters is in face identical to the ways one follows the lives of actual friends.”

Forced Entertainment, on the other hand, uses long performances in order "to place the audience in a world rather than describing one." It seeks "a theatre that disrupts the borders between the so-called real and the so-called fictional.” One way that this is achieved is quite simple: the long duration of these performances cannot but result in the exhaustion of the performers. Audiences therefore, are not watching actors “pretend” to be tired, but real exhaustion. 

Atmosphere

I would like to address question number 3: Do I agree with Kantor's view that the theatre is the least appropriate site for drama to be materialized?

Before examining this question, we must first explore the meaning of space. According to Eugene Minkowski, the essence of life is not "a feeling of being, of existence, but a feeling of participation in a flowing onward, necessarily expressed in terms of time, and secondarily expressed in terms of space" (from Bachelard's The Poetics of Space). Michael Foucalt says that just as the great obsession with the 19th century was time, the present age is the epoch of space. He writes: "We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed. We are at a moment, I believe, when our experience of the world is less that of a long life developing through time than that of a network that connects points and intersects with its own skein."

He then notes that our contemporary experience of space is very different ages that have preceded us. In the Middle Ages for instance, "there was a hierarchic ensemble of places: sacred places and profane places; protected places and open, exposed places," etc. This space of emplacement was "opened up by Galileo. For the real scandal of Galileo's work lay not so much in his discovery, or rediscovery, that the earth revolved around the sun, but in his constitution of an infinite, and infinitely open space."

In other words, in our modern era, space as "emplacement" has been replaced by space as "extension." Today we talk about space in terms of sites connected to each other by relations of proximity. In Foucault's words: "space takes for us the form of relations among sites."

With the demise of the hierarchical experience of space - (space as places of meaning - i.e. "emplacement"), the world became flat. Many thinkers have written about flattening or leveling affect that modernity has had on the world. The distinctions between sacred and profane began to crumble as space became identified with extension. From this perspective emerge architects who believed that the structural and aesthetic considerations of buildings should be entirely subject to functionality. In other words, space becomes subject to the demands of reason and the feelings or emotional affect of these buildings are seen as unimportant.

In the early to mid 20th century however, with the discoveries of depth psychologists and phenomenology, things began to change. According to Gaston Bachelard, images reveal the psychological state of a person. He says that a reader of poems is asked to consider an image not as an object but to seize on its specific reality. In the introduction to his book he quotes C.G. Jung, who famously wrote about the connection between the images of the imagination and the unconscious depth of the human person. Images embody symbolically deep layers of meaning which the conscious mind may not be aware of. Bachelard takes the philosophic tools of phenomenology and the discoveries of depth psychology to explore the meaning of architecture. Architecture embodies the images of the imagination. He then takes "the house as a tool for analysis of the human soul." While the house may not "contain" meaning as it might have done in the mindset of ancient peoples, it is once again within a world of meaning insofar as it embodies human meaning.

All of this is very important when we consider the role of space in the theatre. Kantor makes a very chilling statement quoted by Amar:

“It is only in a place and at a time where we do not expect anything to happen that something we will unquestionably believe in can happen.

This is the reason the theater, which has been completely sterilized and neutralized by centuries-old practices, is the least appropriate site for drama to be materialized.”

Going back to Minkowski's quote at the beginning of this blog post: the essence of life is not "a feeling of being, of existence, but a feeling of participation in a flowing onward." Theatre is deadly when things get stuck within a particular form. This deadly "stuckness" occurs whenever movement is stifled. Stanislavski reacted against the cliche acting of his day and sought to recover a truthfulness that is new and fresh in each and every performance. In this weeks article's we read about how theatre must also break out of the deadly straight jacket of traditional performance spaces and past uses of technical elements. In short, if life is a feeling of participation in a "flowing onward" which gets expressed in space and time, and if theatre is an expression of life, then theatrical space must never become a fixed and rigid thing. Insofar as theatre becomes a "place" where one does "plays," Kantor is right. If however, the theatre remains open to the images of the imagination and faithful embodies these images in text, movement and setting, the drama of human life will continue to be expressed.

It is towards this goal that Richard Schechner offers his six axioms of environmental theatre. The point of his work, as stated by Amar, is to increase the audience's awareness by eliminating the line between what is the actor's space and what is the audience's space. 

"Face to Face"

Addie asks if theatre is in danger of becoming diluted through the cross-pollination with other mediums. She says: “Are we in danger of losing the only truly present artistic expression in service to our technological era and the demands of instant gratification?”

First off, I think that we need to define our terms a bit more clearly. Frankly, I’m not sure where the lines are between performance art and theatre. I’ll sidestep this question for now and instead focus on what theatre and other forms of performance art have in common – i.e. the physical presence of human bodies. Addie says that the “definition of performance art requires the physical body of the artist in order to be ‘present.’” She then says that if the next movement in the evolution of performance art is towards cross-pollination with other mediums (film, images, technology, etc), does that mean we are in danger of losing what is really essential – i.e. the inter-subjective – “face to face” – encounter between performer and audience?

I would like to look at this question from a different angle. The enemy here isn't technology per se but rather, a growing abstraction from our embodidness. Our culture operates from a dualistic mindset, most powerful expressed by Descartes over 300 years ago - cogito ergo sum. We see ourselves as minds which inhabit bodies. More and more we are seeing the tragic consequences of this horrific split. To be truly human is to be body and mind - or rather - body and mind are two sides of the same coin. True human connection therefore, involves physical presence. The more we lose “face to face” contact with other human beings, the less human we become. Phelan quotes the philosopher Emanuel Levinas who believed that all ethics is based upon the “face to face” encounter. To be a human being, is to be open to other human beings. To be fully alive is to open oneself to another to such an extent, that one allows him or herself to be transformed and changed by the other. This openness to the world – or “presence” – can only take place when I am fully there with another in my body ("in" is not the right word because it perpetuates the mind/body split... perhaps it is better to say: “when I am there totally, body/mind”).

So yes, I do think that we live in dangerous times and that technology allows us to become more and more abstracted from our bodies. As we retreat more and more into our private concerns, we lose the possibility for true encounters with “otherness?” Performance art therefore, has the great obligation of waking people up to the inter-subjective experience. Phelan says it well:

Performance remains a compelling art because it contains the possibility of both the actor and the spectator becoming transformed during the event’s unfolding. People can often have significant and meaningful experiences of spectatorship watching film or streaming video. But these experiences are less interesting to me because the spectator’s response cannot alter the pre-recorded or the remote performance, and in this fundamental sense, these representations are indifferent to the response of the other. Interactivity holds more promise, but thus far most of the technology delimits in advance the kinds of interaction possible between audience members and performers.

Rather then bemoan the death of theatre or the tragic plight of our modern world, I think we need to take a different mindset. The world needs art now more than ever because art is all about that mysterious thing we call "presence." An artist must fight for presence. He or she must sacrifice their life for presence. The vocation of an artist thus becomes something like a missionary. We strive for authentic human interaction by opening ourselves to transformation. In so doing, our lives will also transform others. 

Brecht and Artaud Through the Lens of Ardorno

Amanda asks: "Write about how we can change theatre to bring it into the 21^st century, and bring it into the lives of our communities and in turn bring them back again and again.  New Scripts? Perform in streets and barns?"

I would like to approach this question by first looking at the different ways in which Brecht and Artaud react against naturalism. I will then appeal to Theodore Adorno in assessing which approach is most in line with that particular kind of truth proper to theatre. 

Artaud: “If the public does not frequent our literary masterpieces, it is because those masterpieces are literary, that is to say, fixed; and fixed in forms that no longer respond to the needs of the time.” 

Brecht: "We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself." 

The two men differ most in what they see as the "needs of the time." For Brecht, who was deeply influenced by Marxism, man is conditioned by social circumstances. Change, therefore, must be sought in the social context within which man is embedded - the "historical field of human relations." For Brecht, theatre is placed in service to social change. His method for effecting change is the "alienation technique." Here an actor impersonates the character, yet remains himself; the stage represents reality, yet remains a stage. The audience member is thus prevented from identifying too closely with the character. What is important is that the actions and language of the play affect the audience members conscious life instead of the subconscious. This prevents the audience from becoming mere passive recipient of "entertainment." The point is not to wallow in emotion but to reflect critically on the issues that are represented on the stage. 

Artaud, on the other hand, wants theatre to bring man back to a state of original purity; untainted by the over-rationalization of western civilization. Where Brecht appeals to man's critical judgement and intellect (and thus stands within the enlightenment project), Artaud's goal is to reveal the unconscious forces denied by our culture. His "medicine" for the current ills of modern civilization is to furnish "the spectator with the truthful precipitates of dreams, his taste for crime, his erotic obsession, his savagery…even his cannibalism”, (Artaud 92). Healing is achieved when the audience confronts their own collective repressed desires buried in the subconscious. The ills in society cannot be mediated through intellectual analysis but rather, through an acknowledgment of those irrational forces and desires which our civilization has repressed. 

In light of these two approaches, what can we say to Amanda's question, "How can we change theatre to bring it into the 21st century?" Should we follow Brecht in his concern with social-political issues or should we look to Artaud in his emphasis on bringing to light the primitive purity and savagery of the individual which lies buried in the subconscious? Perhaps the question needs to be re-framed out of "either/or" land."

In, Commitment, Theodore Adorno writes about the controversy between “two positions on objectivity”: 1) a work of art this is committed and, 2) a work of art this is autonomous. In the “committed” position, we find both cultural conservatives and liberal progressives who believe that a work of art should “say something.” In the “autonomous” camp, we have those who believe in “art for art’s sake.” I could be misreading him, but it seems to me that you could put Brecht in the committed camp and Artaud in the autonomous camp. 

In the course of his article, Adorno calls these two alternatives into question and offers a more nuanced position. Following the aesthetics of Immanuel Kant, Adorno believes that “fine” or “beautiful” art is characterized by a kind of autonomy in that “the work of art… does not have an end.” However, following Marx, Adorno also emphasizes the fact that art is always embedded within a particular society. He writes: “There is no material content, no formal category of artistic creation, however mysteriously transmitted and itself unaware of the process, which did not originate in the empirical reality from which it breaks free” (p. 190).

For Adorno therefore, in an authentic work of art, there is an unavoidable tension within the socio-historical process from which the work of art arises and to which it belongs. These tensions enter the artwork “through the artist’s struggle with socio-historically laden materials, and they call forth conflicting interpretations” (Sanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Adorno sees these tensions and conflicts as “contradictions” to be worked out in the piece of art.

It is from this premise that he criticizes those who ascribe to either of the “two positions on objectivity” mentioned above. The work of Brecht for instance, is infected by the deceptions of his political commitment. According to Adorno, Brecht engaged in aesthetic reduction in that his pursuit for political truth gets in the way of his ability to accurately tell the truth. On the opposite front, those who attempt to create works of art ex nihilo and react against empirical reality, are in truth subject to the forces of that reality. Although he doesn't mention Artaud in his article, I wonder if he would criticize him for being a-historical. Artaud appeals to some primal purity but if man is always and already embedded within a social and historical context, the idea that we can ever return to a place of primal purity is nonsense. 

To grasp the “truth” of a piece of artwork, Adorno believed that one must grasp both the internal dynamics of the piece and the dynamics of the socio-political totality to which the artwork belongs.  In other words, the truth content of a piece of theatre is not a metaphysical idea or essence living somewhere outside of the artwork. Neither however, is it merely a human construct: “It is historical but not arbitrary; nonpropositional, yet calling for propositional claims to be made about it; utopian in its reach, yet firmly tied to specific societal conditions.” Truth content is thus the way in which an artwork “simultaneously challenges the way things are and suggests how things could be better, while leaving them practically unchanged” (Sanford Enclyclopedia).

In terms of how we should "change theatre to bring it into the 21st century," I have no idea. I suppose it would have something to do with creating something that brings together the different aspects of humanity which Brecht and Artaud respectively deal with. 

Naturalism

The prompt question for this week asks two things::

1.  Distinguish between the show that you just enjoyed (made you laugh, cry, upset, or was entertaining, etc..) from a production that really informed or convinced you of something True.
2.  Is there a difference between performances that offer some kind of (new or newly clarified) truth versus performances that strive for documentary “verbatim” or naturalistic reality?

For Naturalism, truthfulness in the theater is about creating the illusion of reality with totally authentic and naturalistic stage pictures. Pickering and Thompson claim that Naturalists took three related ideas to create their doctrine: "scientific enquiry, materialism and pictorial realism." They go on to say that it was perhaps more particularly, "the invention of photography to present images of life that were more 'truthful' and accurate than had ever been seen before, which contributed significantly to the passion for visual realism." As Joe points out, Pickering and Thompson claim that contemporary documentary theater is a legacy of Naturalism. The goal is to present events objectively, "with the exact word spoken without emphasis, quite naturally."

This connection between Naturalism and Documentary theater is interesting in light of our experience last fall with Spill. Spill was a documentary style play with elements of verbatim reality and yet, it was also highly theatrical. Instead of merely having the actors recite the testimonies of the survivors of the Deepwater Horizon, the actors engaged in a choreographed sequences with movement, lighting, projection and sound to give the audience an experience of this tragedy.

Drawing primarily from my experience with this play I can say yes, there is difference between performances that offer some kind of clarified truth and those that strive for "verbatim" reality. Tectonic Theatre operates under a larger notion of truth than the pictorial realism of Naturalism. For example in Spill, truth can be conveyed symbolically - (I'm thinking in particular of the rig explosion scene).

A larger question (which I don't have the energy to explore right now) concerns the concept of truth. I would argue that Naturalism's concept of truth is reductionist and ultimately dangerous to true function of theatre. We can perhaps discuss this further when we get to Artaud.

Reggie Watts - Subversive Nonsense

Judith Butler claims that if identity is based upon performances, then this opens the possibility that we may perform differently than expected. In speaking about gender norms, she writes: "If the 'I' is the effect of a certain repetition, one which produces the semblance of a continuity or coherence, then there is no 'I' that precedes the gender that it is said to perform." If this is true, then we can alter performative acts in ways that undermine or subvert how they're "supposed" to be performed. 

A wonderful example of this type of subversion can be seen in the work of Reggie Watts. Attached is a ten minute Ted Talk video offered by Watts, followed by an analysis of his work by Seth Abramson of the Huffington Post. 

Reggie Watt's Ted Talk

In what follows I will summarize some of Abramson's points. However, to fully appreciate his argument, I encourage you to read it first hand. 

Abramson begins his article by distinguishing between postmodernism and meta-modernism. The post-modernists, according to Abramson, are those who contend generally that "there is no stable self, no stable Truth, no stable language, no notable structure for us to hang onto whatsoever as we move through a series of performances and collapsing institutions in contemporary America." Meta-modernism is a disputed concept and those who talk about it "can't agree on whether it comes 'between' Modernism and postmodernism or supercedes both and thereby effectively declares both dead." Professor Stephen Knudsen, writing in ArtsPulse, says that metamodernism, "allows the possibility of staying sympathetic to the poststructualist deconstruction of subjectivity and the self... and yet it still encourages genuine protagonists and creators and the recouping of some of modernism's virtues." 

Abramson claims that Reggie Watts's TedTalk is a masterpiece of meta-modernism. He explores ten characteristics of meta-modernism, present in this clip. Again, I'm just summarizing some of Abramson's points. Again, for his full argument, read the article linked above. 

1. Code Switching (0:16 to 0:53). 
- In the beginning of his talk, Watts switches seamlessly between languages. Abramson says: "Watts telegraphs to his audience that communication in the conventional sense is not his primary aim, nor is deconstructing language. Instead, he aims to embody the twenty-first century information consumer, within whom countless unbreakable codes that are obscure to all listeners are crafted into an authentic and 'whole' identity nonetheless." However, how are we to know that the languages Watts speaks are accurate? We don't! Even the integrity and fidelity of the codes Watts is using are in doubt, "meaning that even if his audience understood a number of those codes, and even if they looked beneath the patina of coherence Watts has layered atop his monologue, they'd still feel the anxiety of uncertainty--which is exactly how Watts wants it." He "exits" his string of linguistic code-switches in a false British accent. The topic he is discussing however, is entirely inconsistent with the occasion casting doubt on the relevance of anything he said previously. 

2. Ordered Nonsense (0:53 to 1:34). 
- "One of Watts's most common techniques is to speak vacuously--that is, incomprehensibly--in such a reasonable, deliberate, and confident way that the listener begins to question her judgment that nothing of consequence has just been said. Hearing Watts's "ordered nonsense" forces the audience to acknowledge that, in the Internet Age, we often give the benefit of the doubt to someone only to find later that that trust was undeserved. More generally, we habitually presume that people know what they're talking about--for instance, politicians, academics, doctors, or prominent political and cultural pundits--when all evidence points to the contrary."

3. Enforced Reality (1:34 to 1:40). 
- "The key to reality-shifting is to not acknowledge you're doing it. Watts is known for telling stories that include hard data and then changing a datum the second time it's referenced, forcing the listener to decide whether the first number provided, the second, or neither is true."

4. Disguised Sense (1:40 to 1:57). 
- "The other side of the coin to Watts's use of "ordered nonsense" is "disguised sense." Essentially, Watts sets the table for one reality--in which what he's saying is nonsense and his audience knows it--and then pulls out the rug from beneath us all by cleverly encoding actual sense into his monologue."

5. Revealed Presumption (1:58 to 2:10). 
- Watts follows the first sensible thing he's said to his audience with a code-switch into pseudo-ebonics. What does this mean?

 "First, Watts is forcing his audience to feel surprise--and to feel shame at that surprise--when he code-switches from the accent of an Oxford don to the accent of (an outrageous stereotype of) an urban-dwelling African-American male. What's certain is that Watts changes his diction level to make that transformation; what's unclear is what it should mean to his audience that that shift has occurred..."

"The second thing Watts does is introduce here, for the first time, the specter of a stable self: the 'real' Reggie Watts. In saying 'I wrote this song' in pseudo-ebonics, Watts gives his audience implicit permission, because of what they know about his background as a songwriter, to believe that he's now ceased code-switching and is speaking in his 'real' voice. As it happens... what the audience hears at this point in the performance is not Watts's 'real' voice. But what does it say about the audience's presumption that it might have been?"

6. Erroneous Self-Correction (2:10 to 2:27). 
- "We've all been erroneously corrected by others in our lives, and it's certainly annoying, but what does it mean to be erroneously corrected by oneself? (Precisely the sort of thing we do when we edit our own blog-posts or Facebook statuses in a way that makes them even more inaccurate, grating, or tone-deaf.) Does it suggest that one doesn't really know oneself, or that one has ceased to distinguish between false and actual reality?"

7. Layered Realities (2:27 to 3:07). 
- "In classic Wattsian fashion, even the comment "I wrote a song"--which would appear indisputable--turns out to be false, as Watts actually improvises the song he sings at this point in the performance."

8. Juxtapositive Spaces (3:07 to 3:53). 
- "Juxtaposition - that is, engaging in two different and seemingly conflicting behaviors or discussions at the same time--is the way younger American artists remain 'true' to themselves while acknowledging that there is, in fact, no Truth. Metamodernism seeks to resolve the yearning for Truth seen in Modernism with the acceptance that there is no Truth seen in postmodernism, which is why the proto-metamodernists of the aughts often said that they were 'between' Modernism and postmodernism rather than 'beyond' or 'above' one or the other."

"Juxtaposition of creative and performative spaces is a classically metamodernist maneuver (to use an anachronistic phrasing) because it emphasizes the fluidity of realities. If I perform something in the same space and in roughly the same timespan that I've created it, you can never know to what extent I took into account the fact of a composition's incipient performance at the moment I authored it, just as one can't know for certain whether creation and performance are ever distinct processes in the first instance."

9. Juxtaposition of Man and Machine (3:53 to 4:35). 
-"When we watch Reggie Watts 'playing' his sound board, it's easy to think he's using a machine as a tool. In fact, he's using himself: His own vocal talents as filtered through a machine. He is, then, in effect playing (or re-playing) himself. In this way, he turns himself into an instrument, but not the same sort of 'instrument' we could accurately say one is using when one sings. Instead, in a perfect exemplar of the layered realities of metamodernism, Watts becomes a human instrument that the human who's playing it (again Watts) can step outside of and manipulate as though it were a separate medium. A single man is thus split into two different media."

10. Looping (4:35 to 5:25). 
"While metamodernism doesn't go in for conclusions or endings - after all, if all realities are happening all the time, how can we say where any one reality begins or ends?--it often does use 'looping' to show us that it is possible to return to realities we've visited previously, thereby creating a 'frame' for all the realities we traveled to in the meantime."

"Looping forces a reframing of everything that precedes it, meaning that it sends us back through (by way of forcing us to recontextualize) all the prior realities we've experienced."

Conclusion:
Abramson claims that the best summation of Watt's philosophy comes in the following statement:

The important thing to remember is that this simulation is a good one. It's believable, it's tactile, you can reach out, things are solid, you can move objects from one area to another, you can feel your body, you can say I'd like to go over to this location, you can move this mass of molecules through the air over to another location. At will. That's something you live inside of every day.

"He's speaking, of course, about the more or less 'stable' reality we feel we inhabit every day. That is, he's comforting his disoriented audience with the knowledge that, however many realities there may be, the one we foolishly believe is the most important does, indeed, have its benefits. Of course, most of these benefits have to do with the body rather than the mind, but they're benefits even so. In case this isn't clear enough, he adds: 'Feel not as though it is a sphere we live on; rather, an infinite plane which has the illusion of leading yourself back to a point of origin. Once we understand that all the spheres in the skies [sic] are just large infinite planes, it will be plain to see."

Abramson says that "these are words few postmodernists would be caught dead saying... For the metamodernist, this sort of mind-expanding exercise is not just important but, in fact, the final destination of this new brand of art."

Performance as Consciousness of Doubleness - What does that mean?

In his the instruction to his book, Performance: A Critical Introduction, Marvin Carlson claims that the term "performance" is "an essentially contested concept." Carlson argues that it is futile to seek some overarching definition of "performance" because there are so many disparate uses of the term. 

He does however, praise "one highly suggestive attempt" by Richard Bauman. In the International Encyclopedia of Communications, Bauman claims that all performance involves "a consciousness of doubleness, through which the actual execution of an action is placed in mental comparison with a potential, an ideal, or a remembered original model of that action." For Bauman, performance is always performance for someone, "some audience that recognizes and validates it as performance even when, as is occasionally the case, that audience is the self." 

Bauman's articulation of performance as characterized by "a consciousness of doubleness" is highly suggestive and aligns well with the semiotic interpretation of art. In Bert States introduction to his book, Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: On the Phenomenology of Theatre, he writes about need for a "phenomenological renewal" in our approach to theatre. At the time that this article was written, semiotics - "the scientific analysis of the means, or apparatus, of the mimetic process" - was the dominant lens through which to speak about theatre. The "mimentic process" refers to the understanding of art as referential. The conception of art as an imitation of something else is ancient. In Plato, for instance, art was an imitation of this world, which is itself an imitation of the the world of the Forms. Art is a third removed from truth and thus, in the Republic, Plato banishes the poets. For Aristotle, although he did away with Plato's world of the Forms, art is still an imitation of an action.  Art is a process of meditation between artist and culture - it provides us with signs which represent different aspects of reality. 

States argues that the problem with semiotics is "the implicit  belief that you have exhausted a thing's interest when you have explained how it works as a sign." He relies heavily on the 20th century German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, who in his essay Poetry, Language, Thought, claims that art is characterized by the fact that it is never used up: "it does not, like a tool, 'disappear into usefulness.'" To illustrate the danger of thinking of art merely as referential, Stokes refers to Van Gogh's painting of the peasant shoes. It is obvious that in this painting we recognize the forms as shoes. But is that all it is? Stokes uses Heideggerian language to say that the painting is not a place of reference but a place of disclosure. What is disclosed in this painting cannot be found somewhere else. In other words, this painting brings something new into reality. 

In a phenomenological understanding of art, therefore, the observer withholds judgment and analysis and simple allows him or herself to experience the thing. While Stokes agrees that semiotics is very useful in that art often does have a referential character, we must not forget our an immediate experience of a thing. 

To further elucidate the phenomenological understanding of art, he refers to Roland Barthe's Camera Lucida and his differentiation between studium and punctum. In a photograph, the studium refers to what one perceives as a result of one's cultural training - (e.g. our pictorial mythologies of beautiful sunsets, polluted streets, children being themselves, etc). It is what is knowable in the photograph. The punctum, however, is a much rarer element. Barthe claims that it is what elevates a particular photograph beyond the studium, beyond what we expect or understand. It is "the wound," made by a detail which somehow fills the picture, annihilating itself as a medium or sign, becoming the thing itself. 

Barthe's distinction reminds me of James Joyce's take on art in A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. He makes a distinction between proper and improper art. By proper he means that which belongs to art. Proper art for Joyce, is about the aesthetic experience of the thing. By aesthetic he means, having to do with the senses; the pure perception of the thing. Joyce claims that proper art leaves the observer in a state of stasis - you are immobilized - not moved to do anything. Improper art, he says, is kinetic - it moves you. He describes two types of improper art: the Pornographic, which  elicits desire (i.e. art in the service of selling you something), the Didactic which repels you away (e.g. plays and novels that focus on social criticism - art in the service to something). 

What then is proper art? Joyce (being a good ex-Catholic - you can take an Irishman out of the Church but you can't take the Church out of the Irishman!) turns to St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas speaks of beauty as that which pleases - that which delights. There are three moments in the experience of a beautiful piece of artwork: 1) Integretas -Wholeness - (e.g. the piece of artwork must be unified),  2) Consonantia - Harmony - (the parts relate to the whole and the whole to the parts), and 3) Claritas - Radiance. This last moment is the most mysterious. It relates very much to Barthe's description of the punctum. Joyce says that the beauty in a piece of proper artwork leaves the viewer in "aesthetic arrest." One is not moved with desire or loathing but is held in stasis; the rhythm of beauty stills the heart. The pure object of the piece of art turns you into pure subject - you are the pure "I" beholding the "thing" - there's nowhere to go and nothing to do.

In my reading of Joyce and Barthe, both fall very much on the side of the phenomenological view of art. How does Carlson's statement that all performance involves a "consciousness of doubleness" fit into this perspective? It clearly works with the semiotic understanding but does it do justice to the phenomenological? If the phenomenological view of art emphasizes the value of art in its standing forth, here, now, do we loose the sense of art as consciousness of doubleness? I don't think we do. To explain why, I turn to Alice Rayner's article,  Presenting Objects, Presenting Things. In this work she utilizes Heidegger's distinction between objects and things. Objects, for Heidegger, are relational. They set a boundary for the subject and are only understood in light of the subject's need or use. A thing, however, is that which rests "in themselves." Instead of something that stands before, over against, or opposite us, a thing, for Heidegger is "what stands forth." 

But what stands forth? What is the thingness of the thing? In Heidegger's essay Things, he asks "what is the thingness of a jug?" Does the jug have an essential nature which stands forth or if so, what is this nature?To answer this question, Heidegger invites us to take a step back and reflect upon our mode of thinking. How do we think about our world? Are there different modes of thinking? Does reality change depending upon how I look at it? Heidegger makes a distinction between the "theoretical attitude," in which we encounter decontextualized entities "present-at-hand," and "engaged coping," in which we encounter context-dependent entities "ready-to-hand." The former is what we call the scientific attitude, the later is common sense knowledge. In our materialistic and technocratic society we assume the scientific mode of understanding is the only route to objective truth while in day to day lives, we rely on our common sense knowledge to "cope" with our world. Heidegger claims that there is another mode of thinking that neither seeks an objective essence nor merely relates to objects as they are of use to us. This other mysterious (and ancient) way of thinking precedes both modes of thinking. This is the mode of pure perception - the perception of the whole before we break reality into parts. As Merleau-Ponty says: "the whole is prior to the part." The invitation of phenomenology is to return to this place of pure perception. When we bracket off what we think we know about reality and simply let the world be (as "things"), we enter into a rich a mysterious world. In this mode, the thing is not a product of mind but rather, a recognized otherness that has its own life process. 

What Heidegger is after is an expansion of possibilities. Rather than reduce the object to an understandable essence, Heidegger encourages a mythopoetic stance which sees the jug in terms of its origins in the earth, through the clay that makes it, the wine that comes from earth, water, and sun, and its purpose, or gift, to humans, in giving out drink and to the gods, in concentration.  

This type of thinking is illustrated beautifully by the poet William Blake in Auguries of Innocense:

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

The artist lives in a world of things and allows him or herself to be moved and affected by them. 

But again I ask, what does this have to do with Carlson's statement about "consciousness of doubleness." Does the phenomenological approach to art retain this doubleness and if so, doubleness of what? What is the criteria with which it compares itself? The answer lies, I think in a quote from Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "The circle is a beautiful figure in itself; it becomes sublime, when I contemplate eternity under that figure." I think what Coleridge is saying (and what Blake is saying in Auguries and Aquinas in his notions of Integretas and Consonantia ) is that the artist is conscious of the whole within the part. Blake sees eternity in a grain of sand where Van Gogh sees it is in a pair of peasant shoes. The point here is that when one allows him or herself to live in a world of things, one enters into a world that transcends understanding. Things are boundless and mysterious. A thing has infinite possibilities because it is interconnected with every other thing in the universe. 

For the artist, each and every thing has the potential to become a manifestation of what Wordworth calls a "presence" - i.e. God, "Ground of Being", "Being," "Buddha Nature," etc. The vocation of the artist, one who is gifted (or plagued), with "consciousness of this doubleness"  is to open up a space where this presence can shine through. A proper piece of art, to use Joyce's language, should reveal a world of things. Through the integretas and consonantia of his or her work the thingness of the thing things and thus brings the viewer to a place of aesthetic arrest. This stasis is the privileged space where the world is temporarily free from human objectification and the human person is free to simply let the world be what it is. 

One brief personal experience of this: I was a junior in college and very much stuck in my head. I went to a concert at the Boston Symphony. They were playing Beethoven's 6th. At first I obsessed about trying to understand what the music meant. What was Beethoven after? What ideas were embedded in the music? After awhile I realized the futility of this task and allowed myself to sit back in my chair and let the sounds speak for themselves. They washed over my and I felt the music enter into my body - move me in different directions. This wan't a matter or right or wrong. I realized that if Beethoven wanted to convey meaning, he would have written an essay. One does art because the intellect is never enough. Since that moment I have gradually grown in the realization that truly living is not about understanding the "meaning of things," but rather, it's about being open to the world as it is.