Amsterdam Group A Response to Tampere Lecture

We here at Amsterdam were extremely pleased to see such an active and in depth lecture upon the modalities of the program. Recently we have been discussing our concerns and confusion regarding the removal from the MAIPR website of the modality structures as delineated geographically per university. Many of us felt that the requests we initially made upon our admissions process for allocations were strongly influenced by the notion of each university specializing in a certain modality. Thereby we were concerned by the modalities removal according to location. However, we found this lecture to be quite reassuring as it reinforced, and explicated upon the meaning and mechanisms of, the central functions of the modalities within the over arching pedagogy of the program. Thank you for this!

Amsterdam Group A Response to Kati's Lecture

Gomez Pena's use of the conception of "risk" as a driving force behind the A Muerte needs to be challenged. Due to the work's mediality, the risk inherit in being confronted with a loaded gun is depreciated on several levels. Firstly, formalized conventions and archetypes at work within mass media, namely the presentation of the gun and the inherit risk for violence, are strikingly familiar and thereby devalued of its shock. Secondly, due to the idea of representativity the spectator questions the verisimilitude behind the gun and whether it is actually loaded or merely an illusion, requiring our suspension of disbelief into a fictitious world. Ultimately, though, regardless of whether the spectator invests fully into the reality of the loaded gun the immediate risk of violence is removed due to their lack of physical co-presence in the same space of Gomez Pena. While the lack of physical co-presence does not reduce the theatricality of the piece it does subdue Gomez Pena’s conception of risk.

These issues appear as secondary modes of inquiry when juxtaposed to Gomez Pena's attention to laying bare the processes of mediality present within A Muerte. That is, rendering the invisible mechanisms of video mediality visible. Through paralleling the pointing, and potential shooting, of the gun at the cameraman to the pointing, and "shooting", of the subject by the video camera Gomez Pena transfers the direction of the gaze.

We find A Muerte especially intriguing in the context of the Gomez Pena’s larger body of work, a taste or which can be sampled at his blog:

http://www.pochanostra.com/dialogues/

Gomez Pena’s exploration/exploitation of physicality through archetypal gestures within A Muerte is reminiscent of his work within The Chica-Iranian Project Orientalism Gone Wrong in Aztlan.

http://www.pochanostra.com/chica-iranian/

Thank you for your presentation, Kati! Hope this finds you all well in the digital sphere.

Jess and David.

What is a Performance? - Deleted Scene

A'dam Y team

What is Performance: mediated- marifetluk

Here's the second (and final) version to the provocative (or not?) performance example. Feel free to comment.



A'dam Y team

Key Word - David - DANÇA PESSOAL

[The body], he is not dancing, he is danced. Tadashi Endo, Butoh-MA choreographer.

Dança Pessoal is literally translated from Portuguese into English as ‘Personal Dance’. In English and in other translations of other languages it usually has an obvious meaning – your own dance, idiosyncratic moves, movement from within, improvisational choreography, your own style of dancing, etc – which, even in Portuguese language if you are not into the Physical Theatre scene in Brazil, also means everything listed before. LUME (theatre group formed by researchers from University of Campinas, Sao Paulo) developed a methodology for actors to help their creative process, utilizing exhaustive physical exercises based on Grotowski’s studies and Butoh dance. Dança Pessoal was first conceptualized in the eighties in Brazil, and since then, it has been a theme or source for innumerous thesis and researches on Physical Theatre, Contemporary Dance, Performance Studies and Anthropology. Basically Dança Pessoal is not a kind of dance itself, it is the initial process of an intense and exhaustive sequence of physical exercises that help to improve actors’ awareness in their bodies limitations and possibilities – it’s the idiosyncrasy of what the bodies can and can’t do – it’s a decodification of spasms, dances, movements from a tired body to the theatrical semiotics on stage.

Example of pushing and pulling exercises in Physical Theatre:

LUME theatre performance created through Dança Pessoal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QEoAXWUTzE

Laboratory Theatre of Jerzy Grotowski:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p09ULGL0uU&NR=1

Butoh based theatre performance by LUME:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ChX3h3CJ6o

Petra's Keyword: Ervaringstheater

Ervaringstheater.

Experience or experiential theatre would be the literal translation of ervaringstheater, but it is an illusive term, since theatre without experience seems quite impossible (to me). The specific focus of ervaringstheater is the unique experience. Or as theatre company Ontroerend Goed puts it (concerning to there performance The Smile Off Your Face): "Actually, it's not about viewing. You are blindfolded; you are in a wheelchair, tied up. It's about experiencing. There is no stage. There is no public, no fixed spot in the lights where actors perform. In fact, you don't know where you are.” In the Netherlands this kind of theatre seems to pop up everywhere since the 2001 Holland Festival invited the Colombian Teatro de los Sentidos (theatre of the senses) according to theatre critic Annette Embrechts. Elaborating on this term Embrechts continues with the following: “welcome to the world of ervaringstheater. Theatre performances which first and foremost want to seduce the audience to look and experience the performance and save judgement and interpretation for later. It’s theatre that preferably manifests itself on unexpected locations such as shopping malls, train stations, prisons, city busses and dunes. The audience is slowly being detached from their daily routine through physical contact and is put in a state of confusion.” This year’s theatre season in Frascati opened with a festival named I, THE SPECTATOR aiming to: “discuss on the position of the audience in the theatre through the showing of new, surprising forms of theatre” in which the audience is in the spotlight in one way or another.

Some examples: Boukje Schweigman, Ontroerend Goed, WunderBaum and Dries Verhoeven. Dries verhoeven U bevindt zich hier (You are here):

[the link in case it doesn't work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu-DNUNCwms]

Keyword: el mágico si / sí - Diego Amsterdam

Mágico ‘si/sí’
K. Stanislavski used to talk about a ‘magical if’ necessary for the work of the actor. It was a kind of self-deception or use of the will to make on self ‘believe’ necessary to enter the role and be able to ‘play’. Mexican director Rubén Ortiz, plays with this idea. Ortiz is a director that has been linked to ‘physical theatre’ which makes his reference to a classical stanislavskian term quite unusual.

The ‘magical if’ is in Spanish ‘el mágico si’. The game rests on the fact that the word ‘si’ (‘if’, conditional) sounds exactly the same as ‘sí’ (with an accent [´], affirmative, means ‘yes’). [There are other possibilities for the word: ‘sí’ (with an accent), also stands for the ‘self’; ‘si’ (without an accent) can also mean a musical note.]

Si – conditional, ‘if’.
[Si- muscial note]
Sí- affirmative, ‘yes’.
[Sí- reflexive 3rd person, ‘one’.]

Ortiz’s game consists on replacing the conditional in ‘the magical if’ for an affirmative ‘magical yes’. So ‘el mágico sí’ –‘the magical yes’- would be then a key to enter into the game of theatre, but not by making an effort of belief in an imaginary world (like the ‘magical if’), but as an act of faith and affirmation of whatever comes: saying ‘yes’ to the circumstances, and working with what is given –even if it falls out of the ‘plan’.

It seems to me, that the ‘magical yes’/’magical if’ distinction points towards two different ways of theatre making. The ‘magical if’ is closer to a realist, director as artist, text-based theatre -product-oriented. The ‘magical yes’, on the other hand, attempts to build a less conventional theatre that assumes transformation as it’s shore, devised theatre, actor as artist, body-based theatre -process-oriented. The weight of the work is displaced to the actor, embodiment and collaborative creation.
Two theatres:

Ortiz's proposal seems to suggest the need to take a stance (and thus falls into the realm of ethics). I don't know if one is better than the other (though I'm more interested in one than in the other). The difference is there to think about it. Could it be phrased as 'acting' vs. 'performing'? Does all of this make any sense?
The following quote of Nietzsche, helps me think about Ortiz's 'magical yes':

“I walk amongst men as the fragments of the future: that future which
I contemplate.
And it is all my poetisation and aspiration to compose and collect
into unity what is fragment and riddle and fearful chance.
And how could I endure to be a man, if man were not also the
composer, and riddle-reader, and redeemer of chance!
To redeem what is past, and to transform every "It was" into "Thus
would I have it!"- that only do I call redemption!
Will- so is the emancipator and joy-bringer called: thus have I
taught you, my friends! But now learn this likewise: the Will itself
is still a prisoner.
(...)
Unless the Will should at last deliver itself, and Willing become
non-Willing-:" but ye know, my brethren, this fabulous song of
madness!
Away from those fabulous songs did I lead you when I taught you:
"The Will is a creator."
All "It was" is a fragment, a riddle, a fearful chance- until the
creating Will saith thereto: "But thus would I have it."-
Until the creating Will saith thereto: "But thus do I will it!
Thus shall I will it!"

[Niezsche, F. “42. Redemption”. Thus Spake Zarathustra. Translated by Thomas Common]

Keyword: Busk (Jess Maxwell/Amsterdam)

Busk

A universally applicable English term most often cited in reference to public performances in urban spaces undertaken with the intention of soliciting tips. A wide range of activities is encompassed within the conception of Busking, the common feature of all being that they are exhibited within a public space, for public consumption and with economic gain serving as a primary motivator for undertaking the task.

Common examples of busking include skilled spectacle driven acts, unskilled novelty stunts and crafted musical and theatrical performances thereby making this form of performance accessible to a wide community of individuals due to the autonomy in choosing content and performance sites.

Particular buskers may rise as figures of great prominence and recognition within their local communities for a myriad of reasons, particularly the unusual content or the durability over time of their performances.

For many performers busking is a primary source of income and as such Busking has become associated in the mainstream with urban semi-migrant populations and the homeless as a form of "begging". There are Buskers who seek to transcend this label, seeking out not only monetary rewards but gratuity in the form of experential contact or publicity, while others do use it as a primary means of economic survival.

New Oxford American Dictionary Definition

busk ¹ |bəsk|

verb [ intrans. ]

play music or otherwise perform for voluntary donations in the street or in subways : the group began by busking on Philadelphia sidewalks | [as n. ] ( busking) busking was a real means of living.

• ( busk it) informal improvise.

DERIVATIVES

busker |ˈbəskər| noun

ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: from obsolete French busquer ‘seek,’ from Italian buscare or Spanish buscar, of Germanic origin. Originally in nautical use in the sense [cruise about, tack,] the term later meant [go around selling,] hence [go around performing] (mid 19th cent.).

Video Examples