What is Art?/What is Performance?
10 July 2009
Essay 9 of 9 in "Performing Identity: An Exploration of the Nature of Performance"
The performances of Tehching Hsieh deeply captivate and trouble me. They intentionally evade description or categorization. Examining documents signed by witnesses to attest to the authenticity of his works, I have to wonder: does it really matter if the performances actually happened? In comparing “Time Piece” to the photographic experiments of Edward Muybridge, I wonder if the performance would have had the same effect if the film had been edited, even slightly. And what about his final two performances in which he deprived himself of art for a year, and then “kept himself alive” for until his 49th birthday? Where is the boundary between life and art? Were those truly performances? Were they truly art? Could they be one but not the other?
Why must we always ask “what is art?” Does it really matter what is and is not a part of that arbitrary category? What matters is: what does it do? (In asking this question, the primary concern of Performance Studies, we can see how the field is applicable to almost any other field.) I do not like “artistic experiments” that simply want to challenge form, because I do not think that form should be the artist’s primary concern. Cavemen (I often try to think about what the very first humans did when tackling philosophical issues like these) probably were not calling their cave drawings “art” – what was important was its function, whether practical or spiritual. Even today, rituals often incorporate many conflicting modes of expression and cannot be pigeon-holed into one kind of “art”. So maybe today we are too concerned with and reliant upon the Critic who wants to know what exactly something is. The Critic wants a neat label: Art or Not Art. Dance or Not Dance. Form is not an end-all-be-all to anyone but the Critic.
(Although I still argue that ultimately, “normative” compartmentalizing shouldn’t be seen as an evil practice. Ultimately it is the process of creating schemas and analogies – narratives – to help us understand the “rules of the game.” We should have faith in people’s ability to think critically and understand that these “rules” are not absolutes. After all, compartmentalizing allows specialization which allows attention to detail which allows analysis and critical thinking.)
André Lepecki, in the introduction to his book Exhausting Dance, has many interesting contributions to this meditation. In his attention to solipsism I am reminded that this is a particularly modern Western concept. Not all human beings experience existence as such – this is why personal space and concepts of privacy are so different the world over. And so too, we may wonder how the ontological question of “art” translates (if at all) to other (Eastern) cultures. Lepecki is driven by a discontent with the Critic, and her role in confining choreography:
This struggle for critical and theoretical authority defines the discursive dynamics informing the production, circulation, and critical reception of dance; it defines how in journalistic dance reviews, in programming decisions, and in legal suits some dances are considered proper while others are dismissed as acts of ontological betrayal. (4)
The Critic who decides what is “proper” and what is “betrayal” is also, therefore, responsible for the arbitrary designations between High and Low art, thus installing a divide between art and its ritualistic origins (to reference Susan Sontag in “Against Interpretation”).
As Lepecki goes on to talk about the definition of a body, particularly in relationship to the subject, I am reminded again of my theories of identity. His reference to Mark Franko’s “techno-body” makes me think of the body as a physical apparatus that enables one to perform – it is tangible and situated within reality, a signifier of the irreal identity (to draw on my previous analysis of Shane Vogel’s The Scene of Harlem Cabaret.)
And it was, ultimately, Lepecki’s definition and exploration of “subjectivity” that spoke to me – not only in that an identity is created through performance, but also in that performance is intentional manipulation. In this way, Tehching Hsieh wandering the city homeless for a year and William Pope.L crawling up Broadway are certainly performances, since these actions were deliberate. In this sense, Foucault’s “technologies of the self” could really just be a synonym for “performance” – performance that enables individuals to “transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness” (qtd. in Lepecki 8). That pursuit of happiness is the intentionality behind performance that engenders identity.
By bringing the human (and therefore conscious albeit fictional) Don Juan into conversation with the linguistic philosophies of J. L. Austin, Shoshana Felman, with her book The Scandal of the Speaking Body,helps me to clarify and frame my concept of performative objects. To reiterate my previous stance: an object cannot perform because it has neither agency (it is inanimate) nor intention (it is not sentient). However, it can be performative when used as a tool to propel a subject’s performance. Don Juan can promise because he is human. His promising is performance – this performance establishes his identity (one that has pervaded cultures, art forms, and centuries), and as seduction implies desire, it goes without saying that his performance is backed by strong intention. The promise itself does not perform, but it is intensely performative. Felman’s illustrations are apt since seduction is a particularly powerful (and therefore easy to understand) performance, and Don Juan is of course the epitome of seduction.
By this definition, and in connection with Lepecki’s statements, one could argue that the body itself does not perform but is only performative, since it is but a tool. In that way, the ultimate puppeteer would be the mind or conscience, which is the true subject, particularly within the context of solipsism. Only the irreal can perform while the real is merely performative. And it is here that we can return to the theme of referentiality that Professor Muñoz emphasizes: just as “an utterance is always, irreducibly, in excess over its statement” (Felman 52) in that language is merely an apparatus of performance, so too is the body, as the site of such enunciation (52), in excess of the subject’s identity.
Essay 9 of 9 in "Performing Identity: An Exploration of the Nature of Performance"
The performances of Tehching Hsieh deeply captivate and trouble me. They intentionally evade description or categorization. Examining documents signed by witnesses to attest to the authenticity of his works, I have to wonder: does it really matter if the performances actually happened? In comparing “Time Piece” to the photographic experiments of Edward Muybridge, I wonder if the performance would have had the same effect if the film had been edited, even slightly. And what about his final two performances in which he deprived himself of art for a year, and then “kept himself alive” for until his 49th birthday? Where is the boundary between life and art? Were those truly performances? Were they truly art? Could they be one but not the other?
Why must we always ask “what is art?” Does it really matter what is and is not a part of that arbitrary category? What matters is: what does it do? (In asking this question, the primary concern of Performance Studies, we can see how the field is applicable to almost any other field.) I do not like “artistic experiments” that simply want to challenge form, because I do not think that form should be the artist’s primary concern. Cavemen (I often try to think about what the very first humans did when tackling philosophical issues like these) probably were not calling their cave drawings “art” – what was important was its function, whether practical or spiritual. Even today, rituals often incorporate many conflicting modes of expression and cannot be pigeon-holed into one kind of “art”. So maybe today we are too concerned with and reliant upon the Critic who wants to know what exactly something is. The Critic wants a neat label: Art or Not Art. Dance or Not Dance. Form is not an end-all-be-all to anyone but the Critic.
(Although I still argue that ultimately, “normative” compartmentalizing shouldn’t be seen as an evil practice. Ultimately it is the process of creating schemas and analogies – narratives – to help us understand the “rules of the game.” We should have faith in people’s ability to think critically and understand that these “rules” are not absolutes. After all, compartmentalizing allows specialization which allows attention to detail which allows analysis and critical thinking.)
André Lepecki, in the introduction to his book Exhausting Dance, has many interesting contributions to this meditation. In his attention to solipsism I am reminded that this is a particularly modern Western concept. Not all human beings experience existence as such – this is why personal space and concepts of privacy are so different the world over. And so too, we may wonder how the ontological question of “art” translates (if at all) to other (Eastern) cultures. Lepecki is driven by a discontent with the Critic, and her role in confining choreography:
This struggle for critical and theoretical authority defines the discursive dynamics informing the production, circulation, and critical reception of dance; it defines how in journalistic dance reviews, in programming decisions, and in legal suits some dances are considered proper while others are dismissed as acts of ontological betrayal. (4)
The Critic who decides what is “proper” and what is “betrayal” is also, therefore, responsible for the arbitrary designations between High and Low art, thus installing a divide between art and its ritualistic origins (to reference Susan Sontag in “Against Interpretation”).
As Lepecki goes on to talk about the definition of a body, particularly in relationship to the subject, I am reminded again of my theories of identity. His reference to Mark Franko’s “techno-body” makes me think of the body as a physical apparatus that enables one to perform – it is tangible and situated within reality, a signifier of the irreal identity (to draw on my previous analysis of Shane Vogel’s The Scene of Harlem Cabaret.)
And it was, ultimately, Lepecki’s definition and exploration of “subjectivity” that spoke to me – not only in that an identity is created through performance, but also in that performance is intentional manipulation. In this way, Tehching Hsieh wandering the city homeless for a year and William Pope.L crawling up Broadway are certainly performances, since these actions were deliberate. In this sense, Foucault’s “technologies of the self” could really just be a synonym for “performance” – performance that enables individuals to “transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness” (qtd. in Lepecki 8). That pursuit of happiness is the intentionality behind performance that engenders identity.
By bringing the human (and therefore conscious albeit fictional) Don Juan into conversation with the linguistic philosophies of J. L. Austin, Shoshana Felman, with her book The Scandal of the Speaking Body,helps me to clarify and frame my concept of performative objects. To reiterate my previous stance: an object cannot perform because it has neither agency (it is inanimate) nor intention (it is not sentient). However, it can be performative when used as a tool to propel a subject’s performance. Don Juan can promise because he is human. His promising is performance – this performance establishes his identity (one that has pervaded cultures, art forms, and centuries), and as seduction implies desire, it goes without saying that his performance is backed by strong intention. The promise itself does not perform, but it is intensely performative. Felman’s illustrations are apt since seduction is a particularly powerful (and therefore easy to understand) performance, and Don Juan is of course the epitome of seduction.
By this definition, and in connection with Lepecki’s statements, one could argue that the body itself does not perform but is only performative, since it is but a tool. In that way, the ultimate puppeteer would be the mind or conscience, which is the true subject, particularly within the context of solipsism. Only the irreal can perform while the real is merely performative. And it is here that we can return to the theme of referentiality that Professor Muñoz emphasizes: just as “an utterance is always, irreducibly, in excess over its statement” (Felman 52) in that language is merely an apparatus of performance, so too is the body, as the site of such enunciation (52), in excess of the subject’s identity.
