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20180820

Reading chapter 3 of Theatres of Immanence – Deleuze and the Ethics of Performance (2013) Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca, in preparation of todays Performance Philosophy Reading Group at the CPR – Center for Performance Research.  The text has a very nice summary of Deleuze & Guattaris’ notes on animals, with a focus on the processes of becoming-animal and the art of butoh co-founder Hijikata Tatsumi and artist Marcus Coates. The author claims that “time-based arts of performance (and video) […] are particularly well suited to drawing our attention to the difference between human and nonhuman as a temporal one, as something to do with relative speed of perception and action”. I agree! When horses are conveyed trough a medium such as video they are flattened (abused). This abuse makes it more easy to identify how technologies that are perceived as neutral (such as cameras and roads) enforce human-centric world making (only humans fit in camera frames).

Humans and nonhuman animals are not ontologically different in kind […] rather they differ in terms of what their bodies can do, in terms of their affects, which includes the relationship their bodies have to duration. […] becoming-animal in performance involves embodying new ways of being in time and, in doing so, exploring how we might expand, extend or otherwise alter our human powers of perception and sensation alongside those of nonhuman animals.

The text offers a very short summary of “animals on stage” art-thinking, arguing that theatre is the last human venue were distinctions between humans and animals are played out. Animals on stage create a rupture from representation: The presence of live animals introduces a non or anti-intentional force (This applies in an interesting way to Mounted Police forces – The horses cannot be negotiated with, hence law is only enacted). The text also identifies that the stage as an apparatus attaches meaning (or the illusion of intention) to the animals presented on it.

According to Nakajima Natsu, a student of both Hijikata and [Kazuo] Ohno, Hijikata instited on the need for dancers to track down ‘all the signs of domestication of the body’, to locate their habitual ways of moving and to attempt to shed them like a dead skin. […] ‘Forms exist so that we can forget them’.

Butoh as an unlearning, body re-wilding process? An opposition to bodybuilding? Anyway… Butoh is not based on the notion of a sovereign author, nor does it assume the value of bodily control. Imitation might be necessary for becoming-animal but practitioners should believe that they can actually become animals.

‘You become animal only molecularly. You do not become a barking molar dog, but by barking, if it is done with enough feeling, with enough necessity and composition, you emit a molecular dog’. [Deleuze & Guattari]

Deleuze & Guattari use the term animal as a verb: “The wold is not fundamentally a characteristic or a certain number of characteristics; it is a wolfing”.

[…] the affects or powers of a body are not fixed for Deleuze; rather, they are constantly increasing and decreasing depending on to what extent the other bodies we encounter ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ with us, to what extent they bring us ‘joy’ or ‘sadness’. What I can do is extended or expanded when I encounter a body that brings me joy […] ‘the affects of hoy are like a springboard that makes us pass trough something that we would never have been able to pass if there had only been sadness’ [Deleuze].

[…] affect has its own reality that comes prior to and produces affected bodies.

Can horses join these realities? Yes they can! When we act as their prosthetics in navigation (trough us horses have access to the internet). When we loose contact from each other, we cannot have access to the same reality again. If I die the horse will not miss me, it will brief for my death in a similar way I grief for something I’ve forgot. Something which I cant remember anymore.

Affect is not synonymous with human emotion, for Deleuze and Guattari; rather, it ‘crosses species boundaries that are normally ontologically policed’, passing between bodies of differing species and drawing them into ‘unnatural participation’ and ‘unholy alliances’.

Becoming is not product or goal oriented, constantly aiming to arrive at some imagined end-point; rather, Deleuze and Guattari insist that ‘becoming produces nothing other than itself’ or, again that ‘there is nothing outside of becoming to become’.

Focusing on speed (as an issue when forming relationships with animals) reminds me of Eyal Weizmans’ observation of highways of “walls of speed” which are intended to segregate citizens.

Different animals have different ways of being in time that produce what lies above and below their threshold of perception.

In the text this idea is explored further in relation to  dynamic is discussed in relation to Marcus Coates Dawn Chorus (2007) video. During the production of the video they realised that when a birds song is slowed down, more notes can be identified (realtime 4-5 notes, slowed down up to 40 notes).

[…] the political dimensions of becoming-animal lie in its resistance to an ontological distinction, and therefore hierarchy between human and nonhuman animals. […] Two ways of performing this opening […] are to affirm the immanence of becoming to imitation; and to explore affects as a durational or temporal relation. […] Deleuze’s emphasis on affet invites us to break with the condescension of pity in favour of ‘unnatural partisipation’

I don’t think that anthropomorphism is bad. It is a form of imitation, a process of simulating other beings (in a human-sense-making matrix). It can be helpful for developing genuine localised knowledge of animals. For example rumours of a horses behaviour, explained in human-terms, passed forwards at a stable environment, may help us understand how to better work with a particular animal. Anthropomorphism also gives us important information on how we approach others: It helps us map out the specificities of our human-centric understanding and highlights our failures in developing an understanding of others (hiding it, will not change it).

Also, Timothy Morton argues that it’s telling how stigmatised anthropomorphism is: Perhaps it’s not permitted to sympathise with a pigs, because showing sympathy towards them would reveal their exploitation to be sadistic and cruel (But Humans are not bad, right? We’re only “misinformed”.) Jason Hribal argues that by retelling anthropomorphic stories, we can show the mechanism that build institutions which benefit from the humans/animal (and master/slave) divisions. For example: Disney stories illustrate our disgust to some species, only after this informations is outed we can affect it.

Side note: Humans can only slow down information (to make it understandable for themselves) but they cannot speed up their information intake – Humans always hear in “real time”#ॐ. If fast information streams are slowed down they can come understandable for humans (because data of the recoding becomes accessible to human sense-making and perception speeds), but slow messages will loose their data when they are speeded up (because the data is compressed and the resolution will be too high for human sense-making and perception). This means that humans cannot develop realities with beings, which make sense at a slower pace then they do. Even when they alter the speed in which signs of slower-then-human-sense-making-animals are experienced (ie. the speed of a recording of whale singing), they cannot make sense of what they hear slow enough. This means that human relationships to beings that reside in slower pace realities are noisy. To gain information from such realms, humans need to decrypt their experience, which is a slow and time consuming process. Humans must think fast to understand slow.

 

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20180813

I got the opportunity to interview Agnes Denes last Saturday at her Soho studio. The interview focused on the conservation efforts of the Tree Mountain (1998).

I asked her what it felt like when it was discovered that the rice of the Rice/Tree/Burial (1968) was contaminated (the soil used in the planting was from a nuclear plant water cooling overflow site and the rice developed a red hue). She explained that that was not a problem for her, as it is inevitable that artworks change. Artworks in galleries change when audiences see them and art made outdoors changes when nature effects it (This feels like a reference to Hans Haackes’ Recording of climate in art exhibition, 1968-1970). Like many artists she does not believe that artworks can fail. I continued asking how much an artwork can to change before it becomes a different piece.

Eero: How much can original plans change until…

Agnes: It becomes an other artwork? It does not matter. It doesn’t matter. So it’s an other artwork. It is still used, still your communication, it’s still your mind. It’s not a problem.

This prompted me to think that the Tree Mountain is an artificial intelligence – It has a mind of it’s own, which exists outside the artist and effects the world according to it’s own logic. The Tree Mountain is a complex prosthetic, an organic device which recreates her thinking (perhaps it is a “landscape organism” as Nancy Holt describes the gravel pits in Pinsiö). This means that questions concerning the restoration / conservation of the artwork should also asked from the mountain itself.

I asked her how she defines “visual philosophy” (a term she uses in The Dream, 1990). She explained that when she started as an artist she believed that she could “revitalize all of knowledge” but she soon understood that this was an absurd goal. In the process she started to experiment how to “visualize impossible processes” trough art (such as logic, mathematics etc.) and the concept developed from this. I interpret that “visual philosophy” is a method for displaying material and social structures which produce knowledge: It seeks to create representations of how our perception of the world functions. This is a two way process (at least in the case of the Tree Mountain). When we make sense of the world, we make the world and this worlds then starts to make sense of us. I think this is why she call the mountain “a living monument”.

“Visual philosophy” feels like a prototype of (artistically steered) object orientated ontology. The geometrical shapes she works with, illustrate human processes of sense making. The shapes map-out how human intellects effect the world. The shapes she presents as artworks don’t actually show the world – They show how the world is being made. This feels very similar to the way Robert Smithson talks about maps. He argues that a map is being read in relation to a terrain and the terrain is being read in relation to map but neither produce an authentic reality. If there is something authentic, it is the relationships of these elements (map / terrain).

All of the trees in the mountain are of the same species (this has prompted critique from professionals who work with reforestation). During the interview I learned that there is a reason why all of the trees are the same: They illustrate the arrogance of human design. She explained that the Tree Mountain is “a forest which tries to be a virgin forest” and defined her desire to develop a virgin forest as “arrogant”.

Agnes: We copy and copy and copy. […] We have a tendency of copying. We also have a tendency of not seeing too far because we are surrounded by other sheep.

The trees in the mountain are owned by selected individuals and their ownerships cannot be sold or traded. They are inherited by the owners offspring. People own the artwork but they cannot sell it. This means that the aftermarket of the artwork is designed by the artist.

She is a true pioneer of the environmental art movement. When compared to todays standards, her collaborations with experts (such as the rice expert who identified the contaminated rice of Rice/Tree/Burial) and scientist don’t feel very deep. But this is understandable because institutions or traditions for art&science collaborations did not exist when she started. The act of contacting a rice expert seems small but it was a pioneering gesture. She attempted to develop an understanding of the world by relying on knowledge sourced from outside of her own field. This gesture was motivated by political ambitions (related to de-development!).

Agnes: He [Leonardo DaVinci] was interested in developing things that didn’t exist and I saw the opposition. I was interested in undoing things what did exist. […]

Eero: What did you hope to undo?

Agnes: All of it.

Eero: All of it?

Agnes: Everything. You have to change. You have to not undo it but you have to see the other side. You have to see the other side to understand it.

At first I thought that she’s talking about humanity: But she is talking about knowledge and about undoing the particular kinds of knowledge, which have led to contemporary environmental catastrophes.

I’m currently editing the interview and I hope to interview her again. I’d like her to define what she means when she is talking about “virgin forests” and to envision some kind of utopian future for the artwork with her.

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20180807

Americans have talent. I’ve walked past phenomenal subway performances, rock solid drum work at the curbs, witnessed stage charisma to conquer the world with and heard talks which melt hearts. After witnessing an abundance of near perfect artist presentations, a doubt has emerged: They can’t all be that good (in performance)… What am I missing?

I’ve come to understand that American aesthetics are the current definition of what talent is. They are not better singers, performers or artists: They are the definition of what contemporary singers, performers and artists are. What is considered talent and charisma is defined by American aesthetics.

For example. The European versions of “Got Talent”, “Idols”, “Dancing with the Stars” are not shows about finding talent and identifying charisma. They are shows in which performers compete on who best fits the American standards of the aesthetics of personal presentation.

Unfortunately “working outside ones comfort zone” has been deduced into a style. Americans are locked into a brawl with the past.

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20180723

Sonic Arts Union: David Behrman, Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, Robert Ashley (in memoriam) concert series at the Issue project room was a positive experience. It was exiting to see Mumma perform live. The event served as proof of the grandeur of the New York electro-acoustic scene and movement. The sounds came from a niche and approaches to music were theoretical but the event still attracted active audiences, who engaged with the pieces. Robert Ashley’s 1993 work Love Is A Good Example was the most easiest piece to approach (I should start making spoken word pieces). David Behrman’s Long Throw was a nice ending for the evening but it felt too picturesque. The blues guitar riffs were too much for me.

Joined the On Whiteness: The Reading Group on Saturday at Helena Anrather. The event was hosted by Maria Hupfield and Jason Lujan of the Native Art Department International. We read a mixture of texts, the longest was Andrea Smiths’ Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy in which she defines three axises trough which white supremacy engages with non-whites:

  1. Slavery/Capitalism. After slavery ended, the Prison Industrial Complex started.
  2. Genocide/Colonialism. Indigenous people must disappear so that their land can be claimed with out opposition.
  3. Orientalism/War. US need to be in war with “exotic countries” so that they can proof that “exotic” are not US. US is defined by war, it needs conflict with to exist.

The text also defined heteropatriarchy as a building block of  White-America: When nuclear families are set as a norm, it becomes easier to implement hierarchical organisational models upon indigenous communities. She identifies “family” as a technology and argues that in Christian-Americas emphasis on family (and the families right for privacy) results into a lack of interest in public, shared infrastructure: Suburban mindset is a disinvestment. The discussions centred on the topics of forced whiteness and passing. Learning about passing from the indigenous perspective was particularly interesting: Indians are often treated as white because white supremacy want to see indigenous people disappear, to claim their lands.

During the reading group the problematic case Andrea Smith claiming to be a Cherokee were not discussed. More on these issues: Open Letter From Indigenous Women Scholars Regarding Discussions of Andrea Smith (2015). Discovered the Native Land map, a mapping system made to further acknowledgement of indigenous presence in America. Trough this source I learned about the Lenape  and the Canarsie who’s land I now live on. The Lenape article is an interesting read.

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20180719

Booked a trail riding session for next Tuesday 1pm!

Making art with plants, is abstract art – It requires an understanding of concepts and approaches derived from cell biology and theories concerning the climate (that there is oxygen etc.). People cannot build relationships to plants because our interdependency is an abstraction. You can respect a plant but the plant will never respect you – Which means that there is no mutual respect in the relationship.

Respect is a relationship, in which the well being of separate entities is rooted on a shared awareness of specific problems and skills an other entity has (face-to-horse-face). This supports the well-being of both entities: A horse needs human guidance for navigating contemporary landscapes (maps, social networks), a human needs the horses skills in moving in complicated terrain (four hooves, sensory awareness).

In this relationship both entities constantly contest each others limits, to set parameters for the collaboration. When entities work together, the work is a social process (the outcome is the surplus of a successful relationship). One entity cannot surrender decision making to the other, both must engage at all times (relaxation is an important form of engagement). This is what Arja Sulin is saying when she shouts: “Absolute focus!!!” to kids learning to ride. Following this logic it seems that people don’t necessary build relationships to each other either: Words develop institutions which make-us-make-sense of each other according to a predefined logic. This would mean that the only respectful relationships we can form are to animals with whom we cannot negotiate with using words. Weird… Lovecraftian?

Post-Capitalist Ecologies: Energy, ‘Value’ and Fetishism in the Anthropocene (2016) Alf Hornborg. The article has a chapter called “The Money Artifact as the Root of All Evil”, how cool is that? He’s citing Andreas Malm (who coined the term Capitalocene).

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