“The proliferation of borders between states, within states, between people, within people is a proliferation of states of statelessness,” according to Stefano Harney and Fred Moten. There is a certain creativity that comes from the liminal space between nation-states, a borderless border, a between-statehood, where home might be a distant memory, where home might be as real as Timboctou or utopia. (See my previous post.) Harney and Moten might wonder where Karl Marx got his “inheritance of the hold,” but it may be because he spent most of his life in an absolute state of statelessness, a refugee status of la nuda vita, bare life. Giorgio Agamben took his notion of la nuda vita from Walter Benjamin’s das blosse Leben, mere or naked life, of which “blood is the symbol” and over which “mythical violence” holds Blutgewalt, blood-power. (The German word Gewalt, interestingly enough, means both violence and power. If a border has a certain power, it might follow that a border also has a certain violence.)
Bare life is a notion Agamben gets also from ancient Roman law. The Homo sacer was a person who could not be sacrificed in religious ceremony, but also could be killed by anyone without being tried for murder under the law. The Homo sacer was set apart from society, too sacred to kill and too easy not to. Bare life today manifests as the refugee, the marginalized, the migrant—those forced to have no home. Unwilling to succumb to the lawlessness of his own bare life, Benjamin made the ultimate refusal by exercising power over his own mortality.
Theodor Adorno, like Benjamin and the many others forced to flee genocide in Nazi Germany, felt his own bare lifeness during his refuge in America. “Every intellectual in emigration is, without exception, mutilated.” Perhaps he only speaks of the intellectual because it is his experience, but it seems apt to extend this characterization to all migrants, especially those forced to flee violence, hatred, and oppression in their homelands. “No individual” is “unmarked.” The borders set up by a “bourgeois” which has become “impenitently malign” help create a further demarcation on the migrant body. “The caring hand that even now tends the little garden as if it had not long since become a ‘lot’, but fearfully wards off the unknown intruder, is already that which denies the political refugee asylum.” For this, we build fences and walls. Those who align themselves with the state become “totally inhuman” in their quickness to dismiss human concerns for the sake of their so-called security.
They say that good fences make good neighbors, and the irony is not lost on artist Ai Weiwei, whose “multi-site, multi-media” public art exhibition in New York City takes that old saw as its name. Showing the marks of his own bare life, and with an eye towards “how populist notions often stir up fear and prejudice,” according to the brochure, Ai’s Good Fences Make Good Neighbors is meant to bring a public awareness to the “global migration crisis.” One of the major pieces in the exhibition, among over three hundred other pieces big and small, is “Arch,” located directly beneath the triumphal arch in Washington Square Park. “Arch” physically fills nearly all of the empty space within the archway with its birdcage-like design in silver steel. In the center at ground level is a tunnel lined in reflective material, cut in the extended two-dimensional shape of what appears to be two figures embracing. (This is a quote of a Marcel Duchamp creation for the entrance to the Gradiva art gallery in Paris.) In one way, you are free to pass through the sculpture; in another, you are not allowed to utilize the archway’s full space, restricting movement. “Arch” recreates a border in operation, where everyone’s passport is valid in the spirit of camaraderie—for now. As you might expect most members of the twenty-first century to do, there is a lot of selfie-taking within the reflective walls of the tunnel—a self-capture at the border.
Another piece in the exhibition is “Five Fences,” which, as the name suggests, is five sections of chain-link fence which have been affixed to archways on the north side of Cooper Union. When the fences were being installed, I thought that, perhaps, someone had decided to jump out of one of the portals, so the fences were a precautionary measure. This piece is perhaps not as effective as “Arch” or “Gilded Cage,” in the southeast corner of Central Park, simply because it is less interactive. The pedestrian is not confronted with “Five Fences” in the way that “Arch” alters the footpath, for example. Where “Five Fences” does confront is on the visual level, imposing as a mesh of incongruous steel fencing against the deep red-brown of Cooper Union.
How is it possible for good fences to make good neighbors? The existence of the fence to begin with signals a distrust of the other, predicating a breakdown of good neighborly relations. If the idea is to keep people “where they belong,” what happens when an individual has no place to belong, is stateless, a refugee, a bare life? What societal benefit is the state missing out on by imposing a policy of absolute non-entrance? What economy is being created around the fence, where money, goods, or services might determine your fitness to cross through? And then, what economy is created counter to that one, where tunnels might be dug or trucks might be trafficking, circumventing the fence?
References:
Adorno, Theodor, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life (1951). Translated by E.F.N. Jephcott. London: Verso, 2005.
Agamben, Giorgio, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.
Benjamin, Walter, “Critique of Violence.” In Reflections, translated by Edmund Jephcott. New York: Schocken Books, 1978.
Harney, Stefano and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study. Wivenhoe, UK: Minor Compositions, 2013.
Public Art Fund, brochure for Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, public art exhibition by Ai Weiwei, New York, 2017.
30 December 2017
29 December 2017
Timboctou: On Borders and Movement
The modern border is a strange concept. No longer just a physical
line drawn between nations (another strange concept), the border
stretches to every major airport in the world. The border has its own
area, contains its own structures and strictures. The border doesn’t
keep people out; it keeps people in, only permitting certain qualified
individuals to exit through a certain door. I have seen the American
border in Paris and Dublin airports. British border patrol begins in
Paris’s Gare du Nord, a situation which no doubt will become more
complicated as the United Kingdom moves to leave the European Union. One
can cross into a border without leaving one’s geography and, sometimes,
without knowing it.
The U.S.-Mexico border is a contentious battleground and conduit for several ongoing “wars,” as suggested by performance scholar Ruth Hellier-Tinoco in “Re: Moving Bodies in the USA/Mexico Drug/Border/Terror/Cold Wars.” The title alone indicates four wars shared by or fought between the two countries. As Hellier-Tinoco points out, the war over this particular border goes back to 1846, when the territory-hungry U.S. invaded and captured half of what was then Mexico, in the name of Manifest Destiny. (It was their destiny, so they manifested it.) Of course, we must remember that colonialism ran strong in both nations then as now; think of all the native people and culture displaced and destroyed in the process. Kofi Agawu has highlighted the “oft-remarked illogic of colonial boundaries,” pointing to “the increasingly urgent need to think beyond borders.” Just as borders trap bodies trying to pass through, borders can also entrap ideas, forcing a colonial gaze. As Fred Moten suggests, “The very taking of an anti-colonial stance looks crazy, from a normative perspective,” but using that perspective to come to “believe in the world,” which is an “other world,” is imperative to the work that needs to be done. Hellier-Tinoco does not directly address this, but focuses instead for the most part on the here and now of the ongoing conflicts in her analysis of Alejandro Ricaño’s 2012 play Timboctou.
Ricaño has created an absurd, darkly humorous piece which attempts, in practice and in content, to rethink borders. The play’s production presents a migrancy of its own, a two-way migrancy, having had a dual premiere in Guadalajara and Los Angeles, using designers and actors from both Mexico and the United States. Director Martín Acosta has said he wants to cultivate “a dialogue of gazes between artists from Mexico and the USA. The dual collaboration allows for a complex and rich framework: the only way of tearing down walls and crossing rivers and tunnels without visas, with the powerful flight of imagination.”
On the U.S. side, Timboctou was presented by the CalArts Center for New Performance at the REDCAT, a state-of-the-art experimental theatre space in downtown Los Angeles. On entering the space, one is confronted by a striking set design filled with atmosphere. The playing space is enclosed on three sides by tall, rust-colored panels; a large mound of interlocking chairs takes up nearly half the space on one side; a big, boxy television hangs upside-down in the center, suspended a few feet off the deck by a cable from the lighting grid some thirty feet above. The panels form a wall (the wall, the border wall? a cell?), the chairs form a hill (Capitol Hill? they’re interlocked—it’s complicated. “Take a seat, hombre.”), the television hangs like a strange ornamental light (so it is an interrogation chamber? “Why were you entering the U.S. illegally?”). During the play, the panels open and close, the mound of chairs migrates, the television swings—all parts of the set, more than mere objects, have their own piece to contribute to the overall performance.
The action of Timboctou, presented in an enigmatic fashion, takes place in contemporary Mexico and involves different pairings and groupings of individuals: drug runners, drug enthusiasts, the government (politicians, police, military), migrants. The media is represented by a cameraman whose captured images are shown on the dangling television. While the action is in Mexico, the actors (both in character and in person) represent both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border: the American tourist on vacation in Tijuana looking to “score,” the Mexican politician taking cold calls from the FBI, and so on. An international border is not the only border in play; the borders between logic and illogic, comedy and tragedy, possible and impossible are all under scrutiny. As the play progresses, the lines blur, and it becomes difficult to see where any border might be, if there is one. The notion of the border and its authority is tested. Edward Said has written, “There is nothing mysterious or natural about authority,” and the same can be claimed for the border which such “authority” puts into place. “It is formed, irradiated, disseminated; it is instrumental, it is persuasive; … it is virtually indistinguishable from certain ideas it dignifies as true, and from traditions, perceptions, and judgments it forms, transmits, reproduces.” Timboctou is an attempt to call out the unnaturalness of the border and steal away its supposed power.
The notion of “Timboctou” is of a mythical place, a place that doesn’t exist but you try to reach anyway (maybe Moten’s “other world”). An immediate connection might be made to the concept of utopia, whether as originally posed by Thomas More or as adapted (for the better) by José Muñoz. More derived the term utopia in 1516 from Greek, meaning not place. As a place (or no place), it’s something one can move towards without ever arriving. Muñoz says the existence of utopia “reminds us that there is something missing.” It functions as a comparative lens of idealism through which to view our current world and see what direction we need to move. The present is not enough: While utopia holds no establishment of a certain futurity, there is a sense that the future is at stake when we talk about the present, informed by the past. Furthermore, the very idea of presence (and “its opposite number, absence”) is not enough: There is some liminal in-between where the utopia exists or can be accessed. In addition to a not place, it is also a not there (yet).
In Timboctou the play, Chucho tells Dany about Timboctou, the concept, while they perform an elaborate running choreography facing the audience:
Throughout her piece, Hellier-Tinoco relates the choreography used in Timboctou to the wars, real or imagined, which take place across, around, and about the U.S.-Mexico border: silent polar bears move around the space ignored by two men, symbolic of the silent war the U.S. fights in Mexico through intelligence agencies; two men perform a routine “reminiscent of Laurel and Hardy,” symbolizing the predictability of the U.S. war on drugs; two men run backwards and forwards in the space, the “running” of drugs and guns. There is a choreography to how bodies move across, around, and within borders, just as there is a choreography to how actors move around on a stage. Timboctou mirrors the movement of everyday lives and asks us, in an indirect way, to rethink borders.
References:
Agawu, Kofi, Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Harney, Stefano and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study. Wivenhoe, UK: Minor Compositions, 2013.
Hellier-Tinoco, Ruth, “Re: Moving Bodies in the USA/Mexico Drug/Border/Terror/Cold Wars.” In Choreographies of 21st Century Wars, edited by Gay Morris and Jens Richard Giersdorf. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Muñoz, José Esteban, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York University Press, 2009.
Said, Edward W., Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
“Timboctou,” CalArts Center for New Performance website. Accessed 20 December 2017.
The U.S.-Mexico border is a contentious battleground and conduit for several ongoing “wars,” as suggested by performance scholar Ruth Hellier-Tinoco in “Re: Moving Bodies in the USA/Mexico Drug/Border/Terror/Cold Wars.” The title alone indicates four wars shared by or fought between the two countries. As Hellier-Tinoco points out, the war over this particular border goes back to 1846, when the territory-hungry U.S. invaded and captured half of what was then Mexico, in the name of Manifest Destiny. (It was their destiny, so they manifested it.) Of course, we must remember that colonialism ran strong in both nations then as now; think of all the native people and culture displaced and destroyed in the process. Kofi Agawu has highlighted the “oft-remarked illogic of colonial boundaries,” pointing to “the increasingly urgent need to think beyond borders.” Just as borders trap bodies trying to pass through, borders can also entrap ideas, forcing a colonial gaze. As Fred Moten suggests, “The very taking of an anti-colonial stance looks crazy, from a normative perspective,” but using that perspective to come to “believe in the world,” which is an “other world,” is imperative to the work that needs to be done. Hellier-Tinoco does not directly address this, but focuses instead for the most part on the here and now of the ongoing conflicts in her analysis of Alejandro Ricaño’s 2012 play Timboctou.
Ricaño has created an absurd, darkly humorous piece which attempts, in practice and in content, to rethink borders. The play’s production presents a migrancy of its own, a two-way migrancy, having had a dual premiere in Guadalajara and Los Angeles, using designers and actors from both Mexico and the United States. Director Martín Acosta has said he wants to cultivate “a dialogue of gazes between artists from Mexico and the USA. The dual collaboration allows for a complex and rich framework: the only way of tearing down walls and crossing rivers and tunnels without visas, with the powerful flight of imagination.”
On the U.S. side, Timboctou was presented by the CalArts Center for New Performance at the REDCAT, a state-of-the-art experimental theatre space in downtown Los Angeles. On entering the space, one is confronted by a striking set design filled with atmosphere. The playing space is enclosed on three sides by tall, rust-colored panels; a large mound of interlocking chairs takes up nearly half the space on one side; a big, boxy television hangs upside-down in the center, suspended a few feet off the deck by a cable from the lighting grid some thirty feet above. The panels form a wall (the wall, the border wall? a cell?), the chairs form a hill (Capitol Hill? they’re interlocked—it’s complicated. “Take a seat, hombre.”), the television hangs like a strange ornamental light (so it is an interrogation chamber? “Why were you entering the U.S. illegally?”). During the play, the panels open and close, the mound of chairs migrates, the television swings—all parts of the set, more than mere objects, have their own piece to contribute to the overall performance.
The action of Timboctou, presented in an enigmatic fashion, takes place in contemporary Mexico and involves different pairings and groupings of individuals: drug runners, drug enthusiasts, the government (politicians, police, military), migrants. The media is represented by a cameraman whose captured images are shown on the dangling television. While the action is in Mexico, the actors (both in character and in person) represent both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border: the American tourist on vacation in Tijuana looking to “score,” the Mexican politician taking cold calls from the FBI, and so on. An international border is not the only border in play; the borders between logic and illogic, comedy and tragedy, possible and impossible are all under scrutiny. As the play progresses, the lines blur, and it becomes difficult to see where any border might be, if there is one. The notion of the border and its authority is tested. Edward Said has written, “There is nothing mysterious or natural about authority,” and the same can be claimed for the border which such “authority” puts into place. “It is formed, irradiated, disseminated; it is instrumental, it is persuasive; … it is virtually indistinguishable from certain ideas it dignifies as true, and from traditions, perceptions, and judgments it forms, transmits, reproduces.” Timboctou is an attempt to call out the unnaturalness of the border and steal away its supposed power.
* * *
The notion of “Timboctou” is of a mythical place, a place that doesn’t exist but you try to reach anyway (maybe Moten’s “other world”). An immediate connection might be made to the concept of utopia, whether as originally posed by Thomas More or as adapted (for the better) by José Muñoz. More derived the term utopia in 1516 from Greek, meaning not place. As a place (or no place), it’s something one can move towards without ever arriving. Muñoz says the existence of utopia “reminds us that there is something missing.” It functions as a comparative lens of idealism through which to view our current world and see what direction we need to move. The present is not enough: While utopia holds no establishment of a certain futurity, there is a sense that the future is at stake when we talk about the present, informed by the past. Furthermore, the very idea of presence (and “its opposite number, absence”) is not enough: There is some liminal in-between where the utopia exists or can be accessed. In addition to a not place, it is also a not there (yet).
In Timboctou the play, Chucho tells Dany about Timboctou, the concept, while they perform an elaborate running choreography facing the audience:
I can’t get rid of the image of my dad, Dany, talking about Timboctou before he died. He always spoke about Timboctou as the furthest place on earth. … I’m sure that no one knows where Timboctou is. … It’s absurd to think of the furthest place on earth when the earth is round. … Perhaps that’s why the earth is round, Dany—so that no one has to live at the end of the world. … Before I die I have to go to Timboctou. No one should die without knowing Timboctou, Dany. After all, it’s the end of the world.The invocation of Timboctou implies a movement, just as utopia does. For Muñoz, “utopia is a stage, not merely a temporal one, like a phase, but also a spatial one.” A stage of time and space upon which a movement acts in time and space, a here and now which moves towards a there and then. In the play Timboctou, the movement is, thematically, across the border between the U.S. and Mexico, in both directions. Objects and ideas are exchanged along with the bodies. The actors’ movements in the play are highly choreographed so as to accentuate subtext; the text, spoken mostly in Spanish with English supertitles projected onto the wall panels, carries with it the sort of “heightened mundaneness” I typically associate with Quentin Tarantino films like Pulp Fiction. This heightened mundaneness is a style where the conversation at the textual level seems everyday—e.g., a light-hearted conversation about fast food—while the context and subtext suggest higher stakes—e.g., the two men speaking are hitmen about to commit murder. Hellier-Tinoco notes that in Timboctou “spoken words tell one story, and bodies articulate another, as corporeal forms, embodied postures, and multifaceted movement vocabularies offer insights into relationships and connections, power relations and attitudes.” It is interesting that Hellier-Tinoco uses the word embodied to modify postures, seeming to indicate that she means posture in the sense of an approach or attitude, or even a false impression, as opposed to the way one stands (though embodying a particular attitude would affect the way one stands). In another connection to Tarantino’s work, the temporality of Timboctou is non-linear, with elements of the plot presented as fragments out of time. As each fragment is presented, connections are realized, and we come to laugh at the absurdities while also cringing at the horrors each new connection brings.
Throughout her piece, Hellier-Tinoco relates the choreography used in Timboctou to the wars, real or imagined, which take place across, around, and about the U.S.-Mexico border: silent polar bears move around the space ignored by two men, symbolic of the silent war the U.S. fights in Mexico through intelligence agencies; two men perform a routine “reminiscent of Laurel and Hardy,” symbolizing the predictability of the U.S. war on drugs; two men run backwards and forwards in the space, the “running” of drugs and guns. There is a choreography to how bodies move across, around, and within borders, just as there is a choreography to how actors move around on a stage. Timboctou mirrors the movement of everyday lives and asks us, in an indirect way, to rethink borders.
References:
Agawu, Kofi, Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Harney, Stefano and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study. Wivenhoe, UK: Minor Compositions, 2013.
Hellier-Tinoco, Ruth, “Re: Moving Bodies in the USA/Mexico Drug/Border/Terror/Cold Wars.” In Choreographies of 21st Century Wars, edited by Gay Morris and Jens Richard Giersdorf. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Muñoz, José Esteban, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York University Press, 2009.
Said, Edward W., Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
“Timboctou,” CalArts Center for New Performance website. Accessed 20 December 2017.
14 December 2017
Ocean Vuong
I just read Night Sky with Exit Wounds, a book of poems by Ocean Vuong published last year. It turns out that a good friend of mine went to high school with Vuong, and she happened to be in the same poetry class as him. She remembers his poetry being “pretty raw” and asked me if it made me cry. I didn’t press further, but I had the image in my head of Vuong reading his work in this high school poetry class and the students weeping around him. With him.
It seems to me that most poetry is analyzed as if every word is spoken by the poet, in the poet’s voice. We ascertain intent as if that’s the reason the poet wrote what he wrote and there must be nothing else. I have a feeling this is because poetry seems impenetrable to many, even those who purport to critique it, but because it is written in languages we suppose to understand, we scramble when we confront what is not easily understood and instead seek to figure out what the poet means to do with these words rather than consider how the words feel in our own mouths and ears. Also, the voice the poet uses is not always his own. In a piece such as “Immigrant Haibun,” Vuong uses the voice of his mother. And there’s “My Father Writes from Prison.” And there’s “Of Thee I Sing,” from the perspective of Jackie Kennedy in Dallas, 1963. Many of these voices come from a past Vuong could not possibly have lived, and yet can bring so much life and presence to with his words.
Poets, it seems to me, are drawn to certain words for their sounds and their images. In Lessons on Expulsion, poet Erika L. Sánchez uses the word “sucking” a lot, or at least enough to get me to notice it. Vuong uses a colorful vocabulary filled with names of flowers and sprinkled with his native Vietnamese (though he was probably not old enough to have learned a great deal of it in his home country, his family spoke it at home in Connecticut), but evocative repeated words and phrases (images) include hands (my hands, his hands, a boy’s early hands, blue thumbprint, blurred finger), shadows, mouths (and tongues), bullets, knives (blades, sharpening, cutting). There is a beauty to the violent, and a violence to the beautiful.
My favorite lines might be these, from “Thanksgiving 2006”:
My mother said I could be anything
I wanted—but I chose to live.
It seems to me that most poetry is analyzed as if every word is spoken by the poet, in the poet’s voice. We ascertain intent as if that’s the reason the poet wrote what he wrote and there must be nothing else. I have a feeling this is because poetry seems impenetrable to many, even those who purport to critique it, but because it is written in languages we suppose to understand, we scramble when we confront what is not easily understood and instead seek to figure out what the poet means to do with these words rather than consider how the words feel in our own mouths and ears. Also, the voice the poet uses is not always his own. In a piece such as “Immigrant Haibun,” Vuong uses the voice of his mother. And there’s “My Father Writes from Prison.” And there’s “Of Thee I Sing,” from the perspective of Jackie Kennedy in Dallas, 1963. Many of these voices come from a past Vuong could not possibly have lived, and yet can bring so much life and presence to with his words.
Poets, it seems to me, are drawn to certain words for their sounds and their images. In Lessons on Expulsion, poet Erika L. Sánchez uses the word “sucking” a lot, or at least enough to get me to notice it. Vuong uses a colorful vocabulary filled with names of flowers and sprinkled with his native Vietnamese (though he was probably not old enough to have learned a great deal of it in his home country, his family spoke it at home in Connecticut), but evocative repeated words and phrases (images) include hands (my hands, his hands, a boy’s early hands, blue thumbprint, blurred finger), shadows, mouths (and tongues), bullets, knives (blades, sharpening, cutting). There is a beauty to the violent, and a violence to the beautiful.
My favorite lines might be these, from “Thanksgiving 2006”:
My mother said I could be anything
I wanted—but I chose to live.
30 November 2017
Notes on Ferrante's The Days of Abandonment
An absence of sense: I’ve seen it and experienced it myself three times in my life. My father divorced twice. The first time, it was my mother who had the absence of sense, and I think she’s been trying to regain it ever since. The second time, my father experienced the absence of sense which precipitated the divorce; my step-mother could see it, could see everything, but he was and probably still remains blind to it, trapped in the new fantasy of his third marriage. So as a child, I can relate to Gianni or Ilaria, who experience the absence of sense second-hand, who become subject to it in weird and unexpected ways. I am struck particularly by the scene of them hiding inside the old cannon, on cardboard which, as Olga says, “had made a bed for some immigrant.” There is this implication that the children have become migrant with her, or despite her; that through this change of state from marriage to separation they have been uprooted in some way and made inexplicably to lie in immigrant dwellings. I think also of the new door, how the door is necessary to keep something out, but also becomes the thing which entraps them in this home that seems at once familiar and foreign to Olga, which contains within it madness, sickness, and death. For things to be restored, there must be an intervention, which they make from inside to out by breaking Carrano’s balcony window, and which Carrano makes from the outside in through apparently his mere presence.
The third time, I experienced an absence of sense myself. I was married to a childhood friend who became disillusioned with our marriage. She, too, sought the comforts of someone else and hid her affairs from me. We still went on dates, took trips, slept together. After a long trip to Europe, the faucet of her misdeeds (as I label them, having been hurt by them) began to drip. Over the course of months, everything was up in the air. I experienced my own absence of sense. Everything could be fixed and nothing could be done all at the same time. I felt like a stranger in my own house. My then-wife once accused me of acting as though she had died. To me, she had. I was in mourning. She eventually left in September, though we tried marriage counselling and still paid the rent together. I left the apartment in January. I didn’t have enough sense to deal with paying bills anymore, to deal with the particulars of our separation and eventual divorce. I barely had enough sense to keep my career going. I am grateful we didn’t have children or even pets. I was able to keep as much of my absence of sense to myself as I could. Yet, in Olga I see it all: delusions which talked me through small problems, the forgetting of mundane importances, an uncharacteristic sexual encounter, even the real problem of fighting ants in your home (which I would have sworn was driving me crazy in and of itself). To see Olga emerge with her sense, with herself, with her strength gives me hope that, perhaps one day, if not already, I will also emerge from my absence of sense, through a regular dosage of “a tisane of normality and repose.”
Elena Ferrante, The Days of Abandonment, translated by Ann Goldstein. New York: Europa Editions, 2005.
The third time, I experienced an absence of sense myself. I was married to a childhood friend who became disillusioned with our marriage. She, too, sought the comforts of someone else and hid her affairs from me. We still went on dates, took trips, slept together. After a long trip to Europe, the faucet of her misdeeds (as I label them, having been hurt by them) began to drip. Over the course of months, everything was up in the air. I experienced my own absence of sense. Everything could be fixed and nothing could be done all at the same time. I felt like a stranger in my own house. My then-wife once accused me of acting as though she had died. To me, she had. I was in mourning. She eventually left in September, though we tried marriage counselling and still paid the rent together. I left the apartment in January. I didn’t have enough sense to deal with paying bills anymore, to deal with the particulars of our separation and eventual divorce. I barely had enough sense to keep my career going. I am grateful we didn’t have children or even pets. I was able to keep as much of my absence of sense to myself as I could. Yet, in Olga I see it all: delusions which talked me through small problems, the forgetting of mundane importances, an uncharacteristic sexual encounter, even the real problem of fighting ants in your home (which I would have sworn was driving me crazy in and of itself). To see Olga emerge with her sense, with herself, with her strength gives me hope that, perhaps one day, if not already, I will also emerge from my absence of sense, through a regular dosage of “a tisane of normality and repose.”
Elena Ferrante, The Days of Abandonment, translated by Ann Goldstein. New York: Europa Editions, 2005.
29 September 2017
Present-Absence
One writes in order to communicate something to those who are absent. The absence of the sender, the addressor, from the marks that he abandons, which are cut off from him and continue to produce effects beyond his presence and beyond the present actuality of his meaning, that is, beyond his life itself…. —Jacques Derrida1“One writes in order to communicate something to those who are absent.” It seems so obvious once it is stated. One typically doesn’t write to those who are present; a conversation is not diligently typed out and scripts distributed amongst friends at a bar. (This is not to say it couldn’t be, but what might ensue would be a representation of a conversation rather than the original or “real” thing.) One writes for someone who isn’t there. An e-mail is composed strictly for someone who is not in the presence of the writer, even if they happen to be only a room away. A text message is written, theoretically, for someone far away; yet, people have been known to text each other across a house, across a room. The idea of what “presence” is comes under scrutiny. “Are you present?” doesn’t just ask if you exist in this particular space at this moment; it wonders whether your mind is actively engaged in that space at that time. “Being present” has been used synonymously with “being in the moment” or “being here now”. There is something to be said for the lack of presence we give one another while we engage with our smartphones—our present-absence.
What does one do in order to communicate to those who are present? Is that, in a nutshell, what performance is?
“The absence of the sender, the addressor, from the marks that he abandons, which are cut off from him and continue to produce effects beyond his presence and beyond the present actuality of his meaning, that is, beyond his life itself….” In a way, it would seem, our written words can perform for us, even after we’ve ceased living. Dead playwrights are often given this prestige, often by practitioners of what Peter Brook calls the “deadly theatre”. (Speaking of the living theatre, Brook says, “theatre is always a self-destructive art, and it is always written on the wind.”1) Our words, put to good use, can make concurrent ripples in the collective stream of life well beyond our having dropped a pebble into it. Those words may be used further down the line to propagate some change in the world. If we, receiving older words, can turn those words to good use, can make a (sticking with Brook) living or holy theatre from them, then we have aided and abetted in the performance which was meant to be, which needed to be, which could do nothing else but exist in a certain time, space, and context. We become the presenters: the ones who are present (for the words we receive, no longer absent) as well as the ones who present. The words have a life of their own and become a part of the larger living theatre, a performance which presents and represents throughout time.
1 Derrida, Jacques. Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: U. of Chicago, 1982, p. 313.
2 Brook, Peter. The Empty Space. 1968. New York: Touchstone, 1996, p. 15.
15 June 2017
Response to a Review – 14 June 2017
The work of the
critic, especially the theatre critic, is difficult. Critics can have
a great influence on the cultural makeup of a society, and as such
they become imbued with a certain power, not just over the audience,
but over creators of art as well. With this power, as the saying
goes, comes a responsibility to the public and to the arts. The
critic should be an expert, well-read and well-versed in their field,
and willing to put aside their own aesthetic preferences in favor of
giving objective and reasoned criticism of work.
A recent review of a piece I directed has caught my eye, and I wish to address certain points. I find reviews to be helpful and instructive, pointing a finger at things that are working and things that aren’t. Examining criticism in this manner is only helpful, however, when the criticism comes from an objective, reasoned place. The review in question is, in my opinion, heavily influenced by the critic’s own experience and expectation rather than being rooted in a deep knowledge of the theatre.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, of course.
Theatre intrinsically happens at the interface between actor and audience. It is unclear to me what the reviewer’s expectation of the producer-playwright is, that he should be relying on a script to “bear the weight” of a theatrical experience. It is also unclear whether the reviewer is hinting at a specific theatrical experience he was expecting. If he did enter with a certain expectation and wasn’t prepared to have those expectations dashed, I would argue he was unprepared for an evening of theatre.
If the reviewer’s point is that the text of a play cannot “carry the show,” then I would agree. The text of Romeo and Juliet by itself is not theatre, and as such it cannot be called upon to support an entire production. (Who hasn’t been subjected to poorly executed Shakespeare?)
Perhaps the reviewer is unfamiliar with the sort of minimalist performance indicative of the intimate theatre; perhaps he is unfamiliar with theories espoused by Artaud or Grotowski, or of the work done by Robert Wilson or Ivo van Hove. This is not to say that the director has attempted to replicate a style; rather, he has used elements of various techniques in order to tell a story which, it seems, moves a number of spectators to strong emotion. This was the intent of the staging, to lay bare the emotional framework which supports a path to enlightenment through meditation, fasting, and mindfulness.
All of these concepts are limited by the strictures of the Hollywood Fringe Festival and the venue, the nature of which means that the most ideal lighting, sound, scenic, and costume elements may not be achievable. This should not deter the theatre artist from presenting their work in a fringe festival; remember, all one needs to present theatre is an actor and a spectator.
Why do chalk drawings indicate the “sole effort at creating a reality”? Do not human beings in a space already convey a reality? If the reviewer were looking for other “real” things to latch onto, what about the costuming? the blankets and other props? It seems arbitrary to pin one’s acceptance of a reality on one particular element of design, when the reality, as it were, of sitting in a theatre is its own experience.
The point worth making, though, is that there needn’t be an attempt to show this light shift. The light dimming in the tomb is unnecessary to telling the story. Half of the review in question is given to the description of a cave and how the work failed to portray this cave adequately for the reviewer. Certainly, if this had been a play about a cave, more attention might have been paid to it; however, this was a play about meditation and enlightenment. Perhaps a different play might have fed into the reviewer’s longing to return to the caves of his youth, seeing the wonder and magic of those caves and how their influence affected his life. This was not that play.
The question of why an audience should take a work seriously is a good one, and one which the reviewer should endeavor to answer himself in his critical work. Perhaps the reviewer has chosen a snarky way in which to indicate that an audience should not take this specific work seriously, based solely on his own definition of what a theatrical experience is, giving no example rooted in the grand tradition or theories of theatre. To do so is to be disingenuous to an audience looking for an expert opinion.
What theatre criticism should accomplish is entirely educational in nature. The theatre critic speaks first to the public in order to enlighten the lay person about particular details of the art with which they may be unfamiliar. Then the theatre critic speaks to the artists in parsing the techniques involved in the creation of their art; what works and what doesn’t. Finally, the theatre critic is uniquely poised to offer their discernment of the meaning and purpose of a piece, the effect the theatrical experience has on its audience. In this way, the theatre critic is positioned as the expert, using their power to influence culture in what we all hope is a positive way. To do this effectively, and for the sake of society, the critic needs to gain the trust of everyone involved, both in the creative community as well as the general, art-consuming public. Only in this way will the art continue to grow and thrive.
The Tomb by Ed Sharrow premiered as part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival on June 4, 11, 15, 17, and 19, 2017. “Recalling Anthony the Great in ‘The Tomb’” was written by Ernest Kearney and published June 13, 2017, on theTVolution.com. It may be accessed here: https://thetvolution.com/2017/06/recalling-anthony-the-great-in-the-tomb/.
A recent review of a piece I directed has caught my eye, and I wish to address certain points. I find reviews to be helpful and instructive, pointing a finger at things that are working and things that aren’t. Examining criticism in this manner is only helpful, however, when the criticism comes from an objective, reasoned place. The review in question is, in my opinion, heavily influenced by the critic’s own experience and expectation rather than being rooted in a deep knowledge of the theatre.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, of course.
- The playwright “has produced his own play and this may have worked against him, as he seems to have relied on the work being enough to carry the full weight of the theatrical experience. It can’t.”
Theatre intrinsically happens at the interface between actor and audience. It is unclear to me what the reviewer’s expectation of the producer-playwright is, that he should be relying on a script to “bear the weight” of a theatrical experience. It is also unclear whether the reviewer is hinting at a specific theatrical experience he was expecting. If he did enter with a certain expectation and wasn’t prepared to have those expectations dashed, I would argue he was unprepared for an evening of theatre.
If the reviewer’s point is that the text of a play cannot “carry the show,” then I would agree. The text of Romeo and Juliet by itself is not theatre, and as such it cannot be called upon to support an entire production. (Who hasn’t been subjected to poorly executed Shakespeare?)
- The director “seems not to have imagined any style to the production or even taken the simplest steps to establish the reality of its dramatic arena.”
Perhaps the reviewer is unfamiliar with the sort of minimalist performance indicative of the intimate theatre; perhaps he is unfamiliar with theories espoused by Artaud or Grotowski, or of the work done by Robert Wilson or Ivo van Hove. This is not to say that the director has attempted to replicate a style; rather, he has used elements of various techniques in order to tell a story which, it seems, moves a number of spectators to strong emotion. This was the intent of the staging, to lay bare the emotional framework which supports a path to enlightenment through meditation, fasting, and mindfulness.
All of these concepts are limited by the strictures of the Hollywood Fringe Festival and the venue, the nature of which means that the most ideal lighting, sound, scenic, and costume elements may not be achievable. This should not deter the theatre artist from presenting their work in a fringe festival; remember, all one needs to present theatre is an actor and a spectator.
- “We didn’t need to see the back walls of the theater or the chalk drawings on the walls ([the director’s] sole effort at creating a reality.) The entire play could have used dim and isolated lighting to convey a cave’s interior. This would have allowed for a variety of wonderful theatrics to effect the demons come to torment Anthony.”
Why do chalk drawings indicate the “sole effort at creating a reality”? Do not human beings in a space already convey a reality? If the reviewer were looking for other “real” things to latch onto, what about the costuming? the blankets and other props? It seems arbitrary to pin one’s acceptance of a reality on one particular element of design, when the reality, as it were, of sitting in a theatre is its own experience.
- “There wasn’t even an attempt to show the interior light of the cave dimming when the huge stone used to block its entrance was rolled into place.”
The point worth making, though, is that there needn’t be an attempt to show this light shift. The light dimming in the tomb is unnecessary to telling the story. Half of the review in question is given to the description of a cave and how the work failed to portray this cave adequately for the reviewer. Certainly, if this had been a play about a cave, more attention might have been paid to it; however, this was a play about meditation and enlightenment. Perhaps a different play might have fed into the reviewer’s longing to return to the caves of his youth, seeing the wonder and magic of those caves and how their influence affected his life. This was not that play.
- “Even simple means were not employed, such as having [the actor] in the darkness change his costume to more ragged states to denote the passage of time.”
- “The director and playwright, it seems, just didn’t take this production very seriously. So why should an audience.”
The question of why an audience should take a work seriously is a good one, and one which the reviewer should endeavor to answer himself in his critical work. Perhaps the reviewer has chosen a snarky way in which to indicate that an audience should not take this specific work seriously, based solely on his own definition of what a theatrical experience is, giving no example rooted in the grand tradition or theories of theatre. To do so is to be disingenuous to an audience looking for an expert opinion.
What theatre criticism should accomplish is entirely educational in nature. The theatre critic speaks first to the public in order to enlighten the lay person about particular details of the art with which they may be unfamiliar. Then the theatre critic speaks to the artists in parsing the techniques involved in the creation of their art; what works and what doesn’t. Finally, the theatre critic is uniquely poised to offer their discernment of the meaning and purpose of a piece, the effect the theatrical experience has on its audience. In this way, the theatre critic is positioned as the expert, using their power to influence culture in what we all hope is a positive way. To do this effectively, and for the sake of society, the critic needs to gain the trust of everyone involved, both in the creative community as well as the general, art-consuming public. Only in this way will the art continue to grow and thrive.
The Tomb by Ed Sharrow premiered as part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival on June 4, 11, 15, 17, and 19, 2017. “Recalling Anthony the Great in ‘The Tomb’” was written by Ernest Kearney and published June 13, 2017, on theTVolution.com. It may be accessed here: https://thetvolution.com/2017/06/recalling-anthony-the-great-in-the-tomb/.
28 May 2017
Laguna Beach, Calif.
I was in Laguna Beach for a few weeks doing the world premiere of King of the Road, and I found some time to do some photography!
12 April 2017
Take a break
Lenten meditation, week 7:
"Sharpen the saw." It's an interesting turn of phrase, but the idea is that we use ourselves like a tool, like a saw. If the saw is dull, it does less effective work. A sharp saw is always better than a dull one, and you need to take time to sharpen your saw; it doesn't just sharpen itself. What does that mean for us? That means taking breaks and assessing our physical, mental, and spiritual shape. Sleep, play, and meditation all help to sharpen the saw. The thing to remember is that it takes time; it doesn't happen on its own. If you're really busy, schedule time to sharpen your saw. Your body, mind, and spirit will thank you.
"Sharpen the saw." It's an interesting turn of phrase, but the idea is that we use ourselves like a tool, like a saw. If the saw is dull, it does less effective work. A sharp saw is always better than a dull one, and you need to take time to sharpen your saw; it doesn't just sharpen itself. What does that mean for us? That means taking breaks and assessing our physical, mental, and spiritual shape. Sleep, play, and meditation all help to sharpen the saw. The thing to remember is that it takes time; it doesn't happen on its own. If you're really busy, schedule time to sharpen your saw. Your body, mind, and spirit will thank you.
06 April 2017
Greater than
Lenten meditation, week 6:
"Synergize." First off, "synergize" is a made up word, but let's not focus on that right now. Synergy is that notion that two things can come together to produce more than two. "Two heads are better than one," as the old saying goes. This only happens when two or three come together to work together, being open to each other's ideas and influence. So, share your work. Form partnerships and make things that are bigger than yourself. You've heard that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts;" it's also something quite different than any of its individual parts, taking a life of its own. Open up to opportunities for synergy in your life. See how it adds up.
"Synergize." First off, "synergize" is a made up word, but let's not focus on that right now. Synergy is that notion that two things can come together to produce more than two. "Two heads are better than one," as the old saying goes. This only happens when two or three come together to work together, being open to each other's ideas and influence. So, share your work. Form partnerships and make things that are bigger than yourself. You've heard that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts;" it's also something quite different than any of its individual parts, taking a life of its own. Open up to opportunities for synergy in your life. See how it adds up.
29 March 2017
Get you, get me
Lenten meditation, week 5:
"Seek first to understand, then be understood." This is my favorite one (not that one needs to have favorite habits...). Before you can hope that someone will get where you're coming from, you need to be open to what the other person is saying, where the other person is coming from. Do you understand them? If not, then how do you know they will understand you? And, here's the kicker: They might not understand you. But at least, if you seek to understand first, you'll at least know why they might not understand you, and there will be one fewer person in this world talking past people rather than with them.
"Seek first to understand, then be understood." This is my favorite one (not that one needs to have favorite habits...). Before you can hope that someone will get where you're coming from, you need to be open to what the other person is saying, where the other person is coming from. Do you understand them? If not, then how do you know they will understand you? And, here's the kicker: They might not understand you. But at least, if you seek to understand first, you'll at least know why they might not understand you, and there will be one fewer person in this world talking past people rather than with them.
22 March 2017
Love your neighbor
Lenten meditation, week 4:
"Think win-win." I am reminded of that Golden Rule, which appears in every culture and religion, which says to treat others as you want to be treated. Everyone wants to win, to gain something from their efforts. Finding ways in which both or all sides of an argument win makes all of our lives better. Don't play all-or-nothing; even if you can't win on all points, trading some losses for others' wins can make everyone a winner in the long run. Jesus said that all of Jewish law could be summed up by two phrases, the second of which is "Love your neighbor as yourself." Love your neighbor. Think win-win.
"Think win-win." I am reminded of that Golden Rule, which appears in every culture and religion, which says to treat others as you want to be treated. Everyone wants to win, to gain something from their efforts. Finding ways in which both or all sides of an argument win makes all of our lives better. Don't play all-or-nothing; even if you can't win on all points, trading some losses for others' wins can make everyone a winner in the long run. Jesus said that all of Jewish law could be summed up by two phrases, the second of which is "Love your neighbor as yourself." Love your neighbor. Think win-win.
15 March 2017
What's first?
Lenten meditation, week 3: “Put first things first.” Prioritize your life. This can be especially hard with so many projects to do, so much going on with your life. Find the most important things and put them first. What are the most important things to you? Remember what your body needs: food, rest, protection. Remember what your soul and mind need, too.
08 March 2017
What's next?
Lenten meditation, week 2:
“Begin with the end in mind.” Set a goal. Set a series of goals. Know where you're going. If you're a spiritual person, your end-of-life goal might be enlightenment; if you're religious, it might be eternal salvation or high karma. It might be establishing a legacy. Along the way, set other goals. What's your goal for this week? For today? “Know well what leads you forward.”
“Begin with the end in mind.” Set a goal. Set a series of goals. Know where you're going. If you're a spiritual person, your end-of-life goal might be enlightenment; if you're religious, it might be eternal salvation or high karma. It might be establishing a legacy. Along the way, set other goals. What's your goal for this week? For today? “Know well what leads you forward.”
02 March 2017
Pro-act-ive
This Lent, I've decided to throw something out there every week based on the Seven Habits. Take it as you will.
“Be Proactive.” You have to be your own best agent, even if you have other people working for you. Let's break down the word proactive. The base word is act. To be active is the opposite of being stagnant, of standing still, of doing nothing. Pro is positive, the opposite of anti or con. Make positive actions and positive actions will come back to you.
“Be Proactive.” You have to be your own best agent, even if you have other people working for you. Let's break down the word proactive. The base word is act. To be active is the opposite of being stagnant, of standing still, of doing nothing. Pro is positive, the opposite of anti or con. Make positive actions and positive actions will come back to you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)