Theron Schmidt

Unsettling Representation: Monuments, Theatre, and Relational Space

This article explores the ways in which theatrical techniques might intervene in the representational operations of monuments. As illustrated by the controversy surrounding nearly every aspect of the memorial to the destroyed World Trade Center, monumentality implies a finality of meaning and an unavailability of monumental spaces to open and fluctuating meanings. Henri Lefebvres distinction between ‘representations of space’ and ‘representational space’ suggests a method for unsettling or rewriting these meanings, which Joanne Tompkins develops as an analytical tool in her consideration of contemporary Australian theatre. However, Tinderbox Theatre Companys production of convictions in a decommissioned courthouse in Belfast demonstrates that theatrical representations may have the effect of displacing previous spatial practices, but they also have their own authorizing norms and associated codes of meaning and behaviour. Using Doreen Masseys concept of ‘relational space’ to augment Lefebvres categories, a set of criteria can be articulated for counter-monumental theatre that is attentive to the politics of openness and closure. And While London Burns, a downloadable audio tour of the financial centre of London produced by John Jordan and PLATFORM, is used as an example of a theatrical event which creates relational spaces that intervene within the normative mechanisms both of corporate organization of urban space and of dramatic narrative. Concluding by co-opting Wrens Monument, And While London Burns asks its participants to rethink identity in spatial terms, and the author argues that this spatial awareness in turn necessitates an awareness of relationality which is relevant to both theatre and politics.

Some people will do anything to keep themselves from being moved

‘Theres a moment coming,’ says Karen Christopher in Goat Islands final performance, The Lastmaker (2007-9). ‘Its not here yet. Its on the way. Its still in the future.’ She waits. ‘Here it is! Oh, its gone.’ Shes caught on film, going round and round, just as she herself echoes a George Carlin routine. Before a twenty-minute silence that is at the heart of Kings of Englands Elegy for Paul Dirac (2011), Simon Bowes says, ‘We are gathered here to stage Diracs most notorious silence, not to close it, but to hold it open.’ These and other theatrical moments are caught between act and re-enactment. They gesture to themselves. They are an open door in the theatre, one that lets the outside world filter in, but also one that lets the suspended frame of the theatre widen outward. Adapted for the page from a live performance-lecture, this text describes performance moments such as these at the same time as it performs its own act of originary repetition. It flutters unsteadily at the tipping point between stasis and movement, between feeling and critique, between image and recognition. Drawing on the writings of Susan Sontag and Stanley Cavell, theories of the brain from neuroscientists such as Benjamin Libet and David Eagleman, and aspects of my biography that precede my own birth, I ask: what is it that moves us to act? Like all performances, it is an attempt to hold that within which it is itself held.

Christoph Schlingensief and the Bad Spectacle

• Bitte Liebt Österreich! by Christoph Schlingensief (pictured far right). Still from Ausländer Raus! Schlingensief’s Container

How We Talk About The Work Is The Work: Performing Critical Writing

Performance begins to have its effect long before the encounter with it, beginning with the first thing we read or hear about it, which may even be more memorable than the work itself; and its work continues in the thoughts and conversations that take place afterward: dialogues and exchanges that may be responding to written accounts as much as to experiences of the work themselves. Critical writing is part of this cycle of making and imagining. It can shape the contexts in which work is made and received, playing not just a responsive role but actively shaping how and what it is possible to make, see, do, and say. And critical writing is also shaped by the circumstances in which it is written, as part of systems of production and distribution. This article gives examples of a number of initiatives by individual writers, artist collectives, and festivals that test forms of critical writing that are as experimental as the practices to which they relate. Drawing on the authors experience running workshops in critical writing practice, it takes inspiration from the expanded field of writing as theorized and practiced in performance writing, placing these ideas in relation to a writing practice that conceives itself as ‘criticism’. It is intended as a practical guide that might be used by writers or workshop leaders to cultivate their own critical writing projects, and to inspire imaginative thinking about writing and conversation as creative practices in their own right.

What is Refugee

This collectively authored article is a curated response to a set of questions (or fragments of questions) derived from a year-long collaboration focused on the figure of the refugee. Delivered through mixed-media, the responses cover a vast range of territory, from the relation between refugees and global capitalism to the reign of bio- and necro-politics, from analytical philosophies of naming to continental philosophies of territorialized flows, and from conceptual mappings of interstitial space to concrete mappings of “refugee” movements across the globe. While the article addresses many different questions, the authors are concerned primarily with the following: How can performance philosophy conceptualize “crisis” in its methods and subjects of study? How is crisis organized, delivered and received in thought and performance? The form our response has taken is one of arranged fragments that speak to the “trailing off” of thought that so frequently occurs when faced with “big ideas.” Meanwhile, the content delivers multiple theses on the ways performance philosophy scholarship might grapple with the figure of the refugee, a figure that will surely dominate ethical discussions for years to come.

Is This What Democracy Looks Like? The Politics of Representation and the Representation of Politics

Taking its inspiration from the twenty-first-century protest chant, ‘This is what democracy looks like!’, this chapter explores the interrelation between theories of representation and modes of radical democracy. Drawing on Jacques Ranciere, Chantal Mouffe, and others, Schmidt analyses recent political actions that refuse to adhere to what he calls ‘the politics of the count’, including demonstrations against tuition fee increases in the UK, the 2011 London riots, the actions of UK Uncut, and Occupy, all of which emerged within the same twelve months. Such actions produce a representational crisis in two interrelated meanings of the idea of representation: they challenge representational democracy, and also challenge our understandings of what counts as the political—that is to say, what politics looks like.

The Philosopher as Stage-Hand

If the philosopher has an analogue in the theatre, perhaps it is not with the performer, the one who shows, but with the stage-hand, the one who sets the stage. This is not, as some might argue, because the stage-hand has some special access to what is behind-the-scenes, or because she knows that what is on-stage is only illusion. The stage-hand’s work is not hidden. It is exactly the opposite: the work is there for all to see. It is because it is there that all can see. It is the work that makes the seeing possible.

Christoph Schlingensief: Art without Borders edited by Tara Forrest and Anna Teresa Scheer

Practice’, Battista offers accounts of events almost entirely forgotten by art history, such as Judy Clark’s Issues (1973) exhibition at The Garage in Covent Garden (which the author problematically refers to as ‘the first properly organized and designed alternative gallery in London’, p. 120). Consisting of ‘traces of the human body’, Issues, Battista writes, ‘should be seen today as a landmark in feminist art’ (p. 32). Clark presented as art her own nail clippings, menstrual blood, and tissues stained with her partner’s semen set inside Perspex, which offers a good example of new strategies used by feminist artists in the 1970s; according to Battista, it illustrated a struggle with the question of ‘how to communicate the physical experiences of womanhood without necessarily depicting the female form’ (p. 40). Conversely, the subsequent chapter, ‘The Body and Performance Art’, considers artists who saw the presentation of their own bodies through performance as ‘an opportunity to reclaim the body from what was seen as its muse-like status’ (p. 53). Battista’s historicisation of poorly documented performances such as Carolee Schneemann’s remarkably early Naked Action Lecture at the ICA in 1968, through examination of the original script and eye witness accounts, is also particularly interesting and laudable in recovering ‘body events’ previously marginalised in history, and their significance in finding ‘a new route into the political’ in art (p. 89). Renegotiating the Body presents an excellently researched mass of primary evidence, drawing from an imaginative array of sources. In particular, Battista’s chapter ‘Alternative Spaces for Feminist Art’, offers an impressive wealth of information by chronicling important spaces eclipsed by history, such as Acme Gallery, SPACE, and AIR, as well as the domestic and public sites of work that existed outside of the gallery system. For women of the 1970s, as Battista points out, mainstream galleries were simply ‘unavailable’ (p. 91), but these artists’ innovations in art production, originally born out of necessity, provided a ‘model for future activities’ (p. 137), and this study offers a solid foundation for further investigation into this line of enquiry. For instance, Battista’s argument for sites of feminist activity as driving a shift away from the institution, and towards ‘more discursive’ (p. 137), heterogeneous spaces for art and activism in the 1980s and 1990s is compelling and well illustrated through engaging examples such as Rose Finn-Kelcey’s subversive Flag (1972), where the artist hangs a huge banner boldly stating ‘POWER FOR THE PEOPLE’ from Battersea Power Station. The book offers a generally convincing argument as to the importance of the artists’ contributions to wider developments within contemporary art generally, such as the shift away from the confines of the gallery space and a raised consciousness of cultural hegemony and social exclusion in arts production. This is particularly well illustrated in Battista’s concluding chapter, which analyses the influence of 1970s feminist practices in the work of artists such as Tracey Emin and Hayley Newman. There is also, however, a disappointing lack of critical rigour or interrogation of the material at times. Occasionally, the argument leans on problematic statements made by other critics. For instance, in her discussion of Mary Kelly’s PostPartum Document (1976), Battista unquestioningly presents Barry Barker’s inaccurate account of the piece as ‘the first time that questions were asked in the House of Commons about art’ (p. 23). The author herself also tends to make bold claims for her subjects without always presenting the range of evidence required to back up her assertions; for instance, Battista’s characterisation of women’s art prior to the 1970s as merely ‘a history of women replicating men’s work’ (p. 160) is particularly questionable. It is, however, easy to sympathise with the author’s enthusiasm. This book provides a strong platform for further research into historically shrouded and marginalised practices – as the author herself acknowledges, it ‘only cracks the surface’ (p. 88).

Beyond Glorious: The Radical in Engaged Practices

I had a weekend among friends. I had never met these people before, but many thought of the arts in the same terms I did: as a sharing practice – not as one an artist makes and which others watch, but that you develop it together. This approach is present in all the collaborative arts but does not always result in an equal contribution in the creation of the art piece. Film crews and orchestras, for example, work together, but under one person’s direction or vision. The stereotype of artists in public discourse is that they are wild, outrageous, uninhibited – and individual. Meanwhile, the sharing of skills is often thought of only in terms of teaching. Working in a participatory way in the arts – with others who, like artists, are also ordinary people – is not what sells. Support for participatory arts often comes in terms of their use as a vehicle for addressing problems in society – a rescue service working in prisons, youth and elderly centres, refugee and health units, minority and migration organisations. Where, then, can we fit radical participatory practice when it comes to be embraced by popular fads, or rejected, or reduced to a standard, and thus unable to be effective in challenging linear narratives, processes and understandings? Can the ordinary be radical? This question was at the heart of the enquiry of Beyond Glorious: the Radical in Engaged Practices – the full programme is available at http:// www.rajnishah.com/beyond-glorious. The symposium observed the end of Rajni Shah Projects’ performance work Glorious (2010–2012). As I saw it, Glorious provides a platform for an investigation of the method a person might use in their everyday in order to elevate it to a kind of spectacle – a visible matter that pays attention to the low-key, ‘out of the limelight’, non-dramatic activities, weaving the radical into the linear sphere of the day-to-day. This is a task for all of us who see radicalism in performance as a performance of a kind of ordinary. If performance is ‘out of joint’ as a practice, it will find difficulty in being embedded, accepted in the regular timelines, platforms and situations where it is most needed in life. In relation to these tensions between the spectacular and the ordinary, the symposium attempted to answer the following questions:Backpages is an opportunity for the academy to engage with theatre and performance practice with immediacy and insight and for theatre workers and performance artists to engage critically and reflectively on their work and the work of their peers. Featuring short, topical articles and debates, polemics where necessary, it’s a place of intellectual intervention and creative reflection. It’s also where we hope to articulate, perhaps for the first time, the work of new and rising theatre artists in an academic forum. Beyond Glorious: The Radical in Engaged PracticesTurning the Page: A Conference on New WritingReality Check: Resurrecting The BirdcatcherCruising Utopia, Missing JoséKane’s Truth: An Interview with Michael Shannon ◊

The Theatre of Richard Maxwell and the New York City Players

land’ – both in and of itself and as a way of reading neoliberal economies of exchange and mobility. Josh Kun opens up the sonic spaces of the border in his investigation of aurality as a constitutive feature of border environments, which he terms ‘listening to the line’ (p. 19). Opening with the relentless clicking of the turnstile at the Tijuana/ San Ysidro crossing, he asks ‘does the fencing of the world have a sound?’ (p. 21). Questions of representation and identity recur in several of the contributions. Ramón RiveraServera articulates a complex and nuanced reading of border politics in his investigation of the cultural erotics of race and sexuality played out across the Haitian/Dominican border. Paige McGinley also implicates the work of race in the movement across borders of liberty and enslavement performed in the relationship of the musician Huddie Ledbetter (Leadbelly), and the collector of American folk music, John Lomax. Ric Knowles investigates both cultural and material borders in his account of his own ‘border crossing’ as a nonNative working as a dramaturg to transindigenous performance artists in Canada. And E. Patrick Johnson’s deeply meditative reflection upon aspects of his own biography problematises notions of ‘home’, bringing the question of borders back to the experience of individuals within the often uncomfortable histories of segregation and racism within North America. Indeed, critique of the history of the United States itself emerges as a central, if subtle, theme throughout the volume. Eng-Beng Lim’s discussion of the ‘minor-native’ in ‘nativised encounters in a spatial configuration not contained by the established logics of postcolonial, diaspora and border studies’ (p. 197) spoke, for this reader, very productively to Harvey Young’s treatment of the forced relocation of indigenous Americans within the borders of the (now) USA. Young’s essay, addressing the ‘carrying of the border’ (p. 221) by Native American peoples on enforced migratory routes recalls the ‘movement’ invoked in the opening section, while staging a timely reminder that the nation-state to which borders accrue is not the same entity for everyone, and nor is it the trans-historical certainty which its own narratives might want to imply. The development of these themes into investigation of commemoration and memorialisation in museum cultures materialises yet another ‘border’: that produced by historicisation. It is perhaps Patrick Anderson’s contribution, on the tropes of representation and reproduction staged in a performative reconstruction of Camp X-ray, in Manchester, UK in 2003 which makes explicit, finally, the political work of the border: it controls visibility and occlusion; it makes and unmakes appearance, identity, and agency; it situates the inside and the outside, with all that that implies. This volume will be of interest to scholars and students in performance, cultural, and border studies: it presents a rich, rewarding, and timely series of readings which will add considerably to the potentialities and provocations of work in this field.