Thursday, 23 September 2010

Routine ideas

Pun intended!

The following is a concept for a (sequential for now) dance performance, which I hope will tickle your tonsils. I use many of the ideas discussed amongst us. I wish to work on some further ideas which Conal raised much earlier (see his post below) concerning filming techniques in relation to the dance aesthetics of repetition and sequential narrative. But I have come up with this tentative structure for the choreography. I describe the structure, then I pose some questions.

So:

Imagine a black screen.

4 dancers shown in bird's eye view stand together forming a circle - like my initial 'aristotle dance' set-up. They wear all-white capes, again, as described in the aristotle dance. So they look like 4 isoceles triangles whose points meet in the centre of the circle. (This mimics the way that the fortune teller origami looks.) They are standing on a black floor.

Gauze layers are added to each dancer according to the instruction of the fortune teller, which has the Lacanian glyphs and marks on it. So the dancers gradually become encumbered with layers of Lacanian gauze.

The dancers move in a circle to the rhythm of the fortune teller's fingers' movements, and they stop still when the fortune teller opens and the instruction then is carried out by stage hands dressed in all black, so as not to be seen.

(Where is the fortune teller origami displayed? In a split-screen section of the screen? As a semi-transparent overlay on top of the dancers? As a separate cut-away shot on its own? Is it a voice chanting a rhythm and announcing the fate?)

Once all the Lacanian glyphs have been added to the dancers' costumes, their rotation ceases - this could be to the sound of a percussive noise like a clap, or beat. They stand still.

Now the kick-flare gesture is performed by all 4 dancers. So we see the dancers' gauze layers billow, from above. The dancers cease the kick-flare, turn to face outwards and stop. now they will look like a white star from above.

The camera point of view changes now (cut-away) so that we see the first dancer (not sure if each is distinctively or uniformly costumed) straight-on, but we can also see the others standing adjacent.

The 1st dancer performs minute gestures similar to those of Tamasuburo's heron. Stage hands dressed in black carry out hikinuku: 3 costumes are removed. Because we are watching from front-on, we are able to see a costume under the gauze layers which hadn't been visible from the bird's eye view. So the gauze layers are removed, then the white cape, then the costume that is underneath but which we have now had glimpses of. It is then fully revealed. (what is it?)

When it too is finally removed, the dancer is dressed entirely in black and folds down into a crouching position so that it looks as if there is no one there, just a pile of folded materials.

Now the camera glides to the 2nd dancer. They carry out similar gestures as above, but different, and when their gauze then cape is removed their costume is revealed.
(again - what is it?) They too have this removed and then crouch down.

The camera moves to the third dancer - same as above.
The camera moves to the fourth dancer - who follows suit.

Nnow the camera cuts away to a bird's eye view. We see 4 piles of fabric in the centre of the black screen, presumably like four strange anemone flowers.

Immediately, this plays back in reverse.
When we see the start there needs to be some technical edit so we can insert a new film, but it ought to look invisibly spliced in. Imagine the four dancers in the circle as at the start, wearing the white capes. The capes are removed: seen from above, but then the camera view immediately shifts so that we see the dancers straight-on.

...

And there, I got stuck! Well, I took a tea break and then was distracted. I love the idea of the humoured procession with unwrapping of boxes to find the golden phallus, and I also did not include the great costumes made by Conal - I ran out of steam, but will continue later tonight.

The questions:
1) Do we choreograph individual short narratives, and then layer them/splice them/ etc in production? Or will some as I suggest above work with each other so we have maybe two or three longer sequences, which we can edit, rather than four or five sequences. Which could be too confusing for the viewer: unless we are making cognitive overload an outright point!
2) How do we film the origami fortune teller, if at all?
3) How do we bring in the use of visible text, if at all?
4) What sounds should we use? Will it be singing, speaking, instrumental, percussive etc?
5) How about using a giant, golden Greek F symbol i.e. Lacan's phallic symbol or do you deliberately want to bring in ribald sexual puns? Rather than obscure structuralist ones...!
6) Could there be a large golden penis-shaped phallus out of which jumps out a mountain troll? or white rabbit...

Yours: SH.

Lacan's Four Discourses

I mentioned this a few days ago in the studio. Going to read the articles now.

http://www.lacan.com/zizfour.htm - primarily, the dicourse of the university.


http://www.lacan.com/hystericdiscf.htm - hysteria.

There are also the disocurses of 'the master' and 'the analyst'. Very interesting conception about how power and subjectivity work and stand in relation to language.

AK

Monday, 6 September 2010

Clinamen and 'Pataphysics - The exception

Here are some links:

'Pataphysics - http://www.college-de-pataphysique.fr/presentation_en.html
Oulipo - http://www.drunkenboat.com/db8/oulipo/feature-oulipo/curator/poucel/intro.html
Clinamen - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinamen
And this discusses the appropriation of the concept of the clinamen in late 20th century writing by philosophers/thinkers:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AD7w2L8EOv0C&pg=PA51&lpg=PA51&dq=the+birth+of+physics+michel+serres+clinamen&source=web&ots=rfZixqhJE_&sig=VyrhqbVTFuR_LIujJKuBE1Xym_A&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#v=onepage&q=the%20birth%20of%20physics%20michel%20serres%20clinamen&f=false

The Oulipian's definition of clinamen, taken from the book: Oulipo Compendium eds. Alistair Brotchie and Harry Mathews. Download the image to your desktop so that you can rotate it to read it - I have had problems tonight getting it up here. Bloody technology. Primitive functions!


Alfred Jarry - http://www.ralphmag.org/jarry.html

ADDITION: forgot to give some more information on Alfred Jarry... I will email you all a small number of PDFs - articles and reviews and poems, which ought to help provide some idea of who Alfred Jarry was and what his work was like.


My idea for the Greek masks - based on a statue depicting Demeter's daughter, Kore, whcih I found from looking for the Aristophanes' play: Thesmophoriazusae.. what do you think?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesmophoriazusae
NB: the play itself. I was reading about Aristophanes to educate myself a little about the history of dramatic comedy in Greece. This play is feminist to some extent and therefore politically interesting for being both a comedy and a feminist work. Who knows if it is good though... need to read it.

Finally, two links to info about Aristotle's logic:http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/2n.htm

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-logic/

Sunday, 5 September 2010

Sex on the Table - AK

I am primarily responding to the Lacanian diagrams as aesthetic forms – this may be because I am already very familiar with their intellectual meanings and connotations. That said, here’s my interp of the Table of Sexuation:




The table is an algebraic rendering of Lacan’s argument put forward in Seminar 20, 'Encore - on Female Sexuality'. In these equations he states that speaking beings can align themselves on either side, on the side of men or women. The top section of the table is an attempt to encapsulate the universal and individual aspects of subjectivity; I would say an attempt to make universal the specifics of the subject due to her or his relationship to language and the symbolic. On the side of the male, the top line translates as: 'There is a being in language who says 'no' to the phallic function' - this is described as the male existential position. The equation directly under this reads: 'All beings in language are subject to the phallic function'. This means that man's pleasures are in relation to the play of signifiers. On the side of the woman, the first line translates as: 'There is not a being in language who is not subject to the phallic function' - the female existential position. And underneath that: 'Not all of the speaking being is subject to the phallic function' - described as the universal position. Which can be summarised as meaning that woman is not wholly bound or limited by the symbolic order or the signifier. (Before moving on to the discussion of what takes place below, I'll quickly discuss what the 'phallic function' is, which is symbolised as the phi).

The phallic function is the castration performed by the symbolic. For Lacan, acting as a psychoanalyst-semiotician, this castration is language based - not based on the threat of the removal of a sexual organ, but the effects that language has on the subject, and the subsequent coded sexual activities of the sexed body. The castration or phallic function is related to Lacan's 'name-of-the-Father', or the 'No!' of the Father, that separates the child from the Mother, or rather, brings the child into phallically dominated or ordered language. The phallic function alienates the subject in language, forces one to loose or give up absolute access to jouissance - where pleasure and pain meet. Lacan argues that every child, whether 'biologically male or female', must accept castration (separation from the mother and the fantasy that he or she is all and fulfils her very need) in order to have different symbolic and sexual relationships around the phallus, as sexual beings. The symbolic phallus in language, therefore, is the signifier. As Lacan state in his paper 'The Signification of the Phallus': 'It is a signifier intended to designate as a whole the effects of the signified'. The idea of the symbolic phallic signifier as 'whole' is useful here, as it is wholly empty. The phallus can be thought of as the 'empty universal', the empty sign. As Lacan writes in 1973: 'It is the signifier which does not have a signified'. The castrating aspect of this symbolic phallic function then, is the laying down of the bar that guarantees contingency, over the subject - it bars the subject from absolute access to the life threatening Real, and underlines the impossibility of the subjects Absolute satiety. The phallus is a sham.

A bone of contention still remains within post-Lacanian feminist responses to the phallic function. It is argued for example that the phallus as privileged signifier is really only Freud's theory of the penis and any privileging of the penis continues to guarantee male domination. But, as I have noted, Lacan argues that no sexed subject owns the phallus, both all are symbolically 'castrated', i.e., born into language that separates them from the Whole (even although they may have different sexual organs). Derrida, in the other hand, argues that as a privileged signifier, the phallus acts as a transcendental guarantor of meaning in relation to logocentrism, creating a phallogocentric latent humanist universe. I would argue in a cursory way, that as an empty or quasi universal, or an historically and contingently constructed fallacy, the phallus is the illusory foundation of transcendental justifications. It is neither a positive or negative theology, it is a atopia, chora or tabernacle where meaning is created to be located - not innocently discovered. It must also be said that in his later career Lacan privileges the use of the object 'a' as a replacement or substitute for the term phallus - he could have easily used the letter 'X'.]

Now to the lower section of the table. On the side of the male, Lacan locates the Universal and Univeralising sign for the male barred subject: S (I can't draw a line through the S here, but there should be one). The male subject as a signifier is barred internally because he is barred from the Other, separated, split, as a subject thrust into language and it's inability to give the subject access to the Other. The barred subject represents alienation in language, the split brought about by the first empty master signifier - the 'No!' of the Father - that puts limitations on the child.

The arrow of fantasy that joins this sign to the letter 'a' - which is in Lacanian terminology the 'objet a' (a for 'autre'/other), demonstrates that the subject believes and fantasises fulfilment and the generation of desire via the part object or fetish object that can be found in the desirable partner - who is here, on the side of women. Remember, any subject can occupy any aspect of this equation. Because as Lacan argues, 'the sexual relationship does not exist' - there is no clear cut, unmediated relationship between the subjugated sexes - the male relates to the woman as a collection of desirable signifiers or 'objet a'. An aspect of her (not all of her) finds a certain pleasure in his relation to the phallus - the phallus being a signifier of lack and desire, which he has (as he stands in total relation to the castrating phallic function), and she is (in that she is his object of desire, 'a', that he feels will give him access to the Other). For the male to be in total relation to the phallic function means that his desire is limited by the incest taboo laid down by the father, and that to unanchor this would cause psychosis by foreclosing the 'Name-of-the-Father'.

On the side of the woman - facing this bared subject, is the subject or signifier of the barred Other: S(A) (line through the 'A'). This can be understood to mean that on the side of the woman, as part of the feminine structure, there is an aspect that relates to the barred subject; the fact that subjectivity is based on the barred Other. This means that the female is not entirely in the symbolic or ruled by language, but that that Otherness is barred and split. We can interpret this to mean that the Other, as Mother, as the unattainable Wholeness that is projected by the barred subject, is not as complete as that subject believes, she also desires and has jouissance beyond the signifier - a jouissance that castration and the phallic function forget. This signifier of the barred Other stands in fantastical relation to the conception of Woman as Whole, Universal, satiated and One. This is an impossible fantasy of Goddess-like omnipotence that counters the pathetic God-like position on the opposite side that aims at Universality. The woman, as a definite article of faith, does not exist. The singular definable woman that stands directly in relation to man, as his other, or as the other half that makes him whole is a myth. She is not One, as Irigary would tell us, she is many. The dream of symmetry that haunts masculinist fantasies of obliteration in the arms of the Mother is here fragmented and exposed. This is why Lacan uses the hyperbolic statement: 'The Woman does not exist.' The Woman is related to the phallic function, which appears on the side of the male here, which demonstrates that she cannot be qualified in relation to this function alone, but can desire it on the side of the masculine structure. The feminine structure proves that the phallic function has its limits, and that the signifier is not everything. The 'not all', or the 'not One' of the Woman is excessive - she says yes and no and yes or no to it's dominance. She evades Universal encapsulation due to the constitutive split that the bar over the Other offers her, a gateway if you will over and under the phallic economy of symbolisation. This leads to a supplementary not complementary jouissance, which is a jouissance that is behind, before and beyond - over and under the phallic function.

Hope this helps.

Excited...

...by all the posts. Looking and sounding fascinating and I'm looking forward to hearing about how these ideas will be realised. My initial thought and instinct is for us to make four short inter-related films, thematically or formally linked, but to always remember to try and keep the work simple and elegant. Conceptual complexity can manifest as formal confusion. My old friend Rachel (the dancer) is making all the right noises, and is very much into the kabuki stuff I showed and described to her.

Oh, and Annie Srinkle posted this on her facebook page: http://feminapotens.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=58&Itemid=57 We could maybe put some money together and submit a proposal?

AK

Wednesday, 1 September 2010

Gamma Wear

Hi- Sorry this took so long to get up- That's a problem I have in more than one sense!

This is the prototype and also the spinning-kimono-for-sale-version as I like to call it.
Alec was saying about how they hang on a horizontal and I had thought i would like to keep one of each positive and negative as props. . .

I like how aristotle is coming back into this (heaven knows why!?) and am getting a loose script from what I'm reading here. Becoming in relation to language, the oulipo programme in relation to the table posted in July and Artistotle's clinamen.
I have written a few notes to Stina (Jens' girlfriend) who is a dancer and choroegrapher- ( I like leasing some out to see what comes back) and think it good to sketch these ideas out as well as to add to what I want to send to her- a sort of warm up and dance out and even if it takes recording ourselves start sketching this out because that process in itself could be really interesting and generative and is in keeping with the content. The table in my studio is a fabulous stage!!!

I also really like the overlaps and the sense of a tension in a duality or a twin duality where one is always the exception. This concept in intself and the relation between the one and the multitude or the
self and other and phallic movement/ the beginning of a movement re: clinamen in the formula is quite a fertile area.

I like the idea of perhaps there being two views of the movement between Lacan s image if I may call it that- front on (aristotle's from above) alternating to present inconsistencies- like Bruce Nauman's floor tiles. Or even formal ambiguities between a mechanisitic movement or framing and a more intuitive hand held action/ framing. And then something else- photos taken at regular intervals- sound or something that comes from the process- that's neither one or the other- a still of moving footage or an interplay between image and monologue. Or perhaps a big costume of the fortune teller controlled by for people that spits out commands to the dancers! If only because its a pleasant metaphor for the quadrologue . . .

The fate of the action seems to be an interesting channel- what will become of it- what is it for?
If movement is required- If the image can suggest or hold a movement?If the image is necessary to the action- what happens to the image after the action and other permutations . . .

I'm loving the flow- !

Postscript

Earlier, I wrote a long and garbled post. I've left it in place as I'll need to refer to it. A scrapbook entry. I did not want to gloss over (if you will pardon the expression) Lacan's formulae of sexuation, which you had suggested might be used in your costume designs. I wanted to understand what the formulae were and work through some inevitably reactive ideas of my own. What intrigued me the most was the concept of the exception. But I have been interested in this concept before, and in slightly different articulations of it. I have yet to take it as a subject of study and do something worthwhile with it. Anyway: it is part of my rough ideas here at the moment.


In AK's last post below, I am very interested in the idea elaborated about the individual's need to seek out a sovereign subject for themselves. The quotation from Beckett resonates. Yes.

I would like to be at a point by the end of this weekend where I have a clearer task set out. What I have been thinking about is very general, and this is a problem; there are connections to AK's ideas as written below and to the costumes, but I need to work on mine more.  I also need to enter into a real conversation with you all as soon as we can, to find out your comments on what I wish to discuss, and vice versa no doubt.

SH