Sketch of Main Idea

Myself and another performer (perhaps Katerina).
I read Adorno on how american capitalism and nazi fascism are two sides of the same coin: Modernity.

Read in german, by me. Hence many words and pronounciations will be very off, incomprehensible.

Occassionally, K, in full bavarian costume, will sing with pleasure and happiness a pub german song.
Perhaps I will play accordion.

Perhaps will turn into a radio show

*******

... find a way to deal with the ideas which is nonetheless spirited... not neccesarily so polemical. not so much a wall or force put up upon the audience in the performance space/time, but rather either a space of investigation or a space of awkward but electric language/bodies... perhaps both...where projections are played with...

UPDATE March 26




original image i had way back when, was me reading the text in difficult (bad, indescribable) german... and katarina on a video screen in bavarian dress dancing and singing but a video fragment almost as if from a 70's festive, childish, rainbow and special effects in the background show (see above of this page for some references to this kind of imagery. had in mind her outlined and cascading repeating to infinity over a solid color which changes.. going through rainbow colors...).. a blend of cheap but fun colorful tv special effects that have her dancing figure cascading in repitition back into the color field and forward again as she is dancing and singing (sometimes we hear this other times not) ... thinking of this, i start to see myself in this scene....somehow in dark light.. perhaps with goggles on... and a strange long hat... like a sleeping cap, but tied in knots streaming back and up into the depths of the stage space.-- like a stream of connection to an unknown space not visible... white squares and rectangles (very modern shapes) around the space. arranged as in a television studio of a music act in the 70's but more abstract and simple.. the left-overs from the dream of modernism... (perhaps inside these boxes and rectangles are radio controlled toy cars. so that on occasion from off-stage the eternal forms/shapes move slightly-- are bumped from within...). at one point, K in bavarian costume comes on scene. perhaps we begin a comedy interaction like in: "hey andrew" "yeah" "isn't it odd how you just can't help but take inside of you in one way or the other the ideology of the quote culture endquote you are living in" "i suppose its a matter of survival. what other choice do you have. you have to learn to swim." "but what happens if you don't learn to swim so good" "you feel bad, incomplete, etc. etc. etc." "so you have to learn to meditate" "definetly" "lets tell a joke" "ok"



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***BELOW: NOTES FROM LINK [2] On ADORNO on art and the problem of singularity ***

"Enlightenment behaves toward things as a dictator toward men. He knows them only in so far as he can manipulate them."

"....For Adorno, no modern subject can break the spell of identity thinking. As Adorno claims of himself that '[e]very visit to the cinema leaves me, against all my vigilance, stupider and worse,' all humans have been similarly stupefied by the culture industry. Whether idolizing Rocky Balboa or Cool Hand Luke, the public learns the cultural maxim that taking hits, absorbing domination, is not only basely the minimum condition for survival, but a virtue in itself. This lesson begins with children taking their ideological medicine with their morning television: 'Donald Duck in cartoons and the unfortunate in real life get their trashing so that the audience can learn to take their own punishment.' Muhammad Ali best embodies the situation as he holds aloft the commemorative flame at the opening ceremonies of the 2000 Olympic Games with shaking arms. He flies the flag of the very institution that beat him senseless, and we find this admirable. Since the masses 'insist on the very ideology which enslaves them,' the momentum of exploitation of commodification becomes a force more powerful than any other in society. As instrumental life picks up speed, Adorno, as if calling a race between technological cretinization and critical thinking, declares a winner: 'thought has lost the element of self-reflection.'


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***End Adorno notes ***
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scene idea: while we are performing a mirror is behind us and above. projeted onto the mirror are white clouds in a blue sky slowly moving. occassionally a dissolve comes up of parking garages, piles of computers in India, showcase interiors of high-rise apartments, highways at night, packs of sugar, children's math, this may have the word OR between the images -- a phrase arises: "Can you self-reflect? I barely know what that is anymore. I am instrumental."


UPDATE MARCH 20


(see below for original sketch of concept)
Key Links to Adorno's ideas that are at play in this concept
Click here [1] [2] general overview of Adorno [2]

Katerina and I talked a bit about the idea.
Now, need a date to do the shoot and then in a way work back from there.
Aim now is to build up text. She will see if online there is any Adorno in german we can find and work with. I will seek out american texts and english translation of Adorno.

Thinking towards a question of where if capitalism is thought of as quite suspect now, how the 'coin' flips now... And as a sequence a kind of history-- through this coin flipping in time(s)... perhaps under one pair of clothes is another... Perhaps we go to songs at certain times (interludes)-- for instance: doing togethor: german song i sing not-so-well while she sings well, then american song, where she sings not-so-well, i sing better (at the same time us singing togethor). So interludes in a sense of song-cycles.

But main thing is building out text at this point. Agreed that performance should go to some kind of conclusion. Leave the audience not so much with a kind of super-irony but rather something that we propose conclusively - and that this ought to come from the logic of the texts as we develop that.

perhaps in the end of the performance it breaks into virtual radio show (or simple discussion), where we are discussing the plus' and minus' of capitalism/communism using the logics and sayings which are common or in culture in general and which we re-work to be a fairly fast-paced dialogue going through different ideas, at the core of the general 'discourse'.

QUESTIONS:
...of which texts to work with and how to develop sequence...
______________________
Sketch of Idea

Myself and another performer (perhaps Katerina).
I read Adorno on how american capitalism and nazi fascism are two sides of the same coin: Modernity.

Read in german, by me. Hence many words and pronounciations will be very off, incomprehensible.

Occassionally, K, in full bavarian costume, will sing with pleasure and happiness a pub german song.
Perhaps I will play accordion.

Perhaps will turn into a radio show

Site specific extended one time performance. Taking a large cloth, perhaps a roughly sewn togethor composite referring to flags of the world and logos. With a soundscape going (mixes of Fleetwood Mac, news music, ads for cars, food on sale jingles, self-improvement tapes and cars starting up)... Dip the large cloth into a giant vat of mayonnaise and attempt to whip the heavy cloth around the space, crossing the windows and the walls with the marks of mayo, while murmuring sweet jesus, deconstructed into small aggressive pumps of sound... Costume perhaps pants as if from a cartoon-satire of a shipwrecked male character (cut bottoms, rope for belt), otherwise bare-chested (perhaps with fake hair added to the chest)... Plaster of paris large brown palm tree in background sways on rope, as space is lashed with mayo.... sounds of birds on occassion...

monologue with pink laundry soap bottle, yellow water bottle hanging, dozens of chocolate easter bunnies.

"everything is alright now. I want to let you know that. You are right. No more violence"

On Sister ID --Develop the hyperreal investigation of shot-reaction-shot further.. somehow I see this as connected to Latex Shimmy... part of the same piece perhaps...

Latex Shimmy
Working with latex masks made of each of the performers faces. interchanging a drama, switching masks as strange voice overs call for... masks are removed and put on, sometimes rapidly to meet and occupy a position -- to keep in rhythm with the weird voice over determining the back and forth.. Set is key. as is sound. Perhaps all grey set, all grey suits and dresses..... perhaps newspaper walls, mixed with Ikea deconstructed....in the interchanges, working with barely perceptible changes and small displacements, yet at moments, speeds up almost without reason, or rather without a logic that we can grasp entirely, yet with a definite order... almost a purely non-vocal performance. sounds of radio and wind are heard. masks constantly switched yet they are often the same.

Constructed out of improvisations. Involving sometimes barely noticeable changes. yet which have specific consequences.
********

excerpt from Sister ID work in progress (march 2009)

Chaotic, chain reaction world. Figures always coping. Surviving, enduring.


Question of how to make sense of where to begin, how to construct, what to hang onto, in such a world. And no escape from its constant slippery slope, chain reaction absurdities.

Use of direct address in this...
shifting spaces of scenes...
re-forming into each other...


a constant: lecturing on Pierce's ideas of meaning in a universe of chance
and how this relates to a political question of movement, chance, change...

comes to questions of

where to begin
given the Spectacle
given the meme (repitition of forms, in the sense of what we might call trends or new directions -- which vertically inform the imagination of society -- constituting its self-development in terms of ideas and new directions, etc.. for instance: how concepts of evolution in the early 20th c. were popularized to create idealist arguments which justifed systemic oppression. Specifically, as rationale by the laws of survival of the fit. Hence, with the argument of evolution oppression was proposed as legitimate and natural. This set of ideas played an important role in the social imagination at the time. Or more recently how slogans of Globalization ("Globalization is Inevitable") were utilized to institute societies of privatization, and to limit questions regarding this development, in the west and differently, in the Global South).

the lecture itself problematized, by sexuality, loss, violence...

hence a fever, in the speaking, may arise.. a sense of running out of time...

a quality of the paroxysm... (uttering 'truths' with a sense that they are about to be swallowed up)...

begins with word play: see here

interrupted lecture is integrated into this. notes on that here:


******
Earlier Notes:

Wolves
Wild near the city
She-wolf....

Scenes materialize of two.

A sequence of lovers. the logic of the story moves forward, from new materialized scene to new scene, though the performers and the time frame and the style of the genre of the narrative changes. In between the scenes is the world of chaos and chain reactions-- figures always just barely coping. Hence, folds within folds, within a larger constant framework of absurd yet survivable, chain reactions. Using Antononio films as sources, as well as romance novels. The performers interchange. Playing different roles, as the overall sequence or rather semi-pyschological 'logic' 'develops' sequentitally. This is done with overlaps and almost a kind of instant replay break-points in linearity. Yet time does overall move ahead. Still, at points, this somewhat cyclical structure of near-loops, is interrupted by strange speak-sing-songs of 'singular' characters seeking to escape the cycle, they perceive, to go into the woods, to become one with the wolves.
Eventually, the love couple becomes super difficult, as more and more concrete senses of time and place become important in the 'psychological logic' (psychological is not quite the right word: more like a sense of natuarlism inside the logic), and the layer of multiple genres falls off. A dance between them starts. Always falling and rising-- each picking the other up as the other fairly immediately falls-- so formally a kind of rapid circle near-tango of up and down movements.


At one point the wolf (seen earlier in the distance, and referred to throughout) or wolves, intrude on the scene and attempt to insist on a more objective sense of things. Much like Pasolini's crow, the wolf(ves) nearly lecture, perhaps in silence, and to rhythm how the cycle of emancipatory politics is the greater frame we are all in (paris commune, 20's in america, late 60's in japan, germany, u.s., 70's in italy) --- the history of our common lives.... (one of movement and a shut down by the state at a certain point... when and where terrorism arises, mostly)

******

FP proposal

Working Title:
I and the Wolf and I


FP Proposal (Revision)
April 13, 2009



Keywords: Supergeneric, Displacement, Narratology, Absurd, Performativity, Shot Reaction Shot, Body (politic), Radio, other/banished, Routines/System



Overview

I will work with methods of translation and other trans-coding techniques, to open up absurdities and playful engagements with the routines and typical ‘stories’ and reasoning of modern times.

To probe how I am situated in reality
It will be in part a performance about a performance, which is in action or to be made and was possibly not made. Where there are interupptions, etc.


My process is to work with images and intuitions. This is how I start a project. It is how I am working now.


The images for scene development I am working with now are. These will be stylized.


- elements from romantic stories and films are re-appropriated into a sequence involving a couple and a third figure locked in a cycle. It is presented in such as a way to probe into the absurdities of modern times-- to examine the relationship of self to larger systems and the questions of self-and-other (what borders this relationship, who are you to me?) in the here and now.

- a lecture-series/education/radio program on the question of how to position the self in today’s complex and mind-numbing mediatic social landscape, that is itself having difficulties becoming in the here and now, due to the ongoing changes of other players, set, timing, etc.

- using shot reaction techniques in video to play with and displace logic of making meaning by the characters in their supposed endless love triangles and power battles…

There will be no "interactivity" of any special nature.

*****



The wolf and the west...


A wolf figure. There could be a wolf who operates much in the way that a crow operates in Pasolini’s film. He would tell the other’s how to understand their situation, from a more global, class conscious perspective, but in a nearly absurd fashion.

The use of the wolf here has to do with the re-arising of a memory of a figure in European and American folklore, which is closely connected with the land and the development of the city-state. Our relationship to the banished/ ‘other’ as, tied to this history. The excluded which is included in the very concept of moving forward as the sign of the other. But here returns to be actually the sign of a very different sense of otherness. It need not be fully explained in the text. But the development of the costume head will connect with this sense of borders, echoing in some respects the wolfman.



Empty time, gaps and rhythm.

This quality or experience of opening will surface throughout the work at different moments, in small acts of displacement from the ongoing text-in-action. This distance will be in essence moments in the void of different proportions. By this term of "void", I mean it in the sense of: "a neutral zone where one is inspired to pay attention to one's own sensibilities, and to 'reality' rather then 'representation'..." (Yves Klein). So, in the here and now. Thus opening a space between the rush of ‘stories’/narratives/logics and the here and now.


*****

At the opening:

3 dimensional human size words play a part... This will give a playful re-contextualization of the scene, as a whole, in front of us, at the level of language and its movement. As well as becoming a visual game with the audience re-combining and displacing sense – It will re-organize the audience’s active participation in the comprehension of what they are looking at, as a whole, and in its particulars.

This re-comprehension of what they are looking at, arrives again, thematically throughout the work.



The action of making sense is made visible throughout, in a re-combined stage space where allusions to the wild are juxtaposed right next to the routines of city-space.

I am a central performer in this, describing a lecture I need to make, and/or that I would like to make. And at times going into it. I.e. powerpoint. This may be on Pierce’s ideas of reality in a universe of chance and/or meaning in a our complex society, with reflections by Baudrillard, Autonomists, and Badioiu.


At other times there are distractions and new directions. New stories that arise.
New Romances. Cycles. Chaos. Financial Meltdowns.



**********
AFS

words out of carboard or sytrofoam etc. which enter and are displaced by another. forming sense then displacing the sense in a kind of visual rhebus or game with viewing and sense. words as things which are physically moved, erased, re-inscribed into presence....

Need:

1. to gather materials
2. to begin to build out from text already the sequence
3. fix date to begin

Two players. Man and a woman in an apartment... constant everyday chaos (entering and exiting the stage, things difficult to start, always interrupted, huge pot of potatoes comes in to be peeled, at one point a roasted lovely chicken dinner is brought on, child enters eats, exits, -- we eat some of the chicken, becoming ravenous -- we are hungry)... slide show is attempting to be made, almost has a life of its own, yet Man seeks to nail it down and to get attention from woman who is super busy with a thousand things, to make comments. Big lecture in the next few days he is trying to prepare for. He is seen as somewhat reluctant to participate in daily things, and always out of his grasp, as she moves through the space, sometimes confused but mostly making connections with an almost dance-like (but everyday) ability to 'surf' through all that is going on, yet eventually growing tired... Nothing quite comes togethor... yet a kind of threadline is there...where the daily and the coordinates of the 'big picture' connect surprisingly at moments...perhaps in ways that the figures don't see, but which is suggested to the audience, by the child's clear understanding of what is happening...

from dream:
she in JFK car, standing, as it is sinking in dark-honey mud. Its as if the car and she were toy models or rather the ambiguity of recent photographic techniques which make big world look like toy models (see below for examples)....

She rises from it as it is sinking. The honey-mud, slowly dripping off her as the car very slowly (almost impercebitbly) sinks further. She is in pink sorta Jackie O outfit. I think the same one that Jackie O was wearing when JFK was shot. With hat.