Tumult,
Przegląd Ideo-Graficzny, No. 11
My attitude to the phenomenon called
"performance" is ambiguous.
I have used this term many times to describe my own artistic endeavors,
and at least the same number of times I have distanced myself from it.
In 1981, I wrote, "In order to
describe what I understood as performance, I must describe the function
attributed to this idea. Thus, in
order to define a term, I must present the path I followed to reach such a
particular use of the term. The
idea of performance results for me from the definition of the concept of
art. If we jointly settle upon a
certain moment or fact in which we postulate the presence of art, this implies
for me the presence of performance.
Does this mean that for me the terms 'art' and 'performance' are
synonymous? Not quite, but it is
difficult to separate them. It is
also hard for me to assume that performance is contained within art, since I am
fully aware of the former's autonomy.
However, I used the term 'art' earlier, and the use of the term
'performance' resulted directly from my own questions regarding the essence of
art...".
In fact, at the end of my studies in
the mid-70s, when I intended to work out a form of expression suitable to my
temperament, my way of thinking, and my attitudes, I arrived at the necessity
to construct something like a play, improvised in front of an audience. It so happened that I had not yet heard
of "performance" at that time.
The first show of this kind I performed together with Janusz Zaremba
during the Festival of Art School Students in Szczawno-Zdrój. This was in fact a concert for six
singers and a director, who performed the graphic, linear score we created from
a spontaneous two-dimensional graphic composition, which was being
simultaneously disassembled.
When I came to grasp the convergence
of my needs with the realizations described as "performance", I clung
desperately to this term for a couple of years. Never, however, did I decide to limit my work to the form of
performance. I never agreed with
the label of "performer", either, despite the fact that from time to
time I present shows which, without much resistance, I call
"performance".
This particular ambivalence results
from my conviction that it is not the type of form, or the discipline, that
determines the sense, importance, and value of a work, but rather the adequacy
of the form to the intention of the expression, and its internal structure and
logic. I was also sure, supported
by reflection on my own artistic practice and that of others, that all external
classifications and generalizations lead to unintended limitations. Consent to a definite classification,
to the limitation of practice, and to self-limitation to a discipline and a
form that can be defined, gives the illusory feeling of being rooted and
safe. But they make it impossible
for us to exercise the feeling of freedom of choice at any passing moment.
These are the grounds for my distrust
and distance towards performance as a separate domain of art. It is of the same
nature as my distrustful attitude towards painting, sculpture, graphic art,
video art, etc., etc. That is why
I feel a certain distance towards painters, sculptors, performers and all other
specialized art professionals. I
consider all these terms and concepts to be facile and unsuitable
generalizations, which degrade what for me is essential in art.
My partial "consent" to
performance resulted from the fact that I laid in it my hopes, or perhaps
claims, which exceeded the general use of this term. In 1981, I tried to define and establish it in the following
way:
"Between the reflection and the
verifiable practice, we can distinguish a sphere of activity which, like facts,
may be the object of reflection, and which possesses its own mental features
with respect to material facts. I
call such activity 'performance' for my own purposes. By that I understand improvised activities, not meant for any
preselected purpose, which are in close connection with association mechanisms,
and are subject, to whatever extent possible, to the course of concurrent
reflection.
"As a claim, performance is an
activity which is identical with thought directed to the universal idea of
art. This is also an element of
our direct attitude towards reality.
"From the view point of art
traditionally understood, in which the art object or artistic event seem to be
identifiable, performance is neither an event, nor an object. It is not, because it cannot be either
seen (defined: measure, weight, or touch), nor described (plot synopsis). It does not have any visual or
spatio-temporal structure, although these can be used as elements of the events
or objects.
"Being based on a certain mental
structure, performance is an act of determined intuition, which is impossible
to plan or to read. This is so
despite the fact that the performance action and its visual realization may
suggest something opposite, and may live with its own life ...
"In the form described here,
performance has expressive features.
It is a show, a manifestation of itself. It is also a 'state of the spirit', an emotion; or it
fulfills a function, or it is a spell, a testimony. As a claim, it is also an ideal reply to the problem of the
'artist-receiver' relationship.
"In the course of describing and
defining, it turns out clearly that performance is unattainable, and that there
is a gap between the claim and the real possibility of its existence. Some such claim similar to that we are
describing is absolutely necessary, and a precondition for any artistic
endeavor, from the moment when we assume a radical starting point; and after
each step we will conscientiously come to terms with it.
"I think that the
unattainability of any such thing is a basic condition for understanding value
in art, as well as a very useful verification of what is, on the one hand, and
what has not been, or is not yet art.
"If, during the artistic action,
we do or produce something which is what it was supposed to be from the very
beginning, this means that we have acted against art, or against ourselves.
"If we want to stay faithful to
the surrounding world and to our own intellectual, sensual, and creative
possibilities, we have to understand that we will never foresee the future in
such a sense that we can design it.
Designing does not mean the invention of the future in a way that it is
attainable, but rather an act of concentration with respect to difficulties; an
act with which we collect and select the whole of our knowledge with respect to
a chosen problem, so that it can help us react proportionally to the challenge.
"Therefore, if we do something
which is what it was supposed to be, we are either deluding ourselves - which
means that we are yielding to illusions - or we have unintentionally gone
astray - which is a cardinal error.
Giving up conscious choice means undermining the justification for such
choice. Such surrender is possible
and justified only when we come to the conclusion that the choice was
incorrect, or when we revoke such a choice.
"Following this course of
thinking, I find the statement that performance does not exist is for me
consistent and convincing, and that it is unattainable and unnecessary, if we
have consciously reached the decision of a radical starting point, if we have
realized the unconditional unity of consistency in thought and action.
"In this situation, there is not
only no performance, but also no paintings, sculptures, songs, or
tragedies. There is only the
dominant postulate, the idea of universal and uncodified art, and the
aspiration to achieve this, charged to the individual making the claim."
This extensive quotation refers, of
course, to the hopes, and to the very personally understood idea, of
performance. It does not have much
in common with the reality of motion or the discipline of performance, or with
the works of most of the artists who are involved in performance. In this sense it has not become
obsolete, and it seems to me that it is still important to persistently
emphasize the distinction between the terms which describe reality and their
use in self-identification. It is
one thing is to say that what is hanging on the wall is a painted picture, and
quite another is to say that I am a painter who paints exclusively
paintings. This also refers to
performance.
Artur
Tajber (1984)
ZBIGNIEW
WARPECHOWSI
During a hunger
strike, in Sandomierz, June 1994.
The first and the
most important part of my workshop is located under my closed eyelids. The second is a spatial tablet, which
always accompanies me, and is placed within the range of my vision, preferably
about two meters in front of me and slightly above my head. What is under my eyelids is the internal
sphere,
and what is in front of me is the external sphere. These spheres are spherical screens on
which are produced the pictures of our memory, of our imagination, of our
thoughts, and of that which no wise man dares to describe, and before which
every scholar cowers, something that is the source of the conscious and unconscious
creativity of Man.
"Unconscious creativity" is something which may make the
rationalists laugh. These are
GIFTS, which we receive through our organism, and which we
"consciously" ignore, appropriating only some insignificant fraction
of them, which we often call "ideas".
Images projected
internally and externally are only partially subject to our will. Just as you can turn the pages of a
book using your will, but you cannot change the content of the pages, so too it
may depend on us how quickly the images change; or we may even the change the
whole sequence of projection, that is, "exchange" the whole book (or
film) for another, by getting drunk, for example, or watching a
"real" film.
Work in these
workshops, to continue speaking metaphorically, involves reviewing the film,
although in fact this is a certain waiting in silence for the signals sent to
us by the as-yet-unidentified creator inside us. Images, thoughts, image-thoughts, and finally thinking,
which, supported by our knowledge, good sense, and will to exist, makes a
selection and a decision: Stop!
This is what I was looking for!
The projection breaks
off when we return to reality, concentrate our attention on something concrete,
real, tangible, when we go back to "normality". Now, things and objects in my field of
vision can be transformed by my physical activities; an apple can be eaten, a
tree cut down, a wall raised, a board planed, a picture painted. Activities of this sort form part of
the real workshop of, say, an artist.
In my case, internal
and external "sketch books" play the dominant role. These are spherical boards, on which
various things draw themselves, in a way I do not understand. The picture in the external sphere is
more "transparent" and more "thoughtful", i.e. it recreates
what was invented:
"image-thoughts", ideas of objects, blurred images of our
concentration, reflections of our ego, emanations of consciousness, or phantoms,
hallucinations, dreams. Whatever we call them, and without trying to understand
what they are and where they came from, it is important to confirm the
effectiveness of this kind of work within such a workshop, including everything
which constitutes the fruit of human creativity. Civilizations and culture are the work of dreams, and not of
great undertakings. I wrote about
visions and projections eleven years ago (Podręcznik [Handbook], page 114), and
then it was for me a revelation and a surprise. But both then and now, I write about this with fear, because
I am entering fertile ground for mockery.
Let's blunder along.
Everyone has seen the face of a person thinking "hard", a
student, perhaps, or a participant in a quiz after a question has been put to
him. I observed with
pleasure the physicality of thinking in Stuart Brisley during his performance in
Dresden, when one could "see" as he was thinking over his next
action. Why does such a thinker
look at the floor, the ceiling, or two meters in front of him, avoiding seeing
anything, and especially meeting someone else's eyes? Projection is at the same time reception, watching what we
are presenting to ourselves, by projecting something on
"non-existent" screens: the internal screen of the closed eyelid, and
the external one, for staring at blurred visions. We see differently, we think differently, using our internal
or external projection apparatus.
Why does a thinker have his eyes open even at night, while a dreamer
keeps his eyes closed? We look
into emptiness, darkness, and nothingness, until the tape of our memory or the
diskette of our internal computer winds to that moment in which we can obtain
an answer to the question, or see the image that has been expected and
suggested by the brain mechanism, driven by the energy network of our Ego; but
that Ego is only a terminal of the huge consciousness system which controls the
universe. Our perceiving sight, which
absorbs the images of the visible world, in turn feeds and supplements the
resources of memory. And again, we
feel physically, corporeally, with our whole self, such an energy load, when we
experience delight; and the moments of delight are experienced and recalled
later as moments of "happiness", bliss, or spiritual feast. Ugliness of life humiliates a human
being. It crushes him because it
deprives him of delight.
It is sometimes said
of artists that they "have imagination". But this says nothing.
Jean Paul Sartre wrote in his book, Imagination, that in our
imagination there appears nothing different from what we have come across or
seen in reality. I read this more
than twenty years ago, and I remember that I never agreed with it. It happens both in dreams and in
dream-like projections that we can see clusters of images, fragments, and
collages of cut film sequences in continuous transformation, overlapping,
moving and changing focus, planes, and even various artistic conventions, from
naturalism to abstract cosmo-molecular forms, beams of light, colors and spots,
up to emptiness starred with the bright points of the sight atoms. And perhaps we have been allowed to
see the structure of the matter of ourselves and the universe?
I do not know if I am
an exception or a rare freak, having such visions. But it seems to me that this is normal, that everyone has
the same possibilities, but perhaps they are not used. If, however, there are people bereft of
the possibility of watching their own projections, they would be very poor in
their, say, "sensual" capabilities, or perhaps spiritual or
intellectual. Let me say it in my
own way - they would be bereft of a creative workshop. Why do I automatically attach a
creative function to this phenomenon?
Because it is hard to imagine that it could be otherwise. A carpenter
planes a board so that it will be as "ideally" straight and smooth as
possible. A bricklayer builds a
wall to be vertical. A perfectly
straight line, an ideally smooth or vertical plane do not occur in nature at
all. These are "ideals"
of our thinking (not any abstract structures this time), and visions - that is,
the inner sight - have the task of imposing shapes on these ideals, giving them
forms, and projecting them in concept and image.
Let's study what is
going on now, when I am writing this text. Is this the effect of the creative work of my workshop,
internal or external? No. At this moment, I am speaking to
somebody using my language. I am
thinking about the reader, appealing to his experience, using verbal structures
which are not congruent with what I would like to communicate. These verbal constructions - that
is, the Polish language, as I learned it - offers resistance and entangles me
in inaccuracy; there is diversity of meanings and various schools of
understanding the concepts and words.
And the reader at this particular moment will look for an asylum or a
cage for madmen to put me in. So,
when writing and speaking, I "deal with" humanness, with the
negative, critical, even mocking reader of my pronouncements. And if I were to involve myself now in
analyzing those sight-projection-thought spheres, the internal one upon closing
my eyelids, and the external one when I stare at the ceiling "out of
focus", I would detour from the subject, or put humanity aside, including
especially my adversaries, and involve myself in waiting in peace and silence,
until on one of spherical screens an image appears that fascinates me, or
worries me; and later the only thing to do will be to decide whether what was
seen in this manner can be taken, whether it can, for instance, be included to
another performance, or discarded as unimportant or an illegible phantom. But this is not everything. There is yet another type of
projection, perhaps even the most important one: the one we experience in ecstasy. And here, the projector is not a point
deep in my brain, but the whole body, including the spirit, the brain, and the
heart. Now, everything is
vibrating, the muscles are trembling, the veins and nerves are getting tense,
the breath is quicker, and the blood circulation is changing its rhythm. I plunge myself into the abyss which
desires me! I give myself to it, crying and howling, shouting at myself
somewhere deep down inside. Behind
me, there is that calling ego.
Now, there is no "humanity", no audience, readers, receivers,
enemies, or friends. There is HE. Good, kind, as submissive as the Ocean,
which I do not swim across only out of my own weakness, because I am not strong
enough. Ecstasy is the highest
state of retransmission. I do not
want to say precisely where the message is taken from, and to whom (or what) it
is passed on. I have used the word
"abyss". It means
"great" and "inscrutable", or impenetrable, and this is important
for the artist: to face and to wrestle with what is great and
impenetrable. How instructive it
is at the moment when I am saying to myself, "Be an 'artist', even a
'creator'!" And I want to
produce works of art! Ecstasy as a
state is the "workshop of measure", a realization of the proportion
of one's greatness and smallness, of one's work in comparison to the rest of
the world. It is a search for
one's own dimension. Ecstasy over
an abyss, facing the infinite, experiencing the impenetrable, tasting one's
greatness and feeling one's insignificance. Ecstasy, Unification in the One. Dust, Nothingness, Loneliness, and Return to reality
enriched, and now, my brother, yes, now try to be, for instance, an
artist. You have received a gift,
so your task is to use it (art!) and give it out. To give it out, but not to waste it, because although we are
all gifted, and each person uses these gifts in his own way, or rejects them,
still, the artist's effort and talent is supposed to make them gems of purification,
which is to say, that which we expect from art. In my opinion, the
performer-artist enters in amongst the state of ecstasy or contemplation, a transcendental
suspense, and on the other hand, has a real occupation, or work, thanks to
which objects are created, perhaps even works of art, which sometimes call to
mind the moments of ecstasy. The
more effort it takes to create such an object, the more it distances itself
from the act of creation, and becomes an object of luxury, governed by
different rules.
In the art of
performance nothing is obvious, determined, or finite, since the most essential
thing happening there is in suspension, like dust in the air, and it is still
in "unreality".
Indefinite man, dust
in the space between the body of ecstasy and the reality determined by its
laws. This is a tragic
circumstance, in which there is no real base point, no existential doctrine, in
which no one knows how to Be or Not to Be. The question arises as to what there is to be shown to
people. Of what interest can it be
to anyone that someone is balancing between the real and the unreal? We know very well what people demand
from art. The artist always gives
more than people can digest. And
although nobody fights for that, art is a lesson, and as the history of
mankind shows, it is only art that Man can be proud of.
My ambition, which is
on the verge of fraud, is to adopt such an attitude as to program some types of
ecstasy to the degree that it would possible to present them (performance) and
to watch them, or rather to "participate" in them, at a predetermined
place and time. And I think that
we can discipline ourselves and our ecstasies or flights of imagination
to that degree. We know that this
is possible. Participation in great moments of improvisations given by poets,
musicians, or secondary ecstasies by actors is something shocking and,
unfortunately, rare, if genuine.
For that reason the world is flooded with pretended and stage-directed
ecstasy produced by specially trained idols. Musicians practice their instruments thousands of hours, but
no practice can prepare or guarantee ecstasy. Ecstasy is a result of the attraction or recollection of
feeling by the mystical body. And
this requires preparation, or mystical "practice". This requires a different way of life
and a different discipline, directed towards experiencing a special kind of
power. This the origin of European
art. In other cultures, art is an
ornament, or an object of luxury.
It is impersonal art.
I describe the
artist-performer's work just as I can see my own life, and just as I can
imagine what it should be like. I
will not apologize for excessive discussion of my personal issues.
The distinctiveness
and identity of the artist-performer's work justifies the recognition of
performance art as a discipline.
Here, I notice two trends in preparatory practice. One is a fate generated in
detail, directed towards art, when one does not wander around the world
like an idiot, a tourist, or a money-monger, but rather generates one's
adaptation by facing the sensations which one wishes to experience, and which
cannot be experienced vicariously through stories or photographs. Censoring and dividing one's life and
choices, the hygiene of living for art. The extraction of signals, which either enrich or purify us,
from both the near and distant world, to turn us into instruments which
resonate at the call of art.
This practice is familiar to us from the biographies of many artists,
poets, and especially philosophers.
There have been artists, the "more human" ones, so smeared
with life that life won out over art, and killed the artist. I prefer those alienated and
emancipated "mountain climbers" of art. What I am writing about refers to all the artistic
disciplines, except public jesters.
The second trend, out
of necessity, will be presented as an introspection, using my own example,
because there is no "school" of performers yet. Nor do I wish to establish one. And perhaps what I want to separate out
and occupy for performance art is a simple procedure for any individual
involved in conceptual work or solving tasks. However, it is one thing when something is
"dumped" on us, and we do not know what to do about it, or what to call
it, and quite another thing, when we receive an answer to a problem we have
been grappling with. The answers
can be found in the questions. And
a question about art is a question we ask of the Creator Himself.
Entering the state of
projection (which is my real work), I "develop " images: that is, I
want to see them. This
"wanting" is important, because it recalls the projected visions and
modifies them in the direction of my desire, or my "effort" to see. Once I have something, I submit it to
evaluation, which is in fact self-evaluation. And so this work involves self-analysis, reviewing and
verifying one's resources, and here it is difficult for me know what to call
this, because it is something much more than the resources of memory. This is the building material of
dreams and visions of every kind, including nightmares and delirium. If I am not interested in the images
gained in this way, I "push away" the projections with my thinking
and my will. They either obey me
or they recur persistently, like an evil thought which does not want to go
away. The rest of me, that is, my
conscious self, is waiting. When I
"come back to myself" under the influence of exhaustion, the
conscious mind starts to work.
I do not prepare any
"technology" of projection states. This may be wrong. I think the Tibetans, who immure
themselves in totally dark caves for six months, have enjoyed the greatest
achievements in this respect. I am
not afraid of mysticism, but being a product of European culture, I want to
maintain both the rigor and the autonomy of art, without diluting it, or making
it dependent on other human vocations, which have other purposes and another
hierarchy. The masters and sages
of the East have been and will remain the unequaled masters in the techniques of
self-control. The fate of the
European is to be suspended between Heaven and Earth. And the "progress" of contemporary civilization
leads to bringing Man down to earth, or even to crawling and wallowing in one's
own excrement.
I submit to my
projections without any special ceremony, somehow on the sly, even when I am
among people; but it is best during the silence of the night, or at the crack
of dawn. Often, I do not
understand my images, and I am even afraid of them. Perhaps these are the "visions" of my former or
future incarnation. Perhaps they come from a different time-space. Perhaps I am
grasping thoughts-images-lightwaves from outer space. I compare these recalled and remembered images to the real
ones from my memory; I juxtapose them, and now I can see that they repel each
other, they do not match, they do not correlate with each other. So they belong to different
worlds. And yet, these worlds ARE
inside me. How many worlds do we
have inside of us? This is not a
rhetorical question, for there are many things "not of this world."
Thus, during the
"projectional waiting" and immediately afterwards, i.e. when I come
back to reality, I analyze whether there is something of use for art; and when
I am pressed for time, I check the usefulness of some signals for my
performance. And this is more or
less how it comes together. My
brain and nervous organism is a receiver and a transmitter at the same time;
who knows, perhaps some unidentified devices located inside us participate in
this, which taken together we call the "soul". And these devices. like computers, are
connected to the Center! To
simplify, my ego, having filtered the resources (the tape collection) of
my memory (the store of information and images) replies to my expectation with a signal, and
the reply is unpredictable! I call
such a signal, sign, message, an "input". The input is the beginning of the "regular"
preparation for a performance.
This is a bit of energy, the given. And it sometimes happens that it must be rejected, when it
does not lead us in the intended direction. (What is good for a poet need not be good for a
performer.)
I am not going to
dissect the course of the work as creative work, because I do not feel I have
the education for this task. One
should not force too much of one's own personality on people (cf. the chapter
in my Handbook). I copy from my
brain only those thoughts which may be useful for someone or something.
"Sobriety"
means cold thought, calculation, premeditation; it means clarity of mind. Clarity suspended in darkness!? With reference to art, this clarity has
a totally different spectrum of radiation. In the colors of that spectrum, a large contribution is made
by the artist qua artist and his "artistic" personal filters
(and there are such filters!). In
addition, a certain contribution to this is made by objective (forgive the
word), non-emotional, external conditions, such as our knowledge of the world,
as well as time, space, and what is universal and general, i.e. the environment
and space of art. The conscious
mind must be an important element of the performer's work (something not
required from, say, a painter or a musician). The performer must know his own reality, because HE IS
ALONE. Both he and the audience
should know with reference to whom and to what he is alone. This is not a melancholy
loneliness. This must be a monody, which is not
something hidden behind the objective conditions of art. The monody of emission, in which there
may be no art.
Ecstasy as work and
ecstasy as a creative exaltation, and that which means to be art, must find its
realization in a separate correlation with respect to art as its own history,
its own theory, and so forth.
Ecstasy is a response to the call from there, where we locate the
essence, the sense, and the reason of art. Let's call this the heaven of art. The art of performance is a journey to heaven and back to
earth. I have seen crafted
performances, displays of some activity or other, in which one could follow the
course of thinking, the combinations, the logic (or lack of logic), the
development and the conclusion. A
dead show, whose class is similar to the class of its author. In a performance that I would like to
cause or to watch, I expect a "cast" of emission which is beyond my
understanding, whose origin is unknown, which means that it had to go through
"Heaven". In art and in
creativity, the element of miracle must be present. For that reason, it is impossible to describe a
performance. What I have written
raises the question as to whether art in general, and especially the art that I
have singled out in this text, has the right to a different way of thinking. What knowledge is indispensable, and what knowledge should
be limited for hygienic reasons?
Evil knowledge (there is such!), excess of knowledge - concerning art -
may cause an artistic offering to serve as a message about the amount of
knowledge held, an opinion, but not a personal act of creation. I agree with Ezra Pound, that it is a
good thing for the artist to learn another field of art, both in theory and in
practice. This opens up for him a
certain space for operation; it does not demoralize him with professionalism,
though there are examples to the contrary. The purpose of knowledge is for it to be used
selectively. We should make
constant choices and changes; but I would venture to say that knowledge is not
important for creative initiation.
Art is something
miraculous. What happens in the
artist and with the artist, before the idea (!) of the work appears, and
during its creation, is close to a miracle. It is something nobody has explained or understood. And fortunately people have stopped
looking for a method and engaging the power of learning to examine it.
It remains for me to
consider the following subjects :
- Spirit-projection-idea-realization
- Reality-intellect-transfigured
reality
- Transfer
of an internal projection into an external one
- Reflection-contemplation-conclusion-rejection