Notes from: The transformative power of performance, Erica Fisher Lichte.(2008)

Chapter 2.Performativity and Performance.

“Performative”:

• term coined by J.L. Austin> language philosophy (1955): Linguistic utterances serve not only to make statements but they also perform actions.
• Distinction between constative utterances and performative utterances.
• Performative utterrances are self-referential and constitutivel they bring forth the social reality in which they referring to.
• Speech involve transformative power.
• Performative utterances are made under social conditions and they are addressed to a community. They perform a social act..
• Austin made a division in 3 categories of acts: Locutionary- Illocutionary and Perlocutionary acts.
• Characteristic of “performative”: it can succeed or fail based on the particular institutional and social conditions. And it has the ability to destabilize or even collapse binary oppositions. Polarities like subject/object and signifier/signified lose their polarity.
• In performance: self-referential acts that constitute reality and they can transform artist and spectator.
• From Austin to Butler: from speech acts to bodily acts.
• Butler will introduce “performative” in cultural philosophy.( 1988: Performative Acts And gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”. She argues that identity is formed based on bodily acts and instituted through a stylized repetition of acts: performative acts. Performative is:

1. “dramatic”- referring to the process of generating identities, one “does” a body and the materiality of the body emerges out of repetition of gestures and movements: Acts that will define and mark teh body sexually, culturally, ethnically, individually.
2. “non-referential”- they don’t refer to pre-existed conditions; no fixed. “Bodily, performative acts do not express a pre-existed identity but engender identity through these acts (p.27).

• Society imposes these performative acts that constitute gender and identity.
• The conditions for embodiment are set up.
• Both Austin and Butler see the accomplishment of performative acts as ritualized, public performances.
• Performativity results in performance or it manifests itself in the performative nature of acts.

The bodily co-presence between actors and psectators (p.38)

According to M. Herrmann’s demonstration that performance consists of the co-presence of actors and spectators > performance: requires two groups of people: one acting and one observing; to gather at the same time and place for a given shared lifetime.It’s the encounter of actor and observer that creates a performative event. In traditional terms: Actor> acts – Spectator>react/perceive/respond. In this sense performance is determined by self-referential and ever-changing feedback loop. (p.38). Middle of 19th century the visible and audible reactions of the spectators will be limited (dark auditorium, gas lighting etc.). The feedback loop gets controlled and organized. From 1960s and on performance explore more the interaction between actor and spectator – staging strategies- role reversal of actor4s and spectators/ creation of community between them/creation of various modes of mutual contact, proximity, interaction. Spectators will make physically experience of of the performance: audience participation.

ROLE REVERSAL: urges the dynamic and multiple shifts in the relationship subject-object. Schechner: let the people “join the story”. – spectator becomes participant/joins to staged rituals. Schechner gives emphasis to the relationship between equal co-subjects: (democratic model)and sets up an opposition between “play” and “social event”. The complication of such a decision to share responsibility with the audience is that spectator can subjugate the performer/inflict violence/act offensively. Later Schechner apply another model: the pressure and manipulation upon audience. In any case, the role reversal, as Schechner states, increase the insecurity for performance’s outcome. Aesthetic, political and social aspects are interlinked in performance (p.44).

CREATION OF COMMUNITY: aesthetics and socio-political coincide. Communities were formed when groups of people performed ritual collectively. (exaple: Nitsch’s orgy mystery theatre: collective performance of adapted rituals.). Strategies: role reversal and avoiding traditional theatre building/stage but choosing socially integrated locations. For experiencing community there is a shift of role: from spectator to participant to co-player. Fusion of aesthetics and social. The community is based on aesthetic principles but its member experience social reality.(p.55)

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The performance as event (p.161)

• The work of art is created as a “thing” whose “thingness” never vanishes. It exists as artifact, which remains consistent with itself regardless of the recipient’s presence….the artifact is accessible to different recipients at different times. And the recipient have the possibility to revisit, return to it and extract or discover new information each time, new possibilities and new meanings.
• Since 1960 when performance art emerges  there is a resistance to produce  artworks as marketable artifacts and commodities but replace them with fleeting events unable to buy and restore> ephemerality of the event. The performace’s aesthiticiy is manifested in its nature as event(p.162).

Three elements  constitute the nature of the performance as event, accordinf Fischer.:

1. Autopoiesis and emergence: mutual interaction between actors-spectators that drives the performance. In performance art , the performer  create situations which they expose the artist and  the spectator/situations that can make difficult the  development of the performance. the artist exposes her/himself and others  to an situation where they share responsibility. Not long god-like creators of the work. New image of the artist.
2. Collapse of dichotomies: All performances are self-referential and constitute reality.(p.170). Like art vs reality.
3. Liminality and transformation. rituals are linked to liminal and transitional experiences.

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SCHECHNER R., Performance Studies, 2006, p.28

According to Schechner:

Perform can be understood  in relation to: a) Being, b) Doing, c) Showing doing, d) Explaining “showing”.

Performance:

• marks identities, bend time, reshape and adorn the body, tell stories.
• are restored behaviors (physical, verbal or virtual actions that are prepared and rehearsed)
• are performed actions that people train for and rehearse.
• takes place as action, interaction and relation.
• isn’t “in” anything but “between”.
• to treat any object , work, or product “as” performance”{..} means to investigate what the object does, how it interacts with other objects or beings, and how it relates, to other objects or beings.
• Performance exists only as actions, interactions and relationships.

The seven function of performance:

• to entertain
• to make something that is beautiful
• to mark or change indentity
• to make or foster community
• to heal
• to teach, persuade, convince
• to deal with the sacred and/or demonic.