Welcome...

The Presentation...

Ggp Odp

View more presentations from trabajodediego.

An example of "reverse anthropology"?

 

The editor is a figure of authority. The text being censored is the one about Celebrity Culture (a typical 'centre' topic). And in the end, the text itself is nothing really extraordinary. Here is the version available on the online version of "IDoP":

XVII.-CELEBRITY CULTURE
Celebrity culture is baffling and embarrassing to us. Luckily, we never get invited to the Playboy mansion, or to parties at our embassies when we are on tour. If we go to the opening of the Whitney Biennial, most likely we’ll either get bored, or overwhelmed, really fast. Despite our flamboyant public personas and our capability to engage in so called “extreme behavior,” we tend to be shy and insecure in social situations. We dislike rubbing shoulders (or genitals) with the rich and famous, and when we do it, we are quite clumsy—spilling the wine on someone's lap, or saying the wrong thing. When introduced to a potential funder or a famous art critic, we either become impolite out of mere insecurity or remain catatonic. And when our “fans” compliment us too much, we just don't know how to respond. More likely we will disappear instantly into the streets or will hide in the nearest restroom for an hour.

II. Key ideas of the text: "On Defence of Performance" by Guillermo Gómez Peña

Character of the text:
The text goes back and forth between a chronicle and a theoretical essay -being faithful to the artist's style. The idea is to try to handle over to the reader a sort of compass, that would enable he/she to sail thorugh the waters of the field, reaching his/her own conclusions. The attempt is to transmit an emobodied knowledge and experience through writing, which demands loads of images as keyports into the blurry borders of the performance field. It is noteworthy that he allows in as valid sources of knowledge not only conversations, reflections, correspondance and 'conscious' experience but also his dreams. (There is another -previous?- version of the text online, which shows the text is ever evolving and utterly unfinished)
Structure of the Text:
The text is divided into three parts (though one can detect several communicating vessels between them). The first part is devoted to describing the field itself, its landmarks (What's the field like?). The second part is much more introspective: it sketches traces of an embodied experience -which in a way brings it closer- (How is it to be in the field?). The third part, once having shown the field, and gone through the body traspasses boundries into the art-world (and the overall system as it can be perceived from there), trying to draw distinctions and sharing a sort of 'sense of direction' (How does one relate from this field to the world?). This trajectory resembles the one he talks of when referring to the 'embodied experience'. Here is an outline of it.

Part I: The cartography of performance
1. The map
2. The sanctuary
3. The human body
4. My 'job'
5. Identity survival kit
6. The irreplaceable body

Part II: Turning the gaze inwards
7. At odds with authority
8. Siding with the underdog
9. Clumsy activists
10. A matter of life or death
11. Dreaming in Spanish
12. An urban legend
13. Necessary and unnecessary risks
14. Embodied theory
15. Dysfunctional archives
16. Everyday life
17. Celebrity culture (censored in our version) (An example of R.A.?)
18. I dreamt I was a pop celebrity

Part III: Performance vis-a-vis theatre and the art world
19. Performance and theatre
20. Art criminals
21. A performance artist dreams of being an actor
22. Time and space
23. "Art with a capital A" and art institutions
24. Marginalizing lingo
25. The cult of innovation
26. Deported/discovered
27. The ethnographic dream
28. Thorny questions
29. The empty stage

[A little game, now. I tied to extract -an interpretation of- the most important ideas within each section with just a few words:

1. 'scanning radars'; 2. 'intersitial emancipation'; 3. 'symbollic materia prima'; 4. 'questioning, sediments, open space'; 5. 'multiple identities sampled'; 6. 'body as the centre'; 7. 'dismantling abusive authority'; 8. 'gut humanism'; 9. 'bad organizers, useful esthetics'; 10. 'jump of faith'; 11. 'keep close to reality'; 12. 'pale kinkiness';  13. 'risk as a strategy'; 14. 'emotional and corporeal associative intelligence'; 15. 'archive of the negatives of culture'; 16. 'challenge:domesticate chaos and discipline myself'; 17. 'bad wit etiquette rules'; 18. 'fame as a representation'; 19. 'theatre-fixed-structure, performance-fluid-in-media-res'; 20. 'cultural anti-heroes'; 21. 'rejection of the underlying subject'; 22. 'not-acting: being here'; 23. 'liminal artists'; 24. 'alternative: restaking the territory: pushing the market-based-centre to the margins'; 25. 'going somwhere vs. pressure of the market system'; 26. 'privileged temporary insiders'; 27. 'the nightmare of fixation'; 28. 'reminders of other freedoms, talk-back and listen'; 29. 'the interest lays in the audience'.

Maybe we could read them several times (assuming they're the essential part of each section, that is), read them in reversed order, in alphabetical order, or just randomly. Does it help to track a set of interconenctions? I can group those into spheres:
A. (through the) body; pure: (1, 3, 6, 8); shared: (13, 14, 16, 22, 28)
B. On (and around) the limit; pure: (2); shared: (5, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28, 29)
C. Seen through the others; pure: (17); shared: (5, 9, 13, 15, 20, 23)
D. Against...; pure: (18, 25, 28); shared: (7, 8, 21)
E. Rules of the game: pure: (4, 10, 16); shared: (5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 14, 19, 21, 22, 24, 26, 28, 29 )

If nothing else, this little game shows some core concerns of the author, and shows the complexity of the map he is trying to draw. (He does warn us about it in the last few sentences: "Like performance, this text is incomplete, and will continue to change in the coming months. A warrior without glory, I turn off my computer…") If we wanted to characterize it (not fixing it), then maybe we should think of something resembling Schechner's overlapping circles -only this time shifting and perhaps in three dimensions.]

Key Ideas:

• 17. Time and space: “Performance is a way of being in the space in front of or around an audience; a heightened gaze, a unique sense of purpose in handling thee objects, commitments, and words, and at the same time, it is an ‘ontological’ attitude towards the whole universe.”
• The body is central and irreplaceable. Through its emotional and corporeal associative inteligences, we can scan (as radar does) the field we are to work with. It is the stage and materia prima to be dealt with. The political dimension of the job must always be worked through the body and towards the others (eagerly looking for feedback). The work is about 'being here'in this particular time and space. Having a body and listening to it, automatically places us in an interstitial space (between identities, among others, between culture and nature). Risking to trespass its borders, pushing them farther, can be an emancipatory excercise.
• Bordering is a strategy that involves risk (of one and the others). It involves the sampling of multiple identities, which fights back the temptation of a 'straitjacket identity' and its partner: an 'underlying subject'. Such a strategy frequently puts one at odds with authority, which normally is interested on having fixed (thus controllable) entities to handle and market with. This makes performance artists, liminal artists, always coming back and forth, in and out of the circle of recognition (and financing). However, being a temporary insider grants the benefit of being able to withdraw from sight and reinvent one's self (and freedoms).
• The game (for it is a game, however serious it might be) demands affirmation of the place were we stand ('being here'). It asks for a 'humane relationship'with things and a 'humanization of the senses' -in Marx's terms. Using corporeal and emotional intelligence (intuition and exploration) it allows the 'other' to appear from within us. Not a fixed other, but a smart, edgy, bordering and oftenly politically incorrect other that points out injustice, throws questions for others to answer, and opens spaces to be filled with unusual attitudes (thus it reminds us of other possibilities, other freedoms). This in a way makes the 'normal' seem 'exotic', posing a question on what 'normality' is -and its desirability. It tries to scape the rage and vertigo of the market-logic (without much success, unfortunatley). It is political more by nature than by intention. It shows that one must learn to talk-back, but that the finest secret lays in learning how to listen... for the answer (which may be not more than another question or the same question reformulated in a more interesting way) lays within those who normally are ignored: the audience.

III. Criticism: Some things to think about...

Ten questions with many possible answers:

1. What is the difference between reusing and recycling? (just a warmup...)
   
2. What is a border? Who draws the line?
3. Is it possible to open up an 'empty space' or 'de-militarized zone'? (Foucault)
   
4. What is the step between issuing 'irritating questions' and developing witnesses (Etchels)? Is the psychic sedimentation enough?
   
5. Do performance artists dismantle or legitimize authority by antagonizing it?
6. How can we talk about the underdog without fixing them in a representation or trying to speak for them?
   
7. What is the limit? What would be a desirable ethics to deal with risk?
8. How is the 'embodied theory' 'embroided with language-based knowledge' (Taylor)?
9. How can we chacracterize that 'space between acting and being oneself?
10. Is there not a risk of the seemingly 'anti-burgeois' performance-art of becoming utterly burgeois?

Other things to think about and discuss:

• Is there such a thing as a natural body?
• What is tradition? Is it homogeneous?
• Who is 'I'? Where do we find it?
• What could one say of the relationship between 'fictional' and real centers?
  

IV. Relating it to another reading: Eugenio Trías' idea of the 'limit'

'Hadrian's Wall' in northern England                                                           

Regarding the ideas of Gómez Pena's "In defense of performance", establishing a link to the ideas of catalan philosopher Eugenio Trías might prove to be useful. Trías is one of the most known philosophers in the spanish speaking world. Over the last 25 years, he has been refining his own philosophical proposal: a 'philosophy of the limit', that encompasses an onthology, an epistemology, an anthropology and an ethics. All of it circles around the idea of 'limit'. But what does he mean when he talks about 'limit' or limes?:

"Yo apunto la idea de que nuestra condición es fronteriza, de que se ilumina desde esta noción de límite que debemos pensar y entender en un sentido muy particular. A este respecto, siempre evoco y recuerdo lo que los romanos denominaban limes, que no era una línea evanescente, como la del horizonte que circunscribe el ámbito visual, sino un territorio. Cierto que se trataba de una franja oscilante, llena de precariedad, entre lo de acá y lo de allá, entre lo que circunscribía el ámbito imperial romano y lo que constituía lo extraño, lo extranjero, lo bárbaro. Y el habitante de ese limes recibía un nombre específico, que se puede encontrar con tan sólo consultar un diccionario de etimología: limítrofe. Trofé significa "alimentarse" en griego, así que, fíjense qué curioso, limítrofe significará algo así como "el que se alimenta de los frutos que en el propio limes se cultivan". Por tanto, la noción de límite me sirve tanto para circunscribir un territorio como para identificar un personaje que no es sino un intento de teorización y de reflexión sobre ese viejo contencioso de la filosofía moderna acerca de la idea de sujeto. Un contencioso que se ha pensado como concluido, puesto que en la postmodernidad se ha hablado mucho de la defunción del concepto de sujeto, de su desaparición, pero que en mi opinión puede ser perfectamente recreado, resucitado, como sujeto limítrofe, sujeto fronterizo que en cierta manera identifica la característica de lo que somos e ilumina una posible propuesta ética habida cuenta de que la filosofía no es sólo una definición de lo que somos, sino también una proposición respecto a lo que debemos ser pudiendo o a lo que podemos ser debiendo, y ése es el ámbito de una ética."

("I point out the idea that our condition is a border one, which is illuminated from this notion of limit that we must think and understand in a very particular sense. In this respect I always evoke and remember what the romans called limes, which was not an evanescent line, as the one in the horizon that circumscribes the visual realm, but a territory. It is true that it was an oscillating strip, full of precariousness, between what is here and what is there, between what circumscribed the roman imperial realm and what constituted the strange, the foreigner, the barbarious. And the inhabitant of that limes received a specific name, that can be found just by consulting a dictionary of etymologies: limítrofe [in spanish, 'bordering']. Trofé in greek means "to be fed", so -look how intriguing it is-, limítrofe means something like "the one that is fed by the fruits that are cultivated within the limes". Therefore, the notion of limit is useful both to circumscribe a territory and to identify a character [ethos]; that is, not more than an attempt of theorization and reflection on that old dispute of modern philosophy around the idea of the subject. A dispute that has been considered to be finished, given that in postmodernity much has been said about the defunction of the concept of subject, of its disappearance, but which in my opinion could perfectly be recreated -resurrected-, as a bordering subject, a borderline subject that in a way identifies the characteristic of what we are and sheds light on a possible ethical proposal; considering that philosophy is not only a definition of what we are, but also a proposition of 'what we should be as we can' or of 'what we can be as we should', and that is the realm of ethics." -the translation is mine-)
["Los Retos de la Filosofía". A presentation by Eugenio Trías. Bilbao: May 6th, 2002. http://servicios.elcorreodigital.com/auladecultura/trias2.html accessed on September 5th, 2009.]

Trías finds that humans occupy a very special place 'inbetween'. He/she moves between an animal and a divine condition, between the physical and the spiritual, between cultura and natura, between the body and the world; human beings are also both rational and irrational (emotional), the battle field where a constant fight takes place between apolinian and dyonisian forces to put it in nietzschean terms. "That is why man can be considered an inhabitant of the border, not belonging here or there, neither animal nor god, but bordering or with the quality of a centaurus. (...) Thus, the limit, found between the nature and the world, constitutes our own condition. A condition always refering to a middle term between two indetermined ends." ("Habitar el límite. Un acercamiento a la ética de Eugenio Trías." Revista Digital Universitaria, Vol.6, No. 41. http://www.revista.unam.mx/vol.6/num4/res/intres.htm accessed on September 5th, 2009)
Limes in this sense is the place where the ethical experience is made possible. Human beings are presented with a set of given circumstances, framed by a given (though border and fluid) condition. He/she is challenged by a situation which demands some kind of response. That is the space to be dealt with the 'practical [ethical] reason':

"en virtud de la libertad y responsabilidad que posee el hombre de responder a dicha propuesta según su acción o praxis de forma afirmativa o negativa; es decir, mediante su acción se argumenta el ajuste a su condición fronteriza o el desajuste a esa proposición. Así, el hombre tiene en el límite el signo de su identidad, pero en razón de su libertad dispone de la posibilidad de decidir por su propia condición o de contradecirla optando por el comportamiento inhumano e incurriendo en desmesura o hybris."

("under the freedom and responsibility that man has to respond to such proposal through his/her action or praxis in an affirmative or negative way; that is, through his/her action an adjustment or maladjustment to his/her border condition is shown. In that way, man has in the limit the sign of his/her identity, but because of his/her freedom he/she has the chance to decide for his own condition or against it -opting then for an inhumane behaviour and incurring in excess or hybris." -the translation is mine-) (Ibid)

In simpler words, he can either embrace his/her condition trying to make the most of it -accepting his 'existence'-, or he can try to fix himself to a certain idea or concept of 'self' (identity) as opposed to 'other' -which means trying to conform to an 'essence'. Such kind ob behavior, however, could be held responsible for many of the 'neurosis' and conflicts inherent to modern men/women. Accepting one's own existence, means -for a start- accepting our bodily presence (and its inevitbale relation to a specific context) as a point of departure to any journey (existential journey, that is) we might undertake. This of course is done not merely through thought, or adherence to a certain discourse ('performativity'); there has to be also an involvement of the praxis ('performatic', non-linguistic, as described by Taylor's reading).

Going back to Gómez Pena's works and writings, what can we find if it is contrasted to Trías idea of the 'limit'? Is it worth mentioning?

I. Background: A.What is Chicano?

The chicano culture is a border phenomenon. To fully understand it, one has to seriously look at the extension (3326km: 6 times the distance between Amsterdam and Paris; 200 km more than the distance between Lisbon and Copenhaghen), history and complexity of the border between México and the United States. Trying to be brief one could say that a Chicano is a politicized mexican-american. In other words, those daughters and sons of mexicans born in the United States and getting involved in a fight for political rights and power positions.



Normally, they claim their origins to be in a mythical land called "Aztlán", from where the aztecs were supposedly original. Their nationalist discourse also has strong tones of anti-colonialism, drawing strong attention to the text of the "Guadalupe-Hidalgo Treaty" (1848), which not only ended the 1847-8 Mexican-American War (along with the controversies of the 1836 Mexican-American War over Texas), but stripped México half of it's territory while claiming to protect the mexicans now to live under the U.S. flag full citizenship. In fact, the mexican settlers where dispossesed from their lands and treated as second rate citizens.

 

The Chicano Movement as such only started its full flight during the late sixties and early seventies. Self-determination was part of the spirit of change prevalent during those days. Though the movement was based on a national ideology pictured in Alurista's "Plan Espiritual de Aztlán" and Rodolfo 'Corky' González's I am Joaquín it always sought more social and political inclusion along with the full recognition of civil rights for the chicano community, rather than secession. The nationalist discourse was probably more of a tool to preserve the unity of the movement than anything else. 



Among the first great names of the chicano movement we can find Reyes López Tijerina, a preacher whom after having a dream decided to study international treaties to bring the lands of northern New México back to their original and legitimate owners (of mexican descent). His discourse radicalized after a while, and in 1967 he along with 20 other men protagonized de "Tierra Amarilla Raid" on the city's town hall. This was one of the first episodes that inspired the movement. Soon others would follow, such as Luis Valdez and his "Teatro Campesino" in support of the strike of the farmworkers against the Gallo Wineyards.
The struggle of the chicano movement keeps going until today, and it faces strong opposition from several conservative groups.




Performing lo chicano
In order to go a bit deeper into the significance of lo chicano as a background to Guillermo Gómez Peña's work and writtings, we will lay hands on Daniel Belgrad's analysis of it. In his article "Performing lo chicano" [MELUS, Vol. 29, No. 2, Elusive Illusions: Art and Reality (Summer, 2004), pp. 249-264 (Storrs, Conneticutt: The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS). http://www.jstor.org/stable/4141828 , accessed on Septemmber 3rd, 2009)], Belgrad charachterizes the chicano as "a more complex phenomenon than either nationalist withdrawal or cultural hybridization. It is, instead, an identity predicated on the dynamic interaction of those two impulses"(268).

Nationalist withdrawal would be a movement towards secession: self-determination taken up to its last consequences. On the other hand, "the discourse of cultural hybridity envisions the collapse of colonialism's structural inequalities into a polyglot global culture, where cultural difference becomes the basis for creative syntheses. Instead of a boundary line where different identities meet and conflict, it imagines a 'border zone' where identities mix and enrich each other"(249). This means that the chicano discourse has been used both as a mark of mixing and as a mark of separation from the dominant culture:

In the current struggle for cultural maintenance and parity within the Chicano community, there are two dominant strategies vying for ascendancy. On the one hand, there is an attempt to fracture mainstream consensus with a defiant 'otherness.' Impertinent representations counter the homogenizing desires, investments, and projections of the dominant culture and express what is manifestly different. On the other hand, there is the recognition of new interconnections and filiations (251).

How does this look in terms of 'cultural performance'? "performances of lo chicano enact a dialectic between accessibility (openness to the dominant culture) and inaccessibility (the assertion of difference), in which accessibility is shown to be necessary, but inaccessibility is finally insisted upon" (262). Gómez Peña, is a good example of such a seemingly contradictory strategy.