Processes And/Of Performance: Difference, Memory, and Experimentation
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2008 Processes and/of performance: difference, memory, and experimentation Benjamin Daniel Powell Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation Powell, Benjamin Daniel, "Processes and/of performance: difference, memory, and experimentation" (2008). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 1881. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/1881 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. PROCESSES AND/OF PERFORMANCE: DIFFERENCE, MEMORY, AND EXPERIMENTATION A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Communication Studies By Benjamin Daniel Powell B.A., University of Northern Iowa, 2002 M.A., University of Northern Iowa, 2004 August 2008 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I give immense thanks to my dissertation committee who stuck by me through thick and thin to get the document done. Dr. John Protevi, for exposing me to difficult and exciting ideas while always willing to carefully explain them with a drawing. Dr. Michael Bowman, for being a valued mentor and friend. Thanks for letting me blather on about soccer, music, performance, or beer. Dr. Ruth Laurion Bowman, who through her wit, subtlety, smarts, and grace taught me about the type of performance scholar I want to be. And finally Dr. Tracy Stephenson Shaffer, who got me through the good days and bad better than I ever could have hoped for. Thank you so much Tracy. I cherish our collaboration and friendship. My thanks go out to the friends who helped me weather this storm. To Charlie Paulk, as always, my dearest friend. To John Cortright and Ben Lind, who always gave me much needed breaks in other states. To Dave Terry, Justin Trudeau, and Roger Pippin, my boys in Baton Rouge. To Rebecca Walker, Jen Alford, John Lebret, and Holley Vaughn, for arguing and loving no matter what. To Sarah Jackson, the best roomie ever. To Danielle, Lisa, Gretchen, and Mel, for showing me so much love and attitude. Thank you all so much. I thank my family for supporting me in ways I can never repay. This dissertation is probably as much for you as it is for me. For my grandmothers GG and Gammie, you are amazing women whom I cherish. My mother Nancy and Father Steve, I love you both. My brother Sean and sisters Katie and Meghan, you keep me on my toes. To Barb, Blaine, and Abby Waychoff, thanks for everything. And to everyone else in the extended Iowa family, thank you. Finally, I give thanks in my heart and soul to Brianne Waychoff. I could not have done this without you. Thanks for making me better in almost every way. I love you. ii Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ ii LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... iv ABSTRACT .........................................................................................................................v CHAPTER 1 PROCESSES OF NEGOTIATION IN PERFORMANCE PRACTICE AND THEORY .................................................................................1 2 RADICAL DIFFERENCE IN/AND PHILOSOPHY ..........................................28 3 HAUNTING, HISTORY, AND THE HIROSHIMA MAIDENS .......................61 4 THE PERFECT MEDIUM: THE SEEN AND UNSEEN PROCESSES OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND SPIRITUALISM ......................................................103 5 SAMPLING, SEVEN EASY PIECES, AND PERFORMANCE DOCUMENT(ATION)S....................................................................................142 6 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................182 WORKS CITED ..............................................................................................................189 VITA ................................................................................................................................195 iii List of Figures 1. Research photo ..............................................................................................................73 2. Research photo ..............................................................................................................73 3. Research photo ..............................................................................................................73 4. Rehearsal map ...............................................................................................................75 5. Breakdown of rehearsal sites ........................................................................................92 6. Photo of Hiroshima .......................................................................................................93 7. ―Book of Esther‖ movement patterns ...........................................................................94 8. ―This is Your Life‖ sketch of potential images ............................................................95 iv Abstract This study enacts performance analyses by combining experimental and avant-garde performance practices of artists or art movements such as John Cage, Jerzy Grotowski, Dadaism, and Eugenio Barba with the differential philosophies of Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze. By focusing on the ways that performance practice informs understandings of ―the ghost‖ and différance in Derrida‘s theories, and processes of production and experimentation in Deleuze‘s, this study examines performance as a process of negotiating practice and theory that continues to produce rather than disappear. To reinforce the productive capacity of performance, this study looks at three different sites and the processes at work in their development as performance products: the development of the performance The Maidens, the photography exhibit The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult, and Marina Abramović‘s performance art series Seven Easy Pieces. Within each of these sites, the processes of experimentation at work in their creation are highlighted to focus performance practice and theory on the multiple variables at work before, during, and after the ―event‖ of performance. v Chapter 1: Processes of Negotiation in Performance Practice and Theory I am a performance studies scholar interested in both performance practice and theory. For me, creating performance is an important means of engaging and experimenting with the theoretical and philosophical influences that shape my epistemological orientation toward performance. Similarly, different performance theories and philosophies inform and offer various methods by which I create performances. The processes of negotiation that occur for me between performance practice and theory are complex, contested, and challenging. Thus, I am interested in the ways that performers, audience members, theorists, and critics of performance navigate the relationship between how performance is theorized and how it is practiced. Such navigation requires a consideration of numerous variables constantly at work within both performance practice and theory. These variables include, but are not limited to: (1) history and methods of representation, (2) processes of production over time, (3) the function of identity and difference within contemporary philosophy and performance theory, (4) a critical orientation to subject/object distinctions within performance studies discourse, and (5) the process(es) of negotiation between practiced performance and critical response. In this study, I explore these variables by enacting a negotiation between my own performance practice and theorizing. Put another way, this dissertation explores the tension between performance practice and theory by examining the relationship as a process of production. Rather than understanding performance as an object that disappears, as Peggy Phelan advocates in her book Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, I focus on how creating and theorizing performance continually produce systems, sites, and modes of critical inquiry. Rather than writing toward disappearance, as Phelan advocates, I write toward production, utilizing and extending upon the theoretical discourses offered by contemporary performance scholars and practitioners. Simply put, this 1 project focuses on how theories of difference, experimentation, and process support and (re)iterate performance theory and practice as a chain of constant productions via navigation. Two main theorists inform my analysis of the relationship between performance practice and theory. Jacques Derrida‘s and Gilles Deleuze‘s writings about difference as a productive force for understanding and articulating experience demonstrates a relationship between the theorizing of experiencing life and the actual living of life itself. By applying these theories to performance specifically this study demonstrates and resituates select complexities at work in the relationship(s) between performance