>>But later I thought, in forms of art with indeterminate sequences, that
>>anxiety in performer or audience, is worthy of expression, could become an
>>important part of the rhetoric of such practice.
>
>anxiety is almost always an important part of the rhetoric of performance
>
>including 'the reader'
Thanks cris, I realized after sending that gobbet that it might well have
seemed naive and crass to the more 'performance-orientated' amongst us. (I
feel that Fiona's performances, in particular, address these issues as a
matter of course to the extent that I never know what is performance and
what isn't although this isn't exactly the same thing.) Nonetheless, I am
thinking of a non-embarrassing reader-shared subversion of that
'slickness,' that dramatic gloss which is apparently so necessary in a
'major venue' (including the major venues of magazines with magisterial
editorial).
And I am comparing what YL & I experienced to the typical 'poetry reading,'
where, also, although we may be presenting work riddled with anxiety,
indeterminancy and the life/non-life of Schodinger's cat, the text is
treated as at least provisionally 'finished' and performed in a finished
manner.
Or, in the case of aleatory work, the performance is likely to be as much a
performance of *the rule* of chance (or the rule of chaos), and as medium
of the 'rule' you, the performer, may bracket any anxieties you feel about
content-as-it-happens. Those anxeties you hand over to the readers while
showing the face of someone seriously engaged with your form and its
sources.
But the transactional or (only potentially) 'interactive' arts, if they do
become more current, may allow such rules to be (even) more directly
appreciable to both performer and 'reader' and what I was trying to say was
that this might allow the performer - *in performance* - to indulge or
pretend ("hold before themselves") those anxieties which concern overall
content and/or 'critical value' of the aleatory or indeterminate work.
love and (uh? .....) love,
John
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John Cayley / Wellsweep Press http://www.demon.co.uk/eastfield/
1 Grove End House 150 Highgate Road London NW5 1PD UK
Tel & Fax: (+44 171) 267 3525 Email: [log in to unmask]
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