Even when you are on a list it seems to be difficult to break into the
clic.....Just to record that I've only ever had 2 people reply to or pick up
on any comments made. Maybe text isn't my thing....perhaps only presence
does the trick. This is my last attempt!

Sarah

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sarah de Nordwall [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 09 September 1999 12:11
> To: [log in to unmask]; british-poets
> Subject: RE: Performance and Pop ups
>
> "I've been writing on this subject
> and for those interested append some stuff below. For those not
> interested,
> press your delete button now."
>
> I'm extremely interested in this debate about performance, as I agree that
> it touches upon a craft entirely different to that of the poet's whose
> efforts are devoted mainly to the medium of the page.
>
> To say that poetry and performance poetry are interchangeable is a bit
> like
> comparing reading a newspaper to attending a political debate.
>
> Performance itself requires life-long devotion to develop. As a
> performance
> poet, I spend several nights a week rehearsing alone, some days rehearsing
> with others (with whom I craft performances) and entirely separate times
> writing. Different poems emerge from the rehearsal process which are
> sometimes dramatic in form and sometimes not.
>
> Stanislavski's "My life in Art" is a beautiful exposition of the
> dedication
> and purity of heart required of the actor in the studio - which he
> describes
> in reverential terms. Terms which the rehearsal process entirely
> deserves,
> I feel.
>
> To represent a poem in a performance is to re-present it, to make it
> present
> again. This evocation of personal presence is both a spiritual and a
> skilled act. It involves both interpretation and personal involvement -
> as
> Simon Callow says " a fusion of the actor and the acted".
>
> This does not necessarily imply that a simple hearted and honest reading
> cannot (with enough skill to be audible) count as a performance. Of
> course
> it can. Half the skill of a performer is to learn to "get out of the way"
> and let the spirit of the piece emerge. However, as Melvyn Bragg said so
> agreably once "It's not simple to be simple". Gods blessings upon those
> who
> can be simple without craft and even more blessings on those who strive
> for
> the art to incarnate with beauty something they or another has written.
>
> But no blessings at all on those who consign performance poetry to the
> niche of trendy spectator sport and no blessings either on those who
> discount performance as a merely optional adjunct of pagecraft.
>
> Performance poets are not Popup Poets ....... except that this
> description
> already sounds dangerously attractive to a culture besotted with kitch!
> There must be a form somewhere with which I could apply for a grant to
> become an installation!
>
> Oh where are you now, ancient school of bards? I was born in the wrong
> millennium!!
>
> Much love
>
> Sarah de Nordwall
> Cabaret Poet!!!
> > Original Message-----
> > From: [log in to unmask] [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> > Sent: 07 September 1999 22:22
> > To: british-poets
> > Subject: RE: Performance(c)
> >
> > To swerve:
> >
> > I completely agree with both Billy in that not all poets write for their
> > work to be 'sounded'. The idea that all poetry, indeed all writing, is
> > benfitted by or intended for reading out loud is as much of a tyrrany as
> > we
> > might concoct. An 'oral' interpretation *might* or *might not* be
> > interesting.
> >
> > Precisions in respect of oral interpretation provide constraints that
> can
> > be extremely interesting (I'm thinking of the instructions for
> performance
> > given by Jackson MacLow for one example and of his telling me years ago
> > with a twinkle in his eye that the welter of instructions for performing
> > The Marrying Maiden encouraged indeterminacy through overdetermination).
> > And there's no need for a spatialised text to be sounded by one voice in
> a
> > linearity at all - what of the polyphonic fields of sound?
> >
> > Alison raises the fraught issue of losing useful points of
> differentiation
> > as far performance being a menaingful term is concerned. I share that
> wish
> > to retain its pertinence - its alertness. I've been writing on this
> > subject
> > and for those interested append some stuff below. For those not
> > interested,
> > press your delete button now.
> >
> > love and love
> > cris
> >
> > ____________________________________________
> >
> > 'Performance', in particular within the emergent
> field
> > of 'performance studies', remains a contested term. [A contested term,
> > according to W.B. Gallie's 'Philosophy and the Historical Understanding'
> > (1964), involves:
> >
> > 'Recognition of a given concept as essentially contested implies
> > recognition of rival uses of it (such as oneself repudiates) as not only
> > logically possible and humanly 'likely', but as of permanent potential
> > critical value to one's own use or interpretation of the concept in
> > question.' [pp187-88)]
> >
> > I find Richard Bauman's suggestion [in the International Encyclopedia of
> > Communications (Oxford University Press, 1989 ed. Ed Barnouw) (cited by
> > Marvin Carlson in his 'Performance: a critical introduction' (Routledge,
> > 1996 pp 5)] useful, that:
> >
> > 'All performance involves a consciousness of doubleness, through which
> the
> > actual execution of an action is placed in mental comparison with a
> > potential, an ideal, or a remembered original model of that action . . .
> > the double consciousness, not the external observation, is what is most
> > central . . . Performance is always performance for someone, some
> audience
> > that recognizes and validates it as performance even when, as is
> > occasionally the case, that audience is the self.'
> >
> > Erving Goffman defines the emergence of performance
> as
> > a process which 'transforms an individual into a stage performer, the
> > latter, in turn, being an object that can be looked at in the round and
> at
> > length without offense, and looked to for engaging behaviour, by persons
> > in
> > an "audience" role'. (p124 Frame Analysis). I find the pejorative use of
> > being 'looked to for engaging behaviour' more revealing of a sense of
> > 'value' that reeks of rewarding work and of time 'well' spent. But
> > Goffman's moment of individual transformation connects powerfully with
> > Bauman's 'consciousness of doubleness' to form a re-orientation of
> > performance, that brings it firmly into everyday life. Of course that's
> > not
> > exactly new either. Since the 1960s, in particular, movements in
> > 'performance art' have explored both the politics and the poetics of the
> > everyday. There has been a vigorous debate, conducted through practice,
> of
> > performance as process and performance as product.[* through what has
> > often
> > been referred to as non-matrixed or 'task-based' performance] One result
> > is
> > to particularise differing kinds of performance along Goffman's scale of
> > 'purity' (see below), and let each be both discreet and be connected.
> > Process and product thus become moments of articulation, as already
> > suggested in the examples of photocopying and vocal utterance.
> Insistence
> > as word by word, phrase by phrase, note by note, frame by frame -
> > particularisable moment by particularisable moment.
> >
> > Again, this is not a smokescreen to obscure the
> > differences between 'performances'. On the contrary it begins to allow
> us
> > to read the differences, by revealing their specificities. Once the idea
> > of
> > 'performances' plural, at differing points of engagement within
> processes
> > relating to production and processes relating to consumption of product
> -
> > a detailed dynamic range of arrivals and departures between process and
> > product, which can encourage one to unravel into the other and vice
> versa
> > - forms a basis for discussion, it is clear that old hierachies of
> > understanding that priveledge the 'live' virtuoso display are
> necessarily
> > challenged.
> >
> > Goffman goes on to distinguish between performances
> on
> > the basis of what he terms their 'purity', meaning 'according to the
> > exclusiveness of the claim of the watchers on the activity they watch'.
> > (p125) At the formal end of his purity range he places performances for
> > which if there is no audience there is no performance (both within
> 'arts'
> > and 'sports' contexts). At the other end he places "work performances",
> in
> > which 'viewers openly watch persons at work who openly show no regard or
> > concern for the dramatic elements of their labor.' (p126) But it's also
> > possible within such a scheme, to understand product as becoming process
> > through the interpretative transformation, by a performer, of an
> existing
> > composition, at the 'formal' end of Goffman's scale; and by the reverse
> to
> > align process as being product through interpretive transformation of
> the
> > 'witness' at the 'informal' end; vide people stopping on the street to
> > watch others who have gathered around a hole that has opened up in the
> > ground, and treating those they are watching as "performers", thus
> turning
> > an informal occurrence into a composition.
> >
> > *
> >
> > Whilst Goffman wrote such differences up in the
> 1950s
> > and 1960s, contemporary Performance Studies has foregrounded other
> > distinctions. The notion of the 'live' has become increasingly
> > problematicised. This occurs under another version of the totem of
> > 'authenticity', that of ontological integrity. The 'aura' of 'liveness',
> > depicted as virtuous, is placed in opposition to the evil of
> > mediatization.
> > In noting this Philip Auslander argues for a relation of mutual
> dependence
> > and imbrication. For him:
> >
> > 'The live is, in a sense, only a secondary effect of mediating
> > technologies. Prior to the advent of those technologies (e.g.
> photography,
> > telegraphy, phonography) there was no such thing as the "live", for that
> > category has meaning only in relation to an opposing possibility.
> Ancient
> > Greek theater, for example, was not live because there was no
> possibility
> > of recording it . . . the "live" has always been defined as that which
> can
> > be recorded.' (perfr * cult stud p 198)
> >
> > Auslander is careful to make a distinction between 'live'
> representation,
> > such as the voices in Greek theater amplified by architectural means,
> and
> > 'live' repetition, that which is reproduced through 'indirect
> testimony'.
> > His concern is with technological reproduction more than with
> > technological
> > mediation. But he opens an important line of argument that:
> >
> > 'nonmatrixed representation provided a beachhead for mediatization
> within
> > artistic practices that resisted mediatization'. (p201)
> >
> > Using Clint Eastwood's squint, filmed in close-up, as an example of
> > nonmatrixed representation, he alerts us to another change in perceptual
> > practices. Namely, that audiences have become used to looking for
> details
> > that might previously have passed unnoticed and reading them as
> > significant. The importance of this lies in what details an audience
> might
> > then concentrate on, in the context of a 'live' non-mediatized
> > performance.
> > Also the extent to which such details either are or are not the express
> > intention of the performers. That is, audiences might see things that
> the
> > performers are not foregrounding in their performance and bring such
> > details to their reading of the performance.
> >
> >
> > *
> >
> > Writing within a context of contemporary poetics,
> > Charles Bernstein points to Goffman's concept of the 'disattend track'
> as
> > of key significance.
> >
> > [* goffman p 202: 'A significant feature of any strip of activity is the
> > capacity of its participants to "disattend" competing events - both in
> > fact
> > and in appearance']
> >
> > He suggests that 'focussing attention on a poem's content or form
> > typically
> > involves putting the audiotext as well as the typography, the look and
> > sound of the poem, into the disattend track'. ('Close Listening: Poetry
> > and
> > the Performed Word' p3 Oxford, May 1998 my emphasis). 'Focus' is an
> > omnipresent term in the visually obsessed late twentieth century. It is
> > one
> > of those words which crosses boundaries between arts and sports and
> > sciences, between traditional approaches and those which interrogate
> > traditions. Lying in wait, behind the urge to 'focus', is the
> apprehension
> > that too much distraction, and distraction is itself culturally and
> > historically specific, can lead to a collapse of the performance
> 'frame'.
> >
> > Many contemporary creative writing practitioners are
> > engaged with testing the 'frames' of 'performance'; as by including that
> > which might have been more conveniently edited out, foregrounding
> > extralexical and extrasemantic aspects of 'writing', as well as the
> > incidentals of orality (pauses, tonal inflections to pARTs of words,
> > stutters, tongue clicks, erms and ums, splutters and so forth [* the
> poet
> > critic Andrew Duncan wrote of the ugliness of such expressions. On the
> > contrary they might be read as generosities which render the work more
> > humane]. It is precisely those points on the boundaries, or on the
> frames,
> > at which distraction can be seen to be ideologically formed, and at
> which
> > the frame, constructed for absoption, might be induced to collapse, that
> > such writers are deliberately at work to reveal. There lies their
> > pedagogical intent. Those points at which the 'formal' and 'informal'
> > along
> > Goffman's scale of purity become interchangeable for the purpose of
> > casting
> > a provocative reflection. Those moments during a given performance at
> > which
> > witnesses are unsure as to what is and what is not part of the
> > performance.
> > Or at which their attention to details has become so challenged that
> their
> > experience is of too much happening, that they can no longer encompass
> the
> > breadth of events, they cannot tell what constitutes distraction, their
> > criteria are ruptured and and they are challenged to impose their own
> > limitation of interpretations. At such points are 'tastes' and personal
> > preferences constructed. Matrices are brought back into the play.
> >
> >
> > end
> >


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