Peter (+ all),
so now its clear where your fear of performance comes from (a fear
shared it seemed by Chris E. with all that 'raids on the mind' stuff) -
it takes away 'your own time span' as listener and as a result, you're
swept away on a tidal wave of presence so all-consuming that malicious
indoctrination is what eventually you must call it -
and instead you'd prefer to read poetry 'That like any old
song...intends a satisfying sense of completed movement' - Are these the
same songs btw, that Bailey avoided because of their 'strong and
powerful' nature, felt exactly as a result of their completed nature? -
sure, provoke discussion, but lets not lose all clarity of argument in
the process -
your call for performance that has in-built protective measures I'll
take in its non-hysterical form as 'Does contemporary performance
practice contain a critique of all-consuming presence?'
- yes it does - e.g seeing and hearing cris and sianed reading aloud
their attempts to decipher some scribbles from a page of 'Songs of
Navigation' which I experienced as a way of problematising the notion of
completed texts and their interpretations, and destabilising impostional
presence by performing an improvised collaboration. One that in turn, I
felt, engagingly risked the nonsensical and opened up the performance
itself to a potential call from the audience of 'here, lets have a
look..' - I couldn't smell no gas ovens honest, tho' was that jackboots
cris (or was it sianed) was wearing?
there's loads more obviously, as the very worries you still give voice
to Peter have been central to this kind of work from the start, just as
they have in written work of the last who knows how long -
- and yes, thanks Ric for questioning Peter's immediate jumping on to a
performance focus, so desperate as he is it seems to maintain its
separateness from, and opposition to writing - in my post way back, I
used a performance example but was making no differentiation as to the
forms in which radical generosity could apply - indeed, I could have
said exactly the same it seems to me of e.g. Raworth's (familiar enough
for us all?) radical recoveries of the marginal which are only freshly
perceived because of the defamiliarising techniques of rapid collage,
elision, jack-knife lineation etc that he uses.
--
Rob Holloway
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|