On sharing the unnoticed

To start off with a question:

“What difference does it make to our understanding of these images in relation to the concept of performance documentation that one documents a performance that “really” happened while the other does not?” (The Performativity of Performance Documentation. 2006, Philip Auslander)

Here Philip Auslander is referring to a picture of Yves Klein, where we see him jumping out of a window. Was this the actual moment? How come there was a photographer ready to take a snap-shot at this very moment? I found this on the website of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:(https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/266750)

“In October 1960, Klein hired the photographers Harry Shunk and Jean Kender to make a series of pictures re-creating a jump from a second-floor window that the artist claimed to have executed earlier in the year. This second leap was made from a rooftop in the Paris suburb of Fontenay-aux-Roses. On the street below, a group of the artist’s friends held a tarpaulin to catch him as he fell. Two negatives–one showing Klein leaping, the other the surrounding scene (without the tarp) –were then printed together to create a seamless “documentary” photograph. To complete the illusion that he was capable of flight, Klein distributed a fake broadsheet at Parisian newsstands commemorating the event. It was in this mass-produced form that the artist’s seminal gesture was communicated to the public and also notably to the Vienna Actionists” (Leap into the void. 1960, Klein).

In this whole set-up, I read an augmented layer of performing. The performing of or for the documentation of the event. This makes me think of my own 1-2-1 encounters. It is, as if you build a ‘set’ for a film to be shot. The actual ‘performing’ of the scene, the so called ‘take’, is meant to be captured on camera and afterwards finds it autonomous placement in an edit of the ‘final’ work, which will be the film as an autonomous artwork. In my case, the ‘take’ is the final work. As if playing the scene for a film would be the real thing. Which is the real thing. Only it is not meant to be witnessed or spectated by an audience. Only the present crew is there. If there would be a mistake in the recording or the ‘tapes’ would be lost, the memory of that take would be the only remnant left. So, if I would bring this a step further, and reverse the whole situation: The ‘take’ is the actual performance. In my case, not witnessed on purpose by some passers-by, but possibly noticed because of the unusual setting and action that took place in public. It was filmed on that moment, from very close-by with a somewhat hidden camera, because I knew in advance that I would need the documentation of at least one of these encounters. What then, is the status of this documentation? Or a better question would be: is this registration, filmed from the table-top where we were sitting, zoomed in on our hands and a pencil on paper, a true record of the moment? From what perspective? From mine, as the instigator of this performance? From the point of view of my participant? Or from the camera’s point of view? The latter as a very close outside eye, in fact it was my own smartphone at the table as a third participant which filmed the whole meeting. And what about the sound? It was not only the visual aspect that demanded attention, the conversation that was held perhaps played an even more prominent role. The audio-recording in itself performs an imaginative role. It might be related to one of those moments I encounter in the public space.  An intimate conversation conducted by telephone somewhere on the street or in the tram. Sometimes the most intimate details are shared, as if the outside world around it does not exist. Or, as if the ‘public’ in this space has no ears. In Intimate Encounters: Screendance and Surveillance(2017), John White argues that in this case specifically talking through the lens of screendance, how the use of camera’s in this discipline and the available techniques for the editing of the material becomes a manner to “bring viewers into a more intimate spectator relationship than is possible when viewing live performance and that these techniques simultaneously position viewers as voyeurs”. In this case referring to dance, when viewed from a public stand onto a stage, the spectator will never be able to be as close to ‘the dancers’ skin’ as a camera can be. He compares the possibility of this very camera to create a space for intimacy for this viewer, to the “surveillance-style footage” in a sense allowing the viewer to get a more intimate glance and henceforth convey “intimate information about the dance(rs) through images that appeal to the viewers’ imaginations.” Talking about a “sense of proximity” between the performer and the spectator which is facilitated by the camera (p. 29). In my case this could also count for a voice-recorder. The soundscape captured close by, as if the auditor/hearer is sitting on the ‘lap’ of the performer, equally presenting a ‘surveillance-style footage’, like eaves-dropping on this intimate moment.

“If I will have a 1-2-1 performative meeting, and this meeting is leaning on an intimacy, between me and my guest, interrogating this very guest on their moves inside their private space, it cannot be a simple applying of a blunt technological capturing of the setting. On the contrary. Every visible attempt of me, being a reporter of this encounter, will disturb the very intimacy of this encounter and will influence this testimony and its capturing” (5-and-two-half Letters to Technology, Letter #1, 2020 a page on this website)

(Take this into consideration when hearing/seeing the work. Was it different from an encounter without any visible technical interference involved. This is a problematic issue I encountered and I cannot and will not answer this question right now. Why? Because!)

Is there a true-ness involved or do both the original performed event and the documentation have its own true-ness(or false-ness)?

How to understand a performed work that happened, in the past, and it happened also just for one other person, the participant-spectator even a potential co-performer. I can state that this happened, and I can ask my participant to confirm this statement. Do I have proof if this? Yes, I have. The proof in question is the documentation of the event. Then the following question arises. Can you show it? And if so, how to show it. Does it need rules or a prescription? Can it be viewed without any context? Will it then be an autonomous thing in itself, macerated from its original intention?

What will I show? What part of this 1-2-1 performative encounter needs to be exposed in order to transmit this passed event? From what perspective? Will it be the perspective of a third eye? Like a witness of this encounter, which took place in a third place.[1] What the camera registered on that moment from close-by. (Which actually did happen) What intention will a viewer pick up from this?

Footnote [1] In Common Ground? Reading and Reflections on Public Space (Anthony M. Orum and  Zachary P. Neal, 2010) one chapter narrates on The Character of Third Places by Ray Oldenburg where he explores the importance of “third places” , referring to other places besides our own home and work-related place. “He believes that places like bars and taverns, even coffee houses, furnish a space where people can meet and converse, and thus expand their social and political horizons. Such public spaces, he insists, can be inclusive and work mainly through the social conversations in which people engage” (p. vi).

Playing with Form whilst searching for the Poetics

To Per-form into a Form-at of Documentation

To Trans-form a Per-form-ance into a Form-at

To Form-ulate what can be and will be the End-form-ula

“The question of activity of form should be placed at the very heart of poetics. Ovid’s Metamorphoseon appears as a turning point not only in relation to the question of metamorphosis but to the very reflection on form, to the poetics or poetology of form, precisely because it exemplifies the impossibility of approaching form without a concept of transformation, that is, of the activity of form. Form cannot be thought without its limit, and therefore without trans- formation. It could reach its limit through its activity only; building upon the etymological potential of the Latin word, we could call this activity per‐formance. Hence, it is impossible to think the activity of form — per‐formance — without a conception of trans‐formation.In this way we could reach a possibility for an enlargement of the notion of performance and transformation as central components of a new poetic or poetological conception of form, of a new philosophy of form. Poetics is impossible without the question of form; the question of form is impossible without the question of modality of form; the question of modality — without the question of activity of form and therefore of per‐formance of form” (The New Arachne. Towards a Poetics of Dynamic Forms. 2015, Boyan Manchev).

This refers to the core aspect of the related work to be documented. Its poetic aspect. Even if the registration is a dry output of what happened then and there, it would be nice if it reveals a bit of its poetry as well. Or how do I consider this to come along whilst viewing the work?

And this:

“However different people around the world are, they all have a body with a number of recurring elements. They stand up straight and are oriented towards the front, because their eyes are located on that side, which also means there are such things as left, right, front and back. Each artwork relates to this, and each culture develops various ‘formats’, which are, as it were, the starting position of how the body of the person who interacts with the artwork perceives it. A starting point could be, for example, the painting, or a mask, or a stone statue. It seems pretty basic, but a complete culture – both spiritual and material – is encompassed in a format” (Steven Ten Thije, frank mandersloot, 2019. Marken-Eindhoven 2011-2019, The Author of the Paint Stripe, correspondence. Eindhoven: Van Abbemuseum.).

And this:

“Poetics, both, in the realm of written language and in the realm of performativity, is a form of encounter, of knowing, a form that –different from the statism of grammar– reveals and evokes possibilities. Instead of responding to the question of what a thing is, poetic language focuses on the workings of its structure. The poiesis, creative aspect of poetics, marks the way in which form can be identified, utilized and understood. (…)So I wonder in this poetic encounter what else could speak here besides us?” (https://fernandagonzalezmorales.com/reflective-writing 2020. Accessed on 22 April 2020)

A good question Fer. What else could speak and with what kind of tongue? If the poieses marks the way of identifying, understanding and utilising the form, it should get some space to drift off I presume. I will exercise some very pragmatic forms of framing the work to see where it will hit the ‘poiesis’ somewhere and somehow.