“Love letters”
For the group project “Love letters”* that we (Antrianna, Jessica and I) developed during the week of Environments of Expanded Acting the idea of “guilty landscape” served as our starting point. We employed repetition for four days in our classroom to create memories within the small community of students that attended the module. Our aim was to investigate what happens, on the fifth day, if we absent the actors of these repetitions from the space and the community.
The concept of “guilty landscape” was initially used by Dutch artist and writer Armando to formulate “the kind of guilt that attaches to a landscape […] that has witnessed terrible events in the past” (Spaul and Wilbert, 2017, 85). The present serenity and beauty of nature’s landscape stands in strong contrast with the cruelty (e.g. war crimes, murder) enacted there in the past. Its guilt arises from the fact that there are none or little traces of the atrocities that occurred there. In this sense, the place hides the crimes of the past. Yet, according to Stijn Reijnders, a “guilty landscape” functions as such “only if there are other sites of cultural memory in which the dark past of the landscape has been preserved” (Spaul and Wilbert, 2017, 87), such as literature, oral tradition or journalism. He, further, points out that the power of this term is that “it assigns an active role to the landscape” (Reijnders, 2009, 175). The actors of cruelty are not present anymore, yet the space is considered to actively bear the memory and the aftermath of an event. I see, here, a connection to Heiner Goebbels’ view on the “theatre of absence”, according to which “a theatrical space emptied of actors can be seen, in fact, to be inhabited by a realm of other ‘matters'” (Manuel, 2017, 27). The absenting of professional actors creates a theatrical space that actively invites other things to perform, such as memories, objects and spectators.
For “Love letters” we wanted to create our own “guilty landscape” inside the classroom where the module took place. Every day during class, we repeated specific actions: moving the bench, cleaning the wall, rehearsing lyrics and choreography for a popular song. The guilt, in this case, refers to secrecy and deception. We didn’t inform our peers about our project and its aims. Instead, we observed if and when they would notice the repetitions and how they would interpret them. We, also, lead them to believe that we rehearse a pop song in order to perform it on the fifth day, although we had no such intention. We, rather, were interested in seeing how the repetition of an action in a space can create a memory within a group of people and how we could afterwards trigger this memory without being present.
There was, also, one action that we repeated after class, when our fellow students had left the room. We individually whispered into a corner our deepest secrets and darkest thoughts, things that we felt guilty about. Would our thoughts accumulate with time and inhabit that corner of the classroom? Could we create a virtual place of guilt? Would our peers notice a change? I understand that this idea might boarder on paraphysical speculation, which is not in accordance with Western scientific thought. However, this was a concrete question for us: can a space hold the memory of an event. While we were preparing the project, we discussed several experiences of that type. For example, when I walk in Athens city center late at night, at a time of slow traffic, I believe to sense the resonance of rhythms and streams of time created by people, objects and actions during the busy hours of the day. There is a big contrast between the calmness of the night and the fast and loud traffic of the day. Of course, I have an experience and memory of the rush-hours in the city center, and that makes it possible to perceive the contrast. I wonder, however, how the invisible streams of time created by people, actions and objects affect the city landscape and what kind of traces (visible or non-visible) they leave behind.
On the fifth day of the module, we presented our project. The score took the form of written instructions for the spectators. Namely, we had prepared love letters addressed to the individual students. They were free to choose if they would read them aloud or not. In some cases, though, we specifically instructed them to share the letter with the whole group. We chose that genre because it amplifies the absence of the writer and the distance (spatial and temporal) between the sender and the receiver. Love letters are a form of communication that maintains a relationship while the lovers are apart. After conducting a small internet research, we found that they often contain retelling of instances shared by the lovers. In this sense, they serve as tools to trigger memories and keep them virtually alive.
We welcomed our peers and teacher into the classroom and informed them that we will be away for a while. We left the room and closed the door. We, then, slipped the first letter under the door and waited for them to notice. Sometimes, the supposed writers of the letters were objects. These were clear cases of anthropomorphism. The bench, for example, was expressing its feelings to a student, namely Anushka, by retelling the instance of their first encounter, when she and Antrianna moved the bench during class. The object asked Anushka to move it once more during the presentation. In this way, the memory of the past event was triggered, and the action was re-enacted in our absence by the spectators. Thus, spectators and objects became the actors of the performance.
Considering the idea that humans are “topophilic”, which means that “they are intrinsically bound to specific landscapes” (The Landscapes of Sherlock Holmes, 1985, summarized in Reijnders, 2009, 172), the classroom landscape enables memory and re-enactment on two levels. Firstly, the event is recalled through the reading of the letter and allocated to the specific spot where it occurred in the past. Reminiscence, therefore, is not a vague image of the mind. Instead, the audience’s memory and imagination have tangible materials to work with. Secondly, the classroom void of us three (who prepared the project) offers space for the spectators to bring in their perceptions of the events and re-enact them in their own way.
We didn’t use any technological medium (e.g. video call) that would enable us to observe the ongoing performance. We thought that a video call would turn the participants into guinea pigs. So, we decided against it. We were standing in the corridor in front of the classroom and we had no idea how the spectators respond to the letters. We, also, didn’t know how much time they would take for reading and re-enacting. We let some minutes pass, considering the length of each text and the instructions in it, and, then, slipped the next letter under the door. We assumed that, when the participants complete one action, they would take the next letter from under the door. In this way, the audience built up their own rhythm of the performance. By waiting outside the classroom and not observing the participants, we gave up control over the unfolding of the performance and over time.
Prototype: an egg on my balcony next to the traffic lights
My research centers on the relation between my perception of time and normative perception of time in public space and looks into ways of creating alternate temporalities in a performance. I have been, currently, investigating Derrida’s idea of hospitality as a way to create alternate temporalities. Derrida perceives hospitality as “the absolute welcome of the other” (Gere and Corris, 2008, 16). For the host this presupposes “giving up mastery over the space” and “awaiting absolute surprise” (ibid.). In terms of time, this means giving up control over time (clocks and schedules are a human way to measure and control time) and not knowing when an event is going to happen. Reflecting on “Love letters”, I understand that the absenting of the actor creates a space for the emergence of the temporalities of the spectators. Of course, the audience’s perception of time is conditioned by normative temporality. Thus, I am wondering how I can create a space that diminishes elements of normative time and allows spectators to discover their own temporalities.
As shown above, in “Love letters” we mainly used the strategy of “autonomous participatory performance” (Manuel, 2017, 49). We embedded written instructions for the participants in the text of the letters asking them (individually or as a group) to carry out specific actions during the performance. Thus, we created an automated theatre piece that can run without professional actors. This automation can be viewed as giving up control from the part of the actors whilst the audience participates and experiences the performance autonomously. However, the preparation of the score by the artist involves decision-making, which implies mastery, and conditions the participation and experience of the spectators. The relation between automatism and autonomy, mastery and giving up control is a substantial point to consider when working on a score for such a performance.
In “Theatre Without Actors”, “autonomous participatory performances” are viewed through the perspective of Giorgio Agamben’s ideas on apparatus: “such apparatuses influence the agency of actors as well as all of those who act, including human spectators as well as non-human actants. In the controlled environment of a theatre piece, subjects tend to modify accordingly” (Manuel, 2017, 57). Considering that for Agamben apparatus is “literally anything that has in some way the capacity to capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control or secure the gestures, behaviours, opinions or discourses of living beings” (What is an Apparatus, 2009, cited in Manuel, 2017, 57), I approached in my prototype** the score as well as the objects as apparatuses. The absenting of the actor is, here, brought forth through video recordings of objects and city landscapes. Traffic lights, an alarm clock and a kitchen-timer appear in the video as apparatuses that shape human perception of time in everyday life. Namely, they enact normative time: a rectilinear, homogenous, measurable temporality that is conditioned by constant progressive movement and productivity (Agamben, 1993; Arlander, 2012; Ridout, 2013; Jakovljević, 2014). I, then, investigated if I can create another apparatus, namely a score for an “autonomous participatory performance”, where the same objects can be used to make alternate temporalities appear. My exploration in the prototype was, also, influenced by Bergson’s ideas expressed in “Time and Free Will”. He refutes that time is homogenous and quantitative and proposes, instead, a perception of time that is heterogeneous and qualitative (Bergson, 1950).
Please, click below to start the prototype.
-> to the prototype: an egg on my balcony next to the traffic lights
Reference list
Agamben, G. (1993) Infancy and history: the destruction of experience. London: Verso.
Arlander, A. (2012) Performing Landscape: Notes on site-specific work and artistic research (Texts 2001-2011). Helsinki: Theatre Academy Helsinki.
Bergson, H. (1950) Time and free will: an essay on the immediate data of consciousness, 6th edition. Translated by F. L. Pogson. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Gere, C. and Corris, M. (2008) Non-relational aesthetics. London: Artwords Press. Available from http://trouble.productions/OccuLibrary/Texts-Online/Corris_&_Gere-Non-Relational_Aesthetics.pdf [accessed 21 February 2020].
Jakovljević B. (2014) Now Then – Performance and Temporality: Not once, not twice…. Performance Research, 19(2) 1-8.
Manuel, P. (2017) Theatre without actors: rehearsing new modes of co-presence. Enschede: Gildeprint.
Reijnders, S. (2009) Watching the detectives: inside the guilty landscapes of Inspector Morse, Baantjer and Wallander. European Journal of Communication, 24(2) 165–181.
Ridout, N. (2013) Passionate amateurs: theatre, communism, and love. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
Spaul, M. and Wilbert, C. (2017) Guilty landscapes and the selective reconstruction of the past: Dedham Vale and the murder in the Red Barn. In: G. Hooper and J. J. Lennon (eds.) Dark Tourism: practice and interpretation. Abingdon: Routledge, 83-95.
Notes
*During the module Environments of Expanded Acting that took place in the framework of ArtEZ Master of Theatre Practices 2019/2020, Antrianna Moutoula, Foivi Psevdou and Jessica Renfro created and presented a group project, provisionally named here “Love letters”, under the guidance of module leader Dr. Pedro Manuel.
**The reflective text and the prototype disseminated through this blog page are part of the assessment for the module Environments of Expanded Acting.
performance practices_divergent temporalities 