By the script
A summary: Kountouriotis, P. (2012) Notes on the necessity of the explicit body in performance. In: Performance Festival. State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki
The body can be shaped and it has been shaped through training techniques to become a productive machine. How?
A young child sees an action and repeats it. We do this throughout our life. According to Erving Goffman and Richard Schechner the body is a stage where the structural script of a certain society is rehearsed and performed over and over again. All elements of identity are rehearsed, they are performative acts. What is normal for a society is a norm written in the script.
Performance art employs the “shaped” body and consciously uses performative acts to expose the script and transgress it. It is a heightened experience for body and senses, where the spectator is turned into a witness and can create his/her own meaning. This is “a way for someone to reappropriate one’s own body”.
performance practices_divergent temporalities 