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ENACTING PLAY: PERFORMANCE WITHIN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN
Anthea Julian Dineo Moys
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of Masters of Fine Art.
Johannesburg 2008
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ABSTRACT
In this thesis I explore play as enacted in certain forms of performance art presented in
the public sphere. I take as my premise the notion that play is a primary form of
creativity fundamental to the healthy development of ?the self? and community. I draw on
the theories of Donald Winnicott (1971) and Johan Huizinga (1970) to explore the
historical sources of play theory and connect these to contemporary play concepts
articulated by Pat Kane (2004) et al. I argue for the relevance of play (theory and
enactment) to contemporary performance art, specifically the type that emphasizes the
action of the performance as meaningful over its material documentation. Such
performance questions frameworks of visual art and its objects. International artists,
Tino Sehgal and Gustavo Artigas, epitomize this type of performance and I discuss their
work accordingly. Their practice entails taking up a different subject position to the
conventional role of artist in that they direct their performances rather than enact them;
they orchestrate others in their interventions. Many of their performances seem
pointless and irrational but they use these concepts to address the growing alienation of
the postmodern subject by challenging economic and cultural values of ?the west? that
are antithetical to the values of play. By drawing on the theories of play and exploring
the work of the abovementioned artists in relation to instances of performance art in a
local (South African) context, I aim to open a space for articulating the relevance of play
to a local situation which has, because of its history, arguably not had the chance to
play. I refer to my own artistic practice in this context.
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DECLARATION
I declare that this dissertation/thesis is my own unaided work. It is submitted for the
degree of Masters of Fine Arts in the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. It
has not been submitted before for any other degree or examination in any other
university.
Anthea Moys
Day of , 2008
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This thesis would not have been possible, were it not for the following people: Penny
Siopis, my supervisor, who has been a constant support, inspiration and friend during
the process of writing this thesis. Her unending energetic, open and light spirit has truly
been a strong hold for me during this process. My family, Denise, Michael and Joshua
Moys who have all been a consistent support, I thank them for their patience, time and
space given to me. I extend a special thanks to the National Arts Council, without which I
would not have been able to have my Masters exhibition. I would also like to extend a
special thanks to all the participants (true players) I have worked with on numerous
performances in Johannesburg and abroad during the period 2005- 2008.
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CONTENTS
Page
1 Parts of the thesis
1.1 Title page 1
1.2 Abstract 2
1.3 Declaration 3
1.4 Acknowledgements 4
1.5 Chapters 6
1.6 List of Plates 121
1.7 Bibliography 122
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CHAPTERS
Page
Introduction 7
1. CHAPTER ONE: Selected historical theories of play. 14
2. CHAPTER TWO: Selected contemporary theories of play. 33
3. CHAPTER THREE: Performance: origins and history and the location of
performance within public space. 45
4. CHAPTER FOUR: Artists who play. 65
5. CHAPTER FIVE: Want to Play? 82
6. CHAPTER SIX: Interruptions. 108
Conclusion 118
List of Plates 121
Bibliography 122
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Introduction
Artworks that relate to their immediate context and to their spectators in a more
engaged way than simply commenting on social, cultural or political subjects in
forms of visual metaphors have been key to the development of art created over the
last decade (Hoffmann and Jonas, 2005:170).
Performance art has developed a highly multi-layered language over the years. Through
the use of the body, various modes of expression are mobilised to mediate meaning.
Like any genre of art ? painting, for example ? there are different ways of using the
medium to express ideas. For example, Impressionist painting is considerably different
to Futurist painting; yet both reflect the context and times in which they were made.
Performance art of the 1970s, often associated with feminism, focused on the sexualised
and sometimes brutalised body to portray feminist ideas, is very different to the type of
performance art I will focus on here. This thesis is not a comparison of different types of
performance, however, but a discussion of the enactment of a crucial element of
performance art today: play. Play can be seen as the action of the work. With
performance art of the 1970?s the body of the artist was the main point of reference.
There is actually a branch of performance art labelled ?body art?. This is not to say that
the body is not a key point of reference in this thesis; rather the body acts as a mediator
or entry point into action. The action is the most important part of the work and nothing
before or after this action mediates as much meaning. Play is used as a theme, which is
enacted in specific examples of contemporary performance art and live acts. Play based
or ?action-driven? performance is a move away from the singular, subjective experience
generally understood as performance, into the public domain. This move includes
working with more than one body, which often is not your own, acting as a director,
exchanging roles and revelling in elements of chance and risk. The performance artists
discussed later on in the thesis enact play succinctly within their work.
The main ?crux? of this thesis lies in the element of play as expressed through
contemporary performance art and the beneficial characteristics this feature has for the
post-modern subject today. It explores play so as to highlight a different type of
performance art current today. Play can thus be seen as an entry point for trying to
unpack this type of contemporary performance art. Play is seen as non-sensical, or
lacking in depth or meaning. However, I will show, through this analysis of the element of
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play that it is precisely these seemingly ?non-sensical? or ?useless? characteristics, which
offer an extremely beneficial aspect to the society within which we live today. Through
this type of performance art, where the emphasis lies in the action of the body rather
than in the body itself, a potential space is opened up. This potential space- which is
created through the acceptance of uncertainty and chaos i.e. acceptance of nonsense
and not trying to make sense out of nonsense- is where the play moment begins. What I
mean by this is that if we try to make sense of situations all the time, they lose their
potential for other situations or happenings to develop. If there is one definite answer
then there is no room left for multitudes of answers or possible scenarios. It is this
opening up to possibility rather than sticking to a definite ?yes? or ?no? which creates a
fluid, transitional and potential space for the play moment to begin. The type of
performance art discussed in this thesis highlights exactly this space.
This thesis is an investigation into actions, which open a door to an arguably more
engaged way of not only experiencing contemporary performance art but also to a more
engaged and active way of 'living' today. Artists who have used play as a basis
(consciously or not) for their work or events are discussed here as examples. Capitalist
society today is governed around specific economic production, where objects are made
with a determined use for the object in mind. One of the theories in this thesis has to do
with usefulness and uselessness. Today, everything is made for a use, an end point in
mind, a purpose. But what of actions that do not have a specific use or purpose? Here
we shall see that it is exactly this uselessness of the action that makes the action
important. This can also be seen as a non-climactic experience1. Kissing or laughing, for
example, are both non-climactic experiences. These non-climactic experiences are just
as important as the climactic experiences. There is still a sense of urgency, action and
agency attached to these actions; however, their power lies in the action itself. For
example a flash mob, which is basically a group of people gathering in a space for a
certain amount of time, performing a random act together and then departing, is powerful
because it is enacted apart (from ?real? life). There is an incredible amount of euphoric
energy, which is attached to these seemingly meaningless acts. But it is because they
are seemingly meaningless that they are actually incredibly meaningful. This is where
the play moment is held and enacted. And this is the play element- meaningful because
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?Non-climactic? experiences refer to actions that are enjoyed in and for themselves. Laughing or kissing for
example are non-climactic acts as they do not have a goal attached to them, they do not have a ?climax? and
are enjoyed for the action in and of itself.
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?useless? or non-climactic - that is important for this thesis as expressed through the type
of performance art I am focussing on.
To broaden this explanation: As mentioned above, the capitalist system today has given
birth to what we now call ?the alienation of the post-modern subject?. Other factors, such
as the Internet, have contributed to this apparent loss of humanity, togetherness or
physicality. Play is something that is forgotten on the sidelines as we focus more and
more on work in order to survive. We live in compliance rather than by individual choice.
The moment of play begins in a shared transitional space: a space where the tension
between experimentation and safety is evident. The moment of play begins in these non-
climactic experiences, in the acceptance of doubt and uncertainty rather than in the
definitive ?yes? or ?no?. The performance artist or player that I will refer to in this thesis
enacts the element of play through action in and of itself.
Pat Kane, who wrote the book The Play Ethic ? A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living
(2004), sees this type of person as a player or soulitarian. His idea of the player is
someone who is actively engaged within the world, an active participant rather than a
passive consumer or spectator. In this world of uncertainty, unpredictability and chaos,
the player revels in precisely these aspects; he revels in this paradox, making a passion
out of uncertainty. In South Africa I find this way of living particularly relevant in that we
have the highest crime rate in the world and have come from a history fraught with pain
and anger. It seems more relevant than ever, in South Africa, even if it is idealistic and
somewhat optimistic in some regards, to live in a more engaged and positive manner so
as to cope with the day-to-day struggles we face. Play or playing can be seen then as an
acceptance of these stresses of daily living, and through this acceptance, comes
understanding and action. Play enacted through performance in my own work can be
seen as an example of how I mediate the ?stresses? of living in Johannesburg. The
Boxing Games project involved myself and others training in Hillbrow at a gym for two
weeks. I then used their rules of the sport of boxing and included my own rules into the
game. It became a game we all played in the space on a one-night event. This idea of
playing a game together became a performance in itself and served all of us in different
ways. For many, Hillbrow is seen as a dangerous and hopeless place. For me, the game
changed the perception of place in the moment of play. This was a result of my
negotiation with this place and a community of people (boxers) living there and working
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out there in a way that challenged this sense of hopelessness. This is just one example
of the performative acts I am speaking about whereby play is adopted in performance to
highlight the potential of an operation - the action - to link communities, open spaces,
create connections and to make known other ?functions? of art. For me this is one
example of how play can function in art. Boxing Games was a performance whereby we
all played a game. I made the rules ? within their set of rules and within their space - yet
we were all performers/players. We were active participants negotiating a space that is
usually fraught with fear and uncertainty through a game. Knowingly, we were revelling
in this paradox.
This thesis will begin with a historical review of three theories of play. Chapter two will
address more contemporary theories of play. After a brief overview of the history of
performance art I will look at how elements of play are enacted through performance. It
is the element of action, not the body, which is important here, because, I argue, action
demonstrates play most succinctly, although the body is always a part of the process.
The works of artists Tino Sehgal and Gustavo Artigas are used as perfect examples
here.
I will then move on to explore public space as a part of performance and other organised
projects or acts, which are not necessarily termed performance art. The performance
works and projects discussed all involve participatory action within public space. The
action creates discourse. It is the importance of the present moment within the act that
takes meaning to a new point of definition ? that of the action itself. The artists and
groups mentioned exemplify the importance not only of this action, but the importance of
the acceptance of the unpredictability this action presents. This acceptance of
unpredictability, chaos and confusion, which are all aspects prevalent in the world in
which we live today, is crucial to understanding play and then, in turn, the public acts
that are prevalent in the world today. For, as I shall show in this thesis, a true ethic of
play according to Pat Kane, is that which makes a passion out of uncertainty in order to
manage the world in which s/he lives.
In the first chapter I move towards forming a definition of play. I look at selected
historical theories of play. Johan Huizinga is a key theorist here who views play as a
form of cultural expression and traces its appearance in many areas of our life. He
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coined the phrase ?Man the Player?, i.e. ?Homo Ludens?, which is still considered a
primary influence on performance art today. Donald Winnicott is important in explaining
play from a psychoanalytical developmental perspective, in which he defines the
paradox of play and the notion of the potential space: the space where play happens.
David R. Kosalka?s review on George Bataille's ?notion of the gift? offers a perspective on
the notion of the sovereign subject who revels in selfish uselessness and the importance
of the moment of this uselessness, this non-climactic experience. Initially this theory may
not seem that relevant, but I will show how it relates to many actions that are taking
place around the world at this time when I discuss examples of performance art.
In chapter two I address more contemporary theories of play. Pat Kane shows us how
play is manifest in different areas of our life and defines an uprising of players who aim
to live a more engaged life as the ?soulitariats?. Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman look at
the connection between games and play, and locate play as ?a free activity which takes
place within a more rigid structure? (2004:304). Kane, Salen and Zimmerman address
play as manifest within our contemporary experience today.
In chapter three I present a historical overview of performance art. The difference
between body art and performance art is covered briefly. This historical overview of
performance art is necessary so that I can show how play is apparent in this varied,
open-ended and interdisciplinary art form. Further on in the chapter I move to a
discussion of the significance of public space. Here, I use a review by Rosalyn
Deutsche, who articulates public space as a performance of an operation not specifically
as a location. I also look at the Situationist movement and how these artists interacted
with public space through methodologies such as psychogeography, the d?rive2 and
urban utopias. Thereafter I discuss present actions that are taking place predominantly
in Europe and America that use public space in a challenging and creative way. The
flash mob and the art project ?transparadiso? are discussed here in their relation to play
and performance within the public domain. This chapter serves as an important
backdrop and contextualisation for the next chapter.
2
The d?rive refers to ?an experimental technique of ?transient passage through varied ambiances?? (Wollen,
2004:147). An example would be a chance wandering from place to place with no destination in mind, in the
anticipation of possibly coming across meaningful encounters.
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In chapter four I discuss the shift to live performance. Artists such as Allan Kaprow are
covered here. Their bodies were used as tools to bring across their ideas. These
became performative gestures. I also discuss the notion of the ?performative? and how it
is present within our world today. Tino Sehgal and Gustavo Artigas, two contemporary
artists who work with performance, are discussed here as good examples of how the
use of the body (their own or others? bodies) can function as a tool to express their
ideas. Their art is an art of ideas expressed through action, and it is through this action
(expressed through games or situations) where play is manifest. These two artists? work
can be seen as examples of actions that consciously use play within a larger structure to
communicate an idea.
Chapters five and six are examinations of my own artistic practice and how it fits into the
above readings and analyses. Moving in between ideas around performance, play and
public space, I attempt to find a common ground from which to work from, so that my
work may be accessible to a large and varied audience. This in itself is no easy feat. The
context of South Africa at the moment ? specifically Johannesburg ? will also be
addressed in relation to my work. Specifically I will be looking at how I negotiate different
space through participation with different people in Johannesburg through my
performances. Certain projects will look at the games we play in order to survive in this
city. The Boxing Games project is one example where I have negotiated a dangerous
space through play enacted through the performance of playing a game.
Chapter seven concludes my project. I do not aim to supply the reader with concrete
answers in this conclusion, but rather with questions and ways into the ideas I discuss
throughout the thesis. Play as manifested within contemporary performance art and
public ?artistic? actions or projects will be summarised within this chapter. How are these
actions important for society today ? for the individual as well as the community? What is
this new trend of actions in public spaces and what implications does it have for the way
we live and want to live in the future? Most importantly what role does play ?play? in
contemporary performance art today and how is this extended into the ?public? domain,
to other contexts?
I hope the above outline of the path that this thesis will follow provides the reader with a
clear idea of what I aim to cover in this thesis. I hope to interest the reader on many
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levels, but mainly through an exploration into play as enacted in live art and public
interventions as a mode of participatory action and communication through the medium
of the body and/or bodies.
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CHAPTER ONE
Selected historical theories of play
According to the psychologist J.Barnard Gilmore, ?Certainly everyone knows what play
is, not even if everyone can agree on just what play is.? (Salen & Zimmerman,
2004:304). What a task it is to try to define what it means to ?play?. Many theorists from
all over the globe have grappled with defining play, to find an explanation for this fluid
and inconsistent action. Because play constantly involves human participation, which
changes over time, it presents a rich area for study, especially for the visual arts, a
practice predicated on flux and change. This chapter will begin with a historical overview
of play and how these theories pertain to my field. My field being the enactment of play
in performance art succinctly expressed through the action of the body. I will also
explore notions of ?uselessness? often associated with that of playful acts. I will show
how ?useless? actions are often meaningful in both contemporary arts as well as in post-
modern society today.
Many definitions of play explain the activity as a feature of childhood, as preparation for
the more serious life ahead. For some, play is a discharge of locked up energies, which
need to be released. For others, play is pure folly and a frivolous activity, just ?fun?
(Huizinga, 1970:20). In the following pages I will be looking at those theorists I feel are
important for understanding play in a way that is relevant to this study. Each has made a
contribution in trying to find a structure of play, not withstanding its contradictory
qualities. All ask important questions, such as: Where is play found? What forms does
play take? And, why does play matter anyway?
I outline three views of these theorists separately. Even though they are intimately
linked, an entry point and brief analysis needs to be given to each individually as this will
make the reading easier and more accessible.
Johan Huizinga, a Dutch historian who is seen as one of the founders of modern cultural
history, wrote the book Homo Ludens: A study of the play element in culture, in 1938.
The first chapter of this book is seen as one of the first, most influential and important
writings on the subject. 'Homo Ludens' is a play on Homo Sapiens, meaning ?Man, the
player?. For Huizinga, play is a social and cultural phenomenon rather than a biological
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or psychological activity. Huizinga deals fundamentally with what play is in and of itself
and what it means for the player. Although much of Huizinga?s work has been criticised
and contested, this book still remains a significant contribution in its radical pursuit to
identify play as a function of culture.
Huizinga?s Homo Ludens provides a useful definition of play for the purpose of this
study. He asserts that play is expressed and closely linked to language, myth and ritual,
and he defines various ways in which play is manifested socially. Some of the
characteristics he includes are freedom, limits, fantasy, order, tension, rules and play
communities. Ritual and space are also relevant to this study. Play forms expressed in
the arts such as music, dance and the fine arts (the ?plastic arts?, as Huizinga calls them)
will be briefly assessed before moving on to his conclusion, which analyses the play
element in contemporary culture.
Huizinga asserts that what most definitions of play have in common is that they try to
assume that play must serve something that is not play; it must have some biological
function. Huizinga asks what, in essence, is it in the fun of playing? What makes people
go crazy at football matches? What makes a young child scream for the sake of
screaming? This passionate intensity and immediate absorption in the action of play
finds no immediate explanation in science or biology. ?Yet,? writes Huizinga, ?in this
intensity, this absorption, this power of maddening, lies the very essence, the primordial
quality of play? (1970:20).
This ?fun element? is one of the main characteristics of play and resists an easy
definition. It is something we can all connect with, as it is a part of life. One cannot turn a
blind eye to play: ?Play cannot be denied. You can deny, if you like, nearly all
abstractions: justice, beauty, truth, goodness, mind, God. You can deny seriousness, but
not play. But in acknowledging play, you acknowledge mind, for whatever else play is, it
is not matter.? (Huizinga, 1970:21). Play, in this sense, moves away from the incessant
need for utility and usefulness and breaks down the whole ?determinism of the cosmos?.
An example of how this irrational feature of play is manifest in contemporary art is
through the work of artist Tino Sehgal. Sehgal is a London-based performance artist and
director who creates works that are seen by most spectators as irrational. Kiss, is one
such example (see plate 5). Kiss took place at the Ballhaus Mitte (dance hall) in the
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mirror hall at the Berlin Biennale festival for contemporary art in 2006. The work involved
two people kissing for two hours or more in the dance hall, every day for the duration of
the exhibition.
Sehgal?s works are not allowed to be photographed or documented in any way. This act
of kissing which cannot be documented in any way denies the art markets usual focus
on the ?object? of art. It is saying that kissing too can be art. While presenting itself as art
kissing undercuts the assumed medium which art is made of or accessed through.
Questions such as ?what is the point?? arise. Sehgal calls his medium ?ideas?: he sells
these ideas as products to an audience and to a gallery. They, the products, work for
only an instant while it is materialised through a human body and when the act is over it
is an idea, it is mind. Whilst Sehgal does not deny the art markets economical practice,
as he does sell his ideas as products, he uses the system through his work to draw
attention to the object orientated system itself. I will return to Tino Sehgal in more detail
in chapter four; however, throughout this chapter I shall refer to some of his works as
they exemplify various arguments I want to discuss.
Although play is essentially irrational, it is also, according to Huizinga, ?an activity which
proceeds within certain limits of time and space, in a visible order, according to rules
freely accepted, and outside the sphere of necessity or material utility? (1970:10).
Huizinga goes on; ?It is a significant function: that is to say; there is some sense to it. In
play there is something ?at play? which transcends the immediate needs of life and
imparts meaning to the action. All play means something? (1970:19). In Tino Sehgal?s
work there is sense, in that he mediates meaning not through an object but through
action. All of his works mean something and he instigates a discourse into the space of
the gallery through action. His works have rules: there is a time limit for his performers
and they are enacted in a certain space to rules and instructions that he, Sehgal creates.
Within this ordered realm lives play.
In saying that play ?transcends the immediate needs of life? Huizinga also concludes that
play is non-materialistic in quality. This notion of moving beyond the immediate
necessities of life, as material manifestations, bestows the significance to the action,
suggesting that nothing before or after the action will mediate as much meaning of his
work as the action itself in that specific place and time. As I shall show later on, all play
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is in fact, action. Action is Sehgal?s medium and, because he denies any documentation,
his works move away from the object and towards the action. They move away from the
object as art in that his works materialise through human action and nothing else.
Usually performance art is reliant on the documentary of the act, which has taken place
and the performance then moves into another realm- that of the photograph or video.
Sehgal denies such ?object-hood?, i.e. the photograph or the video, and is completely
motivated by the act itself. Tino Sehgal is not the only artist whose work revolves around
this element of action. Play ?as a ?significant form?, as a social function? (1970:22) is
crucial to an understanding of play, which I will show when I relate play to performance
art.3
Play is separate from ?ordinary? or ?real? life. It involves taking a step out of the domain of
ordinary life into a temporary or potential space of activity. Almost everyone is familiar
with the childhood context of creating little ?pretend? houses in the lounge or in the
garden: a separate space for children to play in, separate from the rest of the world. This
notion of pretending does not mean that when people are at play, when they are
pretending, that they cannot continue with the utmost seriousness. As people are
absorbed and devoted to the games they are playing it becomes serious within itself.
?Any game, at any time can wholly run away with the players. The contrast between play
and seriousness is always fluid? (1970:27). This is one of the paradoxes of play, in that
the childlike non-serious quality of play is always being offset by the seriousness we feel
when absorbed in the activity/game. To examine performance art in this context can be
enlightening. Performance art happens for a period of time in a particular space. The
artists performing their specific actions within that time and space are separate from the
audience. They are separate within their own game within their own world, removed from
our world.
As play stands outside ordinary life ? as an interlude or interruption to daily life ? play
thus escapes the continuous pressure of economic utility. This is an aspect I shall
demonstrate is present in Georges Bataille?s writing. Bataille describes this kind of
3 Huizinga also attempts to relate play to aesthetics by arguing that even though play is not necessarily
within itself beautiful, there are certainly aspects of play that include beauty. Play represented or acted upon
in dance, for example, within the moving body, is the ultimate example of play, play as action itself
(1970:25). In saying this we can see how Sehgal?s works might correspond so closely to play as he works so
closely with dance in his works.
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playing as the player as ?reveling in selfish uselessness? (1999:7). Similarly, Huizinga
says of play: ?It disrupts the appetitive process? (1970:27). And it is this selfish useless
quality of play, which, surprising as it may seem, is very important as
? it adorns life, amplifies it, and is to that extent a necessity both for the individual ?
as a life function ? and for society by the reason of the meaning it contains, its
significance, its expressive value, its spiritual and social associations, in short as a
culture function. The expression of it satisfies all kinds of ?communal ideals?
(Huizinga, 1970:27).
Play enacted through contemporary performance art is one extension of this expression.
As we have mentioned earlier on with Sehgal, he has disrupted the space of the gallery
presenting the action of kissing in a dance hall. This ongoing non-climactic expression of
play disrupts the appetitive process of the general art market or audience. They
experience it for that moment. This in itself is selfishly useless as it is disrupting the
appetitive process yet at the same time it is surprising, anecdotal and transient. Through
this expression it is indeed a ?life function? in that it injects a sense of momentary unique
appreciation of the moment and the act itself.
Tino Sehgal?s work, entitled this is so contemporary, is instructive here. In this work, a
visitor walks through the front entrance of a gallery and is bombarded by three
individuals dancing and singing, ?This is so contemporary! Contemporary!
Contemporary!? The dancers disperse and the visitor, surprised and probably confused,
yet delighted at the same time, carries on his journey through the gallery. The dancers
were present in their own constructed fantasy world. Sehgal?s works are not functional or
necessary as such, but through their temporary actions they spark off other imagined
scenarios within each viewer?s mind. They are an interruption to daily life, momentary
anecdotes that celebrate their ?momentariness?.
But however ?free? and ?open? these actions may seem to be, there are always limits to
the action. There are always limits to the time and space of the action. In this respect,
play is distinct from ordinary life in both locality and duration. Its secluded nature, the
limits to play, will now be discussed.
Huizinga asserts that play is a voluntary activity; you cannot order someone to play. If
one could order someone to play the essential quality of freedom that is so inherent in
play would be lost. By associating freedom with play, it is immediately placed outside the
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flow of natural processes, as it escapes a rational sense of utility that governs so many
of our actions today. In playing we are free; we play because we want to. Huizinga
argues: ?The need for it (play) is only urgent to the extent that the enjoyment of it makes
it a need. Play can be suspended or deferred at any time. It is never imposed by
physical necessity or moral duty. It is never a task. It is done at leisure, during ?free time?.
Only when play is recognized as a cultural function - a rite, a ceremony, a tradition - is it
bound up with notions of obligation and duty? (1970:26). And what happens when play is
recognized as cultural function, as art? It too becomes bound up with notions around the
subject. Sehgal has taken his work, which is much like theatre, and put it in an
alternative environment/context. The works would read very differently if they were
performed at the theatre.
?Play begins and then at a certain moment it is ?over?. It plays itself to an end. While it is
in progress all is movement, change, alternation, succession, association, separation?
(Huizinga, 1970:28). However, once play is played out within space and time, even
though it is limited, it becomes fixed form as a ?cultural phenomenon?. It becomes a
newfound treasure; a 'gift' as Bataille would put it that will be remembered, repeated and
become tradition through transmission. As Sehgal?s works are not documented, they are
sold as ideas and are transmitted through storytelling from one person to the next.
Through re-presenting the act through speech, a spectator renders real what is in actual
fact gone. The works are there, yet they are not there at the same time. This act of story
telling is important because it is transient within itself. The role of performer is now
extended to the storyteller.
?All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an
act apart? (Huizinga, 1970:53). When play occurs it occurs within a space, which
becomes a playground for the players, a playground that is separate and demarcated or
marked off, materialistically or ideally. The arena, the card table, the child?s playground,
the tennis or basketball court; they all function as playgrounds. This is a crucial fact
within this investigation as it supports the study of the enactment of play in performance
in the public sphere.4
4
What and how these actions are acted out will be analysed in more detail later. I will elaborate on the
notion that public space, through specific actions, can become our own playground.
20
Within this potential space of play a new, completely open order reigns. ?Play demands
order, absolute and supreme. The least deviation from it ?spoils the game?, robs it of its
character, and makes it worthless? (Huizinga, 1970:29).
When thinking of play initially, order is not one of the first things to come to mind. Play,
as Huizinga stipulates, creates order and is order. This is one of the contradictory
qualities of play. To explain: while play is seen as free and open, it always exists within a
more rigid structure and it continually bounces off this structure. For example, Tino
Sehgal?s works would not be rendered as play if it were not for the ordered and
predominantly object-based surroundings. The fact that his works are performed within
this structure of the gallery supports his strategy, as they are actions enacted in a space
where conventionally there is no action. His works would be received very differently in a
theatre. So, in this example, the play that is relevant in Sehgal?s works becomes
apparent because of and sometimes in opposition to the ordered and rigid structure
within which it takes place. Like with a game, play is a free activity within the game but
the game has rules, a time and a place. Within its own time and space, play thus creates
a unique, temporary perfection. Play is enchanting and mesmerizing; it casts a spell over
its viewers or participants and seems to transport them to another space where a limited
order reigns.
An aspect that is usually associated with order and rules is tension. Tension at its source
means uncertainty. In a sense there is always tension in play, as in playing, the player
always wants to succeed in whatever s/he is doing in that space and time. Most games
have an element of tension and solution within them, which makes them desirable to
play. This space filled with tension is, therefore, an open space filled with possibility. In
gambling and athletics, competition is at its most obvious and it is here where the
element of tension and solution is most evident. In art, there is a tension in art?s
incessant need to create and interpret meaning and play?s perpetual openness to
change and possibility. In fact, in all our lives there is the tension between experiment
and safety. This, asserts Pat Kane, is where the play moment begins: ?The need to fully
test out all the possibilities of being human, yet under conditions which are themselves
not fatal, violent or beset with privation and pain? (Kane, 2004:225). However, no matter
how fervently the player wishes to win he must stick to the rules. This in itself is a sense
21
of order and tension.5 For example, Boxing Games I mentioned in the Introduction was a
project whereby I tested out my presence in the space of Hillbrow for two weeks. There
was an element of tension in this project throughout the whole two weeks, which was
dictated largely by the space we were in. There was an inherent tension between
experiment and safety.
While play communities are an aspect of play that will be discussed in more detail in
chapter seven, they need to be mentioned here. All over the world there are
communities that are rising up in a spirit of play. Tired of their mundane lives ? living to
work and working to live ? play communities have sprung up, predominantly in the US
and Europe. An example of this phenomenon is the flash mob, which is a mob of people
who congregate in a specific place and, for a certain amount of time, perform an act and
then disperse. There is something wonderfully appealing about being ?apart together?
that attracts people to play together and to mutually withdraw from the rest of the world
and create something that is, in itself, apart and different: something like a playground.
Clubs, groups, and clans are created all the time as a form of separation from the rest of
the world through the ?games? they play together. I will show later in this study how more
and more of these groups of players are emerging all over the world, using public space
in creative and communicative ways.6
Huizinga?s words are appropriate here:
Play is a free activity standing quite consciously outside ?ordinary? life as being ?not
serious?, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an
activity connected with no material interest and no profit can be gained by it. It
proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed
rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings that
5
Rules are a part of limits and order. ?All play has its rules? and ?the rules of the game are absolutely
binding and allow no doubt? (Huizinga, 1970:30). As soon as the rules are transgressed or broken the entire
?play world? collapses and starts ?real life? turning again. The definition of someone who breaks or trespasses
the rules is a spoilsport. S/he ?robs play of its illusion and must be cast out for he threatens the existence of
the play community? (1970:30).
6 One of the interesting characteristics about play is that it likes to surround itself with an air of secrecy.
Secrets are part of play from early childhood. This secrecy enhances the inside and outside nature of the
game. Inside the game the laws and customs of ordinary life no longer count. We, the players, those who
partake in these ?play communities?, are different and do things differently. This temporary abolition of the
ordinary world is fully acknowledged in child-life, but it is no less evident in the great ceremonial games of
savage societies.
22
tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the
common world by disguise or other means (1970:32).7
Donald Winnicott, a British psychoanalyst who practised in the 1970s, predominantly
working within the realms of child psychology, wrote the essay: ?Playing and Reality? in
1971. In this essay, Winnicott explains play as an intrinsic part, not only of growing up
(the child as the player) but also in adult life. Winnicott says: ?It is in playing and only in
playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole
personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self?
(1971:54). Winnicott emphasises the fact that without play (and without the acceptance
of the paradox of play) people would be unable to create in the world and would lose
sight of themselves. The paradox of play is that if it is assumed that play is a nonsensical
activity, when play does occur, people celebrate this space of nonsense. If I try and
make sense or order out of this nonsense then I destroy the element of play. Thus, play
can only take place, according to Winnicott, with the acceptance of this paradox. The
acceptance of this paradox of play takes place within a potential or transitional space.
This space will also be analysed in more detail in relation to this study. Winnicott does
not supply a complete definition of play, but rather celebrates play?s fluid and
contradictory nature.
He says: ?It is play that is the universal, and that belongs to health: playing facilitates
growth and therefore health; playing leads into group relationships and playing can be a
form of communication in psychotherapy; and lastly, psychoanalysis has been
developed as a highly specialized form of playing in the service of communication with
oneself and others? (Winnicott, 1971:41). Thus, playing is not only an important part of
the growth of healthy human beings; it is also stimulated by the fact that it is part of an
important action of communication and participation with others and ourselves.
Winnicott states that whatever he says about children in this context also applies to
adults. Winnicott theorised that playing begins within a potential space. This potential
7
Huizinga adds that these forms of play originate as either a contest for something or a representation of
something. Both these functions unite as ?the game ?represents? a contest, or else becomes a contest for the
best representation of something? (1970:32). This addition to his description of play ties in with Salen and
Zimmerman?s description of play which shall be discussed in more detail in the next chapter: that it is a free
activity which takes place within a more rigid structure and which depends on yet is also in opposition to this
structure.
23
space is initially realised in the slow separation of infant from the caregiver. This
potential space is not an inner psychic reality, outside the individual, or in the external
world. In this potential space ? the space, which is not inside or outside, but somewhere
in-between - the child uses objects (transitional objects such as a soft toy or a blanket) to
help manage the world in which s/he is living. In playing with these objects s/he is
manipulating external reality in the service of a dream. There is a definite development
from the transitional phenomena of playing, from playing to shared playing, and then to
later cultural experience. This space becomes the area where cultural experience is
realised through playing with transitional objects such as toys.
Earlier in this chapter I mentioned that according to Winnicott, in order to experience
play one has to accept the paradox of play. The paradox in psychological terms is the
following: when the child creates the object s/he wants to play with (the transitional
object), s/he relates to the object. When the child starts to use the object this means that
the child has the capacity to use the object and can distinguish it as an entity in its own
right. This is the crucial change (from relating to usage), which means that the child
actually destroys the object because it becomes external. The next phase occurs when
the child appreciates and loves the object because it has survived its destruction. The
object ??destroyed because real, becoming real because destroyed (being destructible,
expendable)? (1971:90).
This paradox happens within a potential space. With regards to the enactment of the
paradox within the potential space, Winnicott speaks of the tense relationship between
the patient, the analyst and nonsense. I am including this as a good example of the
acceptance of the paradox as well as the creation of a potential space. The idea of the
patient and the analyst could also relate to the performance artist and the viewer or critic
respectively. The point here is that play can only be accessed when people relax, and
people can only relax if they accept their chaotic and uncertain or insecure frames of
mind. If we try to make sense of this chaos and nonsense we will never relax and
therefore never be able to be creative and play. Thus, to create a space of relaxation,
nonsense needs to be accepted. In relation to the analyst and the patient: The analyst
has to accept that there is no need for the patient to explain this nonsense because as
Winnicott says: ?Organised nonsense is already a defence, just as organised chaos is a
denial of chaos? (1971:59). And if the therapist becomes engaged in the futile attempt to
24
try to organise this nonsense, the patient leaves this space unfulfilled because s/he feels
a sense of hopelessness because s/he is communicating nonsense and not sense. And
then, as a result, a perfect opportunity has been missed because of the need to ?find
sense where nonsense is?.8 This is the paradox that Winnicott wants us to accept.
?This paradox, once accepted and tolerated, has value for every human individual who is
not only alive and living in the world but who is also capable of being infinitely enriched
by exploitation of the cultural link with the past and the future? (1971:xii). Winnicott
reiterates the importance of the acceptance of this paradox so that it may benefit
development in the world. So, the paradox is usually found within a potential space. The
acceptance of this paradox- that we have to accept nonsense and that trying to make
sense out of nonsense will just cause anxiety- means that we are able to create in the
world and thus able to play.
Winnicott also states that living creatively is a healthy state in the world, while living in
compliance is an unhealthy basis for life. Expressions for this state (living in compliance)
include identities as ?not all there?, ?feet off the ground?, unreal and in psychiatric terms:
schizoid. In order to find the self, one needs a place in which one can relax, where one
can be creative. This has to be a place where non-purposeful activity or experiences can
take place. In this place of non-utility, one can begin to be creative and eventually, to
play.
?To control what is outside one has to do things, not simply to think or to wish, and doing
things takes time. Playing is doing? (Winnicott, 1971:41). Winnicott asserts that play has
a place and a time. He asserts that play is not inside (internal) nor is it outside (external
reality). This means that play is not a part of the external world, ?the not-me, that which
the individual has decided to define as truly external? (Winnicott, 1971:41). But if play is
neither within the individual (psychic reality) nor outside the individual (external reality),
then where is it? Winnicott reiterates the space that is between the mother and the infant
as being a non-climactic experience. When he says ?non-climactic? he is essentially
referring to that which is not made or done with a specific goal or outcome in mind.
8
We can also use the practice of meditation as an example. In meditation we try to clear the mind, however
if we are constantly trying so very hard to not think of anything we fail to relax and become more anxious in
the process. Whereas if we just accept our situation and let our mind slowly become still by letting it wander
but then gently bringing it back again, we can relax and thus create and play.
25
Almost everything today is created for a specific use and everything we do today is done
for a specific use or goal. In contrast, these non-climactic experiences are, in of and for
themselves, a useful experience. Other examples of non-climactic experiences could
include the communal experience or feeling at a concert, where celebration takes place
alongside thousands of strangers, or the electrifying feeling between two people when
they are in love. Most people do not realise the ?tremendous intensity of these non-
climactic experiences that are called playing? (Winnicott, 1971:41). This is where the
potential space is located.9
In 1998, Michael Szollosy wrote a paper entitled ?Winnicott?s potential spaces: Using
psychoanalytical theory to redress the crises of postmodern culture?. I find Szollosy?s
work interesting and helpful as an up to date inquiry into Winnicott?s notions of potential
space and how this can be applied to the society in which we live today.
Szollosy asserts: ?Play is more than merely the expression of individual interiority or the
discursive exchange between ?doctor? and ?patient?. Playing is a creative, communicative
experience where subjects meet; it is not wholly the domain of either participant?
(Szollosy, 1998:4). Referring back to Tino Sehgal?s dance work in performance art, there
are two levels where two or more subjects share the space. Firstly, the artist has a
relationship with the dancers as they manifest his thoughts through actions. He does not
perform them himself. This is a shared space where the artist as director shares a space
with his participants; without either of them the work would not exist. Secondly, the work
is enacted within the space of the gallery, which is shared with the audience. Their
presence is a part of the work and sometimes even called upon to be part of the work.
In my own work, something similar happens.
9
Winnicott states that one's cultural experience can be found within ?the potential space between the
individual and the environment (originally the object)? (Winnicott, 1971:41). He argues that this theory can
also be applied to playing and that cultural experience starts primarily with creative living, which is first
manifest in play. The use of this space is determined by each individual?s personal experience, which takes
place in the early stages of life. Thus, this space is a third area; that of play, which extends into creative
living and into the whole cultural life of man. Winnicott has found this essential area of experience in the
potential space between the individual and the environment an important open space where the individual
learns to master the complexities of our world through the action of play.
26
The location of creative, ontologising experience must therefore be a transitional
area, a potential space (or ?playground?, if you will) between two subjects; a third
area that is neither ?me? nor ?not-me?, that is between the internal phantasy world of
the individual and the external world, or between the subjective object and the
object that is objectively perceived (Szollosy, 1998:4).
The creative experience is not something that happens solely within the individual, nor is
it something that happens to the individual, but rather something between two (or more)
subjects. The recognition of this is significant as it allows the re-evaluation of the notions
of subjective and inter-subjective space and how we are to think of experience itself,
both within the psychoanalytical sphere and the wider cultural scene.
The realisation of this shared space means that the players enter the space together as
it is not the sole domain of one or the other, but a shared space. I have noted that within
this space where play resides paradoxes must be tolerated and accepted. In accordance
with this, Szollosy states:
Contrary to simplistic models of the dialectic, in which opposing factions seemingly
?come together? in synthesis, the paradoxes maintained in the third space insist that
there be no resolution or ?transcendence? between the contradictions and
complements of subject and object, internal and external (Szollosy, 1998:5).
And when, or if the space is taken over or dominated too strongly by one side, creativity
dissipates and there is no play and thus no space for subjective ontological experience
and, as a result, compliance begins to characterise the subject?s limited experience of
the world (Szollosy, 1998:5).
Szollosy further states that sometimes the subject experiences extreme anxiety because
of the inherent difficulty in the acceptance of the paradox, and when this fear is too
great, it disables the positive experience of the paradox and subjects are not able to act
creatively and simply ?give in? to the object, or discourse, that governs and threatens to
overwhelm them (1998:14). Basically, this means that the nonsense for most of us today
can be too scary and risky, and this causes anxiety. In order to cope with this anxiety,
Szollosy explains that the subject uses transitional objects, which help us in the
continuing negotiations that exist within the potential and cultural sphere (1998:14). It is
necessary to make use of the objects successfully in order to gain a balance in the
development between internal fantasy and external reality.
27
Winnicott says,
It is the creative apperception more than anything else that makes the individual feel
that life is worth living. Contrasted to this is a relationship to external reality which is
one of compliance, the world and its details being recognised but only as something
to be fitted in with or demanding adaptation? (1971:65).
And in connection to this, Szollosy concludes:
It is in the face of the depersonalising, de-ontologising discourses of twentieth
century culture, that we, as literary and cultural theorists (and as subjects
ourselves), must seek to create experiences (and to construct theories of
experience) that open potential spaces to facilitate the realisation of subjective
ontology (1998:5).
Winnicott and Szollosy are both arguing that in today?s world, which is predominantly
determined by compliance, we must find and create open potential spaces in order to
create (play) and to know ourselves and be equipped to deal with the world in which we
live.
Therefore, forms of play such as relaxation, creative, physical and mental activity create
the basis for the search for the sense of self. It is where the ?individual can exist as a
unit, not as a defence against anxiety but as an expression of I AM, I am alive, I am
myself? (Winnicott, 1962:60).
In conclusion, Winnicott asserts the importance of creating a place for the experience of
formless (non-purposive) experience and for creative urges that all are the
characteristics of playing. Winnicott claims:
We experience life in the area of transitional phenomena, in the exciting interweave
of subjectivity and objective observation, and in an area that is intermediate
between the inner reality of the individual and the shared reality of the world that is
external to individuals (1971:64).
It is thus important for us to acknowledge the reality of this potential space, which is the
only place where play can begin.
28
George Bataille, a Paris-born theorist and writer, highlighted the irrational over the
rational, celebrated the erotic instead of bourgeois morality, and revelled in excess as
opposed to capitalist restraint, and transgression instead of conformity. Bataille gives
another insight into the playing subject. These characteristics can be found in his work
The Accursed Share. David R.L Kosalka wrote a review on the book entitled ?Bataille
and the Notion of the Gift? (Kosalka, 1999). Bataille?s writings on the notion of the gift
relate to play on many levels. Important in this contribution is Bataille's writing on the
'free subject?: one who revels in 'selfish uselessness' and is enveloped within the present
moment.
Bataille was one of the ?free? thinkers as well as being a critic and literary figure we was
also a philosopher. Bataille?s theories go on at some length in relation to economics and
the movement of goods. However, his analysis of another dimension of play, specifically
in regards to the player who revels in the paradox mentioned above, but also of how the
players revel in the realm of ?selfish uselessness?, which can be compared to the realm
of those ?non-climactic? experiences which Winnicott speaks of, is useful for these
purposes.10
In analysing how Bataille?s ideas surrounding the ?notion of the gift? relate to the topic of
play and the above theorists, I refer specifically to an article by contemporary theorist
David Kosalka, in 1999, entitled ?George Bataille and the Notion of the Gift?. I would
argue that this essay demonstrates succinctly the notion of exchange between subjects
10
Bataille saw the explanations of classical economy as having limited knowledge of the nature of economic
movement. So he responded to this by creating a meta-category of the movement of energy ?to which
classical economics is only a subcategory? (1999:1). Bataille?s model begins with notions of the excess of
energy. This excess either goes into reproduction and growth or must be used in some other way. Bataille
says:
On the whole a society always produces more than is necessary for its survival; it has a surplus at its
disposal. It is precisely the use it makes of this surplus that determines it: The Surplus is the cause of
the agitation, of the structural changes and of the entire history of society. But this surplus has more
than one outlet, the most common of which is growth. And growth itself has many forms, each one of
which eventually comes up against some limit. Thwarted demographic growth becomes military; it is
forced to engage in conquest. Once the military limit is reached, the surplus has the sumptuary forms
of religion as an outlet, along with the games and spectacles that derive therefrom, or personal luxury
(Bataille in Kosalka, 1999:2).
Here lies Bataille?s first and foremost challenge to classical economics: it is different because classical
economics focused on the notion of scarcity driving the economic activity, here Bataille sees surplus as this
driving force. In a sense he is saying that the positive, not the negative, the active not the passive, drives
society.
29
and the action, which takes place between them in that shared potential space. Kosalka
(1999:1) begins by stating that the capitalist system by which people are all bound today
lacks a sense of humanity. There is less and less emphasis on what is intrinsically
valuable to the growth of human individuals and a lack of true passion and emotion. He
says, ?there is nothing truly sacred or outside the scope of capitalist calculation?
(Kosalka, 1999:1). For Kosalka, communism seemed for a while to be the alternative to
this regime but this system turned out to be even worse. In regards to these various
belief systems, some thinkers looked for alternatives to capitalist exchange and
production to bring forth the truly human and non-economic element into modern
society.
In his exploration of economics, Bataille began an investigation into the notion of the gift.
Firstly, the gift is related to a type of sacrifice and it is important to understand this first in
order to fully grasp his thoughts on the gift. But before continuing, it is necessary to show
how the notion of the gift is related to play. Huizinga said of play that ?it transcends the
immediate needs of life? (1970:19) and that it is thus non-materialistic in quality.
Therefore, this notion relates to the gift as it is in the act of giving that the gift is
important. It is this notion of moving beyond the immediate necessities of life and
bestowing the meaning to the action that is key here. Nothing before or after the action
mediates as much meaning as the action in that specific place and time. Here the givers,
the players, the free subjects, revel in selfish uselessness. They revel in the paradox of
this uselessness because in celebrating its uselessness it is meaningful and fulfilling
within the action itself. As explained earlier on with the theories of Winnicott these free
subjects celebrate uselessness and this is not seen as a positive thing today as it is not
goal or success orientated. However it is precisely this action of celebration of
uselessness that makes the action itself powerful, meaningful and fulfilling. The meaning
lies completely within the action itself, not the end result. Any attempt to try and resolve
this paradox would break this circle of play as play lies within the action.
In a rational economy, production and goods are assigned to ?meeting the general life
needs of the populace or the process of growth? (Kosalka, 1999:3) All production is
designed with the future in mind. This is the process of growth and expansion where
objects are made as a means towards an end and are pre-ordained. ?The subject leaves
its own domain and subordinates itself to the objects of the real order as soon as it
30
becomes concerned with the future? (Kosalka, 1999:3). In sacrificial rituals, however, the
object is destroyed and removed from this process. It is structured towards a future
telos, in that it is destroyed for no economic gain, but is destroyed towards the ultimate
end of its existence (Kosalka, 1999:3).
Kosalka explains: ?They are no longer seen as objects directed towards the use of the
overall cultural system, but are seen in and of themselves, free from utilitarian
domination? (1999:3). Symbolically, observes Kosalka, the person who offers the
sacrifice is also viewed as removed from the demands of utility and therefore becomes a
possible sovereign subject. In the moment of sacrifice they are not controlled by a
system of process but exist free from the rules of necessity and rationalism (Kosalka,
1999:3). The example of the flash mob is relevant here, where people come together in
a public place and their action is free from the rules of necessity and rationalism. They
are sovereign subjects revelling in this selfish uselessness.
Bataille?s notion of the gift involves a power play between the subject who gives the gift
and the person receiving it. Kosalka says that we need to give away, lose or destroy, but
the gift itself would be meaningless if we did not equate it with an acquisition. Thus
giving must become acquiring power; in giving, the subject gains a status, a power of
expenditure and destruction as well as respect from the other members of society.
Therefore, paradoxically, ?by giving one is in fact gaining in prestige and societal power
and status? (1999:4).
This links to Bataille?s theories of sacrifice, as the gift is an escape from the circle of
necessity: ?As the object is taken from the realm of utility to the sacred uselessness of
sacrifice, so too is the subjecthood, a basic freedom to express an individual will of the
giver affirmed through his ability to expend beyond the demands of utility? (Kosalka,
1999:4).
Bataille, like Mauss, asserts that we have lost this certain subjecthood, lost a sense of
self in the capitalist world in which we live today. Even though Bataille lived at a different
time, his theories are still relevant now. There is no outlet for people to expend excess
like that allowed in the gift of giving. Shopping malls become outlets for controlled
release, giving only a small and directed release so that people might avoid complete
31
explosion. In this context, Kosalka quotes Laura Marz: ?The spectacle steals every
experience and sells it back to us, but only symbolically so that we are never satisfied:
via this mechanism we support the machine of endless consumption over and over?
(1999:5). And, through this mechanism, the subjecthood gives way to a repetitive system
of production and consumption, not allowing for any kind of personal expression of
power and subjecthood that is found in the gift.
This interest in the transient nature of the anecdote or the moment becomes ever so
more important in a world dominated by capitalist exchange. People look for various
things to fill this empty space- religion could be one example. This appreciation of the
moment- the instantaneous, the anecdote: that which is fleeting becomes ever more
important in an increasingly alienating world.
Jacques Derrida?s work is also relevant here. Derrida was an Algerian-born French
philosopher who is the founder of deconstruction. Derrida?s view of the gift is that
?the gift draws the flow of exchange and the temporal flow towards itself. In the
gift, the giver as subject initiates, the giver creates the demands and determines the
very nature of the exchange. It is thus for that subject an escape from the rational
discourse, which demands the individual as object. It opens the area of freedom, of
play (Kosalka, 1999:7).
So, while Bataille?s notion that there is an essential paradox of a gift in that it is an
attempt at acquisition of power, Derrida sees a fundamental madness to the gift in that
seeking to escape and lose itself, it draws the world to it. In the act of giving, one attracts
the world to the gift, but at the same time you lose the gift as you give it away.
As Kosalka notes,
It is an escape from the rational discourse of economic utility, an emptying out that
is really a new creation and acquisition. The subject becomes sovereign in the very
creation of the temporal place for play. It is the impossible moment that diverts the
flow of energy in rational exchange in its selfish uselessness to a new point of
definition (1999:7).
This can be linked to Huizinga?s notion of play in that play is constantly moving
beyond the immediate necessities of life and bestows the meaning to the action. It
also links to Winnicott?s theories, as in the acceptance of the subject-object paradox
32
one is open to the third space, the potential space in which creativity and play thrive.
To connect all these notions it is clear that the connection lies within the magnetic
power of gift itself. That in ?the moment of madness that is the gift there is an opening
of freedom to change and define individual and cultural self-understanding? (Kosalka,
1999:8).
Kosalka?s words are appropriate here in ending Bataille?s theories:
The gift, then, for Bataille, is a manifestation of the demand to escape a structural
determinism, allowing for a return of the subject and human freedom to
philosophical discourse through a paradox of losing it, of giving it away (1999:8).
I have outlined these theories of play in a way that is pertinent to my exploration of play
in contemporary art. These theories each provide a historical reference as well as an
entry point into the diverse and complex arena of play. How this varied and fluid medium
is present within our contemporary lifestyle today is what I shall explore in the next
chapter.
33
CHAPTER TWO
Selected contemporary theories of play
In this chapter I discuss two contemporary views on play. The first is by American writer,
singer, activist and consultant Pat Kane, who sees play as an intrinsic part of life, not
only within leisure time, but in work time as well. The second is by the American writers
Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, who focus on various connections between play and
games, and the relevance of both to culture.
Kane?s The Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living is one of the most
significant contemporary works on the subject. He links the writings of the theorists in the
last chapter (Huizinga, Winnicott and Bataille) to a present-day view of play. Kane sees
today?s human being predominantly labelled as a ?worker?. However, he sees a new
revolution of players on the rise who can play and make a living out of it as well. He calls
these individuals the soulitariats. Kane?s writings are helpful as they connect the working
(predominantly capitalist-driven) world we are live in today to that of a different, more
soul-enriching and motivated kind of living, which is celebrated in different ways in
various countries. He draws on Brian Sutton Smith?s seven rhetorics of play, which
categorise different types of play, and examines how and why theses rhetorics fit into
everyday life. This is a good overview of the subject and reveals how play is manifest in
different areas of life.
In their two books on game design, Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman have various
writings on the connection between games and play. One thing that Huizinga does not
talk about in relation to play is games. How do games tie into the notion of play? Even
though video/computer games are not the focus here, Salen and Zimmerman?s writings
on these phenomena are extremely insightful on the relationship between playing and
games. Their idea of play and playing is loosely structured around the notion that ?play is
free movement within a more rigid structure? (2004:304). Salen and Zimmerman?s
discussion of games as a cultural rhetoric ? the notion of games as a representation or
reflection of the culture or context within which we live ? is important to this study as will
be evident later when links are emphasised between play and performance.
In order to define some aspects of play Kane adopts Brian Sutton Smith's seven
34
rhetorics of play (Sutton Smith in Kane 2004: ). These seven rhetorics provide an
accessible framework to see how play is manifest in different areas in life. According to
Sutton Smith the word 'rhetoric' means: ?ways of thinking and talking about play that
expresses a certain vision of human nature and culture and which can be deployed by
everyone? (Sutton Smith in Kane 2004:39). Sutton Smith views these seven rhetorics of
play through two different lenses: the ancient vision and the modern vision. The ancient
vision of play is established according to forces beyond its control; it is made up of
games of chance and contest. It holds within it collective rituals and festivities, and plays
for the sake of playing. The modern vision of play includes the players as the ultimate
embodiment of human freedom, where the players move through the world with
imagination, passion and confidence. The players are also able to dream of new
possibilities in the midst of constraint and routine, and have the energy to make these
possibilities a reality.
Sutton Smith also appears in Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman?s book entitled Rules of
Play: Game Design Fundamentals. We will return to these writings in more detail later on
in the chapter. Here, he also discusses the seven rhetorics of play, which are: progress,
imagination, selfhood, power, identity, fate and chaos as well as frivolity, are connected
to large symbolic systems (political, religious, social and educational) that assist in
constructing cultural meanings. Because they are rhetorics (these seven persuasive
discourses), which are silently part of our everyday lives, they are taken for granted until
they are challenged through a competing rhetoric (Sutton Smith in Salen and
Zimmerman, 2004:518). However, for this thesis I will be selecting the three modern
rhetorics of play, as I think they are most pertinent to this study.
Sutton Smith's rhetorics do not aid a description or definition of what play is. Rather
these categories show how games and play embody ideological values and how certain
types and uses of play ?perpetuate and justify? these values (Sutton Smith in Salen and
Zimmerman, 2004:518). ?Rhetoric?s compete and conflict with the ecosystem of culture?
(Sutton Smith in Salen and Zimmerman, 2004:518). For example, a museum curator
incorporates a video game into an exhibition. He justifies this choice through ?play as the
imaginary?. This would conflict and challenge people who believe that playing for mere
entertainment has no cultural value because we live in a ?play as progress? society.
35
For Sutton Smith play as progress is the most common and dominant rhetoric in our
culture. He argues we are all under the impression that play is for children and that we
must move on and leave it behind us. However, he contends play is part of the very
process that helps us actually progress in the world.
?Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.?
(Pablo Picasso in Kane, 2004:45). As stated above, the characteristic of play as
progress is associated with children and education. For the child, play is a necessity for
progress. Play is adopted by the child and learns how to master the complexities of the
world. For advanced mammals like ourselves, play builds progress in ourselves: ?the
way we re-invoke the brimming energies of childhood ? the better to face the thrills,
spills and challenges of the adult world? (Kane, 2004:45). This ?adult world?, Kane
asserts, is contaminated by functionalism and utilitarianism. And in order not to be
completely drowned by this capitalist need for constant success through a work-driven
society, we must not lose this childhood energy of play, for it continues to help us master
the world. This is in line with the general belief that we need to ?grow up?. This is what
Jean Piaget, a Genevian Calvinist and developmental psychologist, well known for his
theory of cognitive development, believed (Kane, 2004:45). However, as Kane has
discovered, there have been a whole range of reports from psychologists who believe
that play is a constant possibility in our lives, something that can help us at any stage in
our adulthood.
Sometimes play becomes a tangible process that escapes functionality and utility,
literally ?transforming? human experience, casting it in new shapes and styles. This
is the artist?s vision of play as imaginary ? the idea that art, literature, music,
images, computer code, every kind of human symbolising, is driven at its core by
the values of play (Kane, 2004:45).
Kane cites Frederick Schiller in saying that in the Romantic period, play was seen by
Schiller as a way to mend the broken soul. Perhaps today play has this same effect.
Schiller addressed all those who believed the word ?reason? meant the ?destructive
science of industry? by saying: ?Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is
a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays? (Schiller in Kane, 2004:45). Play
was seen as imagination, as an escape from the utilitarian pressures of industrial
society.
An example of a move away from ?reason? or rationality is Surrealism. Arguably,
36
nowhere is play more prevalent than in this art movement. Surrealism was inherently
playful phenomenon. It aimed at accessing the unconscious, where dreams were made
tangible on canvas and through other processes such as performance. In Surrealism
there is already a tension between play as progress and play as imagination.
Progressive play is seen more as a biological urge and highlights the self as connected
to playful activity which fuels how we act later on in life. Progressive play is also always
mediated by its tie to functionalism and its need to create a social use for play, whereas
imaginative play is exercised more as symbolic possibility (Sutton Smith in Kane,
2004:45). This tension is illustrated in Surrealism in that many surrealist artists toyed
with the space between reality and non-reality, waking and dreaming. It is the tension
that lies between both reality (safety - what we know to be real) and non-reality
(experimentation - that which we do not know but test out situations to find out). This is
where, in the contemporary sense, the play moment begins - in the potential space
between what we know and what we do not know i.e. experiment and safety. All the
above mentioned people - from Picasso to Schiller to the Surrealists - contain the belief
that play and the potential play holds within it something, which we cannot afford to lose.
If we were to mix play as a fundamental means of human development (progress) and
play as the energy fuelling our imaginative powers (the imaginary) the result would be
play as selfhood. According to Kane this combination is seen as play?s most
contemporary definition. We are only in play when we feel we are in play. Play, before it
is anything else, is an attitude. This is what the aforementioned theorists and artists are
saying. Play as selfhood is seen wholly as human autonomy:
For players, private will manifests itself fully in public action; players are filled with
the excitement of pursuing their root desires in a disciplined, determined, self-
conscious manner. Who we are, and what we do, come together in the act of free
play (Kane, 2004:48).
Here one can see the mix between play as imagination and play as progress resulting in
the playful self.
The concept of the playful self, that which plays with the boundaries and masks of life,
was first conceived in the minds of the writers of the Renaissance period; Shakespeare,
Donne and Erasmus. These men manifested their identities and their art through an
37
order other than that of the Church, nobility or tradition. And, their favourite strategy in
avoiding these constrictions - that of the Church and various other ?embedded traditions?
- was that of the ludic self. The ludic self is ?a literary persona that toyed with the very
idea of being a single unitary consciousness? (Kane, 2004:49). Modern egoistic ludicism
could include examples such as the rap artist Eminem who compulsively adopts
personae in his lyrics and dramatises himself through overstatement and sentimentality.
Adopting this ludic self-identity can be seen as a way to avoid dominant ideologies and
communities that need to box and ?label? people. Eminem can be seen as one person
who has avoided these mundane classifications.
This new ludic freedom, which originated in the renaissance period and has been with us
ever since in various cultures really became more apparent in the 1950?s and 60?s. Thus
ludicism was beginning to infiltrate into different cultures such as bebop beats, rock and
roll. It was a new public kind of freedom; some were exalted by it, some were scared of
it. One only has to think of the sixties counterculture, which gave birth to some of the
century?s most self-consciously ludic thinkers and writers (Kane, 2004:49). These people
who adopted this ludic self, which, as we have mentioned, can be seen as the ?playful
self?- that which celebrates play as part of their selfhood and identity. This identity is
made up of play as progress and play as imagination. These in turn make up play as
selfhood and these ludic personae discussed here can be seen as examples of this new
identity and new freedom.
The three definitions that make up modern play ? progress, imagination and self ? have
the capacity to be an extensive and boundless fuel supply of human dynamism. Thus,
play as seen through the modern vision is the earliest force that helped build us and has
the capacity to energise and inspire our adult selves with action and innovation. Play is
also a striving for self-mastery, whether consciously or not, whether shaped by the
outside world through education or internally, through our dreams. Through this modern
vision we see the player as a potential-filled individual, freely intending, imaginative and
energetic, well equipped for the complexities of modern day life. It seems we could
actually leave it at that, but play is not just about this ? it has rules too (Kane, 2004:50).
In this respect Kane asks: ?Is there a powerful logic to the wild diversity of play forms in
our world?? And can these forms be used to benefit our society? We would have to ask
38
what play asks of us. What kind of society does it suggest or evoke? (Kane, 2004:55).
The performance artists discussed in chapter four instigate these questions. Working
with themes, which are inescapably ludic, they ask the viewer to make meaning from
their playful actions.
Kane asserts:
Living as a player is precisely about embracing ambiguity, revelling in paradox, yet
being energised by that knowledge. Moreover, an argument can be made that
ethics become even more important in an endemically uncertain world. An ethic of
play is, in effect, an ethic which makes a virtue, even a passion, out of uncertainty
(2004:55).
As mentioned, Kane refers to these players as soulitariats: those who flit from one job to
the next, whose lives are a playful balancing act between employment, environment and
experience. For the soulitarian, great experiences matter just as much as cool
commodities. The Internet has also been a huge part of this uprising, where someone
can download almost anything for free and the notion of authorship is decreasing. Thus,
says Pat Kane, these ?dotcommers? have created their own little economy where one
can download and share things for free, thus undercutting the ?work ethic? at its core and
introducing another kind of exchange. In this exchange, authorship and the notion of the
spectacle is not as powerful or interesting as gathering a heterogeneous net of
information and experience.
Kane sees play as something we cannot live without. He says that in the challenging and
sometimes daunting world we are living in today, we have to allow ourselves room for
uncertainty and accept this uncertainty with a ?maybe? or a ?as if? to our problems rather
than a definitive ?yes? or ?no?. Here he inverts the title of Milan Kundera?s famous novel
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, saying, ?we have to embrace ?the bearable
lightness of being?? (Kane, 2004:63). He says that in order to transform the uncertainties
and risks that our 21st century constantly presents us with, we have to become players
and we have to believe that this activity is necessary, in other words, ethical. The
performance artists who are discussed in the next chapter can be seen as agents, who
act within this framework. Performance art, in its very nature, is constantly testing
boundaries through action. These tests themselves open up an arena for uncertainty
and for risk and therefore create a space for possibility - a potential space.
39
In relating play to art, Kane sees artists as constant reminders of the strange inventions
we can inject into the world through action. He sees art, especially video and
performance art, as the ultimate celebration of action rather than mediation. He notes
that interestingly enough, most artists revert back to the oldest rhetoric of play: play as
frivolity and subversion, the play of the trickster and the holy fool. They are interested in,
not just the means of representation that they want to play with, but the ?very fabric of
material and social reality? (Kane, 2004:234). This is crucial as it pertains to the artists
discussed in chapter four. These artists play with the very ?fabric of reality?, (indeed they
really play) creating situations where others can play in order to make visible their ideas
and stimulate debate. The notion of the ?trickster? is also discussed in chapter four.
Kane?s view of video and performance art as ?the ultimate celebration of action rather
than mediation? highlights exactly what this thesis is about ? the enactment of play within
performance art ? which is often expressed through video as well (2004:234).
Kane?s theory of play supports this thesis in that his theories of play and how they relate
to the post-modern subject today, from the rhetorics of play to play as ?celebration of
uncertainty? ties into the type of performance art I am discussing. The above theories
which I have drawn from his book: The Play Ethic are important in that they give us a
language so that we may be able to access these seemingly nonsensical acts which the
performance artists, discussed in the next chapter, create in their work. The notion of
action rather than mediation, which as noted above, is more specifically, linked to that of
the performance artist, is especially important here. The emphasis being not on ?what
does it mean?? but ?how is it done?? Moving the question from why to how immediately
highlights the action itself rather than the mediation of that action. It is immediate and it
is this immediate action within space and time, which is important. This feature shall
become clearer in chapter four where we will look at specific works of artist?s Tino
Sehgal and Gustavo Artigas.
I now turn to Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, who wrote the book Rules of Play: Game
Design Fundamentals. Their views on play are important to this study as I find their
definitions of play in terms of how they relate to rules and limits especially interesting in
relation to performance art. Rules and limits are an essential component in performance
art, as they are in games. Salen and Zimmerman contend that rules are the means for
40
creating play. The rules make up the inner essence of a game. In play, ?we explore
games as a system of experience and pleasure; as systems of meaning and narrative
play; and as systems of simulation and social play? (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004:304).
For a general definition of play, which has been mentioned earlier, Salen and
Zimmerman contend that: ?Play is free movement within a more rigid structure?
(2004:304). Take for instance when we are driving a car and we take our hands off the
steering wheel and the car moves freely of its own accord. It is moving freely within the
set confines of the rigid structure of the car. The rules that are created by these
elements make the free movement of play possible. Play comes into being from the
relationships leading the functioning of the system. ?Play is an expression of the system,
one that takes advantage of the space of possibility created from the systems structure?
(2004:304). Performance art can be seen as this as well. Performance art has constantly
been on the borderlines of theatre, dance and live acts. It has always leeched off or
repelled ?the structure of art?, but it is reliant on it at the same time. Performance art is
intrinsically paradoxical and it is this tension, which was mentioned before - between
experimentation and safety - where play can be manifest. In its finest moments
performance art demonstrates this tension in ?taking advantage of the space of
possibility.? (2004:304).
For a clearer view on how this definition, that of play being free movement within a more
rigid structure, functions here are some examples: Playing a game like snakes and
ladders happens only when the players set the rules of the game into motion. However,
the game of play is like a dance that happens in the in-between spaces of the dice, the
board, and in and among the more rigid formal structures of the game. For example, in
more ludic activity, we can think of a man hitting a ball against a wall repeatedly. This
does not have such a formal structure like a game, or any rules, however, the definition
of play still applies. Through the experience of playing with the ball, the player is in fact
playing with structures such as gravity, weight and the texture of the ball, the
architecture of the space and his/her physical skills. In playing with the ball the player is
playing with all these structures, testing their limits and boundaries, and creating ways of
moving around and inside them. Another example of a very playful activity: if we were to
walk down the street in a funny, playful manner, mimicking the characters in the TV
series Monty Python, we would be playing with the more rigid structures and
41
expectations of how one is expected to walk in public (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004:303-
304). In performance art Tino Sehgal is playing with the very economic structure of art
by creating and selling ideas instead of objects. By employing dancers and acting as
director he is also toying with the very structure of the gallery space as a space now
used for more theatrical movements as well as the notion of the artist as the performer.
He thus relies on the assumed roles and structures of art (the gallery, the artist and its
market) to make his work possible.
In each example play exists because of more rigid structures, but it also exists in
opposition to structure. A silly walk is only a silly walk because it departs from the
?normal? or socially accepted way of walking. There is a paradox here, which creates
dialectic. The Monty Python walk is pure silliness. If we were to try and make sense out
of this silliness it would lose its whole point, its attraction. It is this, which Winnicott is
speaking of when he calls for the acceptance of the paradox. Those who resist this
dialectic are those who are constantly trying to make sense out of nonsense. They resist
the chaos, the unpredictability, for a safer means to work in the world. An example of
someone who resists this dialectic could be someone who does not see the point in, for
example, one of Tino Sehgal?s works. They would simply see it as a waste of their time
and his because to them, it (the act, for example, of two people kissing in a dancehall for
hours) is not creating a result or it does not give them any concrete answers. Because
they are looking for the answers, for a concrete result or outcome, they resist this
dialectic, which only makes sense when it is accepted in itself to contain meaning.
Sometimes play not only exists because of and in opposition to these structures but
overwhelms and changes these structures as well. I move to this idea because it relates
to how play, which is enacted through performance art, can sometimes change and /or
extend the existing structure where it is performed within. Salen and Zimmerman quote
the philosopher James S Hans: ?The role of play is not to work comfortably in its own
structures but rather to constantly develop its structures through play? (2004:304). When
play happens, often it overflows and overwhelms the structure in which it is taking place,
creating and instigating emergent unpredictable results. In some cases, the force of play
is so large that it can change the structure itself. A playful slang term might be included
in the dictionary, thus becoming a part of the greater cultural structures that it originally
resisted. This is what Salen and Zimmerman call transformative play (2004:304). In a
42
sense, Sehgal?s work can be seen as transformative as he constantly pushes the
boundaries of performance art and the art market in general. His works overflow the
structure and manifest in momentary transient unpredictable acts.
Other acts that are overflowing into the system in which they take place are flash mobs.
Labelled the ?new social phenomena? (Hewitt, 2003) that has started only recently in the
USA, the flash mob has been incorporated into the newest editions of the Oxford
Dictionary. As mentioned earlier, the flash mob is a perfect example of a group of people
(or players) who use the structure of the environment around them (like shopping malls)
to act in response to that environment in their own way. Simply put, they use the specific
structure of the shopping mall, for example (an outlet that is specifically structured
towards consumption), for completely useless and playful activity, which is simply an
active collective performance within a public space for a limited amount of time. Another
important factor is that these acts are not in defiance of the structure: they are not
performing or enacting their games because they are anti-consumerists and anti-
capitalists. Rather, they are doing this to take over a public space simply for a collective
social gathering, for fun, for play, for not having to always do something with meaning
(like a protest). And why not? In the world we live in today with Internet access and cell
phones, it is easy to feel more and more alienated. A desire to feel part of something, yet
apart from the world, is becoming more and more apparent. It is just like the gift that
Bataille refers to: ?in its escape from rational utility it draws the world to it? (Kosalka,
1999:7).
?Transformative play is a special case of play that occurs when the free movement of
play alters the more rigid structure in which it takes shape? (Salen & Zimmerman,
2004:304). Here, the play not only occupies and opposes the gaps of the system, but
actually transforms the space as a whole. If a group of people arrived in a shopping mall
at lunchtime and all lay on the floor together and started to sing, the common use of that
space would change for that time. The collective action changes the space in which it
takes place. It also changes and/or challenges the use of the space through acting
differently within that space. So play, enacted through performance, then has the ability
to change the assumed function of the space in which it takes place.
However, even though every type of play includes free movement within a more rigid
43
structure, not all play is transformative. In most cases, whether we determine play as
transformative play or not is dependent on our experience of it. Take chess for example.
Some aspects of chess are not transformative at all. The rules do not change (as with
most games). But when players enter into the game transformative play can happen on
many levels. For example, a player?s thinking skills (ways of thinking) might change or
evolve as a result of playing chess on a regular basis. Social relationships between
players or non-players may transform or the game of chess might influence the way the
player sees the objects in space (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004:305).
The artist Gustavo Artist has changed the rules of the game in one of his works entitled
The Rules of the Game (2000-2001). He has taken the normal way two games are
played and adjusted them and used them for another purpose: a performance piece. He
organised four teams: two basketball and two soccer teams, to play at the same time
and at the same place (an indoor basketball court). Here both games were transformed
into an artwork for an alternative purpose (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004:305). In chapter
four I will discuss this artist and aspects of his work.11
In conclusion to this chapter, Kane, Salen and Zimmerman give us an accessible entry
point into play and how it is expressed and enacted generally in society today. Kane
sees the player as using play as a tool to manage the uncertain and risky environment
we live in today. Through acceptance of this chaos we can learn to deal better with our
world. He attests that not only do we have to believe that this step to a more playful way
of living is necessary, but that it is ethical. The artist, and especially the performance
artist, the subject pertinent for this thesis, is closest to this way of life ? acting as a free
subject within a more rigid structure.
Salen and Zimmerman discuss rules as the means for creating play. They explore the
relationship between play and games. Different kinds of play include games in various
ways and through these kinds of play Salen and Zimmerman determine a tentative
11
Could one make a game out of an experience that is typically ordinary or tedious? Waiting in line, driving
a car in traffic... If we see that play is 'latent' within any human activity, we can find inspiration for play
behaviours or actions and contexts anywhere. Ludic activities are the most obvious forms of play that
distinguish play from games. In other words, this category brings us closer to the play of games. The most
obvious way of distinguishing games from other forms of play is the fact that games have a quantifiable
outcome. Generally speaking, Salen and Zimmerman note that non-game forms of ludic activities do not
have a quantifiable income (2004:306).
44
definition: ?free movement within a more rigid structure? and that it is ?an expression of
the system, one that takes advantage of the space of possibility created from the
systems structure? (2004:304). Thus, for them, play basically exists because of and in
opposition to the structure. This relates to play as enacted through performance art.
Through their definition we are able to access, perhaps more easily, the works of the
artists discussed in the next chapter as well as in chapter four.
In the next chapter we will be able to see how performance art can be seen as a game:
an expression of the culture in which we live, an enactment of play - free expression, yet
contained within structure and sometimes overflowing this structure, transforming the
way we think and live.
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CHAPTER THREE
The origins and history of performance and its location within public space
In this chapter I explore aspects of the history of performance art to reflect on how play
can be seen to operate within this form of expression. I cover various parts of
performance art including its manifestations through games. After this I focus more
specifically on examples of performance art and live acts relevant to this study. All of
these performances are situated within the public sphere. Elements such as the body in
space, time, and the traces that performances leave behind, will form part of my
discussion. I am interested in how these elements can operate as themes through which
to access this varied and open-ended art form. In order to discern the connections
between performance and play, looking back in time is necessary so as to see the
specific ways play has functioned as a catalyst for action and as action itself.
I begin with the dynamic sensations of the futurist performances in the early 20th century.
This movement was the first to effectively bring the idea of performance into the sphere
of contemporary art and is a significant influence on art today. Futurism, as its name
suggests, reflected the dynamism, energy, electricity, and industrial churnings of
powerful machines of the day, not as negative forces, but as inspiration for artists. The
future was theirs! Futurism began as a literary movement, led by Filippo Tommaso
Marinetti, who was more of a poet than a visual artist. Marinetti wrote the first Futurist
manifesto in 1909. This manifesto was, if anything, a statement of intent. It was a
celebration of the new, the liberation of the machine and the glory of magnificent
science. The idea of actual motion and dynamism became one of the most crucial and
powerful factors to the futurist (Goldberg, 1979:14).
The futurist painters soon became performers and took part in evenings that Marinetti
organized, which were held at various venues in Paris. Roselee Goldberg, a key writer
on performance art, cites Marinetti in this context: ?The gesture for us will no longer be a
fixed moment of universal dynamism: it will be decisively the dynamic sensation made
eternal? (Marinetti in Goldberg, 1979:14). The futurist performers found their material in
their surroundings and saw performance as the most direct and immediate means to
captivate an audience into taking note of their ideas. For them it was also the best way
to disturb a passive subdued public. With the artists now becoming creators of this new
46
kind of ?variety theatre?, boundaries between different art forms such as painting, poetry
and performance became blurred. This was mainly because the artists and poets were
working collectively under the same roof. Some of the aspects which were involved in
these performances were noise music, artists in strange, almost geometric costumes,
acting out senseless acts with no storyline, synthetic theatre and futurist ballets, which
included mechanical movements. The audience was also coerced into being involved in
these acts, abandoning their comfortable passive state (Goldberg, 1979:17-29). The
Futurists? ideas formed the basis of many performances that have happened since.
These senseless acts might have been one of the entry points into the Dada
phenomenon. Even before Dada?s first act in the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in 1916,
Dada was known for its popular nightlife entertainment activities in Germany. Hugo Ball
and Emmi Hennings, two artists living in Germany at the time, decided to relocate and
open their own little caf?, Cabaret Voltaire in 1916 in Zurich. This was not unlike the
ones they had run before in Munich. A kind of variety theatre opened up, where
everything - from paintings to poetry and performance - was welcome. The artists? focus,
however, remained within the bounds of irrationality, nonsense and anti-aestheticism
(Goldberg, 1979:56). Dada was not art as in an art movement: it was anti-art. Dada had
a constant fight with art, in that if art defined itself as one thing, Dada would be the
opposite of this. If art were to have at least an underlying message, Dada wanted this to
be ?no meaning?. In this light, understanding Dada was entirely dependent on the viewer.
Dada became a disruption of order and the promoters of chaos they believed this
disruption created. Dada attempted to destroy traditional culture and aesthetics through
their renunciation of traditional culture and aesthetics.
Dadaist activities included public gatherings, demonstrations, and the publication of
art/literary journals. Passionate coverage of art, politics, and culture filled their
publications. The movement rebelled against the bourgeois interests, as the artists
believed these interests inspired World War 2 and saw the bourgeois as limited and
oppressive in society as well as in art. As an international movement, Dada was always
on the move, from one place to another and thus it is hard to distinguish the artists?
nationalities. Dada?s last performance evening took place in 1919 in Zurich and carried
on to be one of the most influential movements, inspiring surrealism, pop art and Fluxus,
as well as certain art practices today.
47
Surrealism as well as the actions and collaborations that took place in the Bauhaus (an
art and architecture school which functioned in 1919 to 1933 in Germany) was also part
of this chain of multi-disciplinary movements which broke down the traditional barriers
between art and audience, art and object, as well as the relationship between art and its
institutions (Goldberg, 2004:11).
Performance art as it is understood in a contemporary sense developed out of all these
movements, the human body being a key signifier, albeit in radically different ways. The
focus on the body developed one strand of performance art that came to be known as
body art. This phenomenon was at its peak in the 60?s and 70?s. Even though this
practice is not my main focus, it is important to acknowledge the impact it has had on
later developments of performance art. Body art is generally defined as ?working on or
with the use of the body as the main instrument in performance? (Hoffmann and Jonas,
2005:16). When we hear the phrase ?performance art?, certain artists who have been
defined as artists using their bodies in this way come to mind. Some examples are
Marina Abramovic, Vito Acconci, Carolee Schneeman (see plates 1 and 2) (Hoffmann
and Jonas, 2005:16). Locally Steven Cohen?s work might fall into this category but the
social and temporal framework for Cohen is very different. However, according to Amelia
Jones, body art and performance art are different. To explain this difference in a small
but important degree I will discuss the train of thought of Hoffman and Jonas and then
touch on the writing of Amelia Jones.
The phrase performance art often brings to mind clich?s of ?abused, beaten and naked
bodies? (Hoffmann and Jonas, 2005:5), usually in some kind of blood, mud or bodily
excrement. But body art goes much further than these clich?s. In essence, anything and
everything that is linked to existence and identity can be used in a bigger understanding
of the term, a particularly inclusive term that engages in an array of aspects of life. One
reason for this broad definition is because the body is a signifier of subjectivity ? we are
in a sense our own and only observers (Hoffmann and Jonas, 2005:16).
The two contemporary performance artists, Tino Sehgal and Gustavo Artigas, discussed
in the next chapter, both use the body (on most occasions not their own but other
bodies) as a tool to express ideas. Their work, however, is considerably different to what
is traditionally understood as body art. According to Amelia Jones? definition of body art,
48
Plate 1 Interior Scroll Carollee Schneeman, 1975
Plate 2 Trademark Vito Acconci, 1970.
49
which is discussed below ? their work does not fall into this category. Body art or ?body
works? is considerably different to earlier performance works, as well as performances in
the other movements such as Dada.
In her book Body Art: Performing the Subject, Amelia Jones differentiates performance
art from body art. Jones writes: ?Performance art has typically been defined as motivated
by a ?redemptive belief in the capacity of the art to transform human life,? as a vehicle for
social change and as a radical merging of art and life? (1998:13). Body art on the other
hand, ?emphasizes the implication of the body in the work. It highlights both artistic and
philosophical aspects of the project. It is an extension of portraiture in that it is interested
in the document? (Jones, 1998:13). She also says that body art does not ?strive towards
utopian redemption, but rather places the body itself in the realm of the aesthetic as a
political domain? (Jones, 1998:13). Jones is interested in works that have/have not taken
place in front of an audience and in the artists creating scenarios that they will set up for
a photography shoot. This photo will then stand as witness to their performance and
transfer meaning.
As noted my focus in this thesis lies with action, which takes place when artists perform
their art, not body art per se. The two artists I have used as examples in the next chapter
do not even use their own bodies but rather take on the role as director of other bodies
in order to bring their ideas across. The importance, for me, firstly lies in how they direct
the actions of these bodies. Secondly, I am specifically interested in how the element of
play is enacted within the situations, which they create in the world. I am interested in
the intangible action of the body or many bodies as a site for meaning, rather than the
physical body as a site for meaning.
Many, if not all of the body works created in the late 1960s and early 1970s brought
attention to the idea of the ?male gaze? through the art?s feminist ideals. Artists such as
Carolee Schneemann, Vito Acconci, Hannah Wilke and Yayoi Kusama all explored this
idea in one way or another within their work. These artists predominantly created work
that dealt with the body of the individual ? their body ? in relation to social bodies or to a
broader political structure. While body art is more subjective and interior, the type of
performance art I am focusing on is arguably more publicly engaged and exterior. When
I say ?interior? I refer to body works that focus on the often sexualized and naked body of
50
the artist as the main tool to express an idea. With ?exterior?, I am referring to works that
focus on the actions of the body, the body specifically in action, a body physically
engaged with an audience or with fellow participants in a positive, accessible and
energized way. I will return to this aspect in the next chapter.
Roselee Goldberg has been crucial in the understanding and reception of performance
art. Originally from South Africa, Goldberg?s writings on the history of performance art
have become the main route for accessing this varied art form. Goldberg has thus
played a crucial role in the development and archiving of performance art over the years.
She has since gone on to begin the first largest performance art event entitled
PERFORMA that happens every year all over the city of New York. Goldberg?s general
approach keeps the definition of performance open-ended. She presents performance
as an interdisciplinary web of diverse artistic expressions related to dance, theatre,
literature, music, poetry, architecture and visual art (Goldberg, 2004:15). This open-
ended view of performance comes from two points of reference: modernism and
postmodernism. On the one hand, European avant-gardes were challenging the norms
and common definitions of art and this group included a variety of disciplines such as
Dada. On the other hand, the development of post-war art in the USA, such as Allan
Kaprow?s ?Happenings? in the 1960s, was very interdisciplinary and blurred the
boundaries between art, dance and theatre. Other examples of this time include John
Cage, Joseph Beuys and the Fluxus movement (Goldberg, 2004:15). I am not going to
explain all of these examples in detail, as this is not the focus here. But I mention them
because they typify the type of performance art of the time. All encompassed a true
move towards interdisciplinary acts, which involved just about anything and everything
from sound to dance to public interventions and video.12
12
For a brief definition of the movements mentioned here: Happenings were started by a man names Allan
Kaprow in the late 1950?s and early 1960?s. They encompassed every type of media or form of expression
and often involved audience participation. They were often quite spontaneous and anecdotal, taking place in
the streets as well as in the gallery. Kaprow writes in his article ?The Legacy of Jackson Pollock? in 1958: "
?Not satisfied with the suggestion through paint of our other senses, we shall utilize the specific substances
of sight, sound, movement, people, odors, touch. Objects of every sort are materials for the new art: paint,
chairs, food, electric and neon lights, smoke, water, old socks, a dog, movies, a thousand other things which
will be discovered by the present generation artists. Not only will these bold creators show us, as if for the
first time, the world we have always had about us but ignored, but they will disclose entirely unheard of
happenings...." Fluxus was a movement similarly comprising of artists who worked in an interdisciplinary
manner. Yoko Ono and John Cage amongst many others were involved. Most worked with ?new? technology
in very experimental ways. Both movements often left the viewer with little or no answers resulting in some
confusion. They also encouraged viewers to question boundaries between art and life.
51
Performance has always grown and developed on the edges and the sidelines of various
disciplines. It has included individuals and groups in a variety of venues from streets to
clubs, galleries and museums to theaters. Artists who were impatient with the limitations
of more traditional art forms were attracted to performance art?s open-endedness and
collaborative non-defined atmosphere (Goldberg, 1984:24-25). This open-endedness
and fluidity typifies play as enacted through this art performance.
In coming to grips with performance the decision of the artist to move away from the
studio towards live interaction or action before an audience is important. It was a desire
to be more accessible to the public, a desire for the public to access the art and its
community through a more sensory experience of the expression of ideas through
action. (Goldberg, 1984:25). Thus it provided a presence for the artist in society but its
roots were still firmly within the art context. One such example is Allan Kaprow.
Allan Kaprow was a multimedia performance artist who practiced in the late 1950s and
early 1960s. Kaprow can be seen as one of the pioneers of performance art. His
?Happenings?, which were a mixture of performance, painting, dance, theatre, poetry,
almost anything and everything, blurred the distinction between art and life as much as
possible. They happened in the streets as well as in the galleries, and audience
members (players) were often coerced into acting a part in the performance. Here play
seems to play a large role in these often improvised and extremely interdisciplinary
situations. His ?Happenings? were very influential to the Fluxus movement, installation
art, and performance art. Kaprow proposed that the ?intermedialist? (someone that works
in a very interdisciplinary manner, i.e. with lots of different materials and actions) thinks
all at once, non-hierarchically. Kaprow asserts, ?Context rather than category, flow rather
than work of art? (1993:105). There is a connection I suggest between what Kaprow did
and what, more recently, Pat Kane (2004:101) says. Kane observes that true ?players?
are those who look beyond their own ?tribes?, flit from one experience to the next,
expressing a playful balancing of employment, environment and experience. According
to Kane, the move to make an art of ideas more readily available and accessible to the
public led inevitably to a feeling of playfulness or satire (2004:101).
Artists adopting this fluid medium could use any material, at any time, for however long,
at a location of their choice. This feature was in direct correspondence with the
52
audience, who before, had been far removed from the work as well as the artist. It could
be said that before performance art, the connection between the audience and the art
was through the art product rather than the artist and the production of his/her ideas.
Performance art thus minimized the gap between artist and audience as, especially with
body art, there was now no object and the artist him/herself became the immediate point
of reference.
With performance art, the audience could contact both at the same time. This meant that
the middleman ? the critic ? was now not the only access point for the viewers. The
performance artists had arguably more control over the reception of their work. The
liberation from the art product brought forth the possibility of progression toward an art
where the idea dominated. Like conceptual art, performance art enabled the artist to
steer clear of pictorial (or formal) values alone and move toward an art of more
immediate communication: an art of action. According to Goldberg, this huge shift meant
that art no longer had to conform to conventional formats and that it would never be the
same again (1984:26).
Adrian Heathfield writes in his article ?Alive? in the book Live: Art and Performance:
In this play of bodies within space, performance is often an insertion of the improper
or the incongruous within a specific place, and through this intervention a certain
realignment and activation takes place, opening possibilities that were previously
invisible or prohibited within social reality (Heathfield, 2004:11).
The meaning of intervention is precisely this: ?temporary intrusions in a site that seek to
make alternatives evident? (Spiegl and Teckert, 2006:12). Thus, through performance art
or creative intervention, these actions challenge and transform space. Public space is
seen by artists and other individuals as a site (that is not the studio) in which ideas can
be tested in a new context; public space is thus a site to be opened up, challenged,
mediated and negotiated. Artistic interventions in public space ask us to re-examine
notions of subjective and inter-subjective space and bring us to rethink where identity is
situated. And from these actions, new bonds and links are created within the community.
Heathfield continues, saying that performance operates by means of a performing
subject testing out his or her relation to a site; as such it is the test site of belonging.
53
Performance enables artist and spectators ? made inseparable from each other ? to
experience and think the extent to which a given identity may take leave of the bounds of
place, to question the extent to which a person may negotiate a space in order to both
make solid their identity within the place but also leave it at the same time (Heathfield,
2004:11).
This use of space is of interest to this thesis as it pertains to the context within which the
actions/performances discussed take place. These spaces (not unlike the gallery) play
one of the roles of ?boundary? within which play can take place. Here, specifically I am
referring to artists in active and alert engagement with the world, who express ideas
through their actions within a public space.
Rosalyn Deutsche,13 who wrote the book Evictions (1996), theorizes that public space is
the ?performance of an operation? as opposed to a physical location.14 This focus on the
performance of an operation, veering away from the focus of the location, which is
usually referred to when speaking about public space or art, is interesting for this study.
The emphasis here is on the action. She sees the space of public art as located within
the action itself, within its effect, which is found in discourse.15 It is important that the
13
Rosalyn Deutsche is acknowledged as one of the foremost thinkers on the connection between the
politics of space and contemporary art. In her book she explores and critiques the frequent use of the
interdisciplinary discourse of public space.
Deutsche asserts that both sides portray amicable ideas of space (a park, city, institution, exhibition, identity
or work of art) that hide and justify exclusions. Challenging this she opens up an investigation into a
democratic critique of space, which acknowledges the disagreements that make and maintain all spaces,
including the space of politics itself.
Evictions investigates how aesthetic and urban ideologies were combined during the last decade to
legitimize urban redevelopment programmes that claimed to be beneficial to all, yet in reality tried to
expunge traditional working classes from the city.
Using feminist and postmodern concepts about the politics of visual representation and subjectivity in her
critique, Deutsche steps into debates occurring in art, architecture and urban studies that discuss the
meaning of public space. She situates these struggles within larger debates about the definition of
democracy. Deutsche sees these struggles and conflicts as inherent parts that make up the whole; that
public space would not exist and grow without these conflicts.
14
In 1998 she gave a seminar, which was hosted by Cheryl Younger. The location of the seminar is not
mentioned. One can read this seminar on
http://www.thephotographyinstitute.org/journals/1998/rosalyn_deutsche.html
54
word ?discourse? is understood here. ?Discourse? basically means verbal exchange or
conversation. It can also mean in its archaic form: ?the process or power of reasoning?
(Deutsch, 1998: para 44). Thus, according to Deutsche then, public space is found
within action, which comes into effect through a means of verbal exchange, discussion
and conversation.
?Any site has the potential to be transformed into a public space? (Deutsche, 1998: para
7). It is generally assumed that public art must be art that takes place outside of the
museum or gallery space. Inside the museum is seen as a site of partiality and privacy,
whereas outside the museum is seen as the sufficient condition including universal
accessibility for art?s public nature. Deutsche challenges this view by arguing that public
art can also be situated within a gallery. According to Deutsche, what makes a work of
art ?public? or not is not dependent on the location but the action ? the performance of an
operation, the instigation of a situation, which happens within that space. This then
creates discourse (Deutsche, 1998: paras 10 & 11).
Deutsche sees the most important issue here as ?not whether but how an artist enters a
space? (Deutsche, 1998: para 10). Action is key in this context. The artists discussed in
the next chapter use action as a way to enter a space.16 Through their own bodies or
other people?s, they enter a space through action and it is here in the present moment of
action where the element of play is manifest. Through this action, play is demonstrated
and is thus seen as the tool through which the artists enter a space. For Deutsche it
appears that it is the effect of public art, not its site or existence as object, which is the
15
. In Deutsche?s talk she starts with analysing public art as it presents itself as "defenders of democracy".
She defines the term "public", which has democratic connotations such as "openness", "accessibility",
"participation", and "accountability to the people" (Deutsche, para 3) Thus a study of public art essentially
entails a study of democracy not just of public space or public art. Deutsche's interest in public art discourse
does not seek a type of art that is situated in some "universally accessible site" but rather "the discourse of
public art is itself as a political site, that is of contests over the meaning of democracy and importantly the
meaning of the political" (Deutsche, para 16).
16
."Space is not an entity but a relationship? (Deutsche, 1998:para 15). In returning to my earlier summary
of what Deutsche distinguishes as public space, that it is a discourse, I would argue that this discourse must
be located within a shared space, (for one cannot have discourse with oneself) and thus this space must be
a transitional space. This, according to Winnicott, is a shared space. Thus public space - if distinguished as
a discourse is a shared space where play can happen. By Deutsche saying that public space is not a ?thing?
but it rather a relationship she supports my argument that this public space is fertile ground for where play
can happen as when we refer back to Winnicott- play happens within a shared space. If public space is a
relationship then it is a shared space, a potential transitional space where two subjects can meet and,
through discourse and play, create and manage the world they live in.
55
most essential part of public art (Kimmerling in Deutsche, 1998: para 41).
In relation to the artists discussed in the next chapter and how they enter the space, their
actions, their performance works/projects, create an effect that stirs up a discourse. For
example, Gustavo Artigas? The Rules of the Game, which will be discussed in more
detail in the next chapter, is a work that was enacted within a space through the playing
of two games. The site and the actions were interesting and intriguing, and contributed
to the work on numerous levels, but the effect of the work created political discourse
about the San Diego and Tijuana border because of the location of the performance.
Both Tino Sehgal and Gustavo Artigas create effects that create discourse. This is what
Deutsche claims as the most crucial element of ?public art?.17
The Situationists were a group (distinctly Marxist) that emerged soon after the
Surrealists in 1958 and also worked within the domain of public space and discourse.
Leader of the movement, Guy Debord wrote the publication ?Introduction to a Critique of
Urban Geography?. This piece of writing was conceived principally from the post-war
break-up of surrealism and other successor movements from surrealism and shaped the
movements? beliefs and actions. The Situationists developed three theoretical concepts
? derive, psychogeography, and unitary urbanism. The derive refers to ?an experimental
technique of ?transient passage through varied ambiances?? (Wollen, 2004:147). An
example would be a chance wandering from place to place with no destination in mind,
in the anticipation of possibly coming across meaningful encounters. The second,
psychogeography, means ?the study of the exact laws and specific effect of geographical
environments, whether consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behavior of
17 George Kimmerling wrote a review of Deutsche?s speech and challenged some of her ideas: Kimmerling
asks if the debate is to be democratic, then who will be able to take part in this debate? Can large
institutions such as MoMA accommodate such a varied audience (sex, gender, race, nationality), or the
public to participate in this debate? He asks, "Can purely conceptual art effect public space if only art
cognoscenti are aware of and understand the work?" Is it accessible to a large and varied audience?
Kimmerling concludes that perhaps Deutsche's own view to investigation/ inquiry suggests that these
questions remain unanswerable. Perhaps she is not trying to offer a definition of the term 'public art' but
rather trying to focus on the concept of public space as based not on the location but the ?performance of an
operation? (Kimmerling in Deutsche, 1998:para 43) Kimmerling contends that her function-based framework
for public art does not leave us with many answers but maybe that is exactly the right effect for a theory
based on the idea that democracy sustains conflict, not consensus. This resounds with that of Pat Kane?s
notion of the player: one who accepts and revels in this conflict and chaos and uses this acceptance as a
tool to manage the world he/she lives in. It also resounds with that of Winnicott?s theory that living in
compliance is an unhealthy basis for life, whereas living in active participation with life - accepting all its
chaos and conflict is a more engaged way of living.
56
individuals? (Debord, 1958: para 4)18. According to Debord, this means two things: firstly,
the active observation of the present day urban accumulations, and secondly, the
development of a working theory on the structure of a situationist city. A simpler way of
understanding the term could be that it is basically a mix of various playful inventive
strategies employed to explore cities. ?Psychogeography includes just about anything
that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of
the urban landscape? (Hart, 2004: para 1). Psychogeography depends heavily on one?s
methods of observation through experimentation within the environment, namely by
means of concrete interventions into urban spaces. Unitary urbanism, according to
Debord, was ?the use of all arts and techniques as a means contributing to the
composition of a unified milieu? (Debord, 1957:1). Or as Peter Wollen has said: ?the
theory of the combined use of arts and techniques for the construction ? or preservation
? of environments in which the derive and psycho-geographical experiments would
prosper? (2004:148-149).
According to Sadie Plant in her book The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist
International in a Postmodern Age (1992), the movement was involved in cultural politics
and alternative art forms as a point of resistance to the commodification of everyday life.
In their actions they sought to create spaces for self-determination, to act within spaces
through creating situations.
For the postmodern subject living today, life becomes a never-ending circle of
consumerism where there is free time, choice and opportunity, but ?the commodity form
in which everything appears serves only to reproduce the alienated relations of capitalist
production? (Plant, 1992:3). The artists mentioned in the next chapter as well as the
people who are involved in the projects which will be mentioned below can be seen as
players who actively confront the alienation of the postmodern subject today. They are
actively creating in the world ? mediating their world around them through action, which
is, if we remember, play. To refer back to Winnicott: ?To control what is outside one has
to do things, not simply to think or to wish, and doing things takes time. Playing is doing?
(1971:41). Many performance artists do this consistently in their work.
18
For more definitions see: http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/definitions.html
57
The Situationists tried to align themselves with the player, and they were players at
heart. However, their lack of physical action and too much emphasis on inaccessible
long-winded theories undercut their ideals. In his article ?Mappings: Situationists and/or
Conceptualists?, Peter Wollen contends that the Situationists were passionate about
action within the public sphere, but they consciously left the art world and created a
group that was more focused on political and philosophical discourse. Their artistic
contribution to the events of 1968, even though this time of revolution, flower power and
freedom of expression was ?their dream come true? in a sense, was restricted to painting
slogans on walls (Wollen, 2004:147).
Many urban interventionist groups today, however, are inspired by the Situationists?
writings and are consciously adapting their ideas and enacting them out within public
space. These groups, which I briefly discuss below, are consciously challenging the
notion of the alienated post-modern subject through their projects.
Before discussing these selected groups and their projects or interventions and how they
are connected to the notion of the displaced and alienated postmodern subject, I would
like to revert back to Adrian Heathfield. Heathfield says that in performance, space and
time become inseparable. It is important here to insert what exactly I mean by ?space?.
There are many definitions of ?space?, the most appropriate one for our study being: ?The
infinite extension of the three-dimensional region in which all matter exists.? (Answers
Corporation, 2008). One could also get into the discussion of what the difference is
between space and place. This is not my focus, however. In the western urban context,
public space is privatized: ?Sociality is conditioned by a prevailing individualism and
action is strictly regulated and surveyed? (Heathfield, 2004:10). The moulding of public
space has become very controlled and specific. Through the Internet, virtual space is a
phenomenon, which is both distant and near, both unstable and real. With performance
art leaving its institutions towards situating itself wherever the necessities of expression,
relation and finance dictate, it tests this definition of space and the borders of outside
and inside. In this it relocates identity. Through this testing out and situating itself in
different diverse spaces, it also generates new forms of collaboration and community
that ?negotiate and traverse once solid divisions? (Heathfield, 2004:10). The groups
discussed below can be seen to be testing out and situating themselves in alternative
environments. Through this action via relocation they form another type of space ? a
58
potential space. This potential space, which has been referred to on more than one
occasion in this thesis is different to that of an actual physical space somewhere in the
world. This potential space is a space that has to be activated by individuals in order to
exist. It is a space where an action is shared between two or more individuals. Public
space, in a city, for example can become a site for where this potential space can be
enacted.
I turn now to Victor Turner, (1917-1983), Scottish born anthropologist who theorised
notions of liminality and social drama, who was specifically interested in rituals as liminal
performances. I mention this here, as it is this ?liminal? state of being, which relates to the
enactment of play within performance on a very basic level. I also mention his theories
as they relate to the previous discussions on space. Here he elaborates on the space
where performance art exists (Schechner, 2006: 66).
Schechner says: ?[a] limen is a threshold or a sill - a thin strip, neither inside nor outside
a building or room linking one space to another, a passageway between places rather
than a place in itself.? (Schechner, 2006:66). As it is something, which stabilises a
doorway, for example, it thus has reinforcing attributes. Turner asserts that in ritual and
aesthetic performances, this limen expands into space - both actually and conceptually.
What formally was the ?go-between?, now becomes the site of action. And this action,
Turner claims, remains ?betwixt and between?. So, this action expands into time and
space, but keeps its ?liminality? in that the action remains neither here nor there. This
liminal time-space becomes reinforced conceptually. I am mentioning this liminal space
as I see it as corresponding to the potential space I understand play to entail. Players or
tricksters participate in liminoid activities. I say liminoid rather than liminal activities
because Turner states that whilst liminal activities are required activities like that of going
to a Catholic communion at a church, liminoid activities are voluntary and more
spontaneous- thus including that of recreational activities and the arts. Flash mobs
(which we refer to in a moment) and performance art are both liminoid activities
partaking usually ambiguous acts, which expand the limen- the space that formally was
seen as the ?go-between?.
Today, the immediate, the immersive and the interactive imply a shift to ?the live? (one
could say that is a shift to that of the present- what is happening right now). Cultural
59
production is all alive or live: immediate news, mobile phones, imaging technologies,
webcasts and reality TV. It is a time of experience and the spectacle.
The drive to the live embodied event has been employed as a generative force: to
shock, to destroy pretense, to break apart traditions of representation, to foreground
the experiential, to open different kinds of engagement with meaning, to activate
audiences (Heathfeild 2004:1).
The player is a subject acting within this domain, actively partaking in liminoid activities.
S/he is concerned with the present action: respecting the past and aware of the future
but concerned with his/her action in the present immediate moment.
I refer now back to two kinds of live embodied events/interventions that I have
mentioned previously. The first is the flash mob and the second is an organization called
?transparadiso?. We shall discuss these phenomena here in more detail. Flash mobbing
is a phenomenon that has only recently started in the US and has spread to almost
every continent. The flash mob, which has but only recently been added to the English
Oxford Dictionary, is: ?a public gathering of complete strangers, organized via the
Internet or mobile phone, who perform a pointless act and then disperse again.? (?blog
name goes here?:2006). A flash mob breaks apart often controlled and regulated public
space, through participatory action, which expresses the imagination, fun and the
ultimate celebration of nonsense (see plates 3 and 4).
A man called Bill Wasik started the flash mob in 2003. Wasik states that he saw it at first
as a social experiment on the people in New York:
60
Plate 3 Birdcall flash mob, New York, 2006.
Plate 4 Lying down flash mob, Paris, 2006
61
The basic hypothesis behind the Mob Project was as follows: seeing how all
culture in New York was demonstrably commingled with scenesterism, the appeal
of concerts and plays and readings and gallery shows deriving less from the work
itself than from the social opportunities the work might engender, it should
theoretically be possible to create an art project consisting of pure
scene?meaning the scene would be the entire point of the work, and indeed
would itself constitute the work (own emphasis, Wasik, 2006).
This notion of ?creating an art object of pure scene? links to the idea that ?Performance
does not present the illusion of events, but rather presents actual events as art? (Jonas
and Hoffmann, 2005:15). It is the immediacy of these events (although organised
beforehand via the Internet) where its power is held. The flash mob is not allowed to go
on for longer than ten minutes, after which the crowd must disperse and go back to their
daily routine. ?All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the
performance of an act apart? (Huizinga, 1970:53). Thus, this game, this performance,
this play, has rules but it is an act apart.
In an interview with STAY FREE! Magazine, Bill Wasik says that the people themselves
became the show. In an ongoing lookout for the next big thing to attend, they attended
themselves in action. They became the show and the audience. ?The desire not to be
left out was part of what would grow it? (Wasik, 2006). And because it took place in such
a short space of time and in easily accessible environments, such as on the way home
from work, it became readily consumable.
The participants of these flash mobs were acting in an open potential space. They were
testing out their site through these actions. In our lives there is a tension between
experiment and safety. This, asserts Pat Kane (2004:225), is where the play moment
begins: ?The need to fully test out all the possibilities of being human, yet under
conditions which are, themselves not fatal, violent or beset with privation and pain.?
These flash mobbers are doing exactly this ? testing out their environment through their
actions. This in itself is a sense of order and tension. As Salen and Zimmerman
(2004:304) note, all play exists because of and in opposition to a more rigid structure.
The flash mob is exactly this. They would not exist without the spaces within which they
take place. Through an experiment, through play, which is enacted within a ?safe? place,
the participants test out their space and thus their identity within the world, together.
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There is something wonderfully appealing about being ?apart together? which attracts
people to play together, to mutually withdraw from the rest of the world and create
something which is, in itself, apart and different. In its emphasis on participatory action
for the sake of itself, for doing something together, it can de-alienate the subject. We
become the spectacle where we are observing ourselves. We are neither artist nor
audience but both, all and everything.
The flash mob is an act of play. It is an act apart yet its power lies in the experience of
being an act apart, separate from the ?ordinary world?, yet together. It draws the world to
it in its exteriority as something different and special, temporal within its potential space
with its own rules and limits, its own sense of order.
The flash mob also refers to Victor Turners idea of ?communitas?, which is where liminoid
activities take place. Turner asserts that:
In liminality, communitas tend to characterise relationships between those jointly
undergoing ritual transition. The bonds of communitas are anti-structural in the
sense that they are undifferentiated, equalitarian, direct, extant, nonrational,
existential, I-Thou relationships. Communitas is spontaneous, immediate, concrete
? it is not shaped by norms, it is not institutionalised, it is not abstract. [?] (Turner in
Schechner, 2006: 71)
Flash mobs can be seen as communitas as they are a direct form of anti-structural
relationships. They highlight the commonality between people without denying the
individuality of each participant. Instead of focusing on the differences they focus on
the act of being there together. One can also see flash mobs as a ritual of the 21st
century as a result of the alienation of the post-modern subject. By enacting this ritual
these communitas feel a sense of togetherness in their ?liminoid? activities.
Another artist led initiative, which works in the realm of liminoid activities, is the
transparadiso project. The project can be seen to engage with communities to create an
experience where participants of the community can become ?new social agents?.
Transparadiso was founded in 1999 by artist, Barbara Holub and architect, Paul
Rajakovics and it is based in Vienna. It is seen as a ?platform for intended and non-
calculated interventions between art, architecture, and urbanism with regular excursions
to border zone? (2004:para 2). In 2000 they created the ?Wish game? or the ?wishing
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released project? in a town called Deseo Urbano, in Valparaiso, Chile. Here the potential
of wishing was seen as a huge theme of an urban intervention. A puzzle-like board
game was made where the residents? wishes were presented to the city. The board
game was laid out on the ground in a very busy part of the town. Here urbanists
assumed the role of wish consultants.
The project created a means for providing space for the unknown wish and therefore
created desire to contribute to development and growth and give the people a chance to
be led by the idea that they could really have an influence on the space in which they
live. Here what became important was the actual action of ?wishing?: ?wishing beyond
any feasibility rather than leading to short-term consumption of culture? (Telic Arts
Exchange, 2004). This act of wishing creates a potential/ temporary space, which is not
for a particular use. Its function/use is determined within the act of wishing itself, bringing
about a sense of hope as well as worth to those who are wishing.
Out of the difference between the concrete wish and the unknown, a potential can
develop that cannot be imagined yet. This uncertainty, which can be produced, for
example, by temporary releasing contradicts the usual logic of planning therefore
need other instruments and actors (Huizinga, 1970: 20).
This game can be seen as a type of performance art. It is engaged with an audience, a
place and a time. It is an action, which is set apart from ?ordinary life?, creating a
temporary world dedicated to an act apart. Huizinga referred to a definition of play, which
can relate to this project. He notes that play could also be seen as a form of ?wish-
fulfillment?, as a ?necessary restorer of wasted energy? and as ?a fiction designed to keep
up the feeling of personal value? (Huizinga, 1970:20).
Above all, perhaps, it is important to engage in an equal exchange with others that
re-embodies experiences and meanings across networks of ?locals?. In this respect
the tricky spirit of invention and intervention seeks to open up new ethical
landscapes, creating both new narratives and new agents (Peluffo in Fischer
(2004:63).
Both of these examples are quite different: one, the flash mob, is more nonsensical and
interested in the enactment of nonsense within public space so as to illustrate a point
(which is the point of action and nonsense itself), while the other is more directed
towards engaging with people on a more focused level, where they play a part in
realising their desired community or environment through wishing. I use both as
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examples, however, to illustrate my point. That is, play is situated essentially within
action, which is not for utility but for the importance of action in and of itself. This, I argue
is important for the displacement experienced by the postmodern human subject. These
actions/projects are useful examples of expressing this statement.
Performance art and interventions like flash mobs and transparadiso slide into a liminal
temporality. The notion of time, the condition of event-hood brings the spectator into the
present moment of the making and unmaking of meaning. It is a condition, which is
unstable and ambivalent. As Heathfield notes, ?Allowance for the spectator to live for an
audience in the paradox of impossible desires: to be present in the moment, to savour it,
and to save the moment, to still and preserve its power after it has gone is?? (2004:9).
For, as I shall show in the next chapter, with the artist Tino Sehgal?s work, the present
moment is all we are given.
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CHAPTER 4
Artists who play
Our body is not in space like things; it inhabits or haunts space. It applies itself to
space like a hand to an instrument; and when we wish to move we do not move
the body as we move the object. We transport it without instruments as if by
magic, since it is ours and because through it we have direct access to space.
For us the body is much more than an instrument or a means; it is our expression
in the world, the visible form of our intentions. Even our most secret affective
movements, those most deeply tied to the humoral infrastructure, help to shape
our perception of things (Merleau-Ponty in Battcock,1984:x).
The artists discussed below, Tino Sehgal and Gustavo Artigas direct bodies ? their own
or those of others - to create situations. These situations translate as the work, as do the
various actions involved. This is especially the case with Tino Sehgal: when the action
comes to an end, the work ceases to exist except within the minds of the viewers. There
is no material evidence of the work. It is in the moment of the work being performed that
the actions become tangible, where meaning lies and play is located.
The notion of immediacy is crucial here. Live art needs directness to communicate
effectively; the less the action is mediated through other channels the better. The real
experience of this art is the gift of time (Battcock, 1984:xviii). Tino Sehgal, as I shall
show, uses this gift of time to its full advantage, where the experience of the work is of
utmost importance as it is all the viewer is left with when it is over.
Experience is always difficult to analyse in academic contexts. But there are many
attempts; some go back in time but are still relevant. John Dewey, who wrote Art as
Experience, (1934) says:
Experience in the degree in which it is experience is heightened vitality. Instead of
signifying being shut up within one?s own private feelings and sensations it signifies
active and alert commerce with the world; at its height it signifies complete
interpretation of self and the world of objects and events (1934:19).
This statement relates to Pat Kane?s ideas of the players who are fully active and alert
within the world, and are motivated to fulfil their root desires through action: ?For players,
private will manifests itself fully in public action; players are filled with the excitement of
pursuing their root desires in a disciplined, determined, self-conscious manner. Who we
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are, and what we do, come together in the act of free play? (Kane, 2004:48). The
performer or director of a performance/situation is indeed a player, acting out root
desires within a demarcated space. Action is key here.
?Performative? is a word that does something rather than describes something; it is more
of an utterance than a description (Hoffmann and Jonas: 2005:12). The word
performative is also used more generally and is not restricted to or meant exclusively for
performance art. In terms of performance in contemporary art today, however, the intent
of the artist is crucial in determining whether the work is a performance or not. Some
artists and theorists argue that all art is performative. This is because artists participate
in, and play a determining role in this world, which is seen as a theatrical play, yet they
do it consciously, and with specific intent. But the assertion goes even further that the
presentation of self is in a sense performative. Erving Goffman, an anthropologist who
studied the performances and rituals of everyday life explores the details of individual
identity, group relations and the impact of environment on the individual, in his book The
Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959). In this book Goffman adopts a ?dramatical
approach? whereby he sees everyday actions and presentations employed by the
individual as shaping their identity. Goffman sees ?? the process of establishing a social
identity based on everyday acts and ways of social interaction shaped through the
contact we have with our daily environment - as a form of performance? (Goffman in
Hoffmann and Jonas, 2005:12). Here the world is seen as a theatrical play of which we
are all a part and we perform our everyday acts, and through this, participate in a
process to form a social identity.
For me the way Goffmann sees the construction of identity as a performative process
connects to Winnicott, where the beginning of the search for the self can only happen
through creativity and thus play, action, and performance (Hoffmann and Jonas,
2005:12). In Winnicott?s writings on cultural experience and its location, he notes that
play has a place and a time, that through play the individual discents, ?the not-me? as
?that which the individual has decided to define as truly external? (1971:41). WInnicott
continues that ?[t]o control what is outside one has to do things, not simply to think or to
wish, and doing things takes time. Playing is doing? (Winnicott, 1971:41). Therefore the
performative play of life, which we participate in daily, where we act in the world (do
things), ultimately contributes to the make up of our identity.
67
Whilst it would be wrong to flatten out all action in life as play (performativity) and in so
doing deny the specific character of performance art, it is important to see the link that
certain performance artists make through their work with so-called real life experience.
Sehgal and Artigas are a case in point. They consciously partake in this process of play
through doing things in the now declaring their actions manifestly performative. They do
not perform specifically for the ?search for the self? but to open up a space for others to
access ideas they propose through live experience. These propositions could very well
inspire a viewer to ponder notions of subjectivity.
As noted in the previous chapter, Winnicott has found this essential area of experience
in the potential space between the individual and the environment an important space
where the individual learns to master the complexities of the world through the action of
play. This space could also be seen as the space between the audience and the viewer,
the space, which the performance artist shares with others in order to bring across
his/her ideas through action. The creative experience is not something that happens
solely within the individual, nor is it something that happens to the individual, but rather it
is something between two (or more) subjects. The recognition of this process is
significant as it makes us rethink the notions of subjective and inter-subjective spaces
and how we assess experience itself, both within the psychoanalytical sphere and the
wider cultural scene.
Sehgal and Artigas can be seen here to be consciously taking part in the equivalent of
this potential space; a place where play starts. What they do also relates to Salen and
Zimmerman?s broad definition of play as "an expression of the system, one that takes
advantage of the space of possibility created from the system?s structure? (2004:304).
The space these artists work in is generally considered public. The term 'public', as
discussed in the previous chapter by Rosalind Deutsche, is interpreted as a performance
of an operation rather than something outside of the museum and gallery sphere.
TINO SEHGAL
Tino Sehgal (1976) was born in London and is now based in Berlin. Gregory Battcock?s
writings on the body in performance art, for all that these are now historical, serve to
illuminate Sehgal?s practice. The following quote is particularly telling. ?Before man was
aware of art he was aware of himself. Awareness of the person is, then, the first art. In
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performance art the figure of the artist is the tool for the art. It is the art.? (Battcock,
1984:x). Sehgal?s interventions are an expression of his ideas made visible through the
action of others (dancers or actors). Even though it is not his ?figure? or body in the work,
his art uses of ?the body? as a tool to enact his ideas. Sehgal?s methodology stems from
his background as a choreographer and his studies in political economics. In an
interview with curator Hans Ulrich Obrist he says that it (his practice in the visual art
world) all started with his interest in economics and how he saw dance as an interesting
model for this, that is, the modes of production and consumption of objects and how this
was inherent in dance (Sehgal in Obrist, 2004). He motivates this idea saying that the
traditional view of the visual arts is to extract from nature and then create a product from
this. Sehgal notes that "dance transforms actions to obtain a product or artwork and it
produces and deproduces this product at the same time" (Interview with Obrist, 2004). In
other words, dance does not create objects; it creates meaning and connectivity. It
creates relations, as it is always in relation to human beings. Ultimately, he has said that
he would like to link these two concepts (dance and economics) with immaterial products
(his interventions), which are independent of the museum, gallery and art fair for their
short-lived and impermanent existence (Interview with Obrist, 2004).
Sehgal?s work is experiential, thought provoking, anecdotal, surprising and loaded with
meaning. It is transient, in that he uses actors and sometimes the gallery staff to enact a
set of situations from instructions that he has given them. However, as much as his work
is intangible in that it cannot be bought or sold in any material form, it is temporarily
materialised in and through a body or bodies. It can also be seen as a potential or virtual
work.
As noted Sehgal?s works are not allowed to be documented in any way and even when
he sold a piece to Jerome Bel there was no paperwork involved. The only object
exchanged was the money in cash, which is not seen as the object of the work. Sehgal
sees the work as a product, a very specific product that can be performed in different
parts of the world at the same time, but is totally immaterial, thus excluding or
uninvolving the whole 'civilised mode of production' (Interview with Obrist, 2004). Here
Sehgal?s work fits into Bataille's theory of the gift, in that it escapes a rational sense of
utility. His works are gifts made visible through human action and his subjects are freed
from utilitarian modes of production. Meaning is mediated through the action itself.
69
He also does not write down any of his ideas or instructions. Writing is not a part of his
work. He says: "Instruction and interpretation are always there and are inseparable from
the medium or from the actors" (Interview with Obrist, 2004). Here, he finds, is where his
work can be much cleaner than that of what is generally understood as performance art:
"If we are going to dematerialise art then let?s really dematerialise it! Performance artists
didn?t want to sell or reproduce their works, whereas I?m interested in creating products
but by rethinking the notion of a product as a transformation of actions not as a
transformation of material" (Sehgal interview with Obrist, 2004) So Sehgal?s works are
sold in and of themselves as potential products of 'experience', of action rather than
material.
As he is fluent in art history and theory he is more interested in offering his ideas for sale
than trying to dematerialise the art object, as his ideas never materialise into a
permanent trace. Sehgal is not interested in creating critique of the art world but is more
interested in opening up a space, an event space, where he highlights the endless
possibilities of action, which can take place anywhere including the gallery or museum.
Within his work an insistence on encounter and experience is manifest, which sidesteps
that of the 'spectacle' (Steeds, 2005).
At a talk given in Geneva, Switzerland on 8th of March 2006, Sehgal showed no visual
documentation, but told stories about his work. Here, I was able to observe firsthand that
when he discusses the work the discussion creates an entirely new performance. By
this I mean that the discussion is in the moment and thus unique within each listener?s
imagination. Each viewer inadvertently colours the work with his or her own view. Thus
the discussion of an event or a happening becomes part of the act of storytelling. These
stories become ?claims to rendering a missing object? (Hoffmann and Jonas, 2004:20).
In other words the stories ?stand in? for the object, which is not there. This means in
effect that the act of story telling becomes the extension of the performance, if not the
performance itself. Ultimately, the stories told cannot escape a subjective experience.
Sehgal says that he is not as interested in the original as he is interested in how these
ideas, "perform themselves through this society?. He continues, ?They are there even
when they are not there anymore. And I think dance is a good model for seeing that"
(Sehgal in Obrist Interview, 2004). Here the artist becomes a producer in an event that
70
embraces different kinds of audience participation.19
?With performance, traditional approaches to interpretation are of little or no use because
the value of the art is not to be found in its aesthetic characteristics but in the action of
the artist: what is said and what is done? (Goldberg, 1984:xx). When the audience
encounters Sehgal?s works in the museum context (let us assume here for argument
sake that the majority of the audience does not connect the piece with the history of
dance) they are surprised and shocked. This is not because Sehgal is interested in
shocking them. They are shocked, not because of what the person is doing, but because
the person is doing something, which does not automatically make sense in the context.
Their shock seems to be, as Sehgal says because ?[t]hey are questioning the medium
more than the specific activity" (Sehgal interview with Obrist, 2004).20
This medium of action, which is essential to all his works, not only operates within the
context of the gallery or museum space, but within the general art world. The works
"dissimulate regulations and deregulations of a system that never really succeeds in
distinguishing itself" (Moisdon, 2006). It seems as if Sehgal is almost taking advantage
of the fact that the structure of art has never quite succeeded in defining itself by using
this somewhat unstable ?structure? to incorporate his own art. He plays with this
uncertain structure of the art world and creates his own world ? a playground ? with its
own transient aura. In a sense it can be seen as a type of transitional play in that his
works would not exist if it were not for the gallery structure and that of art discourse and
criticism. His works exist because of and in opposition to this structure.
The guards and other gallery staff members all play a part in this structure of
communication and exchange. They are the tools that the artist works with to make his
product, his artwork. Playing neither part of subject nor object, they stand as people who
19
There are many examples of people united by action in an imaginative intervention of daily life to produce
a new collective narrative. A word to describe this could be the word fabulation, which is the moment when
the story telling function is set in motion (Fischer, 2005:63).
20
Thus he feels that the museum is a better place for his work than in the theatre, because in the theatre
people are doing things all the time and the viewers come to the work (more often than not) previously
informed with the medium and thus having certain expectations.
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make up the material elements of an idea, an invention. In a review of Sehgal?s most
recent show at Manifesto in 2005, Stephanie Moisdon writes: "That which Tino Sehgal
bestows upon the place of his signing, is precisely this space of invention, its necessity:
why invent? Why even ? present a world ? which would ? add to ? reality? To produce a
discourse, a fiction, a representation?" (Moisdon, 2006) His works initiate these
questions within the viewer and thus create an alternative discourse (about art, life,
action, space) whenever it is witnessed.
We understand that most modernist traditional artistic discourse goes hand in hand with
critical discourse, which exists in an interdependence of "an affirmation a judgement -
and of a denotation - an object, a signification, a sign? (Moisdon, 2006). Into this space
we are asked or obliged to invent, it becomes a place of invention. And with Sehgal?s
works we are asked to question not only his inventions themselves, "What do they
mean?" but do they have a use? Are they necessary? It is this question ? do they have a
use? These questions interest me in relation to play and specifically to Bataille?s notion
of the gift. They, these works, these actions, are useful in that they are not useful at first
glance. This means that they celebrate their uselessness and it is this celebration of
pure action and selfish uselessness that determines an alternative meaning. Meaning is
deferred to the action and nothing before or after this is important. This is where the play
moment lies. Some examples of his works will be discussed below to give you some
idea of his performances.
As noted earlier Kiss is a work performed at the Ballhaus Mitte (dance hall) in the mirror
hall at the Berlin Biennale for contemporary art in 2006 (see plate 5). Two people stood
in the room entwined in an embrace, kissing. People entering the room would have
different reactions; some would play the voyeur and stare while others would look and
then quickly look away. The live act was repeated at intervals throughout the day.
this is so contemporary took place at the Venice Biennale at the German Pavilion in
2005 (see plate 6). Every day, as people entered the building, they were targeted by
actors and actresses who danced around them and sang the words "this is so
contemporary, this is so contemporary" and then would sign the work verbally saying
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Plate 5 Kiss Tino Sehgal, 2006.
Plate 6 this is so contemporary Tino Sehgal, 2005.
73
"courtesy of the artist Tino Sehgal 2005".
The objective of that object 2004 was a set of interventions or performance installations
at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, which consisted of a group of
"interpreters" and often confused gallery attendees, who sometimes did not even enter
the space of the work, or left it prematurely as they were so caught off guard by the
goings on. When people entered the space they were confronted with five performers,
their backs turned to the entrance. The performers eventually began to breathe quite
loudly and in quite urgent tones they said: "The objective of this work is to become the
object of a discussion". If there were no response from the viewers, the performers
would collapse to the floor as if failing. This was their attempt to create discourse. Some
of the viewers experienced the work differently where someone asked them what they
thought of Henri Bergson's theory of creative evolution. In the review entitled ?Tino
Sehgal at the ICA? by Stephanie Cash, it seems that the viewer who asked the question
knew how to play the game and the answer given back from the performers also
seemed quite rehearsed. After the long discussion the performers, all in unison, lifted up
their bodies in a huge whoop and jumped pogo-stick-like, back to the centre, where they
collapsed in a heap, awaiting new arrivals (Cash, 2005).
Sehgal?s works are ephemeral, or at least fleeing materiality allowed for a moment by
the artist. Sidestepping all that is objective, his transient poetic interventions leave the
viewer with a gift, a content yet somewhat confused afterglow. It is a moment he has
been given to them, an anecdote he has invited them to witness, and to make up their
own minds about.
GUSTAVO ARTIGAS
Mexican artist, Gustavo Artigas (1970), has developed an intricate language around
social tensions of group organization, consequences and risks involved in game and
disaster situations. Jennifer Teets? review on some of his works in 2004 called ?Are we
here to play or be serious?? (Teets, 2004) notes that his work engages a universe of
limits. With regards to the game, a game involves the limit between what is and what is
not a game. It is harder to specify than what it seems at first glance, as Artigas has
discovered within his work and highlights. Teets also says that some common reactions
74
to this relationship between limits and games are that "a game would be a free activity
without consequences. Disaster is a limit confined by fear and/or inevitability" (Teets,
2004).
Like Tino Sehgal, Gustavo Artigas is also a master of ceremonies, a director, and a
designer of situations. He has developed a three-way methodology juxtaposing games,
performative gestures and political critiques into anecdotal chapters. In all of these
strategies though is the element of chance and unpredictability that Artigas enjoys so
much. In an interview with Sean O Toole in 2001 Artigas says that he sees himself as an
?architect of situations with unpredictable results? and that "as an artist you set the rules
and create the platform. But there are lots of things that can happen. I really like this idea
that things can happen ? because it is not boring. It's the beginning of something.
There's always a human factor happening; that's the nice thing" (Artigas in O?Toole,
2001). Thus a lot of the enjoyment of his work comes from the celebration of the
unknown, the possible, the potential, and the unpredictable. By creating these situations
he celebrates this potential space through actions of others, through play.
His work The Rules of the Game (2000 ? 2001), which took place on the Tijuana/San
Diego border confused many viewers as it inverted the idea of the game altogether (see
plates 8 & 9). The work was constructed in two parts. For the first part he built a handball
court next to the border in the local neighbourhood of Libertad, which was situated right
at the common crossing point for illegal immigrants entering into the USA. Young boys
played the game. Sometimes the ball would go over the high wall that separated the two
countries and the boys would simply climb over and get it. In this act this work puts
forward a commentary on the ?bouncer-like? migratory tendencies of the region.
For the second part of the work he invited two high school soccer teams from Tijuana
and two high school basketball teams from San Diego to play a simultaneous match on
the same indoor basketball court. What was interesting here was that this act was not a
typical competitive battle for ownership of the ball. It could have been a battle for
ownership of the court but the players came up with an alternative policy. This manifest
through the concept ?difference without interference?, as all four teams were playing their
games in the same space yet not interfering with each others? game. In the acceptance
of differences of their games, the court became a space, which they had to negotiate
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Plate 7 The Rules of the Game Gustavo Artigas, 2000 - 2001
Plate 8 The Rules of the Game Gustavo Artigas, 2000 ? 2001
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alternatively through the act of sharing the space without interfering in the other players?
game. The work brought up questions around different forms of a limit: grappling with
competitive action versus cohabitation. "There, many viewers witnessed, although
subtly, two strikingly inoffensive yet sublimely political acts of social
compatibility/incompatibility? (Teets, 2007). Accommodation of the other - the San Diego
basketball players accommodating the Tijuana soccer players and vice versa ? was one
of the messages the act brought across during and after the game. The fact that all the
players each received a gold trophy at the end of the game brought the performance
down to a ?common denominator? in that the game was about the experience of
accommodating the other through the playing of their games, not about winning or
losing. The act was extended to a new point of definition in that it had an alternative
ending to what we usually are accustomed to at the end of the game.
Through a mix of chance, jeopardy and considerable unpredictability, Artigas
constructed a situation, which resonated in the political realm of its vicinity (Teets, 2007).
And what of the audience? The viewers of the game really got involved in the game. In a
sense, different supporters of each of the teams of each game also had to share the
space through their support of the game. In a review on this work Sally O'Reilly contends
that Artigas "often makes a contestant out of an observer, confounds an expectation or
sets up a perverse situation that seems almost hilarious" (O?Reilly, 2004). Here, the
viewers of the work are also the spectators of the game, which is being played out. As
their role as spectator they enter the game as a participant, a cheering, motivating force,
intrinsically part of the work (O?Reilly, 2007).
This work can be seen as exemplifying Salen and Zimmerman?s theory that games are a
reflection of culture. "When framed as cultural rhetoric, games are systems of
representation involved with cultural beliefs and values" (Sutton Smith in Salen and
Zimmerman, 2004:520). Artigas? game reflects the culture of the place where the game
was played. The game reflected the political tendencies of the place where it was
situated and he negotiated this place through a game, through play. In Salen and
Zimmerman?s terms it was as enacted as ?free movement within a more rigid structure?
and was ?an expression of the system, one that takes advantage of the space of
possibility created from the systems structure.? (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004:304). Can
the ?play? in this work be called transitional play? Did it overflow and transform the
77
structure from which it was taking place? We might assume the experience of the work
by the players and viewers might have changed their way of thinking in terms of living
and working with others. Certainly this has the potential to highlight situations, which
before may have not been given enough attention. In this sense Artigas has made an
intervention into social space. I cite a definition of ?intervention? here, which I find
pertinent to Artigas? way of working: ?Interventions are temporary intrusions in a site that
seek to make alternatives evident? (Spiegl and Teckert, 2006:12). Here, through the
construction and enactment of a situation, Artigas has made evident an alternative
situation.
In his article ?The Game Ain't Over Yet 2004? (Soler, 2007)
Eduardo Perez Soler's focuses on games and gaming within Artigas' work:
Games: some see it as just fun with no meaning whilst others associate it with that
of ritual or an indispensable part of creativity.
Whatever the case, he writes it?s conceivable to see that,
? games are a practice aimed at representing a reality that, in the margin of our
daily world, never cease to be taken as a model of reference. Games allow
participants to act in a world made up according to their own rules but by which, to a
certain extent, re-enact the real world. It's a ritualised activity that places us in a
world different from the ordinary, although it is inspired by such a world (Soler,
2004).21
In games there are rules and the structure of the game is able to create another
alternate reality, but the game is constantly borrowing elements from the ordinary world.
At their core, games are a mirror, a reflection of reality. Artigas is aware of this quality
and uses games regularly as a way to create new metaphors of our reality. He is
specifically interested in the capability games have to highlight certain experiences and
diverse elements of our culture.
21
Soler quotes Juan Nurio, who says that "games need to satisfy the condition of being a 'representation' or
an 'initiation' of something (Soler, 2004). Examples of this could be softball and soccer: A home-run can be
symbolic of one travelling to other places, running around the outside of the world, overcoming adversity and
finally coming home. In soccer there is a stronghold who defends at all costs in order not to be violated by
the penetration from the adversaries. This idea is also mentioned in Chapter two where Salen and
Zimmerman see games as a cultural rhetoric. What is important here is that games can be seen as a mirror
or a reflection of real life. They are re-presentations of our culture, our reality yet re-presenting it in a
different way.
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More recently, Artigas has directed diverse games with strange characteristics, which
are then later exhibited in the form of video or photography documentation. Through
using an apparently playful aspect of games, Artigas presents work to us, which offers a
world where the subject seems to be compelled into situations fraught with moral
dilemmas, physical risk and even psychological and emotional imbalance (Soler, 2004).
These works allude to a negative and anxious view of the condition of the contemporary
individual.
One of these works, which I think demonstrates a nervous condition, is Duplex. The
artist was asked to create a work around the theme of Latin American identity (see plate
10). He responded by approaching a casting agency and requesting 10 models that
looked like him. He was then supposed to give a speech on the subject. The
actors/models, who were all Spanish, went up one by one stating that they were
Gustavo Artigas. All of them spoke with heavy Spanish accents about identity politics
and explained the definition of multiple personality disorder, a condition in which the
subject loses his/her identity and adopts many identities, not just one.
The work highlights the impossibility of investigating or defining Latin America's identity,
as it is a vague concept, which alludes to "a diverse and complex reality" (Soler, 2004). It
also refers to disassociation or alienation of personality. Also, the fact that all the
doubles were Spaniards with accents highlighted the ironic representation of individual
identity.
The work Geeta vs Sage (2001) focuses on the boundaries of social convention and
cohesiveness among group organisations. Geeta vs Sage took place in Johannesburg at
Roxy's Rhythm Bar in Melville and was different to other projects. Whilst other projects
study extreme or unusual situations, this work analysed the social anxiety of the
immigrant condition. It was also simply about having fun (see plate 11).
Artigas says of this project: "I used a particular tension in one social aspect of South
Africa. Some red zone bars were closed by government because of the growing illegal
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Plate 9 Duplex Gustavo Artigas, 2001
Plate 10 Geeta vs Sage Gustavo Artigas, 2001
80
population coming from other African countries (the same is happening in Mexico too). In
this work I developed a ceramic piece firing the mud used in a mud wrestling fight"
(Teets, 2004). In an interview with Sean O?Toole Artigas also said, however, that one
should not take oneself so seriously as an artist:
I'm just playing around a bit with the context, joking a bit with sculpture and
ceramics. If you had to enter a gallery and find this mud-wrestling ring as an
abstract sculpture, you would say: 'That's a really horrible piece.' I think that would
be an achievement. But it's also a really formal piece too. It's about art, and it's
about conventions? But it's also just about having fun.
Artigas favours a working process, which sees him create situations that are based on
and around rules. Like Sehgal, he ?sets the stage? and the others ? his participants ? do
the rest. In Geeta vs Sage, Geeta and Sage, who are professional strip tease artists,
mud wrestle in the club in front of a large crowd. They play according to his rules but
they also play in their own way.
The intervention Emergency Exit (2002) surprised spectators with its action-packed
character. Resonating with Yves Klein's Leap into the Void (see plate 35), but in a more
contemporary way, Artigas converted the access ramp of the Carrillo Gil Art Museum
into a ramp for a motorcycle. The rider, an action stuntman, climbed the ramp at top
speed and crashed through a wall and landed in the gallery. In this work Artigas made
art a high-risk activity by modifying the institutional museum space into one for sporting
events. He subverted the normal gallery and museum-going activity, which was calm
and contemplative, to that of disturbing reception.
Through his projects and his somewhat delightful morbid contemplations, Artigas turns
disaster into recreation. He is aware of how human beings are fascinated with accidents
and danger, and in his work he exercises his awareness consciously on the
contemporary imagination. He recognises that his morbid fascinations are a re-
presentation of a reality where the subjects are subjected to a continual state of
uncertainty and risk (Teets, 2004).
Both Sehgal and Artigas, directors of situations, work within a somewhat unpredictable
arena. While they may be conductors of their performances, they are not the performers.
I see them as acting within Winnicott?s ?potential space? as they operate in an arena in
81
which identity is negotiated, an arena shared between two or more subjects. To re-
iterate; in all of their works, others enact the performances according to assumed roles,
and rules outlined by the artists. A lot is left to chance. Each individual player interprets
and acts out the work differently. Both artists work within the arena where they are using
play through games or situations by taking advantage or using the structure (the
contemporary art world or political arena) within which they work. The situations, which
they direct and instigate into a space, bring attention to the effects of human interaction,
action itself within a space and inter-subjective and subjective space.
In returning to the concerns raised in the beginning of this chapter, these two artist work
in a way that for me corresponds to John Dewey?s notion of art as experience. It is worth
reiterating Dewey?s notion here:
Experience in the degree in which it is experience is heightened vitality. Instead of
signifying being shut up within one?s own private feelings and sensations it signifies
active and alert commerce with the world; at its height it signifies complete
interpretation of self and the world of objects and events (Dewey, 1980:19).
Immediacy is critical to Sehgal and Artigas, Sehgal more so. Both focus on the work as
an event, as something to be experienced in the moment. The space within which they
work ? the public sphere ? is important and seen, not as a static field but an arena
fraught with possibility. They highlight the notion of the endless possibilities of the human
subject; how we act and interact in the world today, but they do it through play.
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CHAPTER FIVE
Want to play?
Non-climactic experiences expressed through performance.
The themes that I have focused on in this thesis - play, participation, action, games and
intervention ? are key elements in my art practice. Important here are the non-climactic
experiences I spoke of earlier, i.e. whereby nothing before or after the interaction holds
as much meaning as the action itself. These themes provide the viewer with concepts
through which to access my work and they function as starting points for my projects.
Much of my work begins as an experiment by way of performing a situation. This
situation is usually recorded on video or through still photography. Whilst the video and
photography are the means through which I document my performances, I also see
these video and photographic pieces as artworks in their own right. To assert this fact I
emphasize certain formal and conceptual qualities of these media. For instance I try to
foreground the visceral quality of video in a way that evokes something of the physicality
of my performance. I also use the time-based features of video to assert the particularity
of movement of my performances. I thus see my art practice as an orchestration of live
performance, video and photography and my role as director (which includes video
editor). However I am also, very importantly, a player in the situations I set up; meaning
I usually participate in the performances I direct.
The performances I direct often involve getting groups of people to act in public places.
An example here would be the performance, Boxing Games, where I worked with twelve
boxers in Hillbrow22. Then there are performances in which I am my own subject, so to
speak: one-woman stunts, such as The Accident Series and 94.7 Cycle Challenge.
However works such as 94.7 Cycle Challenge, do involve groups of people by virtue of
the fact that I intervene in a situation in which these people are participants. So, whilst I
do not choose the participants in this context, I do choose the situation and insert my
own activity into their context. Here the works are more of an intervention. More recently
my projects have more frequently involved a number of people, usually from a specific
22
Hillbrow, in down town Johannesburg is known for its high levels of crime and drug abuse and is generally
considered an unsafe and risky area. However, it is bustling with energy and is populated with people from
Johannesburg as well as people from Zimbabwe, Nigeria and the Congo as well as many other African
countries.
83
group. This shift I see as a way of working which is inherently more risky. This is
because even though I may produce the conditions for the performance, the play (the
action), which happens within this structure is largely undetermined. This is because
others are involved, which somewhat minimizes my level of control over the situation,
opening the floor to multiple outcomes and experiences.
In these performances I use the notions of ?play? and ?games? as a means to construct
my situations and create dialogue between people. The performances are actions that
happen in a certain space, for a certain amount of time, according to a set of loosely
prescribed rules. These rules may be explicit or implicit.
My initial interest in performance and, following this, the concept of play inherent in
performance, began in 2005 with The Trolley Project. The Trolley Project was a
performance, which involved me, my family?s domestic worker, Connie, a cameraman,
Benji Magowen and Solly, the trolley man. Solly is one of the ?scavengers? of
Johannesburg - people who eke out a living by collecting scrap metal in their trolleys.
But Solly is not a conventional trolley person on account of the distinctive way he
decorates his trolley using mostly CD?s (see plates 11 and 12). These discs are
arranged in dense layers and glimmer in the light to make a beautiful structure that
belies Solly?s work of collecting scrap metal. To my mind this decoration makes Solly a
person who values aesthetic form. I got to know Solly over a period of approximately one
month. Our encounter began one day when I was on my way home from Wits on one of
the back roads in Craighall. I would pass Solly at the same time every day as he sat on
the grass under the jacaranda trees, eating his lunch. One day I stopped and sat with
him. For about a month thereafter I met with him for lunch about three times a week.
These meetings were important, as getting to know the people I work with is key to my
approach to my practice. I did not have a set idea as to how I might work with Solly. In
fact I was not even sure if working together was even an option. Rather I let the idea
come to me as we got to know each other. From the beginning, Connie acted as
translator as there was a language barrier; Solly speaks only Xhosa. The interaction with
Solly produced a context in which I too was motivated to decorate a trolley and with my
decorated trolley I travelled through Johannesburg with Solly and Connie (see plate 14).
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Plate 11 Sollys Trolley
Plate 12 Solly and his Trolley
85
Plate 13. The Trolley Project Solly, Connie, myself and our trolleys. Video still, 2005.
86
Our journeys together with our trolleys could be seen as non-purposeful, non-climactic
activity in that we seemed not to be going anywhere; not collecting or selling anything.
Whilst at the time I did not think of what we were doing as representing the complex
definitions of play that I have covered in this thesis and which came to be very important
theoretical frameworks for my later works, in retrospect this encounter with Solly and our
aimless travels with our trolleys was experientially the beginning of my interest in play.
Thinking back, the project represented the transitional space between intention and non-
intention that later came to motivate my performances, and my sense of the streets of
Johannesburg functioning as the ?playgrounds? to these performances. These
playgrounds stood for a location that is circumscribed yet not limited (except for the rules
of the road). With Solly it was the journey that counted more than the end result, the
journey through the streets of Johannesburg. There was, however, an end result in the
form of a document rather than an autonomous artwork: three large-scale photographs
and a short video of the whole experience. What the video did was reflect scenes of
communication and inter-personal exploration that could not be more widely expressed.
When I applied for the MAPS (Master of Arts in the Public Sphere) program one of the
projects I proposed was to continue to work with trolleys in Switzerland, perhaps
becoming the one and only trolley lady scavenging the streets of Sierre. However, my
idea was soon foiled as one of my friends who had just returned from Switzerland told
me a very intriguing story about the Swiss and their trolleys. He said that in Switzerland
it is quite near impossible to steal a trolley (as I had done in Johannesburg from Pick ?n
Pay in Cresta mall), as there is a big magnet under the ground, which keeps all the
trolleys in their place near the shops. I found out this was not true, but I sent my proposal
anyway ? including the challenge as to how to get the trolley over the magnetic field.
At the end of 2005 I departed for Switzerland for eight months to take part in the
program. I participated in several workshops in Sierre and other parts of Switzerland as
well as in France. Artists and theorists such as Tino Sehgal, Massimo Furlan, Michael
Snow, Gustavo Artigas, Aeronaut Mic and Bernard Stieglar ran these workshops.
Themes covered in these workshops were transmigration, eccentricity, the accident and
the anecdote. These artists and theorists also provided me with constructive feedback
on my work and were extremely influential in determining how my practice developed.
87
My trolley project dissolved into many other ideas, as there were so many different
experiences and influences beckoning from the Swiss landscape and culture. And the
element of play developed into a major motivation in my work. Most of the examples
discussed below were made in Switzerland during my eight-month sojourn there.
As mentioned earlier, the MAPS program was structured around different themes ? one
per month. One of these themes, the ?Accident? really interested me and directly
influenced one of my projects, The Accident Series (see plates 14 ? 16). This series
consists of three acts/accidents that took place in various public sites in and around
Sierre. I describe and briefly analyze each of these accidents.
For three consecutive days I decided to go on seemingly aimless walks, with my camera
in hand. With no destination in mind, I decided to create or find myself in an accident.
The first day I was walking alongside Lake Geronde ? a beautiful lake in a park near to
where I was staying in Sierre ? and I slipped on some ice. I set the camera up and
videoed myself practicing to slip on this dangerously slippery patch of ice. At first the
experience was quite tense. I was too scared to force myself to continue to slip and fall.
Too scared to ?let go?. Eventually after about the fourth run across the ice, I fell. The
relief was palpable. I got braver and braver and finally I was running and jumping and
flinging and sliding my body all over the ice. Passersby were somewhat amused but did
not intervene. The initial accident had now been transformed into a ?performance? or ?act?
through deliberate action and repetition. However, one jump too many and I hit the back
of my head on the extremely hard snow. I had gashed my head causing it to bleed. I
saw black spots in the blue sky. The ?play play? accident turned ?real?. I decided to call
it a day. Game over.
The second day I walked for about four hours before I came across anything that might
have accident potential. Finally, I saw something, which looked like a beautiful white
sand dune, situated in a construction site. I approached this seeming snow dune only to
discover that it was instead a pile of stones covered in snow. The snow had turned to ice
and made for quite a sparkly, shiny surface. I climbed to the top of the dune to look
around. There were quite a few men on the construction site, every now and then
stopping to look at me on top of the ice pile. I stayed up there for a while and then had
this absolute urge to slide down on my back. So, I did. It was glorious. I did this
repeatedly for about five minutes. On one of the slides, however I decided to descend on
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Plate 14 Slipping from The Accident Series, 2006
Plate 15 Sliding from The Accident Series, 2006
Plate 16 Snowswimming from The Accident Series, 2006
89
A part of the pile that was quite a bit steeper. I ended up sliding too fast, and stopped
much too abruptly at the bottom of the hill, my Achilles tendon taking a huge blow. As I
said before, this was not soft snow, rather it was hard ice and quite unforgiving. I had
torn my Achilles tendon and cut open my finger on the ice. Once again, game over. The
photograph Bloody Finger is a ?document? of this accident (see plate 17).
The third day I took the funicular up the mountain to the ski village called Crans
Montana. Walking up the road I turned into a forest. Eventually I came across a huge
expansive field of white snow below me. Just beyond the field there were paragliders
gracefully coming down to land. I decided I wanted to get to where the paragliders were
landing. There was a fence and then, after that, the expansive field of white snow, that
was separating me from the landing zone. So, I jumped over the fence. I landed in snow
up to my shoulders. I literally had to swim out of the snow. Even though I was not really
dressed appropriately for the adventure - flimsy fingerless second hand gloves, jeans
and sneakers, a headband and my luminous orange road workers jacket, which I had
worn for the previous two accidents I decided to set the camera and the tripod up
anyway and ?swim? in the snow. There were paragliders floating above me, greeting me
with much curiosity and a hotel to my left with people drinking tea looking down on me.
The fact that I was swimming in ?white water? is another aspect, which attracted me to
the space. When snow melts it becomes water. The idea of swimming in something,
which has potential for something else, is another aspect to this work. The act of
courageously swimming in ?solid water? defeats the act of swimming because you are not
swimming at all. The act of swimming rather becomes a struggle to get through. The
notion of ?pretending? surfaces here; I was making my own playground, my own
swimming pool within this space. I was in my own conceptual playground: treating the
snow as if it were water. After my 5th ?length? of backstroke, my fingers, toes and nose
became numb and the pain soon became quite unbearable. I called it a day, packed up
my equipment and made my journey home.
These three acts/accidents demonstrate a number of things important to my work more
generally. Firstly, the notion of the accident is interesting to me as most of my work is
created through a process of trial and error. Not knowing what is going to happen on
each of these occasions opens up a space for chance occurrences. Accidents were my
focus here, and I literally treated my locations as sites for accidents to happen. In all of
the feigned accidents, there was a beginning and an end. In Slipping and
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Plate 17 Bloody Finger from The Accident Series, 2006
91
Snowswimming the beginning of the work was the accident itself, which then turned into
something quite enjoyable for a while and then became dangerous or painful ? which
dictated its end. With Sliding the beginning of the work began with simple enjoyment of
sliding down the hill until the accident dictated the end of the performance. Even though
the acts themselves could seem in the vein of ?child?s play? ? from the point of view of the
construction workers and paragliders for example ? one could say there was ?method to
my madness? in revealing the limits to my play. Yes, I was having fun and this is defiantly
part of the work; however things became dangerous. Play became serious, even
threatening. This tension between light-heartedness and threat is key how play functions
in my work.
There is something to be said for these limits, which I (quite naturally) created within my
work. One could even argue that I did not really create these limits, but rather just
stopped when it ?got sore?. There is a long history of performance artists who have
subjected their bodies to great pain and risk, this bodily pain often being the main focus
of the performance. For me, the pain is the limit. When I say this, childhood experiences
come to mind. My mom shouting at my brother and I: ?You two better stop that before
someone pokes out an eye?. And of course we would not stop our ?playing? and then one
of us did get hurt and then we would stop. The same can be said for these three works.
Although these accidents were conducted alone, later projects related to these works
involved collaborations with others. Snowswimming Project is an example (see plates 18
and 19). The work was, quite tellingly, inspired by the original accident. As I enjoyed the
action so much I decided to create a five-man snowswimming team. The team swam up
in the mountains above Sierre for approximately 20 minutes. I directed the situation.
There were 7 players in total: 5 swimmers, 1 cameraman and 1 photographer. The
swimmers were completely immersed in the game of swimming in snow. The
performative act within the public space is separate from the process of documenting
and editing. The edited video and the five photographs are all documents of the
performance. From my role as performer to director to editor, how I choose to portray
this act is another part of my artistic practice. Neither the performance, nor the video is
more important than the other. Both are part of my artistic practice.
Another work, which evolved out of a ?mis-take?, is Can you See me? (see plates 20 and
21). The work involves themes such as participation, dialogue, rules and assumed roles.
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Plate 18 Warm Up from Snowswimming Project, 2006
Plate 19. Dive In from Snowswimming Project, 2006
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Can you See me? can be seen as a game I played with another participant, the
cameraman. Before the performance I wrote up a set of instructions that the ?director? of
the project would shout out to me, the performer. Jerome Lanon was designated director
but became the cameraman as well. The director/cameraman could also make up his
own rules and instructions as we went along. The performance took place outdoors on a
quiet hilltop beside the funicular track. At first there were four of these performances all
conducted in four other public sites. However I have selected the one involving me in
the field as the most powerful (and funny) work. Two of the other works were conducted
at the train station and at a traffic circle. At the former site I jumped on a trampoline,
which I set into a large hole across the way from the platform and at the latter I placed
the trampoline in the middle of the traffic circle. Similar actions to the performance
described below, took place there.
The work Can you See me? ended up with Jerome, the cameraman, shouting out
instructions to me and me shouting back because I could not hear him properly or
because I wanted to make sure he had captured certain parts of my action in the lens.
That Jerome had a heavy French accent hampered our communication. Sometimes I
would follow his instructions and sometimes I would not. The decisions that I made were
very spontaneous and nothing in particular determined whether I would or would not
follow his instructions. I enjoyed the dis/connections between chance and choice here.
The object I used, my prop, was a trampoline. I chose a site ? a beautiful green field
below the mountain village being ?Crans Montana?. Jerome placed the camera far away
from me and shouted out instructions to me. He would shout out ?Jump higher!? and I
would shout back ?Can you see my feet?? This action of communication or lack of it
created an interesting dialogue. The performance became a reflection and a celebration
of confusion. This may seem frustrating to viewers, and was even a bit frustrating to the
players, because questions such as ?why is this the case?? are not answered. There is a
goal but it is open-ended: to create a situation through instructive dialogue, which leads
to unexpected actions on both sides. There is no determined outcome or expectation.
Here I see an analogue with Georges Bataille and his theory of gifting. Bataille says of
gift giving:
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Plate 20 First test from Can you See me?, video still, 2006
Plate 21Can you See me?, video still 2006
95
It is an escape from the rational discourse of economic utility, an emptying out that
is really a new creation and acquisition. The subject becomes sovereign in the very
creation of the temporal place for play. It is the impossible moment that diverts the
flow of energy in rational exchange in its selfish uselessness to a new point of
definition (Kosalka, 1999:7).
Can you See me? builds on the notion of the aforementioned ?non-climactic experiences,
which is what Bataille is essentially referring to. It is this ?emptying out? and ?escaping
from economic utility? which means that it is an act to be enjoyed for itself. There is no
goal attached to the act; it?s purpose being to revel in this ?uselessness? of the situation.
Nothing before or after the interaction holds as much meaning as the action itself. The
video created after the performance can be seen as a glimpse into this potential space,
that moment of play offered and perhaps a way to communicate this idea if not a
replication of the event.
To reiterate: nothing before or after the action mediates as much meaning as the action
in that specific place and time of the work. The action that takes place can be seen as
?bracketed off? from everything else for that specified amount of time. The players, the
free subjects, revel in selfish uselessness. They revel in the paradox of this uselessness
because in celebrating its uselessness it is meaningful and fulfilling within the action
itself. As explained earlier on with the theories of Winnicott these free subjects celebrate
uselessness. Uselessness is not seen as a positive thing today in our goal orientated
society. However it is precisely this action of celebration of uselessness that makes the
action itself powerful, meaningful and fulfilling. It challenges the norm. It is like enjoying
the journey rather than focussing only on your destination. The meaning lies completely
within the action itself, not the end result. Any attempt to try and resolve this paradox
would break this circle of play as play lies within the action.
This dialogue between Jerome and myself gave me interesting aspects of performance
to work with when editing the videos. On one of my performance outings with Jerome I
decided on a location just outside the town of Sierre. My chosen site was a huge
concrete slab where golfers came to practice their shots (see plate 20). The
performance went terribly as I did not know what I was doing, the cameraman could not
hear me and I could not hear or understand him. It was cold and windy, the shot was too
far away so that he could hardly see me in the frame. The list of ?mis-takes? continues.
After the shoot, alone in my studio ? the computer lab ? I began to edit the ?waste of
96
time? as Jerome so eloquently put it. At first I was upset, but then amid all the confusion
of re-takes and more re-takes I began to enjoy watching the process of back and forth
shouting. The dialogue that was created between the cameraman and me became
increasingly interesting and confusing at the same time. It was this dialogue of confusion
that I was editing, not the action itself, thus multiplying the confusing and frustrating
experience itself into a new dialogue. I worked with the confusions and mistakes, which
came out of a playful (not goal-oriented) experience, and created a new point of
reference, a new meaning. By working with the chaotic experience I was in fact
accepting it and creating something else; a recycled, rehashed and re-presented
dialogue that was even more confusing than the first.
I see the act of editing as an engaging ?performance-like? process in its own right. There
may not be an audience, but I become the audience to myself in the video. The action of
editing alone in my studio is very different from the public collaborative performance that
took place initially. An exchange of roles occurs: from running around in a public space
and following orders (or not), I become alone in my semi-private studio observing these
actions on video. The former role was quite immediate, the latter being more reflective.
The enactment of this new role, the editor, ? the editor of myself, the performer, my
actions and words ? becomes a negotiation, a relationship between myself editing and
the ?myself? in the video. This tension ? between the public, engaged performer and the
private, secluded editor ? is compelling. It demonstrates, not only the tensions between
my different ?selves? or roles that I take on, but also it demonstrates the tensions
between interior and exterior, private and public, present and past, immediacy and
reflection, experiment and safety. The tension operates as a form of critical distance for
me. So, play begins in between these tensions. One could say it is the gray area: a
potential space, which is where this tension lies. When I went out with the cameraman to
the golf-shooting site, I was reliant on the experience of experimentation itself. This
acceptance of pure experimentation created anxiety between my fellow player and me:
because it was somewhat disorganized and nonsensical, and because his expectations
of what role he would play were challenged, he thus felt uncomfortable. Instead of
having a definite plan with a beginning, a mid point and an end, there was rather an
open fluid experiment, which changed from minute to minute. If we were to accept that a
script for a play or film is ?sense?, then we could call this fluid dynamic interplay with
Jerome ?non-sense?. Because there was no goal, conclusion or end point in mind, the act
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can be seen as demonstrating an acceptance of ?non-sense?. And, in this acceptance,
there comes the acknowledgment of the potential of the unknown. This
acknowledgement of the potential of that which is unknown opens up a space where we
could be creative and thus play.
The word ?potential? has come up quite a bit in this thesis. I would like to elaborate a bit
on what I mean when I speak about, firstly, ?the potential of the unknown?. This last act -
the first of the triptych of Can you See me? - can still be used as an example. I quote
Huizinga, even though I have used the quote before in Chapter one, I feel his words
warrant repetition because they are so relevant to what I want to say here.
Out of the difference between the concrete wish and the unknown, a potential can
develop that cannot be imagined yet. This uncertainty, which can be produced, for
example, by temporary releasing contradicts the usual logic of planning therefore
needs other instruments and actors. (Huizinga, 1970:20)
The concrete wish can be seen as my idea that day that I wanted to go out there to my
site with Jerome and create a performance through experimentation. The unknown had
a large part to play in the fulfillment of this concrete wish. It was only through the
acceptance of the unknown, that a space opened up for the possibility for a potential to
develop. It is accepting uncertainty, embracing it, if you will. As Pat Kane says:
Living as a player is precisely about embracing ambiguity, revelling in paradox, yet
being energised by that knowledge. Moreover, an argument can be made that
ethics become even more important in an endemically uncertain world. An ethic of
play is, in effect, an ethic, which makes a virtue, even a passion, out of uncertainty
(2004:55)
Thus, in a sense through the acceptance, even celebration of an uncertain, risky,
indeterminate and literally unknown situation, one opens up room for multiple potential
scenarios to happen. And, if we remember the discussion in Chapter one, in extension,
through the acceptance of the unknown - that which does not make sense (yet), the
acceptance of ?nonsense? we open up a space for us to relax, to create and thus play.
The sites I choose to work within I see literally as my ?potential spaces?, my playgrounds,
as I enact (accept) the paradox, which takes place within the potential space in my
performances.
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Plate 22 94.7 Cycle Challenge 2006
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In October 2006 I created the work 94.7 Cycle Challenge (see plate 22). In this
performance I took on the role of cyclist in South Africa?s largest cycling race: the 94.7
Cycle Challenge. Whilst I participated in the race I was literally not going anywhere. Fully
clad in cycling gear, helmet and tight cycling pants I rode the race for a total of 45
minutes. I arrived at Jan Smuts avenue where the race was taking place, and, after
getting permission from the resident security guard; I set up my exercise bike on the side
of the road. The comments, which my other fellow cyclists shouted out at me as they
sped past, ranged from abusive to encouraging. Some of them cheered me on whilst
others shouted ?F***ing loser!? and ?You going nowhere!? or ?Where are you wheels?? I
had a photographer document the performance and it was videoed. Again, when I was
tired and could not cycle anymore I stopped - my limit being my body. The work partakes
in one of the paradoxes of play: of being in their world, yet in my own world at the same
time: accepting yet also enacting the paradox of play. I was with the other, moving
cyclists as they passed, but going nowhere. Whilst all other cyclists had a specific goal in
mind, that of the finish line, I on the other hand, did not. I was enjoying the actual
experience of the race, going nowhere and knowingly so. The work begs the question:
?What is the point?? This question is exactly what I want to be asked. What is the point?
Does there have to be a point? If so, why does there always have to be a point? A goal?
A finish line? Can one not simply enjoy an experience without a goal in mind? This work
is a good example of a ?non-climactic? experience. It is a useless interaction, yet it is
useful and meaningful in its uselessness. In asking the question ?Why does there always
have to be a point?? this question is itself the point of the work. In performing this
pointless act I highlight the pointlessness of it so as to make my point, which is to
question the goal-orientated society we live in today. It is a crucial work, in that it is
through the acceptance of and then enactment of this paradox I highlight the paradox
itself.
A work that I feel really deals with that of a potential space is Train Troll (see plates 23,
24 and 25). Train Troll is a video of a performance I enacted in Sierre. The location for
the performance was on the other side of the train tracks opposite the train station, in a
hole in a large concrete platform. At that time I had bright pink hair. The colour was
exaggerated by the black outfit I wore for the act. I hid in the hole and waited for the
announcement that the train was about to leave the station. I then popped my head up,
waited a few moments and, as the train left, jumped out of the hole and ran after it. One
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Plates 23, 24 and 25 Video stills from Train Troll, 2006
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of the ideas this work addresses is how locations can sometimes provoke in me fictitious
ideas that I feel an urge to enact. A troll is defined as something foreign to ?the land of
the Swiss?. So the performance involves me climbing out of the hole and running after
the train ? possibly my ticket home. It speaks of my fascination with a useless hole as a
transitional space and the train station platform itself being such a space - where people
are waiting to go somewhere else. When I performed this piece I was ready to go home.
Train stations are neither here nor there, but in-between spaces that you have to
traverse in order to reach your destination. I waited and then acted. In the book
Temporary Urban Spaces, there is an article by Andreas Spiegl and Christian Tackert
entitled: ?Tom Waits 4?33??. In reference to the platform they write: ?The platform was a
space that only represented a space of time, a temporary use that promised another
space? (2006:99). They continue:
It made him think of all the terms applied to such places: transit spaces, non-
locations, and non-places... as if they all lacked something. But the spaces were
filled with different speeds and times, with temporalities, full of desire for other
places, with memories of other spaces (Ibid: 101).
In my performance I viewed this space, the platform, from my hole. I looked out on to the
train station platform ? this ?time space?, this interstitial zone and the train that carried
people away from this space. It was exactly what Spiegl and Tackert promised: ?A
temporary space that promised another space?.
As I said earlier on in this chapter, whilst some of my performances can be seen as ?one-
woman stunts?, like Train Troll, as demonstrated, I have more recently extended this
passion I have for enacting play through performance in public space to involve others.
The following can be seen as an example where I have created the structure for play to
take place and the performers become active participants in this arena, producing
indeterminable results. The following project can also be seen as a ?non-climactic?
experience in that it was the actual activity of playing the game, which was important, not
so much the winning of the prizes23. In September this year (2007) I held a public games
day in Newtown, which I co-organized with Tegan Bristow who lectures at Wits School of
Digital Arts in Johannesburg. The event was called ?Have City Will Play?. The event took
advantage of the space, Mary Fitzgerald Square allocated for the Arts Alive lock down
23
I spoke to the some of the players after the game who told me the experience of playing the game was
much more rewarding than the prizes at the end. Some even forgot to collect their prizes.
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Plate 26 Guarded Walk from Have City Will Play 2007. Photographer: Chris Saunders.
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festival, which was taking place that weekend in Newtown. After two lectures, the
attendees were invited to play a game ?The Nonsensical Obstacle Course? I designed.
The game was basically a race whereby the players had to get through numerous
obstacles in order to get to the finish line. For example one of these obstacles included
asking a non-player (an innocent passerby) to join in a three-legged race with you. My
favourite task was the ?guarded walk? (see plate 26). Here I worked with 6 security
guards (2 from ADT and 4 from Newtown Precinct). The players were blindfolded by
thesecurity guards who then spun them around until they did not know where they were.
They were then guarded (not guided) by the guards through to the finish line. The event
could not have been possible without the help from so many volunteers (true players)
who helped in the orchestration of the event. For me what is important here is this
extension of play into the players. People who live in Johannesburg very seldom ?play in
public space?. Most often public space is seen as somewhat dangerous. To create a safe
place for people to play as well as interact with my project and investigation was the
motivation for this project.
I have worked with ADT security guards before for the Armed Response 2 exhibition,
which was held by the Goethe-Institut, entitled Guarded Relaxation (see plates 27 and
28). For this work I invited the audience into a field, which is situated just below the
Goethe-Institut in Johannesburg. On their arrival in the park, they were asked to sit on
mats provided for them, and relax. They were then taken on a guided relaxation given by
Yoga instructor, James Happe. Surrounding the audience members were five ADT
security guards who ?guarded? them whilst they relaxed in an open space. When they
were ?brought out of? their guided relaxation and asked to open their eyes, they saw that
the guards had fallen down on their backs all around them, insinuating that they were no
longer guarded as they were in the beginning. In doing this work I was asking why one
needs to be guarded in public space, or in contexts of relaxation. Through an enactment
of the absurdity of our obsession with security our fear of being alone in public space
became evident. I want the participant to feel the effects of relaxing in an open space but
also to think about the guards surrounding them. I wanted to mark the tension between
?being on guard? and ?being relaxed? in relation to how we perceive public space. When I
say ?we? I am referring to those of us who have come to see public space as threatening.
The project also highlighted the exchange that happens between people ? here the
participants - when roles are both asserted and undermined. The guards represent
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Plates 27 and 28 Guarded Relaxation, 2007
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safety in the beginning; then they represent untrustworthy insecurity.
The work Boxing Games is another example of exchange (see plates 29 and 30).
Recently I took part in a six week residency project called Kin: Be: Jozi. The project was
an exchange between six artists: two from Bern, Switzerland, two from Kinshasa,
Congo, and two from Johannesburg, South Africa. Boxing Games included four main
participants: Joca (fellow trainee and musician); Steffi Weismann (camera lady and
referee); I was the instigator and director of the project, as well as trainee, performer,
game creator and finally, editor; George Nkosi is the owner of the boxing gym, Rhema
Boxing Club, in Claim Street, Hillbrow, central Johannesburg. George trained Joca and I
for two weeks in boxing skills.
For two weeks, Joca, Steffi and I would walk from August House, in End Street in
Doornfontein to George?s gym in Hillbrow. As this is not a safe area, Joca became the
guide to the two women, Steffi and I. We trained at the club for about three hours every
day for two weeks. During the second week we began to train outside in the street.
Finally, we initiated a Saturday night event/public intervention that included screening
three videos and a performance. The performance - a game I created, was played at the
event. The game was advertised at the gym one week prior to the event and was open
to the public.
The game included rules where the actions of the participants ? the boxers - were
determined by the way Steffi blew the whistle. Steffi would blow the whistle in a certain
way and we would act accordingly. For example one blow meant we had to change
fighters, two blows meant we had to find a corner and breathe and one very long blow
meant we had to fall down and lie on the ground. On the evening there were ten
boxers/players and two referees. The game started with just two players in the ring and
ended with twelve players in the ring all at once. This became quite an intense, chaotic
experience. It was not really fighting, but more like ?pretend fighting?. Even though the
game was structured it was not choreographed. We were fighting but we were playing a
game at the same time. We knew the rules and were sucked into another world when
the game commenced.
This project was crucial in extending my practice as it forced me to act within a
completely different environment. Different to the works, which I had made prior to this
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Plates 29 and 30 Boxing Games, 2007. Photographer: Chris Saunders.
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residency such as 94.7 Cycle Challenge or The Accident Series this work became an
exchange of different roles, actions, places and assumptions. Beginning with the walk to
the boxing gym every day, it became an invigorating and alert experience. The levels of
crime in Hillbrow are very high, thus on my arrival at the gym, I was already highly
energised by the fast-paced walk and very conscious and sensitive of my surroundings.
This heightened awareness was then fuelled into our strenuous exercise regime. From
this heightened exercise we would then begin the boxing training in the gym. In this site
fears are heightened. These tensions between safety and experiment, between fear and
security, between playing the game and fighting in the ring and fighting to survive create
substance for me to work with. The project challenges assumptions and instigates a new
way of working through performance. There was an exchange between me and the
place and the people. I came into their world and they, in turn, entered mine. We all
played numerous roles, which all played a part in working/playing together, and
negotiating space and testing possibilities.
I returned to the boxing gym in October in order to orchestrate a new boxing game,
which would be performed at the opening of my exhibition. So, for 3 weeks, twice a week
I started working with twelve players. The game had similar rules to the last game
whereby the players acted according to a set of different types of whistle blows and
shouts. Actions included changing boxing partners, falling down feigning exhaustion and
screaming up into the air. In the next chapter I discuss my Masters show in more detail
as well as some crucial components, which play an intrinsic role in the make up of my
work.
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CHAPTER SIX
Interruptions
In this chapter I cover my work as manifest in my exhibition submitted for this Masters
degree. I comment briefly on the features that struck me about the show and how these
connect with the ideas covered in the discussion of my work in the previous chapter and
my comments on play more generally in the dissertation. I gained insights through the
experience of mounting my exhibition, specifically on issues relating to how the image of
performance functions when captured on video or through photography. For me this
image capture needs to have a mysterious visual quality that corresponds to the paradox
of play as articulated in this thesis. I became increasingly aware of this fact when I put
up my show probably because this was the first time I had seen all the documentations
of the performances presented simultaneously, but also because I had come across
some powerful writings on ?the spectre in the image? which, whilst not ?about? play as
such, contribute to ideas the part visuality plays in play in video and photographic
documents of performances. I discuss these ideas later in the chapter.
The show comprised the presentation of my performances mediated in various formats -
videos, photographs, flipbooks and text. All the videos were shown on Telefunken
plasma screens of the same dimension except for Feet not on the Ground, which was
projected outside onto a building opposite the gallery (see plate 31). Access to this work
was through the row of widows on one wall of the gallery. In addition to these exhibits I
participated in a performance I also directed. The performance was intended as a key
signifier to the show, marking the kind of energy and bracketed off action I see as so
crucial to enacting play.
The show was entitled ?Interruption? and was held at Intermission Gallery on the 19th
floor of the Lister Medical building, downtown Johannesburg. The gallery is shaped
around a central axis with windows looking out onto the city from all sides. The exhibition
was held at night so that Jo?burg city was lit up. Some of the video works from
Switzerland were even reflected in the glass windows thus creating an overlap of the
Swiss landscape and Johannesburg cityscape (see plate 32). After the opening speech
by Prof. Penny Siopis, the audience was asked to take the stairs up to the roof and look
down onto a building below where a performance would take place. The rooftop of this
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Plate 31 Feet not on the Ground installation view, 2007
Plate 32 Reflection of Can you See me? on to Jo?burg cityscape, 2007
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building - a five-story apartment block, much lower than the Lister building - was
demarcated as the arena for the performance. It was a perfect location because the
viewers had to look down giving them a bird?s eye view of the action. The performance
started the moment spotlights lit up the arena to reveal 12 boxers standing in a circle
holding hands (see plates 33 and 34). I was one of the boxers. George, our referee, set
the game into motion. There was an amazing sense of energy, passion and emotion in
the action and from the spectators. People who were not part of the gallery audience
began to pop their heads out of their apartments, looking down to see what all the
shouting was about. Some even had voovoozela?s24 and joined in the cacophony of
sound echoing across the city. The performance lasted for just about four minutes; our
last act being screaming out into the sky and falling onto our backs and lying there for a
minute. Lights off. Game over.
In all of the works on show from The Trolley Project through to The Accident Series, Can
you See me, 94.7 Cycle Challenge, Train Troll, Snowswimming Project, Guarded
Relaxation and The Boxing Games Project, a common thread manifest different aspects
of play. It is important for me to say that at this point that I do not impose the theories of
play analyzed in this thesis onto the players or viewers. I see these theories as tools
with which to create some sort of structure for my performances. They also help me
understand what it is I am doing; they give me some method to my madness in a sense.
Many viewers of my work will not be aware of these theories at all. This could make the
works seem somewhat inaccessible. However, I do not see this possible inaccessibility
as a problem. I see my work addressing a public broadly with each piece having the
effect of an interruption in our lives, as a scene ?bracketed off? from real life, so to speak.
Each piece is like an anecdote25 ? short happening or sporadic burst of energy. In the
exhibition I was all too aware of how, even though all the works are very different, they
connect in sensibility and their emphasis on play. In a way each piece is an experiment
performed and then transformed into a physical thing with more lasting documentary
value (photograph or video) than the event or performance itself. But the value of action
itself, in the moment of the performance ? as with the boxing on the rooftop ? is also, as
24 A voovoozela is a musical instrument, shaped like an elongated horn, which fans out at the end. It is
usually used at soccer games by the soccer fans. They blow into it and it makes a very loud noise.
25 An anecdote, according to Wikipedia on the internet (accessed 29/01/08) is: ?a short tale narrating an
interesting or amusing biographical incident.? Anecdotes are not jokes, however they are usually
humourous. ?Their primary purpose is not simply to evoke laughter, but to reveal a truth more general than
the brief tale itself, or to delineate a character trait or the workings of an institution in such a light that it
strikes in a flash of insight to their very essence.? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdote, accessed 29/01/08)
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Plates 33 and 34 Boxing Games, performance, 2007. Photographer: Alistair Mclaughlin
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I have stated repeatedly in this thesis, an experience in and of itself. That is why I
wanted my exhibition to have both aspects ? documentations of earlier performances
and a performance in situ. Both reveal the interruption in ordinary life I work with in my
performances, hence the title of the show.
If the works were simply accepted as ?interruptions? in life, then this would mean that
they are understood in a way not inappropriate to the impulse that produces them. This
understanding would not be lesser than that of viewers familiar with all the theories
informing my practices. This is because, in accepting the momentary interruption or non-
climactic event of the performance, there is an implicit acceptance of the mystery or the
paradox of play that drives the theories. And in this there is acceptance of the fact that
the performance instigates questions rather than asks them. In the acceptance of the
paradox (of play) one might become a player in my game, as I am a player. In every
performance I am aware of this paradox, which I first accept and then enact. Thus,
through accepting the non-sense of a work like 94.7 Cycle Challenge, one makes sense
of the question as to why you are trying to make sense of it at all. Riding the race, but
going nowhere, implies an acceptance of the journey, of the impossibility of winning, of a
non-sense situation.
For me these theories structure the ?bracket? that shapes each work making a space for
an act of exploration rather than explanation. In short, I feel I am creating a
heterogeneous web of experiences, which are enacted in a limited time and space.
There is limited time for the players as well as the viewer. I would prefer the works to be
seen through a ?lights on, action, lights off? experience.
In the book Art, lies and video tape: exposing performance edited by Adrian George,
there is an article entitled ?Fact or Fiction? by Jean-Paul Martinon. In the article Martinon
refers to the notion of the ?spectre? of the photograph of a performance as the mystery or
question of the image, ?This mystery, the essential question behind the symbolism of the
image, has the form of a spectre. It is the spectre of a question in the image.? (Martinon,
2003:45). Most photographs of performances are somewhat unreliable sources of ?truth?
per se in that they only give us a glimpse of an event, which may or may not have taken
place. Martinon refers to Jacques Derrida who acknowledges the notion of the spectre in
the image in his writings on Marx: Spectres of Marx (1994), as ?the visibility of the
invisible?. Derrida notes:
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Invisibility, by its essence, is not seen, which is why it remains? beyond the
phenomenon or beyond being. The spectre is? what one imagines, what one
thinks one sees and which one projects on an imaginary screen where there is
nothing to see. (Derrida in Martinon, 2004: 45).
It is thus the spectre within the image, which makes us teeter between certainty and
doubt when we look at certain images of events. Martinon continues by saying that if we
were to rationalize the spectre then we would ultimately kill it and in so doing kill the very
mystery or question of the image (Martinon, 2003:45). This idea of ?the life? of the spectre
in the image is congruent for me with the acceptance of the paradox of play - we can
understand it as unexplainable. Yves Klein?s image Leap into the Void (see plate 35) can
illustrate this point: if we knew that he landed on a pile of mattresses, it would answer
the question of the image, destroy the mystery, and annihilate the spectre of it. In
knowing this we take away the possibility that it could be answered differently. ?By
answering the question I kill the spectre, I rationalize the myth. I reject the fiction and
suppress the possibility of (dis)belief.? (Martinon, 2003:45).
The artists I am interested in who use photography as the document of their
performances knowingly employ it in the hope that the mystery might remain within the
image. Of course there are artists who work in different ways, some who might not care
about retaining mystery, as their work is more manifestly discursive; mystery might equal
mystification. The performance artists I am interested in make a deliberate plea for the
mystery to remain. This could explain why their images (of performances) are so
enduring in their own right.
It is important for me that both the spectre and the spectacle stem from the same root -
that of the spectare- ?to behold?. Martinon notes that:
A spectre is an act of revelation. It is a spectacle: something hidden that suddenly
and momentarily reveals itself. A spectacle also has a spectral quality. It is an act of
revelation: the curtains part and a performance is momentarily revealed.? He
continues that the audience who witnesses the spectacle also has a spectral quality
as they too are here intermittently on this earth ?between a birth and a death.
(2003:46).
I mention this in that this is how I would like my works to be ?beheld?. The lights go on,
you, the viewer witness a spectacle for a limited time and then the lights go off. Game
over. As I (and my players) experience the performance intermittently, so too, I hope,
does the audience.
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Plate 35 Leap into the Void Yves Klein, 1960.
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In this acknowledgement of the spectre we can accept the idea of that which is and can
be possible. We accept that there can be multiple answers to the question because
there is not, in fact, one answer. We thus can accept that the images that hold us are
always becoming. As Derrida says: ?the spectre is the future, it is always to come, it
presents itself as that which could come or come back in the future.? (in Martinon,
2003:48). And maybe this is why these images have such an enduring quality because
?they give us the eternal possibility of imagining the invisible, that which is always to
come.? (Martinon, 2003:48). In this, perhaps images, which work in this way, can give
visual form to flux and allow the energy of the event photographed or videoed to be
evident. This ?spectre as the question in the image? or as its ?mystery? is what I hope my
videos and photographs of my performances convey.
Earlier on I spoke about the ?potential of the unknown? in my experience of making my
work. In this sense I see what I do as a constant acknowledgement of the potential of the
unknown, as an opportunity for the imaginative expression congruent with play, and in
this, a celebration of the unknown. I am conscious of the fact that emphasis on the
imaginative realm may seem quite separate from what is really going on in the world
right now in an empirical sense, that is, socio-politically. One might thus call my work
escapist. In some sense it is.
I see my experience in Switzerland as a turning point for me in terms of my work. In
South Africa I felt ?weighed down? by socio-political issues when making work. I felt
hampered by the expectation of such ?issue relevance?. In Switzerland I experienced
more freedom to creatively; I was not bound by the issues of race, gender, nationality
and so on, that mark life in South Africa. My Trolley Project presented my entry point into
this more creative way of working ? an extension through exploration rather than a
project with answers and explanations. This for all that Solly is black and I am white and
all these race issues means in our country. The more playful way of working became
even more liberating as I refined my processes of play in Switzerland.
Since my return to South Africa it has been clear to me that play has a place here too.
And it is play that does not deny the social realities of people and their material
conditions. I enact play as well as use the theories of play to create possibilities for
myself and others (all of us players) to traverse boundaries, which usually separate
people ? boundaries such as nationality, race, age, gender. I create work, which takes
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as its basis the capacity for human relating and the desire in all people to have fun. I am
interested simply in the human experience manifest in a sense of community, which is
every now and then, given the license to play.
I find Victor Turner?s words appropriate here in reference to his ideas of community in his
theory of communitas:
In human history I see a continuous tension between structure and communitas, at
all levels of scale and complexity. Structure, or all that which holds people apart,
defines their differences, and constrains their actions, is one pole in a charged field,
for which the opposite pole is communitas, or anti-structure [?] representing the
desire for a total, unmediated relationship between person and person, a
relationship which nevertheless does not submerge one in the other but safe guards
their uniqueness in the very act of realizing their commonness. Communitas does
not merge identities; it liberates them from conformity to general norms, though this
is necessarily a transient condition if society is to continue to operate in an orderly
fashion. [?](Turner in Schechner, 2006: 71).
I have this desire for a ?total, unmediated relationship between person and person?. The
theories of play I draw on are tools to get closer rather than more distant; distance being
a common notion about the function of theory. I invite you to witness the action and
accept it for what it is before, during and after the lights have gone off.
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Plate 36 Boxing Games, performance, 2007. Photographer: Alistair Mclaughlin
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Conclusion
Throughout this thesis I have explored play as a crucial component of performance. As
my aim was not to ?explain? play in any definitive way, as this is virtually impossible, I
drew on selected historical and contemporary theories of play as tools through which to
access specific examples of performance art that ?plays?. As Pat Kane (2004) and even
Donald Winnicott (1979) assert, the enactment of play within everyday life is beneficial to
each and every human being today. The artists I focused on, Tino Sehgal and Gustavo
Artigas, adopt this point of view. The theories I drew on were also valuable in the
production of my own performances as well as in how I reflected on my practice in
retrospect.
As we have seen in Chapter two, performance art has developed rapidly over the years,
and is now a particularly telling reflection of the crisis of ?the subject? in post-modernity.
Performance uses the body to speak in different ways about subjectivity, but my interest
has been more with that branch of performance in which the artists, even if they use
their own bodies, focus more on orchestrating other bodies in situations. Extending from
these artists is the Flash Mob phenomenon which in fact has no artistic director. All
these situations manifest as interventions in social space.
Play theory in such performances reflects a paradox that hinges on the nature of play as
purposeless unstructured activity. Play is often considered as having no other point but
to have fun. But there is a point to play which can contribute radically to social
transformation. And, play, as asserted by Salen and Zimmerman (2004) in the text is
associated with structure; its structure makes it possible for the action to be contained.
Play has, in effect, been banished from adult life. In most cultures ?sensible?
entertainment has taken its place ? normative activity which is socially regulated and
sanctioned. In the acceptance of the paradox of play, in the acceptance of play?s
?non?sense? status, we open a space, a potential space, in which all manner of
extraordinary practices can happen. Without this space, according to Kane and
Winnicott, we live a life of compliance. Through the acceptance of the paradox of play,
the chaos and uncertainty it brings, we revel in imaginative possibilities. What might
have been seen as a space of inconclusiveness, and even threat, becomes a space of
agency.
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What is fundamental about play in performance is action. Action is often the most
important, if not the only, part of the performance. In these instances I mean that the
documentation of the performance is less important than the ?in the moment? action itself.
The action constitutes the work. The action is often non-climactic.
Flash mobs and various other playful uprisings which have occurred only recently - in
the last ten years - also extend this idea of a space of action. They are also telling of the
need for a certain kind of social connectivity, which has been lost over the years. Whilst
the Internet, cell phones and other forms of technology have created massive
connectivity and in many respects created another kind of community, there is still a
certain physicality, which is lacking in this communication. Thus it is ironic how we can
access everyone at the click of a button yet still feel alienated at the same time. As we
have mentioned, this has led to the term ?the alienation of the post ? modern subject?. In
this thesis I do not proclaim play to be the answer to this alienation. Rather I use these
examples such as the flash mob to show how play is manifest and how creators of these
actions use play as a tool to deal with this alienation today.
If we think back to Guy Debord?s writings from the Situationist movement, he saw the
principle of the spectacle - non-intervention; i.e. passive spectating and consuming - as
one of the main causes for the alienation of the subject. He says that revolutionary
experiments that have broken the psychological tie between the spectator and the
spectacle (where the onlooker identifies with heroes portrayed through commodities) is
broken through by bringing the subject into action so that they can activate their own
lives. Thus, as with most performance and play, he contends that the situation is
designed to be lived by its constructors, where the passive role-played by the public
must shrink and the active role must increase. He calls these new active participants the
?livers? (Debord, 1958: para/definition 4).
The work of Sehgal and Artigas exemplify the enactment of play, specifically highlighting
the notion of the action being the priority of the work. In this the body is not the signifier
as in much performance work stemming from the 1970?s. Their works present numerous
points of reference in terms of how play is manifest through performance, specifically
performance within the public sphere. Through their work they too extend this enactment
of play not only to their participants/performers but also to their viewers who also
120
become storytellers of an event witnessed. This extends the action into another realm of
oral communication whereby the work manifests again in the listeners mind.
Through the acceptance of the paradox of play (that is through the acceptance of non ?
sense or chaos) I enact this paradox of play within my own work. 94.7 Cycle Challenge
exemplifies this. It is this non?climactic experience of riding a bike that has no wheels,
which is crucial to this thesis. These non?climactic experiences are a large part of the
make up of my work as they speak of a challenge to the appetitive process so dominant
in our western society. Through enacting these non?climactic experiences I enact play,
for play is action in and for itself. Nothing before or after the action mediates as much
meaning as in that very moment of the action itself. It is in the acceptance that I will not
win the cycle race or even make the finishing line that I automatically ask the question
?Why do we always have to want to win?? In this performance I make my point by
enacting pointlessness itself. By playing ?the loser?, I foreground the nature of our goal ?
orientated society. It is a crucial work for me, in that it is through the acceptance of and
then enactment of this paradox I highlight the paradox itself.
To challenge my society of goal-orientation is not the reason I make work or the reason I
wrote this thesis. I wrote this thesis to try and understand what it is exactly, that keeps us
alive, keeps us going. I am going to be so bold as to say that I think it is play. Why do I
say this? Because play allows us to create connections. It is a way to ?bracket off?
experience and act out our imaginations within the bracket. It says something about our
similarity as individuals who have desires, but does not deny our differences. In this
thesis I have attempted to show how this is possible through the enactment of play
through performance. In play, a ?temporary order rules?; that which is separate from the
world, yet feeds off it at the same time. One cannot exist without the other. As change is
the only constant, it seems that it is necessary to accept change and chaos, which we
experience on a daily basis, and grow through it rather than kick against it. And only
through this acceptance can we create an open potential space to play and be
ourselves. In South Africa play has not played a significant part in our cultural arena.
This is because of our traumatic past. But now is the time when the curtains can open
and play can have its day.
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LIST OF PLATES
Page
1. Interior Scroll, Carollee Schneeman, 1975. 48
2. Trademark, Vito Acconci, 1970. 48
3. Bird call flash mob, New York, 2006. 60
4. Lying down flash mob, Paris, 2006. 60
5. Kiss Tino Sehgal, 2006. 72
6. this is so contemporary, Tino Sehgal, 2005. 72
7. The Rules of the Game Gustavo Artigas, 2000-2001. 75
8. The Rules of the Game Gustavo Artigas, 2000-2001. 75
9. Duplex Gustavo Artigas, 2001. 79
10. Geeta vs Sage Gustavo Artigas, 2001. 79
All plates, excluding plate 35 are from my artistic practice:
11, 12 &13. The Trolley Project, 2005. 84
14-16. Slipping, Sliding and Snowswimming video stills from
The Accident Series, 2006. 88
17. Bloody Finger from The Accident Series 2006. 90
18 & 19. Warm Up and Dive In from Snowswimming Project 2006. 92
20 & 21. Video stills from Can you See me? , 2006. 94
22. 94.7 Cycle Challenge 2006. 98
23 - 25. Video stills from Train Troll 2006. 100
26. Guarded Walk from Have City Will Play, 2007. 102
27 & 28. Guarded Relaxation, 2006. 104
29 & 30. Images from Boxing Games, 2007. 106
31. Feet not on the Ground installation view, Interruption exhibition, 2007. 109
32. Reflection of Can you See me? on to Jo'burg cityscape, Interruption?,
2007. 109
33 & 34. Boxing Games performance, ?Interruption?, 2007. 111
35. Leap into the Void, Yves Klein, 1960. 114
36. Boxing Games, performance, ?Interruption?, 2007. 117
122
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