Ideal Theatre: 8 Concepts

"The forms of dramatic presentation change very slowly. The history of the theater reveals that new forms have always emerged very gradually. Today, in this exciting age of great technological and psychological advances, theater needs to keep pace with man's rapidly widening horizons. It must expand, or even explode, its visual limits and limitations - somehow, drama must escape completely its architectural confines."

- Ralph Alswang and Paul Rudolph

In 1962, the Ford Foundation commissioned 8 architectural plans for a new theater designed in collaboration with architects, scenic designers, playwrights, theater makers and dancers. Among them included American playwright Arthur Miller and Theater expert George Charles Izenour.

8 Concepts aim was to dream up a future home; a more considered building for the theater of tomorrow. Each concept proposed was in reaction to the monolithic theaters of New Yorks' Broadway. Calling for three dimensional relationships to live bodies, each concept in its own way eschews the flat, two dimensional set up of the proscenium stage. Addressing issues ranging from how to adequately house dance to how to effectively create a stage using projected images, the 8 Concepts are, even today, still considered revolutionary in their reforms. In their concern of audience, each concept eloquently and throughly discusses the role of the spectator and their function in the theater space. This is exactly the kind of groundwork Richard Schechner was calling for in Performance Theory when he asked for a stronger assessment of the performance event: from the time the old ladies put on their makeup to the post show debauchery - but presented here specifically in relationship to space and architecture. Though I don't think any of the concepts were ever actualized, they still hold that same inquisitive energy that was fueling the postmodern theater movement of the 1960's.
Aside from its content, the book itself, designed by Rudolph de Harak demands as much attention as do the concepts themselves. Each concept is color coded and accompanied by offset-lithographs of its buildings layout, printed on color paper fold outs. With over 50 photographs and heavy block print, it stands as an art object in itself.
I couldn't help but imagine what the theater of our tomorrow would look like; how it would function and what would fill it? This lead me to believe that the theater of tomorrow would be a building that occupied two lots. One with the structure itself, the other to hold its remains. Constantly this building would be in either construction of demolition, depending on the needs of the resident company. As the live work of today is occupied with de- and reconstructing performance as a medium, so would its building. It would be a living, organic building; one that showed its transformations, showed its skins. An adequate, tangible metaphor for performance itself: one site for the live body, the other for its remains.

Outside Walls: The Human Fly, Trisha Brown and Jochen Schweizer

In performance and other mediums, the wall or walls of a space have haunted the production of art; either for or in rejection of the flat surface. Allan Kaprow in Assemblage, Environments and Happenings (1966) notably recognized performance and installation work during the 1960's that was moving away from the flat, sanitized-white gallery walls. He writes that artists such as himself, Jim Dine, Robert Whitman and the like were creating new ways of interacting with space by making new art-environments and creating assemblage that demanded the viewer to now become the implicated spectator that had to leave standing in front of the wall so as to walk around - into - under - on top of etc.

Here we'll look at three different moments in three different epochs of walking on the outside wall: Harry H. Gardiner's The Human Fly (1905), Trisha Brown's Man Walking Down the Side of a Building (1970) and Jochen Schweizer's acrobatic corporate-performances (Current). Though these three moments are by no means a rejection of the wall as a surface, we do find something different when the event is removed from the inside to - out.

#1

Harry Gardiner climbs the Hamilton Bank Building on November 11, 1918 to celebrate Peace Day

Now known as buildering, the event of climbing up a building wall was first made popular by Harry Gardiner. Dubbed ‘The Human Fly’ by President Grover Cleveland, Gardiner would climb skyscrapers (typically for an opening of a company building and always for hire) throughout American and Canadian metropolitan landscapes. Though little is known of his life, his legacy of the human fly has lived on in the western imagination - especially considering the powers of such superheroes as Spiderman, Batman and even The Human Fly from Marvel in 1976. Though his performances as The Human Fly were not politically overt or remotely conscious of the art world, they do strike a chord when we consider the performance workings of persona. Harry made his living as - The Human Fly and attracted public audiences in the hundreds of thousands.

#2

Trisha Brown, Man Walking Down The Side of a Building (1970) Photo by Caroline Goodden

In 1971, Trisha Brown, famous for her innovative work in postmodern dance both in the early years of the Judson Dance Group and her personal choreography, choreographed a dance for one man to walk down the side of a building in a small alley in New York. The audience was comprised of a few friends and colleagues and the performance only lasted about a minute. This was performance was later translated as Walking On The Wall (1971):

Trisha Brown's Walking On The Wall (1971). Photo by Carole Goodden

Though this piece takes place inside, it still transforms the traditional dance space of the ground to a vertical plane and attempts to defy the dancers bondage to gravity. The act of walking becomes extremely slow and calculated with extreme consciousness - the dancers are only supported by a fixed sling. Close to the end of the Vietnam War and in the wake of extreme global, political and social chaos - the act of walking on walls becomes: 1. A slowing down and re-evaluation of the body and 2: An absurd act indicative of the post war performance (think Butoh after WWII). The differences between this work by Brown and The Human Fly are mostly of audience and space: both, for Brown, are situated within the contemporary art world of the 1970's whereas The Human Fly's public is of the Masses or the public at large. Brown's audience are aware, educated and familiar with live art. Where The Human Fly is walking or climbing the wall for the sake of spectacle, Brown's postmodern project is to find the spectacle of walking.

# 3

Jochen Schweizer's VerticalCatwalk®

The third example is of Jochen Schweizer's 2004 'invention' of the Vertical Catwalk is not only registered but feels like a synthesis of the first two projects aforementioned. The Vertical Catwalk is made for hire - mostly as an apparatus for corporate fashion shows and store openings. Using essentially the same technology used by Brown, the Vertical Catwalk is definitely all in the name of spectacle - one so wrapped up in the commodity form you can barely take their calling it "Modern Performance Art" even remotely serious. Yet we see it's predecessor in both the 'modern' era and in the history of 'art'. It's interesting to trace this line and see it swaying to and from spectacle; from capitalism; from art. To situate these works outside of the binary of good and bad art - we can look at the outside wall, the audience and social and economic climates in which they were made. From modern to postmodern to contemporary we see the history in the present as something messy and daring; literally the past jumping off the roof and walking towards us. But with no answers or hypothesis I present these three moments next to each other - like opening up yearbooks from two different time periods and placing them on top of each other face to face in the now.

| Trisha Brown | The Human Fly | Jochen Schweizer |

9 Evenings: Theater & Engineering

Throughout the next two years Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), ARTPIX and Microcinema International will be releasing 10 DVD's documenting the 1966 event 9 evenings: theater & engineering. From October 13th - 23rd of 1966, 30 Engineers from Bell Telephone Laboratories collaborated with performance artists: Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, David Tudor, Yvonne Rainer, Deborah Hay, Robert Whitman, Steve Paxton, Alex Hay, Lucinda Childs and Öyvind Fahlström to examine the relationships between live bodies, space, art and technology. The event was conceived and devised in collaboration between the late Robert Rauschenberg and Billy Klüver of Bell Technologies. Most of the dancers at the event were affiliated with the Judson Dance Church/Group. Held at the spacious New York 69th Regiment Armory, 9 evenings was considered one of the most contemporary performance events investigating the live performing body and technology since the Futurist experiments, the Bauhaus Performance Workshop and the early 1950's Black Mountain performances. The space itself housed the infamous Armory Show of 1913 which showed over 300 avant-garde American and European works including those by Duchamp and Cezanne. It still houses the 69th regiment and a violent military history.

To put 1966 context, we see:
1. The first partial artificial heart transplant
2. The influence of London's Carnaby Street fashion
3. The Vietnam war
4. The first disposable diaper invented
5. The development of Kevlar
6. NOW (National Organization for Women) is formed in Washington
7. The first Kesey 'Acid Test' party happens at the Fillmore in SF
8. Both Blonde on Blonde and Pet Sounds are released
9. The death of Andre Breton and the birth of John Cusack
10. No one receives the Nobel Peace prize.

| E.A.T. | Meredith Morse Paper | Images via E.A.T. |

Outer SPACE 3: Live Art Development Agency

Located in London, the Live Art Development Agency was founded by Lois Keidan and Catherine Ugwu in 1999 as an organization to help support live-art on all fronts - from the producers to the consumers. Currently run by Lois Keidan, Daniel Brine and Andrew Mitchelson, the L.A.D.A. was established to meet the needs of performance practitioners working in a path that is not always so well defined:

"The Agency responds, both strategically and practically, to new artists, approaches and ideas by working with practitioners, organizations and institutions on curatorial initiatives; by developing strategies for increasing popular and critical engagement; by providing information and advice; and by offering extensive opportunities for dialogue, debate, research and training." (from their mission statement)


Aside from connecting artists and organizations with facilitators, festivals and funders and curating their own projects, they also hold an impressive study room with available, contemporary materials dating from the end of the 2oth century to the present. You can use one of their commissioned, personal Study Room Guides created by either Franko B, Lonetwin or John Jordan to navigate the materials based off of several particular themes including: The Body in Performance and Site and Space in Performance. You can also buy contemporary performance materials off of their website at Unbound.

Currently, the Live Art Development Agency is working with Lois Weaver (of Spider Woman Theater and WOW Cabaret in NY) to create The Long Table on Performing Rights: an open dinner table for people to speak informally about serious topics regarding human rights. More here.

Between their collaborations with different performance makers, organizations and academics and their own space as resource center, the L.A.D.A. acts as the hard and typically unseen labor in the performance world. Their function as both 'career development agency' and performance producer makes them unique in both concept and feel. Less sterile and authoritative than what one would typically think of a development agency, their name and organization leans on being a playful re-appropriation - an act indicative of may progressive performance groups, related conferences, organizations and academics working with live art.

| LADA website | Online Store | Images via LADA |

Outer SPACE 2: Greenbelt Center for Performance Research

Displacement opening March 9th, 2008

Jonah Bokaer of Chez Bushwick, and former Merce Cunningham dancer in collaboration with John Jasperse of Thin Man Dance opened the doors to the Center for Performance Research in Williamsburg, Brooklyn last month. The opening exhibition of Displacement included visual art as well as performances by Ann Liv Young, Kayvon Pourazar, Amanda Loulaki, Matjia Ferlin, and Jonah Bokaer in collaboration with Michael Cole. Displacement's intention was to:

"[promote] dialogue about the rapid development of places, communities, and neighborhoods, and the resulting emotional and physical displacement of individuals within the urban context." (artist statement from curators Elizabeth M. Grady and Julie McKim)

Displacement opening March 9th, 2008

The Center for Performance Research is housed on the ground floor of Greenbelt, an eco-conscious building in Brooklyn. This will be the first 'green' performance space housed inside of a building in NY and is L.E.E.D. certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). CPR will offer performance makers cheap space to work and present as well as a large storage basement for storage of props and materials. Their goal is to attain a high level of sustainability, in support of both performance and the environment. Though there is nothing particularly innovative about their mission: providing space for artists, creating community dialogue etc - it is exciting to see their relationship with biotechnologies and their ability to house more design heavy work. I'm excited to see what will come out of the CPR in the future.

| CPR | Greenbelt | Images via Center for Performance Research |
| Updated link CPR |

Outer SPACE 1: Center for Performance Research

Founded in 1988 by Richard Gough and Judie Christie, the Center for Performance Research (CPR) was revolutionary in its efforts to archive and make available performance documentation and materials. Attached to Aberystwyth University in Wales, the CPR is responsible for producing performances; facilitating workshops, conferences and festivals; encouraging international exchange amongst other artists and publishes the academic journal Performance Research. Currently they house printed materials, audio-visual works and a video archive.

First Supper - Aberystwyth, Wales 12|07|2007

Currently the CPR, after 20 years of operation, is facing closure after losing its funding from the Arts Council of Wales. If you'd like to sign their petition to remain open, please follow this link.

What I find most exciting about the CPR are its multifaceted functions. Both resource center and facilitator for live research, their job is to act as a living, concrete receptacle for a medium whose very nature is ephemeral. How do we working with performance document our work? And what is the reason or need to do so? What does the work become when it is no longer exists in its original live form? These appear to be the questions addressed by the existence of the CPR - but how do we interact with it as a resource center?

First Supper - Aberystwyth, Wales 12|07|2007

Located in Wales, and with virtually no free online material, to what extent is the CPR a model for performance research/spaces/facilities of the future? Their performance material on sale is extensive and well shelved, but what about us who can barely afford used books? They're based on appointment only, which in the past for me has limited my ability to wander about and discover new materials (as was my experience with the Performing Arts Museum of San Francisco). They do, however, offer residency and internship options - and seem accessible enough through their website. They're also in the process of throwing a festival Giving Voice 10 focusing on the performance of voice and the use of voice in live-art.

In the increasingly digitized world, I'm thankful for spaces like the CPR that allow you to physically interact with the materials. They are reference only, so you can only interact with them to a certain extent. Maybe some sort of hybrid between a physical and a digital resource center will be the future for performance research, but as for the first steps - the CPR has clearly pointed us in the right direction.

| Website | Online Store | Images via CPR |

The Outer SPACE Series

The Outer SPACE Series will focus on contemporary performance spaces that are either experimental in their function or location or are devoted to live, creative performance research. There is a current crisis, not just in the performance world, but in other art practices around the acquisition of space. Space to bring in international artists; space run by community members; space that is affordable; space that is large enough to house multiple sized scales of work. The need for artists to move their work outside of sanitized museums and museum practices can only be facilitated by alternative spaces, but first we must come up with concrete and sustainable ways of doing so. Currently, at least in Chicago, there are many live/work spaces facilitating performance events, and doing so with varying degrees of success - but tend to always be minimalist in form/content and must always be restricted either by neighborhood regulations, inappropriate zoning, the living conditions of the folks who run the spaces, lack of funding for advertisement or residency options or are in-accessible to the differently-abled. Yet for now, they are the best spaces to look for contemporary and up-and-coming works.

Allan Kaprow, The Courtyard, 1962. Happening at the Mills Hotel, New York

The Outer SPACE Series will focus on those spaces who have attempted to work towards transforming how live-art is approached and perceived and perhaps how contemporary performance has adapted and transformed to the opportunities and restrictions they present.

| Image via Met Museum |

DV8: The Cost of Living

A boy dancing out his sexual aggression to Cher.

A man with no legs determined to finish the day.

A woman who looks like Amy Winehouse spinning 100 hula hoops.

DV8 Physical Theater's The Cost of Living, released on DVD in 2004, has haunted how I frame movement since I first encountered it a couple years back. Originally produced for the stage as can we afford this / the cost of living in 2000 and then again as the cost of living in 2003 - this made for film version in 2004 continues today to win awards for its aggressive movement as well as its cinematic efforts. Beautifully weaving in surrealist fantasy, whimsical narratives and sexual energy, Director Llyod Newsom's approach to physical theater has been to move away from the abstract, modernist elements that still dominate most contemporary dance and aims at making meaning with postmodern focuses on everyday gesture; the dance club; child's play; grind-core; slam-dancing and other movements from vernacular dance practices. Though not as queer oriented as some of their past works, we still find unusual parings; a homo bathroom cruising scene and a lot of public eros.

"The Cost of Living was shot on location in Cromer on the Norfolk coast: a typical, old-fashioned and faded English seaside resort. The summer season has petered to an end. An air of desertion hangs over the town. Eddie and David are disillusioned street performers. Eddie is tough, confrontational and not afraid to defend his belief in justice, respect and honesty. David is a dancer who has no legs (as he is in real life), watching him makes you reconsider accepted notions of grace and perfection. He is quietly determined not to let his disabilities or society's prejudices get in his way. A series of inter-linked scenes show Eddie and David's encounters with other people; some are incredibly hard-hitting, others exhilarating because of their sheer physicality." (from their website)

DV8 has been investigating the gendered body, the racialized the body, the differently-abled body, the modern body - the live body - since 1985 and continues with their current touring of To Be Straight With You ; a live dance theater piece with a multi-ethnic group addressing issues about tolerance and sexual identity.

| DV8 website | videos | Images via DV8 |

The SSION

The SSION is an electro-punk rock disco crazed ball of filth from KC MO that makes me cream my pants - every time - without fail. I first saw them when we both performed at the first couple of Whoop-De-Doo's (a showcasing of Kansas City's contemporary art) back in 2006. Frontboy Cody Critcheloe's live performance is undeniably invocative of his predecessor's , Queen's frontman Freddie Mercury's, loud and over the top theatrics. But much more perverted. His cult followings are two-fold: 1. the calculated, performed following of boys dressed in 80's, Keith Harring inspired prints and spandex and 2. the public following of hipsters, radical queers, dirty art school kids and fourteen year old girls.

In terms of their live performance, they're on par within their contemporary genre of visual performance art bands, including: Leslie and the Ly's, My Barbarian, Kids on TV and the like - but definitely in the more exciting vein of Homocore. Typically performed in front of projected images, Cody's movements are contained, loosely choreographed and somewhat improvised and the energy stems mostly from their visuals: costuming, animated backgrounds and the sweaty, sweaty boys.

What is most impressive about Cody's performance is his mastery of persona both on and off stage. Philip Auslander's latest treatment of persona in Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music throughly articulates its tri-fold nature:

" ... I see the performer in popular music as being defined by three layers: the real person (the performer as human being), the performance persona (the performer's self-presentation) and the character (a figure portyaed in song text). p4 "

Of course these three elements are overlapping and intersecting (especially in the improvised moments), but Cody's mastery of the spectacle of persona is of particular interest. Cody, as visual artist, steps outside of Cody from the SSION to direct, construct and implement spectacle. This is most evident in their Myspace pictures of them on set, filming one of their music videos. They are all imbued with sexually anarchy, but a well considered anarchy. As Cody carefully adjusts the camera in one shot then sits open legged and ready to fuck on top of some busted car in the next, we see the small gaps between the different layers as proposed by Auslander. Offstage, you're faced with this sweet kid from Kentucky that probably once delivered your newspaper until he found Fifth Column.

What if we extended this treatment of persona to gender, racial and all other subject identity performance? This reminds me of what post-colonial writer Frantz Fannon had to say about existing in triplicate when a young white boy called him a nigger on a train. He said he not only existed as Frantz Fannon, not only as the nigger in the white boys eyes but also as the universal black man. Perhaps persona is just that - a careful and well considered performance of what we perform everyday. If done well, we buy the spectacle as whole, as truth, as completely outside of us; as with the case of David Bowie, Cher and the like. But when the cracks are left open - when the drunken dancing of a beautiful boy rips down the projector screen and falls into the crowd laughing - we find the human us and perhaps a new sexual, anarchic contingency worth being open to, even if it takes a few drinks:

" I don’t think about it in terms of “role model.” It’s bigger than just a gay thing, and I think it’s the great thing about being a musician or an artist when you can help out other kids in that same place. That really awkward phase where they can either pick up on something a little bit more outsider if they’re interested, or just go down the same path their families always went down. I think it’s great if kids are into what we’re doing and want to do something similar. That’s awesome. That’s what punk is about in one way or another." (from an interview with Gavon Laessig)

| ssion.com | videos | ssion myspace | Images via Ssion |

Gob Squad: Where do you want to go to die?

Last night a couple of my friends met me after work for drinks and dancing at Berlin. Amidst a crowd of young sweaty hipster gay boys, my friend and I turned to see a mutual friend of ours standing still, hands over eyes - sobbing. The degree of contrast between his emotive stillness and the thrashing of hands and heads to some cheesy house beats was so visually arresting. It reminded me of this video piece I fell in love with called: Where do you want to go to die? by Gob Squad, the European performance collective.

I'm not sure if it was the cheap wine we had been drinking that skewed my perception of time, but things were moving in extreme slow motion. Perhaps it was the doubleness and the in-betweenness of the spectacle of the dancing crowd and the private, wearing physicality of our friend that made my reception of his breakdown feel so extrasensorial. The drama about a lover and his lack of commitment was disclosed later - but it wasn't nearly as dramatic as that fleeting moment on the dance floor. These are the moments Gob Squad is after; small, painfully familiar and of the everyday:

"Gob Squad often place home-made magic and spectacle next to the banality of everyday life, setting theatre and the “real world” on a collision course and capturing the results on video." (from their online artist statement)

| website | Image via Gob Squad |