choreography as form of protest
Susanne Foellmer
a ban on public gath- erings was announced, including any kind of movement as part of a demonstration
when, or in which moment, a movement—in this case an everyday gesture, namely, standing and waiting—becomes political
"t"
space - alternative use of public space
artistic practice migrating into temporary form of political protest
constative/performative attributes of a gesture
overlapping spheres: artistic/public/political
Erdem Gündüz’s Duran Adam
Gezi park
"dance"
stilness and deceleration (Lepecki)
critique of representation
placing the movement within the internal structures-not only a question of kinetics but also intensities
a suspension of temporal flow
postmodern movement practices of standing still - EXAMPLES???
jANSA - kinaesthetic transgressions
WHEN AND HOW DOES ARTISTIC PRACTICE BECOME MEDIUM OF PROTEST
MEDIAL-ART WITHIN THE CONCEPTUAL FIELD OF COMMUNICATION
LUHMANN
TRANSFER from everyday gesture to art and finally political
communicability, mediality, forget about the autonomy of art for a while
social phenomena
their epistemological implications
autological implications of a system you want to analyse the world or a phenomenon from - is this not standpoint theory???
inclusive nature of systems' constitutions - autopoesis - does that mean we make and create based on our own design??? - body
systems always constituted in a recursive way
not enough to be repeated - new and surprise - is that not repetition?
systems exist by differentiating themselves from the environment and regulating the boundary to regulate the difference
terms
boundary
inside-outside
self-referentiality
communication is a key element in the differentiation and constitution - for eg. social system
how is co-shaping and similarity then possible???
self-referentiality - openness to the environment are not contradictory
expresses the possibility of situating art as a system of communication—although he definitely agrees to the autonomy of art and its occasional withdrawal from hermeneutic systems as a polysemy
subverting the idea of the classical dichotomy of inside and outside. - HOW ON EARTH???
for instance, that writing must be legible, and music recognizable as such, that is, distinguishable from noises, or even more simply: that that which we encounter in concert halls, literary texts, museums, etc., is art. Without the establishment of such expectations ... art would no longer be able to reproduce itself; it would leak into the everyday and trickle away. (Luhmann 1986, 11)
medium - ensemble of multiple elements, bound together by loose coupling or easy-separability, primary and second-level medium - complying with particular principles of composition - 1st -senses, 2nd - pressupoing attention and observe a second difference - form, expressive method
zone of possibility
a certain constitution, not form &content separation, through differentiation - a state of being, gestalt, unity - this and no other
opposite of form - chance - any difference that marks a unity
TEMPORALITY OF SYSTEMS - genuine “restlessness” and instability that make pos- sible the necessary change within the systems
The arts of the medieval period still displayed “rigid forms, oriented toward stereotypes,” but the art of the nineteenth century showed “tendencies to embrace social facts’ great capability of dissolution and recombination”
protest
If, then, society is constituted through communication, it follows that (political) protest situations represent one of its media of communication
are strictly distinct from one another; on the other hand, however, transfers between these different fields can happen comparatively easily because, - WHEN MARIGNAL CONDTIIONS ARE UNCLEAR
WHO IS FASCINATED BY THIS
Modernist art provides an early demonstration in Marcel Duchamp’s readymades— of which the Fountain (1917) is a famous example—of an object experiencing uncoupling and recou- pling through spatial relocation and decontextualization
out of the realm of the everyday and into the sphere of so-called High Culture in an art gallery. Elsewhere, Luhmann emphasizes the “exchange potential” of profane, everyday objects in an artistic setting, exemplified in Duchamp’s famous example
exchange potential
????????????Luhmann also notes that “non-art” is always a component of art as the “material can also be applied differently” (Luhmann 1992, 71).
????????????? However, he stands by his notion that art always begins in its communicative function, while juxtaposing as a core concept a certain artistic volun- tarism of display with a fundamental openness to reception in the viewer (Luhmann 1992, 70)
EFFECTS OF HIS PROTEST???? - WE GOT TO KNOW ABOUT IT - SO IT BREAKS THROUGH THE FLOAD OF INFORMATION???
diverging systems communicating with each other
which, as choreography—like compo- sition in music—creates the connection between the everyday, the artistic, and the political, and enables exchange between the three, now indistinguishable
?????????????????the work of art draws on sensuously perceptible media for its own self-explication, no matter what is subsequently presented as an internal play of forms. . . . The con- cept of form suggests that two requirements must be fulfilled and inscribed into per- ception: the form must have a boundary, and there must be an “unmarked” space excluded by this boundary. (Luhmann 2000, 45)
POLICE DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE A DECISION
resiliance
protest
creating political awareness
using counter public as a place of experimentation
structural organi- zation and transfers of (system) elements that fluctuate between the everyday, the artistic, and the political
[a]s soon as boundaries are defined sharply, elements must be attributed either to the system or the environment” (Luhmann 1995, 28). As already shown through Duran Adam, elements like this can be temporarily uncoupled and cause difficulties in the differentiation and placing of and in systems.
a connection between the slowing down strategies of contemporary avant-garde dance and a politically charged choreographic riposte to the ideology of standing straight :
onto political connection
critique of rectitude - Adriana Cavarero
EHUS DARASH - TEL-AVIV - SINKING SLOWLY DOWN
SOCIAL CHOREOGRAPHY - “a performative structuring of body practices in time and space, as an analytical category that allows reflection of the social, as well as exposing the relationships between the aesthetic and the political”
POLITICAL-CHOREOGRAPHIC
Through mobilization, bodies traverse a given terrain that by traversing, they con- stitute. ... Mobilization foregrounds th[e] process of how bodies are made, how they are assembled, and how demands for space produce a space of identifiable demands through a practical activity. (Martin 1998, 4)
RANDY MARTIN - “If movement can be plotted on a grid of space and time, mobilization is what generates the grid,” to use Martin’s words (1998, 4).
In Luhmann’s terms, mobilization would be an element that primarily enabled movement (as a medium).
Dance is treated as the reflexive mobilization of the body—that is, as a social process that foregrounds the very means through which bodies gather” (1998, 5), and this in specific historical constellations (1998, 24).
“dance emerges through the mobilization of participation in relation to a choreographic idea” (1998, 4)
mobilisation
postural ontology
Martin does clarify his ideas and places his theorem of mobilization within a triangle of dance, choreography, and participation.
The concept of participation contributes particularly to understanding the connection between movement and politics.
Was that the dance? By initiating this common reflective activity on what has just tran- spired, the audience imposes a direct physical imperative on the dancers, an authority that until now was reserved for the choreographer. . . . The audience decides that the dance is complete [and] what the choreographer began—getting dancers to move with something in mind—the audience here continues. (Martin 1998, 33)
copresence - Lichte
Via Erika Fischer-Lichte’s idea that copresence is a necessary constitutional condition,7 Martin grants the audience an active position not only in the sense of a physical and atmospheric presence, but rather as a temporary authority that takes on authorship of the ending and therefore draws the distinction between dance and no-longer-dance.
could slip out of the organisation - unstable social-artistic activity
audience
character of audience
The audience has no identity as audience prior to and apart from the performative agency that has occasioned it. As such, the audience is intrinsically “unstable.” . . . The uncertainty, the indeterminacy of performance, is momentarily actualized by the audience and therefore itself disrupted. (Martin 1998, 38)
Here, mobi- lization literally creates demobilization
unsettled audience that is unable to take on authorship of the end of the performance because, to return to Luhmann once again, it is not clear what kind of system they are actually facing here: everyday waiting, performance art in a public space, or political protest? The Luhmannian condition of an autonomous observation and differentiation is not available: the police officers have been temporarily relocated to an impossible place that excludes their usual trademark of decisive action.
PARTICIPATION - IMPORTANT TO TRANSLATE CHOREOGRAPHIC MOVEMENT INTO A POLITICAL ACT
SPACE
OCCUPYING PUBLIC SPACE TACTICS
reminiscent of grassroots movements, such as sit-ins
TACTICS//VS//STRATGY
as power options and institutions that normally have their own “place” at their disposal and under their con- trol—he gives “military strategy” as a significant example (De Certeau 1988, 35–36).
The space of tactic is the space of the other. Thus it must play on and with a terrain imposed on it and organized by the law of a foreign power. . . . It must vigilantly make use of the cracks that particular conjunctions open in the surveillance of the proprietary powers. It poaches in them. It creates surprises in them. It can be where it is least expected. (de Certeau 1998, 37)
POLTIICAL ACTING STRUCTURALLY SAME AS DANCING = Oliver Marchart, against a background of theoretical concepts of the political as developed by Hannah Arendt, speaks of political acting as dancing: “Political acting, for Arendt, is structurally the same as dancing.” In this, he is alluding to the sensual aspects of political acting, a behavior that never pursues exclusively utilitarian aims and that Arendt identifies in the student protests of 1968 (Marchart 2013, 45, 41ff.). This idea of the “dancing protest,” also dis- cussed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, ends in a kind of playful antagonism that takes place in community: “To dance politically . . . means dancing together” (Marchart 2013, 45).
tempo play a role in moments of tactical appropriations:
BIG CONCLUSION
systematically indistinct situa- tions or those that cannot be differentiated in everyday, artistic, or political terms have the potential for irritation and for possible reformulations of established social behavior.
Artistic practices can, then, become agents in the true sense of the word: performative, biopolitical mediators of protest that can, at least tem- porarily, subvert established boundaries of political behavior and systems.