(with Simon and Morgan)
It’s not about what you produce, but what you do with it.
I’ve written an unabridged, overly long paper. Great. This is how I work: explode and cut. In this final month, it’s all about the cutting. No, it’s all about HOW the cutting happens.
The plan: make my editing process live and visible through performance. Allow Schpando to appropriate, intervene, and disrupt the text. Perhaps there are three or four voices in the text (at least two of my own, and Schpando, and other people/ research). Relating to virtual space, and its affects, perhaps I don’t talk about it in the paper, but I DEPLOY these affects through Schpando. I will get her to troll me, live. She will ruthlessly cut and edit, type over, whisper quotes, and move with me through the paper. Through her, and this process, I now have license to play with the conventions of writing (footnotes, fonts, formatting). The document doesn’t need neat conclusions, or closed arguments, but it can be truncated, abrupt, and subjected to the movement and flow that has produced it.
Preparing for the performance is already an initiation of the editing process. I’ve been looking for this link between choreography and editing, and think I just found it. The sequencing, the approaches, the entry points, all have to be considered before the performance. The editing lays a terrain for the live-ness of the performance, and to embrace all that happens within it. The editing constructs a performance space.
Morgan had some suggestions as to how to approach the editing: work with once sentence at a time, give Schpando the personality of a very smart 12 year old, and schedule these performances. I’ve got four booked: March 29th, April 7th, April 9th, and April 16th. All will have invited guests, or witnesses, to enhance the immediacy of the work, and consider it as a performance, with all of the careful crafting involved.
Some things to remember from New York, trying this in February, and some notes from my crit group: don’t do too much/ don’t oversaturate the audience with information, everything I do on stage I am responsible for, think about how I’m addressing the audience and don’t ignore them (I need them, how do I handle this?), and think about what, exactly, I’m telling them ( be precise with what information is up on the screen, in the material, etc.). There are new things coming out now, don’t over do it. Stop exploding, this is about cutting.
General notes:
Two things that are great: 1) the studio and research have become inseparable. They are informing each other, and need each other, to continue into this next stage of the work 2) the discussion about what I’m showing in Berlin is a continuation of my practice, of this paper, and how it’s a live piece of work. It changes with each performance, the performance is the generative field. I need you to watch me, and I need you to help me prepare.
In the introduction to the paper: let the reader know the text is produced through performance, and how Schpando will have a relationship with it. This will draw attention to how the reader can access the work, as they are major characteristics.
Sort out my priorities first, and then have multiple things vying for attention. Think about how this will be displayed in the text.
References:
Rolywholyover: A Circus (John Cage)
The SOMETHING ELSE PRESS (Dick Higgins, Fluxus)