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1st failure video

 

Is this performance a failure?…. As a performance I think it could be deemed  a failure as to me this is a non performance. It can also be seen using the concept of failure as a failing to conform… for me… coming from a bacground where doing, and doing well is something one must strive for… non doers are lazy and bad ( in the books of my background)… so in terms of exploring failure… exploring non doing one culd think this performance is a success..

Can Failure be staged? What is the difference between failure and strategic ineptitud?

Im not sure… are we playing with words? If failure is rehearsed and planned and goes according to plan is it not a success… I ges it can be staged  when we think about failure as failing to fit within the norm!

I guess failure for me would be accidental and strategic ineptitud would be planned .. would be investigating failure.

My Failure Manifestos

3rd Failure Manifesto

My wonderful boyfriend told me this one and I want to appropiate it cause I think it is great! :

I Fail Therefore I AM

 

2nd Failure Manifesto

Yes to trying things out

Yes to letting go

Yes to embracing the fear of getting it wrong

Yes to the non normative, the ugly and the smelly.

Yes to appropiating and subverting

Yes to the unknown

 

 1st Failure Manifesto

1- I will fail at being a hero.

11- I will fail at failing being a hero

9-I will fail at being a super woman.

4-I will fail at failing being a super woman.

5- I will fail at being a good student.

6-I will fail failing being a good student.

7-I will fail at being a good artist.

8- I will fail atfailing being a good artist.

5- I will fail at doing as i am told.

6- I will fail at not doing as i am told.

12- I will fail at making money.

10-I will fail at failing making money.

 

More Stuff from 1st Submission

CORMAC POWER: PERFORMING TO FAIL: PERSPECTIVES ON FAILURE IN PERFORMANCE AND PHILOSOPHY

The new thing I am picking up here is the thoughts of Merlau- Ponty about the constant struggle to create constant one-to-one relationships within the environment and constantly faling as these relationships and changing all the time.

Cormac Says: “Merleau-Ponty focuses his attention on breaks to that circuit, where the failure of the perceiver and the object to coincide forms the basis from which to understand the complexity and fragility of subjective experience”.  Cormac then links it tp Peggy Phelans thoughts on Performance- performance is transient, fugitive, escapes the grasp… It fails to fit in with the capitalist money making apparatus… and I ask myself is this a failure or a success?

I have also got to know Mouth to Mouth- a group of performers that for one reason or another live in different parts of the world. The work  deals with the failure of being able to be all together physically in the same space to create a performance, to get around this they use Skype which of course has its own problems of connectivity breakdown.

And this is Cormac’s going home message:

Failure, as Sartre discovered at his unfulfilled rendezvous in the café, creates (at least temporally) the chance to reflect on our own orientation in the world and opens up the possibility of a “felicitous space.”

 

Nicolas Ridout- Stage Fright, Animals and other Theatrical problems:

Ridout discuses in this text  ‘The wrongness in the theatre”.  He initially talks about the difference between Performance and Theatre. He talkes about the ‘ antitheatricality of much performance art’  that we find in the works of Peter Handke, Richard Foremanand Samule Beckett. He talks about how these performance work is more concerned  with “realness” rather than ‘the representation of “the real” ‘. … but he points out that these antitheatrical practices are so theatrical that this prejudice is to be found, is born of theatre itself.

He talks about performance as the back stage of theatre… something that embraces the wrongness of theatre.  In order to do this he explores a text of Heinrich Von Kleit called ” Uber, das Marionettenhater’  … in this text Kleits suggests that ” the perfection in grace is only achieved by the puppet or god”. Why the puppet?… because like the animal the puppet has no self consciousness.

” Simple puppets are capable of more refined and graceful movement than even the most highly trained virtuoso human performer” [ ‘Because he is not capable of human affectation’] Kleit states.

Ridout also discusses  the fact that theatre is face-to face encounter with The Other. This encounter can bring a discomfort and uneasiness, queasiness because the ” act of delivery or the act of collection are always compromised”.

The uneasiness comes  from not ” not knowing where to put oneself  when things go wrongm when ineptitud strikes”.

I am not sure but I think that  what Ridout is getting at is that withing the wrogness of Theatre , withing exploring  and embracing  its wrongness there is a rightness. It brings to the fore different politics that are routed in ” Shame  rather than mutuality” and that they  emerge from the s of the face-to face encounter  with The Other.

 

My favourite quotes are already within the summary but here is an extra one:

” The theatre that I am intersted in most is a theatre that invites us perversely to enjoy our ethical discomfort and to think politically about the sources of our enjoyement”

Lauren Barri Holstein- The Cyclical cupcake.

In this text, Holstein  uses her show How to become a cupcake, the famous adaption of Frankestein to discuss theatre and the fact that it is based in representing real rather than in “realness”. She discusses her failure to stick to theatre norms and points out that is not clear in her show what is real and what is not. …. I need to reread and understand this text better in order to summarise… Im getting in a muddle.

But she talks about the real and the simbolic  and how the real stays at the border with the simbolic and sometimes is absorbed with in it  and then is expelled out ( abjected)…  In  her show The cyclical cupcake, the boundaries of what is real and what is not are constantly blurred.

She references Butler  and I think I understand that in performace when we are represented the adjected then it is sometimes possible to re organize the signifiers, reorganize the symbolic order perhaps?… is it here thet lays the political power of performance? ( I am asking myself)…

Holstein talks about the constant failure of gender to represent itself as … woman for example ‘cannot represent all the possibilities of womanhood’ because the concept of woman is in constant state of flux…. she links this failure to her failure to become a cupcake.

 

Videos

The famous Splat:

What can I say……. The most interesting thing is the humour and comedy…it makes some of the actions that would be difficult to watch more accessible although I must say I still found thinks difficult like being on the floor covered in Ketchup… reminded me of some of MacCarthy’s videos where he plays with Ketchup and sausage…

My favourites seens where: The flying through the air like a bad arial dancer… The story about little bitch and my super favourite was the using the knife like a dick to slash the bags full of ketchup. A woman that now has the Power of the Phallus.

I like how the event is like a parody of a Pop singers show but draws on soo much stuff, like Beckett, folk tales, porn imagery.

 

The Famous, How to Become a Cupcake/The Famous’ Adaptation of Frankenstein:

For me the most interesting bits are the really messy ones, fillthy and gross… what it is normally considered failure by being gross, tabu, bad taste becomes a succes  by being failure on this stage. Even the kind of intervals in between busy stages  become interesting become they are mundane  and boring.

My favourite part of this movie is the melting ice lolly that looks so much like a dick when is melting!

GetinthebackoftheVan- Big Hits:

This has been a diffigult piece for me to watch. I have found it boring to the point of falling to sleep. I found some bits funny, like the guys jokes and somethings annoying like Lucy’s shagging moves and booby wobbles.  I thought it was far to long.

But I found the concept of the bunny  rabbit beeing there and to give security and comfort  and then getting to a point that it can bee killed because it is no longer necessary very interesting.

On the whole though I was pleased when the piece was finished… that was the highlight  for me being able to stop watching because it was boring me.

Ryan Trecartin’s “A Family Finds Entertainment”:

Initially it made me think about multiple personality disorder… then I felt it was more like a stream of the subconscious emerging. I like the dreamlike quality created by the sound and visual effects. I like the Hypertheatricality and the messiness. I like the fact that most caracters in the piece are performing therir gender, subject in a non normative way, more like in an abject/ wrong kind of way.

I like the irreverence specially when refering to the guy that has just been ran over and draws attention to existential issues and the value of life and human relations. I think that the paradox/ contradiction between the silliness, ridiculousness , excessive make up  in contrast to the very real like the very clear image of the cat, the scrottum of one of the guys and the girl that is filming and sentences like a guy has just been hit by a car and is lying on the floor… make a coment on the contradictions or real life and real humans.

Richard Maxwell “End of Reality”and “Drummer Wanted”

Uhmmm…. There is a contradiction here between what is being said and the actions and there is also hyperthatricality… But what i find most interesting is the contradiction… Like when the guy in End of Reality that has just been in a fight gets asked what happened to you? and he says I just hurt myself…. when he has just been beaten up… or when he is still on the floor and he has to ask the security man to help him …. because he is not doing his job… it brings a pang of pain…  and harsh reality to ones head….

Ann Liv Young “The Bagwell within me”

My favorite bit here is the mess with  the red bath tub. The exageration of what is deemed ugly… like pubic hair, saggy bellies and bad dance moves. This women seemed to be enpowered by making use of all that ussually deems them powerless.

Vaginal Davis. 2003. ‘Ron Athey and Vaginal Davis Present: Visions of Excess’.

Marines and big packets…  The military  forces and the phallus … both symbols of power … The phalluses here and made bigger than they really are and this is obvious… we all know by looking at them that they aren’t real… The making fun of this is like saying no to power structures and normativity.

 Karen Finley – ‘We Keep Our Victims Ready’ and ‘Im an ass, man’.

In both films Karen Finley performs her gender in a way the is considered wrong for the normative stereotype. She makes her self look ugly, disgussting and rude and these are negative attributes for a woman. I think the main strength of how she is doing is because it comes across as very ‘real’… not theatrical, not pretending but like performing herself and seems to be saying : Real women can also be filthy, rude, disgusting…. etc.

 

Ron Athey -Self Obliteration:

Things that I think are bery important in this performance:

1- The Blond Wig: Points to the queer body.

2- The blood and The Glass Panes: These, together with the known fact that Ron Athey is HIV +… makes refference to the medical condition and to the weight, pain and fear that that brings with. The glass panes make refference to microscopy slides used to look at blood smears… it is like Ron Athey is making a smear himself.

4- The raised stage and lighting- Gives it a kind of sacred aura.

Andy Warhol- Blowjob, Empire, Kiss and Mario Banana: 

I think in all 4 films there is an element of voyeurism. There is also an element of Boredom. In all 4 films I am straight away excited by the image but as the films are so long after a while i become tired of looking at them and start figiting and want them to hurry up and finish… so I think I actually become a little irritated by them.