I should also mention that I am looking forward to spending time with the catalogue upon my return to Cornell, (and its library’s liberal lending policies), this summer…

Many thanks,
Ryan

How delighted I was to see your name appear as my first and only comment! The Internet is a strange site for dialogue… thoroughly anonymous and then suddenly so personal, present, and particular… So I deeply appreciate your kind response and thought-provoking reflections, especially as I have enthusiastically followed your work for many years.

It saddens me to hear that some audiences (I wonder “some” means, although I can probably guess) are not exactly receptive to Kant and Lacan, but it is not surprising, in particular since Kant and Lacan’s systems are so densely self-contained and forbidding for the philosophically uninitiated. I am myself always preoccupied with how to best frame theoretical inquiry for different, often overlapping audiences. I suspect there’s no single solution, but an array of strategies. On the bright side, I am convinced that there is a growing hunger for philosophical reflection and direction in artistic circles beyond the academy, even if such a dialogue is necessarily difficult to manage.

Regarding capture, I also find that it retains traces of an instrumentally oriented notion of technology– yes, motion capture, screen shot (”capture d’écran), or perhaps the moment of photographic fright in encountering the apparatus. As per “Mille Plateaux”, all of this language seems inflected by war, which is presumably part of a project of resistance to representation. In the context of performance, this reflects an all-too-typical nature vs. culture division, in which culture, or technology, corresponds completely with the theatrical frame– hence, Meg Stuart’s melancholy dandelions as the vanishing traces of the human, or the natural community of men. (With notable emphasis on gender in this last word…)

The presiding interest in liveness is directly connected to this conventional constellation of differences. It also appeals to a general audience, which can relate through first-hand experience– without recourse to historical precedent in philosophy. Of course, I think this ahistorical appeal is misleading. It reinforces an unconscious fear of the technological, or photographic fright. But sublimated horrors are sublime pleasures, and is not the spectacle of spectacle culture our own fixation upon this apparent wound?

Even if performance was never live– and after the one-two punch of Derrida and Butler this seems undeniable– this does not entail that life, or its aesthetic legibility, is necessarily lost. In an attempt to elide and elude this residual aesthetic clot in which liveness is imbricated, I have turned to media and mediation. (And a fair bit of Benjamin, but not “new media” tout court!) Especially as it diffuses and defers the immediacy of liveness, I like the sense in which media is connected to a much longer material history, one that is at least as old as the inception of written language. This history, even if it never becomes immediately tangible, could be conducted by forms of performance that no longer legitimate themselves in opposition to technology or apparatus…

Many thanks again for your comment– and of course, know that your digital dialogue is always more than welcome!

Cordially,
Ryan

I agree the conversation about liveness is outdated. But I think it persists because there are very few critical terms capacious enough to encompass performance as an art form — one that includes, but is not limited to, dance. I am thinking currently about “the thing.” (And recommend Kirby’s helpful work on Performance and Time, as another potential ‘big term’ that can help). When I have presented my new work on the thing (das Ting from kant and petit objet a from Lacan are the foundation of this work) I have learned that some audiences resist the philosophical or psychoanalytic as worthwhile in the aesthetic context. This troubles me. “Capture” for me is promising, but seems most potent in relation to dance, and also has what I would describe as a technological overhang (from ‘motion capture’ etc). Anyway: would be interested in your response. You write lucidly and passionately — nice combination.
Thank you.
Peggy Phelan