E-tivity 6. Performativity and daily life

I intitially found the Theory cards to be full of generalisation and too tabloid-esque for my liking. They do contain a lot of information on some very big and complex subjects, which may serve to be an useful starting point for a serious researcher. However, I fear that, much like the tabloid reader, this information can be taken as gospel and ‘fact’ much like when a student looks in an encyclopedia. There seems to be wikipedia-factor to them in this sense. Whilst they may be an easily digestible light hearted way to begin research upon key writers etc. I would have to stress the importance of seeking out further information on the subjects. You cannot contain the entire theory of say, ‘Karl Marx’ in less than 100 words. After all has his theory not been misread in the past? However, as I continued to browse through the various cards I found a sense of irony to them, particularly the ’special skills’ etc. section at the bottom. This may highlight another use for the cards; light amusement for the sake of the well read theorist who understands the irony.

As regards my own practice and the theme of performativity and the everyday- I feel this is one of a number of umbrella themes within my work which also includes an examination of time and memory, and the relationship between the mediums of drawing and video. My work is underpinned by performativity. When I film someone no matter how relaxed they may be, they are performing in some manner. When I make drawing from the video I too reflect the performance, which I have begun to examine by further recording this process. I also have another idea for creating footage to work from whereby 3 people will be filmed in an audition style talking from memory. This will involve performing in both the ‘natural’ and acting sense, but I fear dispensing any more information on the internet!

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performativity and daily life

Some would say that performativity is in everyones’ daily life, we all perform for different audiences throughtout the day in different roles. I certainly do, a lot of my role as a teacher involves assuming a role.

I love the idea of interrupting daily routine but in ways that add to the delight of the day and not to annoy. I dont like art designed to interrupt the routine but love that that enhances, amuses and enlightens. What we notice is difference, when the posters are changed on the billboards, when the tube platforms are polished, when someone smells. Visual information is quickly assimilated into the routine environment. To remain powerful it needs to be changed everyfew weeks. These days it is changed continually, moving in front of us, adopting a rhythm. So do we no longer look at the image but wait for the repetition?

As for the site suggested, I found the use of the cards a good way of indexing and presenting basic information or thoughts around a person but would have prefered active links and more extensive information. Also I would imagine the site would grow as more people submit more unofficial cards. There are certainly many interesting people that need to go on the site.

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E-tivity 06 Performativity and Daily Life

Theory.org.uk is OK if you want a quick rundown of the philosophers and academics in the world of critical theory, media and arts. I found the trading cards interesting although I was expecting to look at the flip side but to no avail. I looked at the bell hooks one but it didn’t say much, what did stand out is that her weakness is ’she dared to criticise Madonna’??? Maybe they are trying to make the website into a sort of an intro to Media Studies for Idiots. In my opinion it is a promotional website for David Gauntlett. If you want more info then you can buy the book, the cards, the t-shirt etc…. I was a bit puzzled when I read this sentence Academics have found it difficult to establish what identity means, so that at times it has been reduced to a set of categories such as gender, ethnicity, and physical ability (each of which becomes more fuzzy itself, when inspected closely). ‘ Please inspect the text in bold. What does it mean??

Anyway my contribution to performativity in daily life-I don’t know if this is relevant but I once filmed myself working in my studio. I was told by friends that in there view I was becoming a bit OCD about a piece I was working on that involved ripping bits of material and knotting them together onto a a framework to form a web. I decided to film the process for myself. Watching myself work was eye-opening, I suppose I wasn’t expecting to see myself obsess over an artwork in that way. A few days later I was burgled and the camera, tape and all were lost forever. Ironically the work ended up in a skip- but I didn’t get to film that-no camera!!!

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Performativity and daily life

The site theory.org.uk is very slick and modern, my problem is I dislike these media type sites which promise but do not deliver. In fact this site illustrates succinctly the theory of one of the subjects within the site. Adorno is quoted ‘ that capitalism fed people with the products of a ‘culture industry’ – the opposite of true art- to keep them passively satisfied and politically apathetic’………he also suggested ‘that culture industries churn out a debased mass of unsophisticated and sentimental products which have replaced the more ‘difficult’ and critical art forms which might lead peple to actually question social life.’ (however because this comes from from a site I have no confidence in, is this true?)
The information in the site including the trading cards is reminiscent of those literary sites which summate the works of Dickens into three paragraphs for the illiterate. I would prefer to profess ignorance than mediocrity and painting by numbers, did the art of reading a book and creating your own understanding die out with the world wide web and Wickipedia? Discuss!!

The second part of the task is interesting, I am not prepared to go public with an example of performativity and daily life in my own practice and I will avoid the obvious example of Mathew Barney and ‘the Cremaster Cycle’.

My preference is to direct to the Chisenhale gallery site Here I both listened to Jaki Irvine speak and saw her exhibition ‘In a world like this’. Her multi-screen installation looks at the world of birds of prey at a sanctuary, here she captures the daily relationships between the handler and bird when at rest in private behind the scenes. Then there are the performances which are for the paying public and here the birds and handlers perform daily, different roles which are front of house staged performances. Her work and the nuances of role play that she delicately handles are subtle and reflect our own performativity in daily life.

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e-tivity 06 – Identity – Performativity and Daily Life

Revisitng my notes from the presentation given by Iceberg on the subject of Identity we raised the issue of how art can be used to disrupt people’s routines so that they think about the everyday differently, using art as a strategy to defamiliarise the mundane, the automatic response to daily stimuli . Thus inviting an audience to consider the extraordinary in the ordinary, to celebrate life and its wonders and realign themselves with what’s truly important about life. Often it is the great events in a life like birth, marriage, divorce, illness and death that cracks our everyday existence and is a potential catalyst for transformation, forcing us to re-evaluate our lives. I know for myself that when I am able to see things differently, I feel expanded, uplifted and empowered to live my values. Being creative through making art, dancing, making music, playing with friends, being part of rituals, witnessing other’s creativitiy are potential pattern interrupts for me. Experiencing the powerful forces of nature and tasting the daily labours and attitudes of societies that are different and less resourced than my own, interrupts my habitual view of the world that I inhabit. It is an amazing wonder that I have this medium called electricity that is conducted into my home so that I can use this computer. It is an absolute gift that I can eat delcious, healthy food without having to labour to plant, tender and harvest it.

So we examined the work of artists like Cindy Sherman who has played with her physical appearance to simulate various iconic images of women from the 50’s and 60’s and the use of dolls, puppets and sculpture to show woman as sex object and hag. Indeed artists like Orlan go one step further to use her own body and the procedures of plastic surgery to make “carnal art”, transforming her face with the aim of attaining unconventional beauty and questioning the role of the body in society and how we identify with our own bodies. More culturally familiar figures that are chameleons are music artists like Madonna and Kylie Monogue, who are constantly reinventing themselves and could be said to be nourishing the media’s lust for the surface and superficial of life, the ‘appearance’. In the past, artists such as Mary Cassatt unusually depicted the everyday world of 19th century women, mothers and children in intimate domestic portraits free from sentmentality and idealisation. Today, artists like Tracey Emin uses all aspects of her life in her work, suggesting intimate autobiographical accounts can be turned into broader statements about everyday life that have value in society.

Theodor Adorno argues that Capitalism and its emphasis on growth and consumption produces a culture where its members are both politically passified and satisfied and I would say, hypnotised into identifying with and justifying the meaning of life through the creation of false needs and its concurrent obsession with commodities (commodity fetishes) As Grayson Perry puts it ‘we are what we buy’ – the focus is on product rather than process. when surely the quality of our lives is about the excitement, gratitude and joy we feel in our daily lives – giving meaning to our daily work and how it shapes our being rather than the having that results from it. So how can we establish a healthy identity in society as we seek to fulfill our roles as siblings, parents, sons and daughters, friends, colleagues, neighbours, business owners, voters…?

Purpose: In the process of further exploring this topic I came across Theory.org.uk – an on-line resource created by our very own professor of media and communications here at westminster university, David Gauntlett. I invite you to study the site, the structure and the content with the aim of thinking about individual testimony and intimate experience ‘v’ the forces of society, history and memory.

Task: Select one of his Theory Trading Cards (official or unofficial) and further explore and present information on this topic in relation to identity, performativity and daily life. I would also like you to describe either a personal experience of performativity in relation to your art practise or briefly refer to an artist’s work you have seen in situ that resonates with this topic for you. Please enclose an image in your e-tivity and I hope you find it useful.
Respond: Come back to the tiip’s blog, read your classmates posts and leave a comment with your feedback.

Timeline:

Task: Friday, February 23rd
Respond: Tuesday, february 26th

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