Aesthetics of Improvisation

Aesthetics of Improvisation:

Intermissions, Interruptions, and Digressions in Performance

At the Sunday talk/video/dance given by Foofwa at the 92nd St. Y, he

talked about the relationship between complex choreography and inter-

ruptions in his piece based on Cage, THiRtEEn. We talked about this later

and I related the discussion to my own improvisation work, as well as

performances I'd done in Second Life, with other musicians, and so forth.

I began to think of a taxonomy of interruptions, realizing that I was

heading into muddy hermeneutics at the least, as well as splitting

epistemologies and fractured phenomenologies. I revived the idea of the

'fissure,' a break in the midst of A and A, which doesn't change the

entity; the split remains, temporary or permanent, as a glitch, but not -

as in negation, an ontological process.

So we begin with a choreography (which may also be a musical score,

theatrical text, etc.) which is absolute in the sense that the real is

absolute; it forms a foreground and background structure which the

performer follows to the best of hir abilities, without break, with a

sense of inhabiting the piece which is almost unconscious, and with a

repertoire of technique that, hopefully, can be taken for granted - a form

of tacit knowledge that allows the piece to flow smoothly, from beginning

to end. Think of this absolute choreography as an impossibility, as the

performer adjusts hirself throughout the presentation: nothing is or can

be perfect, because no choreography operates as natural law, and

interpretation is part of the very atmosphere of any performance.

We are talking about human performance here, not machine or program

performance, where choreographies may repeat themselves endlessly without

error, or with the repetition of the same error growing either linearly or

exponentially. Let us think, without error.

There is always the question, or the state, of the freedom of the

performer, who has agreed, often under contract and capital, to perform

and rehearse a piece, for perhaps a set amount of time, with various

riders attached, for example drowning as an act of God.

What can happen? Here we enter into the phenomenologies, the taxonomies,

of behavior in relation to structure: the coupling is always a loose coup-

ling.

The performer may repeat or elide a section or sections of the choreo-

graphy, This may be the result of forgetting the section or sections; it

may be a conscious decision; it may be the result of an other cue; it may

be the result of muscle strain or other sense of injury. It may also occur

as a result of play. All of these situations imply different intentions,

different intentionalities: forgetting can also connect to a suturing, for

example, so that the performer does not know s/he has elided something -

s/he remains within the aegis of the dance, inhabiting the dance, in spite

of (perhaps) the consciousness, from outside, of something amiss - as if

there were differing hermeneutics and strata of the same choreography:

someone performing, someone reading, someone watching. A sense of injury

or strain tends to foreground the body; if the pain is minor, the

performer may attempt to circumscribe it, detour 'around' the section, as

if the detour _were_ the section. If the pain is major, the performer may

slip into a phenomenology of the body, backgrounding the choreography

which is then only an inscription under erasure (a differend; the

choreography is no longer speaking, no longer in control, no longer _in_

inscription).

The performer may make a conscious decision not to do the section or

sections, or to repeat them, or transform them according to any number of

semiotic operations. This may come out of an inhabitation of the dance,

leading hir elsewhere/elsewise; it may come out of a sense of play, as if

the dance were temporarily objectified, thrown for a loop, thrown out of

kilter; it may come out of a sense of play in which the dance is forgotten

and the section becomes the horizon itself.

The forgetting of the section may be a conscious forgetting, as the per-

former does something else, or nothing at all: the performer might rest,

might decide to rest; the performer's body might 'seem' to rest or decide

to rest. The daily, the everyday, is foregrounded; the performer has an

itch, wants to rest, needs to go to the bathroom; has a sense of the

giggles; remembers a recent argument or sex; starts laughing; is furious

at hirself; and so forth.

For the audience, the conscious forgetting, the everyday, may well be part

of the performance: did s/he forget hir lines or is this part of the

choreography, the score? Is this Brecht, Pirandello, their descendents? Is

this revolutionary theater, Occupy?

It may simply be everyday, a relationship or communality among people -

performers, choreographers, audience, within or beneath the problematic

sign of capital. For the performer, there may _never_ be a return to the

choreography; for the audience, there is a mixed hermeneutics paralleling

that between the virtual and the real, always these entanglements, which

are on the increase, as reality is augmented and the virtual is mixed: as

programming becomes absolutist on one hand, and the hack and play on the

other.

The performer may elide a section and jump to another section, rupturing

the time and continuity of the piece, suturing the same as a fissure

reveals cracks in the midst of substance, the same and the glitch. The

glitch is already a recovery. Think of the recovery in relation to

communality: the action of one performer affects the others, but not in

the sense of choreography - in the sense of choreography's absence,

everyone covering up, everyone filling in the gaps - or not, for something

is always there to be shown, even the performers asleep, giving up,

deciding it wasn't worthwhile to continue in any case.

What about this? - the decision that it's _not worthwhile to continue._

Here is the audience and its/their expectations - their choreography,

their role/s, and there are the performers carrying a sense of exhaustion,

ennui, the uselessness of it all, bodies still present, perhaps milling

about. So there continues to be an occurrence, and everyone perhaps is

still present, so something is going on, there is a doing or doings.

This is where it might be of interest, thinking through what's worthwhile

in a deeper or more veered-off sense: is it worthwhile to continue if the

choreography physically hurts the performer? Becomes so complex that it

seems ridiculous to follow? Takes up so much of hir time that hir other

life or lives are backgrounded or eliminated for a period of time? But

then there is capital, agreements have been made.

Let the agreements perhaps stand _from the very beginning,_ so as Foofwa

indicated, there is no danger of being fired, eliminated from the

performance, and so forth. The situation becomes one of trust: the

performer is hired, that's all there is to it, and what s/he does is

already acceptable, already in-process, presented, presentable. Of course

there are limits, s/he might abscond... So the ceiling is set sufficiently

high that it disappears, just as soccer for example, as rule-laden as it

is, becomes a dance of improvisation and strategy, a continuance, based on

the trust that players will do their best. (We know where that leads us,

but that's another story, not here. So perhaps a bad example.)

Think of this in terms of taksim, a string breaks, the oud cracks, the

performer is exhausted; in terms of free jazz, a conversation emerges with

the horns, is carried out in song, then words, then leaving the perfor-

mance altogether. And in dance: as if we're in this together, as if a time

and a space were being built - rather, inhabited - a form of temporary

dwelling called an event.

-- I'd say this relates to scripts, roles, and hacks in everyday life,

relates to everyday games (counting footsteps, avoiding sidewalk cracks,

and the like), relates to economies of attention (not just capital, not

just intention). So we might think of loosely-coupled choreographies as a

form of the everyday, or a local Occupy, with its own rules that might (or

might not) be up for negotiation. And negotiation might be up for negotia-

tion as well; such might or might not be the content.

Where all of this goes - is towards an increasing fragmentation between

script, code, program, choreography, and capital on any number of hands,

and play, freedom, decision, hacking, laughter, on any other number of

hands. The category of category is problematized, as are cybernetic

control systems (on any level); what we might be seeing down the road are

varieties of presencing in which the image is what you might see and might

have, and maybe not even that. So in the long run we might look towards a

phenomenology of the imaginary, as the imaginary, in the world, replaces

the obdurate of the real-inert. Beneath both are the regimes of slaughter

and extinction, so that the imaginary is also a dream-screen of the

fractured image, a moment of solace where thinking and the freedom of

thinking are permitted. At this point, we might not be able to reasonably

hope for anything more; humankind is at the verge of the verge, so to

speak/dance, and will probably remain there, as the very real population

of the planet continues to increase somewhat exponentially. So the hope is

that the imaginary is also a back-door to a better future - there's a

utopian impulse in all of this, which may of course be subverted...

[Thanks to Foofa d'Imobilite, Azure Carter, Edward Henkel, and the 92nd

Street Y.]

VR Improvised

Anything is possible in the virtual.

Inscription is absolutely cut off from the real.

Inscription cannot be sutured into the real.

The virtual is disposable.

The structure of the virtual is substitution.

Substitution implies creation and annihilation.

0 may be substituted for 1.

1 may be substituted for 0.

The formula of the virtual is [any][any].

The formula of the real is [1][1].

The real is sutured to the annihilation of inscription.

The real de-; the virtual in-.

Nothing is possible in the real.

Suffering is ontology; the virtual Occupies epistemology.

The real is neither here nor there.

The virtual is multiple.

The real is extruded from the real; the real intrudes on the real.

The virtual divides infinitely; the real divides perversely.

Neither the real divides the virtual nor the virtual divides the real.

The ontology of number is practico-inert.

The ontology of the virtual is imaginary.

We know that the real and the virtual are imaginary.

We know that the imaginary inhabits abjection.

We know that abjection inhabits the imaginary.

Abjection inhabits the real insofar as the imaginary.

The virtual expels abjection; abjection is beyond the Pale.

The Pale is its own configuration.

The Pale confines the real.

Everything and nothing are possible in the Pale.

The Pale is beyond the Pale; there is no interior.

The real is multiple by virtue of the virtual.

The virtual is fractured by the real.

The virtual takes all the time in the world.

The real takes none of it.

The virtual takes all the space in the world.

The real takes none of it.

The Pale rides the back of the real; the real fucks the Pale.

And in the virtual? Anything is possible in the virtual.