Radical subtleties and other things we might take for grantedproceedings of CARPA8 body/word Performance Writing workshop on dramaturgy and artistic research

Abstract

These proceedings are constituted by indicative contextualising information, a workshop score and an attempted glossary regarding artistic research and dramaturgy in the frame of my methodology, body/word Performance Writing. Like a letter to a community that may come together on the occasion of these quests. Context is part of the body of the proceedings. Some information may seem too personal, or is usually taken for granted, thus rarely discussed further, when reflecting on the processes of a conference. The score is both an attempt to transcribe the workshop for those who were not there, but also a current reflection for those who have participated in it, in CARPA8 and elsewhere, including myself. The glossary and notes are attempts at updating a wordly sharing of what the workshop was based on, as a dramaturgy and artistic research project. Terms in the glossary are: Artistic Research, body/word Performance Writing, Dramaturgy, gut feeling, Multimodality, Poetics, Practice, pub version, Radical subtleties, Transitions and Transgressions, Transmediation.

Genuine thanks to Adonis Galeos for his research mentoring of many years and Onassis Air for making my participation and working on the proceedings possible as acknowledged and respected labor. More thanks to the committee offering me this opportunity for a most fruitful experience and the Eleni Gyra and Associates, Psychosocial Care for supporting me and other artists working in precarious universes. Heartfelt thanks to Sara Živkovič Kranjc for being a generous and bold workshop volunteer, Jess Applebaum and Katalin Trencsényi, for the discussions we had during and following the conference. Last but certainly not least, Dr John Hall, Professor of Performance Writing and Jerome Fletcher, Associate Professor of Performance Writing, for their inspiring writings on Performance Writing ontology, terms and processes and their most generous collaborations on several research occasions since 2009.

A little contextualising information

The workshop was titled “body/word Performance Writing as a communal dramaturgical practice for artistic research promoting a collectively more desirable being.”[1] It took place in Studio 4 of the Theatre Academy, University of Helsinki, at 16:15–17:15, on Thursday, August 24^th 2023, the first day of CARPA8. I chose to embed the workshop in the strand “transitions and transgressions” of The Colloquium on Artistic Research in Performing Arts, CARPA, Solvitur Ambulando, “solved by moving”, Dramaturgies of Artistic Research. The organisers were The Performing Arts Research Centre (Tutke) in collaboration with the Comparative Dramaturgy and Performance Research (CDPR) Programme of the Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki. The Conference Committee were Otso Huopaniemi (Chair), Leena Rouhiainen (Chair), Katalin Trencsényi, Jess Applebaum. The presentation was supported by Onassis AiR, as are these proceedings. The weather in Helsinki was fairly good, with a temperature of approximately 22 degrees, no rain and quite sunny outside. It is now an unusually warm November in Greece. I just swam in the sea in Cyprus during the last days of working on the proceedings. Food in Helsinki was great, new, different tastes, except for the haloumi cheese in the falafel shop near the hotel and the burger I had. It was, though, rather costly, as was the whole trip, especially for independent art professionals, creators, researchers and educators based in the south of Europe.

According to my original proposal:

The proposed multimodal sharing aims to experientially open up proposals, failures, questions and potentialities on the links between dramaturgy, artistic research and communities, a hybrid being, time and space. Body/word Performance Writing is Christos Polymenakos’ open-ended methodology (2010) emerging from the field of Performance Writing as conceived and practiced in Dartington College of Arts.

This research sharing is initially based on processes and different roles in projects situated in the field of Performance Writing as conceived and practiced in Dartington College of Arts. It is also informed by past applications of body/word Performance Writing in online and in the flesh projects of different fields, locations, roles and modes of creation, research and education. Finally, the proposed research sharing feeds off ongoing, current and, importantly, designing of future processes exploring collective dramaturgical work and artistic research with different communities in Greece and abroad.

Research proposals, failures, questions and potentialities unravel from the following quests:

• What if dramaturgy is a corporeal practice, perceived as a process sensorially engaging its human and non-human, living and not living entities?
• What if artistic research is a process enquiring dramaturgy as the poetics of connection of communities [cinoːtites], rather than promotion to consumerist audiences [cinaː]?
• How does this connection aim to reassure or update the connections between different corporealities constituting communities through a non-hierarchical combination of extended notions of creation, research and education?
• What if writing is the materialization, transmediation and/or translation of words in space, time, via different corporealities?
• How does processing language as an event and an event as language, inform praxis, the theoretical investigations for the sake of practice and practical explorations for the sake of theory?
• What is the pub version of the above?

End of original description of the workshop proposal.

Here is some more contextualizing information. I am currently an Onassis AiR fellow, conducting the research “CoJAM1312: Corporealities and Dramaturgies as tools for creating a hybrid work employing the body/word Performance Writing methodology”[2], a research part of which is my participation in CARPA8, conference and proceedings.

At the same time, since July 2023 I have been leading “Scoring Corporealities”[3], a body/word Performance Writing research of 28 artists, scientists and other professionals on “how can the relationship between body and word, when approached in the light of different arts and sciences, make dance available to different bodies, their communities and places”. The research is supported by means of hosting venues and publicity by Kinitiras, Artistic Network of Performing Arts, Isidora & Raymond Duncan Dance Research Centre, Dance House Lefkosia and TWIXTlab. Τhe J.F. Costopoulos Foundation has informed us on their kind monetary support for 2024.

The workshop score has been subtly updated after implementation in the frame of these ongoing researches (Polymenakos 2023).

My first time in Finland was in September 2010, participating as a Performance Writing graduate with three mini performances in the ANTI festival[4] in Kuopio. This was my second time and an occasion on which I flew again, after eight and a half years. There is something about Finland and its understanding and reception of body/word Performance Writing, that inspires me and makes me feel welcomed.

The workshop score

A community-activated body/word Performance Writing score for dramaturgy and artistic research

Examine the space which will host the gathering with care and all your senses.

Acknowledge the links that may make the temporary gathering that of a community [cinoːtita], rather than that of an audience[cinoː] (Polymenakos 2022) and nourish these.

A community acknowledges the economy in which it operates and offers its labour in a way that promotes collaboration, shared values and mutual support (Polymenakos 2022). An audience [cinoː] is focused on consuming and hierarchies that go with it. Allow for a collective critical transition from one to the other, or even a transgression.

If this community has entered the venue before, make slight changes to the light, accessibility, temperature, smell and so forth of the space. Place inanimate entities in ways that would challenge their expected function, like turn a tv screen towards the wall, point the microphone to the floor.

Clearly state there is no right or wrong, as long as no one is harming anyone.

Share personal information on attire choices as inanimate entities participating to the gathering, your own disposition, physical state, role in the economy in which the gathering is happening and thank who you need to thank for being here.

Offer subtle and explicit indicators of the entities constituting the community, human, not human, beyond human, non-animate. For this, highlight sensorial information and the connotations, memories, phantasies and timelinesses ([epiceroːtites]) they may relate to, or spark. Likewise, focus on how these corporealities are relating with each other in present, past and potential future time. Are they currently relating in a way that allows their expected function or behavior?

Try how and what every time you are tempted to use why and see how this allows both for personal and practical – physical and material – information and processes to come to the fore.

Pick up on the positioning in space chosen by the participating members. Clarify, if you suggest otherwise, how may this contribute to a confirmation of the togetherness of the group, or the updating of this togetherness. Allow for, or gently promote random placement of people in the space, facing different directions, at different levels. Allow for that which makes participants feel more at ease, before you propose a more homogenized seating, that will allow for differentiations to emerge. Prepare to acknowledge and accommodate these, too.

Use your whole bodies, even if at times certain body parts or functions, may prevail. Explore swapping or distorting the prevailing. Explore any differentiations of physical functions, abilities and potentialities among the members of the community, as they are bound to enrich the process and the connecting.

Repeat as many times as collectively agreed, changing roles. Worry not about the performance, all outcomes can be fruitful.

Listen. Offer back the iterations, unchanged. If you propose alterations, collectively examine the changes occurring and how these might be important.

Remain open to anything, or anyone that may require a diversion of the original plan, no matter how carefully you have prepared it.

Address all the senses, those epistemologically acknowledged and other.

Share. Receive. Be aware but do not worry about time. Dramaturgy is time (de Vuyst 2014) and time is as much subjective as it is objective. Anything that happens during the commoning is part of the dramaturgy (Polymenakos & Galeos 2023). So is anything that leads to it and anything happening after it. The same with research. State this.

If you need a volunteer, carefully prepare them.

Acknowledge wording and movements that may have a threatening or hurtful effect, a triggering resonance.

Keep an eye on the time keepers, as they too may be carried away. Time expands and so does space. So long as you care for this. And regardless of you. So, be careful.

Be openly thankful for the labor, others’ and yours.

When bringing in inanimate entities, make sure you grace their corporalities too, as that of living entities.

Acknowledge the different disciplines and experiences in and around and into the room, as well as their place and role in different economies. They are important factors of what and how that brought this community together.

A failing function is a potentiality for new communities.

The community you have with yourself alone, is a totally valid community.

There is no right or wrong. As long as there is care and respect for all the community members and their processes.

Cite. Be cited. Solely or collectively. Allow for commonly desired places of hybridity and care, Third Space(s) and connectings in between.

Radical subtleties may be informing definings, open ended definitions in flux which state time sensitive findings, failures, new questions.

Power, privilege, colonialisation and institutionalisation are here. As frames and operating processes, or as points of reference. It is a constant critical negotiation.

Experience, add more, spiral over or bellow. Return to the gut feeling from time to time.

Chose an object that, even with all senses available, it may offer different sensorial stimuli, thus consequently ignite subjective experiences, memories, fantasies/ imaginings and timelinesses ([epiceroːtites]).

Phrase using any languages that serve the connecting.

Propose a phrase to be explored through the processes of the workshop and the participants’ own practice and experience. This can be a wordly phrase, a movement phrase, a sonic or music phrase. Really, any kind/mode of phrase that may energise the consideration on what is taken for granted and how this brings to the fore both the dramaturgy and the artistic research. While it will be lovely to have the time for exchange, allow participants to take the proposal and activate or not this part of the score, at their own will and time.

All these expand time. Allow for rest.

Collective processes take more time. Embrace any stress and reconfigure plans according to the need for more time. It is ok. More than ok.

The subtlest things are the most radical. Like an unnoticed someone or something that is an unacknowledged member of the communing. Join in while people acknowledge this, again, at their and your own time and way, if at all.

Collectively reflect on how the events that took place during the defined time, relate to the initial questions.

Ideally, do not document the gathering by video or photos, or audio recordings. It alters the participation.

Attempts on a body/word Performance Writing glossary on artistic research and dramaturgy

While these notes are occurring – in terms of the physical process and experience of the reading act – in a linear succession of time, please feel free to alter this timeline, rhizomatically and spirally, according to your own choices. Or even randomly.

Artistic Research

• is poetic modes of questioning past, present, imagined information, data and processes we either take or propose to be taken for granted. It is focused on critically examining what and how, rather than why.
• relies once again on the corporality, physiology and corporeality of the subjects and media engaged in the performance of the task. Perspectives that may appear in the form of acknowledged genres, disciplines and epistemologies, marginalized or silenced experiences are both tools and subjects of the questioning.
• again a noun operating as gerund, a doing, a happening
• a slightly different thing implied in different languages
• unpacking of what is taken for granted by means of poetic processes and media
• inseparable from the process of making and theorising, viewing and reviewing
• maybe non-existing if there are no people doing it

body/word Performance Writing

• is Christos Polymenakos methodology for looking into relations between body and word as examined through the lense of different sciences, arts and experiences for the sake of offering tools in creation, research and education of any strand, genre.
• is maybe a field of tools and proposals across genres, disciplines and experiences, rather than a methodology, or a genre, just like its motherland, Performance Writing in Dartington College of Arts was (Thompson & Polymenakos 2013). Working on it.
• is proposing ways into things, which means it can be useful to create connections with works and experiences that come from various genres and disciplines, but it does not wish to claim titles and territories or brand them.

Connectioning

• Unceasingly creating the potentiality of connections.
• It feels like an organic extension of the most appreciated notion of the Third Space (Rutherford 1990). As a way to acknowledge the ever-changing things that are going in the spaces around original and Third Spaces. With a preferred touch of looking in to how do they relate and what functions do these relations eventually perform.

Dramaturgy

• the endfix -urgy means work and craft in Greek and drama ([ðraːma]) is the action, a noun in the place of a gerund, as in the case of dance. Drama is the performance-ing of my action ([ðro]), of what I do, what I am doing.
• relies on the corporality and corporeality of its components.
• is the practice of the poetics of connectioning.
• dramaturgy feeds on non-hierarchical combinations of searches, those that best suit us at each time. We can always spiral back and forth.
• there may be events that when taken away from the body of the dramaturgy, this changes things a lot, or even completely. Sense which these are, as they constitute a – not necessarily linear – spine of the sharing. An action, a collision, a compliance, a body, a word, a thought, a nothing can be equally important events.
• dramaturgy exists without dramaturgs. It happens in the subjective, experienced time and space of the subjects performing it. It comes with a definite but not limiting reference to commonly agreed time and space shared by the subjects performing the focal action and the subjects participating voluntarily or not, consciously or not in the overall experience of this performance. Or maybe, it happens, unacknowledged as dramaturgy, by every body. Working on it, too.
• the role of the dramaturg is radically affecting the dramaturgy, even if subtly.
• the dramaturgy’s quality, aesthetic and effectiveness heavily rely on the references of the community experiencing the work and the bridges between those offering and those receiving the work. It is a reading of some sort.
• modes of co-existence and collaboration are inherent dramaturgical processes regardless of their successful or failing performance.
• human, non-human and non-living entities, as well as processes are all equally active agents of the function and labour of dramaturgy.
• radical subtleties are available, more often than not in the shape and tropes of clichés and processes of normalization each community adopts.

gut feeling

• may help you during the whole process of the dramaturgy to stay in touch with your full potentialities, even those that do not come in the shape of words, while in touch with your body. When your guts feel at ease, you know you are where you want to be, regardless if this is actually a success.

Multimodality

• Discourse is articulations of sharings. These may come in different modes, means, media and materialities of expression. It certainly consists of different corporalities, corporealities, transmediations and information related to these.

Poetics

• the multiplicities of making into ([piˈo])
• the creative labour considering textures, structures and what is going on between them in a discourse of any kind
• poetics are very practical, physical, corporeal, even when it is all about imagining
• in plural to maintain openness and inclusivity
• (Both poetics and practice are inspired by and or responses to proposals by Professor of Performance Writing, Dr. John Hall (2013)

Practice

• a practice, thus a labour, part of a matrix of economies and ecologies.
• a praxis, a practice in development/progress that is thoroughly informed by theory, reflection and research, theory for the sake of practice and practice for the sake of theory.

pub version

• is the version of a discourse that may be understood by people that know almost nothing previously about it. It often does not exist, but it is extremely helpful to try to articulate it at different stages. It is also very helpful when you are opening your work up to different communities.
• It often comes in the shape, mode, trope other than more usual forms of words, like a movement, or an experience without words.

Radical subtleties

• as definings
• Radical subtleties appear often as clichés and/or processes of normalization, or habits.
• Radical subtleties may be informing definings, open ended definitions in flux which state time sensitive findings, failures, new questions.

Transitions and transgressions

• Transitions in the sense of borrowing the quests, tools, findings of one field, strand, genre and so forth, and placing them inside one or more other fields different to those they originated from originally. Scripting silence, scoring materials are just two examples.
• Transgressions in the sense of acknowledging precedents while driven to question these in favour of updated versions, possibly seemingly completely new. Respectfully, critically challenging the precedents.

Transmediation

• The process of information of any kind passing through different bodies of living and non-living, human, non-human and beyond human entities. The corporality and corporeality of these bodies who operate as media and the projections we apply to them, affects both the process and the outcome. Bodies and words are some of the possible media involved in transmediations.

Thank you EveryBody * ~

Notes

1 www.uniarts.fi/en/documents/abstracts-for-carpa8-conference-24-august-2023/#christos-polymenakos

2 www.onassis.org/initiatives/onassis-air/onassis-air-programs-202425/christos-polymenakos-corporeal-dramaturgies-of-the-elusive

3 www.fluxlaboratory.com/en/programme/scoring-corporealities-3924

4 antifestival.com/vanhatsivut/en/2010-2/

References

de Vuyst, Hlidegaard. 2014. “On time and dramaturgy.” Unpublished conference presentation at the 20th International Kalamata Dance Festival, Kalamata Municipal Dance School, Zouboulio Megaron, July 7, 2014, 10:00–14:00.

Hall, John. 2013. “A Glossary for Performance Writing.” In Essays on Performance, Writing, Poetics and Poetry: Vol 1: On Performance Writing, with pedagogical sketches, by John Hall, 151–160. Exeter, UK: Shearsman Books.

Polymenakos, Christos. 2022. “body/word Performance Writing: creation, research, education from, for, with the community?” July 5, 2022, Akropoditi Dance Fest, Akropoditi Dance Centre, Ermoupoli, Syros, 19:00–21:00.

Polymenakos, Christos. 2023. “Presentation of body/word Performance Writing methodology w/ Q&A.” Lecture, Onassis AiR Galaxy Studio, Leontiou 5, Athens, Greece, October 10, 2023, 15:00–18:30.

Polymenakos, Christos, and Adonis Galeos. 2023. “Drama! Drama! Drama! body/word Performance Writing Dramaturgy.” Workshop, Studio Trajectory, Exarhia, Athens, March 19, 2023. 11:00–14:00.

Rutherford, Jonathan. 1990. “The Third Space. Interview with Homi Bhabha.” In Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, by Jonathan Rutherford, 207–221. London: Lawrence and Wishart.

Thompson, Melanie, and Christos Polymenakos. 2013. “Performance Writing meets Mapping: A dialogue.” Journal of Writing in Creative Practice 6(3) Dec: 411–419. Intellect Books, Bristol.

The workshop and the paper are supported by Onassis AiR in the frame of an Onassis AiR fellowship.