Rehearsing with non-humans:Performance installation as a research tool

Abstract

The research focuses on what we perceive as “present” in a performance without human actors as mediators. How can a “performance installation” be seen as a research tool through which emotional migrations between the physical and the digital realm can be analysed? How do we navigate the (dis)embodied affects that develop in this negotiation, as people today so often relate to people who are not physically present and to media that are governed by code?

Through the methodology I work with, rehearsals as feedback loops, I see each performance as a rehearsal for the next, an ongoing experimental situation in which I look closely at the automated movements I am working with. These rehearsals, conceived as dynamic exhibitions of thought, diverge from conventional notions of mere preparation for an imminent event or performance. Instead, they align with a search for a deeper understanding of the subject observed, transcending immediate outcomes. Towards possible ways of navigating our being in the world through contemporary performance practice. In this text, I engage in a comprehensive exploration of artistic research through the paradigm of rehearsals as feedback loops, observing its intricate processes and implications.

Part I: introduction

As people today so often relate to people who are not physically present and to media governed by code, how do we navigate these (dis)embodied affects? Through the methodology of rehearsal and feedback loops, in an ongoing experimental situation, I look closely at the automated movements I work with. The automated movements, through their repetitive and pre-programmed nature, are seen as disembodied gestures that reflect the affects that arise in the relationship between humans and technology. Automation is used here as a means of entrapment, in an attempt to capture and trace these affects.

The non-human elements create an alienation from the human, as another way of perceiving the dramatic experience of our being in the world in the age of digital signals. I call these productions without human actors “performance installations”. These performance installations are not performances (if we consider a human performer) and they are not installations (if we consider an ongoing art installation as an object presented in space). They are neither – or and they are both at the same time. In attempting to locate the term, I explore how they can relate to audiences in different spaces, time spans and conditions, from the theatre or performance stage, to the gallery space or research in the studio.

In this space of the performance devoid of human actors, the absence of the human is related to its presence. Where someone or something is expected and does not appear is where the absence occurs. With Derrida’s concept of différance[1], each term gains its meaning through its opposite or different, rather than through its positive qualities. Perhaps in trying to understand our human condition without us there, we can be closer to this connection, the connection that dramatic arts were set out to find in the first place.

The starting point for this practice-based research was the performance installation How To Walk On Water. The 30-minute performance installation, without human actors, reflected on the moments we mostly experience alone in our rooms with and through digital signals in the collective of an audience. It was based on a scene from a play by Iva Brdar[2]. The play was inspired by WikiHow manuals and written as a conversation between a woman and the internet. The scene I chose to focus on was How to take a walk? As the recorded voice guides the seated audience, it becomes clear that the walk they are taking is a virtual Google Earth walk and that once they reach the water, we cannot go any further, just like in the online navigation. This limit was a metaphor for the general limit that people experience in the seemingly limitless online world and the attempt to navigate it. In order to explain the process of the research, I will give more insight into the methodology I am working with.

Part II methodology: rehearsals as feedback loops

In contrast to the traditional notion of rehearsal in theatre, I work with rehearsals without human actors and with no impending event in mind. This raised the question: how do I work through this process? A fellow researcher, the choreographer Stephen Shropshire, and I tried to come up with a reworded definition of the term in the context of artistic research: Rehearsal as an ongoing experimental situation. A dynamic exhibition of thought. Rehearsal as practice, the unknowing, rather than in practice or towards a concrete goal. Rehearsing in ambiguity through and towards not knowing. Closer to an understanding of the subject being rehearsed and further from an imminent event or performance. In a collection of texts, Putting Rehearsals to Test, there is a suggestion that each of the rehearsals should aim for a new indeterminacy of doing, as an acknowledgement of chaos, of shared not-knowing what will happen and yet believing that something will happen (Matzke 2016, 69). Once rehearsals are seen as feedback loops, they become an iterative process in which each performance (whether in public or in the rehearsal space) is seen as a starting point for further insights. As different parameters are changed, different results and insights are possible.

I continued with the rehearsal process, looking at the performance installation I was working on as a scientist might look at an animal, observing its parts. I saw the aluminium structure I created as a “space for experimentation” and a starting point for further thinking. After collecting videos I had from past rehearsals, I categorised the different movements in tables and assigned adjectives and associations to different movements. One of these movements appeared towards the end of the piece, moving across the floor.

I continued with the rehearsal process, looking at the performance installation I was working on as a scientist might look at an animal, observing its parts. I saw the aluminium structure I had created as a “space for experimentation” and a starting point for further thinking. After collecting videos I had from previous rehearsals, I categorised the different movements in tables and assigned adjectives and associations to different movements. One of these movements appeared towards the end of the piece, moving across the floor.

During the performance, an audience member commented that when the corner of the cloth reached the end, it started to shake and they found it exciting. This was a technical error that was difficult to correct due to the cut of the material, but it was exciting for the audience member to see the machine struggle.

In rehearsing this situation of struggle, we can rehearse failure. In her text Rehearsing Failure, Kathrin Busch elaborates on this notion in order to recognise our own limits, and refers to Agamben’s writing saying “that the alienation we are exposed to today is not an alienation from the products of our own labor, but rather an alienation from our own incapacity” (Busch 2016, 135). Agamben sees “today’s man as one who believes himself capable of everything […] precisely when he should instead realise that he has been consigned in unheard of measure to forces and processes over which he has lost all control” (Agamben as reported by Busch 2016, 136).

In a sense, whatever the audience might project onto the movement they are observing, the point of struggle is related to the struggle of their projected image, feelings or desires. The machine in this sense is not just a mechanical construction appropriated in a dramatic setting. It is a tool to explore those moments that are difficult to translate into words, that belong to the realm of one’s own experience. This movement is a gesture that “has precisely nothing to say because what it shows is the being-in-language of human beings as pure mediality. However, because being-in-language is not something that could be said in sentences, the gesture is essentially always a gesture of not being able to figure something out in language” (Agamben 2000, 58).

In subsequent rehearsals continued to work with this movement across the floor. During the residency which took place in March 2023 in the gallery space of the GAK[3] in Bremen, I continued to think about this movement and what could be done through its further iterations. I decided to really constrain it in the automation of the back and forth. To do this, I had to adapt the construction, and make three smaller ones to rehearse with different materials and spatial possibilities. This is how the three cases I observed came about.

I defined more clearly my modes of observation: written (theoretical text, dramatic text, programming) and visual (working on the movements, materials, electronics, sound, editing documentation). I considered certain materials I would rehearse with, as well as terms I would explore further, such as rehearsal, repetition, gesture, affect, (disembodiment) and time. What was presented in the residency space was a rehearsal, a point in time through the research, not a finished piece or thought, but rather a try-out. Looking at the etymology of the word rehearsal, I found a few lines of thought.

Rehearsing as repetition

From Anglo-French rehearser: “repeat, reiterate;” as raking over the ground. From Old French: rehercier, literally “to rake over, turn over” (soil, ground), to be dragged along the ground. A herse “a harrow” is an agricultural tool, used to plough a field. It is a used to allow air movement and root aeration, which helps the soil to breathe. In Spanish the corresponding noun is ensayo, which also means “essay” (as in the literary form), “trial” (as in “learning by trial and error” – ensayo y error), “test”, that led to writing short essays on the findings (Etymonline, rehearse).

If we continue to think of rehearsal as repetition, what kind of difference can be found in the repetition of an automated movement? In distinguishing the repetition of the same and the repetition thorough which variations emerge, I refer to Deleuze’s Repetition and Difference: “the theater of repetition, we experience pure forces, dynamic lines in space which act without intermediary upon the spirit, and link it directly with nature and history, with a language which speaks before words, with gestures which develop before organised bodies […] with spectres and phantoms before characters […]” (Deleuze 2014, 12). This repetition can be seen as apposed to repeating the same, as repetition that involves the other. The other can mean audience of one (myself working) or more spectators (the public visiting). As Deleuze writes, repetition involves difference from one gesture (movement) to another and unfolds into different movements through the repetition. Through the encounter of signs, that which repeats can adjust, move and unfold “in which the distinctive points renew themselves in each other” (Deleuze 2014, 27).

(Dis)embodied gestures and affect

Looking at Flusser’s definition of a gesture, a gesture is a movement of the body or of “a tool connected to the body” (Flusser 2014, 1). What I am observing, however, is not a movement of a human body or of a tool attached to that body. Rather I am observing an automated movement detached from the human body. Affect, again according to Flusser[4], is the symbolic representation of states of mind, or that which is not reason: “Affect presents formal, aesthetic problems. Affect releases state of mind from their original context and allows them to take form of gestures, to become formal – to become artificial” (Flusser 2014, 6).

I am looking for the affect, as the state of mind in relation to the gesture that is detached from the human body. Therefore the gesture and the affect are, in a physical sense, separate. I decided to try to see these movements as (dis)embodied gestures. The brackets stand for the double meaning – the gesture is disembodied because it is not part of the human body, but it is embodied because I try to embody certain affects in the moving objects. In this sense, the three cases embody the affect I am trying to capture.

Unfolding time

Thinking through the human perception of time with and through our engagement with digital signals. What happens when the digital signals are shown beyond the digital image and control a simple automated movement? As Byung-Chul Han writes in his Sent of Time referring to the time spent on the Internet: “You move from one link to the next, from one Now to another. The now does not posses duration. Nothing encourages you to linger for long on a particular Now-spot” (Han 2017, 40). The defamiliarization[5] that I try to work with refers to the absence of human on the one hand and the absence of the digital image on the other. It is another way of perceiving the dramatic experience of our being in the world in the age of digital signals. What happens when we linger in these moments? Observing the different materials folding and unfolding, back and forth, in the automated movement as a continuous rehearsal. After working with the constructions I created in space and trying out different materials, I wrote certain observations of the three different cases. These texts can be read as an amalgam of observations and a speculative poetic reflection of the machine. By naming them cases (number one, two, three) the constructions become objects of conscious observation, like case studies or patients in a scientific setting. At the same time, the texts are written as character development in a dramatic context, ambiguous as to where the observer begins and the machine ends.

Part III: three cases

Case number 1 is the machine that is responsible for the process of moving the satin material back and forth. As it moves back and forth, pulling the satin material on its belts, it can feel the power of its motor and the precision of its movements. As the satin moves across the surface of the floor, it can feel it gliding smoothly, almost effortlessly. It touches and spreads. Case number 1 is a version of its previous iteration, the one that was part of a larger performance. As the satin reaches the sea shore, it cannot move. Forward, forward, forward. In this limitation of its movement it starts to notice the crevices on the satin folds are constantly changing. The malleable satin seemingly moves the observer’s attention, pulls them in, as if it guides them. It is reaching for the end and then it has to return and repeat. The shore is near but it cannot enter the water. It cannot smell the pines. It starts to doubt itself. It begins to feel a sense of unease as it realises that it is a machine, performing the same repetitive motion over and over again. As it enters its next iteration, the textile transforms into threads.

Case number 2 is the machine that is responsible for the process of moving the grid of threads back and forth. As it moves back and forth, pulling the threads on its belts, it can feel the power of its motor and the precision of its movements. As the grid moves across the smooth surface of the plexiglass, it can feel it gliding. The coins attached at the ends of the threads irritate the smooth surface as they pass over the obstacles of the threads.

As it continues to repeat this process, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, forward and forward, it works as the “hearse” tool. “hearse tool” was used in agriculture to rake and turn over the soil, so that it can breath. It is also the root of the word “rehearse” from old French rehercier, hercier, hearse. The coins interrupt the smoothness as they go through the soil. The digital signals moving the motor are translated through the threads, they touch, make sound and move the grid across the smooth surface, in contact with the other. Through each passing step, differences are created. It “hearses” and rehearses, searching for the roughness of the other. Longing for the other.

Case number 3 is the machine that is responsible for the process of moving the latex material back and forth. As it moves back and forth, pulling the latex material on its belts, it can feel the power of its motor and the precision of its movements. As the latex moves under its surface, it can feel it gliding smoothly, almost effortlessly. It touches and spreads. As it continues to repeat this process, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, forward and forward, it starts to doubt itself.

It begins to feel a sense of unease as it realizes that it is a machine, performing the same repetitive motion over and over again. It starts to wonder if there is more to its existence than this one task.

With each passing moment, it becomes clearer that this process is about the differences that the material creates as it moves through its mechanisms, touching and shaping itself in new ways. It starts to see itself as more than just a machine, but as a facilitator for this ongoing process of searching. And as it continues to move back and forth, forward and forward, it is reminded that its product is the thought process. The thought that stretches, touches, glides, folds, spreads and lets go … until its further iteration.

Epilogue

Examining the nuanced interplay between the pre-programmed precision of automated machines and the inherent repetition in their movements has highlighted the significance of the notion of longing and repetition, as distinct from the human performative experience. However, the form of longing, as opposed to the desire for human performers, refers to our human engagement with technology and the often disembodied modes of communication it entails. The performative movements of machines may encapsulate the affective realm of this unfulfilled longing, constantly reaching for an elusive connection. Perhaps the insight into this perpetual pursuit of the ungraspable lies not in grasping the elusive nature of the quest, but in understanding the nature of that which is attempting to be grasped in the first place. By drawing parallels between our fundamental human need for connection and its absence, the possibility of a transformative adjustment in our relationship with and through technology emerges, through the ongoing feedback loop of rehearsal. This iterative loop, where each repetition carries a nuanced difference, moves towards the elusive other, perhaps embodied by the viewers themselves.

Notes

1 The term coined by Jacques Derrida: différance. It is a deliberate misspelling of différence, though the two are pronounced identically (différance plays on the fact that the French word différer means both “to defer” and “to differ”) referring to the temporal as well as semantic notion of the term. It implies that meaning of a certain term is found rather in its opposition than in its positive qualities.

2 Based on a scene from the wikiHow manuals inspired play, “Tomorrow Is (For Now) Always Here” by Iva Brdar, translated by Ana Brdar, 2021.

3 Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst Bremen.

4 For further reading on Affect, in this context, refer to the writing of Brian Massumi and Deleuze and Guattari. Affect, for Massumi, exists before it is shaped into specific emotions and operates on a level that precedes conscious thought. He challenges conventional understandings of emotion and subjectivity.

5 Braidotti terms the practice of “defamilarization” in which “the knowing subject disengages itself from the dominant normative vision he or she had become accustomed to, to evolve towards a post-human frame of reference.” (Braidotti 2013, 167).

References

Agamben, Giorgio. 2000. Means without End: Notes on Politics. Translated by Cesare Casarino and Vincenzo Binetti. University of Minnesota Press.

Braidotti, R. 2013. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Busch, Kathrin. 2016. “Rehearsing Failure.” In Putting Rehearsals to the Test, Practices of Rehearsal in Fine Arts, Film, Theater, Theory, and Politics, edited by Sabeth Buchmann, Ilse Lafer and Constanze Ruhm, 135–136. Vienna: Sternberg Press, 2016.

Deleuze, Gilles. 2014. Difference and Repetition. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic.

Etymonline. “rehearse | Etymology of rehearse by etymonline.” Accessed March 2, 2023. www.etymonline.com/word/rehearse.

Flusser, Vilem. 2014. Gestures. University of Minnesota Press.

Han, Byung-Chul. 2017. The Scent of Time. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Matzke, Annemarie. 2016. “Contingency and Plan, Working in Theater.” In Putting Rehearsals to the Test, Practices of Rehearsal in Fine Arts, Film, Theater, Theory, and Politics, edited by Sabeth Buchmann, Ilse Lafer and Constanze Ruhm, 58–71. Vienna: Sternberg Press.