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ESTABLISH A GLOSSARY OF APPLICATIONS
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This part of the manual moves from the wings to the stage: what happens when we test our instincts and object choices and move towards composition and operation? It concentrates on the processes of the five practical investigations undertaken between 2007 -2010, specifically on methods of composition, assemblage and activation. These investigations lead to a glossary of applications that are tested and then built upon through the summative performance of Garage Band outlined in Chapter 5.
The investigations began loosely, working with instincts and hunches that quickly became more defined. They began with what Richard Wentworth might call a ‘fumbling’ (in Warner, 1993, p. 13) around the studio, a method of trying things out and attuning the eye to recognise the chance moments that reveal the ‘meaningful and the marvellous’ (p. 9). This technique evokes Andre Breton’s ‘hasard objetif ’ (objective chance), a drifting between objects and contexts from which ideas start to form (Nadja, 1923). It is hoped that this process has already started to reveal itself in the opening part of the manual, letting the objects lead the work and set off a series of choices that start to build a practice.
What can be observed in the account of the investigation is the movement from object actions as events - happenings - to a more nuanced theatrical apparatus that, although maintaining these gestures, introduces and plays against performers, narrative strands and music. The logics of this process can be read through the following documentation, which is intended to rework
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INVESTIGATIONS LAMENT OFTHE NOISE MAKERS VARIATION 1
LAMENT OFTHE NOISE MAKERS VARIATION 2
STAGE FRIGHT VARIATION 1
GLOSSARY OF APPLICATIONS
STAGE FRIGHT VARIATION 2
HOUSE
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the material in retrospect, a combination of a pragmatic ‘what I did’ with extended thoughts and reflections whilst also adding to the set of instructions from Part 1.
‘Breakdown the Machine’ is a recomposition of the notes and structures of the investigations, written as performance scores. These scores have been composed in the studio by starting with a large group of objects and then worked through in relation to each other as forms of performative lists. These lists are not only catalogues of the objects I used, stored in SS13, but also lists of operations, direct actions that relate to placement, movement, switches or mechanisms. The individual instances of practice have been devised as a vehicle for testing relations of objects and performance.They have been documented in a way that demonstrates their productivity for me as a maker, rather than offering them as pieces of complete practice. This is reflected in the contexts in which they where shown particularly experimental festivals and scratch commissions as well as closed workshop showings for colleagues and supervisors. The investigations start by working on forms, moving increasingly towards how these forms translate into, and illuminate, content.
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4 BREAKDOWN THE MACHINE
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LAMENT OFTHE NOISE MAKERS
Foundry Studio, Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies Aberystwyth 25/07/08 Duration: 9 minutes 20 seconds Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff 15/10/08 Duration: 14 minutes 32 Seconds
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A performance action made by placing objects in relation to each other.
THE SET UP
Place a wardrobe in the centre of a space.
Gradually introduce other objects Shirt Bowl Clock Tape player Torch Cymbal Amplifier Microphone Cup Knife Fork Table Desk lamp Bird cage Emergency light
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Test their relation.
weight - colour - texture
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Introduce wire and pulleys to test these relationships further. counter weight - light - surface clash
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Introduce more objects and repeat Table leg Crutch Drip Tongs Wheels Spatula Window Another bird cage Rope Boot Hair clippers Triangle Beater Another cymbal Metal tin Table Standing lamp Medical stand Light bulb Strobe LED lights Remote control light switches Bowling ball Chair Camp stove Cookie jar Hand pump Picture frame Trousers
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Ladder Brush Plastic sheet Walking stick Drum stick Coffee grinder Figurine Plastic legs Wooden crate Hammer Cow bell Radio Stuffed bird White sheet Microphone stand 6 blue 7-inch record boxes Saw Mallet Wooden fish Horn Ironing board Bird cage White shoes Record player Sound effects records Bottle Tongs Hedge clippers Snare drum
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Group objects and find short repeatable sequences of action in relation to the wardrobe. Incorporate any objects or structures in the space if necessary. Use the wires and pulleys to repeat the actions if necessary. if the sequence ends in the destruction or breakdown of the object or mechanism then repeat to that point and wait for final activation. Record the pair and group sequences and start to put them into relation with each other to build more complex sequences and relations. Build your own logic for the sequence: Narrative Composition Physical Properties Add further materials and objects if necessary to fill the gaps and consolidate logic. Decide which way the installation faces and place audiences chairs to face it.
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Finalise your sequence and record it as a score.
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Variation 1
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Hedge clippers Wooden frames Strobe
Bowling ball
Torch
Plastic legs Wooden crate Chair
Tape player Crutch Bird cage Window Spatula Bottle Bowl White sheet Light bulb Tongs Table Radio Clock Stuffed bird Camp stove Kettle Drip
Snare drum
Table Leg Microphone Stand
Desk lamp Fan
Hammer Wheels
Beater
Metal tin
Cymbal Amplifier
Wardrobe
Drum stick
Hair clippers
Standing lamp
Shirt
Cow bell
Triangle
Plastic sheet
Audience
Walking stick Cymbal
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Preset Wardrobe torch on Audience light on Camp stove on Actions Brief strobe Roll bowling ball Fan/light on Fan/light off Move to camp stove - turn off slowly Move back to wardrobe Strobe on Shirt up Legs forward Strobe off Cow bell and hammer - KONK Table light on Tape player on Radio drop Bottle drop Bird cage drop - stop (grab it) Table Light off Slowly drop plastic sheet Together Drop window Drop bird cage Drop bird Table light on Drop window Drop bowl Together Drop tongs Drop knife and fork Drop crutch
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Table Leg move Rasie drip Pause Table light off Crutch draw back Stop BANG BANG Stop Drip raise Drip drip Standing light on Hair clippers on Drum stick on snare drum BANG BANG Boot kicks cymbal All off Standing light off Hedge clipper frames Fan on Swing Standing light on Hair clippers on Drum stick on snare drum BANG BANG Boot kicks cymbal ALL RAISE BANG BANG BANG Until total breakdown
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Variation 2
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Light Rope
Wardrobe Torch
Top hat
Brown bird cage
Record player
Soda bottle
Cymbal
Blue
Stuffed bird
Standing light
Kettle
Chair
box
Drum stick
Bowl
Blue Bird cage
Hand pump
Reel to reel
Light bulb
jar
Blue
Mallet
box
Music scores
Hammer Cow bell
Horn
Shoes
Red bird cage
Suitcase
Saw
Bowling ball
Blue
Box
Desk lamp
Beater
Desk lamp
Iorning board
Mink fur
Cookie
tin
Ampilfier
Wooden fish
Metal
Coffee grinder
Gold bird cage
Snare drum
Hair clippers
Microphone stand
Drum stick
Picture frame
Triangle
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Preset Wardrobe torch on LED lights in bird cages on Record player with bird sound on Actions Record player off Triangle Balloon in suitcase on Rise Fall Wait for sound of balloon to deflate Light bulb on Light bulb off Hair clippers on Desk lamps on Appear from behind wardrobe - smile Place microphone into metal tin with clippers Pick up music scores and move to chair Take saw and attempt to cut music scores Return to wardrobe Desk lamps off Hair clippers off Back light on String pluck Desk lights on Fish emerge from box Fish dance left - right Fish finishes low Mink fur emerge from box Stuffed bird emerge from box Desk lamps off
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Bird cages in the dark Light bulb on Standing light on Picture raise Top hat raise to head height Both fall Hand pump raises Pump handle falls naturally Cookie Jar lid ‘blown off’ SMASH Drum hair clippers on Drum stick hits/misses snare drum Top hat rise to head height Drum stick hits cymbal Cow bell and hammer - KONK Reel to reel on -white noise Repeat to mania Repeat slight mania - slow/stop Mallet stands up Set up mallet attach to rope Swing BANG Swing BANG Bird cages drop Repeat all actions to destruction until nothing functions All lights off Leave with music scores
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1. …The appearance of the object, the appearance of the human – how do these converge? 2. …How, when you add another object to the composition, the existing objects react in different ways (positions/colours/textures/utilitarian use). There is wider set of relational gestures that is emerging – example, the adding of the trousers to the back of the space… 3. …amongst the range of objects that can be seen, my eye is drawn to those that are made for humans: handles, chairs, trousers, wardrobe, radio, kettle, clippers, microphone, domestic light sources.. 4. ….I find myself spending time in front of the objects – waiting for something to suggest itself… 5. …I have spent the whole day just playing with objects in relation to their weight – how they shift and move when connected with each other… 6. Things to do: - Plastic side sheets (framing) - Hang other objects from central bar - Rig counter weight wheels for objects in central bar - Drum machine + clippers + strobe
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7. …I realise how important stillness is – without performers – to reproduce movements. With performers we have the impetus to constantly be in motion/action whereas with objects it is the opposite… 8. …Once the machine is constructed (when it feels like there is ‘enough’ stuff) the sequencing begins (although decisions about what movements certain objects do are made throughout the process)… 9. …It strikes me how crude some of the construction is; there is an evident haste. This seems appropriate for the figure of the creator, the human in the mechanism, as it is clearly him who has constructed the machine… It is HOMEMADE… 10. …There is an interplay between precision and crude DIY – like a childish engineering experiment… 11 … I feel like I should document the banal details of making – the dust, sockets, marks, used wire etc… but I am not sure why… 12. …There is a desire to produce a NARRATIVE! – to provide the audience with a way through. I must maintain a disconnection to allow the objects to form their own… 13. …There is a resistance to ‘re-stage’ the object movements – rehearsal is not needed but constant listing and re-listing the sequence… The only time the sequence will be performed is in the showing itself…
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STAGE FRIGHT
Foundry Studio, Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies Aberystwyth 10/06/09 Duration: 15 minutes Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff 11/11/09 Duration: 15 minutes
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A performance machine built to repeat an action.
THE SET UP Conceive of a marginal room space that is adjacent to a primary space like a corridor or a dressing room. Reduce this space down to a number of key aspects that might evoke the space. A wardrobe A dressing table A carpet A picture A chair An intercom A ceiling fan Add details that suggest an action or event that has happened or is about to happen in the room or the primary space. A wig A hand mirror A figurine A gun (prop) A knife (prop) An apple (prop) A glass with false teeth A mouse A balloon
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Work out a series of narratives between the objects of the room of what might happen between them when they are not being watched.
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Narratives of the inanimate c‘ oming alive’.
Narratives of materiality and representation.
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Use wires and pulleys to build a mechanism that can crudely play out these narratives repeatedly.
Build a substage that the room can be built upon and refine the mechanism. The substage should enhance and echo the primary space of which your marginal space is in relation to.
Build a space of concealment where the operator of the wire mechanisms can be placed and revealed.
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Finalise your sequence and record it as a score.
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Variation 1
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Gun
Apple
Knife
PERFORMING PERFORMING OBJECTS OBJECTS
Broom handle
Wig
(End)
Wardrobe Balloon
Mouse
Stage fright monitor Figurine
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Bulb Bulb Bulb Bulb Bulb
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Preset All light bulbs on Tape player with cheering crowd sounds in wardrobe - low level Actions Mouse emerges from under wardrobe and crosses stage to corner Topple Lights off ‘Stage Fright’ title monitor under substage on Off Together (End) light on Balloon on Figurine moves across the stage Figurine moves slightly Balloon off Figurine falls down Balloon on Knife moves from on top of wardrobe and starts to attack balloon Balloon BANG (not from knife) Knife flies over broom handle and falls to floor Gun appears Operator appears and resets the scene Wig is revealed in back of wardrobe Figurine back up New balloon fixed to pump Mouse reset to under wardrobe Operator acknowledges audience with a nod Checks hair in mirror Returns to wardrobe All light bulbs on Mouse emerges from under wardrobe and crosses stage to corner Topple Lights off ‘Stage Fright’ title monitor under substage on
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(End) light on Balloon on Figurine move slightly Balloon off Figurine falls down Balloon on Gun moves from on top of wardrobe and starts to attack balloon Balloon BANG (not from gun) Knife flies over broom handle and falls to floor Operator appears and resets the scene Wig is revealed in back of wardrobe Figurine back up New balloon fixed to pump Mouse reset to under wardrobe Operator acknowledges audience with a nod Checks hair in mirror Returns to wardrobe All light bulbs on Mouse emerges from under wardrobe and crosses stage to corner Topple Lights off ‘Stage Fright’ title monitor under substage on (End) Light on Balloon on Figurine move slightly Balloon off Figurine falls down Balloon on Apple moves from on top of wardrobe and starts to attack balloon Balloon BANG (from apple) Apple flies over broom handle and falls to floor As it falls to the ground all lights off ‘Stage Fright’ title monitor under substage on OFF
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Variation 2
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Speaker
(End)
Mouse
Gun
Knife
Apple
Balloon
Chair Wig
Teeth
Figurine
False
Glass
Broom handle
Balloon
Mirror
Balloon
Dressing Table
Bulb Bulb Bulb Bulb
Stage fright monitor
Bulb Bulb
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Preset All light bulbs on Tape player with cheering crowd on suspedended speaker low level Actions Mouse emerges from under dressing table and crosses stage to corner Topple Lights off ‘Stage Fright’ title monitor under substage on Off (End) Light on Together Balloon on False teeth bubble in glass Balloon off Bubble stop Back piece of chair falls out Bubble Balloon on Knife moves and starts to attack balloon Balloon BANG (not from knife) Knife flies over broom handle and falls to floor Operator appears and resets the scene New balloon fixed to pump Back piece of chair reset Mouse reset to under table Operator acknowledges audience with a nod Checks hair in mirror Returns to table All light bulbs on Mouse emerges from under table and crosses stage to corner Topple Lights off ‘Stage Fright’ title monitor under substage on
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False teeth bubble in glass Balloon off Bubble stop Back piece of chair falls out Bubble Balloon on Gun moves and starts to attack balloon Balloon BANG (not from gun) Gun flies over broom handle and falls to floor Operator appears and resets the scene New balloon fixed to pump Back piece of chair reset Mouse reset to under table Operator acknowledges audience with a nod Checks hair in mirror Returns to table All light bulbs on Mouse emerges from under dressing table and crosses stage to corner Topple Lights off ‘Stage Fright’ title monitor under substage on (End) light on Balloon on False teeth bubble in glass Balloon off Bubble stop Back piece of chair falls out Bubble Balloon on Apple moves and starts to attack balloon Balloon BANG (from apple) Apple flies over Broom handle and falls to floor Balloon under chair on Balloon from side of dressing table on BANG (or deflate) BANG (or deflate) All Lights off
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1. …focusing on specific types or categories of objects – props for example… I will start to work in prop stores… 2. …The purpose of the machine is to set up a mechanism through which specific prop objects can be tested… 3. … The aids of the magician is a territory to explore here – the trick boxes and trap doors…. 4. …Starting to build a repertoire of object actions that can be drawn upon and fixed into sequences… 5. …The machine tests the limitations of objects and in doing so allows them to appear to us… 6. …thinking about the economy of making through the choice of objects… 7. …What is the impact of breaking and repeating the sequences devised?... 8. …The dramatic structure is still needed to frame the actions – and is appropriate for the category of objects that are being explored…In this case a moment of release is needed – that comes many times with the balloon pop which again plays with the textures and ideas of theatricality…
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9. … Construction of dressing table: - - - - - -
Remove drawers and lid Dismantle drawers to make planks that will make the floor under the unit Fix planks Reattach draws to give a ‘fake front’ Attach hinges to the table to make a lid Played with the ‘reveal moment’ which achieved a ‘peppers ghost effect’ with the mirror – a double image of inside appearing at the top of the box - Talked about having an assistant inside the box but decided the awkwardness of my size and frame would be better and produce a laugh
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HOUSE
Great Hall, Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Aberystwyth 04/05/10 Duration: 30 minutes
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A set of performance actions between people and objects.
THE SET UP
Task To build, inhabit and destroy a ‘house’ over various set durations. What dialogues and narratives are suggested and offered between people and domestic things?
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weight - colour - texture
counter weight - light - surface clash
narratives of materiality and representation
narratives of the inanimate c‘ oming alive’
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Action 1 Wall Panels Build a set of plywood wall panels, some with window holes. They should be standard room height and able to be carried by a single person. Play with building walls and rooms by using compression clamps to fix the panels together. Build a living room. Build a dining room. Build a kitchen. Build a garage. Find a way of building several rooms in a sequence. From living room .... to dining room .... to kitchen .... to garage
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Action 2 Garage Band Build a garage Form a garage band by introducing instruments and learning cover songs. Try the room sequence from section 1 starting by building a garage. Use cover songs to score the building of the other rooms.
Action 3 Object Grid Introduce as many domestic objects as you can find by lay them all out in a grid. Notice relations Play with various grid configurations
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Action 4 Object Pile From out of the grid build a huge pile of objects at one end of the room. Repeat actions 1, 2 and 3 using the furniture and objects. Find relationships between the various elements. Start to record sequences and compositions.
Action 5 Object Crossover Divide into two teams. One team has to get all the objects to one side of the space, the other team to the opposite side. Start gradually - build excessively
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Action 6 Poltergeist Units From actions 1, 2 and 3 identify possible mini narratives within the greater composition. See STAGE FRIGHT for instruction on how to approach this. incorporate these units into the overall composition.
Action 7 House Incorporate all the actions into a sequence. Finalise your sequence and record it as a score.
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Object Pile Mouse across stage Figurine fall Build a garage Song - In the Garage Object Pile Song - Furniture Object Grid Object Crossover Living Room Figurine falls from fire place Chair Balloon Mouse Trap
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1. …I have decided to move forward with the disaster room idea as it offers a tighter framing/ dramaturgical structure that offers the possibility of duration as an organising idea… 2. …We will be working in the Great Hall. The size and scale of the space allows for expansion and multiplying objects. The volume of the space becomes important. 3. Searching for text – looking for scenes that take place in rooms and houses. I have been thinking about how proximity works in ‘The Evil Dead’ (1981). How the cabin seems to keep the occupants inside a small space, yet there is an expansive feel to it – a much larger landscape opens up… 4. The language of objects is huge. Almost any domestic object can sit within the structure. The garage in particular is useful as we can have DIY and mechanical elements such as industrial work lights. 5. Pets. There can be an animal presence. Look at using the mouse again? Scale can be important and used carefully with this… 6. Spoken text is proving difficult. We need to establish a register for the performers. Singing offers a way through this, there is not that element of surprise when the performer sings, and it makes sense with the set-up – why? 7.
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We have started to work through zones – areas of the stage where specific objects and items will be. This helps structure the size of the space. 8. Exercises and actions are key. They give us the work from which to recognise the relationships between objects and people. The difficulty comes, as ever, when this is repeated. It is difficult to resist narrative – but the objects are deactivated when we do… 9. The performers take on the roles of archetypal figures. They move in and out of generic characters shown by the costumes. However, this is never fully settled and if we are to take it forward there needs to be a clearer distinction in the performance between them and the figures they temporarily inhabit.
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5 FOLLOW THE LIFE OF THE OBJECT
Follow the Life of the Object is an imperative adapted from Bruno Latour’s statment: ‘follow objects in action and describe what we see’ (In Harman, 2010, p. 14).This technique is first pragmatic - a description of the objects travelling through the processes of practice. Through doing this exercise, we get to reveal actions and alliances of the individual object that are normally invisible to us.This pragmatism offers certain poetic reflections for how the the object sits and moves within the terrain of the wider work. It is a method of drawing out the singular stories around certain objects that illuminates the activity of the wider practice.
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DRESSING
TABLE
In most junk shops, reclamation yards, second-hand furniture stores and recycling centres, you will find a large amount of brown wood utilitarian furniture; stacked, pushed together in groups of type, size and/or era depending of the discretion of the place. Wardrobes of all sizes and descriptions; tables, chairs, chests, drawers, dressing tables and strange hybrid furniture experiments from the 1970s that incorporate all or some of the above. These items are the detritus of British domestic life over the last half of the twentieth century, discarded and thrown out as fashions and materials have changed or removed en masse from a house shortly after the owner has passed away. The furniture, now grouped together in the corners and corridors of the second hand stores, awaits a new home and use, or the inevitable end as landfill or firewood. Although not exclusively found in brown wood there is a startling consistency between what seems to have survived. Ranging from items from the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s and sometimes 80s and 90s (although the invention of MDF and flatpack has produced an aesthetic rupture in the this second- hand lineage) we find many duplicates of items both in material and form as we browse the only places they can now be found.
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Craft, a second hand recycling store in Aberystwyth, 2008. I wanted to test an idea I had been developing that all objects, regardless of worth within the system of objects from which they are part can be made to act differently through their material presence and framing within the apparatus of theatrical presentation. I wanted to set myself a challenge of using objects of cliché or utter banality, objects that are overused or rarely seen and have an inescapable dialogue with the ‘readymade’ (the bicycle wheel) or the deliberate representational materiality of the stage (the battered suitcase). How do these things function when you set up an apparatus that might absorb and appropriate the loaded sets of assumptions, readings and relations it carries with it and is it possible to transform them and our encounter with these everyday familiar
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things. I wanted to take on the brown wood furniture.The brown wood items were grouped together with large red £1 price stickers on them. Nobody wants these things as they don’t fit in the decorative scheme of their houses; but there is still a sense that someone might make use of them. There is a peculiar invocation of violence contained within these objects in a group, as we can see how they have lived through the marks of use on their veneers, the faded water rings on their surfaces and the faded panels where they have been left to the exposure to the sun on one side. Dressing tables were there in abundance. It seems that there is less need for a table to dress at compared with the old wardrobes or chests that might be adapted or restored. One with three drawers and a mirror costs just £1.
The table suggested a sequence, an instruction for dressing, of getting ready for an event. The drawers are there to keep things hidden as well as for storage. They are perhaps, as Gaston Bachelard suggests, part of an image of ‘intimacy that are at harmony ... with all the other hiding places in which human beings, great dreamers of locks, keep or hide their secrets’ (1992, p. 74). In The Poetics of Space (1958), Bachelard places great emphasis on the intimacy of drawers and the psychological significance that they have not as metaphor but as a phenomenologically felt image of secrecy and the disturbing or revelatory potential they hold should we dare to peek inside. There is perhaps even greater significance to this potential should we think of the drawers that live in the bedroom, the bedside cabinet or the dressing table, perhaps the most intimate and private of spaces aside from those deliberately constructed for concealment.The top of the table allows space for keeping makeup and lotions. It needs a chair to make it work, to make sense of it as offering a sequence or action. I put one near it. It offers the look of a magician’s conjuring
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box - there is a desire to saw it in half and make it into a trick box. I wondered if I could fit inside. If the drawers suggest an intimacy of space that might be subverted by rendering them fake. I take out the drawers and fit the front panels back on as a fake front. I remove the top and put it on hinges to make it into a chest. The piece becomes a hiding place and someone can just fit inside. After adaptation the table offers a new sequence. When playing with the ‘reveal’ moment of someone coming out of the chest the mirror becomes a crude form of ‘Peppers Ghost’ as the table becomes a unit in which the control mechanisms for the string machine that exist outside of the unit can operate. This new character as magician’s chest and control unit renders its initial one obsolete. It can no longer operate as a table to keep things on. To rectify this, the other objects in the work are glued down. The illusion of the double life of the object, as it now stands, is maintained. For the show it remains static, perched at the back of a small substage. The lid lifts up the objects remain in place, stuck to the top. This action is repeated. For transportation the adapted dressing table became the trunk in which all the things are carried. It was like a large props chest. It was loaded into the back of my car and returned to SS13. When I required more space for other objects I called Craft to come and collect the things I no longer needed.They looked at me puzzlement.They refused to take the dressing table. I loaded it into the car and took it to the rubbish dump where it was made into wood chips.
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5 FOLLOW THE LIFE OF THE OBJECT
MOUSE
The mouse originally comes from a joke shop in Colston Street, Bristol, bought on my brother’s birthday. It came packaged in a familiar blister pack alongside the fake vomit, biscuits, and flies; the itching powder, exhaust whistles, pepper sweets and exploding golf balls. The front of the packet has the cartoon image of a maid perched on top of a chair in the kitchen - Tom and Jerry style - screaming in horror.
The mouse itself is a crude wedge of rubber with a thin, extended tail. The back of the grey body is dappled with hair texture, the eyes picked out with black dots of paint, probably by a machine, as they don’t quite match the moulding. It sat for years in a shoe box of practical jokes that I used to play on my unsuspecting family; the plastic bourbon that chipped a large part of my Dad’s front tooth; the stink bombs I dropped outside the front door just before my parents had visitors; the cap bomb I placed in the airing cupboard.
My stash of mice seemed to multiply over my childhood, I added white and black versions, always in the same moulding, except the black ones had red eyes. I don’t know why.These mice seemed to have followed me around throughout my life, always reappearing in junk boxes of old stuff, amongst bank statements, postcards, marbles and paper clips. There always seems to
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one in the kitchen drawer reserved for the instruction manuals of electrical equipment, Ikea tools and leftover mini dowels.
The rubber mouse must be one of the few mass-produced objects that have not needed to go through any kind of redesign for at least the past thirty years, if not longer, because as an object they are perfectly designed for the job they have to do.They satisfy their task. It is perhaps this ubiquity that gives the rubber mouse a certain uncanny familiarity. It is strangely comforting to find it at the back of a drawer or box because it never seems to feel old, it is not a nostalgic object like old toys can be. It falls between the gaps.
It stands as a marker for the everyday joke or prop. It does not belong to the world of the stage but it is theatrical. It pretends. It is a double. It brings a smile - what more could you want from such a thing? We know instantly what class of object it belongs to. We don’t expect anything from it.
A small sub-stage sits in the middle of the main theatre at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff. On the stage is a dressing table with a number of small objects on top and a mirror. There is a small off-cut of carpet and a chair in front of it.The stage is made of pale plywood and on the far side there is a row of oversized light bulbs that illuminate the space. An audience assembles. The
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light bulbs are switched off apart from one at the far end. From underneath the dressing table the mouse appears. It is attached to a wire that leads under the stage and back to the dressing table. It crosses the carpet, shifting from side to side. Its journey continues across the ply. It moves more smoothly until it reaches the edge of the stage. It waits until finally falling. The fall appears to trigger the lights - off - then a small television is turned on under the substage revealing the words ‘Stage Fright’.
The mouse at actual size relates to the scale of the spectator It puts the size of the substage into perspective Its theatricality suggests the absence of the human - when humans do not appear the mouse comes out to play. It is a prologue It is a framing It makes the audience laugh. The mouse hangs at the corner.
When the sequence is reset and the mouse is revealed to make his trip again, and again, and again. The mouse is cut free and returns to sit on the desk.
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5 FOLLOW THE LIFE OF THE OBJECT
WIRE
The wire starts out in a fishing shop in Aberystwyth. I select three different strengths: 15 lb, 30 lb, and 40 lb. The numbers refer to the breaking strain of the wire when pulled. The thickness of the wire is dependent on these strains. This wire is dark green, it makes it visible to the eye when being strung up. It joins a large pair of scissors as the key elements in the string machine kit, stored in a black hard case that I have assembled.
In the studio the wire moves around repeatedly. It balances on windowsills and other objects. It gets lost frequently and then re-found. It falls from height and rolls across the floor. It gets strung up and then taken down. It gets reused and reused. It is tied to all manner of objects. Handles, corners, screwed in eyelets. There are off-cuts littering the floor. It is tested to its limits. It breaks. It is tied in knots, around screws and nuts. It zigzags across the room, up high and across the floor. It gets threaded through the front of a wardrobe. It holds things up and lets them down. Take this away and the pieces would be mute – it makes action possible. At the end it is cut down, ending in a pile on the floor and, streched and tangled, it is disposed of. This seemingly simple ‘linking’ material, that joins the objects and the operator together has a central role to play in the apparatus. It makes things work. It is the key protagonist of the action. In many ways these early pieces are about the action and activity of wire and what it is capable of. It will return in Garage Band to guide the flight of a dart and make a football levitate.
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5 FOLLOW THE LIFE OF THE OBJECT
FIGURINE
The Figurine was found in a box of miscellaneous ornaments in my parent’s garage. I have never seen if before and it must have been part of a larger group of things leftover from an auction or car-boot sale. It is a curious object as it is clearly machine-made to be the approximation of antique porcelain.The ceramic is cheap, light, and poorly molded.The painted glaze is imprecise, trailing over the molded edges that hold it. There are half-finished transfers of more intricate patterns on the knees and coat. It is, I think, supposed to be a Regency figure of a man, maybe French. I don’t think that the original makers have made that decision.
It is difficult to understand what the function of this object is. It is an ornament, that is clear, but it is only for set dressing of a living room, a decoration rather than an object that would take on any sentimental value.
After this initial finding I kept the figurine on my desk. It seemed to hold within its materiality a tension between presence and representation that could be found in prop objects. The object is performing; it is mimetic in the aura of awkwardness that it holds - the blush of acting - of being something that it is not. However, this particular figurine is expert at playing this role.
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Instead of the persona of an actor sitting within its form, we might say that the ‘authentic’ object lies within the idea of the figurine, held in the mind of the viewer.
After finding this first figurine, I began to notice them in other situations, in charity shops and on the shelves at my grandparent’s house. I found a large number in the prop store of Aberystwyth University’s Department of Theatre, Film and Television. There were group scenes and individual figures, Regency ladies and men with lutes. Most bizarrely there was a ceramic figurine mounted on a spinning music box. The sound had faded but the figure still spun around.
My original figurine was first used on top of the dressing table in Stage Fright. Fixed on with superglue, it provided a counterpoint to a Regency wig that sat on the back the chair in the ‘approximate’ dressing room. The idea for the partialness of the scene that came from the materiality of the figurine, the awkward object that sits between states even outside of the theatrical set-up in which it is implicated.
The next appearance of the figurine was as part of large numbers in House. I took all of the ornaments from the prop store and supplemented them with a large number from Craft. The figurines moved around the stage with the other objects, lost in the sheer volume of things that populated the space. In the opening moments, one of the figurines fell from on top of a mound of stuff, triggered by a small wire. The arm was smashed off. At the end of the show, I returned a box of them to the prop store. I keep my original, returning it to sit on the desk.
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5 FOLLOW THE LIFE OF THE OBJECT
EYLET
A central component of my tool kit is the multiple number of screw-in eyelets. The size of eyelet is selected depending on the weight of the object that will be placed at the end of the that particular wire/operation. It is screwed into the wooden armature at the back of the control boxes. They act as a crucial hinge as part of the crude prosthetic extension of my reach into the space and how the objects move within it. They enabled wire to turn corners and be treaded in complex ways. They enabled a wider range of placements and possiblities. The eyelet reveals the role of the operator that, like it, is almost completely pragmatic. Inside the converted dressing table, the actions of the operator are to activate the objects in order. There is a list taped inside which contains the sequence and notes on rhythm, speed and intensity. The experience is uncomfortable, with cut fingers and friction rubbing on the corner of the hands, squeezing into tight spaces. The gratification of the audience is only felt through hearing laughter or the hush of silences. There is a subtle interplay between the operation and failure of success of the actions attempted. This is clear when a string snaps or a balloon fails to burst. In these moments decisions are made about the change in a course of action. The decisions are slight but important - when do you decide to turn off the pump when the balloon hits a point of equilibrium? If a string on a central object breaks do you come out from the box and fix it to repeat or decide to cut the object from future actions? These choices reveal a reflexive relationship that starts to emerge between the operator and the set up. At the end of the piece, the eyelets are removed and returned to the tool kit. 285
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6 ESTABLISH A GLOSSARY OF APPLICATIONS
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6 ESTABLISH A GLOSSARY OF APPLICATIONS
APPLICATIONS 1 - 11
Establish a Glossary of Applications is an exercise of assessing where I am at the end of the investigation phase. Throughout the process, a regular undertaking of this exercise enables me to move things forward. It is written as a manifestio of applications that can be applied in the studio and at the point of finalising the instances of performance.
The first part of the glossary, Applications 1 - 11, is inculded in this Chapter and then built upon in Chapter 5 with Applications 12 - 20. It is composed as a list that can be cut out and pinned to the studio wall.
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GLOSSARY
OF 1
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1. THINK THROUGH THINGS - NOT ABOUT THEM This is ongoing. Encounter not control. Reduce the gap between what you think an object is and what you want it do and actually what it might be and what it is doing.
2. CONSIDER AN OBJECT’S BIOGRAPHY: WHAT DOES IT TELL YOU? This is a place to start. Consider the singular stories of an object rather than grappling with it as a total assemblage of attachments
3. LISTEN TO THE ‘NOISE’ OF THE OBJECTS AROUND YOU This is a place to start. How are the objects framing your encounter? What do they expose about the social dynamics of a situation? When are they invisible?
4. ALL OBJECTS ARE EQUAL (BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS) This is ongoing. Remember the Democracy of Objects – a Flat Ontology If it works – it works
9. FOLLOW THE LIFE OF THE OBJECT AND DESCRIBE WHAT YOU SEE What gaps in the set-up does the object expose? How does it travel through?
10. LIST LIST LIST Disentangle your objects from each other. What happens when you compose them as lists? How does the work look separated from contexts? Do the same for actions.
11. OBJECT – SITUATION – OBJECT This will move things forward. The object does not solve the problems in moments of making but takes part in it. The ‘situation’ is everything other than the object (action, gesture, voice, sound, space) The situation will push at the object and the object will push back.
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QUESNE’S HUMILITY MACHINE
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The objects and scenographic set-ups of Philippe Quesne and Vivarium Studio have reconfigured the possibilities of object-orientated theatre after Kantor. In Kantor’s theatre, the apparatus constructed manifests the appearance of the inhuman through the relation of human and object. In Quesne’s theatre, the particular mechanism of appearance is of the human figure existing in a post-human and post-humanist age, one that does not separate the human and the inhuman but is reconciled to a fate of being an object in a world of objects. Like Bryant’s flat ontology, the objects in Quesne’s work operate as a democratizing component in the dramaturgy of his theatre, making possible the appearance of the human (as object) as much as the body and voice of the performer itself. Quesne’s theatre offers us a meditation on the place of the living being (substance) in a world beset with nonhuman systems and apparatuses, ecologies of matter that operate beyond conceivable control. Quesne’s theatre machine could be considered as a humility machine in line with Read’s model of the theatre as a venue of human refuge, where the appearance of the human - as a figure- is witnessed as ‘not quite there’, a life that exists in joy and sadness in a world of systems and processess as an object amongst other objects.
I will consider how Quesne’s figure of the human appears through the two operational concepts of displacement and humility. Displacement is considered as a compositional strategy in Big Bang (2010), which makes us aware of the volume of the stage space beyond the proscenium frame as a plane of composition. The introduction of large inflatable objects, real
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cars or large sheets of plastic foreground the object’s material presence through the physical measurement of the three dimensions of the space as well as how the appearance of different sets of objects allow Quesne to combine moments of equilibrium, tipping, excess and absence. This enables him to disrupt the machinery of the theatre by engineering it to break down and expose its machination, whilst allowing us to think with the objects as they appear, building images through their appearance. I will argue that this repeated strategy of exposure builds an apparatus that animates the encounter between spectator and stage and produces theatrical pleasure: a theatricality of the object.
This compositional process of displacement is combined with a more nuanced approach to the selection and handling of objects, which I consider as the frame of humility. I will focus on L’Effet de Serge (The Serge Effect, 2007), through a reading of objects from Daniel Miller’s concept of the ‘humility of things’, which evokes Bruno Latour’s definition of anthropomorphism. As previously stated, Latour claims ‘anthropos and morphos together mean either that, which has human shape or that, which gives shape to humans’ (2010, p. 237). This anthropomorphic role is considered as the simple, invisible activity of objects in the co-creation of self as well as framing and maintaining the social appropriateness of situations. In L’Effet de Serge, the figure of Serge is built and maintained through the increasing appearance and use of everyday things.These objects are unpacked, adapted, eaten and played with as part of a detailed scenography of actions and gestures that gradually construct an intimate portrait of Serge. Far from removing or obscuring our recognition of the human, the material environment produces an series of entanglements that becomes the very thing that make the recognition of Serge’s partial humanness visible, and
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that all things, bodies and objects, construct the appearance of it. To begin, I will introduce Quesne’s theatre through his central framing device: the stage as vivarium, a microcosm of the world in which the human may appear.
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In the opening moments of La Mélancolie des Dragons (2008) the audience observe a rock band sitting in a car, broken down, in a snowy patch of woodland. The woodland is dense, surrounding the car, suggesting a depth and perspective that opens out onto a clearing. The snow is compacted and appears to be spongy and substantial. The band are listening to the car stereo: ‘Back in Black’ by AC/DC; they are drinking beer and sharing a large bag of potato crisps; they are wearing denim and fake heavy metal wigs; they talk to each other but are barely audible. The driver changes the dial; the music changes; we notice that they have a dog.
The scene is at once hyper-realistic and yet pleasingly contrived. It is a full-scale diorama; a model box arranged with the precision of a hobbyist maker – no tree out of place – everything arranged to be viewed from a particular perspective. This is Philippe Quesne’s theatrical vivarium; a world within a world, nurtured and maintained by carefully controlled environment and strategically placed objects. The inhabitants are fed by crisps and drinks and kept active by the heat and intensity of artificial light. For Quesne, this framing device gives an immediate material structure for the microscopic investigation of an examined life: ‘I assemble scenographic devices which are both theatre sets, and workshops, “vivariums” for the study of
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human microcosms” (quoted from an interview by Déchery, 2011, p. 128). As Chloé Déchery has outlined, the vivarium is Quesne’s model for the theatre as a place in which we might scrutinise the ‘strangeness of everyday existence’ a place to focus on a facet of reality by pulling it apart to then ‘reassemble poetically’ (p. 127). Quesne’s theatre is formed around the apparatus of an intricate scenographic set-up that is the very thing that activates and maintains the life of the inhabitants, or, as we might say in Quesne’s case, the theatrical, political, ethical, and poetic appearances of the human – the affects of the machine – that happen there. An appearance of the human figure existing in a world of objects and processes that support and problematize the life that might be lived there.
Quesne established Vivarium Studio in Paris in 2003 as a laboratory for theatrical innovation, drawing together painters, actors, dancers, musicians and animals, drawing from the conventions of visual art, design and cinema as much as the theatre itself. The studio has created works across a range of different contexts, from the art gallery, the forest, the wasteland and most recently through the theatrical productions L’Effet de Serge (2007), La Mélancolie des Dragons (2008) and Big Bang (2010). The Studio, as Déchery has set out, operates ‘on the margins of conventional theatre in France’ akin to the work of Jérôme Bel, Xavier Le Roy and Grand Magasin (Déchery, 2011 p. 23). These are artists that have abandoned classical dance and text based work to establish their own unique dramaturgies that utilise the ‘immediacy of performance to undertake an acute observation of reality in all its heterogeneity and brute materiality’ (p. 22). They test and defy theatrical convention through experimenting with so-called ‘post-dramatic’ forms and approaches to making that are composed as theatres of events rather than dramatic sequence.
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Quesne’s approach is based on an object-led dramaturgy, in line with Kantor’s material apparatus that sets up the possibility of animation. In Quesne’s vivarium, the apparatus, both materially and conceptually enable the flow of animation to be interchangeable, affording an agency to the objects being used as much as the performers using them. They are ‘playing with a lack of control’ (Bell, 2008, p. 17), setting up situations in which the objects push back against the bodies and spaces and actively animate them, as much as they are being animated themselves.
DISPLACEMENT
Like a vivarium, Quesne approaches the stage as a tank, a container that draws our attention to volume as much as the vertical and horizontal planes of composition. Just like the water in Archimedes’ bath, adding new mass to a space can displace another, not just physically but through an aesthetic displacement that operates visually and viscerally as well.
In Big Bang (2010) the space is framed as that of the universe, an ever-expanding non-space that life and matter materialises and departs, reforms and collapses. It starts with a vast white space – a large covered object on one side of the space and a modest table and chairs on the other. A mixer and some books are on the table including Black Hole by Charles Burns. Tiny white letters that spell out BIG BANG are arranged on the table without fanfare. At times, fizzing ‘space sounds’ are played, at others, a curious ‘intermission’ music is triggered. The sound of an air pump from back stage and performers talking to each other is heard. It is waiting for the start, the start of everything, the start of all matter and life to come into existence. Then
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darkness. What emerges from this darkness are masses of white shapes – blobs that traverse the space with their feelers – evidently hands and feet but obscured by the material they are wearing. Then brown shapes enter, searching the alien landscape until an understated human voice from one of the shapes calls them all together. The blobs stand, the human emerges and quietly leaves – walking this time – into the wings.
This opening sequence encapsulates the compositional structure of repeated displacement that Quesne employs throughout his work. It always starts with a set-up that consists of the building of an image, framed theatrically by the appearance of materials that gesture towards what that image might be. Just at the point of resolution – when the image will finally be completed – it collapses through the introduction of something else, another material or object, or, in the case of this opening sequence, the voice of the performer who understatedly breaks the epic set up by exposing the theatrical apparatus, by letting the build up theatrically fail. This dramaturgical strategy of rupture at the point of resolution brings a pleasurable release. As Nicholas Ridout states: ‘Theatre is a machine that sets out to undo itself. It conceives itself as an apparatus for the production of affects by means of representation, in the expectation that the most powerful affects will be obtained at precisely those moments when the machinery appears to break down’ (2006, p. 168). Quesne plays with our knowledge of the relational set-up of the theatre and its conventions. He deliberately activates and shuts down its machinery as a compositional strategy that constantly builds and stalls the apparatus in an attempt to create a new one. It is in this repeated sequence of attempt, rupture and then re-composition where the theatrical enjoyment sustains and the new apparatus is made. In this instance, our pleasure comes from ‘the operation
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of the machinery (effective or failing), rather than whatever it is that it is producing’ (Ridout, 2006, p. 168) the rebuilding of the apparatus allowing for an animation of the set-up to occur moment by moment. It is a compositional strategy that allows Quesne to repeatedly play with reconstituting his apparatus, interchanging moments of equilibrium, tipping, excess and absence.
In the corner of the stage there is a large object covered in a white sheet. It is revealed to be a car on its roof and a new image starts to emerge. A group of archetypal cave men emerge and they discover fire made from three sticks, a red floodlight and a smoke machine. The car is like a rock or the entrance to a hidden cave. It is recognisable from the opening image of the rock band in La MĂŠlancolie des Dragons. The materials are being reused, the images tip into each other. The cave men themselves are characterised by large hairy beards. Once the original bearded men complete the fire, more of these oversized beards are brought on and given to the other performers to wear. The image is reaching a point of resolution, a point of equilibrium through the objects as the performers all wear beards and dance around the fire. Then there is a moment of tipping with the sudden appearance of a large inflatable boat. Still wearing the beards the performers arrange images with the boat as we watch the shifting of one set of objects displacing another with the original being allowed to remain. This forms an increasingly complicated and messy stage picture that invites the spectators to speculate and construct their own images. A group of performers take a photograph, still bearded in front of a large boat as if it is a prize catch. Tidying up is sometimes done to readdress a balance of materials and placements that swings the image into a different direction. At times the scene evokes the structure of a giant playroom where the remnants of games, dens, and dressing up
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all mix together and are discarded or dropped to the floor. The car is left to one side and even more inflatable boats emerge. The appearance of more and more boats tips the image, lets it over spill into another assemblage. There is a contract of patience observed by both performer and audience in these moments, the resolution of the image that is being built is withheld and at times never reached. The spaces between the images that are built, where there are a few boats on stage but not many, when the smoke is creeping from right to left but has not filled the space is precisely where the apparatus reveals itself through the promise of completion.
In the second phase of the show the back screen of white is dropped to reveal a large greenscreen box with a floor made of water; topped up by a garden sprinkler. The space opens up and the depth and height expands. Some beards remain and some of the initial brown blob material is used to make islands with branches. Gradually spacemen enter and even more boats emerge – a mountain of boats – and the composition shifts again. Some performers are dressed in green screen technicians’ suits and a green screen blob appears to start feeling around the space. This phase is perhaps the shift in human history where humans start to make apparatuses of deception, to make machines of representation that set out to undo themselves, the figure of the human emerging from such apparatuses, trapping and reconfiguring the appearances of bare life that is witnessed. This sequence of images, fading in and out through the gradual appearance and disappearance of these groups of objects starts to dictate a rhythm that invites the spectators to further edit and frame the images themselves, to get lost in the muteness of matter forming and reforming itself. The apparatus continues to be broken and reformed letting the temporality of transition resonate rather than the resolution of it, until the image is in only the darkness of the
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auditorium, contemplating the becoming of the human from the object, becoming an object amongst many.
HUMILITY
The opening of L’Effet de Serge (2007) introduces Serge as a spaceman and explorer who is encountering the landscape of his modest apartment. Wearing a handmade helmet that is lit from the inside, he surveys the apartment as if discovering an alien planet, the darkness hiding the detail of the room. We initially experience it with him as an uncharted terrain with a childlike sense of the epic. Serge stands in for Quesne’s figure of the artist ‘by turns, an inventor, an astronaut’ (Déchery, 2011, p. 130) revealed to us as a sort of amateur special effect artist, a modest magician who likes to devise mini-performances for his friends.
When the lights come up we see a large letterbox stage that depicts a long room with a set of glass sliding doors. The floor is a thin carpet, the type you find in rented accommodation with a tight weave: easily replaceable. The walls are made of raw plasterboard and you can see the manufacturer’s watermark trailing the edges; it is as if Serge had built the apartment himself as a traveling unit to stage his spectacles. At one end is a ping-pong table that has been taken over as a temporary workbench. There is a small TV on the table and behind it are a large number of carrier bags, small boxes and general clutter that has an immediate familiarity, a recognition of the little bunches of stuff that we have around our own homes; the carrier bags in which we temporarily store the miscellany of our lives; old bills, marbles and toy figures; unopened
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presents and postcards. Serge’s own muddle of stuff has been purchased for the performance of mini-spectacles and over the course of the show he unpacks a remote control helicopter; a pair of glow stick glasses that he patiently constructs; he eats crisps and drinks; he plays ping-pong alone; he watches the television.
These moments of unpacking, simple construction, play, idly watching the TV and snacking on crisps take on a surprising intimacy; they are the moments the audience is allowed to linger over, moments of silence – of thinking. This ethic of interaction replaces any dramatic imperative that allows us, perhaps most significantly, to recognize them from our own experiences of inaction; of waiting for friends to arrive; of planning a surprise; of unpacking our shopping; of simply sitting down.This subtle interaction with objects enables Quesne to build the figure of Serge, established not only by the persona of the performer but his selection of objects and the manner in which he handles them. The action of objects in this composition is aligned to Miller’s idea of the ‘humility of things’, as I have previously stated, Miller claims that this activity reaches beyond considering objects simply as material artifacts that evidence the existence of particular affects, but how the material presence of objects act as a frame or trigger that makes possible the immaterial existence of thought and emotion, and ultimately contributes to the construction of self. Again, the audience observe that the objects do not merely account for the fact that something has happened - the empty boxes from past experiments scattered around Serge’s flat; or empirically evidence that something is currently happening - the wine glasses or pizza boxes during Serge’s gathering but they work actively in creating and then transforming the activity of thought. The objects do not work as symbols that signify dramatic meaning but operate as collective assemblages as mini
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affect-generating apparatuses. Miller ascribes a level of ‘humility’ on the part of the objects in this process, as they appear to operate in this way beyond our conscious viewing of them as inert material things, they ‘determine what takes place to the extent that we are unconscious of their capacity to do so’ (2005, p. 5). Therefore, the most intimate level of encounter with objects occurs most potently when we do not ‘see’ them. According to Miller, this works because the objects create a setting making us ‘aware of what is appropriate and inappropriate’ (2010, p. 50) and thus constructs not only cultural norms but also social and moral relationships that function within them. It is the capacity of things to function unchallenged that gives them such potency in the construction and maintenance of individuals and broader cultural clusters. In this respect, the objects in L’Effet de Serge do not direct our attention to hidden dramatic significations but are compositional elements in the creation and maintenance of ‘Serge’ as a figure, a context for our consideration.
This is a composition built through an established relationship with Gaëtan Vourc’h, the performer who plays Serge and Quesne’s co-creator of the production. His unassuming manner of consideration and handling is conveyed with such grace that the banal becomes significant. There is something deeply personal about this process, perhaps to Quesne himself, as the New York Times critic Jason Zinoman (2010) commented in his review, it appears to be ‘a portrait of the artist at work […] he displays a dignity and seriousness of purpose that make everything else seem beside the point’. Much like our own personal possessions, hobbies and projects enable us to establish our own sense of self and communicate to others our interests, ideas and even ethical and political beliefs.The interaction between Vourc’h and these
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simple, everyday objects constantly shifts to reveal subtle idiosyncrasies that guide the context of interaction; the joys of making and showing; the embarrassment of social awkwardness and the intimacy of our private lives. These subtle interactions set-up the partitioning of being that is necessary for Agamben’s functioning of the apparatus, that produce and define the subject of who we are seeing and what makes that person (figure) known to us. In this instance it is Serge, who is produced as a theatrical figure of the human through these configured apparatuses of interaction.
It could be said that the affect of this figure’s appearance is that of humility, established through the recognition of dependence and dependency that Serge has of his objects. As Ian Hodder has suggested, ‘the material objectness of things tends to trap humans into specific forms of codependency. In the practices of everyday life things fall apart, decay, run out, go wrong, need each other in sequence. Humans thus get entangled in this physicality – however much they do so within social worlds’ (2012, p. 95). This reading of the trapping of everyday objectness could be a description of Serge’s routines. The piles of carrier bags and the replenishment of crisps, tape and glow sticks are the things that construct and maintain Serge’s social world; they bring his friends to his apartment and allow him to exchange the performances of his mini-spectacles with companionship.This physical entanglement that Serge displays with his objects is as much enabling, as it is restricting for him. As Hodder continues, the human-thing and thing-human entanglement produces ‘a dialectic relationship between dependence, often productive and enabling’ (p. 88) as in the case of the social and relational world he is able to create through his mini-spectacles, and ‘dependency, often constraining and limiting’ (ibid) in the idea that Serge’s ‘effects’ are never
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entirely complete producing a melancholy to the isolated world that he has made himself. This is played out most directly in ‘Firework Effect with music by Vic Chesnutt’, the miniperformance, which forms the grand finale of Serge’s sequence of Sundays. Serge straps a small pyrotechnic charge to each of his feet and starts the song ‘Warm’ by Vic Chesnutt on his CD player. The performance consists of a slow movement by Serge to ignite the charges that fizz unconvincingly. He cuts the song short. There is laugher, much like the laugher at all of the preceding mini-performances, at the attempt, the breakdown of the object that exposes the set-up, a precursor to the structuring principles of Big Bang. The audience see the embrace given by Serge’s friends in response to the action and wish, prehaps, to join them all on stage for a glass of wine and a slice of pizza.
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Quesne articulates a relationship with objects that the audience undertake day to day without intellectualising their encounters. They recognise the dependence and dependency there is through entanglements with mundane items such as toothbrushes and napkins alongside the things created and made for family and friends as an offer to them, to make social connections. Quesne’s skill is in his ability to make this ethic of human-object/object-human relations the central operation of his theatre, whilst appearing to replace dramatic structure altogether. It generates a flicker of recognition that strikes us as being surprisingly moving, even if at the time we are not sure why. In doing this his theatre machine, like Kantor’s, constructs a stage reality that does not set out to represent its ideas but to make the event a material realisation
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of them. The material objects are used to expose the nature of the theatre as a machine of representation, engineering moments of breakdown and rupture, such as the displacement structure of Big Bang or the failure of the fizzing of fireworks in L’Effet de Serge. This is the operation of Quesne’s Humility Machine, enabling objects to take on a vibrancy by giving shape to the human participants in the event, animating the moments of recognition that allows the human figure, its processes, interactions, ethics, and humour, to appear, however fleetingly to us.
The operations of Kantor’s and Quesne’s machines share the utilisation of the theatre, as an apparatus, to make the appearance of the human possible and the staging of political ideas. The appearances they draw, however, are markedly contrasting and the function of the objects in this process, have significant differences. For Kantor the effect is a form of thinking history, a means through which to call back the ghosts of memory and of the atrocities of World War Two. The objects function to draw the creaturely to the surface through their material presence and relation with actors and space. For Quesne, it is the human, or idea of the human as a participant, or ‘actant’ within the mass systems of objects that we might consider as the universe and the biosphere of the planet or the immediate relations of culture and society and the networks of representation that define it. Quesne recognises the theatre as an apparatus with the possibility of revealing the thinking of politics, history and culture by allowing the spectator to decide how they want to engage or interpret the revealing of that thought. The human figure is not viewed in purgatory within these systems of objects, but in dignified contentment of being together in the space and time of the theatre event.
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