Border House Performance Art Terminology, booklet Booklet, performative actions and concepts inspired by Lynn Book, Nicolas Estevez and Jennifer Nelson Editing by Jennifer Nelson
Action: pre-planned performative art works that are pre-conceived like in theater pieces or political actions (e.g. plan for action: I will walk 3 steps and throw a stone in the air, action: you walk 3 steps and throw the stone in the air). Performative: movement or continuation of movements that can be liner or nonlinear, can have a pre defined structure, be spontaneous, situational or a mixture of those. Performative Action: actions that draw on observations of movement and are mixture of different performative languages. It re-interprets an action (e.g. you throw 3 walks and walk a stone, or you challenge the way walking and throwing (the action) is done). Action Exploration: spontaneous performative actions that search through movement to emphasize consciousness of the un-mediated self- [if such a thing exists]. Border Action: a performance action on a border (psychological or physical), describing a specific border; a specific embodied action that includes the concept of a border based on a person’s experiences. Border Performative Action: reinterpreting border action Border Assumptions: this category would propose a set of static terms for how we understand our border assumptions. Border: 1. A space where my ethnic and linguistic identities are inextricably related 2. The edge or boundary of something, or the part near it 3. Both a line that divides us from one another and a zone for collective construction 4. A misalignment between body and action 5. A line separating two political or geographical areas, esp. countries 6. An inability to relate to the other 7. A specific lines we create while moving 8. A blockage we see or we do not see in our movement and thought that we want to transgress 9. The perimeter of the human body 10. The perimeter of the human body movement 11. The perimeter around the human body 12. The way in which my movement is predefined by codes I perceive 13. The outline, the edges of my body 14. An enclosed space in my mind that contains a set of linguistic premises, is
finite, and that explains a specific decision I have accepted as a static truth about something 15. Various static codes through which I think about where and how the body moves 16. Accumulations of static codes through which I feel and act out, or do not feel and act out with my body. They define the specific line of my movement in space. Physical Border Walking Actions: various ways to walk generated by architecture (physical, institutional and personal) constructs around and within us. Challenging Border Assumptions: a process to re-think how we understand the borders of our bodies, the borders present during communication, and the borders that prevent us from relating to one another. Performative Actions Explorations on a Border: an exploration of a diversity of different codes and ways to reinterpret our bodies and actions that includes legitimizing our performative tongues and our body language. Border Walking: walking that engages thinking about the concept of a border. Physical Border Walking: the physical manifestation of a boundary created by you and/or others. Performative Borders: walking on an imaginary line in space so as to become conscious of those lines and potentially transgress/move them. Procedural Border Walking: set of exercises in which one is given a set of movements to perform based on a finite text composed of prepositions (the grammatical form that expresses relationships). Body Border Mindfulness: observation of the body as physical outlines and the feeling of its physical edges. Involves being conscious about the physical state of your body and the lines it follows while moving, or the spaces it fills in, the physical edges it reaches. Language as Border Structure: observation of language as a limited system of signs that captures information in lines, numbers, words and quantity; lines language creates that the body can follow. Language as Re-Border Tool: performative structure through which to dismantle and reorganize language and the self. Body as Text: various observations of the body as a linguistic structures. Border Language: I am my language as I speak and think. I can represent my thoughts and my speech with various linguistic codes made by me, and all the other languages I speak, however I cannot accept the legitimacy of myself, my own language and the codes made by me.
The body of the performer: A complex breathing, standing and feeling structure made up of infusions of movement, and of conceptual and linguistic constructs, that are in flux. The thought of the performer: A map though which borders are transgressed. Action Map: A drawing of a specific location, which instructs about an action. Performative Structure: collection of specific lines based on text that makes up procedural structures for movement and have a specific duration. Everyday Borders: Observation of/ and re-visiting the lines of our daily movement. Everyday Structure: the collection of movements we exist in our daily lives. Interactive Performance: any performance that at some point requires an audience. It requires an audience to be completed. Collaborative Performance Initiative: a performance that relies solely on the initiave of other people to interact with an unfinished concept created by me. Ritualistic Structure for Everyday Action: the conscious planning and recreation of a set of planned structures for specific movement, everyday at a specific hour. ‘Borderless in Structures’: a specific set of steps to create a pre-planned state of mind while performing (it involves Action, Performative Action and Action Exploration. Within this structure, and after going through the initial controlled set of movements, spontaneity and outbursts can be generated). 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
open up a space get inside do the set of steps you have pre-defined break down the steps to the simplest of movement re-perform each step separately within separate timelines re-perform the steps by using a linear continuity of actions re-perform the steps together all at once (if not possible involve others to perform that) to be developed
Writing Wrongs: cjpkflmab 1. Performative actions and the writing of text, lines, and poetic passages created spontaneously. 2. A state of focus on spontaneous writing of multiple thoughts while thinking about one concept (border)
3. Various focused performative actions explorations to express unfocused state of mind 4. Visual lines of specific text structures that are seemingly completely isolated and unrelated. They are instinctive visualizations of recipes-steps for movement in space. 5. A way of understanding my own process of movement in-between the boundaries of various performative spaces; 6. How I understand performative actions and structures. In-between-space The clash of the performative language zones created between two (or more) bodies performing. It is based on initial performative structure defined by text and the physical feeling of consciousness of the body within its boundaries; involves a specific physical way for thinking about the borders that define the body. Then, trying to relate to the signals, signs created by the language of another body. Performance is my language, my house, my home, my family, my friend, my husband, my baby, my job, my country; The Borderline between Bulgaria and Greece: the line that intersects me and captures me in specific ethnic identity (infusion of the two) whose legitimacy is a minority; a line that divides me in between the two countries. The confusion I experience in communication and language while living ‘divided’ in between the two. The ways in which the two sides perceive (don’t perceive) and misunderstand understand each other. Border Walking between Bulgaria Greece: walking on an imaginary line so as to engage in a diversity of border crossing actions through the physical language of our bodies. Border House: a space for writing wrongs, writing about borders, thinking about structures, building walls and a space for inviting people to experience, share and perform borders.