[iDC] Some things about performance

[sergio basbaum]

John, Trebor, list

I can´t help asking about the relations that can traced between
informational tecnologies and digital culture (in the sense Charlie
Gere sugested in an amazing book) and art forms such as "instalation"
and "performance", these words are so intimately conected with the
values and operations of technological culture.

The instalation of a controled / calculable techno-cosmos (over the
demands of cultural openess indetermination)

The productive and efficient performance which is expected from us all
- as intelectuals, artists, lovers, workers, children, etc.

Sometimes I think that, once we are now completely immersed in this
digital environment,  such names should be changed for something that
is not so much aligned with dominant values.

Once they were not. Maybe it is time to find new labels. I even ask
myself if such words can give account of what is really happening...

best for all

Sérgio Basbaum
www.globalstrike.net

On 9/21/06, john sobol <john at johnsobol.com> wrote:
> performance as knowledge motor
> as enacting
> vs.
> performance as normative category
> as metaphor
>
> performance as practice
> vs.
> performance as theory
>
> it's my opinion
> that you can't learn about the latter without living the former
> and that performance praxis must be the epicentre of performative wisdom
>
> what do people actually do?
>
> how
> do people actually communicate?
>
>
> *       *       *
>
> i really liked Trebor's short list of situated technological behaviours
> in his recent post
> a bunch of samples from his life
> a sequence lifted from experience
> and performed in print
>
> (Anaïs Nin called print "the second tasting")
>
> I'd like to learn about situated technologies that way
> about emerging technologies that way
> casually
> as an accretion of incremental observations of local behavioural changes
> rather than barking ahistorical bafflegab, like:
>
> > "At the crack of millennia, performativity guides innumerable processes
> > ranging from the intricacies of class, race, ethnic, gender, and sexual
> > identification to the large-scale installations of technologies,
> > organizations and cultures."Perform- or else" is a challenge made in
> > the
> > USA and now restoring itself worldwide through innumerable circuits...
>
> 'perform or else' is not a tyranny created in and exported by the
> united states –
> it is the lifeblood of every performative condition around the world
>
> any and every action requires enacting
> you do have to perform
> to just do it
> (to live, to try to live)
> or else
>
> and it's not a macho thing
> women birthing babies must perform somehow
> babies themselves must perform
> and as they grow they learn first to 'act out'
> and then to 'act up'
> and lastly to 'act their age'
> and then they're fully grown
> actors
> each of us acting
> performing our lives
> aware of the narrative
> the narratives
> utterly dependent on them always
>
> the important question for this list has to be: what does this have to
> do with distributed creativity? with technological situatedness? with
> 'things'?
>
> i think that what matters is exactly the things we do
> the acts we perform
>
> sure words are important
> because words can be acts
> especially –always in fact, –when they are spoken
> but not at all always when written
> many written words are the opposite of acts
> they are defenses against acts
> against action
>
> Trebor's literary derive described encounters with 'things people do'
> his vignettes felt situated
> even tho i couldn't tell you where any of them happened without
> checking the post
> but i experienced them as connected to real places
>
> like, to me, this is the epitome of a certain kind of complex
> contemporary performance:
>
> my good friend, the hardest of the hard, Duro3
> (www.durothethird.com)
> gets paid to go to the slickest clubs and to photograph partiers
> i watched him move through a club one night like a magnet
> glammed up guys and girls preening at him
> not that Duro3 gives a shit about any of that
> but they pose and the flash from his 10 megapixel camera blinds us
> Duro3 whips his camera around in that instant
> and the partiers open their eyes into a fat LCD screen
> displaying their own image
> Duro3 deadpans as the partiers stare
> if they like it he keeps it
> if not he deletes it without a thought
> and takes another
> til its right
>
> it knocked me out
>
> they are performers
> at each other's service
> maybe not a stretch for the libidinous partiers who are there to
> perform anyway
> but Duro3's kinetic approach utterly subverted the traditional power
> dynamics of photographic portraiture
> all in a moment
>
> and of course the shots are online the next day
> on one of the club's online photo galleries
> locating the ongoing (via message boards, forwarded emails, myspace or
> facebook links to friends, selves, strangers, etc.)
> performance
> in a locale, a business, a brand
> successfully performing a cross-platform strategy
> hybridity for profit and fun
>
> so what is that?
> something to talk about maybe
> maybe even some kind of distributed performative situated public
> creativity
> i make no claims
> it's just some thing i saw
>
> js
>
> --
> www.johnsobol.com
> bluesology • printopolis • digitopia
>
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