Spectacle and the one-man band : technology, performing bodies, and imaginary spaces

L’étiquette « homme-orchestre » est apposée à une grande variété de musiciens qui se distinguent en jouant seuls une performance qui est normalement interprétée par plusieurs personnes. La diversité qu’a pu prendre au cours du temps cette forme n’est pas prise en compte par la culture populaire qui propose une image relativement constante de cette figure tel que vue dans les films Mary Poppins (1964) de Walt Disney et One-man Band (2005) de Pixar. Il s’agit d’un seul performeur vêtu d’un costume coloré avec une grosse caisse sur le dos, des cymbales entre les jambes, une guitare ou un autre instrument à cordes dans les mains et un petit instrument à vent fixé assez près de sa bouche pour lui permettre d’alterner le chant et le jeu instrumental. Cette thèse propose une analyse de l’homme-orchestre qui va au-delà de sa simple production musicale en situant le phénomène comme un genre spectaculaire qui transmet un contenu symbolique à travers une relation tripartite entre performance divertissante, spectateur et image. Le contenu symbolique est lié aux idées caractéristiques du Siècle des lumières tels que la liberté, l’individu et une relation avec la technologie. Il est aussi incarné simultanément par les performeurs et par la représentation de l’homme-orchestre dans l’imaginaire collectif. En même temps, chaque performance sert à réaffirmer l’image de l’homme-orchestre, une image qui par répétitions est devenue un lieu commun de la culture, existant au-delà d’un seul performeur ou d’une seule performance. L’aspect visuel de l’homme-orchestre joue un rôle important dans ce processus par une utilisation inattendue du corps, une relation causale entre corps, technologie et production musicale ainsi que par l’utilisation de vêtements colorés et d’accessoires non musicaux tels des marionnettes, des feux d’artifice ou des animaux vivants. Ces éléments spectaculaires divertissent les spectateurs, ce qui se traduit, entre autres, par un gain financier pour le performeur. Le divertissement a une fonction phatique qui facilite la communication du contenu symbolique.

Designing in the real world is complex anyway - so what?

Designing is a heterogeneous, fuzzily defined, floating field of various activities and chunks of ideas and knowledge. Available theories about the foundations of designing as presented in "the basic PARADOX" (Jonas and Meyer-Veden 2004) have evoked the impression of Babylonian confusion. We located the reasons for this "mess" in the "non-fit", which is the problematic relation of theories and subject field. There seems to be a comparable interface problem in theory-building as in designing itself. "Complexity" sounds promising, but turns out to be a problematic and not really helpful concept. I will argue for a more precise application of systemic and evolutionary concepts instead, which - in my view - are able to model the underlying generative structures and processes that produce the visible phenomenon of complexity. It does not make sense to introduce a new fashionable meta-concept and to hope for a panacea before having clarified the more basic and still equally problematic older meta-concepts. This paper will take one step away from "theories of what" towards practice and doing and try to have a closer look at existing process models or "theories of how" to design instead. Doing this from a systemic perspective leads to an evolutionary view of the process, which finally allows to specify more clearly the "knowledge gaps" inherent in the design process. This aspect has to be taken into account as constitutive of any attempt at theory-building in design, which can be characterized as a "practice of not-knowing". I conclude, that comprehensive "unified" theories, or methods, or process models run aground on the identified knowledge gaps, which allow neither reliable models of the present, nor reliable projections into the future. Consolation may be found in performing a shift from the effort of adaptation towards strategies of exaptation, which means the development of stocks of alternatives for coping with unpredictable situations in the future.

Estudios sonoros desde la Región Andina UIO-BOG = Sonic Studies from the Andean Region

El presente trabajo se basa en el análisis de las prácticas sonoras y, a partir de ahí, de una apuesta por un nuevo campo de estudios, el de los Estudios Sonoros; cuyo fin último es establecer una perspectiva epistemológica y política de las prácticas experimentales con sonido, en diálogo con proyectos provenientes de los Estudios Culturales, como son el proyecto modernidad/ colonialidad, las teorías poscoloniales y los estudios subalternos. Desde estas posiciones teóricas y políticas, estoy conciente de que el sonido, y sus posibilidades experimentales, articulan un régimen influyente en el mundo contemporáneo. Razón por la cual, sobre todo, esta es una reflexión desde las prácticas sonoras que surgen en dos ciudades andinas: Quito y Bogotá, como una expresión emergente para establecer encuentros Sur-Sur, que puedan generar diálogos epistemológicos sobre el sonido. En otras palabras, en este libro estoy proponiéndo a mis lectoras y lectores, una especie de “juego epistémico”: comprender el sonido como un lugar de conocimiento.Y el sonido es conocimiento precisamente porque el sonido nos permite vernos (y permite verme) como un sujeto históricamente ubicado. En el capítulo primero abordaré la pregunta de cómo se fue articulando el régimen discursivo del sonido como arte, dentro de diálogos y conflictos que se generaron en el contexto de la Guerra Fría que, para el caso de Latinoamérica, constituyó la transferencia de conocimientos articulados desde promesas como el desarrollismo y la modernización. También analizaré el cómo se configuraron, tanto en Quito como en Bogotá, las nuevas subjetividades “artísticas” frente al discurso de las vanguardias europeas del siglo XX y el experimentalismo estadounidense. Como verán mis lectoras y lectores, estos modelos, aparentemente originales e innovadores, fueron influidos por formas de saber y poder moduladas alrededor de la idea de la renovación de las artes a través del sonido, formulación que instaló el sonido como dispositivo/materia desde el cual, en detrimento de lo local, se articuló la fantasía de un universal deseado: las máquinas de sonido y de reproducibilidad técnica. En el segundo capítulo me centraré en algunas prácticas de experimentación sonora para indagar cuestiones como el estilo, procedimiento posmodernista ampliamente diseminado dentro de las instituciones artísticas y de éstas hacia la vida cotidiana. A partir de lo cual intentamos esclarecer el porqué de la confiscación y sometimiento de lo sonoro bajo el cuidadoso encierro del régimen discursivo del arte, que de manera eficiente lo absorbe como un “nuevo” medio para disciplinarlo y nombrarlo como proyecto sonoro, pieza sonora, instalación sonora, performance sonoro, acción sonora, objeto sonoro, paisaje sonoro, composición, loop. En otras palabras, cómo todo lo que genera el posmodernismo es apropiado por las universidades para crear la noción de “pastiche”, en donde todo cabe, bajo la indulgencia del “estilo”, procedimiento desde el cual se va instalando el régimen de verdad de un nuevo universal deseado: El Arte Sonoro. En este mismo capítulo, indagamos sobre las lógicas de producción de estas prácticas, para avanzar hacia las lógicas culturales donde lo sonoro se define y redefine por el posicionamiento y el lugar desde el que actúan los sujetos. Bajo estas consideraciones, queda planteada la propuesta, acuñada por esta investigación, la de un nuevo campo de estudio: Los Estudios Sonoros, propuesta que debe ser entendida como lo que algunos intelectuales latinoamericanos llaman epistemes emergentes11, precisamente porque esta investigación hace un esfuerzo por esclarecer las interdependencias existentes entre prácticas artísticas con sonido, el campo discursivo del arte y otras construcciones discursivas de la modernidad-colonialidad que establecen y regulan la formación del régimen sonoro. En el capítulo tercero analizaré cómo un “medio de creación” se vuelve hegemónico y cómo ciertos artistas que usan el sonido, bajo la pretensión de representar la marginalidad, marginalizan aún más a las personas que han sido históricamente subalternizadas. Seguido de este análisis, en el capítulo cuarto, indagamos sobre las tácticas que marcan nuevas formas de adhesión, de representación y de resistencia cultural, las mismas que son estrategias suplementarias frente, y en contra, de los discursos dominantes de las prácticas artísticas con sonido y las geopolíticas de conocimiento.

Too much information? : Drama teachers’ perceptions of the value of subject knowledge

This paper reports on research into what drama teachers consider they really need to know as drama specialists. In the first instance the very concept of knowledge is discussed as it pertains to education in the arts as is the current situation in England regarding the extent to which new drama teachers’ subject specialist knowledge has been formally accredited and what the implications of this may be to an evolving curriculum. The research itself initially involved using a questionnaire to investigate the way in which drama teachers prioritised different aspects of professional knowledge. Results of this survey were deemed surprising enough to warrant further investigation through the use of interviews and a multiple-sorting exercise which revealed why the participants prioritised in the way they did. Informed by the work of Bourdieu, Foucault and Kelly, a model is proposed which may help explain the tensions experienced by drama teachers as they try to balance and prioritise different aspects of professional knowledge.

Reaching the people: Isotype beyond the West

An overview of the work of the Isotype Institute in the Western Region of Nigeria in the 1950s.

Epic Sea Battle at Night: a Revolutionary Play with the Economic Thinking of Milton Friedman

The play Epic Sea Battle at Night was originally staged in 1967, to commemorate two of China’s People’s Liberation Army’s military triumphs over the Taiwanese navy two years previously. Produced at the height of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the play is an example of the exploitation of the arts as an ideological instrument, celebrating military heroism and political conviction. Stills from the play were included in, China Pictorial 11, an English language propaganda pamphlet that was distributed to Western Imperialists in order to educate them in Maoist policy. Today, these images are clear representations of ideology. More than forty years after the Cultural Revolution, the ideology under which we live, neo-liberal late-capitalism, deliberately shirks from such blatant displays of propaganda. We have supposedly the freedom to believe whatever we like in a post-ideological age, and yet core beliefs about meritocracy, individualism and competitiveness frequently go unchallenged. By juxtaposing the visual language of ideology with the text of the capitalist manifesto, the re-enactment of a scene from Epic Sea Battle at Night harnesses the aesthetics of the past so as to allow us to reconsider the alleged neutrality of the present. The design of the stage, the positioning of the actors, costumes and props of the current production closely resembled those documented in China Pictorial 11, yet the actors’ monologues belong to a completely different context. No less heroic and utopian in tone than the speech given by the political instructor of gunboat 874 in the original play, the capitalist manifesto was an attempt to give a concrete language to the shapeless ideology of the present, and to force the invisible currents that govern life today, in China as in the West, to the surface. Neither a lecture on neo-liberal economics, nor a theatrical performance of a narrative, the piece appropriated the format of the propaganda play to re-evaluate the relationship between art and politics now.

The linguistic status of Isotype

It is ironic that Otto Neurath, one of those responsible for the ‘linguistic turn’ in philosophy of the twentieth century, should have been concerned during the last twenty years of his life with developing a ‘pictorial language’. By using simplified pictograms as components, the Wiener Methode der Bildstatistik (later called Isotype) bypassed verbal language to a great extent, creating the potential for universal understanding of biological, social and economic correlations. However, despite its consistency and rigour, Isotype was not a complete language, and Neurath knew that it never could be. This paper will examine the linguistic characteristics of Isotype and describe the deliberate resistance on the part of its creators to develop a full theory behind it.

The Extras Regina, 2008

Project includes: a large scale live performance and resulting performance video, at Curtain Razors, Regina Queen’s Square, Regina, 2008 Live Performance, 45 mins, incl. 1 actor, 23 extras, 2 live cameras, live video and sound mixing, stage set, video projection. Video 45 mins Video Trailer 7 mins The Extras is a video performance referencing the form of a large live film shoot. The Extras contextualises contemporary Westerns genres within an experimental live tableau. The live performance and resulting 45 mins video make reference 19th century Western Author German Karl May, the tradition of Eastern European Western, (Red Western), Uranium exploitation and entrepreneurial cultures in the Canadian Prairies. Funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, Saskatchewan Arts Board and Curtain Razors, the Extras Regina was staged and performed at Central Plaza in Regina, with a crew of 23 extras, 2 live cameras, live video and sound mixing ad video projection. It involved research in Saskatchewan film and photographic archives. The performance was edited live and mixed with video material which was shot on location, with a further group of extras at historical historical ‘Western’ locations, including Fort Qu' Appelle, 
Castle Butte and Big Muddy. It also involved a collaboration with a local theatre production company, which enacted a dramatised historical incident.

Paradise postponed? The Department of National Heritage and political hegemony

Established following the Conservative Party's election victory in April 1992, the Department of National Heritage has been heralded as an important stage in the growing recognition of the significance of the leisure industry to Britain. By combining, for the first time, responsibility for sport, tourism, the arts, libraries, heritage, broadcasting and film, and by providing them with Cabinet representation, a unique opportunity has, seemingly, been provided to develop and promote the interests of leisure in Britain. This paper takes the view that although this initiative has been broadly welcomed, there are important inconsistencies which require attention. On the one hand the selection of the portfolio appears somewhat eclectic. On the other hand, it is questionable why such a department should have been developed at all. An inspection of the implicit ideology suggests that rather than the traditional use of the state to promote leisure interests, the introduction of the department signifies a shift to the use of leisure to promote the Government's interests. Thus the new Department of National Heritage is to be used as a central feature in the legitimation of the government's political programme. Rather than emphasising its traditional quasi-welfare role, the new place for leisure and heritage is firmly in the market economy. Whilst a leisured society may be the epitome of post-industrialism, therefore, the citizen rights claim for access to leisure activities can only be secured by engaging with the market. This legitimised construction of post- modern citizenship is at the centre of a new political order where choice has been replaced by means and where the classless paradigm championed by the Prime Minister will be a classlessness of constructed omission.

Meta-morphs: – being a mediator of the ‘thin’ place and ‘thin’ experience in the HE classroom. A paper on the experience of creating transformations in HE teaching and learning

The research which underpins this paper began as a doctoral project exploring archaic beliefs concerning Otherworlds and Thin Places in two particular landscapes - the West Coast of Wales and the West Coast of Ireland. A Thin Place is an ancient Celtic Christian term used to describe a marginal, liminal realm, beyond everyday human experience and perception, where mortals could pass into the Otherworld more readily, or make contact with those in the Otherworld more willingly. To encounter a Thin Place in ancient folklore was significant because it engendered a state of alertness, an awakening to what the theologian John O’ Donohue (2004: 49) called “the primal affection.” These complex notions and terms will be further explored in this paper in relation to Education. Thin Teaching is a pedagogical approach which offers students the space to ruminate on the possibility that their existence can be more and can mean more than the categories they believed they belonged to or felt they should inhabit. Central to the argument then, is that certain places and their inhabitants can become revitalised by sensitively considered teaching methodologies. This raises interesting questions about the role spirituality plays in teaching practice as a tool for healing in the twenty first century.