Holding the microphone with two hands cradling it with, one hand on the top, as if it's a very important object. I'm holding it upright, and now I straighten my head up, wearing, wearing a kind of plain, green shirt, and as I stand very straight, I make a V-shape, with my . . . I make a shape with a V, with my two legs and feet apart, and now I've rocked backwards and almost lost my balance, leaning now the my right, the audience's left side, all my balance on my right foot, and the other foot walks this side of the stage as I walk more regularly, holding the microphone now with two hands, but the hand lower, looking somewhat down but not completely down now, started to walk backwards and stopped, as I said the word now.
In the second phase the performer faces the audience again. Now, however, he looks at the spectators directly as he describes their visible behavior for about five minutes.
Facing the audience. In the first two rows, the audience appears very serious, and now everyone laughs the same kind of laugh, and as they laugh they make a phhh-type of a sound, and the sides of their . . . , it's a laugh, where they don't show their teeth, and now just the opposite, everyone showing their teeth, particularly in the center, and they are laughing a little bit more loudly. This is true in the first two rows, all the way back. But there's some, there are people who are looking down and trying to maintain some seriousness. And now their laugh is much louder, and people smile and chew gum, and people look at each other now and there're many people who are moving their heads likely, which they hadn't before, or scratching themselves, as they laugh immediately after that, they are usually . . . , if their hands were on their faces, they change after that laugh. Now they look at each other to see if that's true, perhaps, it's hard now, and they laugh again; and again there's someone looking at each other, everybody tends to be smiling, as if at a, uh, as if it's a kind of humorous performance . . .
Up to this point, the interaction proceeds according the same scheme used in the two performances described above. Now, however, a significant change takes place. And this change, which I would like to examine more closely, leads us to the heart of the experience of art. The performer turns around and faces the mirror. If we view the mirror in metaphorical sense as an image or a picture, then we can say that the artist faces a picture that presents him and the audience from the same perspective. Through this reversal, the initially opposing perspectives of performer and audience are brought into parallel. Both become joint observers of a third party, i.e. of a medium: the depiction of a social community. In the mirror, both see a reversed representation of their public selves and thus have the opportunity to experience themselves, in a static and momentary sense, as a portrait of a social group.
At first, the performer faces the mirror as he describes the gestures and movements of the various parts of his body reflected in the mirror. Thus he describes his own, reversed mirror-image from the perspective of a third-party, as if he were an other. The audience sees only his back, however. It cannot observe his gaze. By describing himself from the perspective of an other, so to speak, which is at the same time the perspective of the audience, he brings about a change of perspective, a taking of the role of the other. Graham describes himself from a perspective that could also be taken by the spectators in the audience. In this mirroring process, he takes the audience's view of himself and describes his own social, public identity.
Now I'm looking at myself, and what I see is the microphone, an enormously large microphone, held very close to a mouth which is moving rather rapidly, and the eyes are looking down, and I see a contrast between the green, very green shirt that I'm wearing, and a very reddish face. Some hairs are white on the brown, blackish-brown hair of head and beard, and as I stare I look very, very naive as if I don't know precisely why I'm looking at myself, and as I move further back and drop the microphone I see more natural and I can see more of my teeth, it could have something to do with the microphone being very large, that produces the self-consciousness, now I notice my foot is kind of going back and forth as if it's playing with the image of itself.
In the last phase of the performance, Dan Graham describes the appearance of the audience. Remarkably, no one laughs, and the spectators in the back rows tend to be rather inattentive.
Looking at the audience on my right. In the front row, everybody seems fairly serious, in the second row, some people are talking, the third row, everybody seems basically serious but they're smiling, smiling just a little bit. Behind that seriousness which is a kind of, well now people are making gestures as if they're, let's say, acting, showing off a little bit. And now everybody is changed, now people are blinking, talking to each other, making gestures, usually with their hands, to attract attention and the other side is very noisy, the left side, hey look there, they are noisy, because they are all talking to each other and they are not looking at me. This is again in the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth row, people are very much like a kind of an unruly gang of people over there. These are the least well behaved people. By the way, people in the first row have been fairly serious and now they're making somewhat nervous, on both sides, yawning or nervous gestures as if it's a little difficult to continue. The best behaved people, I'd say, are in the second row, up to this point. But beyond that it gets pretty bad. Well, there's a change here as people are smiling and laughing, and in the second row, very self-conscious. Other people are talking to each other and weren't mentioned before, in the sixth row, seventh row, all the way back, people are turning and talking to each other in a group, as if conspiring to do something totally different. (19)
Theoretically, one could imagine a painting in place of the mirror, being examined and described by the performer. This would make him a kind of art historian or art critic. Looking at art history and art criticism as a kind of performance strikes me as an especially amusing idea. (20) In the Stuttgart interview, Dan Graham himself characterized the mirror as a sort of Renaissance painting. I asked him about his reasons for introducing the mirror into his performance:
So the audience could use the time-situation. So as I was giving a kind of continuous present time. More like a Gibson time which wasn't static. The audience can see itself in static present time. Also they have a reference to what I said. In other words, after I described them they could look at themselves. And also it gives them an idea of themselves as a social group. So it was the social group that I was giving them that was continuous and then they could look at themselves and see themselves in another social group as a portrait. That also goes back to the Renaissance idea of the portrait. (21)
Graham mentions that with the help of the mirror the audience can make use of the time situation. He distinguishes between a continuous present time and a static present time. The continuously expanded present is a time of consciousness - that is, the time he creates through his description in the consciousness of the audience. It permits the spectators to develop the idea of a continuous self as a social group. The static present as an image, on the other hand, is represented by the mirror. Graham compares it with a Renaissance portrait. He allows his audience to comprehend itself as an other, i.e. as a static, social body.
No comments:
Post a Comment