the performative of encounter With each site of performance (and in the performance of place), I encounter another element: the meeting, a movement and moment in time and space that presents another version of the location: a walking talking living history. Each person is a specific and particular perspective on this place. Encounters are intersections (where you meet me and we step into each other’s orbit thereby crossing from my world into yours, yours into mine) that produce a dynamic of exchange, two worlds overlapping. The space between us is now a shared area of interaction. That space between us, in a performance of transaction, is a zone of fertile potential where even as we come together in real time, neither of us can know the eventual impact of our encounter. the performative of serendipity What I’ve discovered over several years of travelling and monitoring the process of travel, is that spaces only begin to become particularised when I begin to feel a sense of connection to them. Slowly, space (general) becomes place (specific). Encounters with others contribute significantly toward a connection to place. To this end, travelling provides the ideal circumstance for a heightened observation of how we connect – to ourselves, to our environments, to others. Momentarily away from home and from the person who we usually know ourselves to be, we give ourselves the space to discover and reveal other less developed parts of ourselves. In encounters with new surroundings: other people, situations and the built and natural environment there is an opening up of consciousness and a charged peripheral vision. Intuition finds a privileged position, and intimacy – the willingness to let down one’s guard – is offered a platform in which to flourish. With all our senses activated and when openness coalesces with these landscapes of exploration, we encounter serendipity: a spontaneous and unexpected action / reaction that connects various points of contact in both planned and chance encounters. Within that space of encounter, all kinds of unexpected outcomes emerge. A planned encounter can lead to several unplanned encounters and a chain of events unfolds, pointing both back toward a previous sign and forward to as yet unknown possibilities. The revelation of an evolving, interconnected constellation – an embracing of one’s internal map – discovers the unfolding performativity of place. c
The foundation of my research as a performance artist is to keep exploring and attempting to uncover wherein lies ‘the performative’. This research has morphed into several kinds of practices and my most recent work has proposed the crossing over of relational art (that of performative social transactions) with geo-poetic meanderings (performative explorations of place), to produce an in situ / in socius project – that which reveals an intersection; a shared area of interaction, within a specifically chosen site. From October 2012 to October 2013, I carried out a series of research and creation residencies in three locations (two months in Real del Monte, Mexico; one month in Saint John, New Brunswick and four months in Sainte-Thérèse, Québec (going back and forth from Montréal to Sainte-Thérèse). My intention was to spend the entirety of my time seeing sites that hold meaning for the people who live there. In one-on-one meetings the purpose wasn’t to see tourist attractions, but to experience these cities and towns through the eyes of local people – to discover the myriad stories that make up multiple invisible histories of each place. Encountering local citizens to encounter a new place, I was also encountering acclimatisation – a personal consideration of how we come to understand a place and feel some sense of belonging; of how place is indeed constructed. When art is made outside conventional art contexts, when art and life collide in a parallel moment of co-existence, boundaries dissolve and the performance becomes less about an audience- to-artist relationship, and more about human-to-human contact. This re-defines the roles of art and the artist. To qualify and quantify such an invisible trajectory, and to locate the performative function that I perceive as a deeply inherent and driving force in both my artistic practice and the construction of place, some basic principals were uncovered. the performative of necessity Performatives of necessity are acts with which we navigate a place in fulfilment of essential needs: buying groceries, getting a morning coffee, picking up a newspaper. They bring us into contact with others through service transactions. When we find ourselves returning to the café on a daily basis, coinciding with the morning shift of the young woman who works there, the manner and quality of interaction shifts from the more or less formal to the personal. the performative of place A place is made up of its histories, its landscape, its architecture, its socio-political structures and economies. Place is a construct of the identities that make up its existence – place is the localised and particularised assemblage of the people, and communities that move through, inhabit and constitute it. In the individual sequences of repeated activities that make up daily existence, an assemblage of many individuals (even a whole population) becomes a ‘place ballet’: the performance of place. 1
51
1 David Seamon in Anne Buttimer and David Seamon, The Human Experience of Space and Place . London: Croom Helm, 1980
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator