Doing some research on creative ways of invading the virtual space, an interesting project initiated by some students called “the group A3” caught my attention. Curious to learn more about the project posted under the headline „subverting performance space“, I contacted the four group members and gained some insights into the background of their activities.
What seems interesting to me about the project done by A3 is the specific approach of entering a performance space, in this case a blog set up to communicate between groups of students located in two different universities. The blog is installed as a medium to exchange results of six groups working on key terms relevant for the master course MAIPR. However, A3 understands it not only as such but also as a specific space incorporating certain rules which can be undermined in a creative way. In doing this, the group achieves a shifting of perception among the ones using the blog. Questions come up like: In which way is a blog a specific sphere with its own political implications? Which (unspoken) rules do come to effect when participating in interactive blog activities?
First of all, I was fascinated by the parallel use of virtual and actual space of their familiar surroundings such as blog and classroom, and how both dimensions actually existed in virtual and actual realities for the sake of virtual truth which was grounded both on-line and off-line. Due to the current culture of cyber activities on the internet, it is commonly perceived that ‘virtual space’ exists somewhere distant, intangible, void, or simulated, and that it has little metaphysical connection to ‘actual space’. However, A3 has proved through their project that the virtual and the actual are grounded in each other and that one can access and even have control over the other which made their subversion of performance space possible.
When the author Ngugi Wa Thiongo in his book „Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams“ speaks about the politics of performance space, he claims a ‚war between art and the state’ which is ‚a struggle between the power of performance in the arts and the performance of power by the state – in short, enactments of power.’ (38) He is specifically referring to his native country Kenya and is highlighting the restriction of the performance space of artists by state authorities within a postcolonial setting. While Ngugi is mainly focusing on ‚enactments of power’ by the nation state, one can also look at subversive acts done by artists successfully breaking up power structures of institutions or statelike entities. So to do, when Tanja Ostojic questions the immigration policy of the EU in her project „Looking for a Husband with an EU passport“ (2000-2005) by marrying a random partner in order to obtain the permission to live within the EU territory.
I do not want to compare the small intervention of A3 to this project with far-reaching political implications, but by boycotting the blog-exercise in a rather playful way the groups provoked reactions that could not have been foreseen. While the group members thought that their prank was very obvious and that a posting sent during the day announcing the drop-out of the group would be understood as a joke, misinterpretations led to concerns among the ones involved in the exercise. By sending a fake video of struggles and catastrophes by midnight of the same day the group wanted to reveal the prank, but saw itself under pressure to do so a little earlier in order to prevent further misunderstandings. Nevertheless, the exercise shows that a rather simple (and not very subtle) attempt to mess up structures within a specific performance space (the blog) can lead to confusion and misunderstandings. On the other hand, it enhances us to reflect our perception of the ‚performance of power’ within such a space in an enlightening way.
Another thing that is raised in A3's concept is the ongoing and ever-present problem of liminality. My dear friend and colleague Jon McKenzie wrote about this in his exquisite book „Perform or Else“where he proposes the definition of cultural performance as a liminal process, that which deliberately challenges frames of social structures and undermines their normative functions. Now, this particular concept I'm describing doesn't have nor pretends to have an impact on wider political structures. They are, after all, acting within - and obstructing, if I may say so - their own microcommunity, a collectively created blog. This inevitably put them in an ambivalent position: being directly involved in the mentioned (creative) community legitimized them to use and affect the space without strict restrictions, as there were none set up in the beginning. But because of sharing the space with a broader range of people, they are facing a certain amount of responsibility for everyone involved. However, that's the risk one has to be ready to accept when dealing with performances that tend to not only question their own place of emergence, but also provoke the recipients by blurring the border between fake and real - the Yes Men being a fruitful example in all their projects. Speaking about borders, I wish to suggest a question this small piece seems to ask, or at least I recognized it as such: Is crossing the borders - and here I use the term in the widest possible sense - expanding the field it surrounds or is it making them even more solid? I'm not sure about the answer. And maybe (still) don't want to be. That's why we have to keep testing them.
The work also reminds me of the French theoretician and documentarist Jean-Luis Comolli. He has a beautiful term: “at the risk of the real” (from the original Au risqué du reel), in which he defends the proposition of less controlled documentaries, with scripts working as devices that open the camera to the reactions from reality. He sees the risk of the real as a crucial issue in the performative arts. Regarding at Hermann’s, Schechner’s, Fischer-Lichte’s, among others, definition of performance as event, I’m fond of the idea of it being eventful.
In my last trip to Brazil for a conference in film studies, I got to know the work of Glauber Rocha, one of the greatest movie-makers of the country. I learned that after his first movies, in which he owned a lot of control in the production, he started to get interested in approaching “real life” through fiction and vice-versa. He inserts actors in events taking place, like popular feasts, traditional rituals, in a way that you can’t always tell whether the whole event was performed for the movie or not. I think it is pretty exciting when I get confused about the ontology of the performance, of its reason to be. In examples like these or in postdramatic theatre in general, according to Hans-Thies Lehmann, the main point is the indecidability (to use Lehmann’s word) between reality and fiction in the audience’s consciousness. Yet, through these considerations I observe the cyberspace as an interesting medium in which performances can play along with this indecidability. Fake journalism, like the one implemented by the Yes Men, as I mentioned before, is an interesting possibility; the device can make “news” more political than truthful journalism (and what is truthful journalism anyway?). People lie. And perform. For example, myself: In my bio it is written that I have graduated in outstanding universities, but what if I am nothing but a little kid fooling around in the internet, “playing” intellectual games?
