On this page you are welcomed to inform yourself about lectures-performances, which were created and shown during the Seminar. You are introduced with two types of documentation about lectures-performances:
1 Video-Documentation
Documentation of the performance is a vibrant topic, which has no clear solution. As Peggy Phelan said in her work (1), the basic ontological fact of the performance is that its “only life is in present. Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented, or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representations: once it does so, it becomes something other than performance. To the degree that performance attempts to enter the economy of reproduction, it betrays and lessens the promise of its own ontology”.
Nevertheless here you are offered with video of lecture-performances, which was shown during the seminar in Ekeby at 02nd-05th of July 2015. But the form of this video-documentation is experimental and needs a bit of clarification: apart from video of three pieces of performances, you can also share the experience of discussion and find out how the performances were created from the words of the students and listen to comments about the perception of performances by the audience.
For that purpose the video is designed as “hyper-text”, where different links with commentaries are refer to certain moments of the basic video-documentation of performances themselves.
Through such form of documentation we aim to deliver full and multisided picture of the process, which took place at the seminar.
The piece of video-documentation consists of following videos:
- Main video (Duration: 17:50)
- Patricia Carolin Mai talks about meaning of the water in the lecture-performance „Performing“(Duration: 0:56)
- Dina Öhler-Lindström talks about the theme of water in lecture performance „Performing” (Duration: 1:25)
- Dina Öhler-Lindström talks about theoretical background for the lecture-performance „Performing“(Duration: 1:35)
- Teresa Hoffmann talks about her perception of the performance „Movement“ (Duration: 0:49)
- Gloria Höckner talks about her perception of the voice in the performance „Movement“ (Duration: 0:46)
- Insa Griesing talks about her experience during performance „Movement“ (Duration: 0:51)
- Jennifer Krzikawski talks about the concept for the performance „Movement“ (Duration: 0:58)
- Mark Carrera talks about work-in-progress of performance „Movement“ (Duration: 1:00)
- Renske Ebbers talks about key notions of the performance „Improvisation“ (Duration: 1:19)
- Renske Ebbers talks about about concept of the performance „Improvisation“ (Duration: 1:20)
- Teresa Hoffman talks about the score of the performance „Improvisation“ (Duration: 0:25)
- Gloria Höckner explains how the improvisation in the lecture-performance was organized (Duration: 1:10)
Total duration: 31:04
2 Text-documentation
Documentation of the performance in the form of textual description based on the performance analysis strategy by Partice Pavis (2) which includes the following elements:
- General discussion of performance
- Scenography
- Lighting system
- Stage properties
- Costumes
- Actors‘ performances
- Function of music and sound effects
- Pace of performance
- Interpretation of story-line in performance
- Text in performance
- Audience
- How to notate (photograph and film) this production
- What cannot be put into signs
Improvisation
The first work to subject “Improvisation” was shown on the green grass of Ekeby residence, where the bushes created the frame of improvised stage. The audience was accompained to this lown and invited to take a place infront of the „stage“. Two women (Su Jin Kim and Teresa Hoffmann) were standing on all fours like “horses” and looking at each other silently. Two other women (Gloria Hoeckner and Renske Ebbers) came to the “stage” having a chat together, without much attention to two “horses” the set on their backs and continued their conversation trying to arrange themselves comfortably on the backs of two girls under them. Women “under” started to have their own conversation, although they pronounced more single words, not the whole sentences and those were the keywords, which were discussed by the “raiders”. In this cacophony of words the spectators could hear: “spontaneous, social, multitude, in a moment, economy, communication, I know, interaction”. After some time “horses” started to move with the riders in unsynchronised directions and after few minutes the riders “slided” down from their backs taking the same position “on all fours”, for a moment all women were standing on all fours and then they “walked” with the back to the audience, two women, who were “horses” stood up and left the field, two “riders” stayed sitting on the grass and talking and time after time “crawling” to the right side of the “stage”, then they stood up and with words “This is evolution” they left.
Movement
After the announcement of the beginning of performance “Moving” the audience stayed in the hall with the doors open to the garden, which looked from that point as a long corridor. For some time nothing changes in the mise en scene and audience started to worry, laugh, and ask each other weather they see something. After some time four figures appeared from improvised bush-side-scenes, three female and one male figure were slowly coming towards the public in line. The walking style was on the same slow speed, although sometimes the order of the students changed: somebody became last, somebody first. But in general they kept a line. After 1/3 of the path towards audience it became possible to hear the voices of the students, they spoke simultaneously but it was still to far to understand what they say. Some people from the audience started to distinguish words, other still could not and started to ask each other. Finally they could reconstruct the whole phrase although the speakers didn’t pronounce it synchrony and every one had light modifications of it. “Wir möchten etwas kommunizieren, wir möchten mitteilen, Interaktion Ordnung ist Bewegung Ordnung“/ “We’d want to communicate, we would like to share, the Order of the Interaction is the Order of the Movement”. The closer four students came, the clearer was their message. They entered the hall and came right up to the audience. When they reached one level wit the audience the stopped speaking. After few seconds of silence the applause started.
Performing
The audience is placed at the terrace, here, with the closed doors a woman (Patricia Carolin Mai) starts video on the laptop, which she holds in her hands. Spectators see themselves last morning at the table; the moments of drinking are emphasized. The video is silent. After few minutes another woman (Insa Griesing) takes the laptop from her hands and closed it. Two other women are coming next to her (Gabriella Marffe and Dina Öhler-Lindstöm), all three are opening the doors of the terrace and leaving to the garden. Insa stays inside and writes with the wet sponge on the black tiles of the floor word “Handgeschöpft” after that she stands on the stair in front of the doors and looks at the garden. On the background Patricia fills the jag with water from the small pond. She is coming forward and meets with Dina, who holds empty bottle, Patricia pours the whole water out of the jug, the bottle gets filled, although most of the water is spilled. Patricia stays where she was, Dina is going to the terrace and Gabriela with the glass on the tray comes to her, Dina pours the whole water from the bottle into the glass and spills most of the water around. Gabriela puts the glass of the water on the tray and brings it to Insa. Insa takes a glass and offers it to the audience. The closest to the glass was Renske, who took a glass and after hesitating made a sip and said “Danke” to Insa. All four women made a line along the stairs in a service postures. The performance is over.
(1) Peggy Phelan „Unmarked: the politics of performance“ London [u.a]: Routledge, 1993
(2) Semiotik der Theaterrezeption (Acta Romanica). Tübingen: G.Narr, 1988
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