Absent Audiences

Abstract

In ‘Absent audiences: Circuit-bending the feedback loop’, Pedro Manuel proposes to observe contemporary performances where the agency and physical presence of an audience is questioned, destabilizing a stable process of feedback loop between stage and audience, and troubling the argument of physical co-presence as a fundament of performance.

Considering works by D. Marleau, A. Dorsen, H. Goebbels, R. Mroué, as well as by D. Verhoeven, O. Maxted, S. van Lamsweerde, Ontroerend Goed, T. Crouch and I. Muller, the article expands on examples where the audience performs to itself, on performances played to audiences distant in space and time, as well as on performances presented to nonhuman animals (Putnam, Kokkonen) and to no-one but machines and natural elements.

Drawing from E. Fischer-Lichte's description of a feedback loop between performers and audience as a fundamental aspect of theatre and performance's definition, the article proposes a critical appreciation of performance considering, instead, the mediacy of documentation (Auslander, Jones), an ontology of disappearance (Phelan) and an interpassive subjectivity (Zizek) as frameworks which question the assumption of the argument of co-presence as base and border of a stable, normative performance event, allowing for unexpected modes of spectating.