Thinking through Nicola Elliott’s Bruising (2014)

Abstract

This paper focuses on the notion of performance as a form of knowledge (philosophy) through an analysis of Nicola Elliott’s Bruising (2014), first performed at the National Arts Festival in South Africa. This notion of performance as a form of philosophy acknowledges that performance creates forms of knowing that can only be derived from the experience of performance. This knowledge is related to ‘living meaning’ or affect which explains the liminal quality of how meaning arises through performance and that this knowledge/sense is not absolute but singular and subjective for the audience member. Bruising deals with the concepts of living through loss, but does not present one with any prescribed messages or overt meanings. Instead, the work reveals the ambiguity of love and the process of making meaning. I pay specific attention to how Bruising created a shift in my experience of time and space through movement (dance) and argue that this kind of shift challenges ‘kinetic complicity’ via Andrè Lepecki’s theory of a slow ontology. The experiential aspect of viewership informs the observations and conclusions drawn from this research. Alongside this interpretative research methodology is a qualitative engagement with theories related to performance and choreography.

Keywords:

• Meaning
• dance
• performance philosophy
• becoming

Notes

1. Laura Cull discusses the interplay between performance and philosophy and the opposing argument put forth by Martin Puchner surrounding this field of enquiry in Encounters in Performance Philosophy (Cull and Lagaay 2014) in the chapter entitled ‘Performance Philosophy – Staging a New Field’ (15–38).

2. The Standard Bank Young Artist Awards is considered to be one of the most prestigious awards and gives recognition to young South African artists who exhibit outstanding ability within their chosen field. A key aspect of the awards is that it guarantees and funds the recipients a place on the main programme of the forthcoming National Arts festival.

3. For a more detailed analysis of this work, see Nicola Elliott’s official website http://www.nicolaelliott.com/ under the section titled Research.

4. The ‘Disintegration Loops’ is the end result of William Basinski’s attempt to transfer 20-year-old tape loops of music he had created into a digital format. During this process, he noticed that in the attempt to archive the pieces, the quality of the music was deteriorating and working with this effect, Basinski allowed the tape to deteriorate further. Basinski then used fragments from the originals to compose The Disintegration Loops. The composition is a testament to effects of the transitory.

5. Cjević clarifies via a close reading of Spinoza and Deleuze the distinction between affect and emotion, conceiving of affect as impersonal and the result of a ‘modification of experience as an independent thing of existence (2015, 168). This is not to negate the importance of emotion, but to identify quite specifically how a performer does not need to emote a certain feeling to create affects. For more information regarding this argument, see 162–194 of Choreographing Problems (2015).