Editorial: On Performatics

In December 2006 the Grotowski Centre in Wrocław, Poland, hosted an international conference entitled Performance Studies and Beyond. The event celebrated the translation and publication of Richard Schechner's textbook Performance Studies: An Introduction, but the conference hosts and conveners were keen to think beyond the North American schools of performance studies and seek relevance and application for the term (and field) within the advanced and sophisticated modes of theatre studies in Poland.

The conference was organized by the Centre directors Jarosław Fret and Grzegorz Ziółkowski together with Tomasz Kubikowski from Warsaw Theatre Academy with help from Adam Mickiewicz Institute. It not only created a space for dialogue on approaches to theatre and research, which were part of the Grotowski Centre's mission from its very beginning (to examine in theory and in practice intersections between theatre and cultural research)1 but also marked the Centre's transformation into an Institute. In fact, the conference was the final public event co-organized by the Grotowski Centre before it became Instytut im. Jerzego Grotowskiego.2 The significance of the transformation is an acknowledged policy shift to initiating and stimulating growth in a young generation of artists with an emphasis on being an active and living site/place functioning with purpose and vitality in contemporary Polish culture. The interdependence of conducting research and sharing it through transmission processes and artistic projects guided the curation of the event and paralleled the way of thinking promoted by the guests gathered at the conference.

The translator of Schechner's book, Performance Studies, Tomasz Kubikowski, proposed the term Performatyka for the broad field of performance studies and this was adopted for the title of the book and for the greater project behind the conference: to introduce, translate, adopt and mutate the field of study and speculate upon its development.

The Polish title of the conference was Performatyka: perspektywy rozwojowe, which can be translated as Performance Studies: perspectives for development. However, in thinking about a journal issue arising from and responding to the conference (and not wanting it to be merely a publication of proceedings), we wondered whether it was more provocative if the literal translation were retained and Performatyka were rendered back into English as Performatics. What might this term suggest? Does it have the potential to function widely and denote a field of study that might otherwise be captured by an Anglo- American definition (and possibly restrictive terms of reference)? Performance Studies, as a term, is often lost in translation, diffused and confused. What relevance and currency could Performatics have? Might it supply an adjective of performance (as an alternative to the overused and often mis-used performative)?

We hoped this issue of Performance Research could function as an extension of the conference's debates and findings. We especially wanted the journal's pages to help balance the voices of Polish and non-Polish speakers, as, at the conference, Polish theatre scholars and practitioners listened to the representatives of theatre and performance studies from abroad and, even though reflections and counteropinions were shared and doubts and reservations expressed, the conference was mainly a one-way street. Now, the collaboration on this issue of the journal creates the chance to address and redress this.

Producing an issue of Performance Research on the theme Performatics also creates the opportunity to make up for the unfortunate absence from the conference of representatives of the Institute of Polish Culture (at Warsaw University) whose contribution to developing and nurturing in Poland a way of looking at theatre as a phenomenon embedded in culture has been particularly significant. It is within the milieu of the Institute of Polish Culture that the milestone textbook Antropologia widowisk [‘Anthropology of Performances’] was edited and published in 2005. This volume compiles fragments of classical texts by researchers of such diverse disciplines as anthropology, philosophy, sociology and psychology, as well as literature and theatre studies from Poland and abroad in order to create a poly-vocal ‘whole’ that helps (young) people to understand, or at least to be more aware of, the rapid changes that contemporary culture is undergoing as a result of mediatization and globalization processes. This perspective (approach and methodology) has resonance with Performance Studies – harmonies and dissonance.

We are therefore especially pleased to open this issue with a text by Leszek Kolankiewicz, the director of the Institute of Polish Culture, and for his permission to translate and publish his introduction to the aforementioned volume. The title of his article Towards an Anthropology of Performance(s) not only echoes the seminal publication of Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre (Kolankiewicz collaborated closely with Grotowski in the late 1970s and early 1980s), but also stresses interdisciplinarity and extends boundaries. In this way Kolankiewicz's performance anthropology resembles Performance Studies – as he himself acknowledges, while positing that Performance Studies focuses on behavioural patterns and generalizations rather than on differences and types of human actions (such as rituals, games, ceremonies, carnivals) with their innumerable variants – which the Warsaw ‘anthropology of performances’ does (Pałach 2006: 253).

However, Grotowski's presence in Kolankiewicz's article cannot be reduced to the title only. The Polish director's insistence on an incessant search for what is essential in human beings leaves a question mark hanging in Kolankiewicz's deliberations. The mythical character of trickster that represents what in humans is ever-changing – that which belongs to the realm of social adaptation and remains the subject of the game of history – is counterbalanced, by Kolankiewicz, with another archetypal character rooted in, among others, apocryphal texts from Christian traditions: the ‘Standing One’, associated with never-changing elements in humans, their essence, core – and the aim of Grotowski's alchemical quest. Therefore, an ‘anthropology of performances’, as envisaged by Kolankiewicz and his colleagues, seems to owe as much to Victor Turner as to Jerzy Grotowski and on the deeper level tries to reconcile them.

From the perspective of Polish theatre studies we then shift to the ever-broadening field of North American performance studies. Foregrounding ‘problems’ arising from speaking in English and the global role of English as a language in many disciplines – and mindful that his lecture was being simultaneously interpreted into Polish – Jon McKenzie proposes a ‘performative matrix’ that he believes will become more evident in years to come. Starting from The Builders Association / motoroti production Alladeen,3 he enquires about the relationship between globalization and largescale multi-media theatre, and then proceeds to focus on economic and cultural globalization, glocalization and strategies for ‘localizing globalization’. Then through a reflection on the original concept of the performative matrix (coined by the Critical Art Ensemble) he turns to anti, normative and resistant globalization. McKenzie appositely brought to the conference and brings to this discussion his broad view of performance and the inter-layering of performance paradigms from business and economics: organizational, technological and governmental (which have relevance and significance for new Polish realities). The text of this lecture advances issues that readers may well be familiar with from his book Perform or Else, but here, through insightful analysis of the production Alladeen and the implications surrounding globalization/glocalization, the project is advanced.

As mentioned earlier, the conference was co-organized by Tomasz Kubikowski, the translator of the Polish edition of Richard Schechner's Performance Studies: An Introduction (2006) and – more recently – an editor of a Polish adaptation of Marvin Carlson's Performance: a Critical Introduction (2007). Kubikowski is also an author of an inspiring book Reguła Nibelunga [‘The Principle of the Nibelung’] (2004) in which he views theatre in the light of recent research into consciousness. In his text My Performatics, which is a reworked version of his Wrocław speech, he allows us a brief glimpse of his many questions and considerations and along the way also manages to throw light onto the dramatic achievements of Shakespeare.

At the centre of his analysis Kubikowski poses a question about the relationship between performative human behaviour and the performative character of our consciousness. Referring to philosopher John Searle, neurobiologist Gerald Edelman, neurologist António Damásio and cognitivist Daniel Dennett, Kubikowski states that the attitude the mind adopts in front of the world is not of a cognitive nature but of a dramatic one. As Małgorzata Szpakowska writes in her review of Kubikowski's book: ‘the mind does not contemplate reality but enters into interactions with it, and from this clash draws conclusions, sometimes adding a layer of words’ (Szpakowska 2007: 161).

Alan Read takes a long view and places performance studies on a grander timeline than it is usually accustomed to. In thinking about ‘yesterday’ he jumps backwards 40,000 years to the Stone Age and then works forward towards today via the Ceramic Age. Skilfully grafting homespun analects of his children at play, with developments in critical theory, philosophy and ethics, Read spins the tail of Performatics and appeals to the voluminous void that lurks beneath the stage of theatre as a space of subterfuge and subversion with the potential to disturb and trouble studies of performance.

We decided also to include here the debate between the iconoclastic artist Włodzimierz Staniewski – the leader of Gardzienice Theatre Association (and an equally distinguished scholar) – and Leszek Kolankiewicz, a debate moderated by Grzegorz Ziółkowski during the conference that the Grotowski Centre coorganized in November 2004, two years prior to the Performatyka meeting. We recommend reading this stimulating material alongside Dariusz Kosiński's text on Theatre ZAR's Gospels of Childhood, as both articles focus on theatre undertakings – the process and productions of Gardzienice and ZAR. Both companies exceed achievement merely within the aesthetic field and express an artistic ethos in which the performances are seemingly only a tip of an iceberg where the bigger part – research, including field expeditions to the borders of European and Christian dominions (as well as training encompassing voice, body, breath and rhythm) – remains hidden or at least less visible, while being no less important.

But what Jarosław Fret, the director of ZAR, who worked in Gardzienice for a short period, learned from Staniewski cannot be reduced only to an understanding of art as a transformative practice. Fret's work with ancient polyphonic musical structures, found amongst such diverse cultures as Georgian, Bulgarian, Sardinian and Corsican, resembles Staniewski's earlier findings inasmuch as the younger artist sees the indispensability of creating a special and particular environment for his work, grounding it in personal experiences and memories and by doing so bringing the spirit of Polish romanticism back to life. Both Gardzienice and ZAR are process- not productoriented, both base their work on deep research into musical universes, translated into transformative practices, both try to help us to hear not just to listen. And, last but not least, both attempt to discover what the song can do with the singers rather than what the singers can do with the song.

The essential difference between Staniewski and Fret is that the former focuses more and more on ancient Greece with Dionysius as a central character, while the latter questions our Christian heritage and roots, and this, inevitably, brings him closer to Grotowski. But on the deeper level Staniewski's and Fret's paths meet, since in their artistic practices they research performance displacement (namely, performance's place in a complex net of practices no less important than performance itself) and use performance as research into humankind's concordance with the earth. Therefore in both these texts we find a similar dialogic operation at play, with Kolankiewicz and Kubikowski presenting their scholarly positions and with Staniewski and Fret (in Kosiński's understanding of it) advocating for their artistic choices.

Christopher Balme provocatively enquires into the relationship between performance and new media and the questions that arise from innovative formations, alliances and mergers across forms – ranging from the resonant image of Proust listening to ‘live’ concerts in his cork-lined room via the theatrophone to the work of Rimini Protokoll and their city tour of Berlin (via mobile phone and call centre) Call Cutta (to which at the conference Heiner Goebbels also made reference). At another end of the performance spectrum from Theatr ZAR's physical and choral presence, Balme's article focuses on how new technologies, both visual and acoustic, mediate the theatrical experience and indicates this as a significant and dominant area of contemporary practice (if not of the mainstream itself or of theatre studies). Through the precise optic of German Theatre Studies, which evidently embraces some of the territorial claims of Performance Studies (or rather recognizes no such borders between theatre and performance), Balme cogently argues that these developments between performance and new technologies have major disciplinary implications.

Four months after the conference a gathering of Polish scholars and researchers was convened to consider the aftermath, impact and implications of the event (together with the book launch). This included Wojciech Dudzik, Dariusz Kosiński, Tomasz Kubikowski, Małgorzata Leyko and Dobrochna Ratajczakowa. The conversation The Key to All Locks, translated here for Performance Research, was hosted by Dialog (a monthly journal) and appeared in its July–August 2007 issue supplementing translations of Marvin Carlson's and Jon McKenzie's Wrocław papers.4 By doing so, the Warsaw journal affirmed its special position in bringing to Polish readers new thought and research into theatre and performativity. Dariusz Kosiński, who led the dialogue and wrote the review (Raft and Mooring included later), rightly accentuated Alan Read's statement expressed in Wrocław that what performatyka will become in Poland depends on what Polish praxis does with it. For English readers this transcript of the conversation may provide a mix of hesitation, reluctance, hope and anxiety expressed by Polish scholars in the face of the new phenomena storming the gates. Dobrochna Ratajczakowa's warm welcoming words have a particular resonance:

In the past a disastrous thing occurred in Polish theatre studies: we neglected phenomenology, which would have opened various doors – to structuralism, semiotics, communication theory. That is why we should not reject Performance Studies, as it may constitute a real opportunity for our research.

Ratajczakowa's statements have, to use a Polish expression, a ‘second bottom’, that is, a hidden meaning, as they are in fact an expression of belief in the strength of Polish culture (and also in the power of the academic milieu) which aims to and is able to digest and adapt to its needs, foreign, or even alien, solutions and findings.

Richard Gough staged a peformative lecture interleaving texts with images and structuring the presentation around the exposition and explication of a selection of books – a library of longing. The edited transcript reproduced here functions as a collector's confessional, weaving autobiographical doubt with institutional aspiration, hopes for developments between the academy and the profession with fears about an incipient and corrosive de-lamination of theory and practice. The patchwork of texts and images are re-worked here as artists pages in an attempt to evoke the ‘live’ and resist (avoid) the conventional academic presentation.

Our selection of material arising from the conference concludes with a review by Dariusz Kosiński of both the translated work of Richard Schechner (Performatyka: wste¸p) and the conference itself. This appeared several months after the event in Didaskalia. Although this may appear to be a reflection within a reflection (mise en abîme / droste effect), we feel it is a useful conclusion to convey to readers of this journal the reception of the conference (and book) within the Polish context. Partly due to wishing to redress the balance of Polish voices (texts) within the conversations about performatics/ performatyka, we have not included all the papers and presentations that were made at the Wrocław conference (also some of these preexisted or have now been published elsewhere), but we publish below the full conference schedule (poster) so readers can see the range of distinguished guests who were present and so other material relating to this theme can be searched. We would however, like to thank the other conference contributors whose papers could not be included here but who inspired us through their presentations and remarks at the conference: Marvin Carlson, Heiner Goebbels, Patrice Pavis, Janelle Reinelt, Richard Schechner and Phillip Zarrilli, and all the assembled delegates.

In addition to the material springing from the conference proceedings together with the substantial sections from Polish scholars and practitioners that were gathered after the event and in response to it, we felt it necessary to expand the debate further and to speculate upon what currency (if any) performatics might have as a term. We are therefore especially pleased to have received a range of ‘definitions’ for performatics – provocations, interpretations, misapprehensions; some playful, some outraged, many illuminating and all engaging with the problematic of performatics with perspicacity. We are greatly indebted to this diverse group of scholars and practitioners, whose texts are distributed throughout these pages, who responded to the invitation partially reproduced on page 7.

The final line inviting a consideration of the term Performatics ‘its potential, efficacy and limitations and more generally the current state of ideas and practices in the field of contemporary performance research’ may also be addressed to you, the reader of these pages. We hope that, with the material gathered at the conference together with Polish scholars expressing a whole array of reactions to Performance Studies and Performatics, the debates may continue.

• Poster and conference programme of Performatyka: perspektywy rozwojowe. Performance Studies and Beyond

Notes

¹ Full title: Ośrodek Badań Twórczości Jerzego Grotowskiego i Poszukiwań Teatralno-Kulturowych [‘Centre for Studies of Jerzy Grotowski's Work and for Theatrical and Cultural Research’].

² The transition from Centre to Institute was formally completed on 28 December 2006. The statute of the renamed institution stressed the need for providing more space for education and artistic activities within the programme of the institution.

³ This is another example of the multimedia and intermedial work described by Christopher Balme and which further explores the phenomenon of call centres in India (http://www.thebuildersassociation.org/).

⁴ Two more speeches, by Phillip Zarrilli and Christopher Balme, were published in Dialog's December 2007 issue.