The performance ‘apparatus’: performance and its documentation as ecological practice

ABSTRACT

The essay re-evaluates the relationship between performance and its documentation – particularly in the form of performance scores – as a means of exploring human–non-human, and specifically human–water, interrelations. It does so through reflecting on the interplay between performance and its documentation in my ongoing project, Guddling About, which, I argue, builds on materialist and ecological tendencies in other practices and practitioners that use performance scores, such as Fluxus and Lone Twin. Using Karen Barad’s concept of the ‘apparatus’, I consider the interweaving and reconfiguring of performance and performance documentation as a paradigm that recognises and troubles the paradoxes of performance as an ecological practice, such as the inescapability of human subjectivity and the extent of more-than-human agency. The ‘apparatus’ of Guddling About, I suggest, allows space for (human) accountability in fostering attentiveness and flexibility, while acknowledging and surrendering to the unknowability and unruliness of the universe.

KEYWORDS:

• Performance
• performance score
• water
• ecological performance
• performance documentation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The first Guddling About performances took place in August and September 2013 during an artists’ residency hosted by the City of Calgary Utilities and Environmental Protection and Public Art departments. See http://www.watershedplus.com/about/ Subsequent Guddling About ‘experiments’ have taken place in Glasgow with water in/from the River Kelvin, the Forth and Clyde Canal and the waste water drainage system in Govan, 2014–15, the River Manzanares, Madrid, Spain, 2015, streams, burns and rivers in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, 2015 and 2016. See http://www.guddling.tumblr.com; http://www.guddlingaboutexperiments.tumblr.com; http://www.donaldmillar2014.tumblr.com; http://www.then-now.org Accessed February 19 2016.

2. The Scots language phrase is also, appropriately, associated with water. An additional definition refers to the practice of catching fish by groping under rocks and riverbanks where they lurk, while ‘guddling’ onomatopoeically evokes the sound of water running over stones or when agitated by hand. http://scots-online.org/dictionary/scots_english.asp Accessed 19 February 2016.

3. For non- and more-than- representational theory’s valorisation of performance see (Dewsberry 2009, 321–334; Lorimer 2005, 83–94; Thrift 2008). For performance and new materialism see (Barad 2007; Bennett 2010).

4. Barad’s conception of agential realism builds on models of dispersed agency such as Bruno Latour’s ‘actor-networks’ and Deleuze’s ‘assemblages’. Barad’s conception differs in that ‘intra-action’ assumes that no entities (however porous and unstable) pre-exist their momentary materialisation through what she calls the ‘agential cut’.

5. In What is Water? Jamie Linton argues that the abstraction of water is a ‘modern’, substantially colonial phenomenon propagated to support the management and commodification of water for political and economic gains. In Guddling About we acknowledge our inculcation in the ‘crisis of modern water’, while attempting to address it by attending to ‘the social [and material] circumstances that make water what it is in every particular instance’. (Linton 2010, 23.)

6. Whelan cited an instance where Lone Twin proposed to walk across frozen Lake Michigan. In reality, this was not possible due to nature of the frozen ice (personal communication, 30 October 2015).

7. For another example of an artist working with materiality and text within a broadly ecological framework see Paterson (2004- ongoing). Ideas.

8. Whelan describes a similar interest in proposing difficult or ‘impossible’ actions: ‘the more implausible the instructions the more space there is’ (personal communication, 30 October 2015). For other examples of artists working with ‘impossible’ ideas see Paterson (2004- ongoing). Ideas; Alÿs (2002). When Faith Moves Mountains or 2006. Bridge/Puente.

9. Yet other practitioners who are congruent with or have influenced our practice include Jimmy Durham, Jessica Rahm and Simon Whitehead.

10. Water Borrow was partly inspired by our learning about a group of aboriginal women in Canada who walked around the Great Lakes to raise awareness of deteriorating water quality. As is customary in indigenous practices, they spoke to the water, thanking it for providing sustenance to humans and offering entreaties for its improved health.

11. MYOB was performed as one of a suite of Guddling About performances and installations on the site of Calgary’s Glenmore Dam and water treatment facility on 28 September 2013. The event was attended by over three hundred visitors, with over one hundred participating in MYOB. Nick and I engaged in or overheard conversations with over fifty participants. See http://www.guddling.tumblr.com; http://www.guddlingaboutexperiments.tumblr.com Accessed 19 February 2016.

12. For Where Water Goes see http://www.guddlingaboutexperiments.tumblr.org Accessed 19 February 2016.Puddle Drain has been performed repeatedly in Glasgow. See http://www/donaldmillar.tumblr.org Water Draw and Tideline (Mesolithic) were performed as part of Buzzcut Festival, Glasgow, March 2015. See http://www/donaldmillar.tumblr.org Accessed 19 February 2016. Watermeets was enacted in August 2015, as part of the Environmental Arts Festival, Scotland. See http://www/donaldmillar.tumblr.org and http://environmentalartfestivalscotland.com Accessed 19 February 2016.

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Notes on contributors

Minty Donald

Minty Donald is Senior Lecturer in contemporary performance practice at the University of Glasgow and an artist. Her current practice-based research, carried out in collaboration with artist, Nick Millar, focuses on human–water interrelations.