ABOUT THIS EPISODE
In this episoe I try to get Ivar Hackscher and Jay Gilligan to help me further my understanding about the difference between concrete and abstract performance. The topic is complex and our routes into its terrain circuitous.
Some of the topics touched on:
-Necessity, freedom and play.
Arthus Zajonc's book Meditation as contemplative inquiry
-How does thoughts and words pop into our minds as response to stimuli from the world or even ourselves?
-A juggling exercise where one juggler has to respond to a short juggling trick done by another juggler with a juggling trick of their own. Like a no rule juggling dialogue.
-How this question of what comes next in a dialogue relates to plant morphonogy and metamorphosis
-Audience sacrifices time and attention when watching a performance
thought, feeling and action.
-Finding a line of inquiry and following it to the end - conclusion.
-It's time to let artforms use us artists rather than the other way around.
-What does each artform want to express?
Each one has a sweet spot for what it expresses.
-Can we expect audiences to ever reliably see in our work what we put, or think we put into it?
-on the difference between pictures and performance.
-Act as Organism
-The attraction we have to watching skill is similar to the attraction we feel towards watching ideas thought through to the end.
-whats the place for virtouosity today?
-300 years ago people wanted to see perfection. This is not as key today. They want something real.
emotional telegraphing is particularly attractive today. Maybe more so than technical skill.
-Life and warmth in performance
-Perfect means that something is done. Finished.
-We dont listen to hear that final chord.
-Rennesaince music often ends open ended
-Joan Miro and Jackson Pollock and the relation of meaning, intent and ideas in abstract art
-Jackson Pollock was a dancer more than a painter. The paintings are what's left behind after his dances. So full of will and action.
-I see so much abstract art which doesnt say anything to me.
-Juggling IS abstract so to just juggle is NOT TAKING ANY CHOICES
-Abstract with inteniton. If we notice intention its no longer "abstract nonsense"
-If you dont have intention and that's not visible then we get confused work.
-Why is there so little intent isible in so much abstract work?
-A lot of artists get away with being lazy.
-Artists often rely on the structures of the artform like the way an audience sits in a theatre and necesarrily have to watch the show unfolding in time and must assume that each thing that happens on the stage is related to what came before. Performance convention helps prop up lazy decisions.
-The blindfold performance in Vegas Nocturne in 2014
then the conversation ends as I get up to show Ivar a magic act
...
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