Performance Theatre & The Poetics of Failure
‘Nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express.’ Samuel Beckett.
Failure:
1. the evaluation judgement of an outcome – its disappointment.
2. as a constituent feature of the existential condition that makes expression possible, even as it forecloses it.
3. it bound with artistic production, ad it figure of the artist.
Failure challenges the cultural dominance of instrumental rationally and the construction that bind the way we imagine and manufacture the world.
Discourse of failure in art practice has mapped a counter-cultural space of alternative, and conventional standards of virtuosity are challenged, methods of practice re-worked.
A failure can produce unpredictable outcome.
Failure permits contribute to an anti-conformist ideology, it redefine & loosen the boundaris.
In failure, the use of miscomprehension and disorientation as compositional strategies, awkwardness as performance concept.
Failure works when it signals the breakdown of an agreed demand, in a status of ‘wrongdoing’
Post 1960s, theatre-makers shifted performance beyond the interpretive modes of playwrighting and direction. End of twentieth centre, the operations of failure created by some kinds of theatre practice, failure has provided a way to establish theatre convention and the limitations posed by theatre event.
Failure – orders a mood, it can be abstract or understood, usually indicative of one that falls short of an aim, intention or specific criteria. It often shows the infelicitous (inappropriate) outcome of a designate task or action.
J.L.Austin’s speech act theory mentioned that the unhappy or infelicitous utterance, he interrogate ‘infelicity’ foregrounds the way that intention, reception and context contribute to the complexity of reading an event as failed, as well as to its very status as failed.
Failure can be identified through scripted and non-scripted acts, the failed moment not necessarily improvised, original or unrepeatable (not always accidental) but capable to manipulation as any other outcome.
Body-based performance such as Marina Abramovic, Joseph Beuys, Franko B. and etc often explore different conceptions of limitation in the relationship to the body and the politics, produce identity, liveness, and of gaze and object hood. Their works have been described as ‘reality effects’. ‘Real time actions’, actions that take place in real time appeared almost all the body-based performances. Here there is difficulty of draw a clear distinction between an event’s real or fictional status. In other words, functional failure and reality-effect overlap here, because it is hard to mark the success or failure in the performances.
‘unexpected occurrences can make your failure into a bigger success.’
There is a range of modalities of technique and methods of inventing failure to achieve a different end, such as the repetitive structure of the attempt, examining impossibility, the use of miscomprehension and disorientation as compositional strategies, and awkwardness as performance concept.
I personally think that to fail is also break our own limitations. Instead of breaking our ‘positive’ limitation such as to work harder to achieve a goal that people feel proud of, we break our ‘negative’ limitation of failure, work very hard to think and create a failure which it is seldom happen in our life. We always think of making success and so afraid of failing because we might feel embarrass.
From what I observed by watching the videos that has been given, I realise that all of them have a strong theatre/dramatic elements. Therefore, I come out with a question:
It is most of the failure performances contain dramatic act?
Stage Fright, Animals, and Other Theatrical Problems by Nicholas Ridout
This book looks at the experience in the modern theatre, which is the confusion of compulsion (the action of forced or being forced to do something) and disappointment.
Theatre Failure: There is an expectation in the audience when they go to a theatre and watch a performance, but sometimes we find theatre uncomfortable, compromised, boring, conventional, bourgeois, overpriced and unsatisfactory.
Here, the writer stated that the term theatrically as a negative term in the understanding of some post-modern art practices.
‘I can’t name my practice, but I know it is not theatre.’
‘Antitheatricality’ in most of performance art, insistence of Presentation of Realness. Somehow I think that theatrical refers to fake, unreal, representing real, which most of the performance artists try to avoid that. Writer also stated that artists are afraid of resembling theatre is because of the anxiety over mimesis (imitation).
What I think, artists are afraid of their work contains theatrical the reason might be that they feel this consider as failure of their artwork. This could be one of the reason that most of the failure performances were in theatrical form.
Performing To Fail: Perspectives On Failure In Performance And Philosphy by Cormac Power
The writer mentioned that Performance itself is the enactment of Failure. Founder members of Forced Entertainment and Goat Ialand pointed to the importance of failure / consideration of failure can be a key way while they generate work.
In this article, writer focused on the important and distinctive attributes of failure in performance, looking at the positive value of failure in performance work. However failure usually produce negative sense which is recognisable. Writer mentioned that some performance work is concerned with its own failure, and from there he raise the questions about contemporary performance aesthetics and spectatorship.
Performances are evaluated in terms of success, but the possibility of failure and the actuality of failing are fundamental to how performance is often defined and valued. It can say the the failure or something going awry give a live performance its intensity and excitement.
A very good example from my own experience:
For my Diploma in Dance program, we have to perform Plate Dance. The plate is made of glass and we need to hold one in each palm and dance. During the performance, I realised that the audiences became so excited when there was someone dropped his plate and the plate broke. It is clear that his failure has created excitement for the audience. In this performance, the possibility of failure often surrounds it and the way it is experienced.
Manifesto of Failure:
Failure has become part of our life,
It is normal to fail in everyday life.
But, In order to fail completely,
You need to have guts to accept it.
I am trying to make a good manifesto,
But…I know,
Even this manifesto is a failure.
My thought:
I am still new and try to find out what exactly is failure in performance art.
Many questions appeared in my mind about failure, such as how people define a show as failure performance and what is the requirement to make a failure performance, and what exactly is failure.
i tried to create these two video of failure. What I thought about the failure was that they both look quite stupid, not normal, pointless, but yet I personally feel they are quite fun to watch. I got this idea because since I am on my vacation in Inverness, I thought it will be great to use what they have here, obviously the beautiful sceneries and the animals that they have here.
I was trying to create the contrast between the beauty of the nature and my awkward actions, and see what is the meaning behind these two video. When I was doing the second video, I have a thought. What the cow was thinking when it sees me doing some action near to it?? Will it thinks that I am stupid and weird like human think??
These two videos were my first try to create failure, but to be honest, I am not sure whether these can be considered as failure?? Or I just try to make failure yet I was failed to create failure. If it is, then they are failure too.