- FERNANDO AGUIAR
- PERFORMANCE: THE ESSENCE OF THE SENSES
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- One: the first essence
- With the arrival of the eighties and, principally, with the appearance of
new communications media, the whole scheme of relationships between people has been
progressively altered, making them (re)act intensely and simultaneously to a whole series
of situations. Many barriers have been lowered and it is becoming generally accepted that
everything has to do with everything eise, that everything is related arid is
interactivated by everything, both at the social level and at the economic, informational,
polltical or artistic level.
- Artists became aware that only by using the new media would they be abie
to be truly operative in a society overwhelmed by powerful communications media.
- And so artists with many different experiences of painting, sculpture,
dance and music have also intervened in technological areas such as video, photography,
the photocopier, the computer or laser, searching for a specific language for these as
artistic supports, but conjugating them with experiments in other fields.
- Side by side with this exploration of the machine and its specific
characteristics, a type of art has been developed that uses the artist himself as the
principal expressive element. This is the performance.
- The favouring of the body as a form of expression and the latter's
development on a par with technical and technological advance is due, on the one hand, to
the interrelation of the human being with the evolutionary aspects of his society, and on
the other; the overvaluation of the senses es sensorial terminals of perception and
communication with the world. These two aspects, which are perfectly adapted to each
other, accentuate the analogy between man and the machine. The performance, in view of its
specific characteristics, permits that relationship to be fulfilled and multiplies the
informational and communicational flow of the aesthetic act. The performance should,
therefore, be understood as a support where various expressions and artistic techniques
unite. From this union spring a multiplicity of experiences which are interrelated, ehe
performance is therefore more an interactive than an active art. This raises the question
of the plastic arts. (painting, sculpture, engraving, etc.) as artistic objects.
- The art object that cannot alter itself has been rapidly surpassed by the
transformations resulting from this evolutionary process. It is merely an object of
contemplation, it is immutable, perpetual, mythical ... ultimately, finished. The mood of
modern society is to live intensely. There is an underlying appeal to active participation
in all the situations of our daily lives. We are living increasingly in depth and real
wealth lies in the experience we accumulate not in the objects we possess. It is more
important to -live art than to possess- art. In a form that implies participation and
criticism and is also intense.
- The performance as an aesthetic act is above all the art of experiment,
the art of intensity and communicability, the art having the greatest number of signs at
each moment of its evolution, the art of constant narrative, chromatic and formal
transformation. Where the artist is also no longer the contemplative creator of his own
work, but lives the art he creates, and creates an art that lives.
- the body or the second essence
- One of the basic aspects of the performance is the action of the artist
himself who uses his body simultaneously as a form of expression, as the driving force of
all action and, sometimes, as a prop on which lights and slides are projected or paints
and objects are applied.
- The body has a structural function and instigates action in a complex
created and put in motion by it. As a communication factor the body constantly emits an
infinity of signs accentuated by the mime of the movements.
- There is also a very specific relationship between the performer and the
materials, objects and situations surrounding him. These, and other props used throughout
the performance are part of a narrative context that activates and transforms itself.
- When we consider the performance as living art- we refer not only to the
driving force inherent therein but also to the fact that his force is being created and
exercised by a body that breathes, that moves and which makes everything move around it.
- Another important aspect which justifies consideration of the performance
as living art» is the relationship that is established with the public, without which a
targe part of its meaning would be lost.
- space-time as the third essence
- There are two concepts common to all aesthetic representations which
define the contours within which they move. These are time and space.
- The time during which the performance unfolds, and the space where it
takes place.
- The performance es an aesthetic act only means anything in the period
from its beginning to its end.
- While an artistic object, be it painting, `sculpture" or any other,
is only considered as a work of art- after its conclusion, in the performance the artistic
value arises only during the production. The close relationship between time and space and
the importance of these for the definition of art es a process and not es consumption is
therefore understandable.
- Space as a concept, where the installations. that will serve es the basis
for the performance are conceived, is a resource to be exploited for the notion of
tridimensionality and for the possibility of complete utilization of the entire ambient in
search of other forma of expression. It is therefore in this relationship time-space that
a complexity of images are created and processed and variaus situations unleashed, which
are multiplied in different idioms.
- The fourth essence
- To understand the performance as an aesthetic act one must consider the
extremely diverse quantity of elements that make it up and that contribute to its
execution.
- The number of objects to be used is infinite. The materials and the
techniques to be applied for their transformation are limited only by the variety of these
same techniques and materials. The intentions and concepts broached cover every aspect and
many props can be used in a performance. The latter, while transmitting a definite
intention, permits other supporting materials to be included in it such as videos,
computers, the projection of slides and films, the use of recorder or record player, the
photocopier and the polaroid which fix the action the mornent it happens. These props,
acting within the performance, create parallel readings and amplity with their
expressiveness the communicative character of the former.
- Different concepts are linked to the performance in addition to those of
time and space. Movement, colour, sound and light are conceptions where all objects are
stimulated and where structures, meanings arid actions are agitated.
- `Being considered as an (inter)action art the Performance is essentially
the art of movement. From the Agitation of the props, to the cadence of the sound, the
Intensity of the lights, the circulation of the objects, to the very public itself. A
performance might appear to be a sequence of small and large movements which, moving
simultaneously, reinforce the idea of -living art-. Precisely the art of action, or of
interaction.
- In addition there are a series of objects which function as movable or
removable signs which diversify the whole weight of the show.
- Contrary to static aesthetics, the performance as interaction aesthetics,
permits the simultaneous and integrated use of a variety of resources, creating among them
a dynamic force that maximises the expressive capacities of each one.
- Fifth essence: the public
- An essentiell methodology in art is to influence the sensory ducts of the
observer to make him react. The performer is conscious that there are other perceptive
senses in addition to sight, and that a certain message may be capured to better advantage
through more than one of these senses at the same time.
- As it offers a series of readings at the same time, the performance also
requires simultaneous reading of all the tactors of which it is composed, at the moment
when they are revealed. For this reason the public cannot just passively read what is
happening.
- In the presence of an aesthetic presentation the public is no longer the
merely contemplative spectator and, with its capacity for reaction very often becomes part
of the resources on which the performer is relying for the realisation of his work.
The way in which the public interprets what it is watching and the
possibility it has to react immediately to what is happening, alters the traditionell
relationship between the artist, the work and the public. For the performance, being
executed at that moment, permits the public to have effective participation, in a space of
time where the unexpected is always present.
Contrary to the other -plastic arts- and the art which has the various
media as a support, the performance is not unidirectional, that is, it does not transmit
its message in only one direction. The public, when reacting to the stimulus of the
artist, is entering into a dialogue with him and for that reason the message is processed
in two directions. There is a whole web of emotions and reaction that succeed each other
during the progress of the performance and which are important for the development of
same. For this reason, a performance is only defined as such when there is a relationship
of equality between the operator, the action and the public.
The flux of information influences our lives and our way of being more
and more profoundly. The performance, as an art that is sensitive to all these pressures
and realities, incorporates an agglorneration of experiments from other fields, which,
treated and explored aesthetically in an appropriate language result in an art that is in
constant transformation and evolution.
The body, movement, change, unrepeatability, the ephemeral and the
alteration of the relations between the artist and the public are the most remarkable
characteristics of this art which, exploring the unknown at various levels, multiplies
itself in new forms of expression.
Lisbon, March 1985
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