Sensualities/Textualities and Technologies Also by Susan Broadhurst and Josephine Machon PERFORMANCE AND TECHNOLOGY: Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity Also by Susan Broadhurst DIGITAL PRACTICES: Aesthetic and Neuroesthetic Approaches to Performance and Technology Also by Josephine Machon (SYN)AESTHETICS: Redefining Visceral Performance Sensualities/Textualities and Technologies Writings of the Body in 21st Century Performance Edited by Susan Broadhurst and Josephine Machon Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Susan Broadhurst & Josephine Machon 2009 Individual chapters © contributors 2009 Foreword © Ric Allsop 2009 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-22025-6 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. 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A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 Contents List of Illustrations vii Foreword Ric Allsopp ix Notes on the Editors xv Notes on the Contributors xvi Introduction 1 Susan Broadhurst and Josephine Machon Part 1 Writing and Technologies – New Epistemologies 7 1 Digital Practices: New Writings of the Body 9 Susan Broadhurst 2 Texts from the Body 23 Tracey Warr 3 De-Second-Naturing: Word Unbecoming Flesh in the 38 Work of Bodies in Flight Sara Giddens and Simon Jones 4 The Body of the Text: The Uses of the ‘ScreenPage’ 50 in New Media Phil Ellis Part 2 The Body Writes Itself … 65 5 PROSTHETIC HEAD: Ideas and Anecdotes on the 67 Seductiveness of Embodied Conversational Agents Stelarc 6 Performative (Dis)closures – Sensual Readings and 79 Writings of the Positive Body Paul Woodward 7 The Supernatural Embodied Text: Creating Moj of the 92 Antarctic with the Living and the Dead Mojisola Adebayo v vi Contents 8 The Physical Journal: The Living Body that Writes and 103 Rewrites Itself Olu Taiwo Part 3 Performing the Body/Performing the Text … 117 Writing the Body/Writing the Text 9 Socializing the Self: Autoethnographical Performance 119 and the Social Signature John Freeman 10 La Fura dels Baus’s XXX: Deviant Textualities and 132 The Formless Roberta Mock 11 Bodies in Suspension: The Aesthetics of Doubt in 146 Honour Bound Rachel Fensham 12 Translation: Words < – > Movement < – > Bits 162 Dawn Stoppiello Part 4 Corporeal Intertextualities – Body/Text/ 175 Technologies 13 Speaking for Performance/Writing with the Voice 177 Fiona Templeton 14 Authenticity and Perception in the Making of Utah 187 Sunshine: A Dance Theatre/Arts Film Ruth Way and Russell Frampton 15 (Syn)aesthetic Writings: Caryl Churchill’s Sensual 201 Textualities and the Rebirth of Text Josephine Machon Index 217 List of Illustrations 1.1 Danielle Goldman in Surfacing (2004). Photo: Richard 10 Termine 1.2 MUSCLE MACHINE, Gallery 291, London (2003). 11 Photographer: Mark Bennett. STELARC 1.3 Solo4>Three (2003). Dance and Choreography: 13 Emily Fernandez. Interactive video system: Frieder Weiss 1.4 Traces of the performer’s hands and feet leave multiple 14 curved white traces, in 16 [R]evolutions(2006). Performer: Lucia Tong. Photo: Richard Termine 1.5 Elodie Berland and Jeremiah from Blue Bloodshot 16 Flowers (2001). Image by Terence Tiernan 1.6 Portrait:Self-portrait while drawing, 2005. 18 © Marta de Menezes 2.1 London Fieldworks, Thought Pavilion, collage 30 2.2 London Fieldworks, Spacebaby, Roundhouse, 32 London 2006, in the Space Soonevent presented by Arts Catalyst. Photo: Kristian Buus 3.1 Shows and performers in order top left to bottom 40 right: Do the Wild Thing!Performers Jane Devoy and Dan Elloway, Jon Carnall. Drawing by Bridget Mazzey, Jane Devoy and Dan Elloway. Photography: Edward Dimsdale 3.2 Shows and performers in order top left to bottom right: 44 Constants. Performers: Patricia Breatnach and Shelia Gilbert. DeliverUs. Performers: Mark Adams and Polly Frame. Photography: Edward Dimsdale 3.3 Who By Fire. Performer: Polly Frame, on video 46 Ella Judge. Photography: Edward Dimsdale 4.1 Screenshot of dada.doc (image by the author) 62 5.1 SKIN FOR PROSTHETIC HEAD, San Francisco 2002. 68 Image: Barrett Fox. © STELARC 5.2 PROSTHETIC HEAD CONSTRUCTION, San Francisco 74 2002. Image: Barrett Fox. © STELARC 5.3 CLONED HEADS, San Francisco 2002. Image: 75 Barrett Fox. © STELARC 5.4 SECOND LIFE AVATAR, Melbourne 2008. Image: 76 Daniel Mounsey. © STELARC vii viii List of Illustrations 7.1 Mojisola Adebayo shot on location on Antarctica. 97 Image © Del LaGrace Volcano, 2005 7.2 Mojisola Adebayo shot on location on Antarctica. 101 Image © Del LaGrace Volcano, 2005 8.1 The physical journal(2006). Image: Olu Taiwo 111 11.1 Suspended Body, Honour Bound, 2006. Photo with 152 kind permission of Adam Craven 12.1 Screen shot of the Isadora ‘loop editor’ 168 12.2 Troika Ranch dancers Lucia Tong, Johanna Levy and 170 Travis Steele Sisk learning looped choreography from the computer. Photo: Jennifer Sherburn 12.3 Troika Ranch in Loop Diver(in-progress 2007). 171 Photo: Oscar Sol 14.1 Production still, Utah Sunshine(2007). Landscape, 187 watcher and radio 14.2 Production still, Utah Sunshine(2007). Procession 192 of souls, watcher 14.3 Production still, Utah Sunshine(2007). Narrator, 194 figures and screens 14.4 Production still, Utah Sunshine(2007). Slopes, 196 screens, projected footage Foreword Ric Allsopp A path is a prior interpretation of the best way to traverse a land- scape, and to follow a route is to accept an interpretation, or to stalk your predecessors on it as scholars and trackers and pilgrims do. To walk the same way is to reiterate something deep; to move through the same space the same way is a means of becoming the same person, thinking the same thoughts. It’s a form of spatial theatre … (Rebecca Solnit, 2002: 68) There are three beautiful things: bending down while remaining upright, a cry while remaining silent and a dance without moving. (Rebbe Mendel Kalish of Warka, in Unterman, 2008: 175) The three central topics of this collection of chapters – bodies, techno- logies and texts – have constituted the broad conditions of theatre and performance at least since the period of classical antiquity. The rela- tionship between these topics – how they interact with each other, how they might be identified as individual elements in a taxonomy of performance, what cultural values are inscribed in them or ascribed to them, and the variety of affects a particular distribution or arrange- ment of these terms might produce – is of course as much a focus of the history of poetic, performance and dramaturgical practice as it is of the chapters that follow here. The classical (dramatic) view of theatre as a theatron, a ‘seeing place’, a prosthesis of eye and ear that privileged the ‘objective’ senses of sight and hearing through which it structured the vision of the audience, has increasingly given way to the more recent possibilities, driven by technological innovation, of performance as a site of immersive (as opposed to quasi-objective) sensual/sensory experience, an experi- ence which is always produced and constructed through an inseparable relationship between bodies, texts and technologies. The possibility of aligning the ‘subjective’ senses of touch and taste with the objective senses – of effectively merging bodies, texts and technologies – brings the whole human and post-human sensorium into play in ways that would have been unachievable and unthinkable ix