ray langenbach : gesture, stutter, state


Performance art, as one particular rhizome on a larger root-mass of performance, began with manifestos. The manifesto is one of the most ignored but ubiquitous forms of modernist literature, a miscegenation of political and cultural discourse. Like the prediction it is inherently imaginative, open ended and illocutionary. The first Dada Manifesto begins by describing the manner in which the manifesto itself performs. Interestingly, in most critical literature since, this part of the Dada Manifesto is ignored, presumably because it had no content, other than itself. But, there is probably no better representation of the paradoxical nature of modernity than the self-proclaiming manifesto, the manifest content of which is a description of its own workings.

Subsequent performance art has drawn from the manifesto its reflexivity, by which through the force of illocutionary utterance, it brings itself into being. Performance art, either explicitly or implicitly, whether in words or gestures, functions as an autochthon, self-indigenising and au-auto-genetic.

Like the m-manifesto, performance art manifests through de-declaration a new reality brought into being simply by st-stating it to be so. This is what is so supremely irritating about p-performance art to practitioners of other arts, in particular theatre, which, except in improvisatory mode, relies heavily on a historical tradition and codification for its valuations of skill, legitimacy and authenticity.

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