Networks in Performance Art. Network Theory Applied to Artists' Structures E-Book

Liane Ditzer

• Herausgeber: GRIN Verlag
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Document from the year 2013 in the subject Art - Installation / Action/Performance Art / Modern Art, grade: 2.0, University of Dusseldorf "Heinrich Heine" (Media and Cultural Studies), language: English, abstract: This work focuses on performance art networks. The foundation and development of these virulent, globally active structures was not conditional on the Internet. It is a field that, despite its international presence and continuity lasting more than 20 years, has been documented in relatively few research projects. It will investigate three 'projects' that stand exemplarily for these networks within the scope of this work: The Artists Village (TAV) in Singapore, PAErsche in Germany and Black Market International (BMI), which has no national localisation. A major part of this work will deal with the actions of these three networks, of which TAV and BMI were founded back in the 1980ies, when the notion of networking had a very different linguistic connotation. However, the visions and ideas of networking were already inherent in TAV and BMI. This work does not aim to carry out any basic research into the topic of networks, though it will investigate the factors that bring about and define the special performance art networks.

Leseprobe

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Content

Introduction

1. Network theories and definitions

1.1 Georg Simmel

1.2 Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari 'rhizome'

1.3 Bruno Latour 'actor-network theory' (ANT)

1.4 Own definition of the network theory on which this work is based

2. Historical outline of artists' structures

2.1 The first art groups and networks

2.2 Other currents (approx. 1830-1945)

2.3 The second big wave (after 1945)

2.4 Gutai

2.5 Fluxus

2.5.1 Ultimate Akademie:

3. Prerequisite for the emergence of performance art networks

3.1 Social and political prerequisites

3.2 Individual prerequisites

4. Performance-Art networks

4.1 The Artists Village (TAV)

4.2 Black Market International (BMI)

4.3 PAErsche Aktionslabor

5. Collaborations and structures in performance art networks

5.1 Historical development

5.2 Contents and goals of performance art events

5.3 Hosts and organisers

5.4 Financing

5.5 Venues

5.6. Censorship, taboos, rules:

6. Summary and prospects for performance art networks

Bibliography:

Publications:

Catalogs:

Internet links:

Explanation of the image index / documents:

Picture - Text documents Index

Introduction

This work focuses on performance art networks. The foundation and development of these virulent, globally active structures was not conditional on the Internet. It is a field that, despite its international presence and continuity lasting more than 20 years, has been documented in relatively few research projects.

I will be investigating three 'projects' that stand exemplarily for these networks within the scope of this work:

The Artists Village (TAV) in Singapore, PAErsche in Germany and Black Market International (BMI), which has no national localisation.

A major part of this work will deal with the actions of these three networks, of which TAV and BMI were founded back in the 1980ies, when the notion of networking had a very different linguistic connotation. However, the visions and ideas of networking were already inherent in TAV and BMI.

This work does not aim to carry out any basic research into the topic of networks, though it will investigate the factors that bring about and define the special performance art networks.

The starting point for my studies was a personal 'accompaniment' of the performance art scene over longer periods of time. This included visits to several festivals and similar performance art events as well as a partial assistance or participation. These in turn led to personal contacts and I was able to gain an insight into these network structures in a manner that can be compared with field research.

My research is based on a large number of different materials as well as documents that have not yet been wound up, archived or localised in an academic context. Those that display congruent or comparable statements on the basis of several different sources were ultimately used. Even when only one source is quoted in this work, it is always backed up by multiple confirmations of its content.

The most extensive materials were provided by the 'Die Schwarze Lade' (the black kid) archive of Boris Nieslony in Cologne. The archive also defines itself as a 'sculpture of public interest', meaning that this archive - one of the largest in Europe – was explicitly set up by Nieslony as an 'open source' for research into the field of performance art, performing art, action and intermedia art. The 'Die Schwarze Lade' includes not only completed projects and networks but also correspondence, traces, analogue and digital image documents etc. as well as projects which, although they were never realised, nevertheless had a seminal character. (s. Appendix p.1-2)

I also talked to a number of artists and protagonists involved. The digital media of Facebook and e-mail were used to communicate with the artists. I got to know some of the Asian artists quoted in this personally during my travels. We kept bumping into each other in numerous performance art events. Although the talks and interviews held varied with the personal mentality of the respective performer, they nevertheless allowed an objective discourse on account of the large number of comparable statements and the supplementary documents

I 'accompanied' the PAErsche network, which was founded in 2010 in Cologne, from its very beginnings and was a witness to an identification process and processes of group dynamics.

The goal of this work is to explain the network behaviour of performance art: how does it work, act and interact? Under which premises does this kind of artists' network work; how does it finance itself, communicate with other local and international networks? It will also look into the special quality of 'performance art networks' under the aspect of individual requirements. What mental attitude does an artist have to bring with them to be anchored in such a network.

Is the laconic statement on an artist's personality: 'Art is Ego' by Ben Vautier reconcilable with the idea of a network?

I will begin by discussing the use of the term 'network'. When did it enter linguistic terminology and how did its usage change?

Three network theories that are of significance for this work will also be presented. Georg Simmel with his question: "How is society possible", Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari with the concept of "rhizomes" and the postulation of a new mindset. The third theory that will be outlined is a new one developed in the 1990ies by Bruno Latour and others, the "actor-network theory”. I will finally explain the way I have used the notion of networks in this work in chapter 1.4.

The aim of the 2nd chapter is to make it clear that 'networking' is by no means an invention of the modern age. It will provide an impression of the diversity of ways in which the avant-garde of visual artists tried to develop new and alternative structures of living and work towards the end of the 19th century as a reaction to the industrial revolution and the resulting upheavals.

Chapter 3 will spotlight historical factors that favoured the emergence of performance art networks. This will outline the social, economic and political circumstances as well as the individual conditions and requirements that encouraged the emergency of these fragile networks.

In chapter 4 I will begin by describing the performance art scene before going on to present the three performance art networks named at the beginning by way of example.

The final chapter deals with structures and collaborations of the performance art networks. The historical development will once again be taken into account and the goals and content of the performance art events as well as the organisational structures and financing will be described. The conclusion deals with the topic of taboos, censorship and rules of performance art in general and of the networks in particular.

The expected perspectives resulting from the overall picture of these investigations will be summarised in a concluding résumé.

1. Network theories and definitions

"Looking back over our day an age – and the more so the later one does so – one will come across a semantic index fossil. People between 1990 and 2010 appeared to be absolutely obsessed by what they called the ‘web’ or the ‘network’.”[1]

The starting point for networks are cooperations, because these mean the beginning of life and are the mainspring of evolution.„ “(...) without them the earth would never have got beyond a primeval soup full of RNA molecules".[2]

The Cro-Magnons that lived around 28.000 years ago on the Vézère in France already had complex systems of network-like connections. They communicated over greater distances by means of shell horns to warn each other of dangers, for example.[3]In the more recent history of Europe in the Middle Ages, Rosicrucians, orders of knights, and various guilds prove the broad range of social networks. They developed from family, social and strategic structures and interests. The nobility, merchants and artists in particular developed their very own connections across national and feudal boundaries. In his memoirs, the Italian comic playwright Carlo Goldoni, born in 1707, impressively tells us of his complex network, ranging from the French court through to Rousseau and Voltaire, that he was repeatedly able to fall back on during his travels throughout Europe.[4]

The first illustrations of networks appeared around 1500 in the form of tree diagrams. According to the artist and computer scientist Dirmoser, who has been scientifically involved in the visualisation of networks for many years, natural scientists in particular use 'tree graphs' – for example Charles Darwin for his theory of evolution.[5]

At the beginning of the 20th century the term network was coined for technical systems that required an input and an output. It was initially used in market technology to show infrastructures, through also for rail and road traffic as well as for the water, electricity and telecommunications networks that had to be built.

 Georg Simmel laid a cornerstone for social network theories with the notion of the 'interaction between people'. (See chapter 1.1) Moreno came up with one of the first practical uses of the term word network for social analysis with sociometry. In 1916 he was responsible for hygiene in the barracks in Mitterndorf near Vienna. He was interested in the mutual sentiments and social tension between farmers and workers, administrative staff, camp inmates, men and women. He was able to identify affective group structures of persons in particular with sociometry [6]. The term network did not become widely accepted in sociological considerations until 1930 and after (see Schüttpelz, Erhard).

As of the 1970ies, numerous social media and communication scientists such as Radcliff Brown, he research group around Harrison White, Colin Cherry and Bruno Latour, extended and verified these theories.[7] The term networking became poplar in contemporary art and culture in the 1980ies. A change took place from a technological concept to a communicative one. Network radio developed a 'different radio', in which listeners were able to participate.[8]

Any actions in today's civilised cultures appear almost unthinkable without 'networking'. It doesn't matter whether these are private, professional, economic or political networks, everything seems to be digitally 'linked' into one huge network. The term network has become all-embracing and dominates current linguistic usage. Since the middle of the 1990ies the term network has stood for the Internet and is connected to the technical developments this has brought about. Virtual platforms such as Xing, LinkedIn, You Tube, Facebook and Twitter, to name but a few, in the meantime lay claim to the absoluteness of the concept amongst young people. Parallel to the linguistic usage in electronics, the network concept is also used in an inflationary way to describe any kind of social structures and phenomena. This ranges from sports clubs, NGOs through to terror networks.

"The victory of the absolute term 'network' coincides with its increasing blindness, it means a severe defeat of all theoretical efforts that have led to this victory.(...) The point of all network research in the 20th century was that "everything" was never networked with "everything else", that it was all about relationships in the hierarchy and exclusivity, both in the infrastructure and in micro-sociology (...)”[9]

The extent to which this quotation is relevant for performance art networks has to be investigated in the further course of the paper. It is interesting, however, to note that two of the networks I investigated were founded before the appearance of the Internet and maintained an 'analogue' communication with each other and in other structures by air mail, telephone and facsimile up to the 1990ies.

1.1 Georg Simmel

Georg Simmel can be called the founding father of the network theory. Starting from the question "How is society possible", he laid the cornerstone of the exchange theory in 1908 with his concept of 'interaction'. Simmel regards "interaction as the basic element of sociology". He therefore in principle expresses the central idea of a definition of a network: exchange as an interaction between the protagonists and their mutual relationships. What is significant for Simmel is that social structures, though also individuals, always interact with other protagonists. Social structures are based on an exchange. No individual can live completely autarkic in his or her environment without interaction with other individuals.

According to Simmel, this leads to different opinions and points of view that are shaped by the relevant living conditions or local circumstances.[10] In the works "About social differentiation" (1890) and "The metropolis and mental life" (1903), Simmel traces the emergence and development of social relationships. They deal with how social networks change when they are transferred from the country to the city and encounter a much more complex structure of human relationships. Simmel thus believed that the city guaranteed the chance of more individuality.

According to Simmel, self-fulfilment is much more difficult in the countryside than in the city on account of close social relationships, unlike in the city where on can act more freely. Simmel also broached the issue of the risk of alienation and isolation through individuality. Put differently: the bigger the social unit is, the less able the individual is to bond emotionally to this.[11]

What is important here is the question as to how large a network can be to still be able to function and act. This paper, however, will be dealing with relatively small, manageable networks in which the number of people is negligible. According to Simmel, we are imprisoned in networks from our birth, something that will also be discussed in the chapter 'historical outline of networks'. Networks are not a new invention. One particularly important aspect for this work are Simmel's remarks on the various factors that are crucial for the network: the number of protagonists / the space / the time / the level of knowledge about the others / the freedom of choice / the equality and the level of institutionalisation of a relationship.[12]

1.2 Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari 'rhizome'

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari[13], linguists and philosophers, use the term 'rhizome', taken from the field of biology, for their epistemological positions. In biology a rhizome is defined as a generally underground – in other words not necessarily visible – system of stems. Nodes can form at any point, internodes dissolve, develop further on their own and produce further independent plants through the division and separation of individual parts of this network of roots. Philosophy uses this concept as a metaphor and matrix. For example, the development of a book is described as a complex interaction of ideas, technologies and physical levels.

"A book has neither object nor subject; it is made of variously formed matters, and very different dates and speeds."[14]

The book published by Deleuze and Guattari in 1977 "Rhizome" (that was later used as an introduction to their work "A thousand plateaus") postulates a self-dependent, social mentality of the parties participating in such a rhizome. "Yes take what you want. We don't intend founding a school, sects, cliques, churches, avant-gardes and arriere-gardes are trees that squash everything important that happens during their ridiculous fall.“[15]

In their work, Deleuze and Guattari primarily aim at breaking through the strictly hierarchic principle of the language and letters of classic structuralists and therefore opened up a particular way of thinking. "There is no language in itself, nor are there any linguistic universals (…)"[16]

Summing up, it becomes clear in "Rhizome" that Deleuze and Guattari actually postulate a new way of thinking with their wish for a rhizome-like language, an appeal that can be found on page 41: "Make rhizomes, not roots, never plant! Don't sow, grow offshoots! Don't be one or multiple, be multiplicities! Run lines, never plot a point! (...) Don't bring out the General in you!" This describes an essential part of an 'ideal network theory'. 'Ideal' should be understood as the rejection of a sovereign way of thinking and the lack of any hierarchy.

Deleuze and Guattari were probably the first western philosophers of modern times who manifested the main aspects for the ideal state of a network. In the 1990ies the term 'rhizome' became increasingly popular to describe Internet structures. An ostensibly logical definition, but the structure of the Internet by no means exists without hierarchies: web domains are sold according to the principle of the 'highest bidder' and search engines filter results according to the 'principle of attention'.[17]

1.3 Bruno Latour 'actor-network theory' (ANT)

The French sociologists Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, John Law and others have been developing the "actor-network theory" since the 1980ies. Unlike Simmel, Latour's "Reassembling the Social: An introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (ANT)" that was published in 2005 does not describe a theory with which one can 'work'.

"It is a theory and a strong one actually, I believe, but a theory of how to examine things, or rather, how they should not be examined – or rather how the actors are left a little space to express themselves"[18]

It is a tool that I too will be using to understand the complexity and meaning of the actors in the performance art scene.

Bruno Latour drafted a theory for actors with his ANT, meaning that the actors 'must act themselves', including the development of their own theories and intentions. Consequently he places the emphasis on a description and not an explanation. (See B. Latour, "Eine neue Soziologie für eine neue Gesellschaft." p. 253)