PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art

Photo by Matthew Ragan

PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art

Edited by Bonnie MarrancaPublished by The MIT Press

PAJ: A Journal of Performance Art can be examined from three distinct vantage points: the journal itself – who publishes, edits, and distributes this piece of academic discourse; its aim – the general issues and special topics explored within the journal; and an examination of representative articles – an investigation of the journal in terms of the topics and viewpoints that create a thematic through line. 

The Journal

PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art published by the MIT Press is a fine example of an internationally admired journal that is focused on “cutting-edge explorations… [ and ] new directions in performance, video, drama, dance, installations, media, film, and music, bringing together ideas of theatre and the visual arts” (MIT Press). Issues published tri-annually cover a wide range of topics including “artists’ writings, critical essays, historical documentation, interviews, performance texts and plays, reports on international festivals and events, and book reviews” (MIT Press). The editor, Bonnie Marranca, is currently teaching Theatre at The New School / Eugene Lange College for Liberal Arts in New York. Marranca is an accomplished scholar, writer, and teacher who co-founded PAJ in 1976 (Marranca, Home). Marranca began the publication with the intent that PAJ would “publish important, original works in the arts and the critical commentary about them, as an ongoing dialogue between art, artists, and the public” (The MIT Press). Additionally, it is clear that it has met its intent to reach an “international readership of critics, scholars, and artists crosses the borders between art forms, and the arts and humanities and science/technology” (The MIT Press) as it has currently published “plays and performance texts, by now more than 1000, translated from twenty languages” (Marranca, Being Here). 

PAJ aims to reach a broad sampling of artists and scholars who are invested in creating an ongoing dialogue of both performance and scholarship. Despite editing a publication with widely defined notion of theatre, Marranca seems to have a much narrower ideological stance on the topic of performance. In her article Being Here, which introduces the 100th issue of PAJ, she celebrates the unwavering focus of the journal while also sharing anecdotal evidence that suggests a tangible bias in her worldview. 

PAJ Publications never abandoned the dramatic text, even though a changing theatre culture and the rise of Performance Studies have contributed to the slow erosion of interest in drama in recent decades. It is disconcerting to watch the move away from dramatic literature and its heritage, the more apparent when one is able to see a superb realization of a great play. Not surprisingly, drama’s current decline coincides with the diminishing role of the voice in everyday personal communication. Against the background of more and more text messaging, people seem to have lost interest in the sound of the human voice…In the past friends said to one another, ‘It’s so good to hear your voice.’ I wonder, too, if this move away from drama has also to do with the fact that drama is often based on secrets, and we live in an age when the public is valued over the private life of an individual. (Marranca, Being Here 11)

One should certainly not take issue with Marranca’s dedication to the preservation of a journal whose focus is on dramatic text; it is, however, worth questioning the motives and biases of an editor who seems to be ignoring ever present conversations about the value of personal information and privacy in a Facebook driven world. While it is true that advances in telecommunication services have erased illusions of privacy, they have also kindled numerous conversations about the value and nature of what is truly private. While it is clear that the PAJ is dedicated to a broad sampling of work, one should note the absence of perspectives that broadly embrace the use of varied technologies in performance. Instead, the editor’s strong words leave the reader feeling distinctly as though technology is an evil that must be suffered in order to make art in this age. 

The Aim of the PAJ

The aim of the PAJ is not only present in the types of material published in general issues, but also in its special topics publications. Further, in examining the history of the publication, Marranca reflects that, “PAJ started out as a theatre periodical (originally called Performing Arts Journal), with an added interest in dance, music and performance arts” (Marranca, Being Here 3). A survey of material from artists and scholars across a broad swath of expressive fields can be difficult to categorize, but here Marranca succinctly describes the theoretical through lines that have been central to the journal’s discourse: “Over the years attention turned from originality to appropriation, from group to solo, from play to fragment, from live to meditated, from authenticity to social construction; and from, ritual to genocide, from pleasure to trauma, from borders to globalization” (Marranca, Being Here 6). In a summative look at the trajectory of the PAJ and its contributors, the 100th issue “was published with the special theme ‘Performance New York’, featuring commentary, dialogues, and art work by more than fifty artists representing several generations working in multiple art forms” (MIT Press).

The 100th issue, however, was certainly not the first time that the PAJ narrowed its sights to a specific topic. The years and issues worth examination include: 1997’s The American Imagination, 1985’s The American Theatre Condition, and 1991’s The Interculturalism Issue. This last issue “gathered together important new perspectives on theatre, anthropology, and culture from diverse national traditions and art forms” (Marranca, Being Here 7). In addition to special issues, the PAJ has often worked to pull in contributions from fields outside of its original scope. Here Marranca notes that it has “been an editorial direction to welcome more visual art thinking into the journal and books…in 2008 PAJ also began to publish Performance Drawings portfolios” (Marranca, Being Here 11).

This demonstrated inclusionism aside, there is a demographic that is at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to publication in the pages of the PAJ. In the preface of the 100th issue Marranca unabashedly declares that, “performance by visual artists is problematic because it has never fully evolved a substantial critical vocabulary, unlike the development of theatre writing in a comparable period since the sixties… I think this has to do with their lack of sophistication in performance ideas, in addition to the limitation of art history narratives” (Marranca, Being Here 13). Here Marranca’s perspective seems very clear: visual artists with a penchant for performance need not apply. 

An Examination of Representative Articles

In examining the scholarly scope of the PAJ a representative sample of its content can be found in: Soraya Murray’s Cybernated Aesthetics Lee Bul and the Body Transfigured, an examination of “visual incongruity within a cluster of aesthetic divergences,” (Murray 38); Philip Auslander’s Digital liveness A Historico-Philosophical Perspective, an exploratory discussion on a “phenomonilogical perspective on digital liveness,” (Auslander 3); and Johan Callens’ The Double Recursiveness of Postmodern Dance, a critical account of Erase-E(X) which he saw “showcased at the Royal Flemish Theatre in Brussels,” (Callens 70). Important to all three authors’ is the focus on meaning-making in relation to the art they are the most connected to. 

In Cybernated Aesthetics, Murray looks to describe, “an aesthetics that accounts for the impact of electronics and the digital,” (Murray 39). In examining the work of Lee Bul, Murray pulls apart the recurrent use of machine imagery in order to highlight the underlying message that the “development of new media forms are not completely erratic, but situated within the set of possibilities set forth by its ideologies” (Murray 39). That is to say that nothing, even an aesthetic that seems disconnected from existing artistic forms, exists in a vacuum. Murray takes this idea and expands it to more broadly approach the formal aspects of new media, again encouraging the reader / viewer to remember that “[ new media ] are still forms of cultural production, and as such can be considered within the context of the expressions that have preceded them” (Murray 48). This broader vision approach to the examination of art and artist as active members in a critical dialogue about meaning-making is central to the work of the PAJ as a publication that focuses on the connective tissue in the arts community.

Auslander, too, in Digital Liveness is looking to place an emphasis on what connects artists and audiences. Auslander, however, goes one step further in looking to isolate the value audiences place on the notion of “live” performance. Historically, the idea of a “live” performance is relatively new. Here Auslander reminds us that “prior to the advent of these [ recording ] technologies (e.g., sound recording and motion pictures), there was no need for a category of ‘live’ performance” (Auslander 3). It is Auslander’s contention that audiences understand live performance only as a product of their exposure to recorded media. In further dissecting the nature of the live performance, Auslander finally comes to the conclusion that “liveness is an interaction produced through our engagement with [ an ] object and our willingness to accept its claim [ to be considered live ]” (Auslander 9). Like Murray, Auslander is working to make observations that further develop the richness of a connective linguistic architecture for the state of the arts today.

In comparison to Auslander and Murray, The Double Recursiveness of Postmodern Dance feels distinctly different. Callens approach is centered on observation and critique. While projection and media are used in Erase-E(X), Callens only mentions them briefly. Instead his focus is centered on the physical dialogue of the performer / dancers, choreographers, and other contributors. Detailing the chronology of the dance, and its numerous quotations from other works Callens notes that “the postmodern artists assumes and declines authorial responsibility, is present and absent…the artistic hybridity of postmodern art, its ‘in-betweenness’ or the degree to which it eludes medium-specificity and instant legibility, proves crucial to its performative character” (Callens 72). Callens’ perspective on Erase-E(X) rings as that of a dance historian when he observes that “the recursive sequentially of Erase-E(X)remembers the earlier installments in order to forget them, since the dancer cannot forget what the body keeps remembering” (Callens 80).

It is the variety of the contributions in the PAJ that makes it an interesting specimen for examination. It is clear that the journal aims to reach a broad sampling of artists and scholars, all of whom are invested in creating an ongoing dialogue of both performance and scholarship. To that end, it seems worth noting that while the PAJ is focused on a diverse listing of topics, it also harbors biases for and against a variety of creative works and artists. 

Works Cited

Auslander, Philip. "Digital Liveness A Historico-Philosophical Perspective." PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 34.3 (2012).

Callens, Johan. "The Double Recursiveness of Postmodern Dance ." PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 30.3 (2008).

Marranca, Bonnie. "Being Here - PAJ at 100." A Journal of Performance Art 34.1 (2012).

—. Home. 21 10 2012 <http://bonniemarranca.com/>.

MIT Press. MIT Press Journals, A Journal of Performance and Art. Ed. Bonnie Marranca. 2012. The MIT Press. 21 October 2012 <http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/pajj>.

Murray, Soraya. "Cybernated Aesthetics Lee Bul and the Body Transfigured." PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 30.2 (2008).

The MIT Press. MIT Press Journals. 2012. The MIT Press. 21 October 2012 <http://www.mitpressjournals.org/page/about/paj>.

Bocon Tech

¡Bocón!

After four days of going to bed between 3:00 and 4:00 AM it finally feels like we're making progress. This challenge is something between the most amazing opportunity and the most terrifying challenge. Here I am, not even a semester into Graduate School and I'm working on a project with three panoramic screens and floor projection: nine projectors, five computers, two media play back systems, two operating systems, two frazzled graduate student media designers, and one children's show. 

Below is a moment from the show as the main character runs through a forest in an attempt to escape an oppressive military force. As the lights change, the floor is painted with a vine-like mandala as the three panoramic screens are slowly fade up revealing a forest of vines, and masks. 

A sample of the floor projection for Bocon

The time and the place of the play read as an abstracted South America - something that straddles an aesthetic that's a strange marriage of expressionism and realism. It's one thing to think about that in terms of production meetings, and another to see it finally materialize. In this way it's interesting to finally see a fuller representation of the production. 

One of the three 35 foot panoramic screens that surround the audience for Bocon

Strange to me has been the experience of getting tossed headlong into this whole process. The learning curve on this process has felt like more like a straight line than a curve. As this show has developed it's felt as though there are new techniques, software, and concepts to learn at every turn. For every new method I've started to digest, there are another 10 to add to the list to learn later. More than ever the idea of life-long learning is something that I keep coming back to... it's just a matter of continuing to learn and apply techniques and process. I came to grad school to learn lots of tools and techniques, and already I'm quickly finding that I've actually come to grad school to learn how much more there is to learn.

Tools Used:

Media Control for Panoramic Displays - Watchout

Media Control for Floor Projection - Isadora

Media Generation - After Effects, Photoshop

Interested in Attending the Production, learn more here.

Solo Performance Project

This semester I'm in a course titled "Performance Technology." The course serves as a broad survey of technology used in conjunction with performance as well as a primer on the theoretical constructions that frame the discussion about the use of technology in conjunction with live performance. According the syllabus, "This course will examine the issues surrounding the integration of live performance and digital media. Students will study the work of contemporary practitioners and theorists and experiment with creating their own works of digital performance." 

The texts that accompany this course are "The Language of New Media" by Lev Manovich, and "Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (2nd Edition)" by Philip Auslander. 

This past week I completed our most recent project, titled "Solo Performance Project." The assignment guidelines are below:

• Should be between five and seven minutes in length, unless the piece is nondurational (e.g. the performance is a “space,” an installation, or is triggered by an event) in which case it should be appropriate to experience during a five to seven minute window.

• Should be an original, devised/created work of your own.  The subject matter (if it has any) can be ANYTHING.

• Must utilize digital and/or telecommunication technology of some kind as a tangible part of the performance text. Must demonstrate critical or sophisticated use of technology as a medium, with clear thought about its relationship to the subject.

• No live performers other than yourself, unless you use an audience as participants.

• Must include some live performance, though this performance need not be corporal.

• Can either be a completed work or serve as a sample of a hypothetical, larger work.  It might be a sort of performative “treatment,” sample, or work in progress (e.g. “This is five minutes out of an hour-long performance that would…”)  If choose this option, please turn in a written paragraph describing your projected vision of the completed work.  

Here is a video of the work in it's current form.

Solo Project Performance Technology from Matthew Ragan on Vimeo.

Comments and Thoughts:

In conceptualizing this assignment part of the real difficulty was in trying to determine both the subject for commentary and the best media for addressing that issue. If the message is the media, and the media is the message than making a purposeful choice is as much a part of the challenge as the creation and execution of the project. In hindsight, I think I failed this assignment's call to create a totally original work. I used Auslander's text. While my intention was that it was framed by the introduction and conclusion of this unknown character living in the "dark," I wonder if my use of his text was too heavy handed. In all honesty, part of the challenge here was selecting material that felt appropriately matched to the course content that we had discussed up to this point. While I have my own ideas about the nature of liveness and mediated performance, I liked Auslander's point. The audience determines the liveness of a mediated environment depending on their willingness to define it as "live."

In some respects I'm compromised here - I really should have composed my own text, but I was afraid that I wouldn't articulate my thoughts clearly enough to have the intellectual impact that I was looking for. I also elected to learn a new tool / technique for this project, projection mapping, and didn't adequately anticipate the time that would be needed to learn new methods, composition methods, hardware, and software. 

Tools Used:

Mapping - MadMapper

Audio Recording - Zoom H4n

Projection - Sanyo XGA Projector

Media Generation - Adobe After Effects

Sound Editing - Adobe Audition

curse your coreaudio

A plague on all your houses core audio. A plague I say!

My recent system update that pushed me to OS 10.7.4 brought with it an array of issues connected to the system process CoreAudio. It began with no longer registering the presence of speakers when woken from sleep, and evolved into not every recognizing the internal hardware. After reseting my PRAM, repairing permissions, clearing log files, system maintenance, plist editing, and a litany of other maneuvers, it was resetting the SMC (System Management Controller) that finally did the trick.

If you also happen to be experiencing this same issue - start up chime, but no system sound - this might also be the solution for you.

You can see Apple's Support Article here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

photo shoot

See my flickr stream here

Tonight is another photo shoot. Gwynne Flanagan and I will be taking pictures of her tangled in fabric suspended over the ground for two hours. I never would have guessed that I would spend so much time taking photographs of circus. It was only a little over a year ago that I did my frist shoot with some circus friends, and now it's shoot after shoot.

party

photo by Becca Berkey

There's a going away party for me at work today. That's totally crazy to me. Not crazy in the sense that people are going to celebrate my time with them, and gather to share warm thoughts about my time here. Those kinds of things happen for lots of people, and so it's not extraordinary that I'm getting a send-off. What's strange to me is the idea that I'm about to shift directions in life again. Career two, check. 

I know that this living business isn't anything but a winding, twisting set of unexpected changes and adventures. I get that, I'm all for that. It's just that this life has been so very different from anything that I expected, from anything that could have told myself to expect, from anything that I could have planned for. Maybe that's just as it should be, but sometimes I can't help but wish that  I had a little more sense of what direction I was going to tumble towards next. I guess I have some idea of what's going to happen for the next three years... what's after that, though, is anybody's guess.

leaving

more photos on flickr: photos.matthewragan.com

There are  a great many things that I'll miss about my work and time here and New England in general. I know that I'm going to miss the color of green after the winter, and I know that I'll miss the colleagues that I share a hallway with (as well as those who are across the street in another building). I won't miss some of the regular complaints that I've heard when working with people over the past two years, and for good reason. 


Complaint
     I forgot my password, what is it?
Why it's offensive
I don't know any of your passwords, and I don't want to. In fact, when you're typing a password I'm going to look away from the keyboard and screen to make sure that I can't see anything. Your passwords are the keys to your whole digital life, and it is beyond ethically irresponsible of me to even consider keeping your password tucked away in some corner of my memory. Right now passwords and the web suck, and there are plenty of very smart people trying to figure out how to crack that nut. It's a problem that needs solving, and as a stop-gap most modern browsers are doing their best to remember these things so you don't have to. More to the point, I'm not your personal assistant. I don't drive you to work, or order your special latte, remembering your password is none of my business.


Complaint
     So, what is this screen telling me?
Why it's offensive
I know that internet jargon can be hard to parse. The developers making great tools on the web have to write to the broadest possible audience while also using terminology that can be confusing. You're right, it can be awfully confusing. The thing is, I see you flaunting that Ph.D in all of your email signatures. I'd guess that at some point you had to learn how to decode complex and specific linguistic conventions, so your insistance that I give you the cliff-note version of an online service or the terms-of-use you have to agree to; well that just shows me that you're lazy. At least, I'm hoping that you're just being lazy. If you're not being lazy, than you're being a jerk. I don't bring you tea, I don't open your mail and read it to you, enabling your intelectual laziness is not my job.


Complaint
     But why is [insert any web service here] doing that? I want it to [insert unrealistic, highly specific and mostly inconsequential operation here], can you do that for me?
Why it's offensive
Some of the best tools on the web do very general things in intuitive and clever ways. Tools that are based on simple rules in simple frameworks scale faster, and smoother, than complex and highly specialized tools. The more specialized your order, the more complex the process of delivering it to you. Furthermore, you're highly specific use of a particular tool makes perfect sense to you because that's what you want the tool to do, not because that's the nature of the tool itself. I'm happy to work with you to come up with a solution that's a mixture of compromise and creativity, but asking me to invest time and energy into fixing a "problem" that is really only a "problem-for-you-some-of-the-time" is offensive. It's offensive because it demonstrates that you don't really understand the nature of my work or my experience. You may as well ask me to fetch you a bag of M&M's, and while I'm at it to scratch off all of the M's on the red and blue ones.


Complaint
     Can't you just do this for me?
Why it's offensive
No. Learning is hard, and learning to be good at something means practice. If you want to be proficient in the use of technology both in your classroom and in your professional life, than you simply have to use it. Don't voyeuristically ask me to "drive" the computer so you can just watch - you drive. Don't patronize me and say that you just can't learn to write a formula for excel like I can - I didn't know either; I looked it up, I practiced, I experimented, and I did that until it stuck, you can too. Don't ask me to do your job - I'm happy to help you learn to do your work better, but doing your work for you is not what I'm here to do.