SM6305 Media art: theory

1
SM6305 Media art theory practice

• Critical Creative Intervention a
  Performative approach
• Linda Lai
• March 27, 2008

2
language as enunciation

• Two kinds of theory of language have been
  challenged

(1) historicist models -take evolutionary and developmental approaches -languages mutate and shift through time and cultural space. Evolutionary view assumes the more recent the better
(2) structural linguistics- langue and parole Look at language as a closed system Whole determines the part
3
Revisionist views on language

• Everyday language theories ??????
• (1) Wittgenstein
• language as use
• there is no unity of language, but only clusters
  of usage governed by a system of rules
  untranslatable into those of others
  language-games ? family resemblances

4
Revisionist views on language

• Everyday language theories ??????
• (2) J.L. Austin Speech Act Theory
• Language is not just about signification or
  naming. Every utterance is directing towards
  intention and action.
• The act of speech the speaking of an act
• Performativity things might be done with words
• Illocutionary acts of speech Vs perlocutionary
  acts of speech
• Actions performed by virtue of words
  (illocutionary acts ???????)
• Actions performed as a consequence of words the
  name performs itself and in the process of
  performing, the name becomes a thing done
  (perlocutionary acts ???????)
• A word not only signifies a thing, but that the
  signification will also be an enactment of the
  thing.

5
Revisionist views on language a summary

• Historicist Structuralist view of language
• ? ?
• ? Everyday Language Theories
• Wittgenstein, Speech Act Theories
• Key distinctions
• The importance of meaning-making
• The location of meanings

6
The changing locations of meaning-making

• Society/culture/authorities/education/traditions
• ? Everyday life setting, the ordinary person

7
The importance of meaning-making?

• Meanings/signifier-signifier ? usage, use,
  performance, intention actions, inventive
  activities
• (??)?????/???????????????????
• Signification/Representation ? the constant act
  to question and play with signifiers, and to
  overthrow stable meanings
• (??)????????/???????????????????????

8
Performativity

• Things might be done with words
• A word not only signifies a thing, but that the
  signification will also be an enactment of the
  thing.
• (Speech Act Theory)
• Act process of speech gt settled meanings

9
Performativity Deconstruction Jacques Derrida

• Critique of Western intellectual traditions
• Critique of logocentrism, the dependence on
  fixed, a priori, transcendental meanings, that
  is, universal meanings, concepts and forms of
  logic within human reason before any other kinds
  of thinking occurs.
• Critique of phonocentrism, that is, priority to
  sounds and speech over writing
• Critique of stabilized meanings (To him, meaning
  can only be generated through the play of
  signifiers, and therefore cannot be fixed. Words
  carry multiple meanings.)
• reference chapter on Derrida in Chris Barkers
  Cultural Studies an introduction / see handout

10
Performativity-Derrida-Differance

• Differance (Vs logocentrism)
• Language is non-representational meaning is
  unstable and constantly slides away.
• Meaning is always generated via difference ?? and
  deferral.
• Every articulation of a signifier bears a trace
  of its previous articulations.
• The relation between a word and its meaning is
  that of supplement, and not identity.
• There is no pure referentiality

11
Performativity-Derrida-Writing

• Writing (Vs phonocentrism)
• Writing is not secondary to speech.
• Truths are not outside the act of writing and the
  subject who writes.

12
Performativity-Derrida-Deconstruction

• Deconstruction word play/writing
  performances
• To deconstruct means to take apart, to undo, to
  reveal the underlying assumption.
• Deconstruction involves destroying the
  hierarchical binary oppositions ????
• To deconstruct is to place a word under erasure.

13
Performativity Judith Butler

• Reading, Writing and Performing
• Influence from Speech Act Theory Derridas
  deconstructionism

14
Performativity Judith Butler Reading, Writing
and Performing

• Reading ??
• to deconstruct ??(to take someone down, exposing
  what fails to work at the level of appearance)
  via interpretation

15
Performativity Judith Butler Reading, Writing
and Performing

• Writing??
• The politics of writing ?????
• necessarily foregrounding style
• calling into question ordinary language -- e.g.
  grammar and style, narrativity etc. to look at
  how we structure the world via language in order
  to bring newness to the world
• Source Salih, Sara and Judith Butler (eds.)
  2004 The Judith Butler Reader. Malden (MA),
  Oxford (UK) Blackwell Publishing. P. 325.

16
Performativity Judith Butler Reading, Writing
and Performing

• Basis (of her politics of writing)
• Butlers position as critical intellectual
• the commitment to engage in questioning set
  norms and basic assumptions
• (comparable and related to)
• Michel Foucault ?????s politics of discomfort
  designed to estrange and upset

17
Performativity Judith Butler Reading, Writing
and Performing

• Performing ??
• to effectuate realness,
• to engage in concrete action,
• to the degree that it resists settled reading
• Radical re-signification basis for
  intervention in the form of creative activities
• See Paris is Burning on video

18
Performativity Judith Butler

• Reading and performing
• see Paris is Burning on video
• There is NO STABLE IDENTITY
• only the materiality of the body
• ???????,????????

19
Spaces of Writing Performative Writing

• Performative writing -- an impetus to naming
• THREE sources
• Nietzsche and Wittgenstein
• Derrida
• Judith Butler
• Literary works Laurence Sterne, James Joyce,
  Samuel Beckett the American language poets
  such as Robert Creeley, Ron Silliman, Rosemary
  Waldrop and Lyn Heijinian

20
Performative writing

• Writing is not a functional tool.
• Writing is not for the sake of the ideas
  conveyed.
• The meanings of writing is not in its content,
  but in the act itself.
• Only the real present tense of writing and the
  continuous act of writing make writing a
  purposeful activity.

21
Performative Writing

• Writing involves power and control.
• A performance that engages with language
  necessarily comes face to face with power.
• Performative writing is often politically charged
  although the act itself is to engage with forms.

22
Performative Writing

• A work with performative character often begins
  with citing or setting up a specific situation,
  not with the burden of meanings and purposes. It
  often leaves open room for new discoveries, to
  which re-strategizing is required along the way.
• compare this to the poetics of discovery?????
  as opposed to the poetics of signification?????
  
• The conventional boundaries between, or the
  separation of, pre-production, production,
  post-production, reception has to be challenged.

23
Performativity in creative work may highlight the
following

• Undermines the idea of completed-ness of a
  work theres NO clear demarcation or definitive
  moment for a fully finished work. There is only
  a deliberate, even arbitrary, drawing to a close
  of a self-conscious creative process for a
  specific reason.
• Ultimate meanings are NOT pre-determined even
  though specific points of intervention are
  prescribed.
• gtFinal meanings dont exist before the beginning
  of the work.
• gtMeanings are generated along the process of the
  evolvement of the work, the result of discovery
  rather than planning.

24

• Performative Writing?
• Performative video?
• Performative photography? ...
• (Please refer to list of case studies)

25
Performing the Self

• Gary Hill, I want to dialog with my mental
  process, consciously, self-consciously. Art
  Performance, p. 186-7
• Working with no preconceived images the work is
  more the process of performance and
  fictionalization

26
Photo Voice

• Participatory Action Research
• Three examples
• -women in Yunnan
• -women in Guantamela
• -children and the disabled

27
Work samples

• Works by Linda Lai
• One Take (2003)
• Door Game (2005)