Hammer: Daily Life
A Performative
Research on The Meanings and Practices of Aggression Today
Concept & Performance: Nadia
Tsulukidze (GEO/NL) & Andrew Fremont-Smith (USA/NL)
Introduction
We are excited to present to you a developing project. We
have begun to research and develop some early performative responses to what we
feel is an urgent area of focus in our contemporary social political
lives. This area is the question
of aggression: What it is? How
does it manifest? What space can we open to reflect and touch on its role in
our lives? Our project involves interrogating and re-thinking the boundaries of
the different concepts of aggression and the performative responses to
aggression today.
Our working process is essentially based on friendship,
interest and excitement with each other’s work. We have found that our dynamic
in developing ideas becomes electric with imagination and actions. Further, our confrontations and sharp
differences produce a synthesis of ideas that take us to the next step.
Individual
Motivations
Nadia Tsulukidze:
Aggression,
like a hammer, is a tool of force and can be
used for destructive purposes, as well as for productive ones. Yet, we live in
a society where ‘non-aggressiveness’, ‘non-violence’ and ‘de-escalation’ are
basic values of our ethics.
Referring
to recent political and economic events in Europe and in particular in the
Netherlands, I observe that the idea of a ‘tolerant country’ has been shocked,
showing that ‘non-violence’ and ‘tolerance’ are not given truths, but rather
are process’ of becoming. These
have to be shaped and reshaped according to existing political developments. In
my opinion the social resistance in the Netherlands lost the battle by hoping
that ‘tolerant’ society, as such, will protect against the violent actions of
the right wing government. The reality turned out to be different and now we
are facing the aggressive politics without having tools for resistance.
The term
‘we’ and ‘community’ are highly problematic today, as we see ourselves as
individuals with personal opinions, yet when we enter the public space we are
at a loss as to exactly identify what ‘We’, we are, exactly. In the theater
space we become a ‘we’ – the audience. We share the same experience in the same
time frame, although each of us has an individual perception. The theater
becomes a space of shared experience.
Andrew Fremont-Smith:
I have
been interested in the concept of aggression and how it is practiced and
responded to, since witnessing violence by police in a few protests in the U.S.
(for instance in anti-globalization protests, and more recently in the Occupy
Wall Street movement protests) as well as seeing random acts of violence in the
U.S. and Europe (to gay individuals and to non-Europeans, respectively, in city
streets). What was termed “aggressive” by one group was thought of quite
differently by another. The performative responses themselves were also quite
coded, and quite differently. I also find it interesting in terms of how people
use a kind of subtle form of force, through what is often called “passive
aggressive behavior”. What do we
really mean by the term “aggressive”?
How is something determined as “aggressive”? When is it the ‘good kind’,
when the ‘bad’? So, now, how to read these silent assumptions and to give them
a relation which does not ‘preach’ or become didactic, but rather opens the
questions to further thought and personal reflection, perhaps even with humor?
Development
& Production of the Performance
1st Phase: We would like to investigate
the questions: How is “aggression” understood today? What are the major (and
more controversial) current ideas and accepted responses? We will research
different forms of how “aggression” is perceived and responded to (both at
impersonal, social level, and at a more individual, personal level), with texts,
imaginations and knowledges from social layers and institutions of society such
as:
* Pop
culture (wikipedia, internet images, twitter, movies and pop music)
* Mental
health professionals (psychologists, psycho-therapists, social workers,
etc.).
*
Everyday experiences, which possibly reveal forms of responding to
aggression. Cultural reflexes. How
is “aggression” understood in a public space such as a café? For example, what tends to happen when
someone acts ‘aggressive’-- prior to Security Forces being brought in? Are
there generally certain types of responses that are available, and others that
are not? Such as saying “Take It Easy” or other such things. What do such
things aim to perform? De-escalation? Control? And at what price? Etc.)
2nd Phase: Towards Performance. Develop
and transform from the research of the 1st phase, an artwork, a performance.
This will involve a power point presentation, as a playful ground and structure
of the performance, to address the question of aggression. We will extend it
with performative actions, movements and theatrical images to create an
atmosphere with reference to the subject. Humor, seriousness, displaced
stylized actions in a dialogue in real time, revealing our thinking and
collaborative process. This will be organized dramaturgically into a sequence,
as a whole. We see this now, as primarily structured as a dialogue between us
two performers (from different parts of the world) seeking to understand and
come to terms with how “aggression” arises and is dealt with today, in specific
forms. Our aim overall is not to declare a ‘truth’ as final and complete, nor
to generalize peoples or social structures, but rather to create space with the
audience, in sometimes humorous ways-- to reflect and enter a re-thinking of
how “aggression” and its responses are performed today, at both the social and
the personal level.
As part
of the overall process, we will do a workshop in April 2012 on Aggression and
It’s Performativities at Zeebelt Theater, in Den Haag, Netherlands
Notes on the Two Artists’ Approaches
Nadia Tsulukidze: In my work I am interested in
emotional connection with the audience, not in an expressionist direct way, but
rather through a dramaturgical construct that uses analysis, alienation
techniques and distance in order to discover the unknown and rediscover the
known.
Andrew
Fremont-Smith: I
often use de-composition and somewhat absurd styles to create spaces for the
audience to perceive projections. My performative style verges on the deadpan
and is often in some regards ‘task-based’, rather then emotive-centered.
Nonetheless it is not a style of pure conceptualism but rather a mode of being
both ‘real’ on stage and working with the sequence of an idea in full
commitment to revealing its power and limits, in and with the body.
Final Thoughts- Dynamic of the Two - Handwritings,
Collaboration and Active Imagination
Coming together in this project, we are interested in
both the collaboration process itself and the space that is created with
different artistic handwritings and approaches to the subject. We will be
playing with the very process and action of collaboration itself, through the
knowledge of ideas on aggression. Making that apparent.
Further, how does the gap in our different handwritings
and approaches to the subject of aggression also become a presence?
Dramaturgically, there will be three lines at play: a
power point performative lecture, a dialogue between us involving performative
responses, and scenes that give shape to a single idea or imagination. These
three running lines will have a formal logic in their own right. Further, in
being placed closely with each other, we seek to create spaces for the active
imagination and reflections of the spectator.
We look forward to hearing from you, and if you have any
questions or require further information please let us know!
Nadia Tsulukidze & Andrew
Fremont-Smith
