performance exposes the fact
I view the body of the performer
as a constructed image
I am trained
through the intensely mediatized nature
of cultural experience
to respond to all stimuli
as though I were receiving that data
within a media event
the boundaries
between technologically experienced information
and information received without that frame
have become permeable
sometimes seamless
mediatized images operate
within the consciousness as the real
example no. 1
the body of the actor playing Oedipus in Sophocles‘ tragedy
the singular site of two forms of self and civic identification
the language spoken by the actor
identifies his body as that of the Corinthian stranger
who has become the First Citizen of Thebes
after the anagnorisis
his identity expands
to include information that the Corinthian stranger
began his life as the child of Laius and Jocasta
the Corinthian stranger is
indeed
the Theban
the biological child of his wife – Jocasta
the adoptive child of Merope
the tragedy builds itself
on the incompatibility
of these Corinthian and Theban identities
example no.2
Aeschylus‘ Orestes is identified
and identifies himself as
the celebrated savior of Argos
who avenged the assassination of his father – Agamemnon
at the same time he is an abhorrent criminal
guilty of matricide
in performance
the body of the actor (a singular, unified image)
becomes the site of a conflict between identities
or forms of identification
the tension
between the stability of the image of the actor’s body
and the instability or equivocation of the language of the text
depends on the perception that as a signifier
the body is a more simple
a direct instrument of communication
in comparison with the complexity
fluidity
transforming nature of language
the image of the actor’s body
within the theories of people like Judith Butler
becomes much more like a text
like a folio sheet
that accepts the inscription of my writing
theories that textualize the body
suggests that the actor and the actor’s language
are both instabilities
indeterminate and subject to deconstruction
within a spectator’s response
to that image