The idea behind the Franconia Performance Salon is to share sketches or segments of works in progress; drink some wine, and talk about the work. Don’t come expecting a “show” but rather a piece of something in process that you can respond to with feedback.
In art a thing is beautiful whenever it has character. Character — this is the intense truth of any natural spectacle, whether beautiful or ugly. You may even call it a double truth. For it is the inner essence expressed by the outer appearance. It is the soul, the sentiment, the idea that shines out through the features of a fare, the pose and action of a human body, the tones of a sky, the line of a horizon. Rodin, Rodin on realism, 1910
My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression, a new way of communication. It is never about exhibiting in museums or about hanging it on the wall. Art should live in the heart of the people. Ordinary people should have the same ability to understand art as anybody else. I don’t think art is elite or mysterious. I don’t think anybody can separate art from politics. The intention to separate art from politics is itself a very political intention.
Ai Weiwei: @Large Alcatraz
To work in architecture you are so much involved with society, with politics, with bureaucrats. It’s a very complicated process to do large projects. You start to see the society, how it functions, how it works. Then you have a lot of criticism about how it works. Ai Weiwei
Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me, Whispering, I love you, before long I die, I have travell’d a long way merely to look on you to touch you, For I could not die till I once look’d on you, For I fear’d I might afterward lose you. Now we have met, we have look’d, we are safe, Return in peace to the ocean my love, I too am part of that ocean, my love, we are not so much separated, Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how perfect! But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us, As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us diverse forever; Be not impatient – a little space – know you I salute the air, the ocean and the land, Every day at sundown for your dear sake, my love. Walt Whitman
Doth any here know me? This is not Lear: Doth Lear walk thus? speak thus? Where are his eyes? Either his notion weakens, his discernings Are lethargied–Ha! waking? ’tis not so. Who is it that can tell me who I am? Shakespeare, King Lear, 1.4
When we are born, we cry that we are come To this great stage of fools Shakespeare, King Lear
Ava Roy on the Schooner Alma …seasons, light and time, too, are intrinsically tied not only to space but also to human interactions with space. We have biological rhythms in our body: the rhythm of breathing – above all we have a rhythmical heart, melodious blood pumping. We have the circadian rhythms of hunger, of sleep, of sex…. The cosmic rhythms of day and night, winter and summer…. When you live beside the sea, you have the sea as an essential rhythm: you internalise it. It is necessary to harmonise all our rhythms. Augusto Boal
Samuel Taylor Coleridge‘spoem explores a violation of nature and the resulting psychological effects on the mariner and on all those who hear his tale. The Mariner must grapple with loneliness and guilt and ultimately, seek a path of redemption. Through the poem, we are confronted with man’s fragile relationship with nature, and the humbling effects of the supreme elemental forces of the sea.
i remain interested in the work of Georges Poulet, Gaston Bachelard and Roland Barthes in the era of Sur Racine
the theoretical movement often called
the Geneva School of Existential Phenomenology my interest in this theoretical approach derives I believe from its apparent theatricality
apparent
because the practitioners of phenomenological criticism,
with the exception of Roland Barthes,
tended to avoid discussions of the theater
or theatrical metaphors
even though Georges Poulet
wrote about dramatic texts. I find their analyses theatrical in the sense that the image of consciousness they build reminds me very much of a performance space a field whose coordinates can be transformed a field in which images can display themselves in complex dynamic relationshipsthe interplay between transforming acoustic and visual images dominates the theatre of consciousness even if the phenomenological critics never employed that metaphorthe defined but transformable space of performance I think functions well as a metaphor for the field of consciousness where images perform rhythmically in time as within the space of the imaginationI conceptualize the imagination my imagination as a site rather than as an activityas a director I conceptualize the actual theater the space theatre inhabits as a metaphor of consciousness and use that site in a sense to perform a series of psychological transformationsI suppose I look at the individual dramatic text as a manifestation of consciousness
my interaction with that text in which I appropriate a virtual consciousness configures a variant of that consciousness a consciousness that through the rehearsal/production process gains specific embodiment within the performance space
the ideal spectator of this specific performance recieves from the production a manifestation an embodiment of my consciousness and my mediation of the imagination of the playwright
I’m assuming the conceptual integrity of the idea of the subject the unique subjectivity of the playwright and my individual subjectivity as director and–by implication–of the spectator
these three subjectivities are expanded realistically by the reality of other artists in the collective process as well as the diversity of the audience
but in conceptualizing this process in theorizing the phenomenlogy of production I am limiting my thinking to three subjects the playwright, the director, and audience
this is not a process of identification assimilation is a better choice identification suggests projecting the image of the self onto an object assimilation suggests a kind of opening of subjectivity creating a space for the psychological processes embodied within the text in the production
A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted, Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion; A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion: An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling, Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth; A man in hue, all ‘hues’ in his controlling, Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth. And for a woman wert thou first created; Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting, And by addition me of thee defeated, By adding one thing to my purpose nothing. But since she prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure, Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure. Shakespeare Sonnet#20
