Ecosophy and performance art

Short text for the La-bas seminar in Cable Factory, Helsinki. 6.5.2007
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ECOSOPHY
In his short book ”The Three Ecologies” Félix Guattari describes an ecology which would consist not only of the ecology of nature, but also of the ecology of subjectivity and social bodies.
“Without modifications to the social and material environment, there can be no change in mentalities. Here, we are in the presence of a circle that leads me to postulate the necessity of founding an "ecosophy" that would link environmental ecology to social ecology and to mental ecology." (Guattari)”
We are living in the state of capitalistic process, where through the computer revolution there is more potential free time for one to use, but often this free time eventually implies unemployment, marginalization, uselessness, boredom and anxiety. The concept of work has changed, whereas the amount of immaterial work is expanding rapidly. There are masses of ideas, concepts, aesthetics, attitudes, life-styles, and so forth produced in the expanding branches of market. In the last ten or so years there has been a going on a vast reformation of the capitalistic production machinery. This change is directed towards space, free time, family, food and culture.
According to Guattari, this new field of production is connected with the discourse of three ecologies. The idea for the ecosophy is to create thinking and activism to achieve strategies for the new situation of enrvironment, work, economy, bodies, sexes, media and subjectivity. It is a call for a communality which is directly opposite to the conforming, homogenous and structured culture. While the capitalistic production machine is based on the lack and need, this formation would be based of multiplicities and singularities. Very much like the field of creative approach in performance-art.

FACTORIES
We are factories which ceaslessly produce matter. In capitalistic machinery this matter turns into material and immaterial products. In addition this machinery produces lack over needs.
As in any other area of contemporary capitalistic production, anything singular or autonomous is facing harder and harder situation, would it be a performance act or a alterative model for a family – likewise any species opposing the techonolocigal expansion of mankind, finds itself in growing difficulties. Nevertheless, our situation now is completely immune to the rhetorics that call forth dicothomies between rich and poor, north and south, capitalistic and anarchistic, and so forth.
These rhetorics are the products or counter-products of the capitalistic machine. In this ballfield the opposing teams fight over the territory based on lack. The capitalistic machine produces lack, which is also produces by the immaterial workers such as artists. Withouth any second thought, contemporary, performance or site-specific artists can produce, large amount of immaterial lack – or discourse – for the capitalistic machine.
In the field of art production what is being produced is significantly immaterial – as in most contemporary production areas. What becomes important, is the role of the human being as a creative individual, and often artist grows to represents some kind of archaic model of humanity. Quite the similar way as the image of human being or her face has become to signify lack in the machine of production: there are excessive amount of images of bodies and faces in the surface level of the machine, and respectively inside the machine, human bodies, minds, materials and social bodies are fully subordinated to the techonology and economical machinery. Artist becomes to signify an image of human heart within the capitalistic machine. He creates the images and situations and lack-fullfillment-lack performances. Roughly: in the periphery there is the sweatshop and in the center the contemporary art museum.
Artists approach for the three ecologies is singnificant, not as a manipulating neurotic or abusive pseudo-liberator, but as a catalyst inducing ”lines-of-flight” for the community s/he is able to communicate in. It is nescessary to rid artists position from any archaic models: artist is not avant-garde, shaman, nor priest. There is not just one direction, but multiple. Is there avant-garde among the blades of grass?

Critique of separation in the act of performance.
Do we build an action on the separartion of the audience and performer, by utilizing the same method as is used the capitalistic use-and-abuse machine? Or do we propose more communicative models, yet how do we communicate, what language to use? Should we create singular stages, where the catalyst is not separated but underlines the infininte, yet dissensional stage of performance-as-an-assemblage. In this event, the role of the audience also changes. It is no more a role of witness, but active and dissensional singularity.
Nevertheless it is nescessary to notice that the role of art as an assemblage creating lines of flight, is very much in demand in the ”contemporary-art-machine”, it is significant source for the busy machine of capital. Artists are also scouts in the new territories to assist capital machine to take in control.
Within the walls of capital context the performance art acts as a representation of lack. Now we recognize the product of performance easily, and what becomes significant is the limit and border of territory. Essentially: crossing the border. This situation of performance is the situation of negativity, a simulation of lack and continuos to-and-fro movement accross the borders. Performance artist becomes very much an archaic model of seer or visionary. Here stage becomes a continuous state of conflict between the interests of witness and the performer.
For the witness, it is a stage of representational model of back-and-forth lack-fullfillment movement. Respectively for the performer, audience becomes a witness in the realm of imaginary. The conflict rises, whert there is and encountering between separated realms, and this conflict is crucial for the performer. For him – in this setting ”him” and not her – the eyes of the witness are never clear or innocent, though for his imaginary model they ought to be. This situation produces lack and disturbance in the performer. Eventually, it leads the performer to repeat actions which are self-destructive and destructive in the social and mental stage as well. He tries to create as clean stage and as perfect representation of the imaginary stage as possible. Nevertheless, this attempt is continuosly doomed to fail, thus, these attempts perpetually repeat.
Now, the performance has become to signify a purification. This becomes repetitious, since, it is not purifying fully, but ritualistically and already in demand of repetion. For the performer it is essential that he recognizes himself performing, sees himself doing something. In most removed situation, in the stage of video-performance, the audience has literally a role of an imaginary and completely pure gaze.
It is important to notice how much this realm of performance is situated within the perimeters of set territory, where these crossing borders are in fact imaginary. This imaginary stage is where the performer locks himself in safeguarding position against the rupture, in which audience represents imaginary witness of the negative event, and imaginary threat for fulfillment of the performance. Performer represents this threat by attacking his own body, in this way to control the imminent rupture, which the presence of ”unclean” audience creates. An attack becomes an act. These self-destructive acts will never be able to escape the territory of bipolarity, and they repeat endlessly. They never escape the capitalistic, territorializing and overcoding machine.
Yet, all of these border-crossings are very real. They happen in reality, but as an example the tranformation of shit and dirt in the process of ritual. Here dirt becomes filth and simultaneously attains new meanings. It becomes a ritualized relic. Or in capitalistic terms it creates surplus value. Pain and shit is being capitalized in to gold. This is old economical and sacred arithmetics.
What is the role of audience in this ritual? What is its role, when there is no more community? What is the ritual for, and what are these material and immaterial relics for? In this stage of ritualized capital machine the role of the audience’s is not any different than consumer’s in the field of exchange and turnover. Here, ther performance is an institution of ritualistic lack. If the performer attempts to construct a striated territory where to repeat his territorial action, audience may on the contrary act without any imaginary rules in very ragged and smooth territory. This is real conflict, and also an approach to a line of flight away from the capitalized performance art.
Territorial stage is being occupied by a masculine performer, a man. It is a representation of the general occupational machinery dominating the capitalistic model. Respectively this territory represents feminine, in fact it is named as feminine, because of the territorial behavior of the performer. Clearly, it is no more female or male, in the same way as it would be ridiculous and archaic to call nature ”female”. But in this context, the dominating capitalisitic model uses the same force in the territorialized performance stage as limiting the area of other species on planet and similar way offending our singular mental ecosystems.
Opposing this territorio would be a smooth stage, which is a stage in process of becoming-woman, respectively to the gender discourse and in respect to Guattari’s discourse the stage is in process of yet becoming. Members of audience, performers, assitants, etc. would be in a process of becoming-. In this kind of stage every member of the assemblage is perceiving each other from specific point, but not in hierarchical formations. It
Following this thougth, performance art would be rather like a field of grass – in social, ecological and mental level. It should not wish to create any forms of archaic communities, tribes, etc. This field of grass is already polluted and it is an distorted assemblage, where it would be fatal to search for clean and respective gaze from the audience and clear perimeters. It is important to recognize how much performance art is merely repeating the model of lack or representing occupational systems, and why performance art should be aware of what is being forgotten and thus repeated ceaslessly. In what imaginary stages he is performance is being played in.
Performance art should try to build a machine of collective subjectivity, a place of active singularities. If we vaguely name the stage as becoming-feminine process, not a stage of representation and repetitions, we are in process of creating polyphonic processes to tackle the overcoding machine of contemporary capitalism. We are factories which ceaslessly produce matter. Performance produces temporary assemblages with singular people, it is essentially and act in time, in temporality. Like grass.