The Power of the Puppet · 1492 days ago by katebrehm
I had the opportunity recently to speak at the 12th International Performance Studies conference on a panel about Puppetry and Human Rights. The panel was put together by John Bell (Emerson College) and Matthew Isaac Cohen (Royal Holloway, University of London).
Following is the text from my presentation. The text is accompanied in performance by a toy theater puppet ‘powerpoint’.
ThePowerofthePuppet-KBrehm.doc
Crash Thoughts · 1630 days ago by katebrehm
Depressing
For me the most poignant moment was when the good guy shot the good guy. The whole movie was about that one moment. Because for me I lost hope. I became absorbed with the idea that there is something outside of each of us as individuals. Something we have no control over, but to which we are all subservient.
That is: all the thoughts, the assumptions, the securities our culture provides us. Outside of any attempt to be fair or understanding or better than. Even good people are racist. Good people of all colors.
And that means me. There is no escape. And moreso, “the world is not a nice place” (final quote from Road to Guantanamo). We all fall prey to the effects of racism in us, in our culture, at any and all times. In different ways.
but.
I guess that’s the risk of being alive…
anything could happen at any time.
And i want to live.
So i risk my thoughts, my assumptions, my way of life at every moment. One must take risks to live.
All I want to do is watch movie... · 1634 days ago by katebrehm
Over and over and over again. That’s movie singular.
I’ve gone back to my roots as an early media leech. When i was 10 or 11 we bought a new fangled device called a VCR. We were also well enough off to have the luxury of a subscription to HBO (solely a movie channel in those days). SO for a certain period of about 3 or 4 years during the 80s we recorded everything. Whether we liked it very much or not. SO we ended up with a large collection of bad 80s films.
My brother started to watch segments of movies. During lunch or before going to some practice. Constrained amounts of time. Not nearly enough to watch an entire film. I remember feeling a little odd about not watching the whole movie at first, but i got used to the idea and learned to repeat and rewind and return to the same films over and over.
So recently, I’ve started doing it again. And mostly watching the entire film. The first time is good, the second time is good if it’s a great film and even the third time is ok. But the 4th and 5th viewing of anything can be quite boring. But PERSEVERE! because then it starts becoming a new sort of film. I notice tiny moments like a lilt of the voice or tilt of the head. I start to savor the arrival of plot points and emotional arcs. Savor the anticipation of their lead-up.
Thinking about tiny moments.
and repetition.
hmmm….
Guantanamo on TV · 1634 days ago by katebrehm
I recently found out that an independent cinema is not far from our flat in London. Great! I thought, i’ll just trek on down there next week to see the film i keep hearing about, Road to Guantanamo, a re-enactment of life in Guantanamo based on the recounting of 3 British citizens who were held there.
But waiting until next week was completely unneccesary. While babysitting I flipped on the tele to find Road to Guantanamo on British TV.
whoh.
i mean,
this is heavy.
THIS WOULD NEVER… NEVER HAPPEN IN THE UNITED STATES.
Who’s running the TV over here? Who’s running the TV at home?
Granted, i have not owned a TV for many years, but I do read about it in the paper. and i just can’t see Fox broadcasting a politically sensitive piece. PBS??
I am ruminating…
on my astonishment.
.....
Dancingness · 1634 days ago by katebrehm
As Jon said, “That was more Brehm than Brehm!”
And so, I lOVED it. It was bizarre and mystical and movement-based with a few simple objects thrown in. The music really served the piece with its musical wash-over noise. And in a way, it was site-specific.
They performed in the back of a large warehouse (taken over and run by a few artists who produce events and performance in the space). Therefore, the surroundings of the piece were rotting concrete with some pastic roof patches. it was cold as heck and the sound echoed in the chamber. A strange square, 2 foot hole in the stage/ ground added ambience without confusing the movement. Which was exceptionally slow and with stilted internal muscle control. the dancers moved throughout the space in sort of geometric patterns as a group and in relation to one another.
With video. The video filled a huge space on the back wall and was projected on a cloth strung to the ceiling and walls at odd spots so it avoided the old white box syndrome. It remained on the backwall, but seemed more like a thick web than a rear screen. And the video itself was surprisingly supportive to the piece. It was a recording of the dance being performed, almost. The live dancers were approximately 5 seconds behind, give or take 10 seconds.
But mostly, it was A SUCCESSFUL ABSTRACT PERFORMANCE. A thing of beauty and bizarre wonder. Silent wanderings and great costumes. Each dancer was successfully an individual and also a member of the group. With seamless transitions and abstraced relationships between figures.
Oh, to see more of this kind of work!
seen at AREA10
Choreographer: Martina Seiti, Visual artist: Christer Lundahl
Woman + Man, Make Embryos - Ethics · 1640 days ago by katebrehm
Mostly i’m surprised that my opinion differs from most of the papers in which i have read about this story. It is a British story. So those in my home state may not have heard of it. Here is a link http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4781536.stm
but this is my take on it…..
————-
Woman diagnosed with cancer.
Man and Woman go through extensive, planned, and carefully executed steps to make 4 cells grow in a petri dish, Embryos, and then freeze them in case they want to make those cells into a baby with their DNA in the future. (or alternatively, they create life and then freeze it in case they want to bring it back to life to try to make it grow into a baby later.) (or alternatively, they mix a living sperm with a living egg and create a living embryo.)
They sign a document that says these embryos will only be unfrozen and continually stored if BOTH parties wish that to be so.
Woman’s ovaries are removed.
Man and Woman break off their relationship.
Woman wants to unfreeze her embryos to try to make a baby, Man wants to discard his embryos.
———
Unlike a night of passionate sex that may or may not result in a baby to which both parties have a responsibility, the embryo system allows people to be careful and plan out exactly when they will try to have a baby. Or when they will not try to have a baby. Or when they will stop having the thought about maybe trying to have a baby later. It seems to be about intellectual discussions and decisions. Unlike a night of passionate sex.
So it seems that either party has a clear RIGHT to opt out of this relationship… the one between man, woman, and embryos.
[Also take note of the creepy period that science has created: frozen embryo time. if these are considered life, which i suppose they are (in a very basic form), then I think it is creepy to freeze life (life in a state of immense growth) and then bring it back years later. cryogenics?? creepy.]
The question that i’m pondering is whether the MAN in this situation has a “moral” or “ethical” duty to allow the woman to use the embryos they created together to try to make a baby. Seems like, if i don’t want to have sex with you now, then i don’t likely want to have a baby with you. And I can ethically decide NOT to have sex with you.
But the sperm-doner/ egg-doner option makes this case seem like little more than a sperm doner. However, since these 2 people have a relationship they can never be one another’s sperm-doner/ egg-doner in the same way that an anonymous person would.
It seems to me that the man cannot be coerced into having a baby. He has no ethical obligation to give his consent for someone to re-start having his baby. And in addition to that, he has no ethical obligation to give consent to someone he knows and has a relationship with to re-start having his baby.
Tubby Love · 1655 days ago by katebrehm
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Who would’ve thought? Slowly acquired threads of information led me to them. And now that i’ve spent some time with the teletubbies, I like them. not so much their books or plastic figures, but i am dazed and amazed by their television show. |
Peculiar, they are life size (adult life size – i mean i think there are adults in there) waddling body puppets. like the wandering ones at amusement parks. With plastic baby/ animal faces and bath towel fabric bodies they populate a very grassy knoll. But they actually habitate in a 2010/ space-age hideout under a large hill of astroturf. Bunnies roam aimlessly. They take “big hugs” often. But the amazing part is less their pet vaccuum cleaner and more their habit of receiving psychedelic messages through the natural antennae growing out of their heads. Not all receive messages simultaneously, but one at a time. The receiving tubby experiences a very pleasant sort of tiny seizure (or maybe that’s my imagination) as the television set embedded in his/ her/ it ’s belly receives a nice, educational video. About somebody who plays music. or something. Occasionally large microphone-like speakers sprout up from the earth and project messages. All of this governed by a sweet loving baby face in the sun. An omniscient entity of reciprocating love. |
Truth Beauty and Love · 1810 days ago by katebrehm
“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”
Moulin Rouge, the film, is based on these bohemian modern ideals. But we think they are dead. According to postmodern philosophers: yes, of course they are dead. But now we realize that they are also not dead. The simultaneity of things becomes ruler of our critical position.
Laz Burhman’s film uses the desire-to-reminisce not only in his subject matter (of a bohemian idealist love story) but also in Craig Armstrong (and various composers’) score. He clearly picks the most of the most moments in popular nostalgic music for the score. Which allows the viewer to FEEL more intensely due to personal associations and a visceral understanding of pain (shared by living beings) (if the viewer ALLOWS him/herself to be affected). But we are also nostalgic for truth, beauty, and love, which postmodernism has left for dead. In our heart of hearts we our desperate with desire for them not to be dead, for that not to be true. And therefore, it is not true. We desire it and thus it becomes real. We feel, we experience and therefore it is. At the same time it is not. We understand that there is no truth and beauty has no basis.
How does that leave truth and beauty as a lie? Truth and beauty in the machine, in the film, in the culture can only be a lie because in that context they are generated by people and exist only in relation to themselves. Therefore, definitively, truth and beauty are not truth and beauty, because truth and beauty are absolutes. But individually, when we feel: it is real. Truth and beauty are simultaneously real and not real. As technology-enveloped people we understand that. We, who really speak to people while separated by a thousand miles, or an ocean, or the sky.
Moulin Rouge plays on our unconscious understanding of the simultaneity of real/ not real. We understand the sophistication of how a film may affect a viewer. Therefore, we are willing to let the cinematic choices stand out, or alienate us, make us AWARE of their existence. We like the highly stylized cuts and pastes of this film. We are willing to piece together nearly subliminal shots. We like the speed. From the production design too we understand how the film is very much NOT REAL. The spectacle of lights and sounds, singing, and dancing, flashy costumes, and meticulously cardboard cut-out streets look not real.
At the same time the film inspires in us a desire to believe in the truth of our own perceptions. What feels like truth must be truth, what feels like beauty must be beauty, and what feels like love is love. Our more recent virtual lives prep us for accepting that, though we know the film is not real in its tactility or pictures, the power of what we experience is.
Diamanda Galas · 1822 days ago by katebrehm
Saw her at Pace University Thursday, September 8th. Upon entering I considered the large candelabras and starkly lit grand piano. The scene had a look of Goth to it. A bit much for my overly meta brain, but ok. Moving on from the setting to the music, it was great in several ways. She had so clearly never payed attention to any sh*t from anyone about how she should do things or what the audience would like. I so appreciated that purity in her music and staging. She also did this amazing screaming/ wailing that sounded like she was spitting fire: like tearing through an ether of thin mush by freezing it into ice and shattering it. Like what good collage inspires.
Other things though let me think a bit much about how she exists in or perceives her own concepts of staging. I found myself wondering whether she knew that the candelabras threw reference to a kind of ‘roll your eyes’ aesthetic? I wondered, does she know her audience has highly keen sniffers for subtle cultural references like Dungeons and Dragons and Goth? At the same time she exuded the amazing and inspirational sense of ‘I never gave a f**k what anybody else thought I should or shouldn’t do in my singing and staging’. So I forgave her for not answering my petty Meta concerns.
However, there was a curious attention to Presentationalism that I felt was worth further discussion. (Presentationalism is a word coined by Jon Meyer to describe the trend in visual arts that pays ultra close attention to how a piece of art is presented to the point where the art object itself is barely a concern. Of course, this is a whole nother discussion about the rise of installation art and performance art, which I will write about at a later date.) Diamanda Galas’s piece/ show performed a disjunction between her formal choices of presentation: one very traditional and another very presentational. Her audience received mixed signals about how she expected us to receive her work. Her seriousness and traditionally employed theatrics (curtain legs, formal lighting, grand piano, performed walking) suggested that we as an audience should read the performance as one would read traditional theater or music. At the same time the lighting of the event drew so much attention to itself that I perceived I should attend to it as if it was an actor itself in the work.
There is no problem with putting these two formal methods of presentation next to one another except that Ms. Galas’s piece did not reference their juxtaposition or the fact that that juxtaposition created an impasse for the viewer’s perception.
There is a disjunction between traditional staging techniques and presenting performative inanimates. In traditional theater lighting is generally regarded as a magical element that creates a scene without the audience’s conscious awareness. In a work that focuses on the performativity of formal presentation itself or inanimate objects, an audience is meant to take note of the affective qualities and actions of lighting, sound, props, etc. There is no problem with putting these two formal methods of presentation next to one another. However, Ms. Galas did not seem to recognize the disjunction between her formal methods of presentation: One of them begged to be noticed, while the other pretended to be invisible.
It is not that juxtaposing these differing formal techniques is itself bad or uninteresting. The problem for Ms. Galas lies in a lack of reference to her choices of formal presentation and the impasse to perception it created for the audience. The viewer cannot know with which method of formal presentation she should assess and experience the piece. Traditional staging? Or a non-traditional presentation of performative inanimates? More importantly, the audience is left in the dark as to whether the artist wanted to create that impasse (a very legitimate choice). Or, more probably, whether she was unaware of the impasse her work created.
Simultaneity Take 1 · 2012 days ago by katebrehm
SIMULTANEITY the experience of ‘everything’ happening at the SAME TIME.
can we take it? I do many things simultaneously. and every day it seems more. and it makes me crazy. talking on the phone, while sending an email, while searching for some rare bird, and collecting items for the day. That’s only 4. Many things simultaneously. That’s what ‘technology’ has become for me: an experience of simultaneity. which either feels like obliterating overload or a real surfing the waves.
ok, what does that mean, “everything”? ‘things’ :activities, absorptions, attentives. A kind of simultaneity that leaves us in a state of.. we read an article about… ‘exposure’. Living in a state of exposure. Like film developing. But lots of it.
Since ‘things’ may happen at the same time, during the same period of ‘Now’, their state of ‘doneness’ (like film: exposure) is how i rate where each activity, event, or attendant species is infiltrating my ATTENTION and UNDERSTANDING.
I experience a wide horizontal plane of ‘things happening at differing rates and degrees’, as opposed to one straight line of focused activity staring out onto the horizon.
That is, when i’m calm. And that other kind of ‘focus’ can
lay down the hands of attention.
references: ‘Exposure’ as talked about by Paul Virilio
and by Carolyn G. Guertin