Lecture Notes

(Unedited.)

This course is just a proposition. The documentation represents "my state of ignorance."

Man licking a stone. This is silly.

Between the image and ourselves is the question of meaning.
There is no effort without resistance.

"Man licks rock" is a description. "Desire" implies that the rock represents something, or calls into question the relationship between the man and the object.

The space of language
Enigma is inherent in and inalienable from the artwork itself.
How to make him cringe--ask him what it was about.

Why are you making performance? Engaging, re-articulating the action of performance as what you're tring to explain, the question you're trying to address.

Just keep your mouth shut and your eyes open. Try not to scream.

You have nothing to say. Your work is deliberately meaningless, not because you want to offer your audience the opportunity to extrapolate their own meaning, but because you're vapid.

To suggest that art may stand independently from the interpretation or comprehension of man is to suggest an elephant's ass can stand independent from its ears. Art is not absolute, and art is meaningless outside comprehension, or at the very least man's attempt thereto. Without recognition, sculpture is stone alone. Drama is sound and movement. ART IS NOTHING AT ALL.

Lea Vergine: Body Art and Performance. To what extent is the body expressive? Material expressive?

Oh Gina Pane, you with your sadly relevant name.

The Wisdom of Art. Oh for fuck's sake, answer a goddamn question. Prove to me you're listening at all.

Live performance has an intensity that cannot be found in the inanimate--there is a sense of urgency. (In the case of Gina Pane, the urgent issue is getting a tourniquet positioned.)

The question here is not one of the body as art. The question is at what point does it cease to be art and becomes, or becomes recognizably, the masochistic outbursts of the mentally unwell? To what extent are the products of the insane art? Art is not necessarily with--or without--meaning. To what extent should we study art produced by the certifiably insane? As art, or as diagnosis--as progress reports within treatment?

I'm sorry, I don't feel the artist's pain, and I don't hear the language of the bleeding body. Luckily enough for me, I'm not completely detached from reality.

I'm trapped in the mundane. That's what it is. I find this meaningless not simply because it is without meaning, but because I do not have the capacity to comprehend or value form for form's sake. Can we conclude that no one has said anything coherent in the past two hours? If theatre is an assemblage, does it have a medium? Or Is it a medium? I think it probably is the medium of communication. Now we're watching a film, obviously intended to be film, so as to stimulate discussion of live theatre.

I don't think this guy believes this stuff anymore. He can't align his thoughts because he no longer thinks them.

Staged discontinuity. Pretending it's live, pretending it's real. Theatre is a lie.

Try to trace the shadow of the hand that's tracing. Try it.