NINE (9) PROPOSITIONS in-form operations at PPL in 2018. These NINE(9) PROPOSITIONS propose Performance Modes, stated as intentions to realize/materialize/actualize “performance(s).”
These PROPOSITIONS magnetize temporary, relational collectives/support groups of performance makers to research, resource, and potentially realize performance(s) through NINE (9) THINKTANKS throughout 2018. THINKTANK activities are specific to each of the PROPOSITIONS and designed by the persons involved.
The NINE (9) PROPOSITIONS can be viewed below.
PROJECT TIMELINE/OUTLINE
1.) performance makers and researchers are invited to sign up by sending an email topanoplylab@gmail.com with the subject line THINKTANK by February 1, 2018. Please SPECIFY which PROPOSITION supports your intended performance practices in 2018.Expressing this interest does not commit people to participate in the THINKTANKS emergent from each PROPOSITION. If you put your email on one of the PROPOSITION signs at The Kitchen on Nov. 29* you are already signed up.
2.) AFTER February 1, 2018 you will receive a group email based on which PROPOSITION you specified. These group emails officially initiate the NINE(9) THINKTANKS.
3.) Meetings with/as each THINKTANKS may be scheduled throughout 2018 at Panoply Performance Laboratory (PPL) in Brooklyn, NY. All subsequent THINKTANK operations will emerge from meetings, emails, and other THINKTANK-specific interactions. Forms of activities, projects, collaborations, and any public engagement processes such as exhibitions, publications, symposia or events will be determined collectively and relationally by each THINKTANK (in collaboration with project initiator and PPL organizer Esther Neff).
4.) THINKTANKS will operate starting in February and conclude in November and December, 2018. Beyond the initial PROPOSITIONS and this 4-part organizational score, all structures and situations will be generated in situ by each THINKTANK. Thus, no “product” or presentation/performance is required, though THINKTANKS may share their processes and performances with publics through scheduled events throughout the year at Panoply Performance Laboratory and affiliated sites/venues/spaces.
In-person participation in initial meetings in as well as active written involvement in THINKTANK formation materializes this project.
Please Note: This is not primarily an opportunity to show work, to be “presented.” THINKTANKS are mutually-supportive, co-constructive temporary collectives, performed as intellectual locations for rigorous intra-social consideration of ethics, modes, methods, relations, and processes. While some performance projects (individual and collaborative) may be performed for/with publics throughout the year, THINKTANKS are predominately auxiliary supportive of process and discursive intentions, plans, reason(ing)s, and in depth social investigation of modes of performance.
NINE (9) PROPOSITIONS
9 PROPOSITIONS is community theater, a social performance staging collective forms of ideation and ways of seeing in multiplicit and proliferating ways. Thinktanks are encouraged to shift forms and determine their own best practices through practice. By gathering as intellectuals and artists to intentionally-stage our own dialectical “undercommons” (see Fred Moten) we resist the homogenization and industrialization of “deep thought,” operating outside of academia and artworlds (THINKTANK 1) via de-hierarchized, situated personification by those present (THINKTANK 2), gathering throughout one year or more (THINKTANK 3) using digital and networked interfacings (THINKTANK 4) via our own modes of production, mediation, and distribution (THINKTANK 5) operating as para-normative social bodilies (THINKTANK 6) that can transform and construct, cohere and dissolve at will (THINKTANK 7) in ways that interrogate (in)human agencies (THINKTANK 8) in experimental design and materialization of research into modes of performative thought and action (THINKTANK 9).
ONE…EFFECTIVELY FUNCTIONING “OUTSIDE” “ART” &/OR EXTRANEOUSLY TO “ARTISTIC” SPHERES
Potential Forms of Performance: “daily” life-acts, activisms, ANY masquerading form or literal realization e.g. preschool, jury convening, protest, psychiatry office, carpool…
Probable problems: capitalism and post-capitalism, modes of production and political science frameworks, framing, divestment, definitions of “art,” art history and art world(ing)s, specialization, inclusion/exclusion…
TWO….REALIZED SOLELY BY PERSONS PRESENT DURING/AS “THE” PERFORMANCE
Potential Forms of Performance: Happening, social dance, conversation, reflexive gathering, authorship negotiation, collaborative process, social practices, situational activity…
Probable problems: who is present and why? Access, involvement, participation, politics of representation and presence, relational aesthetics and forms, forms of instruction, interpretation, improvisation, and inscription…
THREE…HAVING A DURATION OF ONE YEAR OR MORE
Potential Forms of Performance: Life-art, daily/hourly/ongoing performance, framing of autonomic performance…
Probable problems: endurance, framing, integration of “art” and “life,” bodily processes and self care, temporal frameworks and time…
FOUR…OPERATING ENTIRELY TRANSPARENTLY ONLINE THROUGH A DIGITAL INTERFACE
Potential Forms of Performance: Interactive performance, survey/surveillance, open-source projects, interrogation and dismantling of “IRL” vs. “URL” dichotomies, encoding and processing performance…
Probable problems: access to, usage and “invention” of technology, networks, information theory, systems thinking, coercion vs. collaboration, distribution of subjectivity, usership paradigms, authorship, encoding and encryption…
FIVE…INVOLVING ITS OWN MODES OF MEDIATION/MEDIATIZATION AND DISTRIBUTION
Potential Forms of Performance: Disciplinary hacking, consideration of access and audience, documentation, modes of production as intentional performance…
Probable problems: modes of production, economics, mediation and propaganda, negative reinforcement, mnemonics and mimesis, sense and sensibility, access, technology, capitalism and post-capitalism, production paradigms…
SIX…INVESTIGATING, STAGING &/OR ENGAGING PARA-NORMAL PHENOMENA
Potential Forms of Performance: Communication with ghosts, aliens, angels, etc, sceance, psychic endeavors, telekinesis, dreams, telepathy…
Probable problems: “The Unknown,” normalcy and normalization, excess and the metaphysical, faith, belief, epistemics…
SEVEN…PHYSICALLY, MATERIALLY TRANSFORMING (MY) BODY’S SOCIAL, POLITICAL &/OR HISTORICAL CONTEXT, APPEARANCE &/OR “ABILITIES” TO PERFORM
Potential Forms of Performance: Surgery, extreme exercise, training, dietary performance, transition, direct race &/or gender-related performativities, privilege confrontation, disfiguration, configuration, incorporation, life-form performance….
Probable problems: Politics of “the body,” identity politics (i.e. “politics”), race, gender, sexuality, ability and agency, embodiment, somatics, bodily control and embodied cognition, self-body dichotomies…
EIGHT…PERFORMED BY NON-HUMAN AGENTS
Potential Forms of Performance: Mechanized performance, performance/process by animals, inanimate objects (e.g. melting ice, weathering signpost), robotics, AI…
Probable problems: what and who is “human”? “Artificial” vs. “natural” intelligence, inanimacy, materialisms, humanism and post-humanism, technology and technique, animal and machine sentience…
NINE…RESEARCHING (P)ARTICULAR HYPOTHETICALS VIA (VARIOUSLY) CONTROLLED EXPERIMENTS
Potential Forms of Performance: Performance as research, research as performance, forms of experiment rigorously pursued using articulated methods, hypotheses proposed…
Probable problems: scientific and other disciplinary “methods,” ways of formalizing inquiry, formalization in general, experimentation in general, research modes, hypotheses-formation…
*THINKTANK operations were initiated on Wednesday, November 29 at The Kitchen as part of the Emergency INDEX 6 launch party. The NINE (9) modes of performance were derived from the past 6 years of the Emergency INDEX volumes, documenting performance across disciplines, spheres, and contexts. At the live, free, public launch party, NINE (9) sign(up)s were provided as propositions to situate 9 correlated thinktanks. Those present at this event were invited to attach their email addresses to one or more of the 9 physical signs. If you already signed up at The Kitchen, there is no need to send another e-mail, you are already on the list. You will receive an e-mail after February 1.