Introducing terms of work

Organization

Today it was my first day with Companhia Instavel. I barely slept yesterday. Not so much because I was stressed or anxious for today, but because they forgot or neglected to bring bed sheets and a duvet or a blanket in my room . Can you imagine how I was after 14 hours of traveling? I had to sleep with 3 shirts and 3 pair of trousers. Still I was cold and felt very unvomfortable and I had very little sleep.


In the morning, I met Vera Santos, the rehearsal director, and Antonio Julio the other choreographer of the company. We had a fast breakfast in a café and Vera explained to us the irregularities and difficulties of the program. The problem is that Companhia Instavel has not managed to find a single space where each choreographer can go there regularly. In fact we are going to be working at two different dance schools, and we might need to commute during the day from one dance school to another. Not only that, but we don’t know what times we can be in the studios. How much time ? How many hours per day can I rehearse? We can only know the program of studios ONLY 1-2 days before… and not only which studios we use but also how much time we can work per day. That sounds a bit difficult to organize a long term schedule.

On the other hand, I might just take advantage of this roughness and let me concentrate more on “come what may”. It might give me a hint to keep myself alert for any moments of unexpected gloriousness. The fluctuation on the program could maybe reflect a certain fluidity on the management of the creative outcome. Or differently said, what are the influences of this “unorganized” organization? How can identify these influences and be aware of them so as to use or abandon them according to my specific needs? In order to do that, I need to describe and thus identify what I mean by “unorganized” or how is this organization different from what I have been used until now to work. For tomorrow, thus, I should be alert in analyzing the major traits of this way of work organization. If possible I should try to find similarities and differences with previous works I’ve done and try to see the performative elements of these differences to influence the artistic outcome.

Meeting in the Studio
I saw again Marta, Robert and Goncalo, the three performers we are working together.

Marta
Goncalo

Robert

We soon discovered that all three of them had studied in The Netherlands. Is that a coincidence? We sat around a big table. I congratulated them for having made it in the auditions and explained them that they were picked out because of their ability to adapt to the different tasks of the three choreographers (the audition was given by 3 different choreographers and all three of us we had to decided which dancers to choose). The reason I did this was because I wanted to call their attention in adaptability and how different (or maybe not) my choreographic method will be in comparison to that of Marianne (the previous choreographer). I also asked how they worked with Marianne in order to have a clearer view of what they are used to do. In that sense I could be more aware about their experience in methodologies and strategies and take advantage of their knowledge and custom or spend more time in explaining things they have not encountered before.

The shadow lights from the windows in the studio

We then explained the general outline of the way I am thinking of working. The first week mainly will be lecturing, talking, discussing, writing, speaking, jotting down, drawing, watching and in 6 words: ACCUMULATING KNOWLEDGE. I want us all to be at the same level of understanding, so that we all speak the same language of what I am looking for in the work. I don’t think that in the end of this week, we all think of the same outcome or in the same way, but at least the sky will be clearer, Marta, Goncalo and Robert able to understand more things, and I will feel more comfortable in leading research towards complex concepts. Sometimes, it feels like a lecturer, but my intention is to try more than that, to simulate a small think-tank group. Where there is a person that introduces an idea, topic and then the whole group has the possibility to discuss together and come to some development of these ideas.

I therefore, explained them more precise the two pillars of the work.
1. Why we like watching violence; and
2. Camp aesthetics, Masquerade, Aestetics of Failure.
I tried to define what I mean with these above terms. Not so much in order to establish that this is right or wrong but with the idea of building out a common understanding, a common denominator where we can set out for a journey. Here is my notes:



BLOGGING (again????)
A good way, I have thought until now is to ask from all four of us to have a blog. I have previously worked on blogging and discovered its tiring but beneficial aspects (you can check out at http://painofothers.blogspot.com). The rules/ideas/guidelines that I have set out for blogging are reflecting ideas from Camp and Appeal of Violence. Here they are (I hope it’s clear how they do so):
Blog about
1. Obersvation Reflection Discussion Evaluation Recommendation (ORDER)
2. Automatic writing
3. Allow your thought to develop while writing or allow your writing to take you into paths you hadn’t thought before
4. Your own difficulties, discoveries, reflections
5. Don’t be critical for the sake of being critical
6. Situate everything in/about/concerning yourself, nothing about the other person’s difficulties, weaknesses. What did you get?
7. Keep it interesting, find ways to make it interesting to be read
8. Show your inspirations by other people (choreographer, dancers, books, artists etc)
9. How do you process the feedback given
10. Explain the/ your methodology? What is the/your strategy?

11. Why did you get interested, bored, angry, sad, excited? What does that say about you?
12. How does writing influence your participation?
13. Where do you find inspiration? What are your references? Can you be transparent or you prefer to hide it? Why did I do like that? Who/what influenced me?
14. Is writing enough to help you find your way for tomorrow? What did you decide? How do you need to work ? What did you learn from today or how do you want to approach your work differently tomorrow in order to solve any problems?
15. What is the limit of writing? What do I write and what not? Can I write everything? If yes, how do I write everything? If not why not? If yes is that enough? If not, why not more? Is enough really enough? Can you do more than enough? Can you force yourself? What happens other than being angry, tired or bored? Can you discover creativity through excess ?
16. What happened today? What experiments/games/exercises did we do? What did I do? What was my commitment into it?
17. How did I feel? Why did I feel like that?
18. How can I correct myself tomorrow? What is that I need to take with me tomorrow?
19. Am I defensive while writing ? Why then write this blog down? Why expose myself and be defensive? Isn’t it that by writing I allow myself to be vulnerable? Am I strong enough to be vulnerable? Do I have the guts to feel secure as to allow transparency? Why does that affect me? Can I expose myself without judgment or emotion ?
20. Why is a rainbow more interesting to watch/talk about than a bin full of garbage? How can I just see the garbage but concentrate on the rainbow? Do I need the rainbow? What if I don’t only see the garbage but remember that it was me who threw the litter in there?
21. Can I be glorious, spectacular and intimate while writing?
22. Who am I when I am writing? Is it me or is it me watching me? Or is it someone watching me? Or is it me watching someone else being me?
23. Can I be generous, grateful and munificent? Why is it difficult being generous, grateful and munificent?
24. Why being simply critical is not enough? What is more than being critical? Who is more and why ? Can I be more? Why do we write this blog?
25. Why do I write this blog? Where do I focus: on the negatives or the positives? Why ? What is easier to do good, focusing on the negatives or discovering what the positive elements are/could be?

My main preoccupation with blogging is the fact that it is a very heavy burden that even I found moments where I hated it, helpful though it might be. My question then is How do I keep the passion in me burning? How do I keep myself a devoted writer ? How is writing more important for me than anything else? And ofcourse how can I make Robert, Goncalo, Marta feel the same for their own blogs? And this idea about passion, seriousness about your passion, derives from camp aesthetics. One thing I know for sure. We need internet at the studenthouse FOR SURE. So that at least they can do it when they feel relaxed.

Youtube as a source for inspiration
After that we had a break. When we came back, we saw some videos on Youtube featuring Camp. I began by showing an extract from ‘Another Gay Movie’ where one of the characters is performing what we traditionally call “Camp”. In that sense, it is a representation of Camp, but I found it quite useful to give the stereotype of Camp.






After that, we watched the Greek Reality show “Paratragouda” by Anita Pania, where she invites old men and women to show themselves on her program and then people can call them and have dates with them. What Anita Pania does is to ask these people to sing or perform in a theatrical play. None of them trained as an actor/singer, they sing their outmost and try to be as good as possible or maybe feel good. It is not to be to say how they feel or what they do. I just want to give a description (sorry if I offend someone). Below is a guy singing the song “To thelo” (I want it).



After that an old woman who has only one tooth and she sings “Exo ap’ ta dontia” (Literally meaning “out of the teeth”, in greek means outspeak, not be afraid to say the truth). I perceived them both as being camp, because of their passion and seriousness in their personification, their naivity, the exaggeration that comes out of the repetition of what they think a singer should do, and the inherent failure in that effort. In that sense, I agree with Sontag when she says that “camp is a lie that tells the truth”, because yes it’s obvious they are lying that they are singers, everyone can see that. BUT, I can see so many other things in these generous people, because they expose their hearts and feelings. Camp is a love for the human nature…



Camp is not always funny (if it is ever funny). It is not something you laugh at, but something you can enjoy. Usually however, people perceive camp behavior as quite disturbing. Maybe because of what Kristeva calls abjection. We abject what we think that jeopardizes our own existence. Without wanting to go into detail on what abjection is, I showed this following video to the guys, of a woman bodybuilder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c68_kwdQWzs&feature=related


And also of this super masculine male model, lip syncing on female voice.


And that entered us in the world of lip syncing. The first and foremost video I wanted to show was the NUMA NUMA guy



This boy had created this video, years before Youtube existed. Some of his friends passed it around and soon this guy became internationally famous. He then became depressed for he felt people made fun of him, and it took him an awful lot of time to recover. After that he tried to make another film, but its success was not as big as the first one.
A great duet of lipsyncing is these two Korean friends singing at the tune of a Backstreet Boys song. Why is this camp ? or why do I include it in my footage? It’s because of the passion that these guyz have. Although exaggerated, I never have the feeling that they are not believing what they do. They are very strong performers. And for me that happens because of passion. Enjoy…

Camping Violence (the terms

On the concept of violence (extract from my MA Thesis)

Representation of violent images (such as shooting, killing, fighting etc) is highly popular on cinema and is increasingly gory nowadays with the support of sophisticated technology and special effects. If we consider for example the Cinematic box- office successes one could easily ascertain that images of violence, mayhem and horror are a large attraction. Zillmann (1998) contented that this “phenomenal appeal is not limited to audiences in the Western world, but universal. The attraction of superviolent entertainment is evident cross culturally” (180). It is puzzling, then, why we, or some of us, are interested in going to the movies to watch portrayals of barbarous violence, why we want to share this consumption experience with our friends and why we bombard our children with brutal fairy tales. The appeal of violence seems counterintuitive at first because when choosing violence, horror or mayhem images we intentionally place ourselves in peril of great emotional anguish
Some scholars, on the other hand, believe that violence is not as popular as other forms of entertainment and that it has a very limited appeal. According to Goldstein, (1998) violence is attracting to some boys or men. “ But for many, it may not be the violence per se but other satisfactions that are its main attractants. For the majority of consumers of violent imagery, the violence is a means to ends, an acceptable device valued more for what it does than for what it is” (213).
Indeed, there is not sufficient evidence proving that we like watching violence and it seems very difficult for scientists and theoreticians to agree on this point. What the box office numbers prove, however, is that whatever the popularity of violence per se may be, many films depicting extreme or soft violence in many forms sell. Traditionally, research on violence in media has been concentrated on the repercussions and effects for the viewer of such violent images but it has been neglected to question why these images exist in the first place and what the reasons are for viewers flocking outside cinemas featuring violent imagery.
Therefore, the scope of this thesis is not to prove whether the projection and viewing of violent imagery has repercussions in our behavior nor do I try to establish that violence is attracting. On the contrary, my main focus is, if we like watching action films that include violence and we take their appeal for granted, what could be the reasons for this attraction.
But before proceeding, some further clarifications on the scope of this research should be made. First of all, when I mention violence I mean what Harris (1994) has defined as “intentional physical harm to another individual” (186) or Gerbner (1980) explained as “the overt expression of physical force (with or without a weapon, against self or other) compelling action against one’s will on pain of being hurt and/or killed or threatened to be so victimized” (11).
Furthermore, this research distinguishes between the terms violence and images of violence, especially violence staged for the purposes of entertainment. In this research I only focus on the latter, namely the dramatic images of staged or mediatized violence, and not on violence in general. Therefore, when the two terms are used in the course of this thesis, they both refer only to the representation or reenactment of violent actions.
In addition, I do not consider violent imagery as a single concept. It would be wrong to consider that all violent imagery comes from the same source or has the same purpose. As Bloch (1998) contended, for example, ritual violence requires a different explanation than violent entertainment because the barrier between participant and spectator is less clear. For this purpose, this research does not focus on the violent imagery in general. Its specific focal point is on action films. By the term action film I mean the film genre that features:

a propensity for spectacular physical action, a narrative structure involving fights, chases and explosions, and in addition to the deployment of state-of-the-art special effects, an emphasis in performance on athletic feats and stunts. (Neale, 2000, 52)

On the concept of Camp (Extract from my article: “Daft Male Bodies Camping Youtube”)

Therefore, I consider imperative to define how I read the notion of “Camp” before going any further or differently said what are the aspects and characteristics of a Camp object ? Traditionally, Camp is associated to effeminate homosexual men. But in Literature, “Camp” has most of the times been employed to mean something else than “a swishy little boy with peroxided hair, dressed in a picture hat and a feather boa, pretending to be Marlene Dietrich” (Isherwood, 1954, 51). As Isherwood (1954) mentions, but never went into detail, Camp is “something much more fundamental”(51). Susan Sontag (1964) explains that

While it is not true that Camp taste is homosexual taste, there is no doubt a peculiar affinity and overlap. But all liberals are Jews but Jews have shown a peculiar affinity for liberal and reformist causes. […] Nevertheless, even though homosexuals have been its vanguard, Camp taste is much more than homosexual taste. One feels that if homosexuals hadn’t more or less invented Camp, someone else would (64).

Sontag has been attacked for her stance when arguing against the gayness of Camp. Gere (2001) considers that “she is not only dishonoring, but disempowering gay men” (361) and Meyer (1994) argued that her version of Camp:

with its homosexual connotations downplayed, sanitized, and made safe for public consumption,[…] removed, or at least minimized, the connotations of homosexuality. Sontag killed off the binding referent of Camp- the Homosexual- and the discourse began to unravel as Camp became confused and conflated with rhetorical

and performative strategies such as irony, satire, burlesque, and travesty: and with cultural movements as Pop. (7)

However, a big amount of literature has disembarked from the idea that Camp is a strictly homosexual sensibility. Booth (1983) clarifies that “while it may be true that many homosexuals are Camp, only a small proportion of people who exhibit symptoms of Camp behavior are homosexuals” (70) . And Core (1984) goes further stating:

I do not posit homosexuality as requisite for Camp: quite the contrary. Camp is most obvious to me in a homosexual context, but I perceive it in heterosexuals as well, and in the sexless professionalism of many careers.” (81)

This list of literature distancing or freeing Camp from male homosexuality could go on for quite a long time. From my research, however, on Camp literature, I have noted that the common denominator of all these theorists, even those believing that Camp is a homosexual sensibility, is that nearly all of them speak from a queer studies (and queer studies does not necessarily mean homosexual studies.or a feminist perspective_. In other words, Camp has always been studied as an issue of gender and identity. What I suggest here is to pacify, at least for the purpose of this article, the opposing views on Camp by perceiving camp as a Queer sensibility, not strictly homosexual though. What are then the characteristics of Camp as perceived aboved? Or differently put, what is it that makes something Campy?
First of all, Camp is “the love of the exaggerated, the ‘off’, of things-being-what-they-arenot”; “the hallmark of Camp is the spirit of extravagance” (Sontag, 1964, 56). Furthermore, Campy behavior or performance draws from a character and continuously repeat these characteristics probably in an exaggerated manner. Sontag (1964) mentions that “Camp is the glorification of ‘character’” (60).

What Camp taste responds to is ‘instant character’ […] and conversely what is not stirred by is the sense of the development of character. Character is understood as a state of continual incandescence- a person being one, very intense thing. This attitude toward character is a key element of the theatricalization of experience embodied in the Camp sensibility. […] Wherever there is development of character, Camp is reduced. (61)

And this stylization, this insistence to character means that the person who is campy is serious about this personification, he or she really believes in it and is passionate about his/her character . Susan Sontag(1964) expounds:

In naïve, or pure, Camp, the essential element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails. Of course, not all seriousness that fails can be redeemed as Camp. Only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve. (59)

In fact, this seriousness is so much, indeed too much, that it fails to be taken seriously
altogether. This failure takes place in the moment where the real identity emerges within and because of the passionate devotion to the character. As Core (1984) argues, “Camp is a lie that tells the truth” (81). And I believe that it is this enlightening potential that we are seeking to see when in a theatron. Camp has, thus an innocent sincere quality that is both refreshing and witty. According to Sontag (1964):

Camp taste is kind of love, love for human nature. It relishes, rather than judges, the little triumphs and awkward intensities of ‘character’… Camp taste identifies with what is enjoying. People who share this sensibility are not laughing at the thing they label as ‘Camp’, they are enjoying it. Camp is a tender feeling. (65)

Having defined what I mean by Appeal of Violence and by Camp, I explained them that these ideas are not just what we want to represent, but they should also infiltrate the methodology and strategy of the creation process. In that sense, I am also looking forward for campiness and appeal of violence in the meta-level believing that such an omnipotence of the concepts will influence drastically our understanding of the terms and our consequent use (sounds complicated?). Well, in a few words, the idea is to had a camp methodology and use the weapons of the appeal of violence in our own words. Therefore, we get more experienced with the concepts in the whole of the work and not just by trying to represent them.