draft potato piece with [] Phoenix Theatre June

π Performers A & B.
Title: the title is announced as follows,
The Potato piece with Brackets [ ] engaging with the word to make some other sense.

a performer A is speaking, with radio mike, seated in the auditorium imperceptible to the audience. The auditorium is darkn’d. The proscenium stage is floodlit lit centrally, emphasising attention for an audience on a ‘table’ and stool. The table has 3 largish potatoes evenly placed, balancing on the central hinged and slightly retracted folded top, elevating the potatoes. A microphone on a metal stand is adjacent to the stool.

A [ken]. voice “For what can remain over when the whole world is bracketed, including ourselves and all our thinking.”
Husserl.

Sequence 1.
performer B [jane] suddenly enters stage left. In profile moving frieze like upper torso flatt’nd to the audience – with even steps walking purposefully to centre stage. B. is holding both behind and in front two right angled metal brackets to the hip. B. stops then turning to align the body arms extended.

A. Voice, urging..... brackets!

stepping backwards, repositioning, lifting the brackets in line with either ear, bracketing the face.

A. Voice.... normal brackets

extending the left arm and swivelling.

A. Voice, seeking definition..... normalcy, that’s normal!

with back, facing the audience B purposefully places the brackets either side the apex of the table

A. Voice, determined..... common agreement, signs and rules, that’s normal.

B. turns poised for a second or two then sits inclined over the mike one heel upturned positioned, leg extended, knee relaxed

performer A immediately stands uttering the word “this’ just audible questioning moving through the audience to a central marker in the auditorium up to the stage and now facing the audience.

A. Voice, demonstrative/firm......... THIS!




Sequence 2.
B. Voice to microphone....... what! pause name it!

performer A extends and lifts the right hand. The left hand is glov’d, not visible. The right hand finds a line that is discernable from finger tip to wrist, through the arm to the elbow, then lifts gradually on count of 6, 7, 8, beat slightly up, upwards, then ¬¬– holding the line the finger suspends a beat.


A. repeatedly obsessively..................................... THIS!

performer A continues, the beat establish’d [6, 7, 8] this, [6, 7, 8], this 6, 7, 8, THIS! Stronger louder ss the hand arm finger in line continues to beat,

B. announcement. ‘Tanoy voice’ sounds like, can the owner of the blue car please remove it as it is blocking……. “Deconstruction is a challenge to the covert privileging of language by classical philosophy.”

A. pause........................ THIS, pause THIS,

B. “Deconstruction is not a defence of formlessness but a regulated overflowing of established boundaries.”

B. “the word ‘this’ has been called the only genuine name.


Sequence 3.

A. turns and steps up onto the stage, in one movement the left and glov’d hand emerges – firmly clasping a large potato, continuing the movement about turn, until positioned in profile to the auditorium the right hand draws a large carving knife. The potato is fixed to the point. The right arm lifts in line the hand finger to point at the potato.

A. Voice.........high staccato THIS !

B. Voice.........imperceptibly “before” “after”

A. Voice.........this THING!

A. Voice......... thisssssssssng thing

A. Voice................................................ this thissssing thing

A. in a gesture throwing the knife upwards the potato up and off the point of the knife; as the potato descends – cuts it clean into two pieces/ immediately,

LIGHTS darken

Sequence 4.
again immediately

LIGHTS up

B. takes a knife from the table surface, stands.

A/B Bow. A and B exit stage left.






Aims:
lifting off the ‘form’ of philosophy from the page into a sculptural and poetic dramatisation.

lifting the philosophical text off the page into a sculptural dramatisation.

A numbered series or sequence of performances forming an eventual live programme / that enters the real virtuality of the language itself – in the first instance as a sculptural and poetic articulation of the philosophical term DECONSTRUCTION – represented in the case of both Wittgenstein and Derrida, as the break/historically where ‘deconstruction’ is generated by an intense, sustained confrontation with philosophy. The recognition of Western Metaphysics in its earliest form established by Parmenides poem and the relation of thought to being / the relation of “words to things” the opposition between form and matter which inaugurates Metaphysics.

The historical present in dramatic form;

1. ‘Deconstruction’

Derrida describes the deconstructive standpoint as something like the lateral displacement of a method of writing, each moment of which is orientated toward the precise articulation of some moment of philosophical discourse, and which proceeds to veer away from philosophy while taking its bearings, in a disciplined and methodical fashion, from this articulation.

Deconstruction makes sense only in terms of the relation of the text of philosophy; treating the chain of philosophical works since Plato as “one great discourse” to be read and interpreted.

could it follow that extensive reading of the reference text is therefore required for an understanding of the ‘rules’ of deconstruction. How, we might ask then do we go about the business of asking the question –
What are the rules?


Wittgenstein is SO concerned to pay little attention to the history of philosophy – he wants to be self engendered so to speak. Wittgenstein’s own practice in the ‘normalcy’ of language points to the necessity of establishing communal agreement as to how we understand signs and rules.

It was in an extensive reading of Husserl that Derrida worked out the foundations of his own practice
Husserl considered his phenomenology to be something like the fulfilment or culmination of the history of philosophy.

2. Bracketing
‘Husserl’s Natural consciousness Reduction’

3. The illusion embodied in the idea of “This” “intelligible form” “to the sensible thing”
‘This thisssing thing’ the potato piece with brackets. The compulsion which primarily philosophical problems exercise over us, in the form of lyric poetry – satirical, figurative ‘ war of language’ real thought, active forgetfulness.


jane whitaker.

thinking 'about' thinking

21:37:57) Jane Whitaker says:

- so the 'characters of the composition' introduce themselves draw the audience into the installation, suffering in the aftermath of some truth having been revealed -


....................................................................................................................................................................................


So for instance the opening scene,

The synopsis will therefore take the form initially of a series of scenes or tableaux that depict within the installation the idea of 'aftermath' For instance and I'm already in a fix we construct

that is a SCENE that presents - right and understand this I am only making a notation of my thoughts having returned from a 'walk' in which i have been deliberating on the problem of a SYNOPSIS - there is a differentiation here between the installation as a showcase for 'thinking about thinking' and in the first instance the installation as a showcase for thought. Thought as feeling as experience. What do we do with this?

(14:01:52) Jane Whitaker says:

This technique is repeated:

One of the characters then openly makes a 'claim' for instance,

A claim – that is the opening tableaux might have ARISTOTLE as the 'philosopher' in question where we are looking for an example an illustration [for the purposes of the performance] "fighting against the flux" looking for a definite abiding something.

We are looking here at the concept of form, as determined by Aristotle in the Metaphysics. Form is the essential entity of a thing's being just that thing which it is and of its being knowable and definable as such. And so just as the others might begin to be taking notice of this point of reference this........... claim ..........the installation starts up again [ perhaps a spit of text ] forcing the characters to adjust their positions, from the flow, into the flow.

(14:37:20) Jane Whitaker says:

Here we might have another clearing scene 2 or [the tableaux are in no particular order] ..............this is indistinct in itself what I mean is we are heading towards a tableaux – what we have here are a series of scenes /Scenes as clearings Scene 2. Form? Fighting against the flux? has this been established, do we collectively know this/ Form is the cause of entity (ouisa) of a thing's being just that thing which it is and of its being knowable and definable as such............. "But this means that the concept of form is inseperable from unity and self identity and we are thus led to the principle of contradiction as the "most certain of all principles" A definate abiding something...... We have established something then have we?

that the principle of contradiction becomes the origin and wellspring which thought cannot get behind or under or beyond and ...................Form is is the boundary of definition.


(17:16:07) Jane Whitaker says:

envisaged then as thinking about thinking in its construction, or is it operating currently as a portmanteau for our being identified by our thoughts. Oh Forget it.

Chaos Theory

Where you now, do I rescind reverse merge the horizontal & the perpendicular
Nail
the laughing Buddha.

Seduce
the mystic
Make
blasé remarks to rock and sand patterns warning to err on the side of excess

the minutes cease to op'n up a correspondence to their expenses - the mileage of erotic

and ope up an instead early spring water'd by hail and the quick snow of
the unseasonal season

Flown
in
courtesy of Tesco.

I did try 'nd explain a more common approach

How, early on like you
ceasing to pull rank reveals often'r than not
an undercurrent of loose intention

Human intervention spurts in motion
rather than maintain unending calm.

Chaos I say is this
only this, in exactness
a measure of loosesness

As much as a mange tout now requires
a jetfull
of fuel

to land on our bountiful and overloaded plates

This, is as much in chaos
as I am examining
in one sitting.

Yes

The pea pod

a

two dimensional remonstration
of its own

lack
of
pea.

books as props to the argument?

is there a danger here of confusing the dialogue's characters, with the conceptual personnae?~

PLAYSCRIPT ACT 1 SCENE 1

PLAYSCRIPT;
artists as machines
Newlyn gallery ‘Invitation’

‘alternative Private view’,

A [ken] painter – the signature
B [jane] name Author under a pseudonym
C [milena] enunciator

The gallery space /open is accessible, both the upper and the downstairs area, however the paintings in both galleries are obscured – with detail paper – sculpture in the upper gallery draped with cloths, sheeting. The ‘audience’ are circulating to the upper gallery from the lower area where drinks are available – wine – on a low plinth.

The paintings here too have been covered/strips of detail paper
[The ‘thinking’ is to be revealed as points are made and the paintings ‘unmasked’]
Statements on the frame;

A. One of the characters [Ken the painter up a stepladder]] lacing up boots laboriously so slowly red laces trailing dangerously preparing a series of questions an internal dialogue out aloud.

B. [Jane seated as an invigilator after a pause.

"But this frame is problematical [and I’m talking about the third critique] where, the critique presents itself as a work [ergon] with several sides and as such it ought to allow itself to be centered and framed, to have its ground de-limited by being marked out, with a frame against a general background."

con fused;
"I do not know what is essential and what is accessory in a work. And above all I do not know what this thing is, that is neither essential nor accessory, neither proper nor improper, and that Kant calls parergon, for example the frame."
cont;
Where does the frame take place. Does it take place. Where does it begin. Where does it end. What is its internal limit. Its external limit. And its surface between the two limits. I do not know whether this passage [in the third critique]
PAUSE
where the parergon is defined is itself a parergon . Before deciding what is parergonal in a text which poses the question of the papergon, one has to know what a parergon is – at least, if there is any such thing. PAUSE

A. [begins again] in the framing an earlier statement about the parergon is repeated; "even what is called ornamentation [Zierathen: decoration, adornment, embellishment] (Parerga) i.e., what is only an adjunct and not an intrinsic constituent in the complete representation of the object [german translation], ohhh I’m not going into that here]

B. to the impatient objector, if s/he insists on seeing the thing itself at last: the whole analytic of aesthetic judgement forever assumes that one can distinguish rigorously between the intrinsic and the extrinsic. PAUSE.

Aesthetic judgement must properly bear upon intrinsic beauty, not on finery and surrounds. Hence one must know- this is a fundamental presupposition, presupposing what is fundamental – how to determine the intrinsic – what is framed – and know what one is excluding as frame and out-side-the frame.

We are thus already at the unlocatable center of the problem. And when Kant replies to our question "What is a frame?" by saying: it’s a parergon, a hybrid of outside and inside, but a hybrid which is not a mixture or a half- measure, an outside which is called to the inside of the inside in order to constitute it as an inside ; and when he gives as examples of the parergon, alongside the frame, clothing and column, we ask to see, we say to ourselves that there are "great difficulties" here, and that the choice of examples is not self-evident.

A. in augmenting the delight of taste does so only by means of its form. Thus it is with frames (Einfassungen) of pictures or the drapery on statues, or the colonades of palaces. [Removing the detail paper and screwing noisily into a ball]

cont. but if the ornamentation does not itself enter into the composition of the beautiful form – if it is introduced (angebracht; fixed on) like a gold frame (goldene Rahmen) merely to win approval for the picture by means of its charm – it is then called finery [parure] (Schmuck)
Ken EXIT

and genuine beauty"
Jane produces a tray/s of Hors-d’oeuvres’ a silver platter and eventually circulates the audience to a select few to try.

The Greek here confers a quasi-conceptual dignity to the notion of this "hors-d’oeuvre" which however does not stand simply outside the work[hors-d’oeuvre ] also acting alongside, right up against the work [ergon].

Dictionaries most often give "hors-d’oeuvre," which is the strictest translation, but also " accessory, foreign or secondary object,"
[eating and speaking]
"supplement," "aside," "remainder" It is what the principle object must not become, by being seperated from itself:

listening intently to A Milena [C] [from under the covered sculpture] is starting to peruse the problem out aloud sounding like a recording from a telephone conference, trying out a voice sound - as in a series of vowels aaaaaaa eeeeeeee uuuuuuuuuu full stops and commas - [this section pre empts the backwards opening on the main screen later in the cave the lower gallery entrance hung with a black curtain].
Ü

artists as machines

there are two types of machines then? - the "allopoeitic" and the autopoeitic". Is this like the scientific demonstration of metaphor? / [well one way of looking
at it] - describing it perhaps by what I could describe here as the sorting and filing of ideas into categories - then the synthesis of appropriate extracts into nice
ordered concepts - [archive after archive] of the type being utilised here by Guatari - the "here it is all neat and tidy kind of knowledge" - Well I'm saying it
very well could be - why not? bringing me happily to the resurgence of the ancient quarrel between the poet and the philosopher, that is still of course quite
beautifully unresolved to this day - We have in fact titled the performance in the Newlyn gallery ARTIST"S AS MACHINES - here is the crux of the matter -
e