Fiction and structure

For a time now i have been thinking about the structure of fiction and with in this the concept of reading itself. I will admit I am an information junkie, I want to find out what is happen, why its happening, and how its happening, and this ranges from a physics to theatre, to literature, to social events. My mind currently has been occupied with the Aristotelian philosophy of narrative in a post modern culture, and realting this to literature (specifically). To understand what Aristotle was talking about we can take the typical novel. The story that has a beginning, middle and end. The characters are introduced, the circumstances are presented to for the narrative to start. The middle can be described – rather like Greek Tragedy - want a ‘crisis’ happens. My understanding of, and the pretext of crisis in this scenario revolves around an event talking place. this could be a village fete, a murder and sub-sequential investigation, or the conflicts that arise between 2 characters.

The end can easily be described as the conclusion. I have a problem with this statement. When do things conclude? It is suggesting that we ‘live happily ever after’. In the same respects when does narrative beginning. I fully understand that this is necessity for introducing the reader to the characters and by the book will conclude. Having just finished James Joyce’s Ulysses when the ‘ending’ has immersed itself in to another narrative. The narrative continues so to speak. Having also read Nicole Kauss’s Great house and Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, I found that there was a ‘conclusion’ of happy ever after. This is not being derogative towards the book, they were book great books and I really enjoyed both, equally. They do bring out a frustration in me that I’m struggling to surpress.

I could have easily done without the final chapter of Great House – a chapter that ties things together. The blurb described this final chapter and while reading, I was searching for this connection. This was an enjoyable part of reading the novel – how does this connect together? The blurb gave me the answer but why couldn’t the answer be on the back but not in the text. This is an interesting concept that draws the experience of reading away from solely the book into the wider concept. Our relationship to the book is constantly interpreted from our experiences.

There are those that will argue escapism is inherent in the purpose of a great deal of the fiction that they read and this is fine. My question is why don’t we heighten the act of reading and acknowledge the act of reading, recognising that the ‘fiction’ of the novel can placed in relation to our experience of everyday life. In this I am going to quote Marshall McLuhan’s essay the medium is the message. Our reading can be tied up in the act of living and give meaning to it. The life of the book doesn’t end when the book is put down, however much of the fiction inside it is.

Relating it to Great House again, the act of working out the connections and links was tied up in the reading. Why give me the answer? Stephen Fry read an audio book expressing the format to which I am referring to in The Dongle of Donald Trefusis (access from iTunes). This was a journey, an exploration, the pleasure is in the answer being, not so much hidden, but disguised in the literature. Entertainment comes in the form of Stephen’s account of the story.

I wish to conclude this post, however the I would be conflicting to the purpose of my thought. The postmodern culture that we live in is so fragmented that my discussion of the topic will be disseminated continuously, however the ironic reality is that it won’t. I am an information junkie, the philosophy withheld in Aristotle means that the post has to come to an end in the same respect that the popular conclusion will be one of solution, likely to favour the status quo of fictive fantasy over experiential realism….. Why is this? Is it we are scared on the real world? Why not have a monolithic novel of the crisis?

The time of an artist

I sit here in my bedroom, in my shared house in the middle of Leicester. Leicester is somewhere i don’t want to be right now, work isn’t something I want to be doing either but in the grand scheme of things I love the job that I do. The reason, at the moment, I don’t want to do it is because I don’t think in the manner that I wish to be thinking. I am a concept-based artist and as you may have guessed from the other blogs that I have on this site, exploring the nature of performance in a cyberspace world. Two things are always working in my mind and that is the board nature to which we begun to define performance in a techno-age (these things i wish to focus on). The other thing is the manner to which answers have already been made up on the premise of a reaction to the popular. This is a fair cop, most people that are interested in theatre are interested in it for the enjoyment aspect but where do we go from there. I know that I don’t know everything, in fact I know very little of the amount that i want to know, and this puts me in the minority even further. I am surrounded by books and other resources, I am sat on the internet – as a curisous side one the idea that one is ‘sat’ on the Internet or even surfing the Internet is a funny expression to express when the physical movement of ones body is rather minimal and the ideas that we are placing out weight on something quite abstract and is intriguing in the use of the English language and how that has defined scenarios.
This blog is a great deal different in tone to the ones that I have written previously and that is because, again I am at a cross roads and am using this as a means of release. What is the project that I am creating/working on trying to say about the performance scenario. While I can quote Schechner, Baudrillard, Camus, Sartre, Turner or even practitioners who have utilized technology or scenarios for their own work, like blast theory, paul sermon, robert wilson, robert lepage or jeffrey shaw, I can’t seem to find a purpose to creating the work then encompasses the medium, the means and the meaning that I have used and described to have a piece that I wish to present – another subnote that is of interest to me, in no one else. I do not call it a performance, an installations, an anything because of the lack of direction that I feel the form as gone. This all is the cause of my rather confused and incoherent mood on a job that I don’t want to do and yet i love, research that I also love doing but find no fusion in adding together my thoughts/ideas and finding anything other than constructed conversations of any interest and yet I am overwhelmed by continuous conversations about practical matters. For those that I work with and encounter I apologise for this frustrated outburst, I want to spread wings and grasp things that I can not reach – a quote I believe Oscar Wilde said – face challenges that I find difficult to accomplish. Where does this happen – well could be Leicester, it could be anywhere but so often is the case feeling and location are tied together in an experience.
Thank you for listening to my rant, it has been helpful (to me at least) and you may find it interesting to know and understand in the age of the digital information I am not just spouting information.

My Artistic Direction – The philosophy

Does the liminal simulacrum make the absurd feasible? This sounds rather grand but portrays the lack of significant grounded integrity in everyday life and indeed in the perception of performance/art has led me to investigate this dilemma. It has taken me 5 months (possibly longer) to come to the conclusion about the direction of the work. The ideas have been present, and indeed, raging through my head in a personal philosophical problem. The answer? I have no idea.

 

My starting point has been Murphy by Samuel Beckett. Beckett was, and is, considered an existentialist, but Murphy is a Cartesian character – although, this isn’t the direction I wanted to lead. Throughout the novel (Section Six especially) talk of the shift from the actual – the physical world – to the virtual world – the mental one.  “Nothing ever has been, was or would be in the universe outside it but was already present as virtual, or actual, or virtual rising into actual, or actual falling into virtual, in the universe inside it.” (Beckett, S. Murphy, p. 63.).

 

Where does the boundaries exist between the virtual – in Beckett’s case, the mind – and the real? These are the questions that Baurdrillard asked throughout his career into the media culture. So can the novel, no longer, be only about the Descartes philosophy but merely the dualism that his philosophy proposed? This dualism is present in the hyper real, in a post-humanist manner. (Avatars provide a representation of the physical self, online, so it exists in the first order of simulacrum. It has also been well documented avatars have taken the world of fantasies where alter egos are exhibited for the world to see (Second and third orders of simulacrum). Albert Camus stated in his Myth of Sisyphus, “a man defines himself by his make-believe as well as by his sincere impulses” (p.18). The being has placed his attention in a world other than the one he inhabits; a philosophical suicide.) Have we begun to realise the dualism that Descartes talked about in this meditations through mediated technology? The dualism, in this instance, doesn’t necessarily occur towards the axiom of human existence but towards an existential existence of being – being-in-the-world. Does being-in-the-world mean suggest being in a virtual world?

 

Identity online in the past couple of years have exploded out of all proportion that the simulacrum of the physical reality is believed in the same respect as the virtual. Or maybe this should be the other way round; that the virtual is believed in the respect of the physical, however our need to communicate to the world that we exist is every more present. I do not exempt myself from this, only last night I posted the following on the micro-blogging site twitter:

@FrankenBeaumont Adam Bee

Feeling like I’m in Raskolnikov’s apartment (but slightly brighter) with similar prospects. #crime&punishment #dostoyevski

Why do I, among many millions, do this? By the fact you have accessed and read this has determined that you, also are included in this phenomenon and there is no getting away from the fact that we’re influenced by the ‘net community’ and its content. The BBC, New York Times, and Google have websites that promote content that claims to be factual but we have no way of accrediting it as fact. Journalists have been using Internet articles to ‘factualize’ their own article; in this instances facts are build on information, upon information, upon information, in short Chinese whispers. Events are built on the simulacrum of the report of the event, so where are the mind and the real defining towards one another?

 

The cybernetic world, has given ambiguity towards the growth to claims of disguise, to claims of truth. Baudrillard argued this through his orders of simulacrum, whereby the images move further from the real representation until the reference of the real is completely based upon the virtual and virtual references it has presented before. The virtual is compiled from the virtual, is compiled by the virtual. Where does it end?

 

This is what makes the absurd possible. Although Camus thought about what the absurd was prior to the direct infliction of technology and the media on the culture, the relevance has not been lost. The fast pace of contemporary life has meant that we are never leaving the liminal world Victor Turner and Arnold van Gennep discussed, staying within the transitional stage of the rite of passage. There are no fixed points of departure and there isn’t a destination to arrive at (other that what Camus, and I would argue is death) – thus living with the Absurd.

 

We present ourselves as an inauthentic being by living by this Cartesian habitation of the real and the virtual. Not only do we live in the Absurd but also we live as Sisyphus, immortal and no longer able to find purpose. Direction is placed in front of our screens, albeit ambiguously, towards a simulacrum of ambiguous definition of its own structure and purpose. We are absorbed in the cyber-media that we can no longer live without it. I am reminded of it daily with the influx of Smart phones, whereby Facebook, Twitter, Email and ‘tradition’ texts are able to convey events – sometime better than being there (Philip Auslander in Liveness, gives a great account of The Doors watching a performance of themselves on a variety show while performing in another concert)  – in a manner that is utterly dependable.

Philosophy in my world.

I am sat in front of my computer now, re-reading a book that I read not too long ago. The book is by Jean Baudrillard and a certain foot note drew me to the computer. It’s reference was towards the world as an Archimedean perspective of describing the world. The reference that caught my eye: ” …in Hannah Arendt’s words, with the intervention of an Archimedean point outside the world(on the Gailileo and the discovery of mathematical calculation) by which the natural world  is definitively alienated” (Baudrilard, J. 2009 Why hasn’t everything already disappeared?, p.10). It is discovery of the philosopher that attracted my attention; Hannah Arendt. The realm to which Baurdillard is talking, is known to me and is accepted as a fact that is evident in a wider culture – Clive James refers to this as the science of language – but it is Arendt, an illusive thinker that has drawn me to write this.

After a breif ‘google’ of Hannah Arendt, much of my information coming from Stanford’s Encyclopedia, joins a list of thinkers, that for me, as begun to drive the 20th century and my place within it. She studied with Martin Heidegger, whilst studying under Edmond Husserl. A thought pattern of existential philosophy is panning its way into view. My comment is this; am I a true existentialist? do I follow these lines of thought? We make ourselves what we are, but in a century (previous) that has been defined by technology-based conflict, we are no doubt on the defensive to our actions being the definitive source of our meaning for being on earth. The European philosophers that I have mentioned above, and to include Albert Camus in this mix, action is the basis for an absurd meaning. My action creating meaning. I would like to stop here and question something of the phrase that I have just stated…..

Jean Baurdillard has in the reference that I used above stated that we are beginning to use the science of language to define what actions are and consequentially who we are. This follows that we are this defined by the language that we place upon actions; so we’re not arranged by action but the interpretation of said action before the action has taken place. Baudrillard continues to argue the physical has disappeared before it has ever appeared because of the significance we place upon the impact they will have. The footing come prior to the action. This would make sense that we are already interpreting events that are yet to happen, in causing a extinction of substantialism. What is most important is the commentary; what will he say?

What Baudrillard isn’t saying, is the world is dying, reality in a solidified manner remains, while our focus of the world is upon the virtual realm, where nothing can dye. My attention while I am writing you this, is firmly towards the computer screen, I even have a second one plugged in. My concentration has left my books, my desk, the fan that is jeering in the background (only now do I pay attention to it) and is listening to the music that I have playing, waiting for the alert that comes when my friend sends a message. I am looking for symbols that have no more substance than a thought in my brain – in fact if we understand thoughts as chemical reactions, firing in one’s head, it has even less substance.

Fundamentally Baudrillard is right. Even writing this blog, disregarding the fact it is online, I am using a code, a set of symbols that I have internalized as the means of communicating to another, but what relevance does it have to anything. I like Clive Jame’s use of the phrase ‘the science of language’ because it simultaneously describes itself and contradicts itself. It is science is as far as well all understand that a tree is a tree and it is factually understood. The name by which we call things helps us to categories and maintain a degree of reflection on the world, however these ‘names’ are chosen without a regard for much thought. Why are there different languages, if it is a science? The process of eating has only one considered method, why interpretation of the nihilistic consciousness considered to have this same science? What makes a tree, something that grows outside, with brown colours growing up the middle, with a hard quite bumpy texture to it and from this texture, much softer saplings of green shot from it. Why isn’t it something that I am sitting in front off, while writing this blog.

In this rather extended thought – of 3 pages of reading this evening – the action is pointless and the meaning is even more pointless. In conclusion the world is absurd. Today, action created comes through a nihilism of substance within a nihilism; in order words we are focused on the virtual, where no action is all the action you need to experience the world. To finish off I will quote Clive James again: “we can be world citizens without leaving home. If that seems too static we can travel without leaving home” (Clive James, 2007 Cultural Amnesia).

New Year

It is the new year – well 2nd january to be precise – and we are all busy making new years resolutions. Why? A new start a new calander year where we state that it is no longer the year 2009 but is 2010 and that should somehow make some kind of difference. One minute is 2009 and the end of a year and as soon as the clock hits 12 and bang time for a new start. The new start that is the decision that is determined by the changing of a metaphysical significance of no more importance than the one that I am in at the moment that is writing this blog now. If one could tell me the difference then that would be great because quite frankly the cultural semoetics of the western culture and anyother culture is rather non sensical to me. I am all for believe systems and they are for one to gain reassurance for personal gain but the idea of an inforced Christmas and new year celebration are now so bogged down in western commercialism that have become more of a simulacrum.

I have recently written a article that explores the notion of time in performance. The moment of performance is somehow sacrid to practitioners and audience members engaged in a particular performance. Performances can then be immortalised in a period of history that is no different to the now that we know. Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet is considered an important in the interpretation of Shakespears text and I’m sure that David Tennant’s version will have the same verlosity in years to come but the passage of time to be able to say, ‘I was there’ is something that can only be significant to one’s self being there. How is Olivier’s performance significant to me? I didn’t see it, nor did I see Tennant’s interpretation therefore what grounding can I say that these were significant interpretations? I can only through the ‘trust’ that I place in cultural knowledge – where the weight is stacked up against me if I disagree with it.

So to return to the orginal thread of the blog being why is New Year the time to make resolutions? Is it an idea of newness? the beginning of new growth in an ‘evolutionary’ period (i.e. the period we call spring. I struggled for an appropiate word for my meaning of the time of new growth in nature.)? Is this what we mean by the new year? I kind of like it but it does not give reason for the 1st Janaury being that ‘new day’ to which we place this significance of change. Spring as we understand it happens in what we call it – a birth – happen towards the end of Febuary and indeed closer to the actual birth of Christ in chronological terms. It could be said that the 1st January is nothing more than a semeotic for the functions of Western structure of duration and time; the new years resolutions is only a simulacrum for a seasonal change of growth and adjustment.

Theatre as a simulacrum

This is a follow up to my previous blog, which is exploring the notion of the absurdities of being (bad faith).  This has been heavily weighing on my mind since and will be for some time to come. Richard Schechner using anthropology and theatrical direction, hand in hand, which coincides with my prose of this afternoon’s blog. When are actors acting, does this in any way affect their integrity of being? An interesting question to which I have much to say from a personal and quite irrational perspective. Last week I was working on a production of ‘The Visit‘ (Friedrich Dürrenmatt) by second year undergraduate students at Coventry University. The production itself is not of primary concern but offers a comparison of action and being of character.

This production is performed through German expressionism, whereby actions have been be heightened and exaggerated. Actions that have been amplified are transferred to that of action amplified through action of the everyday.  The white painted faces that were utilized in the aesthetic were ‘made up’ to produce the cloned affect of the being or acting in Bad Faith. The face of fiction produced in building of a character that an actor undertakes can be said to draw upon the act their part in the scripted to play The stock characters, however, have reference from the being of the performers themselves. No other reference is possible because being-in-the-world (i.e. existing) can only be accessible from the perspective of ones own Dasien. The suspension of the being for that of the fictional part has to through into question the integrity of the existent itself.

That is enough with the philosophical babble for a moment so I can provide an example to this point of view that I have. I view the actions of the students performing the text through which the character presented within the constraints a black box setting of a college theatre. This is a trend that is dominant within student-based work. Why in the theatre space that is not anything other the convenience? The purpose is just that, convenience rather than a thought to the semiotic of the text – a trend that solidified a popular view towards theatre and performance taking place in the architecture of the ‘theatre’ space; it must be said that this stereotype is changing.  Why should be perform ‘theatre’ in the space that we call theatres? Logic dictates that this defines the form; theatre is theatre because it happens in theatre but we have already stated, Richard Schechner and director Richard Foreman have challenged this form (their forms incidentally performed in theatre) through the use of open rehearsal to create a ‘natural’ form and forging a link between theatrical practice and anthropology.

Taking the form, theatrical practice as an example of Bad Faith in the construction of the character, the fictional text of the playwright has a direct relationship to that of being and character. Actions created such as ‘a girl being approached by a man for the first time’ (one of Sartre’s examples from Being and Nothingness) one is retaining a factual existence, of existing in the body while hesitating from a decision whereby responsibility for transcendence of said action. What responsibility did the performers take for their actions of creating theatre in a theatre to become the form, theatre? The form was retained in the metaphysical certainty in the notion of the simulacrum. In other words because this is believed to be theatre they perform it in a theatre; the form is determined by the architecture rather than its ontology – to which place is only a part.

Where does this leave theatre and character (in theatre)? Where does it leave the integrity of the actor to his or her own being? These, I think, need to be explored independently in greater depth. One thing can be sure that theatre’s existence is not created by our responsibility to the form but by an acceptance of a simulacrum to the concept of the form.

The Absurdity of Being

Ok, my first blog since starting up this site again. I want to investigate the significance of existence, you may be thinking this is a large topic to cover in what (I hope) a short piece of writing. In it’s own existence as a piece of writing it will have an aesthetic, a meaning that we draw from it but what is the purpose of this message and from that the purpose of this purpose. In other words why bother?
Sartre calls this Bad Faith. It is the expectations that are externally placed upon us that we feel the need to fulfill. Why do we feel this need? We are told that we are free in what we do but how can we be free when we meet the condition that are already placed upon us? This is what I like to call the ‘absurdities of being’. At this point it might be wise to draw on an example – why: to draw meaning from what i’m saying, why: I don’t know all I can through here is to offer a cultural and experential persective of my being. The example I’m drawing upon is the picture of this ‘tree’, this is in fact one that Sartre draws upon in the introduction to his novel, Nausea.

Why is this thing, or object, called the four letter word ‘t-r-e-e’. The word ‘tree’ is nothing more than a frabrication in the English language placing signifance upon this object. Can we therefore, call is something other than what it is? The German’s use the word ‘baun’ for the aesthetic of such an object. The English and the Germans can be said to have different codes for their respective cultures. The written word is an instruction for ways of thinking.

This is applicable to action. I go to an interview, what happens – I dress in a suit, wear sensible shoes, I put on my best behaviour; I want to impress. What are these for? Why is it necessary to being to pander to the desires of a culture? The ambiguity of this inhibits us to all ‘behave’ other than that to what is determined as acceptable. What can we determine the purpose of specific action is? Conformity to the ‘interview process’ is something that is not being yourself, but that of a socially determined ‘character’ with the purpose for getting that employment. This is a valid reason for posing as such-and-such.

However, investigating further the character’s integrity. This character is absurd, it is a character constructed not from experience and understanding of actions but socially determined expereince that are related to a Western simulacrum of this conduct. We could place any number of actions to this notion. The conformity of such a character becomes that of a nulism that comports itself toward an existence of nothingness. The point of one’s actions become ontologically futile.

The western bourgeois culture is proclaimed to be a free culture but how can this be the case when one is responsible to act in this particular way. The suggestion that this scenario contains freedom, rejects any form of responsiblity for action bestowed upon from the being, and therefore revolving towards passive agressive behaviour, thrust away from an authentic being.

This example of interview is nothing more than an example of the direction of my thought. I have had an interview recently and these thoughts of ‘proper’ conduct has arising in my thinking about the actions that I present towards certain people, to hopefully become sucessful with this process. I am yet to find out but I am sure that I will let you know the result as soon as I do. The act of restriction within the confinment of this conduct has in fact constricted a full exposure of the actions I feel comfortable with. This is the lack of freedom that we are faced with that becomes the absurdity of being.