“To survive out there” – T.P.

*Theater ecology* – – not ecology of theater, or theatrical ecology, but theater ecology.

The two terms side by side – – not desiring to exceed beyond the “horizon” of either of the terms – – and so, a gap between them appears. Theater ecology calls forth an intermediate bridge.

Within theater ecology, the gesture is a virus. A jet, launched by a body, something with heat, a projectile packed with affect, a force. Not representative, but catalyzing. Not signifying, but meaning that means because it moves.

Suggestion shares the same Latin root as gesture : gerere, which means to bear or carry, bring forth, support. I’ve been infected by a line from an Anne Carson poem that goes “I want to be unbearable”. I can’t get rid of it, it’s hooked itself into me and copied itself into my system. It resurfaces every now and again – attaches itself by thin connective threads, shot out like sticky spider’s web, onto slight compatibilities or similarities. Like in this case: a perfect example of Carson’s phrase working its way into the world, spreading via me.

To suggest means to bear from below. Nico Baumbach writes in his 2019 Cinema/Politics/Philosophy,

“[s]uggestively, we might add that suggestion is a pre-psychoanalytic method of psychotherapy that works at a level more immanent to the unconscious than the logos-directed talking cure and it is a word that is often used when describing the potentially dangerous effects of cinema. Cinema as gesture is a dangerous art of the unconscious for its capacity both to control subjectivity but also to interrupt the logic that Deleuze called control” (2019, 130).

Carl Lavery sees this on the terrain of theater ecology, by way of Artaud.

The word is a cultural sign. The Gesture = biosemiotic. A cohort of interactive systems, by way of overlappings, horizontal links, and vertical stacks, organize the extent of the biosemiotics sign within an always dynamic and complex realm. The highest laws of nature ultimately account for a counterbalance to every gesture made. The virus is both creative and threatening, a pharmacological force that exposes both life and death, by its twofold potential as poison and cure. Infected by the virus that is the force that is the gesture, people become other than who they thought. The plague becomes a theatrical event, which could be controlled by exposing the Populus to antibodies extracted from the very source of the disease. The right dosage is the thing that protects you. The only response to disease is to affirm the necessity of theater.

This may be seen metaphorically, fittingly so, as the metaphor, Lavery too recognized, as a process of infection. ‘A is like B, but not really’, codes the metaphor. Properties of B are then injected into A, by which A is transformed into ‘A under the influence of B’. Some metaphor theorists like Max Black would assert that the transference by which A comes to bear B, not only transforms A, but reciprocally as well B. Perhaps understood by the way a virus mutates in order to expand its smart reach.

Theater heals because the plague that it transmits is allowed to propagate on its own terms, opening the infected individual up to disturbing containment. Toxicity can never be avoided. Isolation leads to establishing the discriminatory dichotomy between the self and the xeno. Immunity rather needs to be performed perpetually. For Artaud, immunity is not predicated on the lack of being infected. Rather, in line with for instance Lynn Margulis’ work, the practice of immunity goes by way of exposure to varied life. The environment is a hostile zone. Protection does not go by way of isolation or containment, but I would say by moderation; the ability to metabolize toxicity. Moderation as the tactics of always playing, and thereby gaining protection under the counterbalancing laws of nature. But, where is nature, at what scale does it operate, and in the meantime, how to avoid getting pulled in by the loose ends of spirals (which impede moderation)?

Deleuze and Guattari’s sorcerers cope by being vessels, letting the toxicity pass, as there is no identity to stick to. Mark Fisher in White magic channels voices to suggest the tactics of fleeing:

“Sarkon: What you would call white magic is a program of confinement: it operates by marking boundaries, setting limits, stopping things from happening (and also, making things happen; it has a natural affinity with a certain Creationism). The other kind of magic is a tactics of fleeing, of communicability and propagation. Instead of asking, how do we keep things out? it asks, how can we take flight?

Confinement magic is fundamentally concerned with protection, but it is not necessarily an art of caution. And if flee magic is given to risk, it is not prone to recklessness. To survive out there is very … exacting” (n.d.).

One of the stages this is performed on is that of the body: where interior and exterior meet as a contact zone. (Here Lavery pointed us to Elizabeth Grosz’ concept of the Incorporeal.) Bodies to get beyond bodies; to get to bodies and thought. Ideas are powerhouses, like viruses. The gesture that is a virus bridges the human and non-human. The artistic gesture, Lavery quoted Cady Noland, creates short pregnant intervals between what a body is and what it is not. The gesture does not negate subjectivity, but the intermediate barrier. Theater and ecology thus are not bridged metaphorically, but have simply become one another.

References

• Baumbach, Nico. 2019. Cinema, Politics, Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Fisher, Mark.n.d. “White Magic”. Accessed February 5, 2020. http://www.critcrim.org/redfeather/journal-pomocrim/vol-6-virtual/whitemagic.htm
• Lavery, Carl. “Ecologising Theatricality: Theatre and the Earth.” Transmission in Motion Seminar, University of Utrecht, Utrecht, 22 January 2019.