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Presents//presence: Telematics, performance and embodiment

journal contribution
posted on 2014-05-01, 00:00 authored by Rea DennisRea Dennis, M Miranda
Of giving and receiving // Of giving and taking // Of exchanges
Reciprocity // Mutuality // Expectations

A performance of liveness in which the presence of the performer is interrogated.

Drawing on Dan Graham's (1974) Two Consciousness Project, Presents//Presence plays on Object = Space relationships. Engaging with contemporary notions of thinking and consciousness, the performance plays with time - the here and now, the passage of time, time zones, and timing.

Lovers. An anniversary. Fine Dining. Distance. Skype.

Presents disrupt subject positions of audience, of performer; something happens while we are waiting for something else to happen. Through the use portable computers and hand-held (smart) devices for the capture and 'projection' of action in real time, the exploration sets out to engage with notions live and remote, absence and presence, the play of embodied transmission and live performance and the perception of absence.

Through a simulation of the simultaneous presences (performances) of performers Magda Miranda and Rea Dennis, Presents//Presence is a performative event that (re) activates live/d moments in the lives of the artists. Such presence characterizes computer time – “a permanent present, an unbounded, timeless intensity” (Virilio in Dixon 90). Such presence could also be said to characterize the intra-subjective experience of intimacy. The piece draws on the languages of live theatre, elements of autobiographical performance, inter- and intra-subjective perception, and an understanding of time as a spatial metaphor. This paper reports on the performance event Presents//Presence. In it, we outline the narrative and structural anchors that frame the piece and discuss some of the theoretical threads informing the research. The paper is accompanied by a recording of the performance that was delivered to a live audience at University of South Wales, Cardiff during the Remote Encounters conference in April 2013.


History

Journal

Liminalities: a journal of performance studies

Volume

10

Pagination

1-1

Location

Tampa, Florida

ISSN

1557-2935

Language

eng

Notes

Issue 10.1 is a special issue, compiled from the outcomes of international conference: Remote Encounters: Connecting Bodies, Collapsing Spaces and Temporal Ubiquity in Networked Performance, held from 11 - 12 Apr. 2013

Publication classification

C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2014, University of South Florida

Issue

1

Publisher

University of South Florida