'presence is something that I think is (…) always in conversation with the formal pattern. The formal pattern will tend to allow the performer to get lulled into feeling safe (…) the constant battle for me as a director is to find ways that an actor can be always present, always alive, always thinking this is the first and last moment that she’s there - doing this thing – ' (LeCompte in Kaye 1996: 257-8)

MIKE PEARSON AND MICHAEL SHANKS

'Under scrutiny, I can ensure a continuum of presence, the result of a personal strategy which holds me in the here-and-now and which allows my expressive functioning to be diverse and discontinuous. This is best revealed at thresholds – in the micro-second of engagement, of assembling resources, of the adoption of decorums and demeanours of concentration and application, in ´A deep breath and here I go´- or in moments of accident and injury when, of course, it disappears. I have significance in repose, though I need never acknowledge that I am being watched or modify my behaviour accordingly. (…) My ability to achieve such articulation and the nature and quality of the resulting action may be mediated – limited or enhances – by spatial restriction; by physical restraint; by the climate; by the surface – its texture, its hardness; by topography. There may be a (dramatic) tension between what I am attempting and what I manage to accomplish, between the strategic imperatives of plot and scenario and my tactical engagement. I am not just a neutral vessel of signification: I am experiencing as well as representing.´(Pearson and Shanks, 2001: 16)

JOSEPH CHAIKIN

‘(Presence is) a quality that makes you feel as though you’re standing right next to the actor, no matter where you’re sitting in the theater. (…) Schall’s performance reflects the contradictions and levels which I have admired – contradictions with reference to the actor playing the character – the character that he isn’t but which is contained in him. These levels weave in and out and are sometimes present in combination. (…) It’s his balancing act of abandonment and control, of intelligence and innocence, which makes his performance remarkable. (…) This question of tension is fundamental. I know that the opportunity of being present with a given audience is only once at a time, and I want to be there, available to the occasion. I feel myself straining and pushing when it’s not intended. I’m experiencing now the imbalance of me and what I do. (…) (Chaikin, 1991: 20ff)

NICK KAYE ON VITO ACCONCI

Developing an interest "in setting myself up as a point that absorbs a certain amount of time or space that belongs to another person" (Nemser 1971: 21), Acconci's steps into live performance offered structured ‘meetings’ with the viewer through conditions that countered his apparent availability. In the untitled project for Pier 17 (1971) Acconci invited his audience to individual meetings, announcing through the gallery that:

"From March 27 to April 24, 1971, 1am each night, I will be at Pier 17, an abandoned pier at West Street and Park Place, New York; I will be alone, and will wait at the far end of the pier for one hour.

To anyone coming to meet me, I will attempt to reveal something I would normally keep concealed: censurable occurrences and habits, fears, jealousies – something that has not been exposed before and that would be disturbing for me to make public." (Acconci 1971)

In Claim (1971), he occupied the foot of a stairwell within a two-level space for three hours, while a closed-circuit mediation of his activity took the place of the text. Here:

"At street level, there’s a video monitor next to the door leading downstairs to the basement; the monitor functions as an announcement, a warning (…) In the basement I’m seated on a chair at the foot of the stairs; I’m blindfolded, I have with me two lead pipes and a crowbar; I’m talking continuously, talking aloud, talking to myself: ‘…I’m alone here in the basement…I want to stay alone here in the basement…I don’t want anybody to be here in the basement with me…I’ll stop anybody from coming down here to the basement…" (Acconci in Kirshner 1980: 16)

In these performances, Acconci announces and acts out a defence of ‘his space,’ amplifying the visitor’s experience of "the state of being before, in front of" (Onions 1973) and so a sense of presence defined in "the place or space in front of a person, or which immediately surrounds him" (Onions 1973). On these occasions, Acconci recalled, "(it) seemed like what I was getting at were almost ways to say hello to a viewer, but make that 'hello' as difficult as possible" (Acconci in Kunz 1978). In the project for Pier 17, then, the "viewer comes into (…) this warehouse pier at – at the door near the street, but they don’t see what – they can’t really see what’s around, so they’re groping their way along this pier in order to get to me. It’s like this kind of, you know, perilous journey" (Acconci in White 1979: 20). In Claim, Acconci reports, "viewer is forced to come toward me (…) it had this notion of 'I’m-this-focal-point' that viewer is sort of forced to be confronted with" (Acconci in White 1979: 20). Here, Acconci works to amplify his presence and authority, asserting a direct yet paradoxical claim to the privileged space of the unique art object, whose ‘aura’ is constituted in its unavailability, "a sense of distance, no matter how close an object may be" (Pearson and Shanks 2001: 95). Here, too, Acconci mimics the object’s garnering of significance, where "(a)ura refers to the sense of associations and evocations that cluster around an object, correspondences and interrelations engendered by an object" (Pearson and Shanks 2001: 95). In this development, Acconci recalled, "the I and you, the viewer - were never really on equal ground (…) it was always announced, I was always the artist, it was very much – 'I' - 'I-as-art-star' meet you, the viewer" (Acconci in White 1979: 19). As a result, and as the art object’s claim to space, authority, and exclusivity is transposed by Acconci into the performance of public and personal transactions, so he asserts the exclusivity of the ‘art space’ through these found sites, returning, paradoxically, to the gallery:

"Once I set up a point - once I set myself up as the point - at one end of a space, the space around fades away: the space, whatever its shape, narrows into a channel between ‘you’ and ‘me’ (…) the space is only there to advance the plot." (Acconci 2001a: 359)

In developing this modulation of ‘presence,’ Acconci’s subsequent gallery performance, Seedbed of 1972, turned toward the viewer as the scheme for action in a radical reoccupation of the gallery space. Here, Acconci recalled, in approaching space ‘as a meeting place, a place to start a relationship’ (Acconci 1979: 34):

"I wanted myself as a presence that would exist during the viewer’s presence, that would be more than one point – I wanted myself to be a part of the space in which the viewer was." (Acconci in Bear 1982: 234)

(Kaye 2007: 101-3)

References