Bergson and Durational Performance

James Layton

Description

Humans have always marked time, whether by using the earth's natural rhythms or with the clock. Unlike pre- industrial people, living in an age of social acceleration is dominated by clock-time and network time, presenting many more options than can possibly be achieved in a human lifespan.

This book explores the possibility of an alternative experience of time, one that is closer to the pure duration described by philosopher Henri Bergson. The discussions in this book contribute to contemporary performance analysis, philosophy and Bergson studies as well as exploring aspects of immersive and participatory performance, walking practices, ritual and online performance.

Using durational performances as case studies, the author demonstrates new insights into Bergson’s philosophy alongside key theorists in psychology and anthropology. Through a series of performance analyses, Bergson's philosophy of duration is coupled with ideas from Maslow, Csikszentmihalyi and Victor Turner to speculate on the possibilities available in challenging an experience of the world in which time is short, but the possibility of experience is abundant.

The main audience is an academic and student market. Undergraduate and postgraduate students of theatre studies, performance and the performing arts, doctoral researchers, researchers interested in time and performance, the relationship between performance and philosophy, those with an interest in philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and psychology will all find much of interest. 

Potential wider readership in those who are interested in the phenomenon of social acceleration, in performance philosophy as well in Bergson’s philosophy.

List of Figures

Prologue: 15 April 1912

Introduction



PART ONE 

1. Bergson, Pure Memory and Pure Duration

2. Bergson and Durational Performance: Duration, Immersion, Participation, Ritual

3. Durational Performance in a Socially Accelerated Culture: Clock-Time + Network Time = No Time

4. Durational Performance as a Challenge to Smooth Consumption

PART TWO 

5. Peak Time: Bergson and Maslow

6. Flow Time: Bergson and Csikszentmihalyi

7. Time Together: Bergson and Turner

8. Hotel Medea: Memory, Duration and Peak-Experience in an Accelerated Culture

9. All These Are the Days My Friends: Duration and Flow in Einstein on the Beach

10. Walking, Communitas, Ritual and Transformation

11. Marking, Making, Remarking, Remaking Time: Bergson and the Future of Durational Performance



Epilogue: A Manifesto for Durational Performance

Postscript: Arriving at the Crack of Dawn for a Plagueground Game Show

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Theater
• Performing Arts
• PHILOSOPHY
• Theatre
• Performance art
• General officer
• Anthropology
• Art
• General
• Performance
• Henri Bergson

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 22 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789386240
• Langue: English

Extrait

Bergson and Durational Performance
Bergson and Durational Performance
(Re)Ma(r)king Time
James Layton
First published in the UK in 2022 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2022 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2022 Intellect Ltd
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To Beth and Bonnie
Contents
List of Figures
Prologue: 15 April 1912
Introduction
PART ONE
1. Bergson, Pure Memory and Pure Duration
2. Bergson and Durational Performance: Duration, Immersion, Participation, Ritual
3. Durational Performance in a Socially Accelerated Culture: Clock-Time + Network Time = No Time
4. Durational Performance as a Challenge to Smooth Consumption
PART TWO
5. Peak Time: Bergson and Maslow
6. Flow Time: Bergson and Csikszentmihalyi
7. Time Together: Bergson and Turner
8. Hotel Medea: Memory, Duration and Peak-Experience in an Accelerated Culture
9. All These Are the Days My Friends: Duration and Flow in Einstein on the Beach
10. Walking, Communitas, Ritual and Transformation
11. Marking, Making, Remarking, Remaking Time: Bergson and the Future of Durational Performance
Epilogue:A Manifesto for Durational Performance
Postscript: Arriving at the Crack of Dawn for a Plagueground Game Show
Bibliography
Index
Figures Figure 1.1 Bergson's diagrammatic representation of perception. 6Adapted from Bergson (1910: 128). Figure 1.2 The cycle of perception and memory. Figure 1.3 Bergson's cone of memory. Adapted from Bergson (1910: 211).7 Figure 5.1 Characteristics of B- and D-Cognitions. Adapted from Maslow (1971: 249–53). Figure 7.1 Liminal and liminoid. From Turner (1982: 53–55). Figure 8.1 Pure memory, memory-image and perception. Adapted fromBergson (1910: 170). Figure 8.2 Goertzel's (2019) representation of helical time. Adapted fromoriginal image. Figure 9.1 Maya Deren (dir.), in Meshes of the Afternoon , 1943,United States. (Copyright public domain.) Figure 9.2 Representation of the model of interaction in aesthetic experience.Adapted from Csikszentmihalyi and Robinson (1990: 134). Figure 10.1 Efficacy/entertainment braid. Adapted from Schechner (2002: 120).
Prologue: 15 April 1912
Around the time that Bergson's fame reached its peak (his 1913 lecture in New York caused a traffic jam on Broadway), a monumental event took place that was to change the way in which time is viewed; it was to be the beginning of global time, making the world more unified and synchronized as the pace of economic and technological advances accelerated. An example of this global time appeared on 15 April 1912, when RMS Titanic, a ship that took three years to build, sank in just under three hours. The time that it took for the news of this tragedy to reach across the world marked the start of global time, as the telegraph carried bulletins almost instantaneously. It was only 32 years earlier in 1880, that Greenwich Mean Time was adopted as the accepted meridian (despite its introduction in 1675), yet it was the loss of the Titanic, a vessel trying to beat its own schedule, which heralded the start of an instant and accelerated culture. Since that moment the pace of life in travel, communication and the expectations these innovations bring have increasingly accelerated and, whilst we can certainly waste time, the marking of time is difficult to escape from.
March 2020: Lockdown = Slowdown
In the process of writing these words in March 2020, the world is being forced to slowdown. The effects of COVID-19 have required many of the world's governments to place countries in lockdown. In the UK - and more specifically in Newcastle upon Tyne from where I am writing this - the streets are almost completely absent of people. Currently, it is possible (and I have done this) to run along city centre roads in the knowledge that I am safe from traffic. As I run, I pass through traffic lights that symbolize a despairing social mechanism functioning in a temporary void that was only recently full of life (Lefebvre 2004 : 30). The regular sequence of red, amber and green of the lights continues to keep time until we need it again.
At home, which now serves as a workspace, nursery and venue for most leisure activities, time has taken on a strange quality. The demarcation of work time and family time is blurred as tasks are no longer completed in a linear, compartmentalized way. No longer is it possible to dedicate a clear block of time to work without frequent punctuation of playing in the garden, making lunch for a one-year-old and generally ensuring that the daycare provided by nursery is now the remit of parental responsibility. Instead, work continues - albeit in a fragmented way - into the evening and early morning, snatching moments to get things done.
This apparently haphazard way of life, however, has its upside. Apart from the genuine pleasure of being able to spend more time at home and to walk downstairs to the office , the effects of being under lockdown are of slowing down and of a kind of social deceleration. Even though the slipping slope of a socially accelerated culture is still very much present, the incline seems to be less steep. Perhaps a more natural way of living has emerged from human attempts to control the COVID-19 pandemic. Lately, I have seen more birds in the garden and in the streets, as if they are reclaiming what was lost to them as people, machines and their schedules came to dominate. As nature reclaims its environment, humans may begin to reclaim a lost sense of time passing, one that is a step closer to Bergsonian duration.
Networked time, in which we are always present and always online is certainly helping us all stay in touch, whether that is for work or for seeing family and friends. There has, however, been a loosening of the grip of the network, of emancipation from the shackles of always being now . The time of the clock, although still dictating activities such as shopping for groceries has become less important to everyday life. In the queue to the supermarket, we stand zombie-like socially distanced and, in doing so, we are slowing down. The train does not need to be caught, rush hour on the roads is absent and - like the pre-modern cottage dweller - we work until the work is done, not until the clock tells us to stop. We are, in short, much more attuned to our innate rhythms as humans. The world of social acceleration still exists, and in due course we will return to the slipping slope in full intensity, increasing the incline that little bit more as if to make up for the time spent outside of clock-time.
Lockdown equals slowdown in a similar way that this book suggests performance lasting beyond smooth consumption can act as a portal for experiencing Bergsonian duration. Whether it is a kind of enforced slowing down, as in the current pandemic or a conscious choice to slip through the portal of durational performance, the opportunity to decelerate is welcome.
Introduction
In the foreword to Understanding Bergson, Understanding Modernism (2014), Suzanne Guerlac writes:

As the speed of communication across physical and cultural distances approaches real time, and the speed of calculating financial data accelerates beyond the capacity of markets to absorb the interventions based on these calculations, time has never been more central to our concerns.
(viii)
A concern with time is central to the argument presented in this book. Beginning with a personal fascination about the nature of time, I was led to wonder what happens when performance exceeds usual expectations of duration. What follows therefore is an exploration of how our lives are governed by time and the potential for an alternative - pure duration - accessible through performance lasting beyond what is usually easily consumed.
Henri Bergson, who was a widely celebrated philosopher in the early twentieth century suggests that clock-time is not real and that, instead, a real or pure duration is a more accurate reflection of the way in which we (as humans) experience the flow of reality. For Bergson, time is a spatialized concept that is represented in number only whereas duration is that which excludes all juxtaposition, reciprocal externality, and extension (Bergson 1999 : 26). In other words, duration is measurable only qualitatively. In an age of social acceleration, where we are presented with so many options that we cannot possibly achieve them in the time available, we are compelled to do more in less time. It is from this premise that this book develops its central argument: because we feel pressed to do more in less time, the quality of experience is as compressed as an experience itself. Therefore, the potential for a satisfactory experience of life is diminished.
For the first time, Bergson's philosophy of duration is brought together with concepts by Abraham Maslow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Victor Turner in an attempt to illuminate Bergson's thinking in respect of self-actualization, flow and communitas. Bergson's writings on duration have an almost mystical quality that make them, not so much difficult to follow, but rather enigmatic in tone.