I think the reason that embodiment has become central in my work, there's maybe numerous sort of reasons for that centrality. One of which is this sort of grounding understanding I had through encounters with political movements, political crisis, in my own early formation as a political person. A grounding understanding of, in a way, what I think of as a kind of singularity or the importance of singularity. And in that I distinguish something that I think of as a kind of singular encounter, an encounter that happens at a particular time in a particular place through or to a particular subject. Who does have a body, and that body and the sort of markers of that body who end up becoming, significant, or having a particular balance. In terms of the conditions that we exist inside of dependent [INAUDIBLE] sort of constitution of that physical body. And I distinguish between singularity and particularity, or something that I think of as relevant to this. So in a way I think for me to come to an understanding of a kind of singular encounter was also helpful for me to navigate between the universal. Which I found maybe for obvious reasons or maybe now highly problematic but also it's equally troubling reduction to the particular. And that may have to do with coming of age as a political person in the early 90's. Which was significant both in terms of a direct encounter with the AIDS crisis and movement to New York in 91. A direct encounter with a political sort of urgency that lived itself and actually but the crisis was both born in individual bodies, and also in kind of collective bodies. And the response to the crisis was both sort of carried through individual bodies and collective bodies. But also, I think that was formed by a kind of encounter with feminism. And in a way with feminism via a delay, like if I encounter in essence I encountered feminism in the late 80s, early 90s in college. But it was no less sort of powerful for the feeling that somebody else in the 70s or somebody else contribute in another time in another place. >> Yup and something that's really interesting about this personal encounter is that it does, especially as a starting point for projects or ideas or actions. It does capture both the idea of the body of the person, the individual, but also the social nature of it, right? So as we've produced these products over the years, what have you seen as the evolving relationship. The control relationship, between what we call performance art and what many people call these days social engaged art or relational aesthetics. You know these various terms that people use to talk about work that the social relation between people is a part of the medium. >> Well it's interesting because I think one of the things that those two categories of practices share is a kind of struggle in their varying nomination, in naming them. So I think something I became very aware of when I started teaching performance was that performance, or performance art were very sort of limited. Had a limiting capacity to hold all of the chaos of these very sort of heterogenous practices. Similarly I think what you kind of go through enumerating several mediums for what people have gathered as through the main social practice has a similar kind of conflict or confirmation. And I only bring that up lots of lingering kind of beta or abstract relationship, but I think that very struggle is important. And it's important as an artist and also important as a teacher and also important as a student to understand as we try to engage or graple with a set of practices. We are also having to grapple, and I think necessarily be resistant to in the attempt to kind of contain both practices. And contain them in some ways, I think the most sort of dangerous aspect of containment is to keep them separate from each other. So to keep some alike performance separated from what we now call social practice. So I think in some ways there from that family also moment I think both fields hold these incredibly heterogeneous practices. That do use forms of relations, relationships as a kind of central form and content. It becomes both very often form in content of the work wherein the political relation, social relation, the psychic relation is exactly the thing that is trying to be worked at in a project. But that it is also the form through which something might transpire. In a kind of biographical sense I started doing performance in a kind of theatrical setting but in a theatrical setting that was downtown dance theater performance in New York. And so it was very kind of experimental and broad and kind of chaotic set of works and artists. And so in a way I was also always rubbing up against the form. As I shifted out of a kind of theatrical venues or space venues and more towards thinking about event based, the form of an event and what does an event allow? One of the things that became very clear to me is that performance allows for precisely the embodiment of a number of different, sort of conditions, or the reembodiment of a set of conditions. So, where I, myself, have been attracted to particular speed jocks that have transpired at a different political moment, or a different historic moment. Than the one I live inside of it, what we live inside of, performance becomes a way to readdress that. To readdress an audience, to readdress a set of viewers, to readdress a set of listeners. That it is actually, precisely its ability to embody that has been interesting and in some ways I think that means that very often both in what we think of as performance practices. Or what we think of as works of social practice, there is a kind of a repetition of something that is being held outside of where it normally sits. But being kind of reproduced or reimbodied outside of the context in which it typically exists, in order for other questions to be asked. There's been something extremely consistent in my practice, around a kind of almost like a connecting onto, in a foundational way, I can say that the operation of anachronism. I think that anachronism, like a mistake in time or a mistake in chronology but I get it. Something from another time and place, either the future or the past truly could show up in a given temporal moment. I think what I find, so if I had to characterize it for this, I mean I think there are many ways I've articulated these operations, the operations of my work. And each time, I tried to be very specific, I almost never do what I would classically call the enactment. But each time I tried to be very specific about the operation of return. Are we speaking, as distinct from the enactment which generally tries to recooperate the past. For me, it's always actually very important to allow open the gap. That the fissure, the wall, the kind of that is the inability for a past moment to exist in a present moment seamlessly. So that the displacement is also that, what I found interesting about anachronism is that you can think that the displacement is not camouflaged. It's actually quite obvious and it sticks out in that sense, and it was the very sticking out. I guess that has become an interesting way for me to engage a kind of set of questions about the presence of that past in a present moment already. So by that, I mean, generally I think of any given present moment as full of these multiple temperalities. But that's not sort of a bowl, that's not a kind of bowl of soup where all time exisits at all moments. That there's very specific past moments that exists right now for us, or during a specific presidential election. A very specific past moments that come up precisely because a kind of political condition has not been resolved, but time has continued on. So, political condition or political debate or political crisis or political confrontation remains as this kind of open wound or gaping. But for me still has to be in paid because it's still offered. In terms of collaboration in general, it's been a core commitment inside of my work and also a commitment. I think from a place of just living the sort of collectivity that I feel like we are all embedded inside of. So I'm embedded inside a number of different collective sort of identifications, some of which I will say yes to, and some of which I will sort of disidentify with and say no to. And those are always very sort of present, I think in my work but also the way that I go about life. So to engage with, sort of do work collectively has just been a kind of a part of living as an artist. A part of working as an artist, a part of discussing as an artist, a part of being an artist. The collaborations take multiple forms and with Pablo it was really an interesting, because I asked Pablo to essentially write a text for me in Spanish. Which is a language that I don't speak well enough to understand it. And with the intention that I would learn that text and speak it in front of a set of Spanish speakers who could therefore comprehend. So that there was a speaker, there was a sort of writer, an author, a speaker who was incompetent and then a set of listeners who were competent. And so in essence, the author and the listeners are speaking through the body of this incompetent speaker. And it was [LAUGH] one of the sort of most interesting collaborations. But a form I really like, where two people are bringing kind of interests and urgencies to the table but running parallel. Like, they aren't necessarily melding or forming to become a whole. But they are sort of existing as these, maybe things that are slightly displaced from each other. And Pablo, I think, could work with that and, in some ways. Chose a text, that both work with mice, sort of outside or just to the listeners, but also to my, sort of dislocation from myself, as well. So, there was something interesting and potentially risky about that situation, where you ask someone to write a text that you will then speak in front of a set of people who take you at your word. There's a place of vulnerabiltiy and a place of [INAUDIBLE] interested in. And so it's a project that I've actually wanted to do again. It's hard to find a language that you can learn well enough. [INAUDIBLE] I think when I started to leave the actual venues, when I started to do performance outside of the gathering of the performance space. Immediately, the issue of the event of the not event, what I think of as the not event of which is a document. Immediately, that kind of tension arises and I think of these two things as two sides of piece paper such that if you tear the paper in half you still have those bound to each other. But when you're looking at one, when you're the space of the performance you can't see the, when you're in the space of the event you can't see the non event. When you're in the space of the non event you can't see the event, and for me that in that way, the issue of what form the not event will take is always quite important. And almost always determined at the beginning. Sometimes I will not be quite sure if a work should be held sort of together with the event. By audio or by video and I've done both and then realize that it has to be one or the other. I guess what ends up becoming important for me about the document of an event. It's something I learned through a consideration of political events, more so even than art events. Is the document of the event is always disappointing and for me, that disagreement is actually a part of our relationship to an event in and of itself. It's disappointing when you're there because you can't see the whole thing. [SOUND] >> If you're in the midst of a protest, you can't see the photo that shows the sea of bodies marching along one avenue. But, when you're in the space of the non event of the photograph, you feel, somehow, disappointed that you weren't there in the event itself. So there's always this kind of place of disappointment. But for me, it's interesting, and what becomes significant is that each document, that video does certain things, and allows for certain forms of access. But also excludes other things, as does audio. The exclusion becomes as important as the inclusion, so that audio does not include an image as actually really vitally important. And in the case of performance for Pablo, I did the performance and then we recorded it as audio and it came through as audio a second time. In a way, to keep the centrality of the relationship between the speaker and the listeners.
