Intersections: Colloquium of Performance Research 17-17th January 201Royal Central school of Speech and Drama

Coming to terms with my Self[s]: A methodology focussed on the intersections of bodily representations, shame, and anxiety Introduction

This paper explores how the intersections between personal narratives of shame and anxiety, and the practical process of making performance may provide a training methodology for body art, a genre of performance that uses the body to articulate politics of identity (Jones, 1998). This methodology was put into practice through my most recent performance Talking about Keith (2013). However, the starting point for this exploration was actually my previous performance entitled Spitting Distance (2011). After many failed attempts at writing about this performance it eventually became apparent that I was resisting my own lived experiences. Rather than discussing why I became uncomfortable with a man spitting sputum onto my chest, I relied on articulating the meaning of the performance through a Lacanian analysis, which as Amelia Jones notes only reduces the body down to purely visual readings (1998: 12). On reflection, I didnt write about my lived experience, because I was unaware of my body in the process.

However, I was aware that in the physical act of making, memories intersected my work, sometimes forcing me to stop what I was doing. These repressed memories were rejected immediately, for I was embarrassed as to what they said might say about me. In response to the skin of warm milk Julia Kristeva notes that I want none of that element *...+, I do not want to listen, I do not assimilate it *...+. I

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Intersections: Colloquium of Performance Research 17-17th January 201Royal Central school of Speech and Drama expel myself through the same motion through which I claim to establish myself (Kristeva, 1982: 3). I came to realize that these memories that I had rejected were not opposed to the desired construction of my Self, but were in fact my Self. By rejecting these memories, I felt like I was trying to construct a perfect unified Self, one that Lacan might refer to as an Imago, or mirror image, and this concerned me. As such, I decided that in the making of Talking about Keith I would not reject any memory/experience. During this process it quickly became clear that I was collecting abject texts, which constituted my Self in the rehearsal space. I articulate this methodology by borrowing heavily from Michel Foucaults concept of the Hupomnemata, a form of Self-writing practiced by the ancient Greeks. Focussing on the first stage of this methodology I conclude that the collection and performance of abject texts might constitute, at least in part, a type of training.

MAIN

Talking about Keith (2013) was a twenty-minute performance that took place in a male public toilet at the University of Plymouth on 28 th November 2013. It was performed twice to a mixed gendered audience. As you walk in to the space, you would see me dressed in a white shirt, and black tie and trousers, sitting on a wooden stool at the other end of the room. My hands are placed on my knees, my posture is upright, and my focus is on the opposite wall. The breathing is slow and steady. Along one side of the wall, starting from my sitting position, are a series of 5 brown beer bottles filled with salt, and 5 clear 5l demijohns filled with water. These

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Intersections: Colloquium of Performance Research 17-17th January 201Royal Central school of Speech and Drama are positioned as follows: next to the stool, one demijohn, followed by one beer bottle. From thereon, one beer bottle followed by one demijohn. I stand up and pull down my pants and trousers to reveal my penis. Moving to the side of the stool, I pick up a demijohn and pour its water over the wooden seat. Once empty th is is put down and the same action is repeated with the beer bottle.

I bend down and dip the tip of my tongue delicately in the salt, in order to contemplate the taste. Once the salt has disappeared from my mouth, this action is repeated, but this time the entire surface of the tongue is coated, as I lick length of the salty stool. I shiver, which is not part of the score, before making a fist shape with my left hand, and pushing my right index finger through the tight hole. Pushing down slowly but firmly, the tip of my index finger finally emerges from the other side of the fist touching the wet, salty, wooden surface.

I walk along the catwalk of bottles, stop at the first one, and pour a beer bottle of salt into my mouth, followed by the demijohn of water, this is repeated along the space four more times. The salt pours into my mouth and as it inevitably overflows onto my clothes and onto my floor, it reminds me of one of those epic facials in the porn I used to watch with my friends as a teenage boy. On putting down the bottle, the lose particles of salt fall from mouth, the rest become stuck to the inside of the cheeks, the tongue and the back of my throat. The water was used in order to clean out the foul taste. Attempting to drink the entire contents predictably, towards the end of this sequence, I start to gag, and it takes three or four attempts to consume that last demijohn.

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Intersections: Colloquium of Performance Research 17-17th January 201Royal Central school of Speech and Drama

I move back to the stool where I scrape the salt onto the floor. On my hands and knees I push the remaining salt and water into the centre of the toilet making a thick, gloopy, pearlescent, substance. This is collected into my hands and as it seeps slowly through my fingers I rub it into my penis. I keep doing this until it hurts too much and my penis is a mottled red and white. At which point I undo the shirt and tie, and pull them behind my back. Holding the spilled concoction above my head, I give my self a pearl necklace by allowing it to splatter onto my chest. Finally, covered in salt, I make my way back to the wooden stool, pause, and say, thank you.

My making process for this performance started with an anlaysis of Spitting Distance (2011). I identified that there were three stages to my process, which included, the use of abject material as a stimulus, the generation of memories as a result of this material, and finally the indexing of memory through action. My first stage then was to decide what material I was going to use. I had chosen bodily fluids in Spitting Distance (2011) because they emerge in order to compensate for the collapse of the border between inside and outside. As such, urine, blood, sperm, excrement *..+ show up in order to reassure a subject that is lacking its own and clean self (Kristeva, 1982: 53). In other words the abject exists in order to help define ones Self, but also to remind us of our fragmented and leaking materiality and as such I hoped that this would destabilise the Lacanian concept of the unified Self that had worried me previously.

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Intersections: Colloquium of Performance Research 17-17th January 201Royal Central school of Speech and Drama However, *B+ody fluids have different indices of control, disgust and revulsion. There is a kind of hierarchy of propriety governing these fluids themselves. Those which function with clarity, unclouded by the spectre of infection, represented as cleansing and purifying: tears carry with them none of the disgust associated with the cloudiness of pus, the chunkiness of vomit, the stickiness of menstrual blood (Grosz, 1994: 195).

For Talking about Keith (2013) I chose semen as my material stimulus specifically because as a bodily fluid, it is abject (Douglas, Krsitev and Grosz). Yet I have no memories of being offended by my own semen, in the same way that I have been offended by my own shit, vomit, and sometimes blood. This resonated for me as I considered the role of the cum-shot in contemporary pornography, which was never hidden, but rather as Williams notes, is instead presented onto the Other body, for both him and the voyeur to see (1989: 101). I wondered why there was a

glorification of semen, and what its cultural status might be. For me then semen was located within an ambiguous space, it is both abject and glorified.

In my analysis of Spitting Distance (2011) I was aware that during the rehearsal process memories would intersect my practice. On the whole these memories were ones that I did not wish to engage with due to their graphic nature, or because I felt that they did not represent me in a way that I felt comfortable with. For my most recent project I made two very simple rules. I would never reject a memory that occurred through action, no matter how personal it was, and I would allow this to guide my research process. Both rules would then inform my practical exploration.

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Intersections: Colloquium of Performance Research 17-17th January 201Royal Central school of Speech and Drama As a result of this I began to generate a type of abject-self-audit, which was the result of a recognition of multiple texts that shape who I am.

Michel Foucault refers to this type of writing as the practicing of the Hupomnemata. *I+n the technical sense, [this could be considered to be similar to] account books, public registers, or individual notebooks serving as memory aids. *+. One wrote down quotes in them, extracts from books, examples, and actions that one had witnessed or read about, reflections on reasonings that one heard or that had come to mind. (Foucault, 1997: 209). What made the Hupomnemata different from other Self Writings, was that it was not about uncovering ones self, as with Christian Texts, but rather it was concerned with identifying what was already there. In this respect the hupomnemata was meant to be used as a tool for action rather than documentary.

Further still, it is also not an autobiography, as these are usually generated for two reasons. In modern autobiographical writing, this style is a commodity, which forms the overall chronological and linear narrative, the hupomnemata is not a commodity or narrative, it is a private abstracted text. In addition to this, the purpose of the Hupomnemata is to expose all that constitute ones self, where as in autobiography the information presented is carefully selected. Referring to Bobby Baker, Dee Heddon notes that performances of the self are performances. That is, they are representational and as representations they should not be taken to be in any way real (or any more real than any other performance) (Heddon, 2002: par 3).

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Intersections: Colloquium of Performance Research 17-17th January 201Royal Central school of Speech and Drama So when I talk about the Hupomentata I might, in some respects, be referring to Barthes By Barthes, by Roland Barthes, because his collection of anecdotes, thoughts, and experiences exists on the pages, and are set not out to present a lifes narrative. Instead, Barthes wants to show us how the self forms and performs itself in language (Phillips, 1975: x). A discourse, which although does not follow directly, echoes the purpose of the hupomnemata.

As I was not uncovering the abject self, but rather exposing its presence, I used the hupomnemata as a structure for my making process. There are three benefits to this type of Self Writing, which are:

1 It collects heterogeneous texts

2 It simultaneously reads and writes texts

3 It constitutes the self through writing/practice

My decision was to focus on these benefits and present them as three stages in my process. Initially the first stage would be to collect multiple texts by undertaking a series of experiments that would put into practice my readings on semen. I hoped that, as with Spitting Distance (2011), my practicing of these texts would allow new memories to intersect. The second stage would be considered as a making stage and would focus on the simultaneous reading and writing of those texts. As I

constructed the performance by using the techniques from the previous stage

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Intersections: Colloquium of Performance Research 17-17th January 201Royal Central school of Speech and Drama (writing) I hoped to generate new memories (reading and writing) to further develop it.

Before I continue further, more unpacking is needed. When Foucault uses the term writing, he does so with pen and paper in mind, when I use this term, I keep Foucaults ideas, but also I take on the work of Dartington College of Arts, and Allsopps description of Performance Writing. Performance Writing, says Allsopp is an unstable term that holds in tension writing and its performance and performance and its writing (Allsopp, 1999: 70). In this light I recognise that I can write through my body and on paper. My aim for the third stage was to constitute my fragmented self in performance through the multiple texts that I had collected through my body. In turn, I hoped that these texts would offer a polyemous environment where a concrete reading was impossible, and where the audience were required to search for their own meaning, which would result in a rewriting of my Self by them.

As my focus for this exploration at this stage was on processes rather than product, I decided that a rigorous documentation strategy was needed. This included playing with the material that I had chosen twice a week for seven weeks, recording this, and then immediately speaking to camera in order to construct a reflective videologue and capture the moments were memories intersected the practice. To start me off, I made the decision to respond practically to some of the texts that I had read. I started off with Aristotles theory in The Generation of Animals that semen was celestial, because it is made of water and air, it is white hot, and it loses its consistency quickly (2.10). I also decided to respond to Sir Smith-Cummings, the

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Intersections: Colloquium of Performance Research 17-17th January 201Royal Central school of Speech and Drama first MI5 director, who, as a result of rationing in WW1, demanded a cheap and easily accessible replacement to invisible ink. everyman his own stylo (??????). This led to his infamous quote,

In one experiment I filmed myself writing love letters to people I knew, with a fountain pen and semen filled cartridges. The work itself was fairly uneventful, the writing quickly stained yellow, and the flow of semen out of the pen was limited. I had previously found a love letter that I had not responded to as a teenager, and decided to rectify this. Part way through this activity I was reminded of the

conversations I have had with different people about the taste of semen. Conversations and stories that recounted abject responses to ejaculate in ones mouth, about the different diets that makes it taste more appealing, or the potential health benefits once consumed. I wasnt prepared to eat my own semen, so instead I considered those stories that occurred and made my own concoction with salt and warm water. At first I dipped the end of my tongue in it, after tasting very little, I painted my tongue, and then downed the test tube.

My lips, tongue and cheeks burnt as the salt found its way into small cuts, as my body was forced to engage with this pain, more intersections occurred. I was reminded of my mother who used to tell me that medicine might taste bad, but it was still good for me. Attempting to cling on to the metaphorical glory that was my semen, I quickly swallowed my fake load in order to get rid of it. On the way down, it coated the top of my throat, near the entrance of my mouth, and lined the length of my gullet. As I imagine it hitting my stomach, I immediately started gagging.

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Intersections: Colloquium of Performance Research 17-17th January 201Royal Central school of Speech and Drama Recounting this story, I am once again reminded of Kristevas quote cited at the beginning of this paper. I abject myself within the same motion through which "I" claim to establish myself (Kristeva, 1982: 3). The glorification of my semen, the fluid that glorifies the construction of masculinity, was the very same thing that I wished to abject from my body. This abjection, this expulsion of myself is the first time I have experienced it during my research. I stopped the experiment and diluted the thick liquid that coated my throat with water. I attempted to cleanse my body, but nothing could erase the fact that whilst consuming my fake semen, I had thought of my Mum.

Many other abject intersections emerged through my videoed experiments, which I forced myself to follow. Each experiment, some of which I will never tell anyone about, had a very different experience, but my personal responses to these experiences were generally embarrassment and repulsion.

When Lacan refers to masculinity he notes that, as with the feminine and the phallus, these are simply metaphors that any female or male body can operate within (2007). Although, when we carefully look at those representations, the tropes that exist to define them are the same culturally constructed ones that make uncomfortable assumptions about bodies. The masculine is active and in possession, whilst the feminine desires to be the thing that makes the masculine complete, the phallic object (1998). Ideology then defines our Self, so when Lacan refers to the construction of self through the movement into paternal law, in his seminal text The Mirror Stage, its not surprising that what he is referring to is language. Thus as

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Intersections: Colloquium of Performance Research 17-17th January 201Royal Central school of Speech and Drama Foucault notes those who have control of language, the dominant discourse, have power. In turn these bodies articulate the rules of inclusion and exclusion (Butler, 2007: 3).

Julia Kristeva in The Revolution in Poetic Language (1984) attacks the emphasis that is placed upon the linguistic analysis of sign systems. She states that *o+ur

philosophies of language, embodiment of idea, are nothing more than the thoughts of archivists, archaeologists, and necrophiliacs fascinated by the remains of a process which is partly discursive, they substitute this fetish for what actually is produced (Kristeva, 1984: 13). In short, Kristeva s argument is that in hegemonic practices of the West the body has been removed from the analysis of communication and linguistics. However the fact that these memories ensued from my body suggests that memories are not a result of the mind and in turn language, as this dichotmises our bodies, rather memories are the result of our bodyminds. Conclusion

In undertaking this first stage of my practical Huppomnemata I realized that my body has always been present in my making of the work. In Spitting Distance, I had simply short cut this process. After exploring the emergence of abject memories through my body I entered a studio space and used these collected texts to construct Talking about Keith. Here I realized that the generation of new texts did not stop at my first stage, but rather continued in both the making process, and also the performance. As such, the use of the body to generate text meant that the audience had to generate their own meanings. Kristeva calls this significance, which is the result of

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Intersections: Colloquium of Performance Research 17-17th January 201Royal Central school of Speech and Drama the bodys inner-codings rubbing up against language creating diverse heterogenous meanings.

However, there is a lot that has been left unarticulated. What I am most concerned with though is a lack of definition for Stage 1. As such I would like to return to the beginning where I articulated a problem with my writing of Spitting Distance (2011). I noted that I was unaware of my body and relied heavily on an ocular reading of the work using a Lacanian frame. As Whalley and Miller note in reference to their practices pre-2011 my body has always been present, but has been little more than a brief material pause, the thing that carried my ideas out of my head and into the world (Whalley and Miller, 2013: 104). It was only after engaging with Ashtanga yoga and acupuncture that both became aware of the information generated in their bodyminds. Before creating Talking about Keith I hadnt undergone body training, a weird exclusion as I consider myself to be a body artist. Training informs the way you read work (Bales 2011, Whalley and Miller, 2013, and Zarilli, 2001), so why would I have been sensitive to my body in Spitting Distance, if I had not engaged with a body-based training. Further still, why am I starting to become more aware now? I am left wandering as I draw this paper to close as to whether my stage 1, my collection of heterogeneous texts through my body, might be a type of bodymind training. For knowledge through training is gained in and for an ever deepening relationship to the act of practice, is about engagement of bodymind, and is about the construction of metatheoretical issues, i.e reflections on bodymind engagement (Zarilli, 2001: 36). I appreciate that a few sessions does not constitute rigorous training, or an extra-daily activity that enables a different state of being (Zarilli,

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Intersections: Colloquium of Performance Research 17-17th January 201Royal Central school of Speech and Drama 2001: 34). I hope though that my practical huppomnemata could be developed into a substantial training schedule, however, my first task is to identify what this might constitute and exactly what it might be training, because as Whalley and Miller notes, what defines training is a rationale for it (Whalley and Miller, 2013: 111).

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