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• 1 media/gears.webp media/tape 1 long.jpg 2024-10-24T13:00:13-07:00 The Tape Experiment 18 September 17 plain 2024-12-06T13:25:08-08:00

  An In-Class Experiment

  
  We all found an object, please, idea, etc. and had to make a performance from that thing that relates back to Judith Butler’s ideas. I was inspired by a piece of the When Gesture Becomes Event work, particularly the discussion of throwing a bust. I wanted to find some way to articulate an idea I was having about the moment when action stops, which Butler explores multiple times with the same piece of theatre, but I focused on her section from pages 187 to 188. Butler explains Benjamin’s ideas about Brecht’s epic theatre, and details a scene where a woman goes to throw a bust at her daughter and then it stops. There is a threat of harm, yet no harm actually done in the moment.
  
  In class, I found a roll of gaff tape and decided to utilize this to explore something similar. I went to the stairs and started playing around with how much force it takes to roll the tape down a stair and how to connect that idea with the gestures and speech ideas that were floating around in my head. I started to peel pieces of tape off the roll and stick them to the stairs, suddenly curious about how much tape it would take to stop the roll from going down easily. Eventually it became an internal exploration, for me, of how much of one’s self you have to give up in order to stop yourself from doing the thing you are meant to do. It also linked back to Althusser’s ideas in that, under capitalism, we are often forced to pursue something we don’t enjoy or even keep ourselves from following our passions for the sake of actually being able to make an appropriate amount of money to live. I was starting to impose this idea on the tape when pulling pieces off, seeing how long it would take to break the tape’s desire to roll down the stairs while also pushing a little harder every time to see how much force was required to break this Laine-imposed belief that the tape would not be able to roll down the stair. In performing with the tape, I also started to improv sentences about my ideas while always leaving off the last word, letting my speech fade into the failure, and eventual success, of the tape rolling down the stair. Upon performing, I was still unsure where I was going with this specific idea, but I know it’s important to me and I wanted to explore it somehow in my final project. It felt as though my brain was making the connections in the background between the physical tape “machine” and Butler and Althusser’s ideas, but I didn’t know how to properly communicate them yet.

  Inspirations

  This experiment had me grappling with what it means to halt motion. While I am well versed in the physics of motion, I was curious about the emotional and mental barriers that one must break through in times of hardship and stress. What does stop us from engaging in antisocial behaviors? When we are stressed, angry, sad, frustrated, etc., what is it that keeps us in line? The animal in us seeks to break free, so is it the machine that halts our motion, that forces us to reconsider? Perhaps nothing stops us except for our desire to refrain from antisociality, a very social animal behavior. Regardless, this emotional confusion would become the crux of my solo project. I went on to explore how the feeling of being overwhelmed is like the moment before the mother throws the bust: a moment in which a choice must be made.

  References

  Butler, Judith. "When Gesture Becomes Event." Inter Views in Performance Philosophy: Crossings and Conversations, edited by Anna Street, Julien Alliot, and Magnolia Pauker, Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2017, pp. 171-191.