Presence in Art as Something that is not there by Itself: the affect potencies in the act of com-position between bodies

Abstract:

This text presents an approach to the artist presence as a relation by offering a perspective about the body, and also the shift of presence as a non prior assignment from the artist, which allows us to bring attention to what emerges in the encounter between bodies in the here and now. The audience is considered an active partner and the artist is understood as the one that ceases starring to compose (add-with) the viewer, becoming a porous invitation-presence by an accurate perception practice of the environment settings. This combination of art, philosophy, anthropology and cognitive sciences references allows that the differences between an imposing presence and shared presence become apparent.

Keywords:
Invitation-presence; Body; Affect; Relation; Co(m)position

Resumo:

Este texto apresenta uma abordagem da presença do artista como relação, propondo um olhar sobre o corpo e sobre o deslocamento da noção de presença como uma atribuição prévia do artista, possibilitando a atenção ao que emerge no encontro entre corpos, no aqui e agora. O público é considerado como interlocutor ativo e o artista como aquele que deixa de protagonizar para com-por (por-se com) o espectador, como uma presença-convite, porosa, por meio de uma escuta apurada às configurações do ambiente. Uma articulação entre referências da arte, da filosofia, da antropologia e das ciências cognitivas permite que as diferenças entre presença impositiva e presença partilhada se evidenciem.

Palavras-chave:
Presença-convite; Corpo; Afeto; Relação; Com-posição

Résumé:

Cet article présente une approche à la présence de l'artiste comme une relation en offrant un regard sur le corps et le déplacement de la notion de présence en tant que attribution antérieure de l'artiste, ce qui permet l'attention sur ce qui émerge dans la rencontre entre les corps dans l'ici et le maintenant. Cette étude prend en considération le public comme un interlocuteur actif, et l'artiste ne serait plus le protagoniste de la com-position (position avec) le spectateur, L'artiste est une présence-invitation, poreux, au moyen d'une écoute attentive de ce qui apparaît dans l'expérience. Une combinaison de références de l'art, de la philosophie, de l'anthropologie et de les sciences cognitives met en évidence les différences entre la présence imposante et la présence partagée.

Mots-clés:
Présence-invitation; Corps; Affect; Relation; Com-position

Presence, a term dear to dance, theater and performance, is certainly a part in pedagogical, compositional and drama processes. Such processes bring about some questions like: What is presence? How to have presence or to be in state of presence? How to hold the interest of bodies and convene them to engage in the proposed actions? How to create potency of occurrence from the encounter of bodies³³? This is a subject that embraces a diversity of perspectives, not always surrounded by agreements. One of the possible approaches will be presented in this composition which aims some ways to think/make art considering relationship aspects, understanding this approach as an effect of the encounter with the other in the here and now. How could the presence empower the encounter between bodies in art?

Presence artist's assignments are now analyzed as these art-making data agency. It can be found among these data: the artist's individual potency, which contains specific ways of perception and articulation in embodied techniques; the emerging data in the here-now, in its relation with the environment ‒ in which it is included the crowd/partaker; and the artist's exhibition itself including her/his work ethics approach when facing the audience. These elements confer a certain singularity to the act of encounter in art that is powered due to the relation to the other. Considering this relational perspective, the notion of a commanding, unwavering presence becomes, bit by bit, an invitation-presence demanding refined listening, porous body, absence data so that space can be opened to affect potency among present bodies in art proposals³⁴.

Thereby, some notions of presence are discussed along this article: presence as the artist's aura and previous assignment; presence made among bodies in connection with the environment; presence as energy and widening; and presence as possibility of affect/invitation. This course is basically guided by body and affect references, contained in ethics described by Baruch Spinoza; presence in relation, elaborated by Suzanne M. Jaeger; common and audience activity, discussed by Jacques Rancière; energy and widening, presented by Eugenio Barba; corporality, elaborated by Michel Bernard, co(m)position, developed by Fernanda Eugénio and João Fiadeiro. Furthermore, connections between other theories originating from art, philosophy, anthropology and cognitive science draw the notion of porous body and presence-invitation contained in this article.

We are Two because it is Hard to keep Joy when Alone

Suzanne M. Jaeger³⁵ (2006) places some connections about presence in such a way that it seems to welcome the emergences of the encounter. According to the author, presence can be defined as disposition and redisposition of a force in response to the environment, demanding a listening capacity from the artist, as well as self-awareness, considering in this relation a singular way a body may act or react.

Philip Auslander³⁶ (apud Jaeger, 2006) brings the information that the directors Constantin Stanislavski, Bertolt Brecht and Jerzy Grotowski had already identified that the actor's presence was not only about incorporating a role, but an authentic presentation of the actor´s self. For Jaeger (2006), perceptions of the body schema are modified by media, differently from what occurs in live performances. Such evidence requires as a recognizable being in the world as the power of turning to the uniqueness of a moment.

[...] ready for their displacements, accommodations and adaptations, which belong to the challenge of action, and it occurs with the body's full engagement in the present moment. According to Jaeger (2006), the audience would perceive this, and all this triggering of perceptions would keep the performance alive, with that special quality that some performers have, and what is commonly called stage presence (Duenha, 2014a, p. 84)*³⁷.

The German scholar Erika Fischer-Lichte³⁸ (2011) brings the performing body into phenomenal and semiotic aspects to discuss about a presence which considers the environment:

The presence is not an expressive quality, but it is purely performative. It is generated through specific processes of embodiment that the actor engenders in his phenomenal body to the point of dominating space and capturing the attention of the spectators [emphasis added] (Fischer-Lichte, 2011, p. 197)*³⁹.

In Fischer-Lichte (2011) and Jaeger (2006) it is possible to identify a consideration of the artist's enchantment potential over the audience as vestiges of maintenance of a kind of aura, of an extended presence which is able to keep the other's attention. It seems relevant to remind that the techniques developed by the Italian performer Eugenio Barba are frequently quoted in processes that influenced more specifically questions of scenic presence in the second half of the 20th century. Such approach turns to the artist's capacity of involving the audience in his actions.

We often call this presence as actor force [emphasis added], but it is not something that simply is there, in front of us. The mutation is continuous, the growth happens before our eyes. It is a living body. The constant flow of energies that characterizes our daily behavior has been re-directed (Barba; Savarese, 1995, p. 54)*.

The principles developed by this performer, when reprocessed in the light of recent researches about the notion of the body and the body action, appear as possibility of perception refinement, which may facilitate the relationship between the artist and the audience due to the identification of affect in the act with the other. Otherwise, the dilated idea of figure, as well as the disposition of an aura around the artist seems not to fit in an experience that turns to the emergences between the bodies involved. Considering the necessary displacements and accommodations to the artist in the act of the encounter, we must also consider the possibility of contamination of his actions through re-actions and co-actions by those who take part in the event. It makes the artist's presence approach relevant as a match invitation, as a sharing of sensations with the possibility of disposition of the occurrence.

Some contemporary practices, by Grupo Cena 11 Cia. de Dança⁴⁰ and by Modo Operativo AND⁴¹, for instance, offer operations in the presence arts field that seek ways to let emerge mutual affects among presences of the environment in their differences and similarities. The act of imposition over the audience, based on a power of enchantment assigned to the presence artist, tends to hinder the development of relationships in spaces of exchange, of sharing of affects. The establishment of an aura figure imprints a notion of inaccessibility, of something intangible, which does not seem suitable to a presence that considers the surroundings contamination⁴².

The French philosopher Jacques Rancière (2010, p. 109) realized that the spectator condition was not only passivity, in which the power of intervention of what is seen is ignored, highlighting that a non-spectator-theater must be seek making them "[...] active participants in a collective action instead of letting them as passive observers". Undermining the audience activity it is also undermining the possibility of presence art comprehension as transit of affects (Duenha, 2014a). Rancière also reveals some contradictory aspects in his theatrical practice validation claiming:

[...] On the one hand, the viewer must be released from the passivity of the observer, who is fascinated by the appearance in front of him and who identifies himself with the characters on the stage. He needs to be confronted with the spectacle of something strange, which happens as an enigma and demands him to investigate the reason for this estrangement. He must be impelled to abandon the role of a passive observer and assume the role of the scientist who observes phenomena and seeks their causes. On the other hand, the spectator must abstain from the mere role of an observer who stands still and unmoved in front of a distant spectacle. He must be wrenched from his delirious domain, brought into the magical power of theatrical action, where he will exchange the privilege of acting as a rational observer for the experience of possessing the true vital energies of the theater (Rancière, 2010, p. 109)*.

By assigning to the artist the responsibility of offering estrangement propositions and changing the spectator perception, as well as assigning to spectator the task of remaining attentive before these possible alterations, Rancière makes clear that both bodies involved in this artistic experience are active; in other words, both are engaged to the event. Thus, the occurrence produced and the body transformations do not depend only on the artist's enchantment potential or his actions, but on mutual affects emerged in this encounter. At that, it is possible to add that the occurrence potency would not be in the performance as a previously built work or in the performance program, but at the moment in which actions are put into the game in body relations. It is worth mentioning that the thorough process involving the action composition before they are presented to the audience would not be rejected, considering that the very previous production is configured in the artists' relation. Rancière brings out the dichotomy between active and passive as a kind of false problem since artist and spectator, in their own way, have their own perception (and, consequently, their own repertoire and imaginary) activated somehow, and this cognitive operation occurs even on the apparently inert spectator who is sitting in the audience.

Fischer-Lichte (2011), mentioning performativity and the phenomenal body, considers the becoming-body, what is observed in many contemporaneous artists' works. For instance, what the German theater scholar Hans-Thies Lehmann (2007) defines as post-dramatic theater. Assuming that the body is constantly modified by affects in the here-now is a way to increase the com-positive and dramaturgical possibilities before the presences in place. It is assuming that the presence act of art does not exist previously developed in the rehearsal process, but when the encounter with the other occurs. Despite the production process is responsible for a large proportion of what could be potency in the presence art relation, considering a context in which both bodies are affected in the presentation moment, other approaches to this situation become necessary.

Mr. Mauri and Mrs. Maria, a blind couple singing and playing accordion downtown in Florianópolis, Brazil, told us a little about their work, how they live on their art: "we are two because it is hard to keep joy when alone" [oral information]⁴³.

Joy, in this case, is the kind of affect/presence that keeps its sustenance, since it is what makes the ones who pass-by perceive that they are there to propose an artistic experience; at the same time, this joy is what comes from the relationship between the two artists, and it is the invitation to the audience that, by accepting it, also feeds their own joys/presences (Duenha, 2014a, p. 86).

The example of these artists, Mr. Mauri and Mrs. Maria, who live on their potency making, leads us to think about the level of occurrence of an artist's tangible presence notion and, by discussing about this subject, it seems also relevant to consider how much the relation between present bodies in this encounter establishes the course of this art-making, creating new procedures and confirming the importance of investigating its existence and re-existence ways.

Presence as Energy and Expansion

"How to become alive on stage? [...] How to make vibrate what could be defined as a complex node of reactions which is the theater?" These are questions made by Barba (2001, p. 1) in the interview Making theater is a paradoxical way of thinking he gave to the theater researcher Josette Féral. It is a title that actually brings a description of this making, something highlighted in art performers, because "[...] assuming that the artist's and the art researcher's works are also understood as paradoxical is a way to open space to new discovers between one thing and the other" (Duenha, 2014a, p. 88). This space would be, therefore, the recognition of a gap, the non-knowing-place, a brake opened at a present which can be drawn in a collective way, in the encounter between artist and audience. Barba presents in some of his texts a paradoxical relation, which is also identified in his creation procedures. He thinks that one of the theater characteristics would be "[...] make its own anarchy as a discipline which leaves marks and transcends the destiny of those who make it and finishes when their lives end" (Barba, 2001, p. 1).

For Barba, presence would be a differential, a specific artist's assignment to the spectator enchantment, as it is observed in Barba's and Savarese's declarations (1995). According to this stage director, to be successful the artist must explore some pedagogical resources that oppose conventional behaviors, trying to break usual mechanisms that were molded by the enculturation process. Pre-expressive elements: energy, opposition, widening, balance, rhythm, omission and equivalence would be explored in favor of scenic presence evidence (Duenha, 2014a).

Scenic presence, one of this stage director's goals, starts to be approached among other ways as a possibility of energy modulation. For Barba, "[...] the actor and actress' task is to find individual propensities of their own energy and protect their potentiality and individuality". The energy, in this context, is how the force is applied, which must be ridden and transformed in a way to affect the spectator's body (Barba; Savarese, 1995, p. 81). It is worth mentioning that, for Barba, energy is also thought. He supports the idea that there is an actors' apparent immobility, which could offer another quality of presence by being laden with movement intention. "The definition of energy that is important to this author is not only related to muscular or nervous strength, but to the body's biological process which is converted into thought and is shown to the spectator" (Duenha, 2014a, p. 88).

The possibility of consciously modeling the actor's energy and bringing about a transformation in the spectator's energy (Barba, 2010) appears as a strong impulse in Barba's and his collaborators' researches outlining the Odin Teatret profile, a 52 years old group.⁴⁴ "Opposition is one of the elements explored in the techniques used by the group under the intention of offering the opposite, imposing obstacles to the action" (Duenha, 2014a, p. 89). The urge to that would be the imagination of "forces pulling/pushing" to the opposite direction they intend to arrive. As a consequence of this opposition exploration, in motion or in inertia, there would be the "tensions expansion", which would attribute another character to the artist's presence (Barba; Savarese, 1995, p. 12-13). Expanding means widening, enlarging dimensions, which configures, according to the performer, an energy increasing because "[...] they move further apart, attract and oppose each other with more force" (Barba; Savarese, 1995, p. 54). "The result of the expansion would be more life to the actor/dancer, which could, consequently, capture the spectator's attention, according to this Barba's investment in oppositions" (Duenha, 2014a, p. 89).

In his intention to achieve an extra-everyday-routine, Barba proposes principles of "waste" and "excess". While we usually choose maximum profits with minimum efforts, we have an opposite proposal to that: put more energy in a minimum movement (Barba; Savarese, 1995, p. 55). The possibility of body's energy domination in this extra-everyday-routine movement in the actor/dancer situation of immobility or in a "non-representative mobility" would be a way to overcome a representation excess defending the necessity of an artist's sharp perception, a consciousness of what happens to the body and to the environment. For this performer, the energy management in immobility would be one of the possibilities of "[...] becoming the actor's presence alive, who does not need to perform, but being on stage" (Duenha, 2014a, p. 90).

Barba (1991) criticizes the excessive movement when the intention is to show vitality on stage, because he considers the notion of energy would be perceived even when the movement is not apparent. Due to the opposite exploration and the consequent body energy circulation, the actor/dancer's actions would be amplified. According to Barba's exposition, "[...] the opposition dance is performed in [author's emphasis] the body before it is performed with [author's emphasis] the body [...]. The energy does not necessarily correspond to the space displacement" (Barba; Savarese, 1995, p. 13). At that it is possible to affirm that if the actor is able of generate and manage levels of energy, the spectator will also do it somehow and these different levels of energy, in relation, could determine the content of the present encounter.

Such precepts developed by Eugenio Barba deflagrate essential elements of a scenic presence approach that resists over the years once this stage director's studies offer, in fact, a systematization used in many pedagogical processes and artistic works in the here-now, including the Odin Teatret itself. On the other hand, it is not possible to ignore other emergent processes, closer to a notion of performativity which cannot be measured by the performing idea or even the presentation and does not maintain the artist's scenic presence of the centrality making.

And what if this notion of presence, the scenic presence, was understood as "the experience invitation"? And if the potency of what we call presence art was transferred to what, in fact, comes up in the relationship among bodies which make the environment? "Achieving this quality of presence involves, instead of being the difference, letting it emerge, perceiving how much it comes out as an occurrence" (Duenha, 2014a, p. 87), like what occurs in the Modo Operativo AND developed by Eugenio and Fiadeiro (2012), that there is no possibility of predicting what will happen in the encounter of the bodies, as everything will be done from the moment in which these subjects are put in relation.

At that, the artist's essential assignment would become, then, the capacity of sharing experience and enunciate poetical possibilities emerged in the game. To make this presence become an invitation to the other, the understanding of a way of doing is essential and, due to that, we are not going to ignore the information caught in pedagogical and compositional processes which were very important to the presence art conception throughout history. We would ensure to revisit ways of art-making, reinventing them, attentive to elements in line with our time demands, for example: a listening training, the embodiment understanding (incorporated mind) and its relational possibilities; the contamination of the art-making by multiple sources discussions, and an attentive look to questions which involve our experience in the world; to, who knows, from that point, co(m)pose⁴⁵, with the other, and produce occurrence in this encounter, in circumstances presented to us.

The possibility of the occurrence of a state of attention in the audience provoked by the artist is understood in this work as the search for a presence-invitation (Duenha, 2014a, p. 92), in which it is possible to generate energy in the spectator too, as Barba (2010) exposes, according to the reception of this invitation. "Nevertheless, considering that both bodies involved in this relationship are affected, the occurrence emergence becomes a shared responsibility⁴⁶". The notion of scenic presence as approached by Eugenio Barba would carry potency of an invitation, establishing initially the relationship, but necessarily maintain it (Duenha, 2014a, p. 92).

It is possible to admit that the artist's life maintenance on stage (Barba; Savarese, 1995) occurs in the relationship with the audience. Nevertheless, if this possibility of feeding what is in the life on stage was transferred to a "shared experience of presences", whith their own different levels of energy - instead of considering that only the audience would feed the artist's life on stage - a commanding presence, covered by an aura, would give space to what could emerge of potency in this encounter in the relationship between artist and audience (Duenha, 2014a, p. 92).

It would fit to the artist the preparation for the relationship, the invitation, but he could not be the only responsible for managing this experience, which is shared, once the art of presence takes into account the relations that are configured in the here-now. The spectator's presence implications should be considered, as Barba (2001) assumes, when affirming that the spectator influences on the actor's actions (Duenha, 2014a, p. 92)*.

According to Barba (Barba; Savarese, 1995), the pre-expressive elements would appear as a way of maintenance of life on stage, becoming divine the interpretation of the actor/dancer as, to the actor, this quality of presence would imprint a denial image of his terrestrial condition. In this performer's research, assignments and images of intangibility are constant and such characteristic must be also be observed under other perspectives, mainly in what concerns a here-now context in presence-arts, since even if an intensive art experience is aimed, the maintenance of a "[...] divine aura to the artist appears justly as a case which uninvites the spectator to the activity, as its task seems to be only admiring that divine figure" (Duenha, 2014a, p. 93). How could it be possible the disposition of a sharing environment of sensibilities if there is a territory, previously marked, imprinting differences in its use? Who acts and who doesn't act in it? Turning to the matter of paradoxes, here we have a confirmation of the necessity to assume them in this plural making of presence arts once, although Barba (2001, p. 4) devoted a long part of his life to the preparation of a research favorable to an artist/dancer's body expansion, affirming at present that "[...] the theater raw material is not the actor, the space, the text, but the tension, the look, the listening, the spectator's thought. Theater is the spectator's art".

By investing in studies about phenomenology of perception to discuss relational possibilities, Jaeger (2006) affirms that senses and cognition re-affect each other, demonstrating that the pattern formation would not be only a cultural assignment, something more collective, but also what is singular once the peculiar mode of every individual who, in his own way, perceives the environment and creates his net of senses, composing and implying a way of establishment with the surroundings. "The artist is a human being, subject to the social order and biological events" just as the spectator and, even though connections and reactions are different, "the responses to the stimulus will not be apprehensible consciously"⁴⁷ (Duenha, 2014a, p. 93).

The notion of embodiment is brought by Jaeger (2006) to explain the constant body scheme reorganization⁴⁸, which is altered to each new situation and environment. At that, presence in relation can be understood in this body scheme redisposition, "with its constant incorporated activities which constitute our perception experiences". The connection with the environment would be, therefore, "[...] able to change the being-in-the-world and to assume that such relationship would be, then, a way of being open and attentive to what occurs" (Duenha, 2014a, p. 94).

Which Body could be in the Here-Now?

The body is subject, mean and goal of studies in the Arts field. It is also part of other agendas as Sciences, Philosophy and Anthropology. Thus, to the art of presence, which is made in relation, it seems also relevant the dedication to the investigation of its functioning dynamics through the access to various means, in a transdisciplinary manner, before the recognizing of a complexity which is not yet revealed. The bodies present at the relational artistic experience, whether proposer or spectator, are living organisms, dynamic and inapprehensible in their totality.

The notion of presence introduced in this paper, which comprehends the becoming-body in the here-now, in the act of sharing experiences, would be not just the desire of becoming the artist's presence in an invitation with a view to "[...] allow the emergence of affects to configure a change in the act of the encounter between performer and audience, in occurrence to both bodies involved in the relationship". The reference here is a presence-invitation which "[...] evokes, which wants to provoke the senses, but does not ignore the effects, in the bodies, of this transit of affects" (Duenha, 2014a, p. 96). From some questions and connections we looked into means to that opening to the possibilities of body contamination and the consequent alteration of body conditions that may emerge from the relationship between the proposing performer and the environment (Meyer, 2009), "[...] considering the environment not just as the space which is occupied, but also what this space contains, including bodies, objects and occurrences, among other things". Among the emergent questions there are: "Can knowing the ways of body functioning be a datum to the production of this presence-invitation? Could the potency of presences rouse itself against in the shared experience? A porous and non-segmented body appears as a principle to this research."⁴⁹ (Duenha, 2014a, p. 96).

The body divided in parts: physical and spiritual, tool of soul wishes that, housed in this body and conducted it as if 'a sailor in its ship', such as the French philosopher René Descartes' metaphor in the Sixth Meditation (2008, p. 134). It does not stand with such influence in researches which debate the body's intangible attributions. The body-mind matter in Descartes holds a conformation that divides the body in two substances: one material and one spiritual. When describing Descartes theory, the philosopher Paul Churchland (2004, p. 27) clarifies that 'the real you is not your material body, but what is in a causative and systematic interaction with your own body', while Spinoza (1992) understands body and mind as one only and very thing, which is revealed in two distinctive ways⁵⁰ (Duenha, 2014a, p. 97)*.

This body, in constant becoming, in the search for a tangibility of relationships would not be divided in two substances (one material and other spiritual). It is neither an instrument, nor a container. It is not a means by which the soul expresses itself (Meyer, 2009). It is not "[...] a provisional dwelling place of something superior, but what leaves a dynamic trajectory by which we learn to register and become sensitive to what the world is made of" (Latour, 2008, p. 39). This sensitive body, as it is introduced by the French anthropologist, sociologist and philosopher of science Bruno Latour, could be the body that mixes up with what there is in the encounters, which wants to be in the world in a relationship that is less hierarchical and less disciplined with what surrounds it⁵¹ (Duenha, 2014a, p. 97).

The becoming-body, which is described less by the is, and more for the being now, and here, and now, appears as a possibility of body perception which acts, which is not supposed to be conducted by the soul and, as presence in the relations concept negotiates information, proposes sensitive experiences, affecting and being affected, in an imminence field. The performative body would be this being now also considering that exchange ambience which affects and is affected by the bodies, as well as the bodies' singularities when negotiating relations. How can we be sensitive to these relations? (Duenha, 2014a, p. 97).

A Body that does not Conform⁵²

This being now body, here exposed as undisciplined and with vital interdependence operations, is then the body in art that the philosopher Michel Bernard (2011) denies to simply calling it body, inviting us to understand it as antibody, antidote to the body's traditional category, approaching initially by what it is not to get to the notion of corporality⁵³.

Bernard (2001) understands the body as a mean of management of our own, the others' and the world lived experiences. The body would be a living organism that is constantly updated in relation with the environment and the culture which claims it. For Bernard (2009, p. 19), the use of this kind of linguistic sign (the word body) to designate "[...] the material and sensitive dimension of our existence implies the misrepresentation and even the falsification of processes which form it". The author mentions the operation of this falsification through five correlated reductionisms.

The first one would be the reductionism of the sensorial process of perception to a cognitive process of information - to perceive would not be living an experience anymore, which could be "[...] fleshy, random and ambivalent of an encounter or an occasional contact, but trying to identify its cause and its referent"; the second reductionism would be starting from a pulsing and energetic process of expression to a process of communication; the third reductionism would be the action understood as "intensive force and energy dispense" (Bernard, 2001, p. 18-19), which is reduced to the functional and relational purpose; the fourth reductionism would be in the consequences of these body understandings that changes the logic of organic functioning, which would be configured as an obstacle to what is imaginary, innovative and unpredictable, providing a "calculator rationality". And the fifth reductionism would be in the understanding of body as a vehicle and information processor.

Bernard (2011, p. 20) affirms that the contemporary art and its creation processes contribute to the deconstruction of this model of body merely informational and communicational, adding that the reflections of artists like Paul Cézanne⁵⁴, Antonin Artaud⁵⁵, Paul Klee⁵⁶, Wassily Kandinsky⁵⁷, Francis Bacon⁵⁸ or John Cage⁵⁹, and a numerous thinkers with diverging visions as Merleau-Ponty, Anton Ehrenzweig⁶⁰ and Gilles Deleuze⁶¹, would reveal us that "[...] the creation act is not made of inherent power to a body [author's emphasis] as a permanent and significant organic structure, but would be a work result of a 'mobile energetic material net, of pulsing forces and of disparate and crossed intensity interference'".

By quoting Ehrenzweig, Bernard (2011, p. 6) affirms that "[...] far from being the emanation of an even and identical subject-body, the artistic production is a deconstruction and a disclosure of its sensible, instable and random materiality". The notion of corporeality [corporéité], as exposed by the French philosopher, is an element of art speech once this is made of games of intensity. According to Bernard (2001, p. 6), "[...] in the artist, various senses respond in an always renewed polyphony and are established as a strange, precarious and indefinable removable keyboard on which it is possible to create incredible variations". Bernard (2001, p. 8) highlights the effects of another look to the body in the artistic production and pedagogy, suggesting that we should adopt it "as a substitution to the substantialist, semiotic and instrumental model", a look that is "reticular, intensive and heterogeneous of the 'corporeality' [author's quotation marks] in order to disturb the mechanism of power put by this instrumental logic.

The discussion to which Michel Bernard (2001) invites us blocks the reduction of what we usually call body as something which is defined and divided in only two dimensions - mind and body or spirit and matter. Before the wish of the non-reduction of corporeality and possibilities of our experiences management, we will discuss the antibody, proposed by Bernard (2001), as a porous body, inviting the reader to imagine that the notion of porous would allow the maintenance of a complex system of intermediation without the information being adapted, in a stable mode, in a sensitive matter (Bernard, 2001) that we are.

We start initially from an approach of the body as matter, understanding that the physical matter exists and from which emotions and thoughts emerge, while the spirit is still hypothetical, as Paul Churchland (2004)⁶² exposes. We base our work on researches developed by the neurologist and neuroscientist António Damásio (1996; 2004; 2011), who defends the non-dissociation of body and mind. These theorists help us to understand that we do not possess a body, but we are the body (Meyer, 2009).

Final Remarks

The presence-invitation idea articulated in this article considers the compositional relationships between the audience and the artist through a refined listening to the emergences of the encounter. Bodies enunciated here in an encounter situation are porous bodies, which mix up and reconstruct themselves in connections with the environment. They are in the now, in the here-now, they generate empathy, affect and are affected. Therefore, the assignments of an artist's living presence appear less linked to intangibility aspects. On the other hand, if the artist's presence, in this disposition of becoming-body, is also a result of the relationship, in which it is included the "cultural mode of being accepted in the present", in accordance with the Brazilian researcher Gilberto Icle⁶³ (2011, p. 16). At that approach of presence as movement which is linked constantly to what happens in the environment, the author affirms that "there is no universal and transcendental presence" (Icle, 2011, p. 16).

Other artist's presence approaches can emerge from a view to the body functioning dynamics in constant updating. It is about a self-controlled body in relation with the environment, without the necessity of being conscious of everything that occurs around it, as Suely Rolnik (1996, p. 3) observes: "[...] Each individual is permanently inhabited by fluxes from the entire world, which multiplies the interbreeding sharpening consequently the engendering of differences vibrating in the body and make it howl". "To the body that shares the experience in proposed relationships in presence art s a view as living organism is due, latent, which survives on the hybrid and moveable ground in which this art lands". (Duenha, 2014a, p. 102).

A presence-invitation would be the one in which a constant contamination is permitted. Either in its ways of making/training, previous to the encounter, or in what is known as state of presence and, free of mystifications, becomes being with the other in art, with dilated porous, receptive to affects. At that, we outline a notion of presence in art as something which cannot come to be by itself.

Referências

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• This unpublished text, translated by Ines Saber de Mello and José Luis Estrada Araneda and proofread by Ananyr Porto Fajardo, is also published in Portuguese in this issue.

• 1
  This paper is an extract from the Master thesis entitled Presença e (em) relação: a potência de afeto no entre corpos (written in Portuguese) by Milene Lopes Duenha, supervised by Prof. Dr. Sandra Meyer Nunes, by the Graduate Program in Theater of Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina (UDESC). Available at: <http://www.ceart.udesc.br/ppgt/dissertacoes/2014/dissertacao_milene_lopes.pdf>.

• 2
  The event is understood in this work as a milestone that stems from a moment in which the artistic experience has become potent and intense to the point of provoking transformations in the bodies. These possibilities for transformations in bodies are linked to an early 20th century theater scene movement, which would turn more to the sensorial aspects of relations between bodies, than to the effects that were guided by the subjection of the scenic construction to the dramatic text, inaugurating the concept of physical action in the theater. Such alterations would have bases in practices of cinematographers like Jacques Copeau, Ettiene Decroux, Edward Gordon Craig, Adolphe Appia, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Constantin Stanislavski and Antonin Artaud. The ​​transformation in the bodies idea as it is presented here has the exhibition of Antonin Artaud as the main reference in some of his letters presented by the Italian theatrical researcher Marco de Marinis in the book: En Busca del actor y del Espectador (2005, Spanish translation). In another article written in Portuguese, by Milene Duenha (2014b) entitled Presença e (m) Relação: A Redescoberta do Corpo nas Artes Presenciais do Início do Século XX), this issue involving sensory aspects of relationships is amplified.

• 3
  The affect notion that is presented here is based on the discussion developed by the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1992), who presents the idea of affect as a factor capable of increasing or decreasing our body's power of activity. In bringing the Spinoza's idea of affect to an approach on art, we consider the possibility of intensifying its effects on the body from the perception of its incurrence. Espinosa affirms that it would not be possible to predict the effects of the encounter because affects occur independently of our will. However, identifying affect's effects could make us restrain the passions of sadness that would diminish our power of activity. In light of this information, as we transpose this Spinozan sense of affect into the performing arts universe, we could then base ourselves on the possibility of tensing, of opening that term, and using that perception/affects as a parameter of operation, as information to be considered during previous development of actions to be taken to the audience, and also as a thermometer of the relations established in the here-now, before the accomplishment of these actions. If we approach the notions of affection and affect, as Spinoza (1992) puts it, the notion of presence in relation would also consider the affects that circumscribe the encounter between artist/performer and audience. The performer would be able to affect with his presence, but at the same time perceive the affects that the audience presence would cause on him.

• 4
  Philosophy and Human Science Professor at University of Central Florida, Orlando - United States.

• 5
  Professor of Literature, Media and Communication of Georgia Tech College at Georgia - United States.

• 6
  All text, including the quotations, was translated from Portuguese to English by the translators. However, some quotations were previously translated from other languages to Portuguese by Duenha and Nunes. In this case, it will be evidenced by an * beside the reference.

• 7
  Professor of Theatre Studies at the Freie Universität - Germany.

• 8
  Although there is an English translation of the book Ästhetik des Performativen (original title), all excerpts presented here are from the Spanish version of this same book translated and listed in our References.

• 9
  The group, located in Florianópolis, was founded 21 years ago; the research that they have developed along the years concerns creation in dance; ethical and aesthetic orientations that are possibilities of development of the body and environment relations. In this group there is an interest in combining dance and technology, such as the exploration of media devices, interactive software, robots and prostheses, and, even when there is no use of these devices, there is an algorithmic logic of operation contamination in movement, which is aesthetically revealed by provoking poetic emergences (or moments of beauty, as the group itself name it) in the relational act between bodies through the exploration of parameters, which basically explore states of inevitability and readiness. The members of the group are: Alejandro Ahmed, Aline Blasius, Edú Reis, Hedra Rockenbach, Jussara Belchior, Karin Serafin, Malu Rabelo, Marcos Klann and Mariana Romagnani. Other information about the group can be found on the website <www.cena11.com.br>.

• 10
  The Modo Operativo AND [Modus Operandi AND] is a composition relational methodology based on a philosophy that, among other things, seeks re-existing ways of a common action plan disposition. This research has been developed by the anthropologist Fernanda Eugénio, gaining other contours in the encounter with the Composition in Real Time Method (Composição em Tempo Real), created by the dancer, choreographer and dance researcher João Fiadeiro. Further information on this process can be found on the website: <www.re-al.org> and in the blog: <http://andlabpt.blogspot.com.br/>.

• 11
  Marcelo de Andrade Pereira, a Brazilian under-graduate and graduate professor in the Center of Education at the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM), in the article entitled Ne pas toucher aux œuvres: o princípio da (in)tangibilidade da obra de arte no contexto de sua exibição e suas (contra) significações pedagógicas (Educar Journal, 2013), raises questions about the access to the experience of and with art by addressing the implications of establishing art spaces as environments that somehow sacralize and favor the power relationship between art and the audience. Such reading allows an extension of the theme raised here.

• 12
  Mr. Mauri speaks in an interview conducted by Milene Duenha and Michele Louise Schiocchet with street performers downtown Florianopolis, on May 30, 2013. This was one of mapping actions of the artistic collective Mapas e Hipertextos of Florianópolis (Brazil); it was a movement through the city streets with the intention to talk with artists and street people, casting terms of their research to identify how these terms are also part of the nonacademic daily life.

• 13
  For more information about the group, please go to: <http://www.odinteatret.dk/>.

• 14
  The term co(m)pose derives from the notion of 'co(m)position' (com-posição), presented by Fernanda Eugénio and João Fiadeiro (2012, p. 67). Ii is a difficult term to be translated, com in Portuguese means 'with', that is why the composition happens by 'with-positioning' with the other. It is understood in this research as a possibility of taking a fair position, which potentiates the encounter of the environment disposition and the emerging relations.

• 15
  Rancière (2005, p. 15) presents the idea of 'distribution of the sensitive' (Le Partage du sensible) as an act of establishing something common and a shared responsibility in this act, described by the author as "[...] a common way that leads itself to a participation and how each other takes parts in this sharing".

• 16
  This subject is broadly dealt by the Portuguese philosopher José Gil in the book Movimento Total: o corpo e a dança (2001) and in the text Abrir o corpo (2004).

• 17
  The body scheme, for the French philosopher Merleau-Ponty (1994), would be the way the body expresses itself in the world, not being a mere combination of organs. The spatiality of the body refers to the functioning dynamics as a situation spatiality, which refers to what happens at the moment in relation to the environment in a dynamic perspective.

• 18
  We propose a reflection on the body-mind problem, whose heritage involves many definitions under the philosophers, scientists and artists view, and which has reverberated in the arts field, especially in those somewhat related the body. We start here from the notion of bodymind (Meyer, 2009) in order to bring the notion of relational presence closer to embodiment (embodied mind). For this, we also seek references in the cognitive sciences (neurosciences, artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, cognitive linguistics, and philosophy). The interaction of knowledge fields called cognitive sciences has provoked an onto-epistemological rupture, including a profound change in the human beings' understanding of themselves, their nature and their behavior (Meyer, 2009).

• 19
  This Spinoza's theory is problematized by the French philosopher Chantal Jaquet in the book A unidade do corpo e da mente: afetos, ações e paixões em Espinosa (2011) - Original title: L'unite du corps et de l'espirit: affects, actions et passions chez Spinoza.

• 20
  "The notion of discipline would not be, as Greiner and Katz (2005) highlight, able to comprehend such a complex field of knowledge, and to deal with the subject, it is not enough to combine disciplinary knowledge, what we commonly call trans or interdisciplinarity. The condition of the living organism calls for the substitution of the notion of discipline for indiscipline, in an attempt to get closer to the dynamic and procedural character of the action" (Meyer, 2009, p. 22).

• 21
  The following text is an excerpt entirely extracted from the IV chapter of the Master's dissertation of Milene Lopes Duenha (2014a).

• 22
  In the chapter De la corporéité comme "anticorps", from the book De la création chorégraphique (2001, p. 17-25). All translations presented in this text are made from unpublished Portuguese translations made by Marta Cesar, that were presented in studies from a Theater graduate class from Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina (UDESC) entitled Abordagens do Corpo na Arte, Filosofia e Ciência (Body approaches in Arts, Philosophy and Science).

• 23
  French post-impressionist painter.

• 24
  3 Poet, actor, writer, playwright, French theater screenwriter and director.

• 25
  Swiss painter and poet.

• 26
  Russian painter, theorist, musician and professor, considered to be the introducer to the abstraction in the field of Visual Arts.

• 27
  Anglo-Irish painter.

• 28
  North-American composer, musical theorist and writer.

• 29
  Austrian psychoanalyst.

• 30
  Austrian Philosopher.

• 31
  According to Churchland, the dualism versus materialism node has not been solved, for the dualist approaches the brain as mediator between mind and body, and it does not refer to the central capabilities of the nonphysical mind such as reason, emotion, and consciousness. Materialists claim that the thought is an electrical activity within the brain. Telepathy, for instance, would occur from the production of electromagnetic waves that radiate at the speed of light in all directions and which may have effects on the electrical activity of another brain (Churchland, 2004, p. 40).

• 32
  Actor, director and professor of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  Apr 2017

History

• Received
  31 Mar 2016
• Accepted
  04 Sept 2016