Network Gestures

Emile Zile

Critical and Creative Responses to the Mediated Body in Performance Art

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"Becoming The Icon" Excerpts

"Becoming The Icon" Full length

Becoming The Icon

CHAPTER EXCERPT

The project grew out of a desire to work with Lilian Steiner on a new performance work that spanned the fields of contemporary dance and performance art. The prospect of collaborating with Lilian and advancing my own skills and performative abilities appealed to me, specifically as it would allow me to elaborate on the performance techniques I had been cultivating in contemporary art, applied to the longer duration and bigger budgets of a proper theatrical production period. The collaboration was born out of a mutual willingness to work together, and to develop outside of mutual zones of expertise.

Existing at the fringes of live art and theatre, performance work that exists in the same conceptual realm as Becoming The Icon has at times been described as live art, performance art or contemporary performance. The work can be located between the zones of full-body dance and the language-focused modes of contemporary art performance that privilege speech and image as carriers of meaning over direct movement and physicality.

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The nature of the collaboration in Becoming the Icon saw Lilian and myself as equal contributors in both the creative direction and development of the performance. From the outset we discussed avoiding choreographer/dancer, director/actor distinctions in favour of an equal working relationship that credited us as co-creators. A studio-based rehearsal methodology was developed for the project, within which we combined the developmental processes of contemporary dance and performance art. Using techniques borrowed from dance, improvisation and studio art practice, we worked together during a four-week period, rehearsing from 10 am until 4 pm in Studio 2 of Arts House. We used certain rehearsal principles from contemporary dance, utilising a large open stage with a sound system and vinyl dance matting. The rehearsal room was furnished with a basic sound system, tables for laptops and notebooks, a video projector, and seating around the circumference.

Development days would begin with a Lilian guiding a series of dance warm-ups; stretches to music to wake up the body and activate the moving mind with music. While I felt initially self-conscious and brittle, these sensations quickly fell away. Having known Lilian as a colleague and friend ahead of the project, afforded me trust and conviction in the dance processes she brought to the collaboration. Similarly, working with voice and speech improvisation is a realm in which Lilian felt less comfortable and I took the lead to conduct rehearsal workshops and warm-ups for these elements. The private and dedicated rehearsal process allows for risks to be taken and actions made without fear of failure. By shaping the rehearsal period to reflect the developmental methods of both contemporary dance and contemporary art, we were able to build a multi-layered and hybrid rehearsal period which incorporated rehearsal methodologies of both disciplines.

Rehearsal room techniques were developed to test ideas, which had their roots in a linguistic concept or semiotic formula transcribed on paper. Sketching out words or phrases and creating a plot or script allowed us to see patterns and formations of ideas, which may then be transformed into a performative gesture or sequences. During rehearsals, we would each begin by suggesting an idea, a passage of music or mood. After discussing them, the challenge was to make them viable performative concepts through trial and error. Often certain tropes would solidify, feeling like they possessed more ‘density’ and ‘stickiness’, allowing them to remain fixed to an ongoing discussion of what the work would be. Using the methodological process of daisy chaining (as discussed in detail in Chapter 3), focusing on refinement, discussion, reintegration – provided the method for securing the ideas that work and jettisoning those which did not represent our intentions.

We would bring in written texts or excerpts from broadcast media that resonated with the project. Text fragments brought in would then act as discussion starters or provocations. The speeches of Australian politicians would be re-edited and become the raw material for the final sequence of the project, a speech to camera where we focused directly on the camera and delivered multiple lines of dialogue reframed and remixed

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