pavleheidler

interview game with Josefine Wikström - final

DOCH, March 2015

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What is performative about your practice?

My reading of the word performativity comes directly from my reading of the work of the American philosopher Judith Butler; in particular, it comes from my reading of her book Gender Trouble in which she establishes an interdependent relationship between the notions of: performativity, gender, authority, language, repetition, culture, and body. My interest in this specific reading of performativity came from recognising that the role that, according to Butler, performativity plays in the establishment of gender (if gender is a culturally framed aesthetic expression of identity) is not in any way different from the role that performativity plays in the establishment of an equivalent of gender in the realm of dance and/or performance. This, I concluded, was due to the fact that on both sides of the discourse: (1) the equivalent of gender could be understood as that which carries the visual information that signifies, symbolises or brings forth a reference to some intended meaning which, to some extent, always has to do with the establishment and the communication of a specific identity; and it was due to the fact that on both sides of the discourse (2) performativity could be understood as that (or method) which makes the functioning of gender possible.

If gender is, then, that [layer] which carries the visual information that signifies; in other words, if gender is that [layer] in which meaning appears, it could be said that gender is that which functionally speaking, behaves as an equivalent of language at the time when language is perceived, or understood. In other words, one enters the realm of gender at the precise time by which ‘a sound’ becomes recognised as ‘the word’, and by which ‘a movement’ becomes recognised as ‘the gesture’.
I am primarily interested in that space and that time after an utterance has been performed, and before singular meanings have been established and agreed upon. I am primarily interested in that space and that time in which language is not yet functional; the time between a potential to abstraction, and singularisation of meaningfulness - which is, in my understanding of it: the realm within which performativity functions.

That is to say that my practice is never not performative. It can’t be.

If you consider, for a moment, performativity as that which makes communication as such possible, and if you then think of communication as that which makes ‘the organised society’ possible - you start understanding the inherent interrelatedness of all these concepts and the then obvious significance of the role performativity as a method plays in making all of this possible. Materially possible. Physically possible.

Performativity is what lead you to be able to read this text. Understanding what lead to performativity, and how that knowledge can help organise ourselves better (maybe in a non-hierarchic way?) - is what I’m trying to understand.

Do you care about objects?

Even though I can say my work is analytical and precise, I can not say that to be precise or analytical is the objective of the work. Nor can I say that that which it makes is an object; especially not the one to be cherished in its own right. The work I do is, in fact, critical of objective-related value systems and proposes an entirely different order.

Do you separate your art practice from your life practice?

Exactly not. /This is the end of my answer to the previous question.