Cover image: West by Freek Duinhof (2012)
Correspondences
Researching synaesthesia as dramaturgy
A thesis for the MA Arts & Culture: Theatre Studies, University of Amsterdam (2016) Freek Duinhof
Student number: 10001498
Supervisor: drs. meLê Yamomo Second reader: prof. dr. Kati Röttger
like prolonged echoes mingling in the distance
there are perfumes as cool as the flesh of children
that sing the ecstasy of the soul and the senses
Excerpts from C. Baudelaire`s Correspondances Translated by W. Aggler
I would like to give thanks to meLê Yamomo, who has been a fantastic supervisor during the work on this thesis, and to Kati Röttger for being the second reader, and for supporting me during my time studying at this faculty.
I would also like to thank my loving friends and family for encouraging me to continue when I doubted, for listening to me rambling about obscure neurology, and for having patience with me in these stressful times.
Finally, I thank my dear friend Arnica Elsendoorn (1947 – 2016), who taught me all about theatre and acting, who took me under her wing, and who inspired me to begin this journey. I think of you often.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: synaesthesia as dramaturgy 1
1 Synaesthetics 4
Of dramaturgy and synaesthesia 5
A void to be filled 5
The conditions for exchange 7
Early aesthetic strategies 12
Synaesthesia and symbolism 12
The total work of art 15
Expanding on the senses: blue watermelons 18
2 Dramaturgy and the sensible 23
Towards movement 24
Narration and translation 27
Choreographing modalities 27
Translating modalities 32
A dramaturgy of the sensible 35
3 A drama of perception 38
Absence and abundance 39
The synaesthetic act 39
Landscapes 42
A dramaturgy of incompleteness 44
Conclusion: Correspondences 49
INTRODUCTION:
SYNAESTHESIA AS DRAMATURGY
Imagine seeing more than meets the eye, on an everyday basis. You are at this time concentrating on black markings on a white background, and yet you are attaching meaning to them on many levels. What if these black markings appeared to be red, blue and yellow? This sentence alone would form a rainbow. Now imagine seeing more than meets the ear. You would always have a visual response to an auditory stimulus, seeing shapes and shades matching the sounds you hear. In order to experience this, one might see the performance
While we strive1 by choreographer Arno Schuitemaker, where this is done with dance, colours
and music. Three dancers move rhythmically and continuously while coloured lights move from bright yellow to a deep purple and while a low humming sound seems to swallow up the percussion. As the performance develops, so do the colours, sounds and movements, meaning that as a spectator you are guided through a whole array of experiences in one sitting. These two examples show just a few of the many forms synaesthesia takes. This neurological phenomenon, present at birth, is a condition in which two or more of the senses in a perceiving subject are combined involuntarily, creating a new manner of perceiving. This pathology is quite rare, and there are as many synaesthetes as variations of synaesthesia, making it very difficult for objective research to take place. On top of this, this understanding of synaesthesia is quite young. While the term has existed for centuries, it is only in the last few decades that it has been recognised and researched as being a neurological condition. As synaesthesia is an elusive yet seemingly omnipresent phenomenon, it has fascinated many and has been employed in multiple ways. In more recent times, theatre scholar Hans-Thies Lehmann used the term to frame an act of the spectator in a theatrical setting, namely the connecting of ostensibly incongruent elements in order to create a feeling of sense and logic.2 The term has taken on many shapes and forms, for most of which the foundation lies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Many artists living in that time have been stated to be synaesthetes, among which we find Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Liszt. At this time, synaesthesia was mostly an aesthetic, specifically literary device that linked the senses in
1 A, Schuitemaker, While We Strive, performance, Theatre Frascati (Amsterdam, October 7th, 2015).
numerous ways.3 As synaesthesia (syn-aesthesis) holds within itself the cooperation between multiple senses and therefore the corresponding modalities, I believe it to be deeply ingrained into theatre and performance already. This point aside, it has been a part of artistic practice since the 19th century, as will be discussed in the first chapter, meaning it has had time to wear into what might be seen as the theatrical structure and to adapt to what was needed from it. Strangely enough, no records of this are to be found at the ready. It is my goal to analyse artistic applications of synaesthesia in art and more specifically theatre in order to arrive at a discussion of synaesthesia as a part of contemporary dramaturgy.
Until now, one might have thought that in contemporary theatre synaesthesia is nowhere to be found. For isn’t theatre a place of representation, of spoken stories, and of a proscenium arch separating the actors from the audience? I pose this simultaneously outdated and current rhetorical question on purpose, as it is obvious that theatre and other forms of performed arts are ever changing, adopting new strategies and returning to some traditions along the way, and shape shifting according to the demands of artists and spectators alike. As the art forms twist and turn, so do the elements that are vital in creating them. The use of synaesthesia as a literary device and as a possibility for experiment in different disciplines might be exemplary of this. At this moment, synaesthesia and theatre seemingly are of potential interest to each other, but perhaps not congruent in the image that we have of either of them. If we are to arrive at an understanding of synaesthesia as an aesthetic strategy, or perhaps even a form of dramaturgy, we must consider all that constitutes the process of making theatre. Of what use might synaesthesia be for the scenic practices of contemporary performances, for instance? This is a question that leads us to many more questions. In order to arrive at this understanding of synaesthesia and dramaturgy, however, perhaps the most important and pressing question to consider at this time, is that of the state of dramaturgy and theatre in this day and age. In order to discuss this relationship between synaesthesia and theatre, I will start at a discussion of contemporary theatre and dramaturgy, and work my way towards a historical understanding of synaesthesia first, before moving on to a neurological and phenomenological understanding of it. Following this exploration, synaesthesia itself and our use of the five senses will be discussed in order to arrive at a possible description of synaesthesia and perception in contemporary dramaturgy. A phenomenological perspective, following Maurice Merleau-Ponty, will be employed in this thesis in order to discuss everyday sensory experience, the role our body plays in the dialogue between the perceiving
subject and the sensible work of art, and finally, a number of case studies. We will start with the performance mentioned earlier, While We Strive by Arno Schuitemaker, and in the film
Fantasia4 by Walt Disney Studios. These analyses, when combined with a discussion of
Jacques Rancière`s work on the emancipated spectator and the distribution of the sensible will lead me to a set of strategies I would like to call a dramaturgy of the sensible. After this, I will leave the sensorial realm behind for a moment and move to a more conceptual understanding of synaesthesia, namely the act of connecting the dots caused by the inability to perceive certain works as a whole because of an abundance of elements or an absence of elements to be perceived and interpreted in the artwork, as it was described by Hans-Thies Lehmann in his work Postdramatic Theatre. To do this, I will analyse the performance / installation The
Immortals5 by Suzan Boogaerdt and Robert Wilson`s Einstein on the Beach.6 Connected to the mentioned inability to perceive, there is what Heiner Goebbels described as a “drama of perception,”7 which will be discussed shortly alongside Gertrude Stein`s concept of landscapes. In the inability to see the wood for the trees we also find another dramaturgy that revolves around completing a performance in our perception: a dramaturgy of incompleteness.
These two dramaturgies are just two of many dramaturgies that might be discovered, most of which might already be in use. This means, however, that this research will be limited to a small section of the vast space that synaesthesia holds within itself as well. As the words
theatre, theoros (the Ancient Greek word for spectator), and spectator are all visually
grounded terms, unfortunately, there has been a somewhat one-sided approach to the sensory perception of theatre and performance, meaning that vision was at the top of the sensory hierarchy in this situation and that it was followed by hearing long before the other senses were considered as well. However, it is because of this and the size of the research that, for now, I have chosen to focus on these two modalities, leaving room for further research on the other three sensory pathways to be done later on. We must not forget that theatre separates itself from the other disciplines because of the possibility it holds in making use of the correspondences between the different modalities. As it follows, theatre is indeed already a synaesthetic art form.
4 W. Disney, J. Grant, and D. Huemer, Fantasia, film (Los Angeles: Walt Disney Productions, 1940). 5 B. van der Schoot, The Immortals, performance, Theatre Frascati (Amsterdam, December 11th, 2014).
6 R. Wilson, L. Childs, and P. Glass, Einstein on the Beach, registration, Théâtre du Chatelet, (July 1st, 2014).
1
SYNAESTHETICS
Many authors have argued that the arts, and more specifically the performing arts, have been the subject of a paradigm shift. For instance, Clair Bishop argued that one of the changes meant that the artist was viewed less as a creator of a singular work, but more as a producer and collaborator of ongoing processes and situations, while the audience is more and more viewed as a participant.8 She placed this shift within a context of neoliberalism and the growth of popularity of buzzwords such as participation and social inclusion, with two examples of political institutions employing these strategies being New Labour in the United Kingdom and the Dutch right-wing coalition government in the 2000s.9 Naturally, when theatre and performance changed, so did dramaturgy. In the preface to the book New Dramaturgy, a collection of essays on contemporary dramaturgy in theory and practice, Bernadette Cochrane and Katalin Trencsényi elaborate on this trend. They refuse the possibility of a singular new dramaturgy replacing the older dramaturgy, but argue for a transformation of its form and role within the creation process, and for the incorporation of it into a wider paradigm. It is freed from Aristotelian poetics and no longer merely an attribute of dramatic textual analysis. By the end of the twentieth century it would be synonymous with the totality of the performance making process.10 In these changes they are following Lehmann`s historical discussion of the development of postdramatic theatre. It is precisely this step away from a dramatic theatre that is interesting for researching a dramaturgy encompassing synaesthesia. However, as synaesthesia and theatre both grant objects and phenomena a second layer of being, if you will, we must not discredit fictional and dramatic work in this research. The action of being at once here and there indeed seems to be a synaesthetic act in itself. If we follow Cochrane and Trencsényi, we find that they have come across three main characteristics of the new paradigm of dramaturgy: acknowledgement of the decline of mimesis as the dominant dramatic model, making use of multiple value systems and cultures between which can be negotiated, and a process-conscious mentality. This means that the role and position of the “new dramaturg” have changed. They are no longer the first spectator, no longer the critic, but
8 Claire Bishop, Artifical Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London / New York: Verso, 2012), 2.
9 Ibid., 13–16.
10 B. Cochrane and K. Trencsényi, New Dramaturgy: International Perspectives on Theory and Practice (London / New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), xi–xii.
more a curator and facilitator, nearer to the centre of the creation process.11 The use of synaesthesia in and for dramaturgies and theatre has necessarily changed as well and grown to follow this progression through time. In the following paragraphs, this change will be illustrated in both theatre and synaesthesia. Firstly, contemporary dramaturgy and the place of the spectator in contemporary theatre will be discussed with the help of Peter Boenisch` formulation of relational dramaturgy. Secondly, the work that placed synaesthesia within the arts, the poem Correspondances by Charles Baudelaire, will be analysed, as well as its influence on the artists that followed in the discovery of the artistic use of the neurological phenomenon. Finally, the phenomenon synaesthesia itself will be discussed, as a neurological phenomenon and as a bodily manner of perceiving the world.
OF DRAMATURGY AND SYNAESTHESIA
A VOID TO BE FILLED
Since the 1990s, multiple authors and artists have spoken of changes in multiple fields, among which art and theatre, economics and politics. This has lead authors to reconsider the defined borders of disciplines, but also to define the times, as it were. For instance, Robin van den Akker and Timotheus Vermeulen theorised that postmodernism might have given way to
metamodernism,12 and Nicolas Bourriaud worked on the altermodern.13 When researching written work on theatre in the 1990s, we find Claire Bishop discussing process-based works of art that are placed within communities, and we find Hans-Thies Lehmann describing a set of theatrical elements that have emerged in the late twentieth century, and that are to be called postdramatic. In this sea of new terms for the arising and changing shapes of art in our time, relational is often the first noticed. However, Cathy Turner proposes the intriguing term
porosity. In her article Porous Dramaturgy and the Pedestrian, Turner describes the same
trend Bishop wrote of, but also stresses a need for acceptance of accidents and contradictions in creating art. Her arguments are built on the metaphor of porous structures she found in geology, structures that might be eroded, altered and filled by a fluid body. In “porous dramaturgy” there is an attempt to engage the audience in co-creation, and the notion of
11 Ibid., xi–xiii.
12 R. van den Akker and T. Vermeulen, “Notes on Metamodernism,” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 2 (2010). 13 N. Bourriaud, Altermodern (London: Tate Publishing, 2009).
porous theatre is expressive of the space that is left for that what is beyond the work itself and is brought to it by an audience.14 In this formulation, it is more a process of communication that is described than an aesthetic event. Although it seems like Turner is creating a singular form that obliges forms of activation of a singular body, she stresses that porosity merely implies interactivity and instead offers a void space that might be filled by the individual onlooker or participant as they please. She mostly discusses participatory work and site-specific works, but it is easy to see this concept placed onto other types of theatre and performance. She concludes her arguments with the statement that porosity should be perceived as a spatial structure. In this instance, the artwork is an architectural shape to be occupied by a fluid body (or multitude of fluid bodies). Porous dramaturgy, then, is the “relationship between the architectonics of the artwork and the way these invite and respond to occupation.”15 I would like to hook onto precisely this: the concept of relation being at the core of contemporary dramaturgy. If we are to believe Peter Boenisch, another author adding to the book New Dramaturgy, relational dramaturgy “forges relations, changes relationships, and calibrates a dynamic interplay.”16 Boenisch builds his thoughts on the writings of Erika Fischer-Lichte and follows her statements on the trend of a renewed engagement with the audience from post-semiotic perspectives. While naming the bodily co-presence of actors and spectators as the specific mediality of theatre, Fischer-Lichte describes a shift from the classic semiotic investigation of the production, communication and reception of meaning to an “emergence” of meaning localised within spectating as active participation in making meaning. A clear form of dialogue, if you will, is illustrated. However, Boenisch argues that this theory is still reliant on the either/or-structure that dualities tend to make use of, and as such he proposes that today’s dramaturgic strategies activate the full interplay between the semiotic and the material that Fischer-Lichte discusses. “These processes of playful negotiations (…) are at the heart of what I call relational dramaturgy.”17
As clearly as Boenisch is influenced by Nicholas Bourriaud, he is informed by Eugenio Barba as well. Boenisch states that, following from Barba`s writings on dramaturgy, relational dramaturgy “acts” in the full sense, on everything that is impacted by it. More than
14 C. Turner, “Porous Dramaturgy and the Pedestrian,” in New Dramaturgy: International Perspectives on
Theory and Practice, ed. B. Cochrane and K. Trencsényi (London / New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), 199–200.
15 Ibid., 211.
16 Peter Boenisch, “Acts of Spectating: The Dramaturgy of the Audience`s Experience in Contemporary Theatre,” in New Dramaturgy: International Perspectives on Theory and Practice, ed. B. Cochrane and K. Trencsényi (London / New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), 227.
Turner, “Porous Dramaturgy and the Pedestrian,” 211.
17 Boenisch, “Acts of Spectating: The Dramaturgy of the Audience`s Experience in Contemporary Theatre,” 226–227.
interpreting the action on the level of narrative, it is a weaving of actions on all levels of production. It acts on the understanding of the spectator as well. The mode of dramaturgy marks the relations with the spectators within a production, as well as its fluidity in the colour spectrum between semioticity and materiality.18 It is important to add to this that the shift to relational dramaturgy, which is still taking place, is not happening at the surface of the relations by abandoning the passivity of the spectator. If that were the case, the frustrating division between the activated spectating and the passive gaze would be enforced. Reminding us of Jacques Rancière`s The Emancipated Spectator, Boenisch implores the reader to think of the spectator as spectator in their irreducible distance without any reservations. Boenisch employs a Lacanian viewpoint by illustrating that the gaze and the spectating were always inscribed within the aesthetic context. As such, through relational dramaturgy the spectator is no longer the Other, but a subject that holds at once a “spectating I” (or spectating eye) and the “I of the spectator.” Because of this more thoroughly formulated division the separation between the binaries of representation and presentation, presence and the present, materiality and semioticity is blurred.19 If this map of the spectator has indeed just been remapped, then that means that the spectator is indeed at once a separate yet deeply ingrained element within the creation of the work of art, in this specific discussion the performance.
THE CONDITIONS FOR EXCHANGE
Most of the arguments offered by the authors above are informed strongly by what Hans-Thies Lehmann defined as postdramatic theatre. The very physical and concrete elements of closeness and distance to the work and site-specificity, but also the more abstract aspects of the production that ask for a process-conscious approach and use of different value systems, and the consequences of employing a parataxis are all discussed in his work Postdramatic
Theatre, published at the end of the twentieth century. What does this mean? If we are to
believe Lehmann himself, postdramatic theatre is still a useful concept and will be for some time.20 Can we assume that these shifts, that have mostly emerged in the nineties, should be considered part of the postdramatic trend in theatre? On top of this, I have argued many times, and will continue to argue, that the prefix post remains a confusing one in this context.
18 Ibid., 228. 19 Ibid., 233–237.
20 H. Lehmann, “Some Notes on Postdramatic Theatre, a Decade Later,” in Rethinking Dramaturgy, Errancy
and Transformation (Murcia: Centro de documentación y estudios avanzados de arte contemporáneo (Cendeac),
According to Lehmann, the prefix can add multiple meanings of relation to the simple meaning of succession.21 Although postdramatic theatre was conceived of later than dramatic form, it did not end this form. That means that there is no such thing as a time after, or post, dramatic theatre. We must also remember that these arguments are built on a continental perspective and follow the timeline of theatre with Aristotle as one of the founding fathers. Any forms that do not follow Aristotelian dramatic guidelines are implicitly placed under the umbrella term postdramatic because the Western eyes are unfamiliar to them. It is because of this that I am tempted to consider new prefixes such as allo-, pseudo- and non-, but that would not change the situation in this instant. This unfamiliarity does pose interesting questions, however. In her article Time and a Mirror, Rachael Swain considers new dramaturgies that work with intercultural and indigenous performances in Australia, specifically the dance theatre company Marrugeku. Swain argues that indigenous art makes use of different levels of meaning and its absence, meaning that the mode of perception becomes subject of discussion in the production.22 This method of working implies that a post might not be fruitful if different cultures employ different strategies in producing meaning, and that this is an exclusive western post. In the new paradigm of dramaturgy, this is a more pressing matter, considering the possibilities for theatre groups to perform across the globe. Later on, Swain argues for a dramaturgy of incompleteness that paradoxically requires the spectator to simultaneously assume the posture of a passive openness, or a surrender, as well as showing an active need for knowledge through participation as audience. This duality that should take place at once shows a new kind of attention that influences a dramaturgy of the spectator as well.23 This is an argument that is similar to the ones we heard earlier, though this time it is formulated on an intercultural level.
For a spectator that is unfamiliar with these levels of meanings and manners of producing them, it is understandable that a reaction is elicited as described in Postdramatic Theatre. When multiple elements in a performance are seemingly incongruent, new correspondences can be found. As the “human apparatus”, as Lehmann calls it, does not easily tolerate disconnectedness, in these instances, the connections are sought out or forged by the spectator. What occurs to the perceiving subject as similarities and correlations, might not show reason to be related at first. This act, a connecting of the dots, is what Lehmann refers to
21 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, 27.
22 R Swain, “Time and a Mirror: Towards a Hybrid Dramaturgy for Intercultural-Indigenous Performance,” in
New Dramaturgy: International Perspectives on Theory and Practice, ed. B. Cochrane and K. Trencsényi
(London / New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), 150. 23 Ibid., 161.
when he speaks of synaesthesia. Interestingly, since modernism a shift in the use of synaesthesia has taken place, according to Lehman. Where at the time of Wagner and Maeterlinck the form of synaesthesia within the scenic action was an implicit constituent of theatre as a work of mise-en-scène, it became an explicitly marked proposition for a process of communication. Following on this, Lehmann states that perception functions dialogically as the senses respond to the offers and demands of the environment and mentions that when responding we are also actively constructing the manifold into a texture of perception, or a personal unity of perception, causing me to rephrase this concept and from now on refer to it as the synaesthetic act.24
Relational dramaturgy, porous dramaturgy and intercultural dramaturgy each highlight different aspects of what indeed seems to be a new, broader of contemporary dramaturgy. A possible dramaturgy of synaesthesia seems related to these forms, but has not been formulated yet. At this time, contemporary dramaturgy seems to be more concerned with the status of spectatorship than the actual perceptual work done by the spectators. One might recall the sea of new theories about modernisms and citizenship in the 21st century. Which road are we to follow then? Which path in the midst of discussions on participation in the arts and in society, on global and virtual communities, and on neoliberalism should we choose? Is one path enough? A starting point in this instance might be Nicholas Bourriaud`s somewhat controversial writings on relational art. Starting out with a rejection of digital communication and consumerism, his argumentation seems teeming with generalisations. Before arriving at contemporary art from the start of the new millennium, he laments the death of the idealistic and teleological version of art, and discusses neoliberalism and the society of the spectacle.25 He states that the role of art has changed as “the role of artworks is no longer to form imaginary and utopian realities, but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real, whatever the scale chosen by the artist.”26 Simultaneously, it would seem that art has moved from being a space to walk through to a period of time to be lived through due to an urbanisation of the artistic experiment.27 As the manners in which we communicate have changed according to the changes of media and needs in our now global society, Bourriaud argues for a relational art: “an art taking as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an independent and
24 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, 84–85.
25 Nicholas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Dijon: Les Presses du Réel, 2002), 7–13. 26 Ibid., 13.
private symbolic space.”28 Although this is an interesting proposition, the definition of art used here, mentioned in between brackets, is limited to “practices stemming from painting and sculpture which come across in the form of an exhibition,” as it is possible to comment on the work live.29 As his views seems shifting throughout the text, we might later on think that it is not the work that is relational per se, but the exhibition within the work is placed, as it is the exhibition that is described as “an arena of exchange.”30
What is relationality then in this context? The social interactions of the people who are at the exhibition? The form and perhaps even the content of the work of art? If relationality is a concept working with the social interactions between human beings, it is surprising that performance is not (explicitly) considered as an artistic discipline in this theory. Bourriaud moves on in defining relationality not as a theory of art, but of form, stating that the form of an artwork is merely a relational property. It is the manner in which the author embarks on a dialogue with the beholder via the work of art. Each artwork is at once a proposal to live in a shared world (a proposal for communication) and a bundle of relations with that world. At the same time art itself is an ensemble, a formation, of units to be re-activated by the beholder,31 a formulation that is reminiscent of the porosity described earlier. Bourriaud concludes on the note that all form is a face looking at us, a phrase he borrowed from Sergey Daney. “Producing a form is to invent possible encounters, receiving form is to create the conditions for an exchange (…).”32 Although Bourriaud seems to hint at a relationality that is present on all levels of the aesthetic experience, he arrives explicitly at only two; the social arena of the exhibition, and the form through which the dialogue takes place. Perhaps it is fruitful now to discuss two performative artworks, as at this time we can ask ourselves to what extent performative installations in exhibitions can be considered in this equation. The first is Nam June Paik`s TV Buddha,33 a video installation where a camera films an 18th century statue of Buddha, which is transmitted live through a television screen opposite the statue. The statue is constantly looking at an image of itself. If the audience walks into the view of the camera, they become visible on the screen as well. While this work deals with spirituality, technology, and self-reflection, it also questions the position of the spectator, simply by making the spectator`s image a part of the form and content. Following from the self-awareness that is created, the bodies of those present are part of the work for a brief moment as well. But what
28 Ibid., 14. 29 Ibid., 15. 30 Ibid., 17–18. 31 Ibid., 18–22. 32 Ibid., 23.
if the core of the work is the human body? Although contingency is a part of TV Buddha, it is at the heart of Marina Abramovic’ The Artist Is Present, as it was performed at MoMA in 2010.34 In this piece, the artist was literally present, sitting at a table in an open space, waiting for her guest to sit opposite her. The extent of the action that ensues is limited to the locked gaze of the artist and the guest. They share a moment, and are watched by the people surrounding them, meaning that there are multiple levels of experience in and around the artwork. It would seem that this form of aesthetic dialogue works with playful negotiations, as discussed by Peter Boenisch. However, these negotiations are not about the semiotic and the material, but about the act of spectating and the spectating I itself. Who is playing what role? As all art is relational to some extent thanks to the necessity of form and medium, these works are as well. They show the two manners of relationality that Bourriaud discusses, but work on more than just these levels. Next to the possibility of live comments and working with human interaction on a thematic level, they also actively engage the spectator through the form and adopt their bodies into the “bubble” of the work. The works of art thus show many possibilities for many forms of encounter, while showing many faces looking back at us. We must now continue with theatre and performance, as it would seem that these disciplines, involving at least one human presence in the work and experiencing the work, are perhaps more relational than practices stemming from painting and sculpture. This was implied earlier in the essay on relational dramaturgy by Peter Boenisch as well. What separates these and many other works form the aesthetic Bourriaud describes is that relationality is employed on a political level within the form of the work, namely the chosen form of distributing the sensible.
EARLY AESTHETIC STRATEGIES
SYNAESTHESIA AND SYMBOLISM
Due to the obscurity of synaesthesia, it is at once an unfamiliar pathology and a widely inspiring aesthetic form. In order to discuss the use of synaesthesia in a theatrical context, where it might be of interest to the dramaturgical side of the production of performances, I would like to consider a short history of the beginnings of its aesthetic uses as a literary device and as a part of a movement. The first defining period for the artistic use of synaesthesia stretched from the second half of the nineteenth century to the start of the twentieth century. The year that draws our attention, when it comes to the use of synaesthesia in the arts, is 1857, the year that Charles Baudelaire published Les Fleurs du Mal. It is his sonnet Correspondances that ostensibly started the movement that we now call symbolism,35 but it also showcases aesthetic and neurological aspects of synaesthesia. Although the phenomenon had been encountered before, for our intentions this is perhaps the clearest example of early literary use of synaesthesia.
Correspondances
La nature est un temple où de vivants piliers Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles ; L’homme y passe à travers de forêts de symboles Qui l’observe avec des regards familiers. Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité, Vaste comme une nuit et comme la clarté, Les parfumes, les couleurs et les sons se répondent. Il est des parfums frais comme de chairs d’enfants, Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies, - Et d`autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants,
35 R. Taruskin, “Getting Rid of Glue,” The Oxford History of Western Music, 2013,
Ayant l`expansion des choses infinies,
Comme l`ambre, le musc, le benjoin en l`encens, Qui chantent les transports de l`esprit et des sens.36
Correspondences
Nature is a temple in which living pillars Sometimes give voice to confused words; Man passes there through forests of symbols Which look at him with understanding eyes. Like prolonged echoes mingling in the distance In a deep and tenebrous unity,
Vast as the dark of night and as the light of day, Perfumes, sounds, and colors correspond. There are perfumes as cool as the flesh of children, Sweet as oboes, green as meadows
- And others are corrupt, and rich, triumphant, With power to expand into infinity,
Like amber and incense, musk, benzoin, That sing the ecstasy of the soul and senses.37
36 C. Baudelaire, “Correspondances,” in Les Fleurs
Du Mal, 63rd ed. (Paris: Librairie Générale
Française, 2014), 55.
37 C. Baudelaire, “Correspondences,” in Les Fleurs
Du Mal, ed. W. Aggler, 1954 ed. (J. Nygrin, 2008),
25, www.paskvil.com/file/files-books/baudelaire-fleurs.pdf.
Here we find that normally silent objects are able to speak, smells have temperature, taste, and hue, and sounds, smells, and colours are present where vision may fail. The poem is bursting with metaphors, but also with synaesthetic expression. Though in the literary works of the time the use of synaesthesia as a device for conveying meaning was not at all the same thing as the neurological phenomenon, Baudelaire seems to have written quite an accurate summary of the phenomenon synaesthesia and the art movement Symbolism. According to Richard Taruskin, the Symbolist movement had two crucial ideas at its core, both present in this sonnet. While the first idea is a symbolist conception of synaesthesia, meaning the equivalence and interchangeability of sense experiences in this instant, the second idea is the occult knowledge that synaesthesia imparts. There is more to one`s surroundings than just what can be seen, causing sensory input to be merely half of the story. There are symbols in all things.38 A very telling description is given by Taruskin, when speaking of the musical realm of darkness. Through immersing oneself into the impenetrable darkness we cannot see, but we can feel. When one gets accustomed to the darkness, some sort of second “seeing” emerges, clarifying the centre of the dream while hiding real objects. The goal is then to see past the phenomenological world into the beyond, a higher world. It is as if a third thing is placed between the sensory experience and the object that is to be reached, whatever it may be. An interesting yet humorous example of this point of view is expressed by Stéphane Mallarmé when being complimented on the clarity of an essay: “Give it back! I need to put in more shadows.”39 These descriptions of the occult, of shadows and heavy use of symbols are symptoms of a revival of a magical world view, where hidden resemblances may be encountered everywhere, at every time.
In his analysis of the poem, Ihab H. Hassan explores the relationship between French (Symbolist) and English (modern) poetry. In doing so, he lays bare some crucial elements of the poem that informs the reader of the use of metaphor and synaesthesia as well. While the use of symbols and literary devices, such as metonymies and metaphors, create relationships between objects in the poem itself, they do so as well on a larger scale, creating room for possibility in our experience of it. This possibility is described on different levels by Hassan as leading to a dialectic: unity and multivalence, identity and analogy, association and dissociation, contraction and expansion, and subjectivity and objectivity.40 This dialectic, stemming from symbols and metaphors, permits relationships between the different senses but
38 Taruskin, “Getting Rid of Glue.” 39 Ibid.
40 I.H. Hassan, “Baudelaire`s ‘Correspondances’: The Dialectic of a Poetic Affinity,” The French Review 27, no. 6 (1954): 438.
also different areas of our perception. Hassan grants the synaesthetic aspects of this poem another oscillation: the dialectic between synthesis and analysis. This analysis is performed by the author when translating the sensory input into another experiential language. With the help of metaphors and symbols the relations are opened up to make this possible.41 Apart from expanding the realm of scents into colour, texture and temperature, Baudelaire gives the
vivants piliers (living pillars, or trees) the ability to speak and symbols the eyes needed to
gaze back at us. The symbolic realm of the poem encompasses more than mere metaphor or synaesthetic translation, but combines them to arrive at a realm in which the occult and the dark are dominant. Other artists in varying disciplines started working along this path as well. In similar fashion we find Wassily Kandinsky composing paintings with the help of external and internal meanings of colours and forms. He simultaneously addresses colours and forms linguistically, spatially, spiritually and musically. Colours are treated as though they have personalities, while having symbolic value (black signifying death, white signifying birth, etc.) and performing universal moments in time, all at the same time. “Like nothingness after sunset, black sounds like an eternal silence, without future or hope.”42 While colours can move between different antitheses (warm and cold, light and dark) in different fashions (eccentric, concentric),43 compositions can be melodic, symphonic and rhythmic.44 As becomes clear from this description, in the work On the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky adopts a synaesthetic manner of working and theorising the artistic process in painting. However, debates on whether Kandisky actually was a synaesthete never fully reached a conclusion. This becomes apparent when considering the fact that Kandinsky`s cross-modal accounts of compositions in painting seem to be built on the spiritual and symbolic. While descriptions of colours are supported with spatial, sonic, bodily and emotional qualities, no clear neurological basis is found, apart from a short discussion of psychological accounts of patients with synaesthesia at the time. Leaving this aside, an interesting note can be made regarding the theatrical quality of Kandinsky and Baudelaire`s work. In using synaesthesia, objects and phenomena are shown to be capable of action, to some extent of course. Although Kandinsky prefers musical terminology, he seems to be “staging” colour for spectators to behold. As such, he seems to approach art as a singular concept within which all disciplines might be made use of.
41 Ibid., 440–443.
42 W. Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art, ed. Anonymous Translator, NY ed. (New York: Gallery Press, 1946), 68.
43 Ibid., 60. 44 Ibid., 96.
THE TOTAL WORK OF ART
The magical world view described above, supported by the literary and symbolist use of synaesthesia, led me to the concept Gesamtkunstwerk, as formulated by Richard Wagner. Although Wagner does not exactly fit into the views of authors and artists that were described earlier, he presents some ideas and forms that are interesting to discuss in this context when seen as predecessors of the aesthetic strategies that seek to combine disciplines and to reshape aesthetic and theatrical experiences. Claiming that myths should again be acquired by dramatists as their subjects of choice, he shows a longing to revive the near religious relationship between the author, performer and spectator. Following this, he claims there is a need to return to a classic Athenian form of festival drama. In order to establish this, the arts should be reunited into a Gesamtkunstwerk. Because of historic, ethical, and cultural connotations attached to this phrase,45 perhaps we should follow author Patrick Carnegy in translating the phrase to total work of art.46 In Wagner`s eyes the constituent arts would consume and destroy each other in order to aid each other to reach their shared purpose. However, even Wagner himself had some trouble formulating the idea and bringing it into practice. Much later, he redefined his works as deeds of music made visible, instead of total works of art, clearly placing music at the top of the hierarchy of the work.47 At the same time, however, he employed a phrase that holds a synaesthetic strategy within itself. In attempting to make musical deeds visible, aural objects and movements become subject of a search for visual forms and actions.
Although not all artists agree with the formulation of the Gesamtkunstwerk (Baudelaire apparently was a big supporter however), many artists had joined him in the search for the juxtaposition of the arts that would allow for a higher or more total art form. Since the nineteenth century, the “musical painting” had shaped a tradition that many painters partook in, among which Vincent van Gogh and Janus de Winter, who visualised Wagner in his work
Muzikale Fantasie (1916). Another Dutch painter, Piet Mondriaan, allegedly painted
variations of jazz on his canvases.48 A clear example of a search for total art is found in the group called the Blaue Reiter. Wassily Kandinsky and other visual artists, composers,
45 Due to opinions expressed (vaguely) by Wagner himself and his popularity with Adolf Hitler, Wagner is associated by many with Nazism, German nationalism, anti-Semitism, and racism. Ostensibly, the Gesamtkunstwerk was appropriated by Hitler and his propagandists as exemplary for the Third Reich.
46 P. Carnegy, Wagner and the Art of Theater, 10th ed. (London / New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 47. 47 Ibid., 118.
dancers, and theatrical artists joined in experimental research to find the art of the future. By looking for a unification of the arts while guarding their freedom of expression and abstraction, they attempted to arrive at an ideal form of immaterial art. An example of such an experiment is the performance Der Gelbe Klang, around 1912. In this performance, dynamic forms were researched through dissonance and temporality, leading to three types of movement: pictorial movement, musical movement, and physical movement.49 As Kandinsky puts it, each of the art forms has its own strengths that cannot be substituted by another. However, the same type of expression of a colour may be reached through another discipline, as room for experimentation grows by walking a different road than one is familiar with.50 Other attempts at merging several art forms can be found in the form of devices called “colour organs” (earlier variations were the clavecin oculaire and the son-et-lumière). For example, Alexander Rimington`s colour organ was organised around predetermined coloured octaves, being more brightly lit in higher octaves. The colour organ was to be played simultaneously with a regular, musical organ. More famously, Alexander Scriabin researched the psychological effects of experiencing colours and music simultaneously, and worked on a universal sonic palette laying bare the corresponding colours to the musical notes. Simultaneously, he worked on a mystical spectacle, involving dance, light, incense, poetry, and music in a synaesthetic fashion.51
New psychological and psychoanalytical research done around the turn of the nineteenth century into the twentieth century bled into literature and the arts, and vice versa. This led to Symbolist notions of the unconscious and of fate, and the symbolic connection that exists between the two. While emphasis in content and scientific context shifted, so did the core of formal aspects of the arts, leading to new harmonic structures in opera and abstract musical design. An example might be the idea of the leitmotiv, a formal aspect that was important in Wagner`s works.52 Another example might be the extensive use of the symbolic value of colours in Bluebeard`s Castle, a work by Béla Bartók. This psychological and symbolic foundation can take on many “theatrical” forms. One the one hand, there is the Wagnerian mythological stage with grand elements on all levels, and on the other, there is the empty stage of poetry for an audience of one that Symbolist pioneers Stéphane Mallarmé and
48 Cretien van Campen, Tussen Zinnen. Synesthesie of Hoe de Zintuigen Samenwerken (Utrecht: Uitgeverij Zien, 2005), 55.
49 Ibid., 55–56.
50 Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art, 37.
51 Campen, Tussen Zinnen. Synesthesie of Hoe de Zintuigen Samenwerken, 49–50.
52 E. Antokoletz, Musical Symbolism in the Operas of Debussy and Bartók: Trauma, Gender, and the Unfolding
Charles Baudelaire created for their readers.53 In contrast to these forms, we find another author looking for more radical new forms of theatre. In Theatre and its Double Antonin Artaud (with a more Surrealist background) writes a manifest that calls for a theatre of cruelty. He does not call for staged violence, of course, but he asks to lay bare the cruelty of life as it is through a new theatrical language. The settled, psychological theatre of words, always on the hunt for the next masterpiece, should be left behind and make room for a theatre of gestures and vibrations. To make “art” is to rob a gesture of its reverberation in the subject that made it. All the arts should as such be moved back to a central attitude and necessity, giving the same value to an aesthetic gesture and a gesture of a force of nature. Artaud demands a theatre where spectators are in the centre, and where the spectacle surrounds them, where sounds are chosen for their vibratory quality first, where light is more than just illumination, where action and dynamic are created through pure energies.54 His arguments against psychoanalysis and the need for masterpieces lead him to a wish for something that is perhaps more ritual than theatre, while still growing from Ancient Greek poetry. Though he seems to prefer giving up disciplinary boundaries, more than blending them, or even looking for correspondences between them, he does propose a form that is based on theatre. He proposes a form that in a very elementary fashion connects with more than one of the senses of the spectator, while guarding the magic quality of transitory gestures.
A central thought that has risen now is that synaesthesia is not only a neurological phenomenon. It is a concept that stretches into numerous fields. When looking to define it, one comes across so many different paths to take that the task becomes daunting. At this time, we might follow Symbolist thought and state that it is the equivalence and interchangeability of sense experiences. While these paragraphs stressed artists in the Symbolist movement, artists from different thought shared the need to alter the (then) present forms of the arts. Most of them arrived at the idea of fusing the arts into a more total form. The two pioneering poets in Symbolism, Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé, worked in similar fashion: employing synaesthetic expressions of thought and making use of the occult in order to fill the mental stage of the single reader. After musical paintings and colourful instruments, multiple forms of theatre were born in aesthetic experiment. The Gesamtkunstwerk needed mythology and Ancient tragedy in order to create grand total art works, Symbolist writers worked with psychological bases, metaphors and cross-modal references, and more radical figures such as
53 Ibid., 9.
Antonin Artaud and Wassily Kandinsky moved away from those mentioned above in looking for ritual and spectacle while blending the disciplines, or at least going back to their cores. What follows from these different pathways are two shared core ideas: the action of addressing more than one of the sensory modalities and the spirituality that is connected to the communication needed to fulfil that action.
EXPANDING ON THE SENSES: BLUE WATERMELONS
Although this seems obviously true in aesthetic instances, an overlap between metaphor and synaesthesia exists, even in everyday life. Whether we make use of affective and symbolic manners of portrayal of information that was gathered through the senses or not, the gathered information is combined and interpreted. This means that the world we perceive around us is to a large extent forged in our minds. Or as Ayub K. Ommaya puts it: “After all, synaesthesia is what we all do without knowing that we do it, whereas synaesthetes do it and know that they do it.”55 This becomes most clear in linguistic expressions, where sensory phenomena are combined when not stemming from the same sensory origin, for instance, in the form of warm colours and strong smells, or perhaps in the shape of metaphors, and figures of speech. “I’ll pour a glass,” one might say when pouring wine, for instance. While for most of us these are mere manners of speaking, aiding us in describing sensations, for some these expressions are actually reality. Where non-synaesthetes would ask for more salt, a synaesthete would think to ask for more blue, blending perception and metaphor into one. This tendency to linguistically combine different modes of perception seems logical when considering that one is rarely aware of the simultaneous employment of all of the senses at all times, even though the senses are located in separate parts of the brain.56 We receive input through our eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin at all times. However, it is focus, knowledge and analysis that ostensibly separates the senses, even when we zoom in on an object using multiple sensory modalities. With synaesthesia, as it is understood now, a union between two or more senses is present in a subject since birth, and in consistent form. This union, however, differs from the cooperation of the senses described above. Being a statistically rare phenomenon, it is often regarded as an abnormality, a foreign affair. Considering discussions of a phenomenological conception of point of view and personal experiences, and adding on to that the understandable
55 A.K. Ommaya, “Foreword to the First Edition by Ayub K. Ommala,” in Synaesthesia, Union of the Senses, ed. R. Cytowic, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2002), xx.
impossibility of two synaesthetic experiences having the exact same form, it has naturally been subjected to scrutiny and scepticism.57 How does one prove that watermelons most definitely taste a sharp blue when another disagrees? Yet, it is precisely the obscure and unfamiliar that arouses interest in these instances, leading to a growing research on synaesthesia and to a continuously diversifying set of meanings for the term.
Nowadays, the phenomenon exists in multiple forms, more specifically, in as many unique forms as the people that have it. Three examples, then, are coloured grapheme synaesthesia, synaesthesia of tactile sounds and synaesthesia of a touch that is paired with a corresponding taste.58 The first form, the most prevalent form, involves an involuntary association of colour in the subject`s experience of letters and numbers. This might lead to the subject seeing the number 4 as a deep red, but the letter L a dull green. The second form causes the subject to experience a tactile response to certain sounds, and the third form of synaesthesia is a specific type where the subject tastes whatever they are touching at that time. One can imagine that this would enhance many aspects of life, among which mnemonic abilities. It also creates preference for certain words, objects or flavours because of their secondary sensory characteristics. However, these types of synaesthesia can lead to frustration, or even paralyzing contradictions in their sensory perception. For instance, a friend once told me that she was annoyed by the colouring of the number 4 on a sign that we passed. The hue of red they had used was plain wrong, and it really put her off. Think of a false note in the middle of a symphony, or a bright coloured light and loud music during what was to be a moment of theatrical silence. Ostensibly, it is even possible to experience pain in ways that are unfamiliar to non-synaesthetes. Strong emotions and physical experiences can release secondary input, meaning that pain might be “seen.” It is this strong sense of what something should be and the emotional reaction to what it actually is that has lead those who research the phenomenon to believe that synaesthesia is strongly reliant on an affective state. As Richard Cytowic states in his work Synaesthesia: Union of the Senses, synaesthesia might be a limbic shortcut for calculating valence and salience.59 In the correspondence of two or more of the senses, certain sensory experiences are enhanced by the added sensory layers, causing stronger emotional, but also instinctive reactions to phenomena being perceived. This works both ways; it deters the subject from negative situations and draws the subject closer to positive situations. Fear and pain are both experiential forms that can scar a human being, physically and mentally, but
57 Ibid., 2.
58 For a chart of percentages of the different types of synaesthesia, see: Cytowic (2002): p. 17. 59 Ibid., 11.
it is the potential of this hurt, of this perceived danger, that pushes us away from certain objects and situations. In Cytowic`s discussion of the limbic shortcut, a synaesthete, provided they have the relevant form of synaesthesia for the situation at hand, might respond quicker or more strongly to a perceived danger or possibility of harm. Cytowic describes the limbic system to be a “locus where value, purpose and memory are calculated.” It analyses the direct environment in order to make decisions concerning questions of valence. It is an irrational manner of making choices that can be informed but not decided by rational information. It is precisely because of this system of valence and his description of the shortcut that causes Cytowic to metaphorically think of synaesthetes as cognitive fossils. It is not the primitive side of the fossil that Cytowic is working towards. “Synaesthesia is more mammalian (…) because the sensory percepts are closer to the essence of what it is to perceive meaning than are semantic abstractions.” This can be thought of as a strategy that is being employed unconsciously in order to arrive at a personal, meaningful perception that corresponds with the perceptual history of the subject.
The affective side of synaesthesia, as well as its obscure sides, has also given rise to other thought. Although Crétien van Campen does not dismiss the neurological explanation as described above, he stresses the possibility that synaesthesia reaches further than the regular five senses. He discusses a variant of synaesthesia that is present in nearly all perceiving subjects, even non-synaesthetes: the common sense. This should be understood very literally. The common sense denotes the sensitive capacity to perceive qualities in more senses or sensory modalities at once.60 An example of an element of the common sense would be the sense of rhythm, whether it be aural, visual, or temporal. Not everyone will be able to discern rhythm very well in musical settings, but might do well in linguistic situations. Some will go one step further, however, and argue that human perception is, by definition, synaesthetic. Maurice Merleau-Ponty described the act of seeing as a physical act that takes place in a spatial and temporal setting. One must move in order to see, and one sees in order to move.61 Naturally, this should not be confused with the pathology discussed above. The different senses that Van Campen differentiates are of varying qualities, and have apparently grown in numbers beyond twenty, and even more if animals are considered. Among these we find the sense of time, sense of self, sense of temperature and a sense of speech.62 Although it is interesting to analyse each of these independently of each other, they are all cooperating and
60 Campen, Tussen Zinnen. Synesthesie of Hoe de Zintuigen Samenwerken, 150. 61 Ibid., 152.
as such move to the fore alternatively. When returning to the crude division of the senses into five, based on the visible extremities of the organs involved, we see that all are employed when picking up an orange, peeling it and eating it. Interestingly, the picking up of an orange that is not there is a popular exercise for actors as it calls for the use of all the senses, using them carefully and thoroughly, even in our (physical) memory. It is because of this cooperation of the senses, that it is not uncommon to speak of the unity of the senses. We might consider ontological questions at this point, such as whether we have or are our bodies. More interesting and fruitful will be Merleau-Ponty`s consideration of the body image, as it illustrates what we are discussing at this point. In Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty speaks of the spatiality of the body as a whole with the help of the body image. The body is a spatial object within which all elements are intertwined and connected. It is not the eye that sees, it is the entire system of nerves, organs, and structures connected to our brains that grants us vision, provided that all the parts function properly. In a similar way, our sense of speech is thoroughly ingrained in our body, and so is our experience of bodily movement through a space.
As we found in the previous paragraph, metaphors and synaesthesia are two concepts that are very close to each other. Through a metaphor, one object is placed within the context of another, sometimes replacing it while being influenced by the traces of the second object. As becomes clear, metaphors are not only linguistic forms, but they are instruments used on a daily basis to ascribe and describe personal experience. Sometimes a lack of a better word creates metaphoric language, as becomes visible in the “legs” of a chair, for instance. Throughout the ages we have used a plethora of verbs to replace the word understanding in order to come to a fitting formulation for that specific moment: to grasp, to see, to gather, to get, to feel; to name but a few. It would seem that synaesthesia is another way of doing just that, albeit on a level that is not rational but, as Cytowic would describe it, more mammalian. It takes place on an experiential level instead of a level of conceiving. Although we are familiar at this point with correspondences between two or more of the five senses that are physiological in origin, sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, it seems that there are more dimensions at play in synaesthesia. If we accept Cytowic`s diagnostic criteria, we see that synaesthesia does not just happen in the mind`s eye. Synaesthesia is involuntary but elicited; it is spatially extended (sometimes colours corresponding to sounds are perceived in front of the subject); it is memorable; it is emotional; and synaesthetic percepts are consistent and
discrete.63 There are instances where the synaesthete would experience a line in front of them, changing colour here and there, moving in front of them according to sound, or when looking up a date the months would be a spatial structure that the synaesthete might walk through. The point of view might be the same as that of a non-synaesthete, but what is perceived is radically different. It is precisely this difference in experience that has interested and inspired artists throughout the past centuries. It is also this difference that keeps moving to the fore in this research. As we have seen in this chapter, synaesthesia has been employed as an aesthetic strategy and tool many times before. In the chapter that follows, the contemporary employment of synaesthesia will be stressed, as we have discussed historical examples already. We ask ourselves the following questions: In what ways is synaesthesia being employed in contemporary theatre? Is a synaesthetic experience obtainable and even desirable for the non-synaesthete?
2
DRAMATURGY AND THE SENSIBLE
In the previous chapter, it became clear that a neurological concept might inspire artists when creating new work and that it might be transformed into new conceptual forms allowing for discourse on many levels. In the coming paragraphs, the phenomenological argumentation of Maurice Merleau-Ponty will be assessed in order to describe just this. Naturally, this will be discussed within the framework that we are trying to build. When trying to connect a theory of experiences of sounds and colours, as well as the values of these sounds and colours, to artistic form, one might think of film before turning to theatre. And when creating works of art, one comes across the question of subject and storytelling. What should the work reveal and how much should come to fruition with the help of the spectator, beholder, listener? In this section I will analyse two works in their use of visible and audible elements in order to arrive at a whole, namely Arno Schuitemakers` dance performance While we strive, and Walt Disney Studios` film Fantasia. Although a traditional narrative can only be found in a part of
Fantasia, in both works a level of dialogue between the two mentioned sensory channels has
become crucial. The first work is a dance performance where light and sound are choreographed along three dancers, the second work is a film project where multiple short films have been animated to fit to musical pieces. In analysing these works I will describe a set of strategies to translate synaesthesia into an artistic language on a sensory level. One will find that theatre and film always already are synaesthetic forms as they address us via more than one of our senses. In this chapter, the focus will be on the visible and the audible, as those are the two most important elements present in the works discussed. This means that it might be best to dive deeper and to analyse an example from a phenomenological perspective, and, continuing on the relational side of dramaturgy, the proposition that the artwork makes toward the spectators to engage in a “dialogue” of sorts. As the sensory experience of artworks and more specifically theatre will be discussed in this chapter the dialogue between the sensory perception of the subject and the sensible state of the object will be elaborated on. It is not my motive to arrive at a singular comprehensive strategy of making and perceiving theatre. However, as the title of this subchapter suggests, it is interesting at this time to try and formulate a possible dramaturgy that is based upon this dialogue. In order to arrive at this, I would like to take a step back and discuss the distribution of the sensible as discussed by
French author Jacques Rancière. Although he does not discuss dramaturgy explicitly, his formulation of politics and the consequences on aesthetics that this form are strongly reminiscent of dramaturgy. In this section, the dramaturgy encompassing this dialogue and politics, a dramaturgy within which synaesthesia is consciously applied to the process and situation of theatrical performance, will be the object of analysis; a dramaturgy of the sensible.
TOWARDS MOVEMENT
One always perceives from one`s own position and can only perceive through the body. When assuming the role of spectator, one becomes part of a map of relations within an artistic situation. One does so by donning the attitude and perhaps the clothing that is required, and by directing the senses needed towards the object of interest. For instance, when reading a text, we use our hands to take hold of the book or magazine and turn the pages, we use our eyes to be able to actually read and interpret the text, as well as assess the lay out of the text. The added bonus of reading a book is that we might catch its smell, either of being newly pressed, or of having been in a library for decades. Naturally, we are also able to hear the pages rustling while reading. The same applies for theatrical situations. We are not only watching the performers and listening to them, we are smelling the theatre, we are sitting on a chair (and perhaps moving about it), we might even still taste what we just ate a little while ago, or our mouth might become dry from utter boredom. As all these experiences are lived during a performance, we see that much more is going on during a performance than just the execution of a piece and its reception. In his series of radio lectures called Causeries 1948, Maurice Merleau-Ponty spoke of just this when he elaborated on theories of perception, phenomenology and aesthetic experiences. The unity of the perceivable object is discussed there as not being the summation of all elements of said object, but it is confirmed by each of them. He describes this unity with the help of a lemon, of which all qualities are identical in the sense that they all own the same manner of being and the same behaviour within the lemon.64 Merleau-Ponty follows this by saying that objects cannot be separated from their appearances and the spaces they are in, meaning that an artwork is an incarnated totality of which the meaning is not floating freely, but connected to and imprisoned by all signs and
details that it reveals to me.65 Of course, the unity described above can be applied to a great number of objects, if not all. “The outline of my body is a frontier which ordinary spatial relations do not cross. This is because its parts are interrelated in a peculiar way: they are not spread out side by side, but enveloped in each other.”66 According to this quote I may compare the human body to a lemon, which means that the body is simply another object among objects, even though it holds a subjectivity within it. The unity described here is elaborated on when Merleau-Ponty mentions the body schema. “I know where each of my limbs is through a body schema in which all are included.”67 He mentions the body schema to be a total awareness of the posture in the intersensory world and a dynamic attitude towards a certain existing or possible task. The body schema is a way of stating that the body is in-the-world and always placed in an invisible diagram of point and horizon.68
As becomes apparent with the help of this description of the senses and the body: to perceive is to mediate. Merleau-Ponty theorises precisely this when speaking of the interplay between the sensible object and sensitive subject. I do not construct the object in front of me. It is always already there and reveals itself when I am there to perceive it.69 This ostensibly contradicts Ayub K. Ommaya when he states that we, in fact, do construct our surroundings. However, we are not discussing the same thing here. Where, in the first chapter, we talked of making sense of the world around us, we are now at the level of sound and ear, of colour and eye, of smell and nose, causing us to think about the core of the human subject. Merleau-Ponty seems to place that, the subject, inside the body, as though it were acting via a membrane that allows for sensible objects to permeate it in whatever manner they present themselves. We are constantly reminded in his work that the body is, in fact, an object. My body is not me; neither are my senses. On the contrary, my body is “not only an object among all other objects, a nexus of sensible qualities among others, but an object which is sensitive to all the rest (…).” It is thus described as a separate entity. Again, because of this described cooperation of the senses it is not uncommon to speak of the unity of the senses. To illustrate, Merleau-Ponty describes the act of seeing as a physical act that takes place in a spatial and temporal setting. One must move in order to see, and one sees in order to move. Although one could guess where Merleau-Ponty stands in this conversation, we might consider ontological questions at this point, such as whether we have or are our bodies. More interesting and
65Ibid., 40.
66 M Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, ed. K. Paul (London / New York: Routledge, 2005), 112. 67 Ibid., 113.
68 Ibid., 114–115. 69 Ibid., 237.
