Laurie Anderson
When talking about herself, Laurie Anderson says “I have never thought of myself as a writer … I think of myself as a speaker” (Quoted in Goldberg, 2000, 82). However, although she has an extensive discography, and reams of monologues she has written and performed, I am far more interested in the visuals of her installations, particularly Habeas Corpus (2015). As the performance begins, the space of Habeas Corpus seems to have no limits,due to her use of lighting, which transformed the room into an endless void somewhere in space. To me, the music accompanying the space suggested an almost sinister oppressiveness, an interesting contrast to the expansive void you would find yourself in. This perhaps mirrors the situation Mohammad El Garani experienced, who collaborated with Anderson in the show. His time spent detained at Guantanamo Bay may have had a similar sensation – finding yourself isolated from everything, aware of an oppressive force around you.
I adore the visual impact of this installation, and have considered implementing something similar within my own show. However, the effect may not be able to make any significant contribution to the show, if it does not seem to compliment the invasive atmosphere I may create. That being said, perhaps the best way to express the disparity found in modern life would be to transition into a cosmic void at the point of my show where vision is lost. This may add an element of universal insignificance – an interesting addition to a show critiquing the loss of spirituality.
Anderson’s use of lighting and sound makes Habeas Corpus visually compelling, and I hope to tailor my own lighting design to emphasise the poems I will be speaking.
Guillermo Gómez-Peña
“The allure of Gómez-Peña’s politically astute solo pieces lies in the power of his poetic language, along with the warmth and charisma of his performance persona” (Wolford, 2000, 276).
Studying Guillermo Gómez-Peña unveils a unique and varied array of work. His primary concern seems to be focused on xenophobia, leading him to create work criticising dominant ideologies which categorise those who exist outside of them as other, or inferior. He does this by exposing the post-colonial attitudes still present in Western society – such as the piece he and Coco Fusco toured around American and European museums, where they were displayed as indigenous people within a cage: http://bombmagazine.org/article/1599/coco-fusco-and-guillermo-g-mez-pe-a – or with his incendiary language, delivered as politically charged poems.
The text Gómez-Peña creates, and the way he intertwines separate poems together into “a distinctive textual montage” (ibid, 277), is what I too need to achieve. Lisa Wolford states that by “adding transitional texts that highlight certain aspects of meaning within a piece, he subtly frames each performance in such a way as to more directly address a given audience” (ibid). The transitional elements of my performance seem to me to be getting more and more lost, where I now no longer know where the transition lies and where the performance begins. I suppose this is because all aspects of the piece that occur within the time I am performing is my performance – simple. Yet, I fear that I am losing the efficacy of my words by swamping them in video, or the impact of the video is reduced by overusing it… This is the balance that I am trying to find, and I think much of the work I have studied – particularly those created by Gómez-Peña and Rachel Rosenthal – has found it, though admittedly, much of what I have seen hasn’t. That is why at this point, my main concern is not content – I have enough for a short show – but is instead balance, as getting that wrong will weaken my shows impact immensely.
Works Cited:
Goldberg, R. (2000) Laurie Anderson. In: Bonney, J. (ed.) Extreme Exposure: An Anthology of Solo Performance Texts from the Twentieth Century. New York, USA: Theatre Communications Group, 82-91.
Wolford, L. (2000) Guillermo Gómez-Peña. In: Bonney, J. (ed.) Extreme Exposure: An Anthology of Solo Performance Texts from the Twentieth Century. New York, USA: Theatre Communications Group, 276-285.