Chapter One
The Nature of Artistic Performance
1 Introduction
The aim of this book is to identify, explore, clarify, and perhaps even answer a range of philosophical questions that arise when we reflect upon the nature of the performing arts and our involvements with them. Most of us have participated in different ways in broadly artistic performances. Indeed, preparation for such participation begins early in life. Few of us manage to pass through primary school without finding ourselves on a stage trying to master a primitive instrument or struggling to remember our lines, under the nervously expectant eyes of our parents and friends. Some who emerge unscathed from such experiences pursue these kinds of activities in a more accomplished and self-assured manner not only in later schooling and university but also in adult life. They become professional or amateur singers or musicians, or participants in theatrical or dance productions, or orchestrators of the performative efforts of others. For most of us, however, our subsequent encounters with artistic performances are in the less heady role of spectator. We sit reverently at a performance by a string quartet or a theatrical troupe, or shiver under blankets at an open-air festival, or peer through lorgnettes at the posing of a diva, or pause in our evening meanderings to watch a street mime.
As you reflect upon your own encounters with the performing arts, it may seem strange to talk, as I did a few sentences ago, of the "philosophical questions" that arise when we reflect on such experiences. For our involvements with artistic performances hardly seem to generate such questions, apart from the ruminations inspired by the content of some performances we have attended – dark existential meditations inspired by a performance of Hamlet, for example. What I hope to show in the following chapters, however, is that our experiences of the performing arts, whether as performers or as spectators, already implicate us in questions about the very nature of artistic performances, independent of their particular content.
But before we take up these matters, we must look more critically at some notions that I have thus far taken for granted. I have spoken of "the performing arts" and of "artistic performances," and I have given some content to my use of these expressions by providing examples of familiar activities that might fall under these descriptions. But, we might ask, in virtue of what are these activities rightly brought under these descriptions? What makes a particular practice a performing art, or a particular event an artistic performance?
Consider the following response: a performing art is a practice whose primary purpose is to prepare and present artistic performances. This may be true as far as it goes, but we need to explain what it is for something to be an artistic performance. To answer that an artistic performance is the kind of event in which we actively participate or which we receptively encounter in the context of the performing arts is hardly illuminating. For we are simply moving in a narrow definitional circle. How should we try to break out of this circle? Since the circle involves two terms, we might try to give an independent account of one of them and then use this to explain the other. Suppose we take the notion of an artistic performance as our first term. Then we might characterize artistic performances in terms of some manifest properties that distinguish them from performances of other kinds. Given this analysis of artistic performance, we could define the performing arts as those practices designed to enable the presentation and appreciation of artistic performances so construed. We find something like this approach in Monroe Beardsley's (1982) attempt to characterize the movements that make up artistic performances in dance in terms of their distinctively "aesthetic" qualities. Suppose, on the other hand, we take the notion of a performing art as our first term. Then we might characterize those practices we commonly think of as performing arts – theater, music, and dance, for example – in terms of "institutional" features that do not presuppose the nature of the performances presented within them. And we could define artistic performances as those that are presented within the context of such institutionally characterized practices. We find something like this approach in George Dickie's "institutional" theory of what it is that makes something a theatrical performance. After some preliminary remarks about the nature of performance in general, I shall explore this second kind of approach before considering the former alternative.
2 What is a Performance?
Since we are interested in the nature of artistic performances, and not simply in whether they are properly classified as theater or dance, we should start by asking, in the most general way, what leads us to talk of a particular event as a performance. All performances, in the sense that interests us, are actions, whether individual or collective. In a collective performance, different individuals not only act but do so in a way that aims at some kind of coordination of their individual efforts. As actions, performances involve behavior that falls under at least one description specifying a purpose governing that behavior and, implicitly or explicitly, a result at which it aims. This is how the action of shutting the window differs from those bodily movements described in purely physical terms through which that action is accomplished. In so characterizing the sense of "performance" that interests us, we distinguish it from the use of the term to assess the behavior of things that may be incapable of action. We can mark this distinction by talking, in the latter case, of performance "in the merely evaluative sense," and in the former case of performance "in the full sense." When I describe to a garage mechanic my car's erratic performance when I drive it in the rain, for example, I am not attributing actions to my car, but merely characterizing what it does in a context where this is a subject of evaluation. My car is in no sense a performer, even though what it does is indeed its performance in the merely evaluative sense.
But, if all performances in the full sense are actions, not all actions are performances in the full sense. It is unlikely that brushing one's teeth in the morning, or walking to one's place of work or study, would normally qualify as performances in the full sense, for example. We rightly describe an action as a performance in the full sense only if it meets certain further conditions. Suppose, for example, that Basil regularly carries an umbrella when he travels to work, and that he twirls it ostentatiously as he walks to and from the station. This could just be a nervous tic, but suppose that the twirling becomes more stylized and daring when he passes through neighborhoods where his actions are likely to be observed. It now starts to seem natural to describe what Basil does not merely as an action but as a performance in the full sense. Part of our evidence for characterizing what Basil does in this way is the patterns that we observe in his behavior, the actions that are repeated from one occasion to another. But a performance in the full sense need not be an instance of a type of behavior that is repeated in this way. Young Ben who stomps from the room slamming the door after being told that he can't play his new video game on the family television may also rightly be described as giving "quite a performance" even if this is (happily) an isolated punctuation of the domestic calm.
What then are the features that distinguish those actions we are inclined to call performances in the full sense from other actions? First, as our examples indicate, performances in the full sense not only involve actions aimed at achieving some result, but are also open, at least in principle, to public scrutiny and assessment. But this by itself obviously fails to distinguish performances from mere actions. Ben's mother may comment that he is getting better at brushing his teeth properly, but we would resist saying, on these grounds, that Ben's tooth-brushing behavior is a performance in the full sense. We might talk of it as a performance in the merely evaluative sense, since it is a regularity in Ben's behavior that we are evaluating relative to some standard. In this sense, parents worry about the performance of their children in school. But the worry would be different if it was reported that their children were "performers" in school, that their actions were performances in the full sense. To see why, it will be helpful to use a different example.
Consider how one might talk about one's local football team after watching them slump to yet another ignominious defeat. One might bemoan the performance of the team while also singling out the performances of certain players for particular vilification. But, as with Ben and my car, to talk about performance here is to talk in the merely evaluative sense about what someone or something does. It does not entail that the persons or things evaluated are performers in the sense that Basil can be described as a performer. But consider the footballer Edwin who "showboats" because he believes a scout from a big team is in the crowd. Confronted by the somewhat agricultural fullback of the opposing team whom he could easily outpace, Edwin makes a point of executing a smart "step-over" routine that leaves the fullback floundering in his wake. Here, as with the pupil who deliberately acts up in class, it seems right to talk not just of his performance, but also of him as performing. To perform is to act in certain ways for the attention of those who are or may be observing one's actions. The football player normally chooses to act in the way he does because of what his opponent is doing. His actions are guided by, and are responses to, the actions or expected actions of the other players. In the case of Edwin, on the other hand, his actions are guided not merely by what the other player does but by his expectations as to how the scout will evaluate these actions. He is acting for the scout, and it is these expectations that explain why he makes the particular moves that he does.
Thus the performer differs from the mere agent whose behavior is subject to evaluation in that she intends for her actions to be appreciated and evaluated, and thus is consciously guided in what she does by the expected eye or ear of an intended qualified audience. It is because we take Basil and Edwin to be so guided in their actions that we think of them as performing and of what they do as performances in the full sense. This is not to say that such performances require an actual audience – a point to which we shall return in Chapter 9. Basil's expectation that his umbrella twirling will be admired by startled neighbors interrupted in their breakfasting by the sight of his astonishing manual dexterity may be ill-founded. No one may observe him, but it still makes sense to say that he is performing. Similarly, if Ben's behavior becomes more common, his parents may become immune to his tantrums, so that none of the expressive nuances of his stomping are registered, but he will still be performing. In fact, even the execution of ordinary mundane tasks can qualify as performances in the full sense. For example, if Ben brushes his teeth with special vigor and care on the assumption that his mother is watching him, in order to impress her, it seems reasonable to describe him as performing and what he does as a performance in the full sense. (In future, I shall speak here simply of "performances," and use the term "performance in the merely evaluative sense" to talk of the other sense in which some behavior can be rightly described as a performance.)
None of the actions just described will strike us as "artistic performances" of the sorts to which I alluded in the opening paragraph. But the kinds of things done on stage by actors, dancers, and musicians are certainly performances in the sense just characterized. The musician's manipulation of her instrument, the actor's delivery of his line, or the dancer's execution of a pirouette, have the form that they do at least partly in virtue of conscious expectations as to how these actions will affect and be evaluated by members of an intended audience, even if that audience is sometimes the performers themselves. This, however, brings us back to our earlier question: what is it that distinguishes artistic performances from the performances of Basil, Ben, and Edwin?
3 Institutional Theories of Artistic Performance
The second approach canvassed earlier holds that an artistic performance is one that takes place in the context of those established practices that we think of as "performing arts." These practices, we might say, embody norms prescribing specific kinds of conduct for performers and for receivers of performances. We find such a conception of what makes something a theatrical performance in George Dickie's argument for an "institutional" theory of art. Dickie proposes that to be an artwork is to have acquired a particular kind of status within what he terms "the artworld." The artworld is "the broad social institution in which works of art have their place" (1974, 31). This institution comprises a set of systems of "established practices" which correspond to the different art forms. Each such system functions as a framework for the presenting of works of art. To be an artwork, according to Dickie, is to be an artifact a set of whose aspects has acquired, through the agency of some person or persons acting on behalf of the artworld, the status of "candidate for appreciation." To be a "candidate for appreciation" is to be eligible for presentation within the appropriate system of the artworld, the aim being that receivers appreciate – find some value in – what is presented. The theater is Dickie's primary example of a system of the artworld. In the theater, "the roles of the actors and the audience are defined by the traditions of the theater. What the author, management, and players present ... is art because it is presented within the theaterworld framework. Plays are written to have a place within the theater system and they exist as plays, that is, as art, within that system" (Dickie 1974, 30).
An analogous account might be given of works and performances in those other artworld "systems" that we intuitively view as belonging to the performing arts. A musical work or a work of dance, we might say, is something composed to be performed within the "musicworld" or the "danceworld." Dickie's concern is with defining what it is to be a work of art, rather than with the notion of an artistic performance, and we shall inquire shortly about the relationship between artistic performances and artworks. But we can offer a tentative "institutional" definition of artistic performance in line with the strategy canvassed above. An artistic performance, it might be said, is a performance that has had conferred upon it, by a person or persons acting on behalf of the artworld, the status of candidate for appreciation in the theaterworld, or the musicworld, or the danceworld. We can add additional artworld systems to our definition if we want it to cover events that fall within the rather eclectic category of "performance art" but that fit uneasily into the artworld systems listed so far. For example, Vito Acconci's Following Piece (1969) involved following unwitting citizens through the streets of New York over a period of a couple of weeks, and Stelarc grafted an ear onto his forearm with the intention that it incorporate a microphone capable of transmitting to receivers what the "ear" was hearing.
Our tentative Dickiean institutional account of artistic performance began by characterizing the performing arts "extensionally" through listing the relevant conventions definitive of the artworld systems in question. We then defined an "artistic performance" as a performance having the status of "candidate for appreciation" in one of the performing arts so construed. But this account faces some serious objections grounded in a feature upon which Dickie insists. It should not be thought, he maintains, that there is a distinctive kind of appreciation for which artworks or artistic performances are candidates. Appreciation, in his definition of "artwork," is just what it is more generally outside the arts: "All that is meant by 'appreciation' in the definition is something like 'in experiencing the qualities of a thing one finds them worthy or valuable,' and this meaning applies quite generally both inside and outside the domain of art" (Dickie 1974, 40–41). He is motivated here by the concern that, if our definition specifies a more narrowly "aesthetic" kind of appreciation, we will be unable to accommodate many late modern artworks that deliberately eschew the aesthetic as traditionally conceived. But while Dickie is right to think that such works must be accommodated, he is wrong, as we shall now see, to think that the institutional theorist can do so by simply denying that there is anything distinctive about the kind of appreciation for which artworks, and artistic performances, call.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Philosophy of the Performing Artsby David Davies Copyright © 2011 by David Davies. Excerpted by permission of John Wiley & Sons. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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