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Topography of Representation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2009
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Representation carries a promise of a performative act. As Mark Taylor observes, in contrast to the so-called constative utterances which describe facts, a promise realizes ‘a state of affairs that did not exist prior to the language event’ or, as is the case here, prior to the events unfolding in a theatrical or any other space. Such an act signifies that the ‘I’ or ‘we’ making a promise understands or knows the problem or the text, plays the part of the agent authorized by a convention or its systems to execute a promise, and the act requires that representation assumes the function of reality maker that produces the real by simulating verisimilitude. For this process to be complete, the mode of operation needs to be clearly delineated by cultural or social practices and institutional structures that safeguard the promise, its execution, and its use.
Even though the general tenets are still dominant in everyday practice, the concept of representation has been championed and problematized ever since the fragmentation and the split within the subject became evident in the twentieth century. The ‘I’ and ‘we’ ceased to be valued as universally defined nouns. As a corollary, the promise of representation was no longer able to express the subject's desire to impose linear transfer and ideological order upon both human beings and the objects of their creation (theatre and drama). Once the subject was undone, the order of representation disseminated into pieces scattered throughout space. It became dispersed in contradictory meanings, which now could be assigned to objects that had been kept outside of its boundaries.
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References
Notes
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19. For example, Kantor observed that ‘the act of deforming classical beauty, for me,/did not take place in the territory of aesthetic categories./The time of war and the time of the “lords of the world” made me lose my trust in the old image, which had been perfectly formed,/raised above all other, apparently “lower species”./It was a discovery! Behind a sacred icon, a beast was hiding.’ In a different passage, he observes that ‘theatre is probably one of the most anomalous institutions. The actual auditorium made of balconies, boxes and stalls—filled with seats—finds its parallel in a completely different space. This “second lurking” space is the space in which everything that happens is FICTION, illusion, artifical, and produced only to mislead or “cheat” a spectator. (…) What he sees are only mirages of landscapes, houses, and interiors. They are mirages because this world, when seen from backstage, is artifical, cheap, disposable, and of “papier-mâché”.’ See A Journey Through Other Spaces, pp. 19, 135.
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21. Ibid., p. 59.
22. Ibid., pp. 85–6.
23. Ibid., p. 197.
24. Ibid., p. 142.
25. Ibid., pp. 162–3.
26. For a discussion of Kantor's theatre experiments and his theoretical writings, see A Journey Through Other Spaces, pp. 269–386.
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30. All quotations come from the unpublished text of Today is my Birthday, (translation mine)
31. Ibid., p. 196.
32. Kantor, ‘Silent Night’, A Journey Through Other Spaces, p. 182.
33. Kantor, ‘A Painting’, p. 196.
34. In the same way, Kantor's ‘Impossible Theatre’ questioned the production of physical space and the self-commentary of the Happening. Dissatisfied with the Happening, Kantor rejected its tenets in his ‘Impossible Theatre’. Even though the eight scenes of ‘The Impossible Theatre’ (1969) maintained the structure of the Happening, they did not take place in any performance space. The actors, a group of ‘Eternal Wanderers’, were on a journey to the places whose functions were defined either by nature or civilization. While visiting those places, the actors presented individual scenes from Witkiewicz's The Country House. As Kantor noted, his design for staging eight individual scenes from the play was to create stage actions which could not develop in any direction, because they were separated in time and space, making it impossible for spectators to interpret the whole play.
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40. In I Shall Never Return, Kantor entered the performance space and participated in the actions that were presented in the performance space. He was no longer the creator of his Room of Imagination. Rather, he was one of the participants in the events acted out by the actors.
41. Eisenman, Peter, ‘Guardiola House, Santa Maria del Mar’, Deconstruction eds. Andreas, Papadakis, Catherine, Cooke, and Andrew, Benjamin (London: Academy Group, 1989), pp. 163–66, 163.Google Scholar For a critical analysis of this space see Derrida, Jacques, ‘How to Avoid Speaking’, Languages of the Unsayable, ed. Sanford, Budick and Wolfgang, Iser (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), pp. 3–70.Google Scholar
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