Action to Surface

Action to Surface

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IÂ certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work, photographs or ideas is identified in notes and or directly in the text.

Tereza RullerovĂĄ 17. 12. 2014 The Hague

3 Thesis Action to Surface Rethinking surface production in terms of performance

Author Tereza Rullerovå Supervisor Marjan Brandsma Graphic Design Department Royal Academy of Art, The Hague 2014 — 2015

4 Keyterms

5 action act performance surface event staging chance affect attention tool production process audience viewer participation interaction craft occupation circulationism identity skeumorph selfie potential relation activation

6 Table of Contents

0.

0.1 0.2 I. I.1

I.2 II. II.1 II.2 II.3 III. III.1 III.2

Certificate Acknowledgements Abstract Introduction Context and Fascination Structure Guide Understanding Performance and Surface Performance and Performativity Surface Theoretical Background of Performance Speech Act Transformative Situation Power to Affect The End of Gutenberg’s Galaxy Performance as a Testing Ground for New Ideas The Performative Act as a Catalyst of Art Revolution

2 8 10 14 16 20 26 28 36 44 46 52 58 64 66 72

7 III.3 Medium of Action 86 III.4 Activism 100 IV. The Age of Post­ 108 ‑Gutenberg’s Galaxy IV.1 Commodified Performativity 110 IV.2 The Power of New Media 118 IV.3 New Millennium of 126 Performance—aware Designers The Age of Democratized 136 V. Surface Production V.1 Democratized Surface 140 Production V.2 Performative Ways of 146 Production V.3 Happening in Design, 162 Design in Happening V.4 Post—representational 170 Paradigm and Crisis of Identity VI. Conclusion 184 List of Reerences 190

8 Acknowledgements

9 I would like to take this opportunity to thank the following people who have supported the process of generating this thesis - Maki Suzuki from Åbäke, Petr Babák from Laboratoř, post­‑choreographer Bruno Listopad, Arnold Mosselman, Matteo Maragoni and Jennifer Helia DeFelice.

Let me thank my teachers; Niels Schrader a founder of Mind Design, Lauren Alexander from Found Land, Roosje Klap an initiator of Design Displacement Group, Dirk Vis an ed­ itor of De Gids magazine, Esther de Vries, Thomas Buxó, Bart de Baets, Marc Boumeester, the head of Autonomous Laboratory for the Exploration of Progressive Heuristics and Renske van Dam. I would also like to thank my parents, especially my father, Tomas Ruller, professor of Atelier Performance at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Technology in Brno, who helped me theorize performance and performativity.

And above all, I thank my husband, Vit Ruller who was al­ ways ready to discuss particular ideas and issues and has encouraged me in my work on this thesis from beginning to the end.

10 Abstract and Research Question

11 Due to my previous artistic experience I understand using the body and an action as a method of design. Despite the fact that the terms action and surface exist in seemingly disconnected worlds, I see the possibility to establish a connection and elaborate more on a multidisciplinary link between – and coexistence of – performativity and graphic design.

The following thesis introduces the research question: How does performativity influence the surface? Encouraged to answer this question, I examine the field of performance art, graphic design craftsmanship and vernacular action.

As a result I demonstrate several examples of performative acts in contemporary graphic design related visual culture and how it determines the production of its surface.

We, designers, are used to presenting graphic design as a surface­‑centric praxis, the way of surface production.

In addition to this, I try to step out of separated media con­ strains and tend to establish a new field of potential through identifying performative components in graphic design pro­ cesses and results.

This research covers the investigation and establishment of links between action, body, designer and surface. It at­ tempts to convince the reader, that surface production could be an action, happening, or chance­‑driven act. There­ fore the text introduces necessary theoretical, philosophical and historical backgrounds of performance art.

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●○ The Rodina, Keep Smile, installation, Tereza Rullerová, performing the role of designer, Banská Stanica, 2014

13 The narrative covers examples from Leonardo da Vinci through Modernists, Post­‑War Expressionists and Andy Warhol to recent work by Hito Steyerl. It also presents graphic designers working with action in their design pro­ cess. For example Sister Corita Kent’s activism, Stefan Sag­ meister with his involvement of the body and nomadism, the conceptual approach of Czech designer Petr Babák, Maki Suzuki with his excitement “to do”, ephemeral surfaces and the unforgettable events of Cox and Grusenmeyer, Moniker with their Conditional Design happenings towards surface and Auto Italia’s identity of interactive assistant.

Finally, the text explains why the contemporary form of la­ bour - Sven Lütticken’s concept of general performance - is so important. This thesis is a manifestation of the emerging designer, his/her milieu and effort to position himself/herself into the world of democratized surface production.

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0.

Introduction

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0.1 Context and Fascination

17 I would like to start with a brief introduction of my personal history. As a child I became fascinated by theatre perfor­ mances and happenings because of my artistic family’s background. This later became the reason why I decided to study Fine Arts. At that time art, especially performance, was a carefree game for me; never critical and always super­‑naive. Consequently I started to document my ac­ tions in the form of small zines and posters. To confess, I was only a weirdo presenting a completely redesigned portfolio each semester.

Later on, I decided to concentrate more on promotion and creating the visual identities of the small gallery I curated at that time. Naturally, those first design results were not satisfying. The curiosity to gain a deeper understanding and the desire to be “a professional” led me to apply to study graphic design at KABK. Immediately after the academic year’s kick off I discovered that the discipline’s borders are fluid and full of possible fields for examination and exten­ sion. So I started appropriating the language and production modes I had learned in Fine Arts.

I understand Dutch design education is research based, focused on the future, emerging technologies and respon­ sibility. But the most fascinating thing is the effort to con­ nect the individual abilities, needs and experiences with the realm of graphic design. So I decided to write this thesis as a synthesis of my previous artistic experience and design education.

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●○ Library Session, Tereza Rullerová performing the designer, Stroom Den Haag, 2014

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●○ Hyper-Kalokagathia, Tereza interprets philosophy, 2014

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0.2 Structure Guide

21 I present the thesis structured in two sections. The first sec­ tion contains two chapters, Understanding Performance and Surface (1st chapter) and Theoretical Background of Performance (2nd chapter). The second section is com­ posed of three chapters chronologically presenting histor­ ical and contemporary examples of performance art and graphic design using action.

The title of the first chapter – Understanding Performance and Surface – already indicates that the chapter provides fundamental information to gain orientation in specific ter­ minology. I explain the meaning of Lütticken’s general per­ formance and its capacity to redefine labour, Battcock’s and Nicka’s field of action and Schechner’s art redirection from object­‑making practice. Then I look closely at the term sur­ face. I present Metahaven’s key ideas upon its capacity to transform values and my own cloud metaphor. After this chapter the reader understands the difference between ba­ nana peel, banknote and computer screen in terms of sur­ face, as well as that performance consists of a few unique ingredients: chance, action, eventness, space, time and bodies.

Theories of speech act, language­‑games, theatre meta­ phor, the performative turn of the 1960s, defamiliarization and Deleuzian philosophy of affects are all introduced in the second chapter: Theoretical Background of Performance. It begins with a glance at performativity through the theories of Austin, Derrida, Lyotard, Goffman and moving on to more recent debates surrounding the use of the concept of per­ formance by Fischer­‑Lichte, Butler, Bateson, and also with a little resurrection of theories by Shklovsky, escalating in Deleuze’s and Guattari’s philosophical approach towards affect.

22 The narrative of the second section of Action to Surface is organized chronologically in the realm of The Guten­ berg’s Galaxy. It begins with Renaissance man Leonardo da Vinci who used performance as a ground for testing new ideas. The third chapter, however, continues with a leap – displacing the reader directly into the revolutionary era of the avant­‑gardes. From the Dadaist magical form of acti­ vating the audience, through Duchamp’s performative act, Schlemmer’s stage theory, Teige’s performed alphabet to the post­‑war era of Performative Turn, where the action emerged as a new medium of the form of art and activism – Klein, Cage, Kaprow, Brecht, Beuys, Corita Kent and The Provo.

Performativity in The Post­‑Gutenberg Galaxy is the title of the fourth chapter where the narrative of selected historical exam­ ples continues. It starts with Warhol’s transfer of performativity from artist to designer and its commodification. It also shows artworks connecting action with cryptography, graphic signs, typography and calligraphy – de Cointet, Paik, Holzer, Stelarc.

And in return it presents designers inspired by conceptual and performance art – Sagmeister, Babák and Najbrt.

23 The second section of the thesis ends with the fifth chapter entitled The Age of Democratized Surface Production. This chapter looks at the democratization of design and pres­ ents performance as a possible approach of how designers may face it. Contemporary design projects incorporating action and participation are introduced here. For example Åbäke’s performative survey into graphic medium presen­ tation, Cox & Grusenmeyer’s design­‑wise happenings, live handwriting as a form of the craftsmanship by Letman, Mon­ iker’s projects exploring surface created during happenings and other projects done by artists and desigers. The last chapter shows how designers execute their processes as actions and consciously became performers.

Both sections, the theoretical one as well as examples of different approaches towards performative surface produc­ tion, serve as a basis for my conclusion. This thesis answers the research question by proving that surface production is more and more oriented towards actions, happenings and events to catch the viewer’s attention.

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I.

I.

Understanding Performance and Surface

I.

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I.1 Performance and Performativity

29 “Our body is not in space like things; it inhabits or haunts space. It applies itself to space like a hand to an instrument; and when we wish to move about we do not move the body as we move an object. We transport it without instruments as if by magic, since it is ours and because through it we have direct access to space. For us the body is much more than an instrument or a means; it is our expression in the world, the visible form of our intentions.”

— Maurice Merleau­‑Ponty[1] To clearly understand my research question, I would like to introduce concepts and theories of performativity. Per­ formance and performativity are hazy cross­‑media terms, which are often used throughout different disciplines and various, sometimes even contradictory uses. They became ubiquitous and it looks that they provide a kind of imaginary umbrella that covers recent cross­‑media work in time, in space and with bodies. When fine art, economy, linguistic and other disciplines may claim performativity, I feel it’s the right time and that it makes sense to start thinking of the discipline of graphic design as performative as well.

Performativity and performance are derived from the verb “to perform”, therefore they also, among other specific­ ities mean the capacity to execute an action, to do well.

1 Lawlor, L. and Toadvine, T. (eds.) (2007), Stud‑ ies in Phenomenology and Existential Philoso‑ phy: The Merleau­‑Ponty Reader. USA, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, p285

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â—?â—‹ Businessman Winning Race, Constant pressure to reach higher performance levels, www.tamarathorpe.com, Leadership tools for life, 2014

31 Paradoxically, performance can be understood in our cap­ italist view as a quality of a commodity, as well as an action of performing an artistic work. A discovery for me is that performance has extended meanings, especially in contem­ porary economy and its labor regimes. According to the es­ say General Performance[2] by Sven Lütticken performance refers to “quasi­‑theatrical self­‑presentation” where every­ body does his/her job by performing it (which I further inves­ tigate as a theatre metaphor in the second chapter) but also what’s more fascinating is that it redefines the work itself.

The Performative turn of art in the 1960’s indicated not only an art­‑revolt but also the birth of a new form of labor - gen­ eral performance. That means how Western societies per­ ceive, execute and give value to work has changed since then. Automation of production made human labor needless and transformed it into occupation. Work leads to an end product, however occupation is an activity that doesn’t in­ tend an end, rather a service or engagement. Everybody is nowadays constantly occupied and unable to distinguish between performance and life or working hours and free time; it is all mixed up together. Flexible working hours, overused especially in arts and design, signal that imma­ terial labor became Lütticken’s general performance. Time was made into currency, where quality is emphasized over

2 Lütticken, S. (2012), “General Performance”, E­‑Flux online journal #31, http://www.e­‑flux. com/journal/general­‑performance/, e­‑flux, accessed 3.10. 2014

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●○ Oscar Schlemmer, performance at Bauhaus, 1927

33 quantity. I, as a designer, not only design things, but I often visit or take part at various design­‑related events, exhibition openings, symposiums, and talks and I don’t perceive it as leisure time, that’s my investment into potential future proj­ ects, future clients and collaborations. Being social is part of my self­‑presenting performance, it’s part of my occupation.

Let’s return from economy back to art and design to ask what is performance there? For me it is a practice that ex­ ecutes an action, that denotes the occurrence of an event, it incorporates space, time and it’s connected with a per­ forming body and an audience. To sing, to dance, to act in a play, and to do performance art. So performance is the act or activity and “performativity is its essence, nature and quality”[3] thus I understand performativity also as a con­ cept and method of performance. The fine art theoreticians Gregory Battcock and Robert Nickas define it as a field for action, an “extension of possibilities”. [4] More specifically it’s a unique unrepeatable event, something that couldn’t be easily mass­‑produced. According to Jean­‑Pierre Cometti, the performance practice is “opposed to the production of an object”[5]. Process became new material for artists. But still, and what makes it very contradictory, is that this process is capable of creating a work of art, a fetishized material mem­ ory. It’s clear to conclude that performance works with the

3 consultation with Ruller, T., a professor of Ate­ lier performance at Faculty of Fine Arts of Brno University of Technology, Brno, Czech Republic, October 2014 4 Battcock, G. and Nickas, R. (1984), The Art of Performance: A Critical Anthology. USA: E.P. Dutton Inc. and Ubu Editions (2010), p6 5 Cometti, J. P. (2014), Per/Form: How to do things with/out words, “Performance as Experience”, Chantal Pontbriand (ed.), Madrid: Sternberg Press, p48

34 tension between material and the ephemeral, between unexpectedness of creation and fragility of being.

Choreographer and curator Bruno Listopad emphasizes chance as a key aspect - the sparkle - of performance. Bru­ no, inspired among many things by Deleuzian philosophy, circulation of affect and Google Earth extends the field of theatre, design and dance. He describes himself as a post­ ‑choreographic app. And in my eyes, his function as an app is to activate and emancipate the audience, but also the performer via the creative act. For Bruno, this creative act examines actualisations of a potential where relations play an important role. Therefore he describes performance as “a different level of exchange”[6].

Where does performance take place? Let’s explain this through its relationship to objects. For example I under­ stand painting as a materialized work of art, it takes place in the physical object. Another example could be an essay, which takes place in the words or a song which happens in sounds. But a performance is special, it takes place only in action, interaction, and relation. More specifically in theatre, on the street, or even on a computer screen - an active sur­ face. In addition to this, a book, a painting and other medias may be treated performatively and thus they become part of

6 consultation and interview with Bruno Listo­ pad, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, November 2014

35 performance, as it is explained by Richard Schechner[7]. The paradox is that performance art in its early stages separated itself from history of arts as an opposition to object­‑making practice, but through the second half of the 20th century it incorporated the creation of the art object again.

This makes me think - what are performative works and art pieces in our medialized world? How do we perceive them?

I found an ambiguous answer in Shannon Jackson’s text published by Walker Art Center: “They (performative art works) might be choreographed but are not quite ‘dance.’

They are theater­‑like but not theater. Some might call such works performance art, and yet others would be unsure about the use of such a term…”[8]. This proves to me, that it might be still a bit confusing, the term performance is slippery even when I try to define its context. Therefore, in the second chapter, I focus on performativity through the philosophy of language, social sciences and performance art theories.

7 Schechner, R. (2003), Performance Studies: An Introduction, “What is Performance?”, Lon­ don: Routledge pg23 8 Jackson, S. (2014), “Performativity and its Addressee”, Living Collections Catalogue: On Performativity, # 1, http://www.walkerart.org/ collections/publications/, Walker Art Centre, accessed 7.10. 2014

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I.2 Surface

37 “Graphic designers are in fact producers of surfaces, mil‑ lions of them.” — Andrew Blauvelt[9] There are many ways how to approach the definition of sur­ face. Traditionally the surface is understood to be hiding, covering what is behind. The surface is assumed to be the thin border between object and outside, the flat peel wrap­ ping the volume. Contradictory to this I realized that flatness of surface is not a quality with the potential for contempo­ rary designers. On top of that I assume flatness is more the issue of a viewer’s distance than the surface’s essential property. I would like to explain this through the metaphor of clouds. When we look at clouds, we perceive them as flat textures trudging the sky. But getting closer in a plane we realize they are volumes. Similarly the development of infor­ mation technologies allowed us to discover that the surface is not Gutenberg’s flatland anymore.

Due to technology evolution there are now three recogniz­ able types of surface. The first type is surface connected to its material as a border with a potential of relations with the surroundings, when simultaneously it’s a place to show in­ formation. That natural surface is, for example, human skin or a banana peel and we can call it former surface. The sec­ ond one, according to Amsterdam based speculative design

9 Blauvelt, A. (2011), Graphic Design: Now in Production, “Tool (or, Postproduction for the Graphic Designer)”, USA: Walker Art Center, p24

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â—?â—‹ Metahaven, Wikileaks identity, scarf colection, exhibited at Art Berlin Contemporary, 2012

39 studio Metahaven[10] is mute or passive surface, which has the capacity to transform values and it is defined as a place where the material properties of its material don’t have to correspond to its information properties. This information increases the value of the material. For example money or credit cards are made of paper­‑textile material or plastic, but we, as a society, agreed on the certain quality it has. The last type would be called communicative or active surface.

This surface is “classified by its capacity to reveal and open up doorways to virtual worlds.”[11] It could be a smartphone or computer screen, display of wearables, iPads and Kin­ dles. “Active surfaces are inhabited by worlds in worlds”[12].

Surface evolution caused design to now be defined as the management and creation of virtual qualities binded to materials - multifunctional objects, gadgets which commu­ nicate and display information through their screens. For example the phone as a surface has the capacity to perform with its user and organize social relations and informations for him/her.[13] But what makes active surfaces extraordi­ nary is that they produce production (surface produces ac­ tion). Consumption has become a force to produce, a force that creates other needs. Contemporary surface is waiting for its user full of placeholders and default settings, fake friends, default images or avatars, even with default text

10 Metahaven (2010), White Night Before A Manifesto, “Surface: 0:00 AM”, The Nether­ lands: Onomatopee 11 Metahaven (2010), White Night Before A Man‑ ifesto, “Surface: 0:00 AM”, The Netherlands: Onomatopee 12 Metahaven (2010), White Night Before A Manifesto, “Surface: 0:00 AM”, The Nether­ lands: Onomatopee 13 As examples could serve Active Gaming Apps, which use the iPad/iPod/iPhone camera or the device’s accelerometer to stimulate it’s user to be physically active. In app called Heads Up! player guess the word on the skewmorph [explained in chapter 5, note 19] card by putting his iPhone on his/her head.

Player’s friends have to answer only with ges­ tures and performing. Heads Up! are playable with many but also one person at same time, all games are recordable, so therefore also sharable and it includes many card decks with

different topics that varies from Animals to Movies. Other examples of active apps: Motion Maze App, where player runs in virtual space towards a goal, but he has to do that by real running. 4D Bowling App simulates this famous game by swinging the device like a bowling ball except throwing it away. Player becomes Sci­‑fi space warrior and launches rockets against in­ vaders in app called Skyhunt. By holding iPhone level with the floor and then lifting it the player becomes a skier in Real Ski Jump HD App. To enjoy shaking the bottle until it explodes, there is simple app Soda Shake.

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●○ Moniker, The Skeuo Office, active surface proposal, video, 2013

41 posts in the form of lorem ipsum. This surface needs user­ ‑generated content - an action or performance - to become more personal and friendly. Nowadays content is generated effortlessly and in an extremely pleasant way, the time when activities required some physical endeavour is gone. It’s so easy to take and upload photographs, measure burned cal­ ories, share the data with friends, search find and shop or even write to people who are thousands of kilometers far away.

As passive surface can be produced by labour or machines, the active one needs to stimulate users to perform to be created. Active surface stimulates us to perform action, to accept the role - a user, administrator - which produces surface itself, which then as in the cycle becomes a self­ ‑perpetuating system. For example users (they perform a role) have to fill in information (action) to their social media profiles (place) by uploading pictures and writing statuses for their friends (audience). So these performances hap­ pen in virtual space by movement of a cursor and updating profiles as well as in our physical world by mouse clicking.

Therefore the existence of performance is essential for the production of active performance­‑surface machine[14].

14 Typical example could be described as a cycle of sharing photos. Users take selfies, upload them, share them and then as reaction do another selfies.

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â—?â—‹ Metahaven, White Night Before A Manifesto, Written from the perspective of the design practitioner engaged in an almost automatic and unquestioned alliance with the virtual, paperback, 2018

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●○ Eran Schaerf, Listener’s Voice, performative space, 2002; image selected by Sven Lütticken for his text Performance Art After Television, 2013

II.

II.

Theoretical Background of Performance

II.

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II.1 Speech Act

47 In this chapter I follow different subsequent performance theories from separate gesture or speech act, through lan­ guage game to the understanding it as a part of wider sys­ tem or complex interaction and finally to Deleuzian affect.

In 1960’s, at the same time when performance art step out of the conformist traditional art world, John L. Austin prag­ matically rethought the nature of words. To understand his core idea of the performative utterance one has to accept, that saying something is also doing something. Austin claimed the performative speech act could not be reduced only to constative utterances that provide us description of the world such as the statement: “It’s a sunny day”. In contrast performative act forces its limits by projecting an intention - a task. Therefore it can be extended as a mode of action. Let’s take for example Austin’s famous marriage act phrase “I do”, which goes beyond reporting because it con­ tains acting. Therefore correct marriage procedure - a ritu­ al - makes this statement valid. According to his influential book How To do Things with Words, performative utterances don’t only describe or report but also contain the potential to create[1].

Austin’s linguistic theory can be understood as a revolu­ tionary shift in the theory of communication. That particular

1 “… “[performativity] is derived, of course, from ‘perform’, the usual verb with the noun ‘action’: it indicates that the issuing of the utterance is the performance of an action – it is not normally thought of as just saying something.” — Austin, J. L. (1975), How to do things with Words, UK: Harvard University press, 2nd edition, p6-7 2 Derrida, J. (1977), Signature Event Context, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, p1–23

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●○ Performative speech and action, Christening a World War II battleship, 1943

49 approach to performativity was further extended by French post­‑structuralist philosophers, Jacques Derrida and Jean­ ‑François Lyotard. In essay Signature Event Context[2] Der­ rida introduced idea of language­‑text relations and devel­ oped inspiring method of deconstruction, while Lyotard was interested in question: where does performativity emerge?

That led him to investigation of the role of the language games in society. The language­‑games give the language its meaning. Term was firstly introduced by Ludwig Wittgen­ stein and brought into the prominence the fact that “speak­ ing of language is part of an activity, or a form of life.”[3] To say something - to make an utterance - is similar to make a move in a game. Lyotard extended Austin’s definitions of performative utterances and developed three principles: that statement is valid by a contract between players of the language game, there must be rules and every utterance is equal to the move in game[4]. That idea of language games was stressed in the frame of political events and ethical situations.

3 Wittgenstein, W., (1986), Philosophical Investi‑ gations, UK: Basil Blackwell Ltd, p5 4 Lyotard, J. F., (1984), The Post­‑Modern Condi‑ tion: A Report on Knowledge, UK: Manchester University Press, p9

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●○ The Sacrament of Baptism incorporates believers into the church, the body of Christ, and serves as introduction to the life of the Holy Trinity. Christians believe water is a symbol of cleansing and newness of life. from www. mozhno-detyam.net Когда можно крестить ребенка? [When is it possible to baptize a baby?]

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●○ Just married gay couples, Wedding ceremony, showing Austin’s famous marriage act phrase “I do”, USA, 2013 from www.america.aljazeera.com

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II.2 Transformative Situation

53 American social theorist Ervin Goffman provided a unique perspective on the idea of self and society. He was interest­ ed in staging, relationships and question how performativity happens. According to Goffman, not only an actor or a per­ formance artist, but every individual; a policeman, a hotel stuff, a violinist, a Vogue model; is trying to persuade others to believe in their character. To do this they need to deliver a performance, by which he means “all the activity of an individual which occurs during a period…before a set of ob‑ servers and which has some influence on the observers”[5].

This metaphor of social life as a theater is broadly under­ stood as “conceptual framework for interaction analysis”.

[6] It describes conditions of producing reality within social exchange. It covers setting of a whole situation, a place (the­ atre stage, or for example a hotel), actors (not only theater actors as mentioned above) and their audience (which is possibly also in a role). Based on this, Goffman argued the theatre metaphor is what social life is like, performativity is made possible through the framing of the social scene.

When I understand the performance in Deleuzian terms as capacity to transform situation, I think it’s more than appropriate to present the ideas of theatre historian Erika Fisher­‑Lichte. She writes about the Performative turn of the 1960’s and breaks down this phenomenon into its

5 Goffman, E. (1990), Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, UK: Penguin Books Ltd, p28-32 6 Smith, G. (2006), Series: Key Sociologists, Erving Goffman, UK: Routledge, p44

54 components to explore its transformative and interactive powers. She explains that live performance is shaped by interaction between performer and spectator, where anything can happen.[7] Marvin Carlson in introduction to Fisher­‑Lichte’s book describes the Performative turn in fine arts as a historical shift from production of art object to production of event.[8] For Formalists like Shklovsky, how­ ever, the ordinary was found in the materiality of the world (objects); while for Fisher­‑Lichte it is the experience of the ever­‑evolving dynamics of being in that world (event, hap­ pening) - as is described in the Defamiliarization essay.

Fisher­‑Lichte goes further in theory of performance and elaborates on its immanent connection with culture: “if not in the first place, performance. It can hardly be overlooked to what an extent culture is brought forth as and in perfor‑ mances – not only in performances of the different arts but also, and foremost in performances of rituals, festivals, po‑ litical rallies, sport competitions, games, fashion shows and the like – performances which, in a mediatized form, reach out to millions of people.”[9] I’ve selected few arguments from Erika Fisher’s Lichte text Culture as Performance: 1) A performance comes into being by the bodily co­‑presence of actors and spectators,

7 Fisher­‑Lichte, E. (2008), The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics, UK: Routledge, p136 8 Carlson, M. (2008), The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics, “Perspec­ tives on performance”, UK: Routledge, pg: 7 9 Fisher­‑Lichte, E. (cca 2010), Culture as Per‑ formance: Theatre history as cultural history, http://ww3.fl.ul.pt/centros_invst/teatro/pagina/ Publicacoes/Actas/erika_def.pdf, Lisboa: Uni­ versidade Livre de Berlim, pg1

55 by their encounter and interaction. 2) What happens in per­ formances, is temporary and ephemeral. 3) Performances are characterized by their eventness. At the end of her text she briefly explains that reproductible performances mediated through film, television, video, design and inter­ net, are also included in broader concept of performativity, however they are not included in bodily co­‑presence of performers and spectators.[10] Judith Butler understands performativity in wider meaning - as our everyday life roles. Her theory of performativity specifically addresses the process in which gender and identity are created. She explained complex ideas about performativity and power to reject/create normative rules.

Nothing ever exists outside of the power and power is al­ ways relation. She wrote about identity which is a process of construction, a consequence of historical and behav­ ioral norms within larger social contexts. “Identity is per‑ formatively constituted.”[11] I understand that Butler sees performative practices as transformative components of our everyday life. According to Sara Salih, a theoretician who made further readings of Butler’s Gender Trouble a “gender is not something one is, it is something one does, an act, or more precisely, a sequence of acts.”[12]

10 Fischer­‑Lichte, E. (cca 2010), Culture as Performance: Theatre history as cultural history, http://ww3.fl.ul.pt/centros_invst/teatro/pagina/ Publicacoes/Actas/erika_def.pdf, Lisboa: Uni­ versidade Livre de Berlim, pg1-14 11 Butler, J. (1990), Gender Trouble, UK: Rout­ ledge 12 Salih, S. (2006), Sexualities and Communica‑ tion in Everyday Life: A Reader, “On Judith Butler and Performativity”, Sage Publications Inc, p55

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●○ The Rodina, Tereza Rullerová holding a dummy of the first book published by Mox Nox, performative campaign, 2012

57 In the book, Ecology of Mind, Gregory Bateson explained actions in terms of being performative within the complex system which they are part of. [13] I understand this system as human interactions, relations and reactions to patterns.

[14] Bateson’s patterns are acts of human perception and respond to the world which is in the process of constant change - a flow of life.

13 Bateson, G. (1972) Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology, USA: University of Chicago Press 14 Blaeuer, D. M. (2010), An Ecology of Perfor‑ mance: Gregory Bateson’s Cybernetic Perfor‑ mance, USA: University of South Florida, p147

58

II.3 Power to Affect

59 Talking about Butler I have to present the following ideas of Gilles Deleuze, who formed a very complex and sometimes almost unintelligible philosophy known as New Materialism.

He was inspired among many others by Butler’s work. In his Logic of Sense we find him concerned with the transfor­ mative (performative) potential of bodies and language.[15] In Thousand Plateaus, collaboratively written with psycho­ analyst Félix Guattari, they rephrased Austinian distinction between the performative, as that which one does by saying it (swearing, naming) and the illocutionary, as that which one does in speaking (questions, promises, commands).[16] They went further, when describing the relation between the act and the statement as immanent or inseparable: “each state‑ ment accomplishes an act and the act is accomplished in the statement.”[17] They name this statement­‑acts.

In another branch of New Materialism, called philosophy of affects Deleuze demonstrated his theory on performa­ tivity and bodies through examples of cinema and movies (moving images). Construing that art (in this case images) and design have special capacity to affect the audience and also to be affected, we may understand his theory as considering the performance as expression­‑event of affect.

Affect he presents is beyond language, binary structures as reality/illusion, subject/object, and ideology. Therefore the

15 Deleuze, G., (1990), The Logic of Sense, UK: Athlone Press, p25 16 Parson, A. (2009), “Performance and Perfro­ mativity”, https://sites.google.com/site/prax­ isandtechne/Home/architecture/performativity/ performance­‑and­‑performativity, accessed 11.10. 2014 17 Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987), A Thou‑ sand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophre‑ nia, “Postulates of Linguistics”, translated by Massumi, B., USA: University of Minnesota Press, p79

60

●○ Jeff Koons, Made in Heaven series, celebrating marriage with his wife — Italian porn star La Cicciolina, exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1990

61 body becomes “site where the affective event takes place, in either its productive or receptive modalities, or more like‑ ly, in both simultaneously.”[18] Elena del Rio, author of the book Powers of Affection is, after reading and incorporating Deleuzian philosophy, concerned with the performative di­ mension of bodies, especially in cinema. Here the bodies of actors are “doers, generators producers, performers of worlds, of sensations and affects.” According to her, per­ formance has the power to de­‑form and trans­‑form. Perfor­ mativity is also a way of social construction of identity, which in my opinion correlates with Butler and the art theories of Russian Formalists.

One thing is certain, though, according to Shklovsky’s essay Art as Device, art and design have strong affective power due to defamiliarization of what they are made of. The abil­ ity of art and design “is to make objects unfamiliar”.[19] In other words, the purpose of fine art and design is to com­ municate the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. According to Shklovsky the author has responsibility to manipulate formal elements in order to transform common everyday language into defamiliar­ ized one. American writer, Audrey Watters explains Formal­ ist “act of creative deformation restores sharpness to our perception, giving “density” to the world around us.”[20]

18 del Rio, E. (2008), Deleuze and the cinemas of performance: Powers of Affection, “From representation to performance”, UK: Edinburgh University Press Ltd, p4 19 Shklovsky, V. (1965), Russian Formalist Criti‑ cism: Four Essays, “Art as Technique”, originaly published in 1917, USA: University of Nebraska Press, pg12 20 Watters, A. (2002), “Defamiliarization: Shk­ lovsky, Brecht, Debord”, http://audreywatters. com/defamiliarization.pdf, pg5, accessed 11.10.

2014

62

â—?â—‹ Eve Babitz photographed naked playing chess with Dada doyen Marcel Duchamp, 1963

63 Excellent example could be found in Duchamp’s work, which is described in the third chapter.

I would like to end this chapter with act of living. I under­ stand it as constantly re­‑inventing, bringing ideas and ac­ tions together, contributing to the being­‑together web of re­ lations; to Deleuzian assamblage. Deleuze’s interest can be found in bodily capacity to make us think of the unthought.

Moreover bodies have active power to affect and also passive power to be affected.[21] To summarize this, I can conclude that affects are thus powers of body while perfor­ mance is the bridge of these powers of bodies out through action, relation and transformation.

21 Deleuze, G. (1989), Cinema 2: The Time­ ‑Image, USA: University of Minnesota Press, p139

III.

III.

The End of Gutenberg’s Galaxy

III.

66

III.1 Performance as a Testing Ground for New Design Ideas

67 In what follows, I explore the frames of reality­‑making con­ texts of performativity within its briefly examined history.

I reflect around selected artworks, theatreworks and design­ works that span the time of Renaissance to the present day.

To understand the term Gutenberg Galaxy I have to start in 1962, when media theorist Marshall McLuhan analyzed the effect of mass media and technologies on culture in his book The Gutenberg Galaxy[1]. For a duration of 107 chapters readers are invited to an historical ride from pre­ ‑alphabetical tribal humankind to the electronic age. As I understand the message of McLuhan’s book, the inven­ tion of typography and print in 1436 gave birth to first mass production. It brought the visual into dominance over the oral - the significance of objects over events. Therefore the Performative turn of the 1960’s was, among other aspects derived from the arising importance of communication in­ dependent from printed text, which turned attention back to the ignored verbality of language and the eventness.

Jose A. Sanchez describes this as the abandonment of the Gutenberg Galaxy[2].

The most significant predecessors of performance art can be found in the Italian Renaissance. During 15th century, performance served as a testing ground for new ideas.

1 McLuhan, M. (1962), The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, Canada: Uni­ versity of Toronto Press 2 Sanchez, J. A. (2014), Per/Form: How to do things with/out words, “Act, Realize, Manifest”, Madrid: Sternberg Press, p92

68

●○ Gutenberg’s revolutionary technology of Printing Press helped to accelerate the spread of information since the 1450’s

69 Architects and scenographers designed triumphal proces­ sions and planned elaborate celebrations for the rich elites of that time. According to that fact I assume, that already six hundred years ago, artists and inventors used performance with its transformative potential to create famous artworks capable of moving their audience which are still remarkable today.[3] Leonardo da Vinci had all the hallmarks of the Renaissance man, a polymath, whose expertise spanned a multiplicity of talents, creative force and vision. He became a legend already during his life and perfected various techniques to produce fantastic effects. A stunning example would be how he depicted Pythagorean music of spheres: “The guests now streamed into the Sala del giuoco alla pala, which had been arranged for the representation of the Paradiso, by Leonardo da Vinci, the Court mechanician.

Then a train of powder exploded, and crystalline globes, like planets, were seen disposed in a circle, filled with water, and illumined by a myriad of living fires sparkling with rainbow colours.”[4]

3 di Felice, A. (1984), The Art of Performance: A Critical Anthology, “Renaissance Perfor­ mance: Notes on Prototypical Artistic Actions in the Age of the Platonic Princes”, Battcock, G. and Nickas, R. (eds.), USA: E.P. Dutton Inc. and Ubu Editions (2010), p14 4 Merezhkovsky, D. S. (2009), The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci, USA: Ishi Press

70

â—?â—‹ Renaisance Pythagorean music of spheres: Sun, Moon and planets

71 In contrary to Modernists and the 1960’s views of perfor­ mance as a tendency towards dematerialization, 15th cen­ tury performativity was highly material. These fashions of object­‑driven vs. immaterial­‑driven performative production have alternated ever since.

72

III.2 The Performa— tive Act as a Catalyst of Art Revolution

73 In the first decade of the 20th century the avant­‑garde emerged in fine arts. Modern art was at that time strongly influenced by technological innovation, the horrors of World War I and theories of space and time by Albert Einstein. Ac­ cording to RoseLee Goldberg the history of performance art can be seen as a series of waves, Futurists, Dadaists, Constructivists, Surrealists and Abstract Expressionists who challenged traditional forms of art and experimented to­ wards conceptual ideas. They used performativity as a cata­ lyst for change, an endless mediator and a way of animating formal ideas.[5] At that time, artists criticized their own dis­ cipline, attempted to resolve problematic issues and break down conventional categories, especially via performance.

Due to Modernist’s experiments the graphic design disci­ pline, as we know it, was born.

In the first decade of the 19th century avant­‑garde artists, intellectuals and the first graphic designers met together, read poetry and shared their excitement. Marrinetti and the Futurists, obsessed with developments in technology, be­ gan with manifestos and performances “against what they branded as the past­‑loving art of the museum”[6] before finding their ground in materialized art objects; painting and sculpture. In their designs, especially to visualize poems, Futurists started to play with mixed typefaces in unbridled compositions, whitespace and diagonals.[7] 5 Goldberg, R. L. (1984), The Art of Perfor‑ mance: A Critical Anthology, “Performance: A Hidden History”, editors Battcock, G. and Nickas, R., USA: E.P. Dutton Inc. and Ubu Edi­ tions (2010), p23 6 Goldberg, R. L. (1984), The Art of Perfor‑ mance: A Critical Anthology, “Performance: A Hidden History”, Battcock, G. and Nickas, R. (eds.), USA: E.P. Dutton Inc. and Ubu Editions (2010), p24 7 Zang Tumb Tumb by Marinetti was published as an artist’s book in 1914. It was inspired by the Battle of Adrianople, which Marinetti

witnessed as a reporter. “The poem uses words in freedom -creative typography- and other poetic impressions of the events of the battle, including the sounds of gunfire and explosions.

The work is now seen as a seminal work of modernist art, and an enormous influence on the emerging culture of European avant­‑garde print.” — Open Set (2012), Dutch Graphic Design Summer School, design blog http://openset.nl/ blog/?p=175, accessed 5.10. 2014

74

●○ Filippo Tommaso Marrineti’s typographical montage Futurist words‑in‑freedom, 1915

75

●○ Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber‑ -Arp, Dada puppets, Scenes from the marionette play “King Stag”, 1918

76

â—?â—‹ Hugo Ball reciting a poem at the Cabaret Voltaire, 1916

77 Before Zürich Dadaists created art objects, they were poets and cabaret artists interested in the element of chance. Dadaists experimented with graphic design and typography by using photomontage, accidents and auto­ matic drawings. In 1918 Tristan Tzara wrote instructions on how to make an accidental poem.[8] and Hans Arp with his wife designed many abstract puppets. Toys became per­ formative objects used in a cabaret, but I assume they are also the embodiment of a fascination with the realm of the childlike. On the account of childlike Hugo Ball, cabaret Voltaire performer, wrote that the aim of the Dadaists was to: “surpass oneself in naiveté and childishness.”[9] During his poetry experiments Ball used performance as a magi­ cal form of manifestation, to activate relationship between himself and the audience.

Another modernist­‑superhero, Marcel Duchamp, helped to articulate through his ready­‑mades the crisis of the artistic object in the field of visual arts[10]. The act of exhibiting and signing an everyday object was clearly a performative act.

In Duchamp’s famous Fountain, I observe his interest in dis­ placing the commercial product out of its context through a performative act of giving a special value to it - by the sig­ nature. This is an excellent example of the affective power of defamiliarization, as it is described in the second chapter.

8 “To make a dadaist poem, Take a newspaper, Take a pair of scissors, Choose an article as long as you are planning, to make your poem, Cut out the article, Then cut out each of the words that make up this article, and put them in a bag., Shake it gently, Then take out the scraps one after the other, in the order, in which they left the bag, Copy consecutively.” — Tristan Tzara. — Melzer, A. H. (1984), The Art of Perfor‑ mance: A Critical Anthology, “The Dada Actor and Performance Theory”, editors Battcock, G. and Nickas, R. USA: E.P. Dutton Inc. and Ubu Editions (2010), p27

9 Hugo Ball described his attraction to “child­ hood as a new world, and everything childlike and phantastic, everything childlike and direct, everything childlike and symbolical in opposi‑ tion to the senilities of the world of grown ups.”

— Andrews, W. (1990), The Surrealist Parade, USA: New Directions Publishing, p25 10 Sanchez, J. A. (2014), Per/Form: How to do things with/out words, “Act, Realize, Manifest”, Chantal Pontbriand (ed.), Madrid: Sternberg Press, p92

78

●○ Duchamp’s poster for French Chess Championship, depicting optical illusion of tossed cubes, 1925

79

●○ Andor Weininger, Mechanical Stage Revue, Bauhaus, 1926

80 Moreover Duchamp used action enriched with gimmick to create a poster for the French Chess Championship[11], one of the biggest conceptual and visual riddles ever. In partic­ ular, it’s a poster designed by action, spiced up with optical tricks. Duchamp himself was a chess champion.

Meanwhile, the Bauhaus school, under the direction of Wal­ ter Gropius, opened its classrooms in Weimar in 1919. Bau­ haus as a Cathedral of Socialism strove to re­‑establish “uni‑ ty between the areas of artistic and technical production, which had been separated by emerging industrial produc‑ tion”[12], which led to the idea of a total artwork, synthesis of the arts and their construction called Gesamtkunstwerk.

Richard Wagner, German composer of operas coined the term Gesamtkunstwerk as an ideal of unifying all works of art via the theatre and performance; a collective total art­ work of the future.

The first course in performance, ever given in an art school, was opened in 1921 at Bauhaus; headed by expressionist Lothar Schreyer. Students from all departments wearing geometric full­‑body masks participated in this Stage Work­ shop experiment “to explore issues related to the language of form”[13]. Later Oskar Schlemmer, painter and choreogra­ pher took over its direction and developed his Stage Theory

11 Duchamp claimed that he created his poster from a photograph of 20 thrown cubes into the air. In 2004 R. R. Shearer and R. Slawinski tried to generate same photograph according to cube’s positions, surprisingly they made shocking discovery. Physical reality in Du­ champ’s poster is a trick, because in order to co­‑exist in one space, the cubes would inter­ penetrate into themselves and some of them would change their shape and became optical illusions. Duchamp developed his “impossible figures” before famous opart emerged in visual arts in 1950s. — Shearer, R. R. and Slawinski, R. (2004), “Examining Evidence” updated 2012 http://www.toutfait.com/online_journal_details. php?postid=1375, accessed 7.11. 2014 12 Siebenbrodt, M. and Schöbe, L. (2012), Bauhaus 1919-1933, USA: Parkstone Press International, p8 13 Museum for Design: The Bauhaus Archive, Berlin, “Stage Workshop”, Bauhaus Online Magazine, http://bauhaus­‑online.de/en/atlas/ das­‑bauhaus/werkstaetten/buehne, accessed 7.11. 2014

14 “It is natural that the aims of the Bauhaus — to seek the union of the artistic­‑ideal with the craftsmanlike­‑practical by thoroughly investi­ gating the creative elements, and to understand in all its ramifications the essence of der Bau, creative construction … Let us now observe the appearance of the human figure as an event … each gesture or motion is translated in mean­ ingful terms into a unique sphere of activity. … we are not concerned with imitating nature …

Let us rather open our eyes and minds to the pure power of color and light.” — Schlemmer, O. (1927) cited at “Theatre at Bauhaus”, http:// thecharnelhouse.org/2013/07/20/theater­ ‑buhne/, accessed 8.11. 2014

81

â—?â—‹ Metallic Festival, Metallic Room and Performer, Bauhaus, 9th February 1929

82

●○ Teige, Alphabet, Graphical dance compositions performed

by Milca Mayerová symbolize individual letters, 1926

83 of Body Movements in Space[14] When the school moved to Dessau, Schlemmer organized a huge opening party called Metallic Festival. This event included distinctively designed invitations, performances in silver costumes and decorated rooms in metal. From photographs I guess Bauhaus parties gave a free rein to students to show their creativity and design invention, providing opportunities to produce remarkable invitations, posters, costumes and decorations.

Besides that, Bauhaus introduced a new manner of stage and theatre practice, while at the same time graphic design pedagogy began to form and take shape.

Let’s move to Prague, where in 1926 Surrealist Karel Teige, a key figure of the Czech avant­‑garde movement Devět­ sil (Nine Forces), designed an elegant photomontage al­ phabet. What I find unique is that the entire alphabet was performed by a ballet dancer. Every letter is expressed; performed. Each movement was choreographed to create a visual counterpoint of typography. Therefore it is per­ formative surface. Teige was not only a great typographer and graphic artist, but also editor, designer and critic. He shared the same belief in power of functionalism as the second Bauhaus director, his friend Hannes Meyer. Unfor­ tunately Teige was silenced and his work banned by the Communists in the late 1940s.

84

●○ Schlemmer, Diagram for Gesture Dance, stage open at both ends, Schlemmer’s complex notation system was used to plan and record the actual movements of each performance, 1926

85

●○ Oskar Schlemmer, Triadic Ballet Performers, 1924

86

III.3 Medium of Action

87 By the end of World War II, television as a mass medium began to play a major role in everyday life and artistic perfor­ mance had clearly emerged as a medium itself. In terms of looking for post­‑war performativity it is necessary to mention the action painter Jackson Pollock, author of abstract drip paintings[15] and pioneer of European performance art, Yves Klein with his investigations into colour and immateriality.

Yves Klein developed the intense colour IKB – International Klein Blue, similar to contemporary primary digital Blue co­ lour, widely used by internet artists and designers. IKB was demonstrated during numerous salons in which spectators were invited to watch nude women covered by the famous blue, leaving imprints on huge canvases and simultaneously becoming Klein’s living paintbrushes.[16]. Pollock and Klein remind me that surface can be an intended result of action and chance.

There is similar redirection towards action and gesture at the progressive American Black Mountain College, an in­ fluential avant­‑garde school on the post­‑war art scene and pop culture. This is where the Untitled Event, a multi­‑layered multimedia experiment[17] involving poetry, music and dance, inspired by Bauhaus performances was introduced to the artworld in 1952. In particular, its authors John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg and Merce Cunningham proclaimed

15 “On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting. … I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own.”

— Jackson Pollock (1956). In Rose, B. (1980), Pollock: Painting, “My Painting”, USA: Agrinde Publications Ltd, p65 16 Klein also investigated immaterial aspect of performance art, in his Jump Into The Void and Zone of Immateriality, where he throw 20g of gold into the river Seine in Paris in 1951.

17 “Experiment, whether it be in the context of education, community, or art, has on the whole been treated in the Black Mountain literature as a generically positive appellation, lumping diverse practices under a single category that comes unproblematically to signify both artistic avant­‑gardism and political progressiveness.”

— Cage, J. (1961), Experimental Music: Doctrine in Silence, Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, p13

88

●○ Jackson Pollock, Dripping, 19471950

89

●○ John Cage, Medusa, Black Mountain College, USA, 1952

90 the first prototypical happening. Happenings were left to chance events with minimal script, abandoning the tradi­ tional concept of stage­‑audience, involving the audience into the co­‑creating of an event. Cage’s student, Allan Kaprow brought the term happening[18] to fame. I under­ stand happenings as unstructured participatory events that just happen without any hierarchy between the artist and viewers. Such viewers aren’t only looking at the piece, but interacting with it, becoming part of it. Kaprow developed his practice called activities by studying ordinary life as a form of artistic adventure, making the boundaries of art and life less distinct.

Recognizing Kaprow’s desire to lose structure, improvi­ sation, and non­‑theater places of happenings, renewed through the usage of other medias such as films and recorded music, the neo­‑dadaist movement well­‑known as Fluxus emerged. During the early 1960’s George Maci­ unas, its founder, along with Joseph Beuys, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Ay­‑O, George Brecht and other fine artists con­ tributed revolutionarily to performance, installation and video art.[19] George Brecht, conceptual artist influenced

by Zen and Dadaism explored the element of chance in art through his Water Yams and Word Event[20]. Water Yams were boxed collections of cards with minimal textual

18 Happening was “a game, an adventure, a number of activities engaged in by partici‑ pants for the sake of playing.” — Allan Kaprow, In: Rosenthal, S. and Meyer­‑Hermann, E. (eds.), The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, (2008), “Allan Kaprow: Art as Life”, http://www. moca.org/kaprow/GalleryGuide_Kaprow.pdf, accessed 12.11. 2014 19 Carlson, M. (2004), Performance: A Critical Introduction, USA: Routledge, p107

91

â—?â—‹ Yves Klein, Zone of Immateriality, act of throwing 20g of gold into the river Seine, Paris, 1951

92

●○ Yves Klein, Living Brushes, 19601961

93 instructions, after this many members of the Fluxus move­ ment began to assemble works nestled in beautifully de­ signed art boxes using innovative typography.

When discussing Fluxus, I have to mention the legendary and enigmatic teacher, art theorist, conceptualist and per­ formance artist Joseph Beuys, who was passionate about public debate, democracy and social sculptures[21]. His democratic approach to art and teaching reminds me of the prophecy of the design medium democratization con­ nected with surface production which is so current nowa­ days. When teaching he refused to follow university rules of restricted entry, so he welcomed anybody who wished to attend his classes.[22] Beuys supported his students in getting rid of art boundaries. He was fascinated by speech and participation techniques of explaining things together with performative elements and philosophy.

20 Word Event was simple event with instruc­ tions for the audience: “Exit,” and “The audi‑ ence is instructed to leave the theater.”

— Friedman, K. and Smith, O. (2002), The Fluxus Performance Workbook, Performance Research vol.7, no.3 “On Fluxus”, UK: Rout­ ledge, p22-23; Fluxus had understood that concert halls, theaters, and art galleries were mummifying. Instead, these artists found them­ selves “preferring streets, homes, and railway stations....” — Brecht, G. (2005), Events - A Het‑ erospective, USA, Michian: Walther Konig, p118 21 Beuys believed that art had a potential to bring cultural and political change: “...art is now the only evolutionary­‑revolutionary power.”

— Beuys, J. (1974), Art into Society, Society into Art, UK: ICA, p48

22 “Through a pedagogical process, we must always try and this must always be tried, to scan what is occurring in the audience, what they are able to understand, and yes, how I can com‑ municate with them. I must repeat that these actions provoke something: a subject which concerns me and which in my opinion I could objectively represent: in other words, to express something about world towards which we are moving.” — Joseph Beuys in conversation with Filliou, R. (2014), Teaching and Learning as Per‑ forming Arts, UK: Occasional Papers, p168

94

●○ Yves Klein, Living Brushes, 19601961

95

●○ Fluxus, Fluxshop inventory with Dorothea Meijer, Amsterdam, 1964—5

96

●○ George Brecht, Water Yam Box, Fluxus, 1963

97 Another influential conceptual artist who connected per足 formativity and semiotics is Joseph Kosuth, author of the famous piece One and Three Chairs[23] dealing with var足 ious levels of abstraction: reality, representations, signs and definition or language. Through addressing experi足 ence including Aristotelian philosophy of spoken words, symbols and actual things Kosuth is closely connected to Derrida. In contradiction Beuys and Aristotle would see three chairs as one chair, but Derrida would probably de足 scribe them as three different chairs, or maybe even as three diverse texts.

98

●○ Yoko Ono, A Box of Smile, Fluxus, 1971

99

â—?â—‹ Ay-O, Rainbow Manifesto, Ay-O was known for his Finger Boxes and for his performance events in Fluxus, 1966

100

III.4 Activism

101 During a lecture at the design conference Integrated I en­ countered the amazing and inspiring work of American nun, image­‑maker and activist designer Sister Corita Kent. Over the many years she taught art in LA, she, in cooperation with her students, designed banners, books, costumes and silk­ screen posters. She dynamically appropriated advertising techniques and the language of popular culture and emerg­ ing consumerism to passionately spread the message of love and peace.[24] On top of that, Sister Corita was friends with many intellectuals of that time, among them John Cage, with whom she wrote and designed the famous Rules for Students and Teachers. [25] These rules were brought to fame via The Whole Earth Catalog, an American alternative Do It Yourself culture magazine in 1968, the year Sister Cori­ ta passed away.

Performers, activists and designers worthy of ending the third chapter are Dutch Provo. As described by Experimen­ tal Jet Set, The Provo was a playful anarchist movement, a collective of individuals with different ambitions: “sub‑ versive agendas, artistic motives, utopian ideas, concrete plans.”[26] Provo, inspired by the anti­‑authoritarian anti­ ‑capitalist Situationists[27] incorporated graphic design, ephemera with happenings and calls for social change during their short two year existence, 1965 - 1967. Part of

23 One and Three Chairs, exhibited in 1965 is most famous conceptual artwork ever. Kosuth exhibited wooden chair (reality), next to it he hung photograph of a chair (sign) and an en­ larged dictionary definition of chair (designation) to create work that questions value of language, representation and object of the same thing.

More details of philosophical Aristotle­‑Derrida analysis could be found in Crandell, G. (1998), Critical review of lanscape art, “One and Three Landscapes”, at Space Maker Press website, http://www.spacemakerpress.com/lffall98/ lfpage04.htm, accessed 15.11. 2014 24 Ault, J. and Berrigan, D. (2007), Come Alive!: The Spirited Art of Sister Corita, UK: Four Cor­ ners Books 25 “RULE ONE: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for awhile; RULE TWO: Gen­ eral duties of a student — pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students; ... RULE FOUR: Consider everything an experiment; RULE FIVE: Be self­‑disciplined

— this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self­‑disciplined is to follow in a better way; RULE SIX: Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make; RULE SEVEN: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something.

It’s the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things; RULE EIGHT: Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time. They’re different processes; RULE NINE: Be happy whenever you can manage it.

Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think; RULE TEN: We’re breaking all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities. (John Cage); — Cage, J. and Kent, S. C., Rules for Students and Teachers, In: Brand, S. (1968), Whole Earth Catalog.

26 Van Den Dungen, D., Brinkers, E. and Stolk, M. (2012), Two or Three Things I Know About Provo, CZ: Moravská galerie v Brně

102 Provo was also a political wing addressing social problems by proposing White Plans, to make Netherlands a more live­ able place. The most famous of Provos political plans is the White Bicycle Plan, that proposed improving public trans­ port in central Amsterdam and the first public bike sharing system ever.[28] So Provo produced surface as an activist tool during their happenings.

27 Situationist International was an organization of intellectuals, social revolutionaries and politi­ cal theoreticians formed in 1957 by COBRA art­ ist Asger Jorn, architect Constant Nieuwenhuys and theoretician Guy Debord, author of famous Society of Spectacle. In his essay on General Performance Sven Lütticken explains influence of Nieuwenhuys’s test space called New Baby­ lon upon Provo. — Lütticken, S. (2012), “General Performance”, E­‑Flux journal #31, http://www.e­­ ‑flux.com/journal/general­‑performance/, e­‑flux, accessed 17.10. 2014 28 “After the plans were rejected by the city authorities, the Provos decided to go ahead anyway. They painted 50 bikes white and left them on streets for public use. The police impounded the bikes, as they violated municipal law forbidding citizens to leave bikes without locking them. After the bikes had been returned to the Provos, they equipped them all with com­ bination locks and painted the combinations on the bicycles.” — Tusman, L. (2010), Really Free Culture: Anarchist Communities, Radical Movements and Public Practices, USA: Pedia Press, p161

103

●○ The Provo, White Bicycle Plan, Amsterdam, 1966

104

●○ Sister Corita Kent, The Mary’s Day Parade, Immaculate Heart College, Los Angeles, 1964

105

â—?â—‹ Sister Corita Kent, The Best to You Each Morning, sophisticated Pop prints appropriating the visual style and content of mass-culture advertising, Los Angeles, 1963

106

â—?â—‹ Joseph Beuys, Lecture Event, Free International University for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research, Edinburgh, 1980

107

●○ Joseph Beuys, Art = Kapital, Free International University for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research, 1972 - 1980

IV.

IV.

The Age of Post— —Gutenberg’s Galaxy

IV.

110

IV.1 Commodified Performativity

111 The gear of technological development mounted in the late 20th century as an era of computers, satellites and nuclear power. While Marshall McLuhan was formulating ideas about shift of the media, famous pop artist and bo­ hemian illustrator Andy Warhol emerged coincidently in New York. Warhol was a genius who found a relationship between celebrity life, art, graphics and commerce. He uniquely merged a mode of serial art production, advertis­ ing and performative aspects into his work. Compared to Duchamp’s discovery of performativity as a process of pro­ ducing art, Warhol removed performativity (labour) from art production and commodified that. He added value to mass produced designs by removing valuable production of a surface from its unique relationship to the artist. He cre­ ated mass produced graphic prints like in an average fac­ tory, but he added value through his performance. I would call this the first capitalistic art production[1].

Warhol positioned himself as a brand and hid real labour behind the surface. Therefore an artist as single unique creator became obsolete. I perceive this as the first his­ toric transfer of performativity from artist to designer.

Nonetheless Warhol used several forms of performativ­ ity, he became a celebrity by creating a myth about him­ self, he shocked his audience through hoaxes and held

1 I mean “capitalistic” in a manner of creating surplus value above artist’s labour, which is possesed and multiplied by the owner - the capitalist - not by the one who actually worked on it. I think Warhol found relation between performativity in society and object by practic­ ing an opposite way than Duchamp. Duchamp was interested in displacing commercial ob­ ject out of its context by performative act of singing it, consequently giving a value to it.

On contrary Warhol used pop art and perfor­ mative gestures to employ process of mass production - to create art with it.

112

●○ Warhol, Exploding Plastic Inevitable, event, Velvet Underground and Nico — Pop girl of the 60’s, multiple screen projections, 1966

113

●○ Andy Warhol, Polaroid series, selfportrait, 1979

114 controversial performances and art gatherings[2]. Among that, Warhol pioneered computer­‑generated graphic de­ sign and art on the Amiga a few years Amiga few years before he died.[3] In The Visual Event[4], a book emphasizing eventness in graphic design, editor Oliver KlimpeI refers to work of the late 70’s artist Guy de Cointet. Cointet was inspired by Du­ champ and Warhol, fascinated by riddles, TV soap operas, cryptography, conceptual art, typography and language. He delicately mixed this all into his staged performances, where his actors discussed art surrounded by beautifully designed props, such as books, large single letters, posters and sim­ ply coloured strange objects. I understand his work as a very special moment, where graphic design and performance meet and work equally alongside of each other to affect their audience.

2 Warhol organised series of complex events cummulating all what he liked called Exploding Plastic Inevitable in 1966-67. These unique parties were taken as an exploration platform for finding the new in art and music, included simultaneous multi­‑screenings of his movies, concerts of Velvet Underground, lightworks and debates upon future of humankind. Influential is his 1967 Utah lecture, a hoax and performance questioning identity. Lecture became a shock­ ing discovery by outraged audience. Because he feigned his own presence by hiring a bad ac­ tor to perform him. “Warhol’s gesture serves as a premediated self­‑portrait. This event is best described as performance. … Warhol’s self­ ‑portraits construct multiple guises rather than reveal the true self.” — Hill, S. (2011), The Artist is Not Present: Andy Warhol’s 1967 Utah Hoax as Performance and Self­‑portraiture, USA: The University of Utah, pg1-5

3 Stinson, L. (2014), “An Amazing Discovery: Andy Warhol’s Groundbreaking Computer Art”, Wired, http://www.wired.com/2014/04/ an­‑amazing­‑discovery­‑andy­‑warhols­‑seminal­ ‑computer­‑art/#slide­‑id-794551, accessed 20.11. 2014 4 Klimpel, O. (2014), The Visual Event: An Edu­ cation in Appearances, “Everything Spoke So Vividly”, DE: Spector Books, p116

115

●○ Guy de Cointet, My fathers diary, Mary Ann Glicksman shows propbook, 1975, restaged at Cricoteka, PL, 2014

116

●○ Guy de Cointet, 1979, Tell Me, restaged at Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2013

117

●○ Guy de Cointet, Going to the Market, 1979, restaged 2014

118

IV.2 The Power of New Media

119 Lets move on to the 1980’s to discover the fascinat­ ing work of Korean­‑born Fluxus artist, Nam June Paik, who transformed the electronic moving image, video, into an artist’s medium. His experiments seem to me as the ground where new media, performance and graphic signs merge together in incredible intermedial coopera­ tion. I would like to introduce a few of his works, for exam­ ple the Video Synthesizer able to change colours[5], the TV environment called Video Garden or the application of telecommunications in his Electronic Super High­ way[6]. From the graphic design point of view he explored signs and visual codes through his multiple TV screens.

Paik’s work could be theorized as an active relation be­ tween signifier and signified, which is connected with Der­ rida’s postmodern crisis in representation.[7] Jenny Holzer is a conceptual artist, a digital poet partly following in the steps of Paik. Inspired by linguistic signs, minimal texts and symbols, she uses multimedia but also imitates the commercial language of graphic design to bring art into circulation. For example ironic and bitter statements applied to golf balls, coffee cups and other merchandise products as well as huge LED displays and projections[8].

Holzer’s work welcomed a sort of a pathos until the 1990’s, when she began to be involved in more risky territory,

5 Vasulka, W. and Vasulka, S. (1992), Eigenwelt der Apparate­‑Welt: Pioniere der Elektronischen Kunst, “Paik/Abe video Synthesizer”, AT: Ars Electronica, p126-129 6 Kac, E. and Paik, N. J. (1988), Satellite Art: An Interview with Nam June Paik, “A Tribute to Nam June Paik”, DE: Digital & Video Art Fair (repub­ lished 2005), p8-9 7 Barnard, M. (2005), Graphic Design as Com‑ munication, UK: Routledge, p141

8 Britt Miazgowicz writes how Holzer’s messag­ es designed in simple capitalized fonts “cling to surfaces and then vanish into thin air, fleeting and ephemeral, more wistful and calming aesthetically than the mechanical, frantically­ ‑paced diodes.” — Miazgowicz, B. (2010), You are Responsible for Constituting the Meaning of Things: Examining Jenny Holzer’s Progressively Complex Textual Constructs, USA: University of Miami, Open Access Theses: Paper 33, p12

120

●○ Nam June Paik, TV Robot, 19972000

121

●○ The Residents, videoart as music video, 1997

122

●○ Jenny Holzer, Truisms, electronic display Spectacolor, New York, 1982,

123

●○ Jenny Holzer, Truisms — Survival series, caps, 1983-85

124 displaying texts that addressed politics, war, rape and se­ rious illnesses projected in and on public spaces. Holzer pushes viewers to interpret her texts and truisms[9], she creates performative space to activate the viewer through technologized typographic artworks.

In the context of evolving technology and performance art there is a special artist to be mentioned, Stelarc, the ro­ botic calligrapher. Revealing himself in the appearance of a cyborg who can write simultaneously with three hands, he shocked his audience, opened new ethic questions and showed that artists have power to push new technologies forward. In order to extend his obsolete body beyond its own limits he attached an extra robotic Third Hand to his body and wrote: “EVOLUTION” with it in 1988. He claims that the body is driven by a desire to transcend its evolutionary lim­ itations[10]. Stelarc is fascinated by utilizing his body as an object - a surface - inviting technology into coexistence for the very first time. When talking about the body as surface and the field for potential acts, I have to mention another extreme artist, Orlan, who actively redesigns her body fol­ lowing an ancient aesthetic canon. In my eyes her body, sur­ viving many painful surgeries, became a mute surface.

9 Truisms are obvious claims, that are even not worth mentioning. I would like to select few examples: “THE FUTURE IS STUPID, ENJOY YOURSELF BECAUSE YOU CAN’T CHANGE ANYTHING ANYWAY, IT’S CRUCIAL TO HAVE AN ACTIVE FANTASY LIFE, MONEY CREATES TASTE, MOSTLY YOU SHOULD MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS, OFTEN YOU SHOULD ACT LIKE YOU ARE SEXLESS and POTENTIAL COUNTS FOR NOTHING UNTIL IT’S REALIZED” — Jenny Holzer; In: Wallis, B. (1989), Blasted Allegories: An Anthology of Writings

by Contemporary Artists, USA: The MIT Press, p103-111

10 “Stelarc progressively unfolds the concepts that demonstrate and emphasise the influence of technology on the reality of the body. … illustrates the symbiosis of prosthetics, virtual reality and biotechnology on the body. Stelarc, as body artist, boldly positions his body as an “obsolete” “object” that needs to be altered, extended, and redesigned in order to align itself to the technological environment in which it finds itself.” — van Zyl, S. H. (2008), Crossing the Boundaries: Stelarc’s Artworks and the Reclaiming of the Obsolete Body, ZA: University of the Witwatersrand, p22-25

125

●○ Stelarc, Third Hand, “Evolution”, 1988

126

IV.3 New Millennium of Performance— —aware Designers

127

“[Performance] really is an attempt at synthesizing commu‑ nication. It’s an attempt at a new communication. But the only people this art exists for are the people who are there.

And it’s the only time the art exists.”

— Terry Fox (performance artist) [11] I understand this as Fox’s belief in performance and it’s power to create a new form of communication. Design­ ers use communication, and manipulate it through their work,[12] so it’s natural to see a connection between creation in performance and communication design.

Talking about the body as a surface, a possible area for ac­ tion, to put a message on, to communicate through, I have to introduce the gutsy New York based designer Stefan Sagmeister. Influenced by working at M&Co for the “bad boy of graphic design” Tilbor Kalman[13], a social activist and editor­‑designer of Colors magazine, he started to commu­ nicate clients’ wishes with imaginative typography and self­ ‑centric way. The best example uniting design and the body act would be his 1999 poster for an AGIA lecture, where he cut an entire invitation into his skin. Another performative as well as nomadic aspect could be found in his experi­ mental years called Sabbaticals, which he use for relaxing

11 White, R. and Fox, T. (1979), Terry Fox: Inter‑ view, USA: Crown Point Press, p9 12 Rock, M. (2011), Graphic Design: Now in Production, “Fuck Content”, USA: Walker Art Centre, p15 13 ”In the mid-1980s two names changed graphic design: Macintosh and Tibor. … For a decade he was the design profession’s moral compass and its most fervent provocateur. …

About clients, Tibor said: “We’re not here to give them what’s safe and expedient. We’re not here to help eradicate everything of visual interest from the face of the earth. We’re here to make them think about design that’s dan‑ gerous and unpredictable. We’re here to inject art into commerce.” — Heller, S. (1999), “Tibor Kalman”, AGIA, http://www.aiga.org/medalist­ ‑tiborkalman/, accessed 20.11. 2014

128

●○ Terry Fox, “The poster photograph is meant to combine with the quote and produce a strong enough reaction in the viewer that he enters the gallery with conscious or subconscious expectations similar to those experienced in a hospital…”, 1971

129

â—?â—‹ Tibor Kalman and Emanuela Frattini Magnusson, Sky Umbrella, 1992

130 and exploring the world. In 2008 he stacked ten thousand bananas which through their phase of age - while changing colour of their former surface from green to yellow to brown - formed up a sentence: “Self­‑confidence produces fine results.”

I met Stefan last year at AGIA London shortly before his talk about his Happiness project[14], which aims to positively activate the audience. So I have to admit, implementing per­ formance and play into the design process, makes him an extraordinary designer.

14 For his Exploration of Happiness, traveling exhibitions and movie entitled The Happy Film, Sagmeister used social media crowdsourc­ ing, simple happy data visualisations and little playful tasks to activate his audience. Speaking about activation I should keenly think of the re­ lation to affect. Affecting is influencing and Sag­ meister is interested in such things. As a good example could be how he titled his workshops: “How to Touch Someone’s Heart with Design”

131

●○ Stefan Sagmeister, The Happy Show, 2012

132 I would like to end this chapter with the surface­‑driven performative practice of two selected Czech graphic de­ signers, Petr Babák and Aleš Najbrt. Babák’s characteristic style is based on experiment and importance of chance during the process of creation and production of surface.

As an example from his amazing oeuvre I’ve selected one of his recently digitized hybrid typefaces and its applica­ tion. Řezan [The Cutter] typeface was cut out of solid paper using a razor blade what makes it a great demonstration of exaggeration and playfulness. But this unconventional typo­‑game continued, in 2012 Babák designed a catalogue with it and created a special edition glued by asphalt, afterwards cut on a circular saw during its launch[15]. Mute surface was “baptized by fire” during this performative cer­ emony. That’s why I consider Babák a master of communi­ cation involving viewers by decoded production practices and defamiliarization. His designs are oriented towards concept more than superficial aesthetic forms and styles.

When I interviewed Babák about performance as a poten­ tial approach in conceptual graphic design, he admitted he liked to “find another way to get our (his design studio’s) works into viewer’s awareness than just deliver a book to the bookstore shelves and wait ...”

15 “Lukáš (design­‑colleague) and me con‑ sidered the event of cutting limited prints (of Balaban’s catalog) as a show during the opening. A special limited edition signed by the author was born on the spot. … Cutter and other typefaces became themselves performances in 1992-94. At that time I left all the traditional tools for creating typefaces and experimented with a razor blade, a vegetable crate, scissors ... Yes, that all was definitely a performance ...

In the beginning of a book­‑projects I often like to consider how to entertain readers, how to provoke and activate them... “ — Petr Babák (2014), interview

133

●○ Babák, Labortoř, The Cutter in use, Balabán exhibition identity, 2013

134

●○ Aleš Najbrt, Thomas & Ruhller, The World Tour, 1985

135 Mr. Najbrt, who despite owning a successful commercial design studio, practices performance inspired by late 1980’s anti­‑communist activism and performance. Under the name of Thomas and Ruhller (as a joke that refers to Tomas Ruller, performer and my father) Najbrt started iron­ ic performances involving art formality and its appropria­ tion as entertainment. He is interested in catching viewers’ attention through provocation.[16] For shows and a hoax world tour, he designed a special typeface and various printed matter. Therefore, following the merging of graphic design into the realm of performance, the case of Najbrt is quite interesting for my thesis.

16 Leierová M. and Najbrt, A. (2012) “Aleš Najbrt: O grafice, Varech, divadle i penězích”, Lidove Noviny, http://www.lidovky.cz/designer­‑ales­ ‑najbrt­‑o-grafice­‑varech­‑divadle­‑i-penezich­ ‑pih-/design.aspx?c=A120712_091839_ln­ ‑bydleni_ter, accessed 2.12. 2014

V.

V.

The Age of Democratized Surface Production

V.

138

●○ Hugo Gernsback wearing his TV Glasses, 1963

139

●○ FKA Twigs, “#throughglass”, high-tech connected with artistic expression, performance and advertising, video for Google Glass, 2014

140

V.1 Democratized Surface Production

141 “We live in a dynamic, data­‑driven society that is continually sparking new forms of human interaction and social con‑ texts. Instead of romanticizing the past, we want to adapt our way of working to coincide with these developments, and we want our work to reflect the here and now. We want to embrace the complexity of this landscape, deliver insight into it and show both its beauty and its shortcomings. Our work focuses on processes rather than products: things that adapt to their environment, emphasize change and show difference.”

— Moniker[1] Over 45 years of information technology has transformed performative surface production as well as our working pat­ terns. In the post-1995 climate of extreme expansion of the Internet as well as diversity of softwares and apps caused many new things to become possible. Performance which was as a production strategy discovered by Duchamp for fine arts and extended by Cage, Fluxus and Warhol has now became part of everyday life. People produce thousands of surfaces to capture their actions or experience. Users take selfies and share personal data collected by various small wearable devices such as Google Glasses or Nike+ Fuel­ Band bracelets and many other wearables.

1 Moniker (Luna Maurer, Jonathan Puckey, Roel Wouters) and Paulus, E. (2011), “Conditional Design: A manifesto for artists and designers”, Conditional Design, http://conditionaldesign. org/manifesto/, accessed 21. 11. 2014

142 Alongside media evolution came the democratization of de­ sign[2]. I understand it as new technologies enabling a wider unprofessional audience to access the process of creating.

This is done through the availability of new tools. Especially through the mass usage of personal computers, home print­ ers, Adobe Photoshop and increasing amounts of intuitive user friendly softwares supported by the tutorial boom.

But when people use tools to transform physical and virtual materials, at the same time tools transform users, as it is nicely described in Andrew Blauvelt’s essay Tool (or Post­ ‑Production for Graphic Designer). This particular transfor­ mation of design tools and designer’s milieu, caused a shift of the role; from designer­‑translator, who provides a service by adjusting and interpreting content, to the designer­‑editor, producer, researcher, programmer and hacker[3]. However, the same questions remain: How to catch the viewer’s at­ tention? Which instruments should the designer create to build relationships? How to construct a visual strategy that has the power to activate the audience? What kind of effect do I want to address?[4] The democratization of design according to Ellen Lupton “offers designers a new crack at materialism, a chance to re­‑engage the physical aspects of our work. Whereas the

2 “The historical use for designer as image­ ‑generator and print­‑production czar seems to be less in­‑demand with the democratization of design’s methods and tools while the culture of design has proliferated resulting in over­ ‑saturated supply.” — Harry Gassel; In: Gassel, H. (2012), Non­‑Authoritative Information or Network as Author, USA: Yale School of Art, p7 3 inspired by Metahaven’s statement: “Today, if there is something that needs to be designed, it is the designer himself.” - van der Velden, D. (2006), Research & Destroy: Graphic Design as Investigation, Metropolis M, No. 2

4 questions inspired by Els Kuijpers, a co­ ‑curator of Jan van Toorn’s exhibition Staging the Message at Van Abbe Museum. Kuijpers held a lecture on alternative graphic design history at KABK 18.11.2014. She introduced her theory of 5 Design Strategies - Functionalism, Formalism, Informalism, Productivism and Dialogism; 2 Methods of Editing - Descriptive and Editorial; and 3 Conditions of Concept Semantics, Syntax and Transformation.

143

â—?â—‹ John and Thomas Knoll, Photoshop 2.5, new features included the Pen, the Path and CMYK colour support, which led to widespread Photoshop adoption by the printing industry, 1991

144

â—?â—‹ Lust and LustLab, Urban Echo, interactive billboards, connection between Eindhoven and Vilnius, Webcams allow people to see into another space, 2010-2014

145 term ‘author,’ like ‘designer,’ suggests the cerebral workings of the mind, production privileges the activity of the body.

Production is rooted in the material world. It values things over ideas, making over imagining, practice over theory.”[5] I doubt Lupton’s limited solution focused towards the terri­ tory of physical object production. I think this new engage­ ment should also be extended towards a more immaterial mastery of informations and lastly to move into the realm of performativity to establish new connections, generate new relationships towards viewers, to involve them and to en­ rich the field of communication design.[6] I assume perfor­ mance, with its potential to generate new value, to be a pos­ sible approach to face the issue of democratization. That proposed extension of Lupton’s theory corresponds more with the aspects of active surfaces, as they are described in the first chapter.

To demonstrate my arguments I’ve selected a few contem­ porary designers and performers who are active towards employing their skills within performative strategies to shape the user/viewer’s experience.

5 Lupton, E. (2011), Graphic Design: Now in Production, “The Designer as Producer”, USA: Walker Art Centre, p12 6 By mastery of informations I mean applying developer’s skills such as scripting, coding and programming to get out of restricted palette of software functions and design software driven aesthetics. By viewer’s involvement I intend an online crowd­‑sourcing and interactivity, rather than physical one, as we know it from history of performance - by happenings, or Sagmeis­ ter’s playful tasks placed in his exhibitions.

146

V.2 Performative Ways of Production

147 Engaged in performance, studio Åbäke, is focused on self­ ‑initiated projects deconstructing the conventions and processes of design.[7] Their exhibition All The Knives con­ nected performance and graphic design. Visitors were wel­ comed by hired performers­‑storytellers. Exhibited ephem­ era and other printed graphic items catalysed personalized narratives. Åbäke curated this for one simple purpose - to make a survey of new forms of graphic medium presen­ tation. Their Talk About Talks intrigued me as well. It was announced as a lecture, but rather it was a happening constructed upon previous talks, involving audience and chance.[8] The audience was asked to set up smartphone alarms. It resulted in a few minutes long cacophony of ring tones among the lecture auditorium. I asked Maki Suzuki, member of Åbäke, about using performance in his talks and he explained that he enjoys that, because “it’s more exciting to do rather than represent”.

Other designers incorporating performative acts into their works, talks and lectures are Belgian Ines Cox and Lauren Grusenmeyer. This duo is interested in creating graphic de­ sign discourse by involving staging, dialogues, costumes and graphic identities. Cox & Grusenmeyer critically and playfully personalize their acts aiming to activate the audi­ ence or open social, educational and political issues.

7 Spampinato, F. (2014), Come Together: The Rise of Cooperative Art and Design, Åbäke USA: Princeton Architectural Press, p20 8 Åbäke’s recipe for good talk:“Improvise new things to say, check reactions. Pace yourself.”

- Åbäke (2014), “Seriously Forks X, A Talk About Talks”, 26. Biennial of Graphic Design Brno, http://www.bienalebrno.org/en/BiennialTalks/ Abake, accessed 21. 11. 2014

148

●○ Åbäke, Frank Einstein, workshop and lecture, 2008

149

●○ Åbäke, All The Knives, storyteller performing at the gallery, 2013

150 I’ve seen documentation of their Citizen Speech happening, appropriating the marketing techniques of political gather­ ings. By fictional scenario of dystopian unified America and China it criticized ideology and investigated “how the politi‑ cal theater is strictly directed with designed gestures, cloth‑ ing and accessories.”[9] The event happened in the form of a presidential speech, accompanied and supported by de­ signed props with empty slogans and encouraging panels.

This design experiment reminds me of Austin’s speech acts, described in the first chapter.

There is a list of very special tags on their website, for ex­ ample “blablabla”, “participation”, “remonstrance”, “action reaction” or “masquerade” which all have a strong relation­ ship to performance and surface production. For example the series The Cox & Grusenmeyer University are events where the “performance is a complete design in which both the inscenation as the character, attributes and gestures are designed in the format of a university.”[10] Designers ap­ pear here as professors equipped by markers, badges with C&G University logo and theoretical textbooks. The textbook then remains as a souvenir of the happening. Another ex­ ample would be their Brush Factory event, a ritual to initiate new art students into their careers. Participants were asked to fill in a form and contract according to which a unique

9 Cox, I. and Grusenmeyer, L. (2011), “The Cit­ izen Speech”, Cox­‑Grusenmeyer.com, <http:// www.cox­‑grusenmeyer.com/?p=175&cat=3>, accessed 19. 11. 2014 10 Cox, I. and Grusenmeyer, L. (2013), “Cox & Grusenmeyer University #2”, Cox­‑Grusenmeyer. com, <http://www.cox­‑grusenmeyer. com/?p=3121&cat=3>, accessed 19. 11. 2014

151

●○ Cox and Grusenmeyer, The Citizen Speech, 2011

152

●○ Ines Cox and Lauren Grusenmeyer, Open Impact Channel, 2010

153

●○ Cox and Grusenmeyer, Bureau for Busyness, looking busy props, this photo: packed pin-up boards — for the illusion of a creative brainstorm, 2013

154

â&#x2014;?â&#x2014;&#x2039; The Yes Men, corporate portrait with actors wearing SurvivaBall protecting against disasters, documentary film, The Yes Men Fix the World, 2009

155 personalized paint brush was created from their own hair.

This illustrates how Cox & Grusenmeyer brilliantly unify per­ formative acts with graphic design to create ephemeral sur­ faces and unforgettable events.

The next example of working with printed matter during and for happening would be the work of art activist duo The Yes Men. Through various acts they wish to achieve public awareness of many economic, political and social issues.

One may ask, so how do they do that? Then my answer would be, by exposing the truth about the world through ridiculous caricatures, total fakes and hoaxes. To target a larger audience they use mass media - TV, newspapers, websites. In The New York Times project[11] they spread newspaper large­‑scale, containing only positive news under the title “All the News We Hope to Print” altering the real motto of the NYT: “All the News That’s Fit to Print”. They worked on that one particular issue for 9 months. Around 80,000 copies were handed out in American cities pro­ claiming that the Iraq War Ended, oil corporations started to fund climate change efforts and USA established a new bet­ ter national health care system[12].

11 The Yes Men (2008), “The New York Times: Special Edition”, http://nytimes­‑se.com/todays­ ‑paper/NYTimes­‑SE.pdf, accessed 19. 11. 2014 12 Fillip and Lambert, S. (2009), “Best Case Scenario”, interview, Fillip blog, http://fillip.ca/ content/best­‑case­‑scenario, accessed 19. 11.

2014

156 The next illustration of questioning contemporary means of production by exposing it to performative circumstances would be what Dutch art platform iii calls Self­‑made media. iii claims that such media becomes autonomous when created through experimentation and combining skills from different fields, including visual art, music and philosophy.[13] I have found their interdisciplinary research fascinating. It helps expanding cultural fields through alternative and synthetic methods. I interviewed iii member, Matteo Maragoni about his latest project No Patent Pending: Self made Performative Media.[14] Each page of this publication consists of a single card containing a variety of contributions on the topic of con­ temporary cross­‑media performance. However, the cards were randomly shuffled during the collective performance and the reader had to assemble his own book. Matteo em­ phasized the importance of chance in the performative pro­ cess. Chance - the potential of everything that can happen, maybe even a mistake, is what makes performance unique besides the relationship between audience and performer.

This reminds me of what Bruno Listopad talked about (in the first chapter). Chance and randomness transform the aver­ age medium of print into the performative artefact.

13 iii (2012), “Artist Statement: Self­‑made media as models of autonomy”, http://iiinitiative.org/ about/, accessed 19. 11. 2014 14 Marangoni, M. (2014), No Patent Pending: Self made Performative Media, NL: iii editions

157

●○ iii, Self‑made Performative Media, publication, 2014

158

●○ Letman, If You Could Collaborate, action typography, video, 2009

159 While thinking about process it’s the right moment to men­ tion the performative calligraphic practice of Job Wouters — known as Letman. He is inspired by the suggestive power of language, text and typography - especially in the form of amateur street design. Letman’s handwriting practice breaks the super­‑carefulness of formalist typography while often performed as live shows[15]. I perceive this particular synthesis of performance as craftsmanship. Job is a crafts­ man who adds special unique value to his designs through the performance. In my opinion, craftsmanship without per­ formativity is worthless.

15 Wouters, J. (2013), “Job Wouters, Letman, Amsterdam”, Walker Art Centre, http://www.wal­ kerart.org/channel/2013/job­‑wouters­‑letman­ ‑amsterdam, accessed 8.12. 2014

160

●○ Roel Wouters, zZz is playing: Grip, live recorded music video, gymnasts simulate typical postproduction effects, 2007

161

â&#x2014;?â&#x2014;&#x2039; Cox & Grusenmeyer University 2, workbook designed to be used by participants during performance, 2011

162

V.3 Happening in Design, Design in Happening

163 Amsterdam based design studio Moniker uses happening to generate surface. By various performative and interactive projects mainly focused on process Moniker explores “how we use technology and how it influences our daily lives.”[16] Designers Luna Maurer, Roel Wouters and Jonathan Puckey are also founders of playful design methods that harness creative acts with simple tasks called Conditional Design[17] This method is based on experimenting out of the media­ ‑restricted world and on an easily adoptable DIY setup.

To manifest their exciting creative system Moniker released the Conditional Design Workbook, designed by Julia Born.

The workbook contains several essays, a glossary and 10 complete workshop rules. Moniker explain their activities as a “play with instructions, taking turns, participation and interaction.”[18] Alongside this remarkable method there are other key projects linking performance with surface. In The Skeuo Office video Moniker presents offices of the future from a bird’s eye view. What makes it special for my thesis re­ search is, that it shows a new form of generic skeumorph[19] surface, which could be changed by its inhabitants - in this case by office people. But how do they change the office style when the whole room is one big active surface? In­ stead of swiping, because there is no device to swipe on,

15 Wouters, J. (2013), “Job Wouters, Letman, Amsterdam”, Walker Art Centre, http://www.wal­ kerart.org/channel/2013/job­‑wouters­‑letman­ ‑amsterdam, accessed 8.12. 2014 16 Moniker, “About Our Studio”, http://studio­ moniker.com/, accessed 20.11. 2014 17 Conditional Design manifest: “Process: The process is the product. The most important aspects of a process are time, relationship and change. ... it stems from subjective intentions.

Logic: Logic is our tool. Logic is our method for accentuating the ungraspable. ... Constraints sharpen the perspective on the process and stimulate play within the limitations. Input: The input is our material. Input engages logic and activates and influences the process.” — Maurer, L., Wouters, R., Paulus, E. and Puckey, J. (2013), Conditional Design, “A manifesto for art­ ists and designers”, NL: Valiz, page ii (cca 160)

18 Moniker, “Thursdays Afternoons”, http:// thursdays.studiomoniker.com/, accessed 20.11.

2014 19 Skeumorph is a design feature, that carries a visual form of its original version to be largely understandable and make users feel comfort­ able with the new gadget. For example when designing I use brush by clicking on the icon with brush but there is no brush involved in purely digital process of painting. I take notes in my iPhone Notepad, which looks like old yellow paper diary, which of course doesn’t make any sense solely as being familiar. Skeumorph is “derivative object that preserves ornamental design abilities from structures that were in the original.” — Basalla, G. (1988), The Evolution of Technology, UK: Cambridge University Press, p107

164

â&#x2014;?â&#x2014;&#x2039; Moniker, Conditional Design Workbook, designed by Julia Born, 2013

165

●○ Moniker, Thursday Afternoons, Slit-Scan Projections, 2013

166 employees simply jump to redesign the office. But why does Moniker propose such a system? The answer is that nowadays people are used to everything being open for possibilities and personalization. Social media profiles are the best examples. How Moniker shows the contemporary user’s need of synchronizing surroundings with performed occupation seems like a brilliant idea to me, which is very close to the reality of future surfaces.

In 2013 I became part of a crowd­‑sourced music video Do Not Touch. An extraordinary mix of user experience through storytelling, simplicity and fun. Users aren’t passive any­ more like they are described in The Society of the Spectacle

by Guy Debord[20], they are stimulated and directly asked for action while watching Moniker’s videoclip.

Viewers are guided through the video by easy tasks, that they may follow with their cursor. Cursor data is recorded and integrated into the video. Especially intriguing is that the viewer isn’t alone during completing these prompts, there are hundreds of other cursors. This is an excellent example of how online happening - a collective performance with non­‑professionals - produces a non-stop active surface, al­ ways open to potential.

20 Debord’s Society of Spectacle is an inside in to the social life of that time (1967) and decline of authenticity transformed into the representa­ tion. I understand the spectacle as false passive relation to commercialized and mediated appearings or images. Principle of Spectacle is never enough of consumption in capitalized world. In his 17th thesis Debord described that the effect of “economy’s domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of being into having — human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but with what one possessed. The present stage, in which so­ cial life has become completely dominated by the accumulated productions of the economy, is bringing about a general shift from having to.”

— Debord, G. (2000), Society of Spectacle, USA: Black & Red, p10-11

167

●○ Moniker, Do Not Touch, crowd‑sourced video, 2013

168

â&#x2014;?â&#x2014;&#x2039; DIS images, Mer-Life, mermaids go mainstream, Trans-hybrid Aquatic Folklore, 2013

169

●○ DIS images, Jogging x Gallery Girls, Bravo’s Gallery Girls, Lululemon Yoga and Natural disasters, 2013

170

V.4 Post—repre— —sentational Paradigm and Crisis of Identity

171 Berlin based artist and cultural critic Hito Steyerl ques­ tions the proliferation of media in capitalism and global­ ization. She emphasizes a post­‑representational para­ digm of contemporary visual art explained through active surfaces: “We might think that the phone sees what we want, but actually we will see what the phone thinks it knows about us.“[21] I understand the term post­‑representational as how smart software interprets user data. Among other inter­ esting things Hito Steyerl is an author of a cultural theory called Circulationism, which I consider as art of post­ ‑production and acceleration of new, old and appropriat­ ed images. Steyerl is captivated by contemporary identity, which she defines as an informational, pictorial and ge­ netic battlefield over owner’s code. This war rages on the surface of physical but also virtual bodies. I think that all users - we - should be aware of this, especially in a time when social media create a zone of voyeurism, mass­ ‑control and profit from data mining.

The artistic video called How Not to be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File is Steyerl’s masterpiece from 2013 depicting all her post­‑representational identity concerns. In her works she desires to inform viewers how

21 Example could be photographical sensor capturing data in form of a noise - not recog­ nizable and not detectable mixture of pixels.

But nowadays especially when online, uploaded photographies undergo smart processes.

Various algorithms go through the visual infor­ mation - the noise - clean it and find a definition to it. These algorithms are smart, they scan all other photos from users phones via Facebook or Instagram profiles. They look at previously made tagged images, recognize user, his/ her friends and needs. Then it, in my opinion, disrespectfully interprets the data and offers what it thinks the user might like to see or buy.

— Marvin, J. and Stereyl, H. (2014), “Politics of Post­‑Representation”, http://dismagazine.com/ disillusioned-2/62143/hito­‑steyerl­‑politics­‑of­ ‑post­‑representation/, accessed 28. 11. 2014

172

●○ Hito Steyerl, How Not to be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, official still, 2013

173

●○ Hito Steyerl, How Not to be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, 2013

174 to disappear from social media bots using smart algo­ rithms. Thus she surrounds herself by photo­‑calibrating targets while her companions wear green key suits to be­ came techno­‑ghosts. In her oeuvre she performs, reflects and uses surface as a tool and field of potential.

Thinking about Steyerl’s work, pointing out post­‑represen-tation through accenting an escape from algorithms led me to do a little research on a common popular performa­ tive social practice - the selfie. Users are stimulated by this mania to upload many self­‑captured images. The benefit from being social and are showing users from their best angles hides a thread. Their data can be easily abused and monitored. I imagine user profiles as windows to inti­ mate lives, therefore the data they contain might be stored as a source of commercial information of the capitalist market.

All users are, at least for a while, performing their better selves to create a part of the active surface of social net­ works. The best example of design work focused on this specific topic is Optical Illusion Selfies webcam filters set

by Pinar&Viola. Project explores everyday digital gestures and the persona.[22] Every user is a performer.

22 Pinar&Viola (2013), “Optical Illusion Selfies”, http://www.pinar-viola.com/#/home/overlayer, accessed 15. 12. 2014

175

●○ Pinar&Viola, Overlayer, application comissioned by OKFocus, 2012

176

●○ Pinar&Viola, Nike+ 21-Karat, future running experience with Nike+ App, video, 2012

177

●○ The Rodina, Tereza is wearing Tunica surface T-Shirt, 2014

178

●○ Auto Italia, Meet Z, virtual assistant, 2014

179 The last example in this thesis is Auto Italia, an artist or­ ganisation focused on artificial identity and the relation­ ship of art within mainstream media. In the interactive teaser Meet Z[23] the visitor is guided by a virtual girl, an automated online assistant through an active surface full of spam and branding.

The visitor enters a stunning visual space for exploration where she/he is several times challenged to scroll through the narrative exploring future of lifestyle, leisure activities and possible work spaces. The visitor becomes active a user who controls her/his experience. Auto Italia is my last example of contemporary performative practice working with the relationships between identity, surface production and theorisation.

23 Auto Italia (2014), “Meet Z”, http://autoitalia­ southeast.org/meetz/, accessed 8. 12. 2014

180

●○ Auto Italia, Meet Z, wearables, 2014

181

●○ Tereza Rullerová, Dutch Education: Budget Cuts, performative data visualisation video, 2014

182

183

VI.

VI.

Conclusion of Action to Surface

VI.

186 Even though it is not obvious and sometimes not specific, the stra- tegy of becoming a performer isn’t only a fine arts privilege nowadays. The Performative turn of the 1960’s in­ dicated not only an art­‑revolt but also the birth of a new form of labour - general performance. Besides the known roles of graphic designers as service providers, editors, translators, researchers, autonomous creators and system engineers – graphic designers have adopted the role of performers.

Although the typical result of a graphic designer’s labour is surface, designers are more and more involved in actions, happenings and events. They use their virtual/bodily pres­ ence and actions to give value to their labour.

Another way performance is presented in graphic design is craftsmanship. The value of contemporary craft labour is produced by the presence or the notion of craftsmen’s body.

Surface production is more and more oriented towards ac­ tions, happenings and events to catch the viewers attention and generate value. Crafted surface without the action of designer­‑performer would have merely the value of print.

From another point of view, the viewer’s action is a key ele­ ment in the re­‑production of active surface. Information is no longer trapped in books, narratives and images, rather they circulate independently in networks. Therefore infor­ mation no longer exists as a static media, they are pro­ cesses, connections, interactions, impulses or options.

187 Representing reality isn’t important for us, we rather post­ ‑produce and in Deleuzian terms re­‑territorialize it through millions of tiny interactions. As a result we, designers, talk more frequently about performativity, experience and event than about the image or text.

If graphic design competes for the viewer’s attention and performance with its power to affect increases attractivi­ ty, than involvement of an action and the body into design makes sense. Graphic design is no longer limited by being only an object­‑driven practice, the new value could be found in its eventness.

Tereza Rullerová 17. 12. 2014 The Hague

188

â&#x2014;?â&#x2014;&#x2039; PWR studio, Volt, a model of a human head worn by actors to cover surface as to protect it, proof of ones identity, 2014

189

●○ Tereza Rullerová, Walking with the Professor, staged philosophy for ALEPH, rhizomatic makeup, video, 2014

190

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â&#x2014;?â&#x2014;&#x2039; The Rodina, WeberWoche, Stroom Den Haag, exhibition teaser, post-choreorgaphy by Bruno Listopad, Tereza is staging the message 2014

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Wittgenstein, W., (1986), Philosophical Investigations, UK: Basil Blackwell Ltd WEBSITES Auto Italia (2014), “Meet Z”, http://autoitaliasoutheast.org/ meetz/

Parson, A. (2009), “Performance and Perfromativity”, https:// sites.google.com/site/ praxisandtechne/Home/ architecture/performativity/ performance­‑and­ ‑performativity

Pinar&Viola (2013), “Optical Illusion Selfies”, http://www. pinar-viola.com/#/home/ overlayer Rosenthal, S. and Meyer­ ‑Hermann, E. (eds.), The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, (2008), “Allan Kaprow: Art as Life”, http://www.moca.org/kaprow/ GalleryGuide_Kaprow.pdf Schlemmer, O. (1927) cited at “Theatre at Bauhaus”, http://thecharnelhouse. org/2013/07/20/theater­‑buhne/ Shearer, R. R. and Slawinski, R. (2004), “Examining Evidence” updated 2012 http://www. toutfait.com/online_journal_ details.php?postid=1375 Spampinato, F. (2014), Come Together: The Rise of Cooperative Art and Design, Åbäke USA: Princeton Architectural Press Stinson, L. (2014), “An Amazing Discovery: Andy Warhol’s Groundbreaking Computer Art”, Wired, http:// www.wired.com/2014/04/ an­‑amazing­‑discovery­‑andy­ ‑warhols­‑seminal­‑computer­ ‑art/#slide­‑id-794551 The Yes Men (2008), “The New York Times: Special Edition”, http://nytimes­‑se.com/todays­ ‑paper/NYTimes­‑SE.pdf Wouters, J. (2013), “Job Wouters, Letman, Amsterdam”, Walker Art Centre, http://www. walkerart.org/channel/2013/ job­‑wouters­‑letman­ ‑amsterdam LECTURES & TALKS Åbäke (2014), A Talk About Talks, 26. Biennial of Graphic Design Brno Els Kuijpers, a co­‑curator of Jan van Toorn’s exhibition Staging the Message at Van Abbe Museum CONSULTATIONS & INTERVIEWS Åbäke, interview via e-mail, 25.

11. 2014 Bruno Listopad, consulatition, 20. 11. 2014, Rotterdam, NL Tomas Ruller, consultation, 4.

10. 2014, České Křižánky, CZ Matteo Maragoni, interview, 3.11.2014, The Hague, NL

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196 Colophon Action to Surface Rethinking surface production in terms of performance Thesis Author Tereza Rullerová Supervisor Marjan Brandsma Graphic Design Department Royal Academy of Art, The Hague 2014 — 2015 concept, editing and graphic design — Tereza Rullerová, english corrections — Jennifer Helia de Felice, photographies — internet (no author’s permission), typeface: Suisse BP Int’l, Suisse BP Serif, printed in Deventer (NL) 1st edition — 4 copies, numbered and signed. All rights reserved. www.therodina.com