The Ministry Of Housebound: Rogues, Ravers & Northern Soul in Pandemic Performance Research
How To Manufacture & Circulate A Theatre-Virus (2012) by Andrew Wilford
Drawing on my methodology for “How To Manufacture & Produce A Theatre Virus,” my current project emerged in response to lockdown measures that were imposed in lieu of the SARS Co-Va-2 virus and drew heavily on aspects of my Ph.D to reframe performatives of the practice in ways that adapted to the constraints of the global pandemic. It was through undertaking an extensive retro-activation of my music archive, developing virtual dj-ing skills and learning to live stream performance to Twitch.TV, that the The Ministry Of Housebound was launched in June 2020.
Drawing on my methodology for “How To Manufacture & Produce A Theatre Virus,” my current project emerged in response to lockdown measures that were imposed in lieu of the SARS Co-Va-2 virus and drew heavily on aspects of my Ph.D to reframe performatives of the practice in ways that adapted to the constraints of the global pandemic. It was through undertaking an extensive retro-activation of my music archive, developing virtual dj-ing skills and learning to live stream performance to Twitch.TV, that the The Ministry Of Housebound was launched in June 2020.
The Masquerave launch event coincided with the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in protests against the murder of George Floyd and a weekend in which a number of lockdown-breaching raves were also reported in the U.K. (particularly in the North of England). It is in this spatio-temporal co-incidence that the Ministry Of Housebound’s ‘responsible raving’ on socially-distanced ‘domestic dancefloors’ fused party and protest in a crystalline call to action – “Unite in the fight for your right to party for your right to fight”. This concept draws on the long running U.S.A. television show Soul Train (1971-2006) as culturally revolutionary in transforming audience reception into participation. According to Berkeley scholar, Naomi Bragin, Black American households across the States would collectively dance in front of their TV sets in a network of wireless transmission connecting bodies as a community. It is within the mass uniting of movement and the body in protest that kinesthetic bio-politics can be fully understood. This kinesthetic politics of mass moving bodies as protesting bodies was later echoed in the rave movements of the mid-1980s to early 1990s and revisited in this ongoing practice research project. The Northern Soul? Just three words are required to state that I was “made in Sheffield”. My paper will be accompanied by a live-stream performance and Ministry Of Housebound mix produced exclusively for one of the conference evenings.
Andrew Wilford University of Chichester
Andrew Wilford University of Chichester
Technê as Performative Expression
“Raving, which among other things describes the act of dancing to techno music, might in fact be one way of practicing technê. It is a self-reflective understanding of emotions, mediated and expressed through the body. The medium knows the message.” ~ Wassili Widmer, 2019
This paper investigates the relationship between the body and space on the basis of the classical Greek notion of technê. The notion is not intended to be reinterpreted, but serves to interpret an artwork by the young Swiss performance artist Wassili Widmer, whose artwork Techne explores the visual performativity of the body in space. He frames his conceptual work in the rave culture of Scotland, a subculture described by Simon Reynolds (author of the book: Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture, 1998) as being based on sensation and fascination rather than truth and meaning. As with most subcultures, rave culture is a fluid construct, as it is part of a social structure of people that is itself always in flux. Rave can therefore be understood as a heterotopia, which is elaborated in a sub-chapter in the paper. The paper further tries to shed light on a contemporary form of conceptualisation and understanding of corporeality and technology by analysing the artwork. For in the artwork, as it is described in the preceding quotation with mcluhanic touch, the dancing body becomes an expression of the technical vibrations of the music and is determined by it. From this thesis, I go on to raise the question of whether the dancing body loses its sexual difference in space or, on the contrary, whether that difference is reinforced. (The performance will be shown as a video during the presentation and if the time capacity is available, the artist himself [via zoom] can explain his artwork and his thoughts on it moderated by me.)
Joel Spiegelberg University of Zürich, Switzerland
Ministry Of Housebound flyers designed by Sylke Freeke
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