CRITIQUE SUMMARY — Task 1 Pitch

12/8/20

Anne Burdick, Ali Chalmers, Andrew Burrell

PRESENTATION SUMMARY

• Pitching a Cyborg Witch Theatre — code space-stage for a cyborg-witch becoming
• Parts — creative code, code 'casting', generative poetry, image-making
• Asking for feedback: how to better tackle the task of representation, how to build performativity into the actual outcome? 

FEEDBACK

Representation

• Sitting well as a personal project AND as something that speaks to a broader audience — feels really specific to me, while acknowledging other identities and without coming across as prescriptive.

• SO much material, don't think about it as a single project but the beginning of a body of work / research trajectory. But really interesting metaphors, analogies, experiments, materials, framings. May be helpful to not think of it as a single, big thing that is supposed to represent and communicate EVERYTHING, but one of many pieces exploring some of these themes and ideas. Figure out how to make this a DOABLE project — maybe it's not a good thing to be intimidated??? 

• Refocus and try to explore one or two ideas really well, especially to have a solid foundation to build from later on, definitely scope for this to go beyond honours. But for now, work out what you can do WELL in the time frame. It's ok to set some things aside!
  
  It's worth it to take an idea as far as it can go, to play it out and explore something small really rigourously. Good learning experience, and you don't lose the other stuff either because you've tried to do too much badly. 

• I seemed most confident/interested in the poetry translations? 

Live performativity / web interactivity

• Have a record/recording of me in the experience as a closed space/separate entity? A kind of manifestation of the cyborg that performs and goes through a ritual. What about the performativity, whether I'm there or not, is interesting? Seems like a nod to the constructedness of the space and identity. 

• Answer might be in the 90s cyberfeminism space — navigating the performance of body, to traces of the performance/the body, the viewer as performer. Really researching those precedents. 
  
  Ways to be present, active in it without being there in real time. Writing interactivity off personal data, patterns of behaviour, etc. 

• What is the role of the audience, if this is a theatre? 

• Depends on what the content is? How do people engage in the experience over time? What do you want the takeaway to be? Ask yourself these questions and work out helpful boundaries — time, entry/exit points, content, to work within. This will help you answer some of the bigger questions. Right now it's super open which makes it hard to work towards and pin down. 

CRITIQUE OF CRITIQUE

• I think re: representation, if i want to do it, and if it's either queerness/chineseness/both, I know what I need to do, it's research. Finding the stories and touchpoints that I could work into the content and narrative. I don't know if I do, though? They're both BIG. I think that I could do both, with everything I pitched here, but not with the full depth and richness that they offer. I really liked what Anne said about playing these ideas out rigourously. I think that is what I would benefit from most, at this moment with the structure and support of honours. 
  

• Same with the form and how I explore performativity within it. It's doing more research, looking at cyberfeminist precedents and thinking about what I want this project to do, and how to achieve that. I think this should be the priority right now, to work out the best way forward, with purpose. 

• I think what Ali was picking up on around the theme of 'constructedness' was really pertinent. I am pointing to the theatre, and our identities as constructions as a way to invite people to look at their own identities and consider how they inhabit them. The theatre is such a sacred place of imagination, where we willingly put aside what 'is', and explore what 'could be'. If we consider our identities as constructs, are we not more equipped to understand, see and shape/reclaim our own narratives? As performers on a stage, our stories are the story, and we are in a position to play with where it goes or what that means. 
  
  I think the transparency of the theatre — the spectacle of it, but also it as this blatant illusion, is also really compelling in pointing to our agency. It's significant also, the roles of the performer and viewer in this context. For the viewer it's a suspension of disbelief, and allowing yourself to be immersed in the world and rules of the story. For the person on stage, the lines between acting/performing/living blur — whether or not there is a script I think there's a sense of control in occupying and living out this particular story. 
  
  It's pretty much a structural device in and of itself — all projects tell a story, but placing the story on a stage invites us to examine it all as a construct. I want the seams — between code and performance, text and image, words and reality, to be visible and tangible, inviting participation — interaction? In a way giving the audience the same tools to think/perform/reimagine with, in their own way. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• How you set up the theatre — in the code, in the presentation/communication, will be significant. There needs to be a threshold, to establish the bounds, rules, objective of the space, and invite people in. Isn't this your narrative? Why it's a theatre? 

• Ask yourself why something is, or what about it is interesting. That will give you a way forward, and focus the work. 

• Work out what ideas and aspects of this are the most compelling, and workable in this moment and play this out through the semester. Might be helpful to think about the project as a process, just one that is building to an outcome. What you are doing, back from week 1 to week 13, is the project. 

ACTION LIST

• Research cyberfeminism. Find interesting, relevant examples of performativity. 
• Work through the questions raised here. Map out project, map out whys, possible boundaries, experiments, and outcome. 
• I think a good next experiment might be coding/casting the theatre, playing with the commenting and language around this.  
• Rework timeline. 
• Start thinking of and designing ways to test these ideas in class sessions.
• Remember to consider documentation !!! Do the exercises and research from Gabe's workshop.