Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
reviewing, endorsing or planning coursework/other institutional needs. You may store and print the file and share it with
others helping you with the specified purpose, but under no circumstances may the file be distributed or otherwise made
accessible to any other third parties without the express prior permission of Palgrave Macmillan.
Please contact rights@palgrave.com if you have any queries regarding use of the file.
PROOF
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
Part I
Setting the Stage
cha01.indd 17
05-02-2015 15:17:03
PROOF
cha01.indd 18
05-02-2015 15:17:03
PROOF
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
1
From Homo Performans to
Interspecies Collaboration
Expanding the Concept of Performance to
Include Animals
Laura Cull
cha01.indd 19
05-02-2015 15:17:03
PROOF
20 Performing Animality
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
cha01.indd 20
05-02-2015 15:17:03
PROOF
From Homo Performans to Interspecies Collaboration 21
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
cha01.indd 21
05-02-2015 15:17:03
PROOF
22 Performing Animality
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
cha01.indd 22
05-02-2015 15:17:03
PROOF
From Homo Performans to Interspecies Collaboration 23
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
Armed with his two cans, Mike continued to stare toward the other
males. After a few minutes he began to rock from side to side. At
first the movement was almost imperceptible, but Hugo and I were
watching him closely. Gradually he rocked more vigorously, his hair
slowly began to stand erect, and then softly at first, he started a series
of pant-hoots. (Goodall cited in Schechner, 2003, p. 237)
According to Goodall, the chimp then began hitting the two cans
together and hooting increasingly loudly as he started to charge
towards the audience of other males, who fled to relocate elsewhere.
This action is repeated by Mike a number of times, before culminating
in an approach to the then alpha male of the group (Goliath), whom
Mike would go on to replace not long after (2003, p. 237).
As Schechner acknowledges, this event could easily be interpreted
as nothing more than an instinctual challenge to the chimps social
hierarchy, an action ultimately motivated by evolutionary impulses to
achieve the alpha male status and the privileges, sexual and otherwise,
assigned to it. However, Schechner argues that what is significant about
Mikes performance (and he is unequivocal in naming it as such), is
that his challenge to another chimps rank came not as a direct attack
or life-and-death fight but wrapped in ritual, played out as a theatrical
event. Just as making fun can be an indirect attack on the authorities
[in human performance], so Mikes charge, driving the kerosene cans
ahead of him, was a rehearsed, yet still indirect attack on Goliaths
dominant rank (2003, p. 238). Schechner suggests that Mikes charges
at the lower-ranking males could be analysed as rehearsal: Both fun
and rehearsal seem to be part of the performance sequences of the
great apes The apes may not rehearse [in a conventional human
sense], but they do practice and improve their performances through
repetition (2003, p. 237). But then crucially, just as he acknowledges
that chimps are not pre-human, Schechner also insists that:
Chimp performance is not a prototype of human performance, but
a parallel. As such it is even more interesting than as a prototype.
A prototype tells us nothing more than that human performance has
antecedents; a parallel means that another species, developing its
own track, is engaged in deliberate, conscious, chosen activity that
can best be described as performing (2003, pp. 978).
So if chimps can perform, Schechner concludes that so-called aesthetics is not the monopoly of humans (2003, p. 98).
cha01.indd 23
05-02-2015 15:17:03
PROOF
24 Performing Animality
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
cha01.indd 24
On one level, Animal Performance Studies scholars might retrospectively see such work as a step in the right direction, a step that relates
to ongoing debates surrounding the extension of human rights to
primates, which has been supported by some animal rights activists
like Peter Singer (Singer, 1999, n.p.). But on another level, we might
question whether such a gesture goes far enough in the first instance,
simply, because it fails to include other animals, reintroducing a kind
of exceptionalism albeit with a slightly expanded population, reactivating the anthropological machine but drawing a line now between primates and non-primates. For instance, Schechner ultimately concludes
that Performance probably belongs only to a few primates, including
humans Humans do consciously, by choice, what lower animals do
automatically; the displaying peacock is not self-conscious in the way
an adolescent male human is on Saturday night (2003, p. 98).
But secondly, I would argue that going down the line of trying to
prove that animals do in fact share specific cognitive capabilities with
humans is limited because it fails to prompt a rethinking of the category
of performance to the same degree as Puchner outlines with respect
to language. It leaves a human-centred definition of performance as
deliberate, conscious, chosen activity intact and applies that concept
only to those animals that are perceived to be most like us.
So what is the alternative? How can research at the intersection of
Animal Studies and Performance Studies take more radically inclusive
steps in this regard? Firstly, I would suggest that we abandon those
more reductive definitions of performance in favour of those that
affirm a more expanded view of what counts as conscious behaviour,
pretence, intention and so forth. With regard to the first of these,
this could involve exploring the idea that there are different levels of
consciousness exhibited by different animals including humans. But
it could also go further by acknowledging the possibility that animals
might be differently conscious from each other (and indeed, from themselves) in a qualitative sense (without feeling the need to structure such
differences into a hierarchy). Correlatively, it could be that what is
required is to abandon altogether our need to approach animals with a
predetermined definition of performance already in hand, in favour of
allowing performance to remain open to perpetual mutation and reconceptualization in the face of our encounters with animals.
Secondly, I would like to propose that this radical inclusivity might
also demand that we genuinely follow through on an expanded definition of performance in terms of both the types of behaviour, activities
and events that we study in the field of Animal Performance Studies
05-02-2015 15:17:03
PROOF
From Homo Performans to Interspecies Collaboration 25
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
and how we study them. That is, to expand the concept of performance to include animals need not just, or not only, mean analysing
animal behaviour, activities and events (in the wild or elsewhere,
with or without interactions with humans) as performance. Rather,
or additionally, the particular value of performance might lie in its
capacity to produce new research methods to those already established
in Animal Studies. The emphasis here would be on performance as
a lived, embodied process of coming into contact with the ways in
which animals are differently conscious from themselves and one
another, regardless of whether or not it culminates in the production
of performances for a human audience. This is animal performance
as research, then, where practitioners insights into the animals they
work with or alongside might produce a counter-knowledge to the
dominant scientific accounts of animal life (recalling Chaudhuris suggestion above). Or better, perhaps, such uses of performance may not
be geared towards the production of knowledge about animals at all,
so much as an embodied proximity to animals own ways of thinking
and performing that remains resistant to any attempted paraphrase
into discourse. It is when we dont understand and have to leave
behind our certainties that we can gain the greatest insights (Bowie,
2007, p. 11). As we shall see, such a move need not be seen as a mere
retreat to notions of ineffability and mystery so much as a rethinking
of performance as a felt knowledge of unknowing (Mullarkey, 2009,
p. 211) in relation to animal life as that which perpetually resists conceptualizations of it.
cha01.indd 25
05-02-2015 15:17:03
PROOF
26 Performing Animality
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
cha01.indd 26
05-02-2015 15:17:03
PROOF
From Homo Performans to Interspecies Collaboration 27
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
on new sounds from one another and absorbing them into their repertoire in a cultural fashion. As such, he saw no reason why the whales
might not also be interested in drawing from human sounds as part of
this creative compositional practice.
In the winter of 2007, Rothenberg went to Maui, Hawaii to try and
interact musically with humpback whales based on the reasoning that
because music can communicate across cultures in a way language cannot, there should be no reason why music cannot be used to cross species lines (2008, p. 48). Practically speaking, this attempt at interaction
involved broadcasting a clarinet underwater next to a singing humpback whale (2008, p. 49), recording the duet on hydrophones and
analysing the results through the use of sonograms (Figure 1.1). That is,
the project begins with a performance for a whale, rather than a human
audience (there was also a human crew on the boat but as far as I can
tell from the documentation, they were only able to hear Rothenbergs
side of the duet). In this respect, Rothenbergs practice relates to but is
also distinct from a wide range of other instances of what we might call
performance for animals: events in which non-humans have been the
primary audience. For instance, it recalls the 1798 orchestral concert
staged in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris by musicians from one of the
citys conservatoires for two Indian elephants, Hanz and Marguerite
in hopes of observing their reactions to a range of musical stimuli
(Putnam, 2007, p. 154). But it also resonates with contemporaneous
practices such as the work of the experimental composer Shinji Kanki,
whose piece Music for Dolphins (2001) is inaudible to humans because of
the sonic spectrum it occupies, but designed to be performed for dolphins using underwater ultrasonic loudspeakers (Kanki, 2013, n.p.).
Clarinet
Microphone
Amplifier
Humpback whale
Headphones
Recorder
Underwater speaker
Hydrophone
Figure 1.1 How to play clarinet along with a singing humpback whale. Diagram
by David Rothenberg, 2008.
cha01.indd 27
05-02-2015 15:17:03
PROOF
28 Performing Animality
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
cha01.indd 28
05-02-2015 15:17:04
PROOF
From Homo Performans to Interspecies Collaboration 29
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
signification alone (2007, p. 378). Music allows Bowie to make his argument that any form of articulation that can disclose the world in ways
which affect the conduct and understanding of life can be regarded
as possessing meaning (2007, p. 6). Both verbal language and music
have this performative dimension, as ways of revealing new aspects
of being, rather than just means of re-presenting what is supposedly
already there (2007, p. 4). Nothing about this definition would seem
to preclude non-humans, such as humpback whales, from using music to
produce and communicate meaning, not only to one another, but
across species boundaries.
But I would also like to suggest that Rothenbergs practice can be read
in the context of the concept of interspecies collaboration a useful,
though little used term, either in the arts or in scholarship. However, one
of its leading proponents, Lisa Jevbratt, has been using the term since at
least 2006, in the first instance as a title for an art class she continues to
run at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In the class, students
are asked to collaborate on art projects (loosely defined as aesthetically
driven projects) with individuals of other species and to set up systems
allowing them to experience and examine the world together with
animals ( Jevbratt, 2009, p. 1). They are advised not to look at or make
studies of animals, nor to use the animals as material to communicate
an issue, however noble that issue is. Interspecies collaboration should
also be distinguished from the longstanding tradition of humans supporting art by animals such as paintings by Koko the gorilla which
tend to involve training animals to produce aesthetic forms (paintings,
drawings etc.) that humans will recognize as corresponding with their
existing concepts of art. Instead, collaborations with other species have
the potential to produce events and objects unimaginable without their
non-human co-creators. For instance, Jevbratt suggests that the human
participant can strive to adopt a non-human animal perspective and
indeed to rethink the concept of art from that point of view: We need
to put ourselves in the animals position (zoomorphism) and imagine
other senses and the creative realms of those senses. For example, what
sculptures would one make if one used sound to understand ones
spatial surroundings, like dolphins and bats? (2009, p. 17).
No doubt there will be those who would argue that humans cannot
genuinely collaborate with animals, in the true sense of the word (that
is, as it is defined on the basis of dominant ideas about how humans
tend to work together). After all, how do we conduct scientific or artistic research in collaboration with someone whose experiences, sensations, and knowledge is difficult or impossible to understand? Can one
cha01.indd 29
05-02-2015 15:17:04
PROOF
30 Performing Animality
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
cha01.indd 30
05-02-2015 15:17:04
PROOF
From Homo Performans to Interspecies Collaboration 31
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
Figure 1.2 Sami Slpkivi and Bobi Girl in the first ever horse theatre in Finland,
Hiano Mailma, which he created with his wife Anne in 2002.
cha01.indd 31
05-02-2015 15:17:04
PROOF
32 Performing Animality
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
cha01.indd 32
communication they demonstrate in wild behaviours such as synchronous movement. For instance, Scott argues that much of what
has been written on improvisation by its best-known theorists (Viola
Spolin, Keith Johnstone etc.) is also applicable to animals, particularly
when it comes to a sense of co-presence and an alertness to specific
environmental or contextual conditions. Likewise, there is evidence
of attunement to others, a form of empathetic intelligence apparently
more pronounced in horses than in humans (Jevbratt, 2009, p. 58).
Another term for this is limbic resonance, defined as a symphony
of mutual exchange and internal adaptation whereby two mammals
become attuned to each others inner states (Lewis cited in Jevbratt,
2009, p. 10). What comes more naturally to horses, then, can also
through training become a means to sense non-human consciousness
for humans too; a way of becoming like horses in movement, developing horse-like qualities of attunement, according to the notion of zoomorphism cited above. In this way, then, as in Deleuze and Guattari,
becoming-horse is not a question of imitating a horse, playing horse,
identifying with one, or even experiencing feelings of sympathy or pity
(Deleuze and Guattari, 1988, p. 258). Nor is it simply a matter of training the horses to appear as performers according to a reductive human
account of what performance means. Rather, Slpkivi stages a mutation of human performance as a matter of learning to speak a horses
language of attunement.
Crucially though, Slpkivis work also operates as a form of unlearning for the horses involved, insofar as the giving and taking of
weight exercises he performs with them go against both their seemingly innate responses and traditional horse training (to which most of
the horses he works with have already been subjected). While training
began with simple food-based incentives, Slpkivi soon observed by
listening to embodied expressions of consent that the horses enjoyed
playing with their new movement skills and were capable of improvised combinations of normal horse vocabulary (bucking, running fast,
standing on hind legs) and the new contact improvisation vocabulary.
Slpkivi states that, in my opinion, theres no communication or
respect in traditional horse acrobatics. In contrast, he concludes that
horses can dance. And definitely the horse was sometimes leading the
dance, because I let her do that and then I responded to her moving
(Slpkivi, 2013, n.p.). In this respect, Slpkivis attitude resonates with
that of Bartabas and the better known equestrian shows of his company,
Zingaro. For instance, Bartabas also remarks: In competition dressage,
you have to have the horse completely under control. You have to go
05-02-2015 15:17:04
PROOF
From Homo Performans to Interspecies Collaboration 33
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
precisely from this step to this step. In my technique, I like the horse to
be able to do the movement in his way. Its a very subtle thing, to do
with his energy (cited in Orozco, 2013, p. 33).
In the cases of both Slpkivi and Rothenberg, what seems of particular value and unusual in relation to many performance practices
involving animals is the practitioners concern for the creative experience of the animal they work with. In contrast, it could be argued
that many practices, despite seeking to undo any firm distinction
between human and non-human, do still remain firmly centred on
what happens to the human in the encounter. For example, one might
think of the 2011 work by the French artists Marion Laval-Jeantet and
Benot Mangin entitled Que le cheval vive en moi (May the Horse Live
in Me). As Louis Hilton describes: In the piece, which took several
months to complete, Laval-Jeantet received a series of transfusions of
blood plasma drawn from the body of a horse (Hilton, 2013, p. 487).
In interviews, Laval-Jeantet has given a fascinating account of her
sense of the transformations that took place in her perceptual capacities following the transfusion: it was practically impossible for me to
sleep for a week and I had extreme and slightly aggressive reactions to
stimuli; a slammed door, a tap on the shoulder. I was experiencing
the hyper-reactivity of the horse in my flesh (cited in Hilton, 2013,
p. 488). However, while such work may well go some way to counteract the anthropological machine that ceaselessly separates the
human from nonhuman animals (2013, p. 488) as Hilton contends,
it does seem woefully unconcerned with the horses side of the experience. Indeed, I would argue that this is also a feature of Deleuze and
Guattaris concept of becoming-animal to which this work might
be seen as a somewhat literal response. For example, in A Thousand
Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari suggest that the invention of the stirrup constitutes a becoming-horse a new symbiosis of bodies both
in its nomadic and feudal contexts (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988, p.
399). In turn, when the authors do note that the stirrup is a source of
controversy amongst its theorists, it is not with respect to its impact
on horses, but only insofar as historians debate the question of who
is its rightful inventor (1988, p. 447). In contrast, I would suggest
that the stirrup example, and indeed the vast majority of Deleuze and
Guattaris examples of becoming-animal, fails to present a convincing
case for why such an encounter constitutes a becoming for the animal
as well as for the human it involves. All the more reason, then, to
value the collaborative and communicative dimensions of Slpkivi
and Rothenbergs projects, both of which specifically facilitate the
cha01.indd 33
05-02-2015 15:17:04
PROOF
34 Performing Animality
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
cha01.indd 34
Conclusions
I began this chapter with a question about whether or not research at
the intersection of Animal and Performance Studies should task itself
with expanding dominant concepts of performance whether through
scholarship or practice along the lines of the expansion of the category of language outlined by Puchner, with a view to becoming more
inclusive of animals. As this chapter ends, I hope I have gone some
way to convince the reader that it should and indeed that this will
constitute an important contribution to Animal Studies as a whole. For
Cary Wolfe, the influential Animal Studies scholar, the animal should
not just be a theme for the field of Animal Studies; it needs to change
how we approach and understand the notion of studying itself. To put
it bluntly, Wolfe states, just because we study nonhuman animals does
not mean that we are not continuing to be humanistand therefore, by
definition, anthropocentric (2009, p. 568). In particular, Wolfe suggests
that Animal Studies needs to question the humanist schema of the
knowing subject: the picture of the human as constituted by critical
introspection and self-reflection that is, after all, a hallmark of humanism (2009, pp. 56970). In this discussion, I hope to have indicated that
performance might be one such means for Animal Studies to approach
the study of animal life anew, to reconceive the role and nature of
the human researcher not as one who represents the animal from a
distinct and superior position outside of it, but who uses performance
as a lived, embodied process of coming into contact with the ways in
which animals communicate and perform beyond reductive, anthropocentric definitions of those terms, in ways that expose the instability
of any claims to human exceptionalism. Likewise, I have argued that
future research in Animal Performance Studies need not approach
encounters with animals with readymade concepts of performance
for instance as deliberate, conscious, chosen activity (Schechner, 2003,
p. 98) in hand. Nor need it be understood as a form of practice as
research that produces new knowledge about the animal through
performance. Rather, my proposition is that work at the intersection
of Animal and Performance Studies is best conceived as departing from
a felt knowledge of unknowing (Mullarkey, 2009, p. 211) in which a
wide range of concepts of the human, of language, of communication
05-02-2015 15:17:04
PROOF
From Homo Performans to Interspecies Collaboration 35
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
Notes
1 See http://terrain.org/columns/21/Rothenberg_Clarinet_Humpback.mp3
(accessed 23 September 2013).
2 These remarks are based on an unpublished email interview conducted with
Slpkivi by the author in 2013.
References
Banes, S. 2003. Spontaneous Combustion: Notes on Dance Improvisation from
the Sixties to the Nineties. In A. Cooper Albright and D. Gere (eds), Taken by
Surprise: A Dance Improvisation Reader (pp. 7785). Middletown, CT: Wesleyan
University Press, pp. 7785.
Bowie, A. 2007. Music, Philosophy & Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Chaudhuri, U. 2009. Of All Nonsensical Things: Performance and Animal
Life. Publications of the Modern Language Association 124.2 (March): 5205.
Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari. 1988 A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
London: Athlone Press.
Dreifus, C. 2005. Ode With a Nightingale, and a Thrush, and a Lyrebird
A Conversation with David Rothenberg. New York Times, 20 September 2005.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/science/20CONV.html?pagewanted=
all&_r=0 (accessed 8 June 2013).
Hilton, L. J. 2013. The Horse in My Flesh: Transpecies Performance and
Affective Athleticism. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 19.4: 487514.
Jevbratt, L. 2009. Interspecies Collaboration Making Art Together with
Nonhuman Animals. Interspecies Collaboration website. www.jevbratt.com/
writing/jevbratt_interspecies_collaboration.pdf (accessed 8 June 2013).
Kanki, S. 2013. Music for Dolphins. Artists website: http://silakka.fi/compositions/music-for-dolphins/ (accessed 8 June 2013).
Mullarkey, J. 2009. Refractions of Reality: Philosophy and the Moving Image.
Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Orozco, L. 2013. Theatre & Animals. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Puchner, M. 2007. Performing the Open: Actors, Animals, Philosophers. TDR:
The Drama Review 51.1 (T193) (Spring): 2132.
Putnam, W. 2007. Captive Audiences: A Concert for the Elephants in the Jardin
des Plantes. TDR: The Drama Review 51.1 (T193) (Spring): 15460.
Rothenberg, D. 2005. Why Birds Sing: A Journey into the Mystery of Birdsong.
Cambridge, MA: Basic Books.
Rothenberg, D. 2008. Whale Music: Anatomy of an Interspecies Duet. Leonardo
Music Journal 18 (December): 4753.
Slpkivi, A. 2013. Unpublished email interview with the author.
Schechner, R. 2002. Performance Studies: An Introduction. London and New York:
Routledge.
cha01.indd 35
05-02-2015 15:17:04
PROOF
36 Performing Animality
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
cha01.indd 36
05-02-2015 15:17:04