4 from ritual to theater and back: the efficacy ... - AAAARG.ORG

selective inattention 233
star quality. I think this is true of official stars as well as movie stars.
Mao is seen at a distance, waving; or a picture is released of a president
signing a bill, or shaking hands; a pope kisses the earth or blesses the
crowds: the actual work these people do, if any at all by the time they
have ascended to their ultimate positions, is hidden from the public.
The ironically comforting revelation of the Nixon tapes was that presidents
curse, fumble, speak as humans do; that their policies are forged
through prejudice and arguments.
This star quality is something Genet understood better than most
other dramatists. His plays – especially The Maids and The Balcony – examine
the gaps and links between the gestures/costumes of power and the
personalities of those who put on these accoutrements. The appearance
of stars – their empty but emblematic look and gestures – encourage
the public to project onto them every kind of expectation and fantasy.
The stars are in fact blank screens. Ehrenzweig’s primary process is not
the property only of artists and scientists, the general public
participates in it too.
The blank screens, the underlying rhythms, the absence of focus
which constitute the operative processes of stardom relate back to the
infinity-loop model. What is blank, undifferentiated, hypnagogic,
relaxed – in a word, inattentive – is actually the bottom or hidden half
of the loop. When the noh spectator enters and co-creates the performance
by absenting herself from too close or narrow a focus on what’s
coming from the stage, she is encouraging hidden or underlying
unconscious material to blend with her conscious experience. In a way,
she is relaxing in order to be creative. This kind of experiencing
happens – or can happen – during a wide range of performances.
Spectators can be trained to enjoy being selectively inattentive. A large
enterprise of contemporary experimental performance is to make visible
this creative process – to reposition it at the top half of the loop. In
experimental performance, what then is underneath? Nothing other
than the orthodox genres and tropes – narrativity, parody, lyrical
description, etc. On the surface a Robert Wilson opera, a Merce
Cunningham dance, a Pina Bausch dance-theater piece eschew orthodox
genres. But if a spectator is selectively inattentive, narratives, social
commentaries, “pure” or simply beautiful movements and spectacles
emerge and merge with her own reveries. To a certain degree the works