Performing the Wound: Practicing a Feminist Theatre of Becoming

193 Pages·2022·3.453 MB·English

by  Niki Tulk

Performing the Wound
This book offers a matrixial, feminist-centered analysis of trauma and perfor-
mance, through examining the work of three artists: Ann Hamilton, Renée
Green, and Cecilia Vicuña.
Each artist engages in a multi-media, or “combination” performance practice;
this includes the use of site, embodied performance, material elements, film, and
writing. Each case study involves traumatic content, including the legacy of
slavery, child sexual abuse and environmental degradation; each artist constructs
an aesthetic milieu that invites rather than immerses—this allows an audience to
have agency, as well as multiple pathways into their engagement with the art.
The author suggests that these works facilitate an audience-performance rela-
tionship based on the concept of ethical witnessing/wit(h)nessing, in which
viewers are not positioned as voyeurs, nor made to risk re-traumatization by
being forced to view traumatic events re-played on stage. This approach also
allows agency to the art itself, in that an ethical space is created where the art is
not objectified or looked at—but joined with. Foundational to this investigation
arethewritingsofBrachaL.Ettinger,JillBennettandDianaTaylor—particularly
Ettinger’s concepts of the matrixial, carriance and border-linking. These artists
and scholars present a capacity to expand and articulate answers to questions
regarding how to make performance that remains compelling and truthful to the
trauma experience, but not re-traumatizing.
This study will be of great interest to students and scholars of performance
studies, art history, visual arts, feminist studies, theatre, film, performance art,
postcolonialism, rhetoric and writing.
Dr. Niki Tulk is an interdisciplinary artist and Director of Acting and Perfor-
mance at Plymouth State University. Her poetry book, O, won the 2021 Drift-
woodPoetryPrize(DriftwoodPress).Findoutmoreatwww.nikitulk.com.
Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies
This series is our home for cutting-edge, upper-level scholarly studies and
edited collections. Considering theatre and performance alongside topics such
as religion, politics, gender, race, ecology, and the avant-garde, titles are char-
acterized by dynamic interventions into established subjects and innovative
studies on emerging topics.
Performing the Wound
Practicing a Feminist Theatre of Becoming
Niki Tulk
Butoh America
Butoh Dance in the United States and Mexico from 1970 to the early 2000s
Tanya Calamoneri
Deburau
Pierrot, Mime, and Culture
Edward Nye
Performance at the Urban Periphery
Insights from South India
Cathy Turner, Sharada Srinivasan, Jerri Daboo and Anindya Sinha
Australian Metatheatre on Page and Stage
An Exploration of Metatheatrical Techniques
Rebecca Clode
Functions of Medieval English Stage Directions
Analysis and Catalogue
Philip Butterworth
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Advances-in-Theatre–Performance-Studies/book-series/
RATPS
Performing the Wound
Practicing a Feminist Theatre of Becoming
Niki Tulk
Firstpublished2022
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Contents
List of figures vi
Acknowledgments viii
1 Introduction 1
2 Reframing Performance within Trauma Studies Literature 23
3 The Textured Language of Rupture: Multimedia Installations by
Ann Hamilton 39
4 Dreaming In-Between: Landscape, Trauma and Meaning-Making
in the Work of Renée Green 79
5 Weaving Lament: Cecilia Vicuña’s Poetry in Performance 122
6 Conclusion 153
Index 176
Figures
3.1 View of Royce Hall, Anne Hamilton and Anne Bogart, the theater
is a blank page, UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, 2018.
Author’s photograph. 60
3.2 Shredded Paper, Anne Hamilton and Anne Bogart, the theater is a
blank page, UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, 2018.
Author’s photograph. 63
3.3 Woman Reading, Anne Hamilton and Anne Bogart, the theater is a
blank page, UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, 2018.
Author’s photograph. 65
3.4 Passing Along the Prose on Ribbon, Anne Hamilton and Anne
Bogart, the theater is a blank page, UCLA’s Center for the Art of
Performance, 2018. Author’s photograph. 66
4.1 Film Installation Nook. Renée Green, Pacing: Within Living
Memory, Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, Harvard University,
2018. Author’s photograph. 83
4.2 Colored Banners. Renée Green, Pacing: Within Living Memory,
Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, Harvard University, 2018.
Author’s photograph. 89
4.3 Plaque details from Climates and Paradoxes, Close-Up, Renée
Green, Pacing: Within Living Memory, Carpenter Center for Visual
Arts, Harvard University, 2018. Author’s photograph. 108
4.4 Plaque details from Climates and Paradoxes, Street View, Renée
Green, Pacing: Within Living Memory, Carpenter Center for Visual
Arts, Harvard University, 2018. Author’s photograph. 109
4.5 Man Bungee Jumping, from Climates and Paradoxes, Renée Green,
Pacing: Within Living Memory, Carpenter Center for Visual Arts,
Harvard University, 2018. Author’s photograph. 113
5.1 Cecilia Vicuña and Collaborators Perform, Cantos del Agua, 2015.
CeciliaVicuña.com. Photo used with permission. 132
5.2 Cecilia Vicuña, Precarios. CeciliaVicuña.com. Photo used with
permission. 145
List of figures vii
6.1 Cecilia Vicuña, Beach Ritual, Limanakia Vouliagmenis, Coast of
Athens, documenta 14. Photo by Natalia Figueroa. Photo used with
permission. 169
Acknowledgments
To makethe decisiontowrite longformabout something forwhichthereis no
language presents an obvious challenge. To explore this across different per-
formance modalities and disciplines meant that I stepped out into territory that
was largely unmarked, and sometimes I felt I had fallen into some deep world
for which I could find no words or direction. No one person could be the
guide here; I had to form not just one village but many, across different
departments and areas of practice. The nature of trauma studies is it is at once
theoretical and challenging, personal work. When combined with creative
practice, it becomes a truly multi-modal, expansive experience. I have huge
debts of gratitude to pay, and the list is long. So here we go. Firstly, to Dr.
Bessel van der Kolk, whose book The Body Keeps the Score opened a world of
personal healing, and the doorway into what is becoming a life work across my
writing, teaching and arts practice. To Mark, who gave the book to me, and
has been my partner in every possible aspect of this work, as in life. There are
no words, truly. To Ann Hamilton, Renée Green and Cecilia Vicuña—their
generosity in answering my questions, allowing me to use their words and
photographs, all the while opening their work to me and gifting the world
with their healing artistic presence. Their influence on my own imagination
and art-making is profound and ongoing, and I am deeply thankful. Bracha L.
Ettinger, in granting me the permission to use her writing, and for turning
unspeakable suffering into exquisite, liberating, and powerful theory. To Cathy
Caruth, Diana Taylor, Jill Bennett, Françoise Davoine and Jean-Max Gau-
dillière, Patrick Duggan, Dori Laub and Shoshana Felman—I acknowledge
their work asthereason Icould domyown.Kristen Kreiderhas mentoredme,
encouraged me, and bought me breakfast one morning in Boulder, Colorado,
and her book Poetics and Place was the first work of theory I came upon in my
research—anditmovedmetotears,convincingmethatthiswasthedirectionI
should go. Performing the Wound began as a dissertation, and I thank my Advisor
Marcus Steuernagel for not insisting that I use his sensible planning methods
and letting me be the divergent poet-scholar that I am. Julie Carr, Gesel
Mason, Beth Osnes, Joel Swanson, Stephanie Spray, Michelle Ellsworth,
Donna Mejia, Oliver Gerland, all supported my insane but ultimately successful
bid to do two PhDs at once—the cross pollination of both gave this book the
Acknowledgments ix
life it needed. Will Lewis, Alia Goldfarb, Ligia Batista-Silverman, Tara Walker,
Patricia Paige, Iain Court and Hollie Rogin, co-conspirators who kept me real
and on my compass. I thank the University of Colorado Boulder, Department
of Theatre & Dance, for funding my research travel, as well as supporting my
practice and scholarship in innumerable ways. My soul sister Dr. Stephanie
Jones for walking Renée Green’s work with me—and so much else. Robert
Reginio for reading through chapters even though he had no time. Nicholas
Birns for his consistent encouragement. To my parents, Alex and Rosemary
Wearing, for everything. To Jade, Corrina, Molly and Ari, for being the abso-
lute best, most courageous, compassionate, and wildly intelligent women I
know. To Laura Hussey, for believing in the book from the beginning. And
lastly, to the best of rescue dogs and trauma-healers, Charlotte and Lilly, for
sitting on me until I got the damn thing done.