NEW PERFORMATIVE PRACTICES 2011-2013

• THE RECIPROCITY OF SHAME IS NOT PRIDE BUT LOVEArtistic research: Using shame as a strategy to decode social choreographies and as the engine for methods and movement practicesWhy the spotlight on shame in artistic research? We can be isolated pris- oners of shame in relation to other human beings or we can be united by shame. I believe that it is hard, if not impossible, to talk about equality, pres- tige, privilege, power, creativity, innovation, motivation, and change without taking shame into account. Shame is central to group acceptance and issues of “good,”’ “bad,” and “taboos.”Linguistically, shame is connected to hiding. The Indo- European root skem, kem, skam means to conceal or veil—the polar opposite of to perform, which by definition requires exposure that, in turn, carries the potential for shame.So, how does this potential for shame affect me on stage? It raises several issues. How much space I will take on stage or in society? What kind of aesthetics will I represent? What cultural expression will I adopt? What will determine whether I care about one norm and not another? Do I search confirmation of my power within the existing conventional parameters or do I dare, as an artist, to challenge the normative gaze? How big a risk will I be willing to take? These were some of the questions that brought me to research shame within the artistic framework.

  According to Maurice Merleau, “It is by lending the body to the world that the artist changes the world into painting.” As a performer, I lend my body to the world through the medium of the stage art.

  Before initiating my research, I thought of shame as a private domain. How- ever as my investigation progressed, I came to view shame as instrumental in maintaining or rupturing boundaries, as a tool in the use of power. Pure fear generates instant reactions, but shame paralyzes. With shame as a tool of power, we can internalize our “story” about why others should obey us. The ideology thus spawned is kept alive and becomes a part of our personal scripts. I became aware that I, as a performance artist, was trapped by the

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  instinct to obey power without questioning it. However, after reading the radical feminist Carol Hanisch’s book, Personal Is Political, I was able to con- ceptualize it differently. Hanisch wrote about how the political affected the individual emotionally and concretely by what happens to us in our everyday lives. With the growth of feminism and related discussion groups, women discovered that what they had thought of as being too private and/or too shameful was something they shared with other women, each of whom had similar personal stories.

  Shame can occur in a movement of interest that drives you towards some- thing but gets interrupted. For example, I’m walking and a person is ap- proaching me. I think it is a friend and raise my hand in greeting, but when the person comes closer I become aware that the person is a stranger. The spirit of joy is broken and I take my hand down. I blush and lower my head because I was mistaken and, thus, was intrusive in my approach to a stranger. Or, for instance, I’m sitting beside my love and form my lips for a kiss but my loved one turns his face away. I feel rejected and pretend that nothing happened. Movements of different degrees of joy, interest, and desires hook up with our shame scripts and they are often hidden even to our selves. Shame materializes so instantaneously that you can’t relate to it in real time. Silvan Tomkins (1911-1991), the father of affect psychology and script theory, claimed that there is always a risk for the eruption of shame when we speak out or act freely and that correspondingly there is always the potential that others refuse to respond, enjoy, repay, reward, or greet you in such instances.

  The biological mechanism of shame is often used as a political choreogra- pher that moves the hierarchies according to the contemporary ideology ruling smaller groups or the larger society. As soon as we move outside the comfort zone, the potential for shame arises. Shame is instrumental in regulating all group ideologies and the development of different agenda into acceptable or unacceptable political statements. Thus, it is vital to under- stand and have knowledge about the concept of shame if we are to be able to distinguish the differences between method or content and become more aware of our conscious or unconscious ideologies—not only in our critique of society at large but also in the field of stage art.

  The starting point of my investigation on shame is the theory of affect psy- chology developed by Silvan Tomkins and Donald Nathanson, which I incor- porated into the toolbox of my artistic practices. It has helped me create a method wherein shame becomes a means of measuring the urgency of a new idea. The more I realized how challenging and confrontational shame could be as an artistic practice, the more I clearly understood whether I had hit the right spot or if I was out of context. Because shame is often consid- ered too private to share, it has the affective consequence of hiding or keep- ing secrets that cascade into unwarranted and unexpected consequences. “The reciprocity of shame is not to pride but to love; for only, a love rooted in the will to affirm the value of the other, can absorb shame” (Gary David, PhD in Epistemology and member of the Tomkins Institute, refers to Donald Nathanson’s lecture in Cape Cod 1996).

  Shame is often used as a tool of power, instead of a tool to regulate inequal- ity and imbalance. It is in this arena that my research could provide an ef- fective operating instrument to deter behaviors and ideologies and/or to avoid internalization of personal toxic shame that contaminates our social environments. We need to be able to risk being vulnerable and feeling shame to make changes and bravely expose our personal interests or desires.

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