When
An ‘Affect’ is a gap between the emotional responses that one might expect the content of an event to produce, and autonomic reactions. Autonomic is defined as a part of the nervous system in humans and other vertebrates that control involuntary activity, for example the action of the heart and glands, breathing digestive processes and reflex actions ‘When’ is an event that engages with the audience’s senses on the level of ‘affect‘, operating outside of narrative logic and representational signification. The aim is to transmits affect not through communicative, acting techniques of performing emotion, but by inserting my body, in a state of autonomic intensity, into a context of containment, uncertainty, and anticipation. For the waiting crowd, the partial absence of visible activity, combined with an unfulfilled sense of anticipation, manifests as an edgy mood which outcome is uncertain.
25 Oct 2009, PAE Annual Performance Art Festival – Rotterdam
