Susan Sontag, in her 1964 article, Against Interpretation, reprimands art critics and commentators for their focus on the interpretation of content. She calls for a greater focus on form and appropriate vocabulary for that discussion. "Transparence," she writes, "means experiencing the luminousness of the thing in itself, of things being what they are."(13)
Indeed, in the 1960's, Sontag's cause emerged as a subject in new works of art. The Pop Art of Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol defined itself through a particular brand of realism that made irony out of the literal. John Baldessari's "conceptual art" made words into art objects and, in doing so, troubled the boundary between discourse and art works. Allan Kaprow's "Happenings" and George Maciunas' "Fluxus events" facilitated visceral, bodily experiences for their audiences and that challenged the role of the spectator. In New York City, performance artists reacted against 'psychological theatre' and its willingness to be interpreted.
Director, Elizabeth LeCompte, rose to artistic maturity in this milieu and brought to the Wooster Group aesthetic an air of defiance. An enfant terrible of the 1970's, she updated Sontag's charge by defying interpretation of both content and form.
What is luminous in the Wooster Group performances shines through a series of transparent layers. LeCompte relies heavily on the use of media and mediation to create these layers. It might be useful to first attempt to name these layers of mediation in order to discover how they engage or reject interpretation.
In this brief attempt, it quickly becomes apparent that everything is mediated in a Wooster Group production. Generating a comprehensive list is an impossible task and won't serve to reveal the luminousness in Wooster Group productions. Let me now try another tact by exploring the function of one, very prevalent use of media by the Wooster Group - the television monitor.
Television monitors have been present and central in every Wooster Group show that I have seen, including The Hairy Ape, HOUSE/LIGHTS, The Emperor Jones and North Atlantic. The monitors are used to display moving images that I have divided into three broad categories - found, created and live action.
In HOUSE/LIGHTS, the monitors play Joseph Mawra's 1964 cult classic, Olga's House of Shame. This is an example of found image on the monitors. Anticipated by Jack Smith (1,2,3), this usage of media pastiche grounds the production with historical significance.
In Route 1 & 9, the monitors display a version of Wilder's Our Town. The text of the play is presented dry and slow and the camera frames only the actor's faces. In L.S.D., the monitors display footage from previous runs of the show. In both of these cases, the moving images were made for and during rehearsals. Often, these created images are played simultaneously with live action. And just as often, the live action features company members who are playing the very role depicted on the monitor. This duality is effective in different contexts. In Route 1 & 9, for example, the video induces vivid polarity that emphasizes the central themes - 1/9, black/white, male/female, daily/performative, live/mediated, etc. It also satisfies Elizabeth LeCompte's directorial and relevant itch: to discover if, in fact, the audience will always prefer the TV's over live action and why.
In The Emperor Jones, the monitors display live action that has been digitally modified. The performance occurs in a very simple set - a sort of boxing ring with a floor that acts like a blue screen. In HOUSE/LIGHTS, the monitor is placed downstage center and often obstructs the live action. In both shows, the actors manipulate the video feed and camera angle. Their performance is projected onto a monitor where it is distorted and modified. It is as if the battle between screen and stage has been reversed. Watching The Emperor Jones, audiences feel compelled away from the monitor to watch the frenzied live action. HOUSE/LIGHTS offers a less antagonistic conflation of live action and live feed. The Wooster Group has so deeply and skillfully integrated media into these works that there is no place where the "media" ends and the "live" begins.
In Against Interpretation, Sontag wrote, "In place of hermeneutics we need an erotics of art."(14) The Wooster Group so masterfully integrated technology into performance that media could no longer be thought of as a flirtatious accessory. Those aroused by the Wooster Group accepted media in the sumptuous body of their muse. It follows that a list of media elements does little to clarify the intelligence of the Wooster Group "in itself." An attempt to elucidate the function of some aspects of mediation, however, is more appropriate. As Sontag suggests, transparence can only be discussed through the experience of "things being what they are."
