Senza titolo
The man is an animal of promise*
Looking at one of the installations (Senza titolo, Mario Merz) in the Vanvitelli subway station in Naples, composed of neon Fibonacci spirals and numbers stretching from the spiral blue neon tube of the upper vault above the stairs leading to the trains, over the wall painting of Merz's prehistoric animals, I recalled this statement by Jacques Derrida from his book L'animal que donc je suis (The Animal That Therefore I Am).
Photo 1. Blue neon tube
Merz's work described as large spiral comprising a blue neon tube installed in the vault, was one of the last works created by Merz before his death. It is a geometric representation of the Fibonacci series, which also continues on the vertical wall at the back, next to a succession of prehistoric animals. The series of numbers identified by Leonardo Fibonacci in the thirteenth century has appeared in Merz's works since 1969. The artist interprets this progression in which each number is the sum of the previous two as emblematic of the process of growth in the organic world.[1]
Photo 2. Prehistoric animals
The form of promise
Every artistic idea begins with the form of promise. Every performance is in its own way perversion on promises because we seduce the audience with the promise of an unforgettable experience during the face-to-face encounter in theatre. In the interpretation of Shoshana Felman, due to the imperfections of the performative – the expression addressed to the interlocutor in certain circumstances – we as performers promise constative, and sometimes also, neither do we ourselves do not believe in what we say. But that is precisely at the core of every performative act, as it is also a part of human nature. Shoshana Felman in her book The Scandal of the Speaking Body; Don Juan with Austin or Seduction in Two Languages (2003) points out how every performative can fail because "the performative always depends on the contingent addressee and the circumstances in which that addressee is addressed" (Felman 2003). Felman starts from the (unsuccessful) performative of promise, which is fundamental to reading of Don Juan, in which the scandal of seduction is associated with the scandal of a broken promise.
The concept of the performative occupies an important place in the second half of the 20th century. The theory of "performatives" or speech acts was established by J.L. Austin, and the theory is close to Ludwig Wittgenstein's understanding that the meaning of words is created by their use. Among expressions (statements), Austin distinguishes constatives, which communicate a state of affairs and can be true or false, from performatives, which perform actions, so their success depends on the so-called felicity conditions. But he then discovers a series of implicit performatives, which ultimately leads him to present the entire linguistic activity as aimed at achieving effects. The constative refers to descriptive sentences and sentences that assert facts, unlike performatives, which presuppose the performance of some act and the execution of the act by the very act of expression.
Most ideas are human spam, and only a small part is usable in the seduction game where we promise to our audience a unique experience that is interesting, entertaining, and worth of their attention. But how many times have we disappointed our audience? How many times have we failed to meet their expectations? And did we feel guilty because of it? In theater, it is precisely the disappointed of the expectation that needs to be happen for the performance to be ultimately judged as successful. In theater, we must flip the trust pancake. Because when we disappoint expectation, in that moment precisely we can achieve the greatest success.
Somewhat contradictory, isn't it?
Photo 3. Autoportrait on Vanvitelli station
[1] https://metroart.anm.it/en/component/spsimpleportfolio/item/65-spirali.html
By Irena Bockai
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