Schizoanalysis as a Method in Artistic Research

Tero Nauha

This exposition uses concepts of contamination, sponge and plasticity to approach the heterogeneity of a schizoanalytic practice - and as such as a method for artistic research. These concepts are singular to my research on the amalgamation of performance, subjectivity and contemporary forms of capitalism. My argument is to a large extent based on the theoretical thinking and practical works of Félix Guattari. The singular concept of ‘sponge’, developed here, can be linked to Guattari’s concept of chaosmosis and to the concept of plasticity, which has been reworked from its Hegelian comprehension by Catherine Malabou. The foundation of my research is my artistic practice in the field of performance art. It is a practice based research including three artistic works – “Loop Variations” (2008), “Life in Bytom” (2012) and “Astronomer” (2014). My aim is to predicate it within the larger context cognitive capitalism, the neoliberal economy and post-industrial labour. Artistic practice is a device located within and conditioned by each economic and political ideology or order. However, an artistic practice is not only a formal production, but also produces content, which is not yet categorized, in other words new. Often in the discourse of neoliberal culture production, this new is described with the word ‘innovation’. In my opinion these terms are not equivalent, but often contest each other. This exposition takes place at the convergence of performance studies, psychoanalysis, and the critique of neo-liberal capitalism. My overall aim is to produce a contribution in this convergence. What is the particular locus of a performer in the setting of performance art or social practices, where borders between everyday life, audience, performer, physical setting or duration are not explicit? This exposition includes some analysis of artistic works, which are tied in with the discourses of capitalism and subjectivity.

Workshop documentation, arranged by visual artist Karolina Kucia and Liisa Haverila. The workshop took place in northern Carelia, in an abandoned foresting factory site, in Autumn 2010. Participants were local artists, dancers and theatre practitioners. With Karolina Kucia we wanted to work with perception limitation to process autobiographical materials.

CHAOSMIC SPONGE

”Chaosmosis: the (mental) apprehension of the world [...] I absorb and I dissolve all discursivity while affirming this discursivity. But in general this time of fusion, or absorption, goes completely unrecognized, or is even thought.” [8] (Watson 2009, 133)

Chaosmosis is a process of the first two types of plasticity: of receiving form and giving form - and it goes completely unrecognized. "You are the music while the music lasts," writes Damasio about the continuous auto-production of the self and subjectivity. (Damasio 1999, 191) Sponge follows the path of chaosmic becoming-something. This unrecognized process is easily considered as a creative procedure, where form is being received or simultaneously given to a performance, drawing, composition, etc. However, what Deleuze and Guattari emphasize on this becoming, is that it does not follow a path. (Deleuze & Guattari 2004, 232-309) Becoming-something is a process of transformation, not a state of imitation, but a real incarnation of something yet to come. Becoming-something is discomforting, with the potential danger of annihilation or becoming neutral, cool and flat. For Deleuze and Guattari becoming-animal is "traversing human beings and sweeping them away, affecting the animal no less than the human." (Deleuze & Guattari 2004, 237) It is a process of becoming in which receiving, giving form and annihilation of form are simultaneously taking place. It is the production of the new and a monster with a shadow.

The Brazilian artist Lygia Clark worked with both therapeutic and artistic practices to search for all sides of plasticity in relation to social trauma. Her works have been widely publicized, and connected with relational art practices initially by Suely Rolnik (2007). Clark’s works were not processes of becoming as mimicry, but becoming as irreversible transformations of subjectivity. For Lygia Clark the presence of annihilation is doubled, but not yet amalgamated with the presence of affectivity. Such practice may have produced a transformation – becoming-something – of subject and social body surrounding the event of her practice. Her work as a type of schizoanalytic practice, produced psychic, social, political transformations on the spatio-temporal politics of the time. (Rolnik 2007) Such practices bear a similarity to psychoanalytical practices, though they are not discursive or purely analytical.

It is the exteriority and potentiality of the real, which gives form to sponge subjectivity, and to chaosmic subjectivity. At the other end of the spectrum there is psychopathic subjectivity, which has cut off affective connections with the world and become numb. (Malabou 2012a, 160) There is no effect on the coolness of such subjectivity, which is epitomized in the environment of the neoliberal economy. The neoliberal economy requires subjectivity to stay cool, focus on details and retract from the ability to be touched. It is what Malabou defines as "difficulty letting oneself be touched” which she explains “is the evil of our times, the paradoxical result of being wounded.” (Malabou 2012a, 160)

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[8] “Dans Chaosmose, je développe l’idée que l’appréhension du monde, le fait d’être dans le monde (le « da sein »), est essentiellement une appréhension chaosmique : on s’abolit dans le monde, le monde se met à être pour soi, « je suis dans le monde parce que je suis le monde », j’absorbe et je dissous toute la discursivité dans le même temps où j’affirme cette discursivité. Mais généralement ce temps de fusion, d’absorbsion est complètement méconnu, voire même combattu.” (Guattari 1992, 1-2)

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