Moving As Thing

Moving as Thing: Choreographic Critiques of the Object
Author(s): ANDRÉ LEPECKI

Source: October, Vol. 140 (Spring 2012), pp. 75-90
Published by: The MIT Press
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Moving as Thing:
Choreographic Critiques
of the Object
ANDRÉ LEPECKI
To give oneself as a thing that feels and to take a thing

that feels is the new radical experience that asserts itself
on contemporary feeling.
- Mario Perniola1
To be moved by some thing , rather than by oneself
- Yvonne Rainer2
If there is a distinguishing trait of recent experimental dance, it is th

noticeable presence of objects as main performative elements. Examples can be
found in numerous works of the past three or four years. German choreograph
Thomas Lehmen's recent Schrottplatz (Scrapyard, 2010) is a fifty-minute solo pie
in which Lehmen interacts with a lamp, chairs, a microphone, a hammer, a tom
to, and a newspaper, among other items, attempting to explain to one object th
function or nature of the object next to it. Exploring the elusive yet inescapa
referentiality of objects, Schrottplatz probes the limits of signification, as it display
language bouncing against the opaque surface of matter. In Portuguese choreog
rapher Vera Mantero's group piece We Are Going to Miss Everything We Don't N
(2009), we also encounter an investigation of what Mantero calls the "rebound
effect" between an "object of the world" and the word that signifies it, the ambigu-
ous movement between an object's sheer presence and its semantic resonances. A
Mantero writes in the program notes for her evening-length piece, such
rebound effect between bodies and objects, mediated by language, opens the pos
sibility for "touching the other side of things."
But the recent choreographic move toward objects is not only concerned
with exploring the gap between referentiality and signification. In My Privat
1. Mario Perniola, The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic: Philosophies of Desire in the Modern World (Londo
Continuum, 2004), p. 1.
2. Yvonne Rainer, "A Quasi Survey of Some 'Minimalist' Tendencies in the Quantitatively Minim
Dance Activity Midst the Plethora, or an Analysis of Trio A," in Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, e
Gregory Battcock (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1968), p. 269.
OCTOBER 140, Spring 2012, pp. 75-90 © 2012 October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Techn
76 OCTOBER
Himalaya (200
Quraishi, seve
lamps, one pl
organic), a rep
household cle
Aristotle. By
Quraishi slowl
Jean Baudrilla
vectors of sub
Levi's Em volt
French choreo
2007-08, and M
Object-invest
gence of the
Being and Guer
Silvia Benso 's
Things ), criti
Moten's In the
Wexner Center
Thingly Variat
sent on dance
vivid dialogue
icantly after W
a large num
became inter
of time whi
this interest
of dance and
some to act a
The recent re
phy, however,
Krauss to desc
works mentio
phers are not
scenic effects
stuff onto sta
from the one
then, most of
object be - i.e
affirm it as "
3. Rosalind E. Kr
Moving as Thing 77
object of a substantial transf

objectifying the object, a mov
stand that "a thing is neithe
Perniola, closely following Hei
If the concept of object (as
tied to instrumentality, to u
exist in a symmetric relatio
are always "an endless repro
of the subject ," as Silvia Bens
tive subject" is powerfully li
to his or her authorial funct
ing moves to the minutest
obeyed with precision: this i
choreography as "an art of c
moves are perceived as bein
unmediated) and obedient ex
cific choreographic economy
manipulation, as a mere m
dancer might be assimilated
by the choreographer. It wa
choreographic project that Y
against, in her famous essay
she defended the need for
"oneself.'"7 Given that "self
on manipulative and instrum
accept, a "thing" would be th
tal entity that would liberat
izontal interactions. The task
ical) was to create a choreog
and "subject," "utility" and "
for things could come into b
Once objects and subjects s
that "if the status of the ob
ject."8 In this light, the chan
a pressing question for subj
from) utility, once it is remov
4. Perniola, The Sex Appeal of the I

5 Silvia Benso, The Face of Things:
York, 2000), p. xxxiii.
6. Susanne Franco and Marina Nord
Routledge, 2007), p. 16.
7. Rainer, "A Quasi Survey," p. 2
8. Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibni
p. 20.
78 OCTOBER
of subordinat
an object becom
Specifically, w
metry obtain
object: the su
does this invo
as that of the
These questio
dance, and th
(2008) by Chi
Giant #9 (20
(2008) by Po
Spanish chor
pieces, these v
and perform,
moved by a th
of a thing's b
dancer and th
these four wo
Rub
Rubbish City
Sweden, in 20
Kulturen der
building's lar
cal crew of H
"clean trash,"
ter. In this la
roamed throu
ing the floor
ing machine
paper, half-br
and electroni
different st
encountered i
different spo
9. "Creative inv
denotation in B
minoritarian vec
confused with r
Guattari, A Thou
1987), p. 238. See
and the Thought o
Moving as Thing 79
stuff; an older male actor sit

memories; a piano player s
upright piano (also found in
mysterious man in a tuxedo
fling along the path carved o
the acrid smell of dust and m
dirty linens, and the whole
coming from the out of tun
A mix of installation, but
mance, social sculpture, and
ly harsh, overwhelmingly sa
determined path, feeling our w
the rubbish, attempting to e
tary performers, one cann
recent, how contemporary , al
with it thanks to the darkn
Duan 's own shuffling, we r
distant past. Rather, all that
destiny of all commodities in
a kinetic-political, as well as
as participants, accomplices,
ly unstoppable, culture of m
upon) a symmetrical, also cat
tion of what once had been
used and useful, a true Be
moment of political-histori
cally presented historical ci
in which the confrontation be
It becomes such a field insof
phantasmagoria of Rubbish C
discarded stuff in the presen
of how, by the mere fact of
those objects endured what
real transformation."11 By
passed from the realm of u
they had stopped being obje
all instrumental use, the car
possibility for being in the wo
Perniola wrote: "our ignora
10. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades

McLaughlin (Cambridge, Mass.: Har
11. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thous
80 OCTOBER
are generall
exclusively in
tion with re
will or to our
the experien
path and of
against piles
mous figures
reversal of this "subordination" in
order to affirm what could be called a
proximal aesthetics with things - an
alongsidedness without identifica-
tion. Thus, if the audience experi-
ences physical proximity to the per-
formers, the performers never relate
to the audience, refusing even a sim-
ple eye-to-eye exchange. And if the
spectator steps on a landscape made
entirely of familiar daily objects, it is
only to see those objects existing far
away from their intented purpose.
Finally, if the spectator breathes in
dust and mold from all that discard-
ed stuff, literally inhaling particles of Yingmei Duan. Rubbish City. 2008.
Photographs by Elin Lundgren.
history, it is only to be overtaken by a
sudden desire to cough, sneeze, or
puke - thanks to a very real incorpo-
ration of the vapor of things. These
carefully choreographed tensions
between proximity and incorpora-
tion, distancing and excorporation,
which hold the affective atmosphere
and dramaturgical consistency of
Duan's artwork, reaffirm the proxi-
mal yet nonrelational mode of being
with things. In words that are res-
onate with the experience of roam-
ing in Rubbish City , Silvia Benso pro-
posed the development of such an
ethics of things that would promote
the development of ecological and
12. Perniola, The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic, p. 109.
Mewing as Thing 8 1
political awareness: "Only if

which does not submit, beca
subject, can any ecological
and fundamental than the fo
In Rubbish City's apocalypt
not enough. Yet the piece al
subjects are both stripped of
what they can find proximally
thing next to thing. This m
recall that alongsidedness, w
of things, is one of the nec
only in Deleuze and Guattar
morphic political and ethica
"just tarrying alongside" is t
from any manipulation or u
very mode of subjectivation
ing thing by giving space (w
Tickle the Sle
In the opening moments o

Harrell sits on his spectator
parallel rows of chairs on bo
space and then methodically
one's lap, as the catwalk rem
might be, Harrell's repetitive
ates a sense of generalized disc
mate physical interaction re
Transforming subjects into o
of such an act thanks to the
skin. As Fred Moten has sugge
cal force he called "the resis
is one where objecthood and
of (in)visibility and (silenced
field."15 In this confrontatio
despite a history of having be
tus of objects for use and tr
also of capitalism; a history
reduced to the status of comm
13. Benso, The Face of Things, p. x

14. Martin Heidegger, Being and Ti
York, 1996), pp. 88-89.
15. Fred Moten, In the Break: The A
Minnesota, 2003), p. 233.
82 OCTOBER
Two years la
subject with
proximal aest
much as poss
main foyer o
SIT 09. The p
ing drug Am
trol, neither
commanded
dancers' will
metabolic vel
notic chemic
ly eight hour
dancers took
frames on th
ies supposed
form (movem
ing, tremblin
A "thingly z
choreographi
tic discipline
sion) is a kin
expression17)
pher-author,
she risks losin
within a chor
of what is us
movement ot
small percept
alongside unc
just let be. Fi
kind of atten
behind a colu
but still there
eight hours,
an inescapabl
slumber. Harr
16. For a critiq

Performance and
Manning, Relatio
of Petra Sabisch,
epodium, 2011).
17. For a discus
Lepecki, Exhausti
Moving as Thing 83
rial oversight
with an ethica
made him less
an attendant. Yet Harrell's version of
the attendant is not the one that
Deleuze defines in Logic of Sensation:
"An attendant is not a spectator but
part of the Figure." It is "a constant,
or point of reference in relation to
which a variation is assessed."18
Harrell's presence does not belong to

the regime of the "Figure" since his
off-frame presence never allows him
to become a "point of reference" in
the piece's overall plane of composi-
tion. Instead, his attending care sug-
gests the particular erotics Mario
Perniola assigns to the mode of being
he calls "a thing that feels," a mode
predicated on the fact that
the discovery of the

essence of things goes
hand in hand with the
dismissal of any desire
Trajai Harrell. Tickling the
and individual cupidi-
Sleeping Giant #9.
ty. 2009.
Therefore when I
Photographs by David Bergé.
give myself as thing, I
do not mean at all to
offer myself to the

exploitation and the
benefit of others. I do
not offer myself to the

other but to the imper-
sonal movement that at
the same time dis-
places the other from

himself and allows him
in turn to give himself

as thing and to take
me as thing.19
18. Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sensation, trans. D. W. Smith (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
2003), p. 14.
19. Perniola, The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic , p. 109.
84 OCTOBER
Este c
In the first
Me), lines of
ard events in
place, are pr
Fiadeiro walk
on the back
down on the
ter of the sta
ter, and imp
chair, and m
the scene: th
lamp, a meta
ways that are
the armchair
their sides; a
aligns everyt
composition.
es (which he
himself along
Este corpo qu
cept of along
Its title offe
other. As far
occupies anot
of subjectiva
possessed by
"While subjec
is troubled b
possessed - in
possession, p
possession ove
corpo que me
performs a c
use. Restorin
side up; TV
power outlet;
ting room. Th
temporary su
he slouches o
20. Moten, In the
Moving as Thing 85
where objects have been replaced

back to their functional positions to
perform their utilitarian purposes,
we see how a whole system of objects
invades, takes possession, and defines
the very core of subjectivity. We see
that the systematicity of this system
choreographs to the minutest detail,
even at the level of desire, the subject
who is supposedly controlling the sys-
tem. In this mode of usage, an
unbearable portrait of contemporary
passivity emerges thanks to the figure
of the solitary man sitting on a
couch, before a TV set, surrounded
by tamed, decorative nature. This
scene - this image - is held for min-
utes toward the end of the piece,
generating an effect that is not at all
the same as when Fiadeiro was lying
alongside the matter of the world.
What emerges is the realization of
how "immersed in the object of
João Fiadeiro. Este the enjoyer is condi-
enjoyment,
corpo que me ocupa.
tioned by what is enjoyed."21
2008. Photographs by
Patricia Almeida. At this moment of realization,
Este corpo que me ocupa resonates
deeply with Giorgio Agamben's
recent critique of the object. In his
essay "What Is an Apparatus?,"
Agamben describes the object in con-
temporaneity as an overwhelmingly
pervasive system of command. He
writes: "I shall call an apparatus liter-
ally anything that has in some way the
capacity to capture, orient, deter-
mine, intercept, model, control, or
secure the gestures, behaviors, opin-
ions, or discourses of living beings."22
2 1 . Benso, The Face of Things , p. 53.

22. Giorgio Agamben, "What Is an Apparatus ?" and Other Essays (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University,
2009), p. 14.
86 OCTOBER
Endowed with
this "anytfAm
be understood
positions, bod
ular display o
tion of the te
trol, and inst
ratus as an ob
panopticon, s
forth (whose
pen, writing,
cellular teleph
Between pen
that the num
ments is limi
ist developme
proliferation
apparatuses th
ties. As we p
there is not e
contaminated
ratus, then,
experimenta
objects, and
inhabiting ob
subjectivity a
gestures, of d
contemporary
political verv
approach crit
to be governi
function. But
Agamben no
gion or cigare
ly implicit."2
tus, and, mos
calls the "cou
23. For a discus

"On Choreograph
24. Agamben , " W
25. Ibid., p. 15.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid., p. 20.
Moving as Thing 87
action that would lead to r

the reinstatement of the
given to the "use of men"
piece by Spanish choreogra
these capturing and contr
"man" or the need for more instrumental "use."
Solo...?
Karl Marx famously noted that if human activity in general is cap

enacting corporeal transformations on matter by turning it into an object of
instance, by turning a block of wood into a table), under the specific pa
of capitalism, human activity makes objects endure a supplementary, ma
incorporeal transformation, where anything made for the use of hum
into "a very strange thing" called a commodity.29 Guy Debord remarked
this peculiar mode of transformation, "we have the principle of co
fetishism, the domination of society by things whose qualities are 'at the sam
perceptible and imperceptible by the senses.'"30 Debord took this pr
domination and used it to define our "society of the spectacle," which is
ety made of spectacles but one where "the spectacle corresponds to the h
moment at which the commodity completes its colonization of social life. It is no
the relationship to commodities is now plain to see; the world we see is
of the commodity."31
The political destiny of the commodity is, then, to complete its tota
nance over social life, including the life of things, but also over somatic
the commodity's dominance inscribes itself deeply into both inorganic a
ic bodies. Indeed, the commodity dominates not only the world of things
ing them into instruments of profit, or use, or exchange) but also the
what is deemed to be perceptible and what remains imperceptible (or irr
the realm of the sensible and of the infra-sensible, the domain of desi
domain of dreams. The commodity governs even the very possibility of
governance. At least, this is its impetus. Under its domain, humans and t
their shared openness for endless potentiality violently crushed or sub
diminished. Even if the commodity is a material object, its power makes
neither persons nor things are left in peace. In this way, we can se
between Agamben's "apparatus" and Marx's "commodity." But what kin
gesture, or movement can one perform against such dominance? If Agam
posed "profanation," Aitana Cordero 's Solo . . . ? proposes revolt.
28. Ibid., p. 18.

29. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books), p. 163.
30. Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (New York: Zone Books, 1994), p. 29.
31. Ibid, (emphasis added).
88 OCTOBER
Cordero 's Sol

evening-leng
brings to th
domestic obje
set, electric
fans, electric
irrigation sys
laptop compu
gresses, the
changes, along
handles the
ning, the piec
cise in creatin
of everyday p
al minutes, we
ter-of-factly c
ing it on the f
ual accumula
composition
dimensions. A
the Aitana Cordero.
stage Solo
and... ? 2008.
ities ofVideography
displby Filip Molski.
slowly at first
to randomly
stomping on
against each o
or against the
destroy each
ble. Then she
up. Using wh
a straight line
from one side
of objects, Co
fours and, as
follows the wh
it were a chor
Cordero ever
toward the pile
ater slowly dim to blackout.
Carefully, even caringly, as darkness
looms, Cordero pushes her body into
the pile of destroyed, no longer use-
Moving as Thing 89
ful objects. Sh
objects than a
fusion - a con
The piece ends in tranquility,
despite, or perhaps because of, all
the preceding violence against
objects, which now may simply be.
Here, I would suggest we have not
really a "profanation" of the object
for "the use of man" (as Agamben
would have said), but a violent revolt,
performed by a woman against the
domination of things and subjectivi-
ty by the gripping force of that colo-
nizing apparatus known as commodi-
ty. Different from the three pieces
discussed previously, Solo . . . intro-
duces a very explicit link between
revolt and revolution, where violence
emerges not as destructive force but
as the necessary action to break free
subjects and objects, and reveal a
shared mode of being thing, and
moving as thing.
The paradox of any thingly

investment in creating art turns on
the fact that even as a work propos-
es modes of becoming-thing, the
work itself remains, obviously, an art
object. This is the inescapable limit
that thingliness places on all repre-
sentation - it lies at the threshold of
objectivity, just as it defines the

outer border of subjectivity. And,
yet, the current choreographic
interest and investment on thingli-
ness is precisely where such a para-
dox becomes not a dead end but a
source for energizing the links
90 OCTOBER
between art
Within the r
diately subv
mand, and b
human bodie
at last, if on
lies alongside
gently fuses
ecology, and
stuff in a ch
dancer's dru
an "ethics of
a moment. In
and activate
choreograph
an "imperson
and allows him
32. Perniola, The

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Moving as Thing: Choreographic Critiques of the Object

Author(s): ANDRÉ LEPECKI

To give oneself as a thing that feels and to take a thing

To be moved by some thing , rather than by oneself

If there is a distinguishing trait of recent experimental dance, it is th

object of a substantial transf

4. Perniola, The Sex Appeal of the I

stuff; an older male actor sit

10. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades

12. Perniola, The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic, p. 109.

political awareness: "Only if

Tickle the Sle

In the opening moments o

13. Benso, The Face of Things, p. x

16. For a critiq

Harrell's presence does not belong to

the discovery of the

offer myself to the

not offer myself to the

places the other from

in turn to give himself

20. Moten, In the

where objects have been replaced

2 1 . Benso, The Face of Things , p. 53.

23. For a discus

action that would lead to r

Karl Marx famously noted that if human activity in general is cap

28. Ibid., p. 18.

Cordero 's Sol

The paradox of any thingly

objectivity, just as it defines the

source for energizing the links

32. Perniola, The

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