Embodied Performativity and Rhetoric of Populism - some notes and excerpts

A Practice of Appropriation, Parasiting, Identification, Dis-identification and Over-identification

1.    Training populism: How to become a populist? - a tool kit of exercises for almost all emerging populists (or How to Exercise a Research?)

In September 2019, I performed a lecture at TaPRA, a theatre and performance academic conference held annually in the UK. This short intervention was presented in a panel in the context of a research group on ‘Training for Actors’.  I started by identifying myself with the research group’s context, by performing my previous practice of a renowned training to later dis-identify myself with it, whilst still keep parasiting on and appropriating the whole context of ‘Training for Actors’. Later, I ironically subvert it towards the construction of a physicality for populism, offering a toolkit of exercises for people who wish to become a populist or for already populist leaders who wish to better succeed in their public endeavours (over-identification).

Afterwards, I thought about developing this performance-lecture up to an hour’s length. I would continue to explore the morphing of the semiotics of political gesturality into something else. This something else, most likely non-sensical movements, could become the new gesturality for populism, as if in an attempt to draft something more definable concerning populism, and echoing also many political scientists for whom the definition proper of populism is still disputed. As Curato states: ‘For some, populism is an ideology – albeit a “thin” one – that articulates people's resentment against ruling classes (…). For others, populism has no ideological core and is better defined by its “social base”. It refers to those who are increasingly frustrated with their declining status in society, rendering them vulnerable to “irrational protest ideologies”, which can range from fascism to racism and nationalism, among other things.’ (Curato 2016). As an ironic attempt at defining a populist gesturality, she would make the whole notion of populism both more definable and more easily identifiable for the voters.

I was also interested in continuing to explore the ‘role’ of the populist physicality coacher. Two months after the event, I saw a call for a Fair, in which individual artists, theatre groups or charitable organisations could have a stall to sell their work or objects they no longer needed. I thought about applying and setting myself up in a stall selling specially designed movements for each individual customer that wanted to explore and give visibility to their potential growing populist seed. Movements and short choreographies tailored individually to each customer: from walking steps to greeting movements, or rallies movements, or movements to communicate tragic news or great achievements, etc etc, individually designed to their personal aspirations and based on the various types of populism they wanted to project. Whether more or less authoritarian (Inglehard & Norris 2019), whether situated on the left or right-wing (Müller 2016, Inglehard & Norris 2019), thus having different priorities, or whether putting the emphasis ‘on social programs’, ‘employment’ and aiming to ‘expand workers’ benefits’ or ‘prioritise economic stability and physical security’ (Aytaç & Önis 2014). I could offer the option of which type of Othering to prioritise, whether the ‘corrupt elites’ or the ‘immigrants and refugees’ (Curato 2016), or eventually both, or which type of affectual display to focus on, for instance on fear and fear-spreading - caused by the invading Other, as are the Mexicans for Trump, or whether to concentrate on other types of affectual appeal, such as the display of ‘love’ as was a common practice in the couple Perón. ‘Eva Perón’s particular variant was to speak of her “love” for the people’ (Molyneaux & Osborne 2017). And so, for each type of client she could tailor a specific populist movement variant, which she would coach and sell in the moment. At a cheaper price people could purchase the access to a more general (movement) tutorial on these matters, which they could access through a YouTube video.

I could picture myself standing behind the stall counter, shouting at a megaphone or through a rudimentary mic-amplification system, promoting my products: ‘Find your own populist, find the populist in you, at an affordable price! Or invest a little more and have your populist type specially tailored to you!’ 

By this time I also started to explore the embodiment of populist speeches…and then the pandemic started.

2.    The Archive of Improprieties – the subject of the Leader (domestically repurposed to fit within a 10 sqm room).

The material below was pulled out from ‘The Archive of Improprieties – the subject of the Leader – 1st iteration’, a 25 min. work-in-progress performance due to be presented at the Camden People’s Theatre in London, on the 16th of March 2020. Due to the covid outbreak and confinement rules the performance was cancelled. The sound was made by Gregory Jackson. 

In the impossibility of developing live performance and audience participatory/ interaction, I repurposed some of the performative and rhetorical material into short video performances, using tmeans of green screen produced in a domestic DIY set-up, in which I virtually occupied renown venues (visual arts and theatres), improperly bridged analogies between art’s processes and populist rhetoric (e.g. institutional critique in art with populist rhetorical stances on institutional critique.)

In May 2020, as the press was reporting the behaviour of the animals that occupied and inhabited the deserted-of-humans cities, I delivered some speeches from The Archive of Improprieties – the subject of the Leader - 1st iteration at renowned public venues, emptied now from their usual inhabitants.

What seems to be at stake is an implicit critique of institutions, but also on the other hand an implicit desire to occupy a place whose institutionality is criticised. Anti-institutional rhetoric is not only an artistic trend, but equally one of populism, ‘populists are bound to cast doubt on the institutions that produce the “morally wrong” outcomes. Hence they can accurately be described as “enemies of institutions”—although not of institutions in general.’ (Müller 2016: 39) ‘They only oppose those institutions that, in their view, fail to produce the morally (as opposed to empirically) correct political outcomes. And that happens only when they are in opposition. Populists in power are fine with institutions—which is to say, their institutions.’ (62)

Since the late 1960’s many artists such as Allan Krapow, Graciele Carnevale, Guerrilla Art Action Group, Eduardo Favario, or later Andrea Fraser and Liberate Tate had performed practices of institutional critique. Many performed actions of boycott to the institutions, such as Osvaldo Mateo Borglione and Also Bortolotti whilst others occupied them. For instance, in 1975, Christopher D’Arcangelo, an artist who ‘was generally unwelcome in the institutional spaces’ (Johnson 2019: 243) performed a series of ‘unauthorized works’ (1975) in which he handcuffed himself to the building of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York, whilst displaying an anarchist statement on his back.

On the 6th of January 2021, Donald Trump, not accepting the result of the presidential elections, incited his supporters to occupy the Capitol ‘We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong’.[i]  A few hours later the crowd, displaying supportive messages to Donald Trump, stormed the Capitol building and many Trump’ supporters stationed themselves at the Senators’ offices (e.g. Nancy Pelosi’s) and in the House of Representatives Chambers. 

Later, I enacted a speech towards an audience of face-potatoes, as if a premonition of the end of populist politics, the end of a cycle in which rhetoric will cease to overcome politics itself.

To my mind come images and footage of the couple Perón, in the 60s in Argentina, and specially of Eva Perón performing her affected-oriented shows live towards masses cheering and greeting them, where a wave of contagion was propagating like the falling of aligned domino pieces. Opposite to that, the ways nowadays in which contagion and affect-transference happens: through the screens of social media and with the help of algorithms. Donald Trump’s tweets, Bolsonaro’s home-made mobile-phone recorded videos spread in Facebook and other social-media retweeted, reposted, replicated. One stays home to avoid viral contagion, yet other forms of contagion happen nonetheless or are aided by the very mechanisms that are put to avoiding contagion.

3.    As Though you were Watching a Movie.

On the 25th of November 2021, together with Rob Hart (sound design), I performed a 55 minutes work-in-progress experiment at the Howard Theatre, Downing College, University of Cambridge.

Still an ongoing experiment, ‘As Though you were Watching a Movie’ draws upon some of Lauren Berlant’s reflection on genres as a way to organise and normativise bodily/affect experiences and on Benjamin Moffitt’s and Maria Esperanza Casullo’s descriptions of populism as a ‘style of political leadership’.

For instance, some populist leaders’ embracement of ‘low’ and ‘high’ culture, the performance of the strongmen/women (Casullo), performance of crisis and scandals, bipolarization between the so-called elites and people, aversion to complexification (Moffitt). I want to explore the connection between populist spectacle and genres (of performance), for instance, Boris Johnson’s slapstick, performance of failure, goofyness; Duterte’s performance of fear and horror; Bolsonaro’s staging of the private publicly, performance of scandals and a mixing between pedestrian performance and reality show, or melodrama; Le Pen’s performance of the strongwoman; Sara Palin’s seductive cuteness; Trump’s celebrity behaviour, reality show and performance of greatness; and even Obama’s heroic, the Western-like attitude.

Over-identification is a strategy used by makers and activists, as referred by the research collective BAVO, in which artists mime and magnify a given reality in order to clearly show its flaws. The term was coined by Slavoj Zizek to refer to the work of the Slovenian group Laibach in the 80s. Artists that have used these strategies are, for instance, the Yes Men, Christoph Schlingensief, Santiago Sierra and Janez Jansa

The term ‘institutional critique’ was coined by Mel Randem in 1975 and refers to a form of politicised art practice starting in the late 60s and early 70s, in which artists exposed how the political, economic and ideological interests of art institutions ‘intervened and interfered’ in the production of art works. (Alberro 2009: 7-8)