DIY History | Transcribe | Campus Culture | I.C. Notebooks 1 | 1971-12-10 ""Ubiquitous caveat of the 70's: 'No shirt, No shoes, No service'""

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1971-12-10 ""Ubiquitous caveat of the 70's: 'No shirt, No shoes, No service'""

Ubiquitous caveat of the 70s: "No shirt, No shoes, No service."

This out-of-service waiter also recalls the famous line from the Duchamp/Cabanne dialogue:

"I live the life of a waiter"

I stand beside a small table in the center of the rug winding the mechanical penguin,. which toddles around a miniature drawing room, upsetting the tiny pieces of furniture.

"So art must tend toward anti-art, the elimination of the 'subject' (the 'object' the 'image'), the substitution of chance for intention, and the pursuit of silence."
Susan Sontag, The Aesthetics of Silence

The toy penguin periodically stops, bending its head to one side as if listening. The sound of the natural world briefly intrudes, cueing me to act. I again wind my surrogate to continue pushing back the furniture and clearing its space outside the museum. The literary device of framing itself the narrative,a reduced reflection of the original, reappraised and with intensified focus. The accompanying text, a long list of animal sounds, is handed to the audience members in a printed program. It reads, in part

....quack,cackle,gaggle,guggle; gobble, gabble, cluck, clack, crow; grunt, gruntle, snort; pipe, pule, blatter, chatter, sing,chirp, chirrup,cheep,tweet,twitter, chuckle,chir, whir coo,caw,croak,crunk,hoot,honk,boom; grate, chirk, crick; stridulate, squeak.....

December 10, 1971; 8 PM

The Metaphor of the Actor Gaining the Right to Speak is the piece most activated by silence. The title focuses on the physical presence of a "body" as it is moved onto the stage, indefinitely delaying the need for an accompanying text. 

"As a property of the work of art itself, silence can exist only in a cooked or a nonliteral sense...Instead of raw or achieved silence, one finds various moves in the direction of an ever receding horizon of silence - moves which, by definition, can never be fully consummated."
Susan Sontag, The Aesthetics of Silence

This boulder, which reflects the Artaud-inspired physicality of the nearly mute actors of the Iowa Theatre Lab, creates a stage presence by the enormity of its weight. Studio theatre, an aging wooden structure, serves as the sounding board for its thud and vibration. The granite boulder, referred to in geological terms as a 'glacial erratic', had been shaped by its journey from northern Minnesota to the Iowa City vicinity two and half million years earlier. Frozen and flowing water and the interaction of its fellow erratics were elemental forces that had propelled it on its journey. 

"Stones - particularly hard stones - go on talking to those who wish to hear them."
Breton

The anthropomorphism of this entity began at the moment of its movement, and when I begin to lever it across the floor, it has, by its history, signaled its intent. The humanization of the boulder or the dehumanization of the worker/performers asks the audience to broaden its definition of an actor. This ancient, when brought before an audience, accepts its roll: an envoy of the earth art movement (readymade), arriving at the stage door in the scoop of a front-end loader, takes its place through the literary device of the pathetic fallacy as a human(ized) body.

-3-

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Ubiquitous caveat of the 70s: "No shirt, No shoes, No service." This out-of-service waiter also recalls the famous line from the Duchamp/Cabanne dialogue: "I live the life of a waiter" I stand beside a small table in the center of the rug winding the mechanical penguin,. which toddles around a miniature drawing room, upsetting the tiny pieces of furniture. "So art must tend toward anti-art, the elimination of the 'subject' (the 'object' the 'image'), the substitution of chance for intention, and the pursuit of silence." Susan Sontag, The Aesthetics of Silence The toy penguin periodically stops, bending its head to one side as if listening. The sound of the natural world briefly intrudes, cueing me to act. I again wind my surrogate to continue pushing back the furniture and clearing its space outside the museum. The literary device of framing itself the narrative,a reduced reflection of the original, reappraised and with intensified focus. The accompanying text, a long list of animal sounds, is handed to the audience members in a printed program. It reads, in part ....quack,cackle,gaggle,guggle; gobble, gabble, cluck, clack, crow; grunt, gruntle, snort; pipe, pule, blatter, chatter, sing,chirp, chirrup,cheep,tweet,twitter, chuckle,chir, whir coo,caw,croak,crunk,hoot,honk,boom; grate, chirk, crick; stridulate, squeak..... December 10, 1971; 8 PM The Metaphor of the Actor Gaining the Right to Speak is the piece most activated by silence. The title focuses on the physical presence of a "body" as it is moved onto the stage, indefinitely delaying the need for an accompanying text. "As a property of the work of art itself, silence can exist only in a cooked or a nonliteral sense...Instead of raw or achieved silence, one finds various moves in the direction of an ever receding horizon of silence - moves which, by definition, can never be fully consummated." Susan Sontag, The Aesthetics of Silence This boulder, which reflects the Artaud-inspired physicality of the nearly mute actors of the Iowa Theatre Lab, creates a stage presence by the enormity of its weight. Studio theatre, an aging wooden structure, serves as the sounding board for its thud and vibration. The granite boulder, referred to in geological terms as a 'glacial erratic', had been shaped by its journey from northern Minnesota to the Iowa City vicinity two and half million years earlier. Frozen and flowing water and the interaction of its fellow erratics were elemental forces that had propelled it on its journey. "Stones - particularly hard stones - go on talking to those who wish to hear them." Breton The anthropomorphism of this entity began at the moment of its movement, and when I begin to lever it across the floor, it has, by its history, signaled its intent. The humanization of the boulder or the dehumanization of the worker/performers asks the audience to broaden its definition of an actor. This ancient, when brought before an audience, accepts its roll: an envoy of the earth art movement (readymade), arriving at the stage door in the scoop of a front-end loader, takes its place through the literary device of the pathetic fallacy as a human(ized) body. -3-