ROBOTIC and SYNTHETIC PERFORMANCE: Steps Toward a Culture of Liberation a Manifesto of the OmniCircus
II. THE RIDDLE
There is a riddle buried deep within the art forms of history, a riddle which, when solved, unlocks the social forces of the culture which created the form, makes them transparent and easily understood. Why is it so hard to unlock this puzzle? Everyone can feel the mysterious power and effect of works of art. But the immense technical and social forces of history, which find concrete expression in the things we make, speak a very strange language indeed.
In the social life of humanity, few activities are as inexplicable as those involving artistic creation. Art is seemingly the most abstract of social acts - far removed from the practical, even further from the necessary. Even so, there is something that drives us towards the miracle of artistic creation like a paper clip to a 10,000 lb. electro-magnet. Like a magic act, or a religious apparition, art seems to thrive on mystery, and disappear under the hammer blow of brute force explanation. As the uncritical media response to any number of recent apparitions proves - (Jesus in an oil stain, Mary in a chandelier reflection) - we seem to be more comfortable when the causes of the miraculous are examined with - how shall I put it? - a minimum of efficacy? Less than total enthusiasm?
Most who present themselves as judges of the quality of our present-day artistic miracles never deign to reveal the frame of reference for their pronouncements. To be sure, it is only recently that such a discussion would be possible. Plato told us that art is ideal approximations in earthly materials of unearthly ideal forms which just happen to resemble earthly things; is it any wonder that the Catholic feudal aristocracy found it easy to overthrow this early attempt at a science (?) of art and replace it with the icon? The bourgeois revolution overthrew all the old answers and opened up the game, for a time. After all, we do like our miracles simple, our explanations more so. The countless thousands murdered by the Catholic Inquisition in their struggle against science and heresy couldn't crush the new and dangerous empiricism, the corresponding activity of "realistic" drawing, the resulting creation of new artistic language-forms, or ultimately the basic question - why art? Today our noble art priesthood again attempts to create a consensus by obscuring the question amidst clouds of incense and mystic formalist double talk, and we again must ask - why art?
What motivated the nomads of primordial days to indulge in painting and sculpture even though their conditions of life involved a brutal hunt and constant threats to survival? Why has practically every culture deemed it necessary to express itself in terms of image, sound, movement, and mechanics? Marxists believe that the development of technology and material production has been the engine driving history forward, with class conflict providing the spark; what possible role could artistic expression play in the turning of these giant wheels? Is art primarily a "spiritual" or "emotional" act, expressing some fundamental human desire for self-expression, independent of, or peripheral to, the concrete needs of the society that creates it? Is it at bottom an ideological tool, simply another vehicle for the propagation of philosophic or political ends? Or does art play a material role - does it in some way contribute to the development of our technique, our mastery over the forces of nature, adding to our productive capacity, thus making our survival more assured? What role does theater, ritual and myth play in the development of human behavior? And why, why, oh me oh my, does mechanical performance appear so early, and re-appear so often, in the history and evolution of theater?