MRPJ#23/Now: Extras

See, when we go to a work of art, 90 percent of our reactions and our expectations are controlled by convention. We are used to seeing a certain kind of stylistic thing in the theater, and that becomes deadening, because once we are used to seeing it it becomes a lie. It no longer speaks to us in a truthful way. Practically every important moment in the history of theater has not been “realer” or “truer” than the moment that went before, but it’s been a cold glass of water thrown in the face to wake the audience up by showing what was not expected. Which implies that the real issue in art is the audience’s response. Now I claim that when I make things, I don’t care about the audience’s response, I’m making them for myself. But I’m making them for myself as audience, because I want to wake myself up. And I assume that other people might be woken up by what wakes me up. But, you see, art is a kind of strategic manuever. There is no work of art that has ever been made that is absolutely truthful about life. — from “Richard Foreman Interviewed by Ken Jordan”

NOW, an issue just shy of the events of Sept 11 and the War on Terror, addresses the concept and practice of now in performance, art, culture and politics. The introduction to this issue, a reprint of dictionary definitions, reveals the impossibility of arriving at a singular understanding of now. Reflected in the articles are a need to articulate the immediate moment, but also the presence of multiple realities and the inability to grasp ‘now’ separate from memory and expectation. Our featured article is “Excerpts From A Letter To Marion From India; 03-01-01, Chennai Dusk” by KJ Holmes, which speaks to the heightened perceptions that come with being afar, facing mortality, and the way impressions are fleeting, carrying layers of past and present.

I feel it I feel an impending folding I feel a folding and shrinking but please bless this edge of a new economy before it goes away please bless this moment Om Shanti Om Shanti 20 dollars yoga class that taught me how to be here now be here now be here now… — from “Buyer’s Remorse” by Mike Albo

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