‘I’ & ‘LOVE’ & ‘YOU’ /

Collaboration as a Lover’s Discourse

by Daniel Kok
Inexpressible Love1

écrire / to write

Enticements, arguments, and impasses generated by the desire to

“express” amorous feeling in a “creation” (particularly of writing).

In recent years, notable dance artists have paired up in

collaborative efforts that explore identity via notions of difference.

Some examples include “Pichet and Myself” directed by Jerome Bel

to investigate cultural/historical differences between himself and

Pichet Klunchun; and Akram Khan’s (sometimes unlikely) pairings

with various artists - Sylvie Guillem, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Juliette

Binoche, each one a celebrity in his or her own right. Meg Stuart is

an even better example since collaborations have somewhat

become the raison d’être of her artistic practice.

I continually seek out collaborative situations. I like to create

work in dialogue, and dance with others in a conceptual way.

These meetings help you define yourself but also disrupt you.

I enjoy the rupture, collaborating with others leads you to

places you wouldn't dare venture on your own. (Stuart)

1
I have inserted some of Roland Barthes ‘fragments’ that define aspects of the
lover’s discourse at various sections of my essays (in blue). This is to suggest that
I have read Barthes’ discourse as I write my own. The definitions that the lover’s
discourse offers have helped me weave together my own discussion. In the later
part of my essay, I map my reading of Barthes’ text onto my reflections on
collaboration in performance.
Through engaging in dialogue with other authors, Stuart exposes

her practice to artistic differences. This necessarily entails a process

of negotiations, and conflicts that may result in compromises as well

as resolutions. In a duet, a convergence of two erstwhile soloists,

the authorial position of an artist is displaced, made to move and

put to the test by the other.

This strategy has come to constitute a shift in focus in collaborative

dance from attempts to objectively define artistic signatures in

collective terms to dynamic exchanges whereby the process of

negotiation is the art in and of itself. Collaboration has emerged as a

plausible and popular modus operandi in contemporary dance to

tackle broad questions of authorship and facilitate artistic discovery.

But what is the nature of the discovery that an artist is looking for

in/through/with another that he cannot find in himself? What is the

essence of this gap between two authors that cannot be easily

bridged even though inherent in a collaboration is also an attempt

to build that bridge? How does such a collaborative process -

characterized by the politics of difference, the attendant conflicts,

and the likely frustrations - produce movement for the stage? How

can the gap between two bodies be SEEN?

Union
union / union

Dream of total union with the loved being.

The outcomes of collaborative practices have also been discussed

as the production of a gestalt, a “third” entity produced by

dialectical differences. The “third” is neither the sum of one-plus-

one nor the difference of one-minus-one. It refers instead to the

potential discovery, as-yet unknown, that is best described as the

dynamic relationship between two figures. Otherwise an open

concept, the “third” is characterised by tension, by potentialities, by

negotiation.

The writer, filmmaker and net activist, Florian Schneider addresses

this gap between two parties by distinguishing the use of the term

“collaboration” starkly from “co-operation”. This allows us to

conceive of collaboration as a process of differentiation rather than

unification.

“While co-operation involves identifiable individuals within and

between organizations, collaboration expresses a

differentiated relationship made up of heterogeneous

elements […] As such they are not identifiable or subject to

easy categories of identity, but defined out of an emergent

relation between themselves” (Schneider, 2007)

In collaboration, the heterogeneity of conflicting elements is

sustained. Such an approach to collaboration has clear political

ramifications. Particularly since the end of the Cold War, the word

‘collaboration’ in contemporary performance usage has replaced

notions of ‘collectivism’; the former is preferred as it is considered

more amenable to the pluralist values of democracy whilst the latter

is perceived to subordinate individual freedoms under authoritarian

agendas.

Nevertheless, in her essay, “Collectivity? You mean Collaboration”,

Bojana Cvejic revisited the idea of collectivity in terms of

community. To her, a liberal artistic community still operates via

notions of collectivism even if not motivated by common goals. The

contemporary artistic community functions through the network;

within which different stakeholders of the community capitalize on

each other’s capacities, even if to fulfill individualistic objectives.

This is analogous to the dictionary definition of the word

‘collaboration’ which connotes the pejorative idea of ‘working with

the enemy’, an idea that Florian Schneider also shares. The

implication is that even contradictory needs in a collaborative

environment can be met concurrently and singular identities do not

have to be forfeited in order to facilitate the mobilization of the

community.
According to Cvejic, there is at best a ‘community of discourse’ but

the contemporary performance artist essentially still operates as a

monad. As a soloist, the contemporary artist critically defines the

parameters of his own choreographic practice and produces

performative text independently, even if the authoring of his oeuvre

is necessarily supported by discursive exchanges shared with

others. The artist-as-soloist in this sense, is actualized by the

community.

“For if the soliloquy and the monologue seem to be stand-ins

for self-realisation and initiation, at the same time there arises

a fundamental impossibility: solo happens with regard to the

‘you’, to the outside, to the opposite, to the other; the self

constitutes itself only in a dialectic with community.” (Allsopp,

2009)

Domnei

dépendance / dependency

A figure in which common opinion sees the very condition of the

amorous subject, subjugated to the loved object.

In this assessment, the collaboration between ‘I’ and ‘you’ does not

produce a ‘we’. The resultant third-term is not a fixed article. A

synthesis of identities is not presupposed. Therefore, collaboration

is an open concept insofar as it is not accompanied by a defined set

of rubrics or predictable outcomes. As an active unfolding of

relational politics, the third-term remains responsive and contingent

to the actions of its collaborators.

“So, for "us" or to be able to say "we," there is only something

like this phenomenon taking-place. The "taking-place", in other

words, signifies a contact of singularities and the law of

touching in this contact is not fusion, but separation. It is the

heterogeneity of surfaces that touch each other; heterogeneity

that stimulates further heterogenesis, and not homogenization

under the responsibility of one or the attraction to one author.”

(Cvejic, 2005)

Here, Cvejic’s analogy is particularly interesting. Comparing

collaboration in the context of dance and performance practice to a

‘touching of surfaces’ conjures the image of the pas de deux, two

bodies dancing together in close physical contact. Of course,

Cvejic’s idea of different surfaces coming into contact does not

purport a union. On the contrary, it suggests that collaboration

between separate and disparate elements brings about a

proliferation – the possibility of two become many through

movement. The contemporary pas de deux would have to shaped

by a different vocabulary, one that signifies multiplicity.

Talking

declaration / declaration
The amorous subject’s propensity to talk copiously, with repressed

feeling, to the loved being, about his love for that being, for himself,

for them: the declaration does not bear upon the avowal of love, but

upon the endlessly glossed form of the amorous relation.

In their collaborative tour de force, “Maybe Forever (2007)”, Meg

Stuart’s uncompromising expressive poetics is matched with Philipp

Gehmacher’s restrained gestures. Stuart has referred to emotions,

excess and narrative as words she is ‘not afraid of when [she] talks

about dance’ while Gehmacher is known more for a minimalist,

spartan aesthetic and performative ambiguity.

The juxtaposition of their palpably different disciplines resulted in a

duet centered on a notion of struggle; perhaps more accurately, the

performance is a eulogy to a failed romantic struggle, a pas de deux

in which the partners come together not in celebrative union but to

play out the push-pull ambivalence of their strained relationship. It

is not clear however, if this bad romance is also a metaphor for the

collaborative relationship between these two authors.

Stuart would move in to Gehmacher’s outstretched arms for an

embrace but the latter’s mind seems elsewhere. His hands do not

acknowledge her but are preoccupied with shaping some other

thought. With much effort, he finds her eventually, only that she has

slipped tentatively away.

Alternating between text and movement, intelligible speech and

murmurs, abject bodies and spent humanity, the two figures of

“Maybe Forever” stretched their performance of emotional

exhaustion over 80 minutes. A sense of tedium pervaded the

theatre. One could not ascertain if this cloud of emptiness is in itself

a representational device; an opportunity for the audience to

partake first-hand in a relationship that has lasted for too long.

Attempts were made to articulate ambivalence (this is fascinatingly

ironic): gestures come across as incomplete, singing disintegrates

into mumbling, and sentences would undermine one another. Stuart

muttered into the microphone, “Remember I told I couldn’t live

without you? I take that back.”

“I am engulfed, I succumb…”

s’abîmer / to be engulfed

Outburst of annihilation which affects the amorous subject in

despair or fulfillment.

So, what is the consequence (of love) when utterances (of love) are

negated by one another? What compels the subject to keep

expressing love when he no longer has any faith in it? In “Maybe

Forever”, love and its breakdown brings about the disavowal of love

as a performance in itself. In the duet, each figure is prompted by

the other to move, to perform gestures that simultaneously beckon

and reject the other. Each moves because of the other. Each leaves

an imprint on the other who moves. They move together in spite of

their differences. They stay apart despite being together on stage.

How does this reading of “Maybe Forever” help us to further

understand Meg Stuart and Philipp Gehmachers’ approach to

collaboration or by extension, the movement required to grapple

with the politics of collaborative practices in dance?

I Love You

je-t’-aime / I-love-you

The figure refers not to the declaration of love, to the avowal, but to

the repeated utterance of the love cry.

According to Roland Barthes’ glossary of love, ‘I love you’ has no

meaning beyond its utterance. It is the declaration’s repeatability,

rather than the successful transmission of its message, that

preoccupies the subject. The subject speaks to the beloved but it is

never clear who or what he is addressing; neither does any

response from the object of love seem adequate or relevant. Does

he love the actions of the beloved or the effect the beloved has on

him? Is he in love with the beloved as an idea? Does the utterance

proclaim any more but that the subject is in love, perhaps with love

itself? Does this expression of love not come back to the subject as

an image of himself?
In the end, ‘I love you’ is no more than a speech-act, and as such,

torn between language and meaning,

“The word (the word-as-sentence) has a meaning only at the

moment I utter it; there is no other information in it but its

immediate saying: no reservoir, no armory of meaning.

Everything is in the speaking of it: it is a formula… then to

what linguistic order does this odd being, this linguistic feint,

belong, too articulated to be no more than an impulse, too

phatic to be a sentence?” (Barthes, 1977)

Motivated by his desire, the lover makes an utterance that never

becomes clearly meaningful. The object of love is addressed as an

absence, a lack that stimulated the utterance in the first place. If a

statement was intended, it is not successfully issued. If something is

issued, it is not a coherent statement.

The Absent One

absence / absence

Any episode of language which stages the absence of the loved

object – whatever its cause and its duration – and which tends to

transform this absence into an ordeal of abandonment.

Since the lover, ‘I’, never absolutely, truly sees the beloved, ‘You’,

he is caught in a liminal space in which he deploys a language that

is ultimately inadequate. Yet he persists in his Beckettian

expression. Despite failure, ‘I’ struggle to address that void, obliged

to communicate with a ‘you’ that exists essentially as a fabrication.

Suspended by desire, the lover’s impulse results in a movement. ‘I’

moves as a result of ‘you’ and that movement is constituted as

‘love’. ‘I love you’ can be seen as a gesture, an attempt of ‘I’ moving

towards ‘you’. It addresses the gap between two figures. It neither

brings about a union nor any longer maintains two figures as

discrete singularities. The gap between subject and object is never

bridged.

‘Love’ is then a sustained tension that bonds ‘I’ to ‘you’. The Self is

motivated by desire to move towards the Other but the

consequence is merely the endeavor, an attempt at understanding,

suspended in motion. This movement of desire, vacillating between

language and meaning, does not have a definite shape since its

materiality is an incidental outcome, a by-product of the amorous

address from Self (‘I’) to Other (‘you’).

To Love Love

annulation / annulment

Explosion of language during which the subject manages to annul

the loved object under the volume of love itself: by a specifically

amorous perversion, it is love the subject loves, not the object.

Relating the lover’s restless consciousness and his expressive urges

to an artist-as-soloist in a collaborative context allows us to

articulate the quality of movement material as a consequence of

desire. Stuart herself has declared that:

“…all movement expresses desire. Not simply physical desire

or the erotic or the material desire of wanting, owning or

inhabiting something but the desire to make contact, to

announce to expose oneself to the viewer and the other on

stage. Consequently all movement also expresses and

incorporates the missing, the failed communication, the

censored and all conditions real or projected that block any

action or connection from taking place.” (Stuart)

The Uncertainty of Signs

signes / signs

Whether he seeks to prove his love, or to discover if the other loves

him, the amorous subject has no system of sure signs at his

disposal.
How would this movement of desire - so imprecise, so formless, so

elusive - appear? How can what will fail be enacted?

The lover’s ‘language of solitude’ oscillates between movement and

spoken word, between pure desire and meaningful action, although

through gestures, the liminal space between Self and Other is

delineated. As the subject is moved by, moves towards and retreats

from the Other, his statements are provisional and gestures

irresolute.

In “Maybe Forever”, the gestures are uncanny and sentences half-

meaningful. They keep breaking down and negate one another. In

the sense that both performers were constantly present, engaged

by the other, their bodies were dynamically charged. Yet, their

movement comes across as afterthought more than convictions –

listless, vague, and unsettled.

“Maybe Forever” could be read as a representation of the ontology

of the contemporary pas de deux, even though this duet holds two

bodies apart; their contact remains just a possibility. Physical

gestures reach across the threshold that separates one from

another but never surmounts it.

Philipp Gehmacher’s outstretched arms opens up his body, exposing

it to space. His hands observe where the body ends and otherness

begins. His gestures at once give him intimacy with space but also

distance himself from it. (Is this an acknowledgement of the limits of

authorship?) His hands lead him towards the other, expressive of

something… a vague sensing… of his partner. Is she still there? With

his melancholy dance, he tries to find her. He does not seem to

know that she is doing the same.

As witnesses to each other, artists find themselves through the

other in a collaboration. In the contemporary context, the

movement vocabulary that collaboration engenders is likely to be

dynamic as well as tentative.

(2669 words)
References

Allsopp, Ric (2009): Producing the Space of Appearance: solo,

collaboration and ‘insideness’ (unpublished paper)

Barthes, Roland (1977): A Lover’s Discourse, Fragments. Richard

Howard (trans.), London: Vintage, 2002

Cvejic, Bojana (2005) ‘COLLECTIVITY? YOU MEAN COLLABORATION’

http://www.republicart.net, EIPCP multilingual webjournal ISSN 1811
– 1696

Nancy, Jean-Luc (2000): Being Singular Plural, Robert D. Richardson

& Anne E. O'Byrne (trans.), Stanford, California: Stanford University
Press, 2000.

Peeters, Jeroen (2007): Living Together on Stage. First published

in: herbst. Theorie zur Praxis, Sept 2007

Peeters, Jeroen ‘Take a Walk on the Wild Side, and Talk’

http://www.corpusweb.net/

Schneider, Florian (2007) ‘On Collaboration’

http://summit.kein.org/node/190

Stuart, Meg ‘portrait’

http://www.goethe.de/kue/tut/cho/cho/sz/stu/stu/enindex.htm