Bergson and Durational Performance: (Re)Ma(r)king Time

By James Layton

Humans have always marked time, whether by using the earth's natural rhythms or with the clock. Unlike pre- industrial people, living in an age of social acceleration is dominated by clock-time and network time, presenting many more options than can possibly be achieved in a human lifespan.

This book explores the possibility of an alternative experience of time, one that is closer to the pure duration described by philosopher Henri Bergson. The discussions in this book contribute to contemporary performance analysis, philosophy and Bergson studies as well as exploring aspects of immersive and participatory performance, walking practices, ritual and online performance.

Using durational performances as case studies, the author demonstrates new insights into Bergson’s philosophy alongside key theorists in psychology and anthropology. Through a series of performance analyses, Bergson's philosophy of duration is coupled with ideas from Maslow, Csikszentmihalyi and Victor Turner to speculate on the possibilities available in challenging an experience of the world in which time is short, but the possibility of experience is abundant.

The main audience is an academic and student market. Undergraduate and postgraduate students of theatre studies, performance and the performing arts, doctoral researchers, researchers interested in time and performance, the relationship between performance and philosophy, those with an interest in philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and psychology will all find much of interest. 

Potential wider readership in those who are interested in the phenomenon of social acceleration, in performance philosophy as well in Bergson’s philosophy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Release date: Sep 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781789386240

James Layton

Dr James Layton is a lecturer in performance at the University of the West of Scotland. His current research examines drama in applied contexts, specifically how drama can be used a tool for change within communities. He is also currently involved in a project in Romania exploring drama in the school curriculum. Other research concerns durational performance in relation to the philosophy of Henri Bergson.

Book preview

PART ONE

1

Bergson, Pure Memory and Pure Duration

Bergson, modernism and modernity

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a succession of inventions and innovations in science and technology reinforced a preoccupation with time that likely influenced Modernist writers and thinkers. The age of modernity is characterized by speed, celebrated by movements such as the Futurists. Innovations such as the beginning of laying trans-Atlantic telegraphic cable (1858), Suez Canal opening (1869), the invention of the telephone (1876), first successful aeroplane flight (1903) and opening of the Panama Canal (1914) were all concerned with travelling or communicating faster and more efficiently. The invention of the commercial typewriter in 1874 meant that offices could work more efficiently. Henry Ford's production line making the Model T was a standard of productivity, such that Fordism has arisen as a term from these practices. Modernity was, for many, a way of seeing and experiencing the world from new perspectives. Changes in technology, science, travel and communication had an impact on many people's lives as well as having a profound effect on artists, writers and thinkers. Movements such as Cubism, Surrealism and Vorticism demonstrated that reality could be represented differently. Bergson's philosophy then, was situated and developed in a world where things could and were seen in different ways.

In the early years of the twentieth century, Bergson was so famous as a philosopher that his public lectures were standing room only and ‘attending his packed lectures was akin to being seen at a society event’ (Ardoin et al. 2014: 4). Between 1909 and 1911, over 200 journal articles were published on his work (Taunton 2016), and such was his influence that his advice was sought from both scholars and statesmen (Gillies 2014). Whilst Bergson's work somewhat fell out of favour with philosophers in the 1930s, his broader influence on twentieth-century philosophy is apparent in the work of Deleuze who, in 1966, published Bergsonism. It was, in fact, Bergson's popularity with the general public that lessened his standing in academic circles. In 1914, English philosopher Bertrand Russell published work that presented major criticisms of Bergson's ideas, which he felt lacked substance. Apart from his impact within philosophy and cultural life, Bergson's more widespread influence can be found in the work of major modernist writers such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot, whose doctoral thesis was on Bergson.

Stream of consciousness novels such as Joyce's Ulysses (1922) and Woolf's Mrs Dalloway (1925) were influenced by Bergson's philosophy of duration. In Mrs Dalloway, a novel which takes place over the course of a single day, the ‘exploration of personal time – where a rush of thoughts can occur in seconds, or hours may pass barely disturbing the surface – is always running up against the clock’ (Taunton 2016). This preoccupation with time as experienced was an important feature of Modernist literature. In Michael Cunningham's The Hours (1998), a reworking of Mrs Dalloway, three central characters exist in three separate times and places. As their stories are told, there is a dream-like quality to the narrative that suggests unfolding of memory rather than linear storytelling according to clock-time. Most famously, Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time (written between 1922 and 1931) illustrates Bergsonian involuntary memory in a long description of a past moment prompted by a simple taste. In this way, the novel's narrative is not so much concerned with clock-time but by the free-flowing nature of memory; memory being important in Bergson's concept of duration.

T. S. Eliot's poetry is often concerned with time. In A Game of Chess (the second part of The Wasteland, published in 1922), the interruptive refrain of ‘HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME’ punctuates the narrative. In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915), Eliot makes reference to ‘time’ throughout the poem (‘for indeed there will be time’; ‘in a minute there is time’). Prufrock's talk of growing old suggests someone looking back on their life through the disorder of memory rather than the linearity of clock-time. In measuring ‘out my life with coffee spoons’, Eliot evokes a sense of slowing down and stepping outside of ‘normal’ time.

In the twenty-first century, Bergson's philosophy is gaining increasing importance once again. Mary Ann Gillies (2014), in considering her readings of Bergson's Time and Free Will some 30 years apart, writes:

what continues to resonate most fully today is the fact that [Bergson] demands that we never cease to be aware of the dynamic nature of thought itself […] my (re)reading is ‘reinforced and swollen by the whole of [my] past’ (TFW, 153) and so, too, is the TFW that I (re)read today. For Bergson, thinking thus always occurs in time, knowledge is always in the process of being made and remade.

(21–22)

The possibilities of Bergson's dynamic nature of thought are explored through an application of his philosophy of duration to performance. In the next part of the chapter, I will outline Bergson's ideas of pure memory and pure duration, concepts that are further explored in Chapters 8, 9 and 10. This chapter continues with an explanation of Bergson's view of memory as constructed either as habit memory or pure memory. The former, according to Bergson, is the one we use to execute everyday tasks and is something we can recall at will. The latter, unlike habit memory, is involuntary and therefore pure. It cannot be stored as one would hold a file in a drawer, nor can its appearance be predicted. For Bergson, this is the most powerful form of memory and offers an experience richer than the everyday functionality of habit memory.

From perception to memory and back again

Science might regard memory as being a function of the brain (O'Shea 2005), that it is held somewhere in the physical body as a catalogue of easily retrievable facts. Bergson (1910), however, regards memory as ‘habit’ or ‘pure’. The former term refers to the memory we use to carry out actions such as recalling lines of text or operating a machine, whereas pure memory is involuntary and unable to be summoned at will. This view is one that is increasingly supported by science, that ‘memories are not possessions […] [t]hey are mental constructions, created in the present moment, according to the demands of the present’ (Fernyhough 2013: 6).

The performances discussed in Part Two draw broadly on pure memory as a tool for approaching each analysis. Whilst each performance account may have drawn on a concerted effort to recall the experiences, many of the details have arrived via pure memory. Duration and memory are inextricably linked and, as my autoethnographic approach relies on memory, I outline Bergson's conception of memory and by association, perception.¹ In Matter and Memory (first published in French in 1896), Bergson presents a diagrammatic representation of perception (see Figure 1.1).

Two shell shapes, one larger, placed on top of a smaller shell shape with the curved end facing downwards. Each shell consists of three segments. There is a centre section where the two shell shapes meet. From top to bottom, the segments are labelled D, C, B, B', C', D'; the centre section is labelled A O.

FIGURE 1.1: Bergson's diagrammatic representation of perception. Adapted from Bergson (1910: 128).

Point O represents the object perceived (the present moment), whilst A, B, C and D represent memories moving further away from the present moment. At point D, memories are deeper and more complex the further removed from point O (the object perceived in the present moment). The further away from point O in time, the details become richer and conform less to the perception image, or what we actually see. In this model of perception, one must always return to point O, as ‘each time one must return to the present to be able to leap once again into the medium of the past’ (Grosz 2004: 174). Points B’, C’ and D’ represent virtual images from the past, that is images that we recall as representations of the past.

Elena Fell explains Bergsonian perception as the ‘conductor of new content being incorporated into our conscious life, and memory is the previously acquired content which gives meaning to what is new’ (2012: 55). Thus, perception and memory cannot be separated in this cyclical process, which I represent in the above diagram (see Figure 1.2).

Six arrows arranged in a circle, moving in a clockwise direction. Words between each arrow are Perception, Memory, Recognition, Process information, Volition, Action.

FIGURE 1.2: The cycle of perception and memory.

The growth of duration via perception is enriched by memory. These stages ‘present a continuity of the inextensive past flowing into the material present and looking into the future’ (Fell 2012: 55). According to Bergson, this cycle explains how we process images and draw understanding from our perceptions. In perceiving an object, we use memory to recognize it and take action accordingly. As Fell notes, ‘[p]erception is the conductor of new content being incorporated into our conscious life, and memory is the previously acquired content which gives meaning to what is new’ (2012: 55). The role of perception then, is to act as a way of accessing memory in a useful way that makes new experiences.

Bergsonian memory

Bergson illustrates memory using an upside-down cone. In Bergson's diagram, the square P represents the plane of existence (i.e. where we happen to be) and S the present (or sensorimotor mechanisms that we experience in the present moment), S being the point at which memory is closest to action. The cone grows at each successive moment, but the present always remains the same. Because the cone is upside-down, we see point AB (joined by a curved line) ‘in the measure that we detach ourselves from our sensory and motor state to live in the life of dreams’ (Bergson 1910: 211). Points AB and A'B’ (both joined by a curved line) represent memory gaining depth as it moves from the plane of existence. Point AB is the furthest point from S and is thus richer in memories as we carry a heavier and heavier memory load with us. It is as if, as Rudolf Bernet notes, ‘the evanescence of the present is ballasted by the weight of the past that not only saves the present from foundering in nothingness but that also gives it a dimension of depth’ (2005: 70, original emphasis). Point AB, being the richest in memory, is also the most ‘dilated level thus represent[ing] a dream-plane, the most languid and expansive of all memories, where memories can elaborate themselves for their own sake instead of being subordinated to a current interest’ (Grosz 2004: 181). The case studies contained in Part Two, and particularly Hotel Medea, draw on Bergson's argument that memories from longer ago are the deepest and purest. In activating these memories, they elaborate for their own sake and disrupt clock-time with pure duration.

A drawing of a cone with its point facing downwards and resting on a square, labelled P. The point of the cone is labelled S. The cone is divided into three sections. From top to bottom, on both sides, the sections are labelled A B, A' B', A'' B''

FIGURE 1.3: Bergson's cone of memory. Adapted from Bergson (1910: 211).

For Bergson, memory was either habit memory or memory proper. Habit memory ‘appears through conscious effort, through repeated learning; [pure memory] occurs spontaneously and often unbeckoned’ (Grosz 2004: 171). Habit memory is action-oriented and future seeking, appearing as an action rather than representation, as a combination of sensation and idea. Memory proper, or pure memory represents and recalls the past. Just as perception reconstructs the material image, spontaneous, it is concentrated in the past. This kind of memory is similar to what happens when we dream. When pure memory and action found in habit memory are at their closest point, the process of recognition occurs, and pure memory is displaced by habit memory.

Michel De Certeau describes memory as ‘a sort of anti-museum: it is not localizable’ (1984: 108); this is Bergson's pure memory – unlike an orderly filing system – it cannot be methodically located. Ann Game notes an important distinction between these two types of memory described by Bergson:

The present is sensori-motor, the materiality of existence, and is unique for each moment of duration. As memory materialises in the body, in movement, it ceases to be pure memory; it is lived in the present. It has moved from virtual, in the depths of the past, to actual, capable of provoking movements.

(1991: 97)

Fell notes, ‘[t]he two types of memory do not function in isolation but constantly interact: pure memory records memory-images of all events of our life’ (2012: 45). The recounting of each performance experience in Part Two uses pure memory, as I draw on the involuntary recollections of the past. In my explication of these performances, it is not necessary to repeat actions, nor for them to unroll in the time it took to experience them, something reflected in the non-linear account of Hotel Medea in Chapter 8. The performances cannot be repeated; each new memory or recollection of a moment is a new event.

Memory moves from an unlocatable position to the body and in doing so, can no longer be pure memory as it is lived in the present. Thus, pure memory is only ever virtual: ‘it cannot be known as something past unless we follow and adopt the movement by which it expands into a present image, thus emerging from obscurity into the light of day’ (Bergson 1910: 173). The actualization of pure memory, in which it moves from the past into the body at the present moment, is duration itself although – because moving from the virtual to the actual is a form of differentiation only – pure memory cannot be regarded as being in the present moment as such.

For Bergson, there is no limit to the memories available to infiltrate the present. Aligned with this thinking about duration being something distinct from time considered in spatial terms, there is no container which acts as a receptacle for memory: because ‘we are so strongly obsessed by images drawn from space […] we cannot hinder ourselves from asking where memories are stored up’ (Bergson 1910: 191, original emphasis). Rather than existing somewhere spatially, all of the past (in the form of memories) continues to survive ‘in the permeation of moments that move us forward’ (Rose 1991: 98). Mark Sinclair notes that, in Bergson's theory of memory, the ‘contraction of the past in the present is a contraction not just of the immediate past but of the whole of our past experience’ (2020: 94). Thus, the number of available memories is limited only by our own past. It is, however, impossible to remember in a pure sense, which is something I acknowledge in my accounts of the performances discussed in Part Two. Sinclair takes a pessimistic view of pure memory: ‘There is something essentially tragic about remembering, for it is doomed to failure, destined never to reach exactly what it seeks. Episodic memory, taken as an attempt to retrieve the past as it was, is a Sisyphean, infinite task’ (2020: 103). Despite this, the actualization of pure memory is a fundamental component of experiencing pure duration as distinct from homogeneous clock-time that is counted in space: ‘the past cannot be gathered in the form of an image, since images are of space and belong in the present, whereas pure memory is not spatial and belongs to the past’ (Sinclair 2020: 105). Although at the moment of pure memory being actualized it is no longer pure, the fact that it has been actualized means it loses none of its power, despite its existence then becoming virtual.

That which excludes all reciprocal externality: Bergson and pure duration

Duration, as a qualitative and thus subjective phenomenon, defies the accurate measurement of productivity and/or negation that can be achieved using clock-time. Despite Bergson scholar F. C. T. Moore's argument for the appropriateness of ‘durance’, I have found his usage to be an exception across the broader range of Bergson scholars and have therefore adhered to ‘duration’ throughout this book. Bergson always used the descriptor ‘durée’ and, in translating this to ‘duration’, there is a risk (noted by Moore) that the English term might be read to ‘refer to a measurable period of time during which something happens’ (1996: 58). While Moore prefers the English ‘durance’ I follow the broader range of Bergson scholars in adhering to ‘duration’ and in trusting to the reader's grasp of context. Furthermore, the authorized translation of Matter and Memory (which I refer to) is noted by Moore as having ‘the great advantage of being revised in proof by the author’ (Moore 1996: 58). Therefore, unless stated as something else, the use of ‘duration’ as a term refers specifically to Bergsonian duration, described as that which ‘excludes all juxtaposition, reciprocal externality, and extension’ (Bergson 1999: 26). In contrast, the term ‘durational’ refers to performance lasting beyond smooth consumption (see Chapter 4 for a detailed discussion of smooth consumption).

At its heart, Time and Free Will, in which Bergson introduces his ideas on duration, is based ‘on the recognition that the sciences overlook real duration, which is the real experience of the passage of time’ (Sinclair 2020: 59, original emphasis). For Bergson, pure duration is defined as that which ‘excludes all idea of juxtaposition, reciprocal externality, and extension’ (1999: 26); in other words, that duration cannot be measured against something else such as hours, minutes and seconds. Bergson argues that duration is defined as succession without distinction and begins his discussion of this by asking what constitutes number. He states that number is a collection of units; a synthesis of one and the many. Bergson is fond of metaphor in his discussion of time and duration, on this occasion using the idea of counting sheep. Although they are all different (else how would a shepherd recognize them?), we ignore their differences, counting only what they have in common; that they are sheep. It is the particular feature of something that allows it to be enumerated. If the 50 sheep described by Bergson are all identical (for the purposes of enumeration), do they exist in space when placed side by side? Or does the counting of sheep in succession mean that they exist in duration? He argues that ‘[w]e cannot form an image or idea of number without the accompanying intuition of space’ (Bergson 1913: 78) and, for number to continue, we must set each sheep next to the other; retaining successive images of the sheep means that they must exist in space.

In another example, Bergson uses the image of a row of balls, successively being counted until the image disappears, leaving only a symbol for expression. It is a habit we have fallen into, Bergson suggests, that we count in time rather than in space. To imagine the number 50, we repeat successive numbers until we reach 50, believing that we have built up to that number in duration only. Bergson suggests, however, that the moments of duration have used points in space with which to count them.

In Bergson's philosophy of pure duration, ‘[e]very clear idea of number implies a visual image in space’ (1913: 79) as, when we add units together, we can visualize them only through the traces left by them in space. Units are divisible only because they are regarded as extended in space. He goes on to say that there are two kinds of units: ultimate and provisional. Ultimate units form number by the process of addition, whilst with provisional units, number, multiple in itself ‘owes its unity to the simplicity of the act by which the mind perceives it’ (1913: 80). In isolation, number does not represent a continuity; when placed alongside another number it is spatial. Number, as a juxtaposition in space, ‘implies a multiplicity of parts simultaneously perceived’ (Bergson 1913: 85).

Bergson's final conclusion is that there are two kinds of multiplicity: material objects that are counted in space and conscious states that elude counting unless represented in a symbolic way. Time is something that allows conscious states to be represented in a homogenous form, countable in space, whereas pure duration is something different. This, then, is the key to marking the heterogeneity of pure duration out as distinct from homogenous clock-time. To demonstrate that pure duration is not connected to space, Bergson summarizes by presenting the following logic: If time is something that can only be counted when divided into discrete series and therefore our understanding of number is counting only what can be considered spatially, pure duration must be different. As Bergson writes: ‘Pure duration is the form which the succession of our conscious states assumes when our ego lets itself live, when it refrains from separating its present state from its former states’ (1913: 100, original emphasis). Bergson sees time as homogeneous and thus spurious because the concept of time as space, he argues, cannot encroach on pure consciousness: ‘we shall see that time, conceived under the form of an unbounded and homogeneous medium, is nothing but the ghost of space haunting the reflective consciousness’ (Bergson 1913: 99).

Space, then, is not the same as pure duration, which ‘might well be nothing but a succession of qualitative changes, which melt into and permeate one another, without any tendency to externalize themselves in relation to one another, without any affiliation with number: it would be pure heterogeneity’ (Bergson 1913: 104). Once one tries to apply homogeneity to duration, space is introduced and, as pure duration is qualitative, it cannot be measured unless ‘symbolically represented in space’ (Bergson 1913: 104).

In another use of metaphor, Bergson uses the example of a pendulum swinging 60 times, marking the passing of one minute:

If I retain the recollection of the preceding oscillation together with the image of the present oscillation, one of two things will happen. Either I shall set the two images side by side […] or I shall perceive one in the other, each permeating the other and organizing themselves like the notes of a tune, so as to form what she will call a continuous or qualitative multiplicity with no resemblance to number. I shall thus get the image of pure duration; but I shall have entirely got rid of the idea of a homogeneous medium or a measurable quantity.

(Bergson 1913: 105)

When one measures time, simultaneities are counted such as when looking at a clock whereas, in pure duration, successive moments infiltrate one another: ‘several conscious states are organized into a whole, permeate one another, gradually gain a richer content, and thus might give any one ignorant of space the feeling of pure duration’ (Bergson 1913: 122). In arguing for the primacy of duration, Bergson suggests that ‘it is through the quality of quantity that we form the idea of quantity without quality’ (1913: 123). For Bergson, duration is a qualitative multiplicity; that is where ‘the moments of inner duration are not external to one another’ (1913: 226) and, when ‘restored to its original purity, will appear as a wholly qualitative multiplicity, an absolute heterogeneity of elements which pass over into one another’ (1913: 229). Ultimately for Bergson, duration is fundamental to existence: ‘to exist is to endure, to persist in heterogenous duration’ (Cunningham 2012: 105). Life cannot be divided into units or measures; only a sense of inner duration unfolds as we endure.

The following chapter explores Bergson's philosophy specifically in relation to performance and introduces some of the ideas visited in Chapters 8, 9 and 10. In particular, I discuss immersive and participatory performance and ritual which are of significance to the subsequent analyses. At the end of Chapter 2, I outline in some detail where aspects of Bergson's philosophy are discussed and further light is shed on pure duration.

NOTE

¹ See discussion of the ‘hyperreflexive I’ in Chapter 4 for a full explanation of how autoethnography has been used.

2

Bergson and Durational Performance: Duration, Immersion, Participation, Ritual

Despite Bergson's significance as a philosopher in the early part of the twentieth century, his ideas fell out of favour in the 1930s and it is only since Deleuze's Bergsonism (1966) that Bergson's writing returned to wider circulation. This absence of Bergson's thought is reflected in the field of performance, with the exception of Laughter (1900), often discussed in relation to comedy as well as a range of other areas including organizational management (see Butler 2015). Despite this lull in Bergson's popularity as a philosopher, recent discussions emerging around his theory of duration and its implications for performance have become more commonplace. In a themed issue of Performance Research, Edward Scheer notes the ‘idea of duration has always been essential to the experience of performance’ (2012: 1) and cites Bergson as a central figure in the discussion of real duration,

with its emphasis on the constant change or flow of time […] a definition that suggests an approach to time that is defiantly non-linear and non-chronological [...] [an] approach to time, and to perception, [that] is not static but fluid and mobile.

(2012: 2)

Scheer's privileging of Bergson as a major influence on philosophies of time positions him as significant in current thinking around duration and performance. Despite this, Bergson is still omitted from discussions of duration and performance. Although noteworthy in its exploration of time, performance and philosophy, Performance and Temporalisation: Time Happens (edited by Grant, McNeilly and Veerapen), does not include a study relating to Bergson. Many others, however, have cited Bergson as central to explorations of performance such as Amelia Jones, who notes Bergson's significance to performance art:

[T]he profound paradox of live events […] is that they are only accessible through human perception; even in the live ‘instant’ (if we can imagine such a thing), we perceive and make sense of performance through bodily memory, itself impossible to pin down or retrieve in any full state.

(2011: 34)

The relevance of Bergsonian duration for performance may be in its ability to interrogate liveness and what it means to be present. In realizing a sense of being present, the loosening of parameters is found in durational work rather than smoothly consumed performance (see Chapter 4 for a full explanation of smooth consumption). This liveness is evident in Katia Arfara's discussion of Kris Verdonck's performative installation End, in which the visual aesthetic and use of slowness is Wilsonesque and places us ‘inside Bergson's time abyss and his concept of simultaneous, coexisting temporalities’ (2014: 52, original emphasis).

For Patrick Robinson, the significance of Bergson's Matter and Memory is that liveness as a source of power is ‘action and indetermination […] in the living body [….] [and] the same question […] floats in the wings of nearly every performance’ (2012: 147). Robinson concludes that encounters between Bergson's philosophy and performance might be multiple rather than singular, raising questions of ‘presence (stage presence, the present moment, liveness), memory (in rehearsal, in the unconscious) and attention (memory, focus, intention) in terms of time, rather than space’ (2012: 147). Throughout the case studies in Chapters 8, 9 and 10, these themes (memory, liveness, the present moment) explore Robinson's hypothesis that ‘we are ready to exercise the power Matter and Memory urges for us’ (2012: 147).

Mark Fleishman uses Bergson's notion of duration in discussing how performance as research exists as embodied repetitions in time. He argues that

through Bergson and then Deleuze we can begin to understand the difference of performance as a mode of research, its refusal of binaries […] its radical openness, its multiplicities, its unrepresentability, its destabilization of all pretensions to fixity and determination.

(2012: 32)

Whilst this is clearly related to practice as research, its implications for using Bergson through which to view and analyze performance are clear: Bergson offers a way of understanding the lack of fixity in an experience of duration in performance, its ephemerality being contingent on a fluid sense of time passing.

Austrian collective AO&'s four-hour performance Old Acquaintance Should Be Forgot takes the form of a meal, where fifteen guests share fifteen courses, exploring the ‘temporality of these participatory and ephemeral events’ (Roberdeau 2012: 130). Roberdeau suggests that AO&'s slowed down rhythms of the shared meal illustrates ‘their intensely durational praxis of living and cooking [that] successfully renegotiates everyday aesthetic awareness’ (2012: 134). Drawing on Bergson's notion that perceptions are impossible to isolate as they consist of many millions of tiny vibrations (see Chapter 6, p. 98), Roberdeau argues that the isolation of tastes in Old Acquaintance might facilitate the distinction between the essence of things and the unity of experience that holds them together.

Lara Shalson uses the parameters of a performance normally lasting beyond 90 minutes to define durational work. For Shalson, durational performance offers the ‘opportunity to concentrate on a single, often very simple, idea or activity for an extended period of time, in the belief that such engagement yields certain rewards’ (2012: 103). In her article, which argues that durational performance can offer a sense of something different from homogenized late-capitalist culture, Shalson cites Bergson as being centrally important as an alternative way of viewing and experiencing time in performance. Using works by Marina Abramović, Jamie Isenstein, and Yingmei Duan, Shalson examines how experiences of these works might proffer a different way of viewing time.

Following theorists such as Robert Hassan (2007) who argue we are now in the age of networked time – an advancement on the changes brought about during the industrial revolution – Shalson suggests, ‘[t]he problem with networked time is not that we view time as external and homogenous, nor is it that we fail to experience the multiplicity of duration’ (2012: 103) but that our attention is less focused, as we are constantly directed to multiple diversions simultaneously, a notion resonating with Rosa's hypothesis of social acceleration (see Chapter 3). Shalson regards durational performance as being able to counter this, a position for which I also argue. In discussing her participation in Marina Abramović Presents (Whitworth Gallery, 2009), Shalson notes that ‘by focusing on the time spent, rather than on what transpired during it, the four-hour period […] is transformed into a quantified representation of precisely that which escapes such measurement’ (2012: 105). Similarly, my focus is on the time spent and experience of that time in selected performances. The events of each performance are discussed at length to give a sense of my experience, but it is the fact that the performances happened over a certain amount of time rather than what happened that takes precedence. Shalson's point that simple focus on single tasks or activities over a period of time might produce a reward may seem different from the immersive nature of Hotel Medea and Einstein on the Beach. It is, however, the commitment of engaging with durational performance regardless of content that I suggest offers a transformative outcome.

In the next part of this chapter, I elaborate on some of the areas explored later in Chapters 8, 9 and 10. Beginning with Hotel Medea, I introduce the notion that the journey to the performance is as important as the performance itself, therefore stretching the durational experience. I also outline some discussions concerning immersive and participatory performance and consider them in relation to making sense/sense making. With regards to Einstein on the Beach, I consider how Robert Wilson's use of time in his other works supports a case for the realization of Bergsonian duration. Finally, I provide an overview of walking art practices as context to Wilson's Walking. Furthermore, I discuss the significance of ritual and transformation in this production.

Challenging assumptions and challenging smooth consumption

By challenging audience expectations, perceptions and the after-work theatre culture, Hotel Medea also challenged meaning making by its extended length and nocturnal form. Citing Frank Coppieters’ work on theatre audience perceptions, Susan Bennett notes, ‘[p]erceptual processes in the theatre are, among other things, a form of social interaction’ (2005: 91). Coppieters’ data were gathered from two performances in 1976 where the usual frameworks of theatre were broken. Significantly, he also noted that audiences ‘generally felt frustration because they were denied the usual channels of making meaning’ (2005: 91).¹ Thus, whilst there are many examples of plays, musicals, operas and other cultural forms that do indeed exceed two hours, they challenge our comfortable levels of consumption, even when taking into account differing levels of enculturation in individuals. There can also be an expectation that a performance falling short of a particular length somehow offers less value to the consumer. This suggests another paradox of a socially accelerated culture; because we are offered so many choices, we attempt to condense them into as short a time as possible to maximize the value of everything, but when offered something that is beyond comfortable consumption (and logically therefore of greater value) it can seem less appealing.

Directors of ZU-UK, Jorge Lopes Ramos and Persis Jade Maravala, claim that in Hotel Medea, ‘we intended to create a personal experience that would separate this group from the rest of the world by highlighting the eventness of the occasion’ (2016: 153, original emphasis). For me, another significant aspect of Hotel Medea was that it was not primarily concerned with duration but, as its length was beyond comfortable levels of consumption, I understood it as having duration at its core. Many durational works (i.e., work with duration as a core element) allow audiences to drop in and out of the action. Forced Entertainment's Quizoola (1996) and And on the Thousandth Night (2000), plan b's Bed Full of Songs (2003) and How do you keep talking even when you've said everything you thought possible? (2003) are all examples of durational work that allow audiences to make their own decisions regarding length of stay. Whilst I regarded Hotel Medea as being concerned with duration, it did not share this feature of audience choice commonly found in durational performances.

Adrian Heathfield defines duration in aesthetic terms as ‘a sense passage in which corporeal attention is drawn to (a) time reforming’ (2009: 22, original emphasis). His parenthesis of ‘a’ implies different times; the time that we measure in clocks, and its alternative, duration. It is the experience of time being (re)evaluated and (re)formed as duration that is central to my analysis of Hotel Medea, thus, offering a transformative experience akin to Maslow's concept of peak-experiences, something I explore later in Chapter 8.

Sensing time

When we ask, ‘what is the time?’ there is, according to the clock or network, a definitive answer. It is 1 p.m, 3 a.m., midday and so on. In this way, time can be measured, planned and used for work, leisure and generally synchronizing activities with others. Duration, however, is something that can only be sensed. In the next few pages, I unpack the notion of making sense and sense making in relation to Hotel Medea and consider how