5/15/2021: Who & What Performs
My good friend – maybe my best friend – and I are at an outdoor art exhibit's reception. He's in all black, actually bothering with a nice-looking outfit. Me, I'm wearing whatever. Or at least I think I was. The venue has a huge yard in front of it, which makes it great for this sort of event. There's even a little creek that splits it in two, plus scattered trees and green grass and then a few little exercise-type things like tightropes tied between trunks and hanging swings.
The swings were of particular interest, though I was trying my hand at the tightropes for a minute or two in my slightly wine-tipsy boldness. My friend is over on the swing, taking big pulls from his small plastic cup of white – might've been rosé – and I come over to photograph him. It feels like an interesting, funny candid because the swings' seats are a shade of royal, borderline neon purple. There's a juxtaposition between my friend's all-black attire and the crass color of the swing. He laughs when I show him the photos I take.
I promise this is relevant to performativity. All of the build-up in this post here is leading up to this moment. As we're sort of giddy and enjoying ourselves, walking back from the swings to get more wine if I remember correctly, he says – completely unprompted, with no knowledge of the project I'm working on – "it feels kind of performative." I'm a bit taken aback by this. I think, what does performative mean here? So, I ask him. He clarifies that the hot swing is what's being performative in this situation. That's even more surprising to me.
Do objects perform?
I wouldn't have guessed that the inanimate objects could be seen as performing; it would've made more sense to me if he felt like he was performing with the all-black attire.
Perhaps, here, it is the collaboration between my friend's outfit and the swing's purple that enables the 'performative' categorization. Similar to the way that theater consists of actors performing in combination with an assembled set – it's unnatural; an established guise. Though the literal definitions for 'performative' and 'performance' involve some sort of tangible action or the doing of an action, which is generally not something we'd see from an object. Are objects performative by virtue of them executing their own existences?
