tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2541533352993831442024-02-20T04:41:23.676-08:00TheStandUpPhilosophermatthew hammondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04537886411911282887noreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-254153335299383144.post-40295764686494875872013-09-16T01:29:00.003-07:002013-09-16T01:29:52.637-07:00Different ThinkingAssumptions and simplification are of course the mainstays of thought. It is so difficult to get thinking for oneself, or to make one's own point, if one has to assume another's argument is ever more subtle... How can one argue with real thought as it is actually thinking? One can only argue, if one can find a neat place to disagree. To hack one's own way into thinking is therefore invariably to clear space in an actually shifting argument, a space in which one can define and nail down another argument; in order to be able to start thinking or at least arguing, for oneself.<br />
Now in a sense this simplification does make sense. Actions are, after all, done (or not): They are events, which have ramifications and open out histories, but do happen (in some form). To argue for oneself is therefore to treat other thinkers and their arguments as if they were events, which might cast long shadows, but whose form is knowable, and effects traceable. But of course the effect of such simplification on a discipline such as philosophy, which is all about the argument, is that all great thinkers become, for all but their exponents (and sometimes antagonists) mere caricatures of themselves. Even more than that, their arguments become simplified and distinct. Once you are part of a canon, the byways that led to the argument become very unimportant, as everyone wants to get to the real deal.<br />
More than that, the philosophical extras, the playful texts, and weird essays that mark the careers of the great writers risk being lost. The problem being, that in these texts, one often as not meets 'another writer', and a very different one, from the one that one thought one knew. And to lose sight altogether of these texts is such a pity. For what makes a great thinker is surely the capacity to think many things, argue differently, and sometimes mischievously or oddly or obscurely or maybe even to change one's mind and change it back again: What is greatness but the capacity to experiment and think many things? So much so, that I might argue that it is in the oddities, and byroads of their thought, and not in their 'royal roads' that you real feel a great thinker at work. More than that, it is often these playful essays that reveal deep things about the way in which a great thinker works, and the way that their arguments are crafted. It is also these texts that are often the easiest to read for the non-philosopher. It is therefore such a pity that in the rage to teach, to learn and to argue, that they can become so obscured.<br />
It is these more playful or sometimes frankly weird works, that my new sequence of performance pieces will aim to explore. I will endeavour to take thinkers who often seem difficult and remote to general audiences, and through performing their minor works, their little essays turn them into playful friends, whose arguments fairly rip off the page, make immediate sense, and are even fun. The aim being to show what for me is such a cardinal truth: That thinking, however difficult the process is so much Fun!matthew hammondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04537886411911282887noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-254153335299383144.post-9896451606647515652013-06-17T22:23:00.002-07:002013-06-18T01:26:55.572-07:00The Fun and the Privilege One of the things I think I love most about performing thought, is how fun it is. I mean, of course it is wacky, and you need to be careful, not to confuse the audience or pastiche the thinkers. But it is fun, taking ideas, turning them into muses with boots on, and introducing those muses to people who have never met them before. It makes the ideas into living entities once again: Thoughts with their own power, their own passion, their own ability to take over or to stimulate minds. What is more, if you are careful the audience will hear and enjoy ideas that are really on the printed page fairly tricky and abstract; but which are, as living word-creatures, vital, real and palpable.<br />
What | hope the show opens up for people, is another way to think about their own ideas, and ideas in general. I mean we tend to think of ideas as something very page-based, and so potentially abstract and removed form vibrancy. By returning then the ideas to their intense roots, I hope I show that what makes a great idea, and what gives it its simple urgency, and defines it as genius, is its ability to live beyond a page. A great idea in a sense is very like a human. They are easy to grasp and see, and even relate to, and yet they are full of infinite subtlety, and surprise, and it is this human (but also strangely monstrous) element, I feel that the show articulates so well, and which the audience tell me afterwards, moves them and makes them think.<br />
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But see what you think - this playlist takes you through most of my latest show in Bristol:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PLKka5Ma0i-wIX92GR50zU-4Z33xd7tZSd" width="560"></iframe>matthew hammondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04537886411911282887noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-254153335299383144.post-74271279456145369252013-06-16T01:00:00.001-07:002013-06-16T03:06:21.638-07:00keeping the show moving onwardsThere is nothing more important, when you are doing stand up thought, than working out the rhythm of the audience. I mean the exact level the audience will work at together, to enjoy the show: That is, how they will react together, and catch each mood, and how this dynamic element is effecting what they are thinking and (hopefully) enjoying about the show.<br />
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This element really matters, and it is this feeling the audience generates which I think makes or mars the show. The problem is of course that the audience are alway rather apprehensive when the performance starts. They are worried, about what the show will involve (what after all is stand up philosophy?), but also they are always worried about whether they will understand the pieces, a fear that is so real, and very understandable. As the performer one has to break into this fear, and make </div>
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Everything ok. But one can never do it alone from the front of the house, so one needs to get everyone on board, together as soon as possible.</div>
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In recent shows I have sought to do this in three ways. Firstly I make sure the most intense pieces are right at the beginning of the show. These pieces are the poetic and multi-layered works of Foucault and Deleuze. These are the pieces, which are for me as a philosopher so critical, and yet which could be fairly challenging for those (the majority) who are encountering these thinkers for the first time. By presenting them at the start, I deliberately worry the audience, while intriguing them with the language of these pieces, which is highly polished and rhythmic. The pieces serve then, I hope to get the audience's ear into the show, but you must be careful, because it scares them too . So the third piece I do is one of my storytelling philosophical classics complete with audience participation, and irreverent humour. The relief is palpable...what is more as it is integral to this story that philosophy often difficult when it is trivial, the audience kind of feel included ( I hope)- their fear has been reflected back at them, and they have laughed at it....</div>
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My second main strategy revolves around powerful one liners, the kind of things one will remember and do so long after the show is over. These one liners, memorable phrases abound in the kind of thinker I deal with, and I design <span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875);">the show to make them shine out. The audience then know they are getting something, will keep something in memory, and that is a lot of the battle.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969);">Finally one does</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875);"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969);"> need to crack on with the show. It is a fatal mistake to tarry, the audience must not tire.So I crack on at a </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969);">pace, keeping the rhythm of explanation and performance tight and carefully measured, so that the show does not feel at all long, which would be fatal to it.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969);"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969);">In my last two shows this strategy appears to have paid off, as the audience have been very generous in their remarks afterward, but I will soon post up the shows, so you can judge for yourself.</span></div>
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matthew hammondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04537886411911282887noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-254153335299383144.post-49732397939426945962013-06-06T00:51:00.001-07:002013-06-15T07:01:37.647-07:00Enter the hell's kitchenHave you ever wondered what a philosophers mind sounds like? Tonight the standing up for freedom <span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); "> edition will be the enter the hell's kitchen special. The noisy place of he philosophers mind, with all its stroppy muses will be recreated for one night only. So come along to st Nicholas of Tolentino in Easton Bristol,and hear what that book of freedom might sound like !</span>matthew hammondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04537886411911282887noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-254153335299383144.post-69715818857621671982013-05-15T23:32:00.002-07:002013-05-15T23:32:53.375-07:00Crystalizing the ProbelmThere is nothing like philosophy to make one rethink a problem or at least understand it in a different light. Take this piece on Heidegger. It takes the form of an ad-lib lecture, to a mixed audience at the end of night of poetry. The aim of the piece is to pose a problem, or better still shine a different light on a problem we all know so well. It introduces the idea of Being (as opposed to ideas such as identity or the Human Soul) and shows how that idea in itself creates a modern imbalance in our understand of our own lived time. But also how that imbalance itself creates problems of responsibility to the future. It finally poses a partial solution to that problem, a solution that is at best partial and problematic.<br />
This second set of problems, are highlight about half way through, where I link arguments from Being and Time back to Fascism (an old argument). The point being then that the 'solution' to the problem of responsibility, like the original Heideggerian version, is at risk from fascism and eventual irrelevancy. This second problem is deliberately left implicit (it was the end of the evening and I did not want to depress anyone), and yet it makes the end this piece more open than perhaps the audience would have expected.<br />
The experience therefore allows one to understand a problem, poses a solution and then queries that solution, and does so in under five minutes, and while leaving a lot room of arguments and different reactions. In short it is the kind of high velocity that philosophy does so well.<br />
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matthew hammondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04537886411911282887noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-254153335299383144.post-10540872056021222932013-05-11T01:21:00.001-07:002013-05-11T01:21:23.001-07:00Standing up for Freedom - the incite remix! 'Matthew Hammond jumps about the stage making theatre out of all those books you meant to read but never got around to...'<br />
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Where does the idea of freedom come from?<br />
It is after all, very much the word for our time. We are told, in the West, that we are the 'Free world', we feel ourselves to be free, and more than that, we expect, or demand, that others whatever the culture or nation, desire our kind of freedom. 'Freedom' has become then not only a political maxim, but also the defining factor of identity for people and nations. So much so, that the history of our times, feels itself to be, at our time, the very history of freedom, and its triumph.<br />
And yet how did this happen? How did freedom reach this pivotal role in our minds and our world? What great dramas and great minds created this idea for our times? In a unique one man spoken word show, I aim to take you back through the two thousand year history of the idea of freedom. Recreating with a mixture of intense poetic monologues, humourous tales, and dramatic stories, the minds and the moments that gave us our freedom, that made us the individuals we are today.<br />
History and thought has seldom felt so fun and engaging; But at the same moment current debates, and modern problems are seen not merely as are they in the here and now, but also as they are part of a two millennia adventure, right into the heart of being human.<br />
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To see more about standup philosophy, see my video at: http://youtu.be/4hGZulSP4Yw<br />
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To see more about this show - see this promo at: http://youtu.be/APLah_qlWa8<br />
matthew hammondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04537886411911282887noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-254153335299383144.post-36779961109382982332013-04-17T23:39:00.002-07:002013-04-19T03:19:19.099-07:00Ranting for Modernity - A performance<br />
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A while ago I used to write many pieces like this one, which is on the recent death of Mrs. Thatcher. These pieces all had the same format. I started on the one hand, with a problem in philosophy, or perhaps a thinker, and on the other, with an event based on the week's news, and bought the two into sharp contrast and relief. The aim was to transform the ideas of philosophy into political commentary, while allowing the events of the week to infuse and explain abstract philosophical ideas. - Well I wrote such pieces for a number of years (a series that included a history of justice, a number of which turned into my paperback book of essays 'Not What One Was; A Brief History of the Concept of Justice', and the Portraits of the Week series - you can see them all here: http://www.cartwheels-collective.co.uk/Dun_Rantin....html), but in the end felt the pieces to have run their course, and in its place developed my stand up show.<br />
The Stand Up Philosophy Show has up to this point tended to revolve around the history of philosophy, which is so rich and deep, it has provided (and will continue to provide), an endless source of material. And yet the events of recent times (well the death of Margret Thatcher), has put my mind back to thinking about my Rants, and how one might turn them into performance pieces. This is the first result of that process, a brief essay, that is at once a study on Foucault, but also a genuine attempt to understand the difficulties which so-called Thatcherism poses to thought (and to politics). As it was performed on the day of her funeral, and to a mixed audience, I tried to be respectful throughout, and yet not to compromise on the point that really matters. Namely, that people live and die, and that is tragic (or happy). But what is really at issue in considering Thatcher's legacy, is something else - namely the apparent undead nature of Thatcherism itself. A nature that means in spite of the banking collapse, and global prolonged recession (which even if Thatcherism - aka deregulation - did not directly cause, it was certainly caught up in), the 'Ism' is still very much around, still irreplaceable, and potentially as strong as ever...<br />
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Maybe, but on a deep level, such an argument, misses the point of philosophy itself. For me philosophy, ancient or modern, is really all about using the past of thought to articulate what it is to have a mind, to think and so be free in the present. For it is in the past, that you see the ideas that have given you your mind, emerge, and then mutate as they become what we are today. It is the past therefore that can teach you how you became what you currently are, and so open you up to becoming different. A move which, rightly or wrongly, I always feel, that an issue based approach, on modern trendy topics, could never quite aspire to. But I am certainly at fault, if this move is not always clear, a fault, that I hope my latest performance piece goes some way to addressing.<br />
Here it is - so judge for yourself!<br />
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matthew hammondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04537886411911282887noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-254153335299383144.post-48764217289628614372013-03-03T23:02:00.005-08:002013-03-04T01:29:11.232-08:00Standing up for Freedom, the Trailer'The Stand up Philosopher is Standing up for Freedom<br />
Join him, because Freedom is worth standing up for'.<br />
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For me, some of the the joy of performing philosophy, lies in making tangible all the shifts in tempo and mood, that animate the great works of philosophy. If these works were really as they are sometimes seen to be, merely abstract arguments, which are as dry on the page, as they are difficult in the mind, I doubt philosophy would matter at all, or ever be studied. On the the contrary, it is the urgency of the writing, and fascination of thought as it changes its rhythm, sometimes mid-sentence, or runs across a gamut of emotions, which makes philosophy powerful and signficant. It is these then, the complex harmonies and melodies of thought, which the stand up show, by word and expression, aims to bring to the fore.<br />
This is all the more the case when one is tracing a theme such as 'freedom' back across the ages. For in this case, the same idea has had many different aspects, moods, and even concepts attached to it. To follow such an idea is therefore to be caught in a wonderful theatre of the mind, where at one level, all is contrary ideas, and powerful passions; and yet, beyond all that tumult, lies always one great gathering theme, which is slowly becoming what it is, across the shifting arguments and passions.<br />
It is then this passionate and complex development which I hope is caught both in the show itself, but also in the recent trailer-come-short-film we have made of the show. This trailer ought, I thought, to stand up itself, to ask its own questions, and tell its own story, and yet it must do so in the context of the show from which it was taken. But what it shares directly with the show is the same attempt to develop one great theme, across many changes in tempo and cadence, a theme that might remain, ethereal throughout, and yet all the same is clearly gathering its own relevance and force.<br />
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And yet that statement gets it wrong (slightly). We are all so used to the emotion/thought dichtomy, that we tend to assume that the emotions are either explaining thought or else clouding it (and so somehow ought to be absent). This Dichotomy would have us believe that either emotions help us therefore 'know the thinker' and 'explain his thought', or else have no place in any rational thought - and if this was the case then performance philosophy would, I think, be as pointless as it was impossible.<br />
Luckily (for me) the real relationship between emotion and thought is so much richer than this, and performance offers an opportunity to explore this richness. In making this argument I understand myself to be drawing on Deleuze (but also Foucault) who argue that great thinkers are great stylists. More than that, they are writers and explorers of the human soul for their method involves catching up their affects in their thought - sometimes using them as topics, at others dismissing them (and so arguing openly against them or pitching them against logic), while at other times riding them like a breaking wave. A work such as Wollstonecraft's 'The Vindication of the Rights of Women' or Spinoza's 'Ethics' is therefore a witch ride like nothing else in literature, for one never really knows where the affects which it conjures up or shares, and the argument of the book is taking one. That is, to read such works is to be taken on an emotional journey, where one is infused with feelings, but those feelings are then the topic of discussion, and reforged in the light of the very fiery words that inspired them.<br />
Or to put it slightly differently, a truly great philsopher is one that reaches into our mind, and makes it jangle, but then from the discord of rational thought and feeling, plays some kind of new tune, a new melody, in our minds: This tune is like no other for its effect is that in singing it, our natures themselves become re-thinkable. It is this facet of reaching out, and allowing a chink of thought, that makes both philosophy and performance great. It is why then they can be so easily combined. - That is, it is why philosophy makes great drama.<br />
But more than that, it is this emotional lexicon that makes performing thought easy and fun: It you get the thinker right, then the argument and the actions follow. When people ask then, as they do, 'how do you remember all that', I always feel like saying, for me it is like simply remembering who one is: For the philosopher I perform (and their arguments) are stalwarts in my mind (and in a sense, as they are part of the tradition of thought that gave us so many of the ideas we all live by, of all our minds). All I do is find then the affects that infuse those individuals, and the thoughts, and their arguments follow.<br />
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It is therefore this idea of combining passion with argument (a method which she pioneered), that 'makes' my recent performance of Mary Wollenscraft. I had not had much time to work on the exact words, but I got the affects right, and everything else followed when I was in front of the audience, and the fiery power of the Vindication coursed though me: Next time I perform this piece (and there will be a next time), it will be more polished - but I hope I will keep that level of emotional intensity....<br />
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Hegel is certainly right (not a sentence I have much use for normally). Ideas are strange slippery things, and in thinking them we are transformed beyond any one time, and somehow caught up in the drama, in the struggles and in the language of the past. What is more, Hegel is surely quite correct when he suggests that there is a difference between those ideas that we are silently thinking without realising it, and which infuse both our assumptions, and feelings, and those ideas which we are enacting consciously and deliberately. I mean, both are silently thinking their history in us, but in a different ways, and at a different rhythm.<br />
To follow an idea, which is so central to our modern self, such as freedom, across time, is to watch that idea (and so the modern mind) emerge, through many stages and epochs: Ideas that are at one time just silent and implicit becoming explicit, but then are lost again, or found in a different context and in different places. The very ideas one lives by are thereby opened out, and become, in a sense, characters in their own drama, with their own story to tell. The aim of this show is therefore to catch the audience up in this drama, which is after all, also their drama, for it speaks a lot to and with, the ideas that fill and reverberate around all our minds.<br />
In addition there is a real fascination in going backwards through history, one akin surely to following a river back to the source. Now I am not an essentialist, and do not believe that the past is 'purer', or that freedom was more 'free' there, but as a performer I know the gathering power of going backwards in time. The audience feels the urgency build, as we come closer and closer to the finale of the show - in this case the Trial of Socrates, a moment when the main threads of Western thought were first clearly enunciated, and the adventure really got going. To ride piggy back on that energy, that power of flowing the wrong way in time, is a delight. For it gives a pattern and power to the ideas. More than that, it provides a strong framework for the pieces, that by themselves might be hard to place, however good the ideas (and their performance) are. In short to run backwards in time, is to already have caught up the audience on the journey.<br />
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But if you want to judge for yourself whether it works: A playlist from my first performance of my new 'Standing Up for Freedom' show is here:<br />
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How indeed?
Perhaps the only way is to watch that idea decompose before us - to hear and see where many of its aspects come from, and to think then for ourselves how the ideas are then used: In short a backwards history of thought, where ideas fall apart, and are reworked - a history that we can then in our own minds, run forwards for ourselves, as we decide how we might also be free.
A history must start with the very modern paradox of how one lives in a society where if one is not necessarily free to do something, the thing is either illegal or the topic of anxiety; and then work backwards to re-find the potency of freedom itself.
The first piece tonight looks at Foucault's argument, which seeks to understand how society captures you without you being aware of it, and how that makes freedom so hard. The second piece is Deleuze's counter argument, and is a poetic conjuration of how the moment might set you free.
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<i>Full playlist</i>
<b>The Four Minute Foucault</b>
<i>Or the History of Sexuality, in an Introduction, three Arguments, and a Conclusion.
</i>
In his scintillatingly intense study, 'The History of Sexuality Volume 1: The Will to Know', Foucault not only attempts to persuade you that your sexuality is really not what you have been told it is, but also that even as you desire, you are plugged into a wider complex web of power, that defines our society. Foucault thereby turns our inmost feelings into a battleground of regulation and resistance. Freedom becomes then, if not about setting your mind free, then a matter of managing the exact way that the Power-Desire locus, defines what one is, and what one can think.
In this short piece the critical argument here, is turned into an intense performance, which summarises both the complexity, and includes the good humour of the original work.
<b>Deleuze, - Becoming Heaccity:</b>
This vivid piece is an adaptation of one short essay from Deleuze and Guattari's great ragbag of a book 'A Thousand Plateaus'. The study, uses art and imagery to try to show you how you might set yourself free in each and every moment, if only you have the courage to see it, and the commitment to live it.
This brief, and beautiful piece of writing needs to be understood as as much an invocation to freedom, as it is an argument. Deleuze is trying to show you how you are free, and not merely to tell that you are, a move which I attempt to capture in the performance.
Having set out the modern problem, we start to go back in time. First a hundered years (or so) ago, but this basic duality of freedom remains the same - but understood now in relation to the demise of god, and what it means to be 'from hope and fear set free'.
<b>Neitzche: Kant, and how to 'think the thought that has Ne'ar been Thunk before'.</b>
This piece was inspired by Nietzsche's hilarious deconstruction of Kant in 'Beyond Good and Evil'. Here he dismisses Kantian philosophy as mere word play, and theological smoke and mirrors. I have taken it as my inspiration, and blended it with famous details from Kant's life, to make this rumbustious story.
So is it time to
<i>Think the thought that ne'ar been Thunk?'</i>
or even
<i>'Plunder that ponder thats ne'ar been plumbed?'</i>
On a different and far darker tack, is Marx's version of a similar problem. What does it really mean, he asks, to live beyond God in a world of science?
<b> The Three Minute Marx:</b>
<i>Or The dream of Marx in 3 thesis and a panic attack</i>
This short piece attempts the impossible! Not only is it a short succinct summary of Marx's great work 'Das Capital', but also it attempts to make Marx radical and powerful again.
We then move back only a generation, and yet so much changes. God is still in heaven (just), and there is the argument that not only can one reconcile personal and political freedom, but it is necessary for both that one does so. An argument that will infuse the work of the next three philosophers.
<b>Hegel: Or how Culture will Set you Free.</b>
Hegel presents, albeit it a slightly idiosyncratic way, the clearest, and perhaps most persuasive argument, that only society can set you free. This argument is perhaps best made in the philosophy of Right, whose introduction is presented here. The performance attempts to recapture something of Hegel's unique lecture style, part introverted thinker, part messianic prophet.
<b>Kant: What is Enlightment?</b>
This is Kant at his critical and yet belligerent best. In the cause of freedom he argues, one must both question everything, but ultimately to conform the norms of one's day. To fail in either of these, Kant claims, is to risk that very freedom that we should cherish. Kant is therefore both the greatest of revolutionaries but also the most extreme of reactionaries: As modern audiences can find this position uncomfortable, please feel free to heckle - Kant will love it!
<b>Rousseau, and the dark symphony for Freedom:</b>
<i>The first two books of the Social Contract</i>.
This is one of those books, whose first opening, like certain pieces of music, we all know so well. And yet like a big symphony, the introduction, the first lines, are actually at odds with a lot of the rest of the argument in the work; an argument that takes one on a very strange journey, through freedom, to oppression. It is therefore a book that writes the history of so many revolutions, and yet does so before the revolutions have happened... It is a study which, like good music, is at once dark and light, and has gathered new power and new meaning across the two and half centuries since it was written.
<b>Why Must One Worthy of Living in the Best of all Possible Worlds?</b>
The next piece, is one of my favourites. It is from my second favourite philosopher, Leibniz, and amounts to a thesis defence of an idea which Voltaire hooted out of history, namely that this is the Best of all Possible Worlds. And yet, this mockery is so unjust - for the argument behind this doctrine is very subtle and carefully nuanced. In this piece I update Leibniz for modern ears, and give him a chance to answer Voltaire, and to try to invigorate an idea he held very dear.
We now jump back past the Reformation, to a world of fixed theologically sanctioned monarchy, and a somewhat surprising argument which appears to critique that world.
<b>Thomas Moore and the pathway to Utopia</b>.
<i> The first book of 'Utopia'</i>
In this very witty and radical text Moore, appears to question not just the assumptions of his day, but also of the ages that have followed it, as he sends up not only monarchs, and their desire for land, but also the Novo Homo, desire for wealth. He can do this by presenting the critique as traveller's tales, and putting it into the mind of a speaker whose position in society is unclear and complex. I attempt to capture that complexity, and the very modern alternative style comedy that infuses it, by performing this piece in two voices, that of Moore and the traveller Raphael, through whose interactions so much can still be said.
Now we jump a millennia and a half, over so much that could be said by Aquinas, Augustine and Ibn Sina. But for reasons of time, we will next pick up the story of freedom in a lament, written in Ancient Rome to the passing of its Republic, a lament that then formed the backdrop for so much that was then thought about freedom and the state.
<b>The Valediction to Freedom</b>
<i>Or Cicero's 'Republic' as a speech</i>
This piece seeks to present Cicero's central argument, in his book 'The Republic', as he might have best understood it, a speech made by his ghost. In his address Cicero will, not only present a summary of his book, but will also relate it to his own tragic end, and seeing both as precedents, make a direct appeal to us today. For he argues that we too, stand upon the fork of Fate, and on one side lies fear, and on the other only hope.
The final two pieces go right back to the origin of philosophy in Plato, and looks from a different perspective at the idea of personal freedom, and its consequences.
<b>That is all very well for you Scocrates</b>
<i> Or Alcibiades' lament for love </i>
This intense performance attempt to recapture something of one of the great moments in philosophy, but also in the history of freedom. Its inspiration lies in Plato's 'Symposium', the book that invented the word Philosophy. The highlight of that book might have been Socrates' great speech, where he attempts to show how love can set the lovers free. But just at the moment of Socrates' great appeal, his erstwhile friend Alcibiades, enters and is persuaded to give this very different account of their relationship. An account that is at once sobering and powerful, for reminds us that the freedom of one, is so easily another's dark prison.
The final piece for tonight is where one always needs to start and end in Philosophy. It is from Plato's Apology - and starts with the moment that Socrates stands up to make an appeal for his life, against trumped up charges. It is a moment of high drama, for no-one really knows whether, like so any others, Socrates will plea bargain, or whether he will fight, and if so how. A drama that caught the spirit of Plato, and which infuses so much of his writing and all the philosophical debates that have followed it. It is therefore one of the great Events, in whose light the Western Philosophical tradition of freedom was forged.
There is also a major role for the audience in this piece, so feel free to bury yourself in the part of the People of Athens.
matthew hammondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04537886411911282887noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-254153335299383144.post-71011623551713552482013-01-12T22:53:00.000-08:002013-01-13T01:10:08.491-08:00Hegel - to Mock or to Think?It is one of the oddities of philosophy - how an idea can really grab you, and do so in spite of yourself. I am currently working on a piece on Hegel, who is never a philosopher I feel happy with - he is too verbose and too much the archetypical clever fool - the one people mean when they laugh at philosophy or think it pointless. All of which is true - and to read Hegel is to be perplexed and slightly annoyed - one wishes he says things more clearly (the really annoying thing is that he can - the start of the phenomenology of mind is wonderful, it is just a pity about how it then carries on though).
And yet, and yet there is something also wonderful about Hegel. Even as one dismisses his ideas, and laughs at his made up universal histories, and bizarre pompous formulas, something in him grabs you. He has a power to make you step out beyond yourself, and your normal experience, and challenges you to re-examine yourself and your life. You laugh at him at your peril therefore, for you might very well become the object of fun....
The game therefore of performance I think ought to be to capture something of this movement. The audience ought to start laughing at him, and then wonder if it is he that is laughing at them...
To see if I manage to pull it off come along to Taking the Mike on wednesday - or, alternatively there will be a video coming soon!
matthew hammondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04537886411911282887noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-254153335299383144.post-64084711775326063802013-01-09T23:29:00.000-08:002013-01-09T23:29:25.511-08:00Why Going Backwards is the way Forwards!Why are the Stand up Shows a backwards read through time? In a sense because for me philosophy is at its best at its cutting edge. What the show does is to attempt to get the moment of elation that is a good idea. More than that seeing that moment makes even very well known ideas feel exciting again, and vibrant. It also opens up strange links between ideas. Foucault might be habitually seen as opposed to the modern liberal consensus, but that does mean he is fundamentally opposed to Kant, upon whom that consensus bases its foundation, and with whom Foucault shares so very very much. It is this loop of Foucault-kant that presenting them in their moment of thought capture, and which is so much clearer if heard Foucault before Kant.
To go back in time, is to know where the ideas lead to, even as you are presented with them in their power and passion. It is therefore to be and feel the bitter sweetness of the history of philosophy - where ideas that promise so much, lead to odd places, and never were the thinker hoped. And yet it is the power of thought that these odd journeys do not matter. Indeed they is the point, ideas should open out to who knows what, for it is it that opening the world replies to them, and they are made what they then become. and it is reply to the immediate power of the idea, the structure of the show, the running backwards though time, tries to get at.matthew hammondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04537886411911282887noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-254153335299383144.post-20793647774616053322012-12-19T22:42:00.000-08:002012-12-19T22:42:28.859-08:00Performing in ones own voiceIt is strange. I am am experienced performer, I relatively rarely get nerves, and yet last night I discovered something that does make me jumpy: Performing- in my own (or near to my own) voice, without a script or paper to work from.<br />
I was practising intros for my standup show, trying to work out, why I am never that happy with how i frame pieces, a process one must get right with one performs the kind of material I do..<br />
The piece I was doing was called -A Vindication of the Rights of Performance Philosophy, and took the form of a handbook to help one live beyond of the Death of God. It includes two or three of my more cherished maxims - about identity, freedom and redemption: All of which are difficult ideas to critique(which I kind of was) as they are so much a part of an individuals mental landscape, particularly to a poetry audience at the end of the night (after 10:30).<br />
And yet it does feel good, as it is make me, in my introductions to take Standup Thought in new directions. It is allowing me, however scary, to make it clear to others how much of what I perform is my own voice (and how how belong to the thinkers I perform). This is absolutely necessary, and without this demarcation I know I am simply not doing justice to philosophy (or my own scholarship). i have therefore a duty make it work, and was pleased by the performance - given the difficulty of the hour, and the piece, I think it could not have been different.<br />
But I will not give up, and next time will be better still, and there will be a next time very soon.... I just wish did not find it quite so terrifying!<br />
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<object width="420" height="315"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/tJ9Unc4YZ_Y?hl=en_GB&version=3"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/tJ9Unc4YZ_Y?hl=en_GB&version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="420" height="315" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>matthew hammondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04537886411911282887noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-254153335299383144.post-53423956083140339122012-11-19T23:42:00.002-08:002012-11-19T23:42:22.375-08:00An Idea for all TimesWhen you think about it, the history of philosophy is essentially a temporal monster, or a time-crime of the highest order; and performing mere exacerbates this fact.<br />
Or at least it ought to be. Philosophy only has power (or separate existence) as its ideas speak to us here and now. And yet the same ideas have a history of their own, and what was more all its ideas were always peculiarly rooted in their own times : But this strangely does not matter. I mean Hegel might have thought history ended with the Prussian king, and Marx he revolution was tomorrow, but that does not undermined exactly what they say (any more than the minor Apocalypse undermines Christianity).<br />
But this does not mean the ideas ought to be pulled apart from their history, or seen as logcal and so true and distinct from their times. On the contrary, their history, what they were solving, and how we feel about tt, is actually part of their identity, and infuses their reality for all time. To know them as powerful ideas now, is also therefore to re-conjure there history.<br />
More than this, good ideas crystalise for us, that history so that in them it lives again - and in thinking them we feel its power and passion, as a thing gone, and get still present and vivd. The history of ideas is therefore not only a challenge to our conception of the here and now, as learning the history of the assumptions you simply accept makes you rethink them: but it is also the most vivid of historical romance, and one that really does put the thinker at the centre of the drama. You hear the ideas as they were, and as they are- and are caught up in the moment of their history, even as you feel that history in the moment.<br />
I am currently working on a performance of Behemoth, Hobbes account of the start of the English Civil. It is a book shot through with the politics of his day (it was written in 1668, but then supressed until after his death), but also the memory of the politics of the generation before (it analyses 1640-1660), and has is its debates, echoes so much of what we think today. A good performance of it, ought therefore to let all this aspects out -- the audience ought to be back in time, even as they feel the power of the arguments today: To read and perform it is is therefore to breed temporal monsters, or to commit a crime against time.matthew hammondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04537886411911282887noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-254153335299383144.post-37588807960299856292012-10-17T23:00:00.003-07:002012-10-17T23:00:43.603-07:00Keeping up the paceI have blogged before about that integral difficulty of standup philosophy: pace versus explication. That is go to quickly and the audience is lost, as you have said far far too little, but go too slowly, and you do the philosopher justice, but bore, then loose the audience. This dilemma is not only integral to the structure of each piece, but also unique to each performance. Take this piece. It was the end of a long evening of (very strong) performances. It was therefore far too late for most the audience to engage their brains. This meant there was no real point 'doing Plotinus' properly. It would not have worked. Plotinus is hard at the best of time to wrap your head around, even more so at the first hearing and almost impossible if that hearing is past ten, and everyone is tired... The performance therefore had to not be about explanation, so must as impression. I wanted the audience to get the idea that there was an amazing theory of time, a theory which is similar and yet so different for todays conception of it, in the third century AD. What is more I wanted the audience to get the idea that this theory was linked to St John's gospel, and combines a theory of physics with outright mysticism. Hence the piece has lost some of the subtlety of the original, and yet has I hoped kept much of its poetry and its power.<br />
But judge for yourselves:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/mC4cwe8iceA" width="560"></iframe>matthew hammondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04537886411911282887noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-254153335299383144.post-5344629069798392842012-10-10T23:22:00.001-07:002012-10-10T23:22:08.877-07:00Jarring TimeOne of the oldest theories in western thought, involves restitching ones notion of time, so that it is merely a participation within, or a mired reflection of being in something else. The reason why such an idea is so persistent is easy to grasp: It is so hard to think of time in the first place; so hard indeed one cannot even be sure that the analogies one uses to encompass it (be it -rivers or fabric, or mirrors) are not in fact the actual reality of what is being described in the first place. To think of time, almost (but not quite) always involves grasping that time in, or as part of, something else.What is more philosophies are defined by the way they define this participation.<br />
The question therefore always becomes exactly how one understand this participation. Here there are perhaps three basic stratagems. The first one, which is usually attributed to Plato, argues that time is some kind of reflection of an eternity, and imperfect one at that. It therefore attempts to capture of difficulty of thinking time, by blaming times imperfection itself.<br />
The second methodology was pioneered by Aristotle, and looks understand think time through something we all understand, and which necessarily involves it, namely movement. Time is the numbering number of movement - and so the way we grasp the difference it makes. So that while we cannot grasp time itself, we still understand what it is, and how it functions.<br />
Finally one might understand time as participation in something other, something greater and enigmatic- be it the fabric of space-time or the participation in a 'One' beyond all difference. This latter move was poineerd by Plotinus (a third century AD thinker), who saw time as the way we were part of, and part in, the eternity of being, which was itself an expression of the singularity of The One that existed beyond all being. The theory argues that our being in time is our being in something else, something we cannot understand or comprehend (which is why we find it hard to think), a mind numbing idea, but one that came back strong at the start of the twentieth century, in the form of relativity. It is therefore a theory which in a sense we now all know of (even if we do not understand it), and for that reason alone, one well worth performing.<br />
The problem of course then is how do you do it? how do you perform an enigma, that has confused two thousand years of thinkers? One could perform the confusion itself, but that never appeal to me. Far better to bring out the relationship with Einstein, but also to link the idea also to a wider fin de siecle feeling that wants time to mysterious. Plotinus will therefore appear as half Einstein, an abstract thinker of genius, and half sub-lovecraft writer, obsessed with what lies beyond the curving of our universe: He needs to be half wooly mystic, and half abstract thinker of great genius. A conjunction that is, I think is very interesting, as it gives novel way to explore how all abstract thought, relates to, feeds upon, and yet critically remains distinct from profound imagination. In Plotinus one can really see being a mystic is not enough in itself to be a scientist, a fact that might need relearning.<br />
The game with this performance, and what will make it succeed or not is the voice of Plotinus. He must feel like Einstein on acid, as so get the audience to 'feel' they know him, even as his ideas overwhelm with abstraction, and carry one on the strangest of journeys, that is bamboozling, and yet strangely beautiful and even fulfilling. In short I need to get poetry of the ideas, in all their vivid glory right. If I can this piece will move beyond the humour it has to start with and that must run through it, and which carries the audience along, and become truly a 'glittering shard of sepulcral majesty'...matthew hammondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04537886411911282887noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-254153335299383144.post-24347047819067358832012-09-24T01:31:00.004-07:002012-09-24T01:31:55.732-07:00Morality and MatterOne of the things I love about philosophy is its endless ability to ask you to see the world from another perspective. Take my latest performance piece on George Berkeley. Now the piece itself is a lovely little essay from the minor history of thought. It has a certain place in the philosophical canon, and presents an interesting proof for the existence of God, while making a nice point about the nature of being, and the problem of abstract thought, but on the face of it, that is all.<br />
And yet there must be something so much more to this piece - for it really spoke to the audience in a way that other philosophers perhaps sometimes do not. The reaction to a minor philosopher is itself very interesting (and gratifying), but with with my very strict philosopher's hat on, rather surprising. However, seen from another perspective there is no mystery in it. I think people are reacting warmly to two central (and inter-related) claims in Berkeley's argument. Firstly there is his claim that to accept the radical truth of perception, and the world as we see it, is actually rather a difficult thing to do. We are forever drawn away from that bright perception, and led into other thoughts, or abstract speculations, and miss its power, or simply assume that we know what it is. More than that, one misses where the real world actually is - where it exists - in a me. But secondly, on very deep level, if the being of the world is tied to my perceiving of it, then its order (as well as those thoughts not derived from perception, namely awareness of others), imply a deep order beyond simple actuality. To give and be given in the world, at the same moment, and in the same thought, opens up that giving, that perceiving, to morality (or we might say ethics). So that what I perceive, what I choose to look at, and the thoughts I derive from that choice, those experiments, are necessarily already ethical in what they encompass. The bright being of perceptions (which is their reality) might predate all our thoughts about them, and so we need to think inside them (that is inside evidence itself), and yet that 'inside' is enmeshed within a moral order, which puts the reality of the perceptions within a wider framework where truth and the way we share knowledge with each other, is itself already part of a wider picture.<br />
In short Berkeley puts his finger, in an incredibly perceptive way, on one of the central problems of modernity. Once one understands perceptions, not as simple reflections of God given essences (a world where hats and dogs simply are), but rather as part of evidence, that might open out on many worlds (dogs exist, but so too do electrons, quarks, and fundamental strings), then we are necessarily caught up in endless ethical problems of what we should look at and why. The seemingly 'neutral' act of the scientist, who is determined at one level to let the world be and does so free from any assumptions, might be neutral in itself, but on another level it is an act beset by moral questions and ethical implications.<br />
Berkeley understands even before the 'scientific age' properly gets going, both the importance of letting perceptions be in our minds, but also the ethical implications about where such experiments might lead. What is more he understands this in way that encourages thought in itself, and wants us to answer him, and do so in a constructive and generous manner of our own. He gives us much to think about and with, even if we do not agree with him. And it is this generosity, which spoke to Hume, Kant, Hegel and Wittgenstein so powerfully, that still has its great power to move us all. In short Berkeley is wonderful because he opens us all to being, if but for a while, great philosophers, and to think for ourselves.<br />
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matthew hammondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04537886411911282887noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-254153335299383144.post-43816668957347783672012-09-08T01:14:00.001-07:002012-09-08T01:14:29.565-07:00"If Berkeley says there is no matter, then it matters not what Berkeley says!"<br />
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I am just starting to work out how to perform one of the sadly under-read greats of British empiricism - the Irish Bishop George Berkeley. My problem is exactly how to present him. I mean Berkeley is not widely read, and yet his fundamental point, that for humans 'Essence is Perception', so if a thing is in our minds it is real (for us, at least), is one of the touchstones of philosophy, and is so for a number of reasons. Firstly it is one of those ideas you read and understand, and wonder if it is true. Secondly, there is something rather subtle going on here. For it is not just the world's essence that is defined in perception but also our own. It is then in perceiving a world apparently beyond our minds and yet within which we are, and in which we actually exist: so that we and the world are given in the same created-creative glance. This is then a theory of how one 'is' only through a relation to an elusive Other (the good Bishop's actual argument being that this Other is actually God). Thirdly, in a world of virtual reality, where truth is defined on computer screen, it is an idea with a new cadence, and power: Our reality does once again lie in perception. - All of which makes rich performance material, and requires the philosopher to be subtle enough to say this, without going beyond Berkeley's text.<br />
However it is at this point the problems start. You see Berkeley is actually really very subtle. In the midst of his main argument there are all sorts of lovely arguments about the nature of language, of Causes and of God. The problem is that these are arguments that other philosophers would have written greatly about, but which the young Berkeley raises as interesting points, makes a pithy argument about and then moves on. The reader is then left wanting more. This is of course a powerful philosophical trick. It meant that for many years thinkers read and quoted Berkeley, as they made a philosophy and so a living out of what he never quite managed to say.... Any faithful performance of Berkeley must therefore frustrate an audience at the same moment it intrigues it.<br />
Moreover there is one last point that must be bought out, if never stated. Berkeley only writes one short philosophy book, and does so as a young man. What is more, the main purpose of this book lies not in pure philosophy, so much as theology. He wants to demonstrate that we need to assume God, to perceive the world at all (and so to be). This hurry to God, and the dismissal of the world as a consequence (it is only what God gives to me), can and has made Berkeley a figure of philosophical fun - and even a stooge. Here is a man whose argument appears to actually be straw, and can be attacked accordingly. To get this element of Berkeley out there, so the audience can hear it, and yet also hear the rather interesting and powerful things Berkeley is <i>also</i> saying about our relation with whatever is really outside us, must be the real trick of this performance. If the audience all think the same thing at the end of the piece, then I have failed in my job, and let George down!<br />
In short, why I have put Berkeley off all this time, is because I have always deeply respected him, and realised that to get him right is a challenge... but one that must be addressed at some time (if nothing else to do justice to British thought, I usually make Locke a figure of fun after all, and perform Hume too rarely). And that time had better be now. For Berkeley is the first great ethical thinker of our encounter with an Other, an encounter which he understands and renders moral in the same moment. He is therefore a philosopher whose time is now, and who has never had more to say to us all, and I can only hope I do not, as so many have, not do him justice!matthew hammondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04537886411911282887noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-254153335299383144.post-4640503811891115162012-08-08T09:24:00.002-07:002012-08-08T09:24:52.465-07:00Many voices to ThoughtOne of the joys for me of reading and thinking philosophy is the sheer variety of different voices which it conjures up. Arguments resonate both between thinkers or schools of thought, but even more interestingly, within the same thinker. To Be a philosopher, and do it well, appears to me at least, about allowing many voices into one's head. The great philosophers are then directors as much as they are thinkers. The great works of philosophy, but even more the oeuvre of any one philosopher ought to be understood as much as a stage as it is a single corpus of thought... Upon this stage many thoughts happen, many openings are made, many arguments are aborted and yet left open and possible. A stage where much thought does happen, and yet so much more is also happening, or could happen or perhaps will at another time happen.<br />
For me, of course this is why Stand Up Philosophy works - at its best it ought to liberate not just books from libraries, but also the many voices in the one thinker. This performance of the Four Minute Foucault is my first real attempt to make these voices palpable and relevant. I am of course choosing an easy first target to do this with. One of the glories of Foucault is that there are many voices deliberately within the same text. He rejoices in the diversity of his own thought, and functions as the director par excellence. I am therefore merely following, as it were, his own 'performance notes', while letting the actors speak for themselves.<br />
The result I hope, is not then just that there are many voices in the one performance, but rather that there are many moods. The piece is at times funny, other times thoughtful, sometimes shocking, occasionally controversial, and once in a way Messianic, while being at other times overtly political, but also historical, and above all rigorously analytical, and strangely balanced and scrupulously fair. And yet running across these arguments, and so necessary for them to work together, there has to be a measured narrative thrust, which keeps the action moving, the arguments evolving, and the conversation going. The audience must therefore trust the performance, and think it's going somewhere, even if they do not know where that is, or even what will happen next...<br />
All I can say is, that for this piece, and this audience, I think it worked, and worked well. The only question is, can I do it for a less generous thinker than Foucault - one that attempts to stifle his many voices and pretend that they are not there, and that the book is his and HIS alone? So watch this space - Heidegger here I come!<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Dbku1qJugAk" width="560"></iframe>matthew hammondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04537886411911282887noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-254153335299383144.post-20481198436532071422012-08-08T02:01:00.000-07:002012-08-08T02:02:42.291-07:00Thank you to everyone -That strange Performance thingThe Camera is weird. Sometimes it picks up something that one as a performer cannot see - something which I think about - lighting and atmosphere.<br />
The film below is a case in point. It is at the lovely Catweazel Club, in Oxford. I felt at the time the performance was a little tired (and so did the camera person), and that I kept getting the word order slightly wrong, which broke the rhythm of the piece - or so it felt to us.<br />
But the Camera clearly saw something else - something I think about the light, the wonderful set and the audience reaction (this was the first time they had seen Stand Up Philosophy), that makes the video one of the best...<br />
So Thank you Catweazel Club, for the Venue, and the Opportunity, and Thank you light, you have done it again.<br />
But most of all I guess I should thank Marx, whom I am yet again impersonating: Actually - perhaps - thinking about it, it might have been Marx's unquiet spirit itself, that took over this performance - it was after all was his bete noire, the 'bourgeois citadel' of Oxford... I certainly hope so. <br />
All I know is that the credit is not mine.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/_yBjtzxNVC4" width="560"></iframe>matthew hammondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04537886411911282887noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-254153335299383144.post-82252018067094885812012-07-10T01:26:00.004-07:002012-07-10T03:33:13.832-07:00The two paths to performance philosophy A remark that is often made to me, as a stand up thinker, could be summarised as the following;<br />
How does one make philosophy dramatic, or exciting, or even relevant? Surely it is dry as dust, and boring? It is, after all, merely smug clever-idiots playing word games and never resolving anything...<br />
Now I am not denying that this remark does cover rather a lot of what passes for philosophy. It has more than its fair share of logic choppers, and meaning(less) wallahs. And yet, the remark is surely wrong-headed for all that. For what is more exciting or more challenging or more simply interesting than really thinking? If philosophy is not fundamentally engaging, and engaging on some level for everyone, then it is nothing. The game is though, always to find that level, and it is this that the stand up show explores.<br />
There are essentially two main strategies which I have developed within the show. The first, attempts to really get under the personality of a thinker, or perhaps better, to give personality to their works. The aim is therefore to give life to thought, and explore how ideas relate to contexts, passions and history. In these pieces I am doing a lot of 'filling in' of the historical biographies of the thinker, but doing so almost incidentally, so that when I do it right, the audience should get the feeling of a cloud of events, a history which they can appreciate in itself (as another time) and yet also feel it reflects their times. It is out of these events and histories that the ideas I am developing, arise. More than that, the revelations of thinkers must comment upon or even resolve the passions such events cause, both then and now. The performance is therefore designed to build context, share emotions, and only then to really communicate ideas as a resolution to these situations and feelings.<br />
I hope you can see what I mean in this very short video.<br />
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The second main approach is more obviously ideas-based. I love taking a thinker, or an idea that either we think we know very well, or else regard as frankly bizarre, or think of as too difficult to bother with, and then showing how, actually, in the context of our lives, the idea really does make sense and is important by performing it. I see myself as freeing ideas of their 'assumed' philosophical context, and letting them speak for themselves, and to our times once again. Take for example Leibniz's assertion that this is the best of all possible worlds. This argument was hooted out of history from Voltaire onwards. And yet, when you put it in the context of the kind of moral argument Leibniz was certainly making, it becomes a real proposition once again - a battle-cry which calls to us to be worthy of life itself. The trick with the lectures is to pitch them right, so that although I am often 'doing real philosophy' in them, it does not feel too difficult to a general audience, and catches their attention long enough for them to get something out of it.<br />
I hope this video illustrates something of this.<br />
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For me, the point of philosophy, is that it is as challenging and as urgent as more conventional drama, and the game is merely to show that this really is the case. Does it work? I hope so, but judge for yourself.matthew hammondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04537886411911282887noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-254153335299383144.post-18569511601972099002012-07-06T02:32:00.000-07:002012-07-06T02:32:41.263-07:00Hoping for Hecklers!It finally happened - I always wanted one - a Heckler: For how else do you know this is Stand Up? And that you are really getting to people? I love the idea that the audience have the right to answer back, and think it great that people felt happy enough to do so (and that the ideas were worth answering) - but it did raise a problem mid-performance of how I should respond. This problem was all the more tricky as there was only a limited time (around five minutes) for this piece. I could not then simply become Kant ad libbing an answer (which was my instinct), and had to stay inside the essay. My answer was (and you can see it in the performance below), was to engage the heckler, trying to bring him to the argument. But the question was how to do it? Taking my cue from Kant, I felt I had to be gentle - as arguing with Kant is tricky - he is very very good (although always polite), and if you are not used to him, likely to blast you away (as he has usually thought of the problem you are raising...). One has therefore to genuinely be listening to the argument, and note, as one keeps going on, the point which will really answer the heckle.<br />
In this performance (and I hope you can see it), the answer to the heckler comes at the end - with Kant's masterful (but genuinely difficult) paradox - that in obeying, one is finally free. The point being that real freedom exists in thought alone, and in our human ability to argue and influence one another, and this true freedom is too often occluded or delimited by supposed freedoms 'to act'. Kant is therefore setting the two types of freedom - of 'action' and of 'thought' against each other, and arguing that one is worth protecting from the other. The heckle in the interest of the freedom to act is therefore very much caught within this paradox, and kind of illustrates Kant's point rather well... Which was of course why I was delighted.<br />
My main worry was that it might be too much to ask an audience to take Kant on. I wanted not to be too aggressive in the reply, and to allow the audience to feel that they can answer, and can position themselves in relation to the argument, while all at the time same being true to Kant. A difficult balancing act - and if you want to see if it proved possible, the video is here.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/A3OudUb7MSo" width="560"></iframe>matthew hammondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04537886411911282887noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-254153335299383144.post-51514900684688406682012-06-29T01:26:00.000-07:002012-06-29T01:26:13.896-07:00Performing KantOne of the jokes made by those 'in the know' in philosophy, is 'I bet you can't perform Kant'. At which point I usually say, 'Well actually Yes, his essay "What is Enlightenment?" makes a good performance.' (you can judge that below). But at the same time I know what they mean, there is something about Kant's style, all the more so in his non-political work, that would appear to preclude performance. He gives all the signals of someone who is unapproachable and 'difficult'.<br />
However this is such a pity, for as both Hegel and much later Deleuze noted, Kant's ideas, taken in themselves are both pithy, and also have a violent urgency all of their own, Take for example his very famous division of the self into Empirical and Transcendental aspects - that is into our living self (in day to day life), and that which demands that to live at all, to have an experience, we must be a single self. It is a division which sets up or at least expresses, a profound schism in everything one is or could be. For the Empirical self, my life, based on memory and feeling is always someone less than that other self, the one that patterned the world and allowed me to be. Who I am is necessarily unworthy of whom I also am - the meta-me. The result of course is that the empirical self is always changing, and evolving, while feeling it is never good enough, never complete in the face of that other-me which in forming my world demands of it (and me) more than can be expressed in any experience. The problem is seen clearest in the Sublime, where logic demands the transcendental appear in the world, and rends experience, making the act of comprehension impossible and even painful. A feeling that Kant then says is only placated in Art, which the Meta-me cannot master or fully grasp.<br />
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Here then in a nutshell, is very much the modern human experience. One is both at any one time the result of a certain subset of experiences and habits, and yet always aware that there are other things one was, and will be. From which it is follows that is is impossible to ever feel one has truly reached one potential, for the world might be (transcendentally) what the self makes, but it is what (empirically) makes the self. A doctrine, as full of poignancy as it is full of madness, modernity and necessary futility.</div>
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What is more, this same entanglement, with the same doubling of transcendental and empirical, infuses much of the way we understand the world, much of the way we dress it up and think it. Take for an example so much of traditional economics, where the lusts and desires of an notional self-interested individual, are abstracted and somehow writ large across a population (who all are hence forced become self-interested consumers). And this mandate is then used to attempt to comprehend (or at least contain) all of the highly complex interactions, developments, and innovations that pattern our working and leisure lives. Hence we take one aspect of what we are, render that aspect transcendental, and then think the world through that glass. The Myth of the Market, becomes a reality. The resulting doctrine only succeeds, in that the constant flux of that which the myth grasps at, means that the advocates of the transcendental doctrine, can endlessly re-invent their agency, and understand it anew, and so start the same process over again, and only a huge revolution in thought could ever stop this being the case.<br />
Kant's thought opens up a simple division of the mind, which is at once painful for the individual, and problematic for society as a whole. Hence Deleuze's repeated claim that Kant is the Hamlet of the North, for whom time has become unhinged. Thence the problem of performing Kant is not one of lack of substance, but of too much potential - too much to say. One must perform Kant as Hamlet, and condense the performance into a single dramatic moment....A tall order indeed, but one I think, if it can be done, would be wonderful Stand Up Thought, and so one that remains for me for now, very much a work in progress.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/G18m_0orgdc" width="560"></iframe>matthew hammondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04537886411911282887noreply@blogger.com0