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5Recombinant

Theater and Digital Resistance

People are often confused by the ideas of recombina-tion and digitality. The former typically connotesscientific esoterica pertinent to molecular biology,while the latter is associated with information andcommunication technology. Indeed, these associa-tions are correct, but very reductive. Recombina-tion and digitality are not so specialized. As weshall see, they are the foundation of a new cos-mology—a new way of understanding, ordering,valuing, and performing in the world. While somecultural vectors have been faster to embrace digi-tal models than others, no area remains un-touched. Theater, like all of the fine arts, is nowin the process of constructing a relationship withthis new paradigm, and this is at times a very em-bittered struggle. The elder model of the analogic,deeply embedded in cultural institutions, is notvoluntarily sharing any territory.

This article was originally published in The Drama Review.

76 Recombinant Theater and Digital Resistance

Knowledge/culture production in the west hasnever been a very tolerant practice, and ideas ofanarchistic pluralism held by epistemologists suchas Paul Feyerabend have never gained much cur-rency. The proponents of any given paradigm aimto eliminate all competitors and thus dominateknowledge production and the rewards that accom-pany such a position. Theater is no different fromany other cultural vector.

Much more is at stake than the configuration andappearance of theater in the next century; the for-mation of digital theater (in the widest sense of thisterm) is a struggle over the micro-sociology of theperformative matrix of everyday life. The digitalmodel, like the analogic, contains both apocalypseand utopia, and the applications constructed nowwill in part determine the directions in which digi-tal processes will later flow. Capitalism is primarilya digital political-economy, much as the medievaleconomy was primarily analogic. Pancapitalism’suse of the digital thus far has been horrifying,whether one considers the pathological separationand alienation of Taylorist production, the false de-mocracy of consumption, the repressive apparatusof surveillance, or the biotechnologies of eugenics.Digital culture is on this same trajectory, with itsprimary manifestation being an invasive mass me-dia that functions as a re-production and distribu-tion network for the ideology of capital.

In spite of this parade of the usual suspects thatconstitute the undesirable hegemony ofpancapitalism, there has always been a resistantcultural undercurrent in the digital. The first evi-dence of it appeared in 1870 when le Comte deLautréamont wrote: “Plagiarism is necessary.

Recombinant Theater and Digital Resistance 77

Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase,makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, andreplaces it with the right idea.” In three sentencesLautréamont summed up the methods and meansof digital aesthetics as a process of copying—a pro-cess that offers dominant culture minimal materialfor recuperation by recycling the same images, ac-tions, and sounds into radical discourse. Over thepast century, a long-standing tradition of digitalcultural resistance has emerged that has used re-combinant methods in the various forms of com-bines, sampling, pangender performance, bricolage,detournement, readymades, appropriation, plagia-rism, theater of everyday life, constellations, andso on. Maintaining this historical tendency by fur-ther refining methods, finding new applications,furthering its theoretical articulation, and increas-ing its rate of manifestation is an ongoing task forthose who hope to see the decline of authoritarianculture.

Part IThe Analogic and the Digital

During the millennia it dominated, the cosmologicalparadigm of an analogic universe may not havemade the world perfectly intelligible, but perhapsit offered a sense of certainty about the cosmos tothose who lived within its enveloping hegemony.Merely sixty years ago, no one thought that theanalogic model could ever be challenged. After all,the sheer weight of the data compiled in its de-fense was immeasurable. From the phenomenologyof everyday life to the most complex abstractionsof physics, one principle of the secular world wasbeyond doubt: chaos came from order, and order from

chaos. The most common experience in life was the


construction of complex order followed by its de-cay. Entropy was the primary dynamic of organizedmaterial, and the exquisite moment when order andcomplexity were integrated was perceived as a briefsingularity that was impossible to precisely repli-cate. The fullest expressions of complex order, in-timately associated with the foundation of civiliza-tion itself, were cherished and valued above all oth-ers. However, over the past fifty years thistranshistorical master-narrative, this timeless pointof assurance, has found itself in competition withthe rapidly ascending digital paradigm. As the digi-tal model grows in influence, surrendering the val-ues and certainties of analogic cosmology will bedifficult for many, while the various publics of fullydeveloped economies contend with the fragmen-tation and separation that accompany the emer-gence of a second model for understanding, orga-nizing, and valuing phenomena. For each principlethat the analogic model holds dear, the digitalmodel proposes its opposite. From the smallest de-tails to the first principle of the digital paradigm, itacts in a manner contrary to the analogic by insist-ing that order comes from order.

The conflict explicitly began in 1948 when ClaudeShannon, an electrical engineer at Bell Labs, solvedthe problem of how to send a clear signal over anoisy channel. The solution was to transform thesound into a numerical code that could be trans-formed back into sound when the code was re-ceived. This would prevent any other sound fromdisrupting or distorting the communication process.The history of communications technology fromthat moment to the present is the operationalizationof this idea, along with deploying the hardware andsoftware within all communications and informa-


tion media. In historical terms, the analogic modelhas died a surprisingly quick death in the field ofinformation and communications technology. Thelatter half of the 20th century has truly been a revo-lutionary period in this respect, but the communi-cations revolution is only the beginning. The digi-tal model of organization is rapidly spreading toother cultural vectors dominated by the analogicmodel. While its entry into other areas of humanexploration and development may not be as dra-matic (only in communications is the analogicmodel in a state of total meltdown), it has appearedin almost every sphere of human activity. The realrevolution is not computers, the Internet, or DVD;rather, it’s the rapid change over the brief fifty yearsduring which we have moved from a totally analogicworldview to one that is shared by the digital.

Digital Economy

Perhaps saying that the digital appeared approximatelyfifty years ago is not quite correct. While it is truethat the idea was not formalized until the 1940s, ithad long been with us in the negative form of thatwhich the analogic could not explain. In fact,whether this was understood or not, the politicaleconomy of capital has always included facets ofthe digital, and thus has created numerous digito-analogic hybrid forms. For example, the guild sys-tem in pre-capital had some characteristics that arebest explained by an analogic model, while othersare best explained by the digital model. The highvalue placed on producing unique products madeby or under the guidance of an individual artisan isan expression of the analogic model, while replica-tion of the workforce through strictly coded peda-gogical procedures represents the digital model.


Yet it was not until late capital that the digital be-came a latent foundational principle in economicdevelopment. Complex manufacturing could notexist without an intuitive understanding and cen-tering of digital principles (order from order). Hereindustrialists were attempting to make products inwhich the original and the copy imploded—everyFord Model T was the same as the one that pre-ceded it and the one that followed it. Some physi-cists argue that no matter how sophisticated theprocess may be, manufactured products are still notexact copies, and some Taylorist consultants say thatindividual products within a given product line canvary dramatically in durability depending onwhether they are manufactured on a Monday or aThursday: indeed, both views are correct. Theanalogic model cannot be totally dismissed. At thesame time, within operational reality, the productsare perceived and treated as being the same. Theyare replications comparable to the digital copiesthat I can make on my computer of this very ar-ticle. The products rolling off an assembly line aresuccessful only to the extent that they can standthe test of equivalence; that is, the process offersan ongoing flow of sameness, of order from order.

Hybridization of the two models seems even morepeculiar when one considers the western style ofmarketing these products. The consumer must holdtwo opposing values simultaneously. On the onehand, the consumer wants the assurance of reliabil-ity provided by digital replication, and on the otherhand, desires to own a unique constellation of char-acteristics to signify he/r individuality. Conse-quently, manufacturers must provide products thatsignify both the analogic and the digital worlds. Toreturn to the example of cars, Ford was too far ahead


of his time when he quipped to consumers that theycould have “any color of car they want, as long asit’s black.” The purity of the digital model does notaccount for cultural lag; in spite of the digital domi-nation of the assembly line, the analogic still domi-nates aesthetic value. The lesson learned from thisis that in the practical arena of the commodity, pre-cise replication is more desirable; however, in theaesthetic realm of the commodity, the appearanceof difference is more desirable. Now auto manufac-turers offer a digital infrastructure with an analogicsuperstructure. All types of colors, designs, and fea-tures are offered in a car in order to give the im-pression of difference and retain the analogic valueof the unique precious object.

To this day, digital aesthetics is still on the eco-nomic margins. While it is dominant in appear-ance in the form of the mass media—now literallythe domain of the digital—the high end of value isstill found in the analogic. Here the anachronisticeconomy of artisans reproduces itself as luxuryeconomy. This is the area where one-of-a-kind,customized, and designer products still rule overthe cheap imitations and digital knock-offs. Cus-tom-made jewelry, haute couture, and high art arestill the signifiers of privilege that underlie aes-thetic value. They are perfection in a world ofcounterfeits. The luxury market is closely relatedto high culture, but as we shall see, this secularfield of sacred privilege is also being quietly plun-dered by the digital.

Digital Science

Even science has had to contend with the advance-ment of the digital paradigm. True, the elder sci-


ences of physics and chemistry have held tena-ciously to their analogic version of the cosmos, butthe youthful discipline of biology, in a sublime mo-ment of oedipal revolution, has rejected the analogicmodel of its elders as being useless to its pursuits.Central to this discussion is the discovery of DNA.In the 1940s, it was already known that heredity iscontrolled by genes; that genes are located on chro-mosomes found in cell nuclei; and that genes areproduced by DNA. However, DNA was not reallyunderstood in terms of its function and potential. Itwas not until Crick and Watson were able to imag-ine the structure of DNA that its true potential wasrealized. According to human genome scientistMaynard Olson, Crick and Watson’s discovery wasmeaningful because it occurred within the atmo-sphere of a formalized digital paradigm. They intu-itively understood that DNA was not analogic (or-der from chaos), but instead digital (order from or-der). This type of modeling made possible the bio-logical understanding of the production of life. In-formation replication in the body is analogous todigital copying on a computer. Information is storedas DNA (in a base 4 format, rather than in a base 2format as used by computers), and precisely repli-cates itself when cells divide. Now that this piece ofinformation is understood, humans can intervenein the once autonomous molecular systems of repro-duction. This organic frontier now has no bordersbecause the basics of DNA become intelligible whenone analyzes them using the digital model of infor-mation storage, recognition, retrieval, and replica-tion. Digital humans, animals, food, and medicineare now in the marketplace.

Computer science and biology (hardware/softwareand wetware) have reached a parallel maturity in


the latter half of this century. That this correlationis coincidence is unlikely, given their shared stakein the development of the digital paradigm. Conse-quently, even science, like culture and economy, hasto suture the divide between the analogic and thedigital. Without question, when asking whethernatural, social, or economic processes are analogicor digital, the answer at the dawn of the new millen-nium is: they are both.

Digital Culture

If Henry Ford is the avatar of a digital economy, thenhis contemporary Marcel Duchamp is the avatar ofdigital culture. With his readymade series, Duchampstruck a mighty blow against the value system ofthe analogic. Duchamp took manufactured objects,signed and dated them, and placed them in a high-culture context. Duchamp’s argument was that anygiven object has no essential value and that thesemiotic network in which an object is placed de-fines its meaning, and hence, its value. If a bottlerack is in a hardware store or next to a sink in akitchen, its value is defined by its function and itsappearance is mundane; however, when it is placedon a pedestal in the legitimizing space of a galleryor museum (where the readymades reside to thisday) and when it carries the signature of a legiti-mized artist, each object becomes a nonfunctionalobject d’art, and therefore an object of high value.Like Ford, Duchamp was too far ahead of his time.His critique was not widely accepted in a periodobsessed with the romantic notions of the artist,when each artwork produced by the elite few andaccepted by tastemakers of the time was viewed asa unique testament to artistic genius. No great workof art could be replicated by man or machine.


Half a century later various publics were ready tohear what Duchamp had tried to say early in thecentury. Andy Warhol was emblematic of the manyartists, musicians, and writers who reintroduced theidea of the digital to a now-eager audience. Warholdiscovered that all the people of digital culture re-ally wanted was more of the same. No more uniqueobjects—they wanted the familiar ones that wereforever replicated around them. They wanted end-less flows of Brillo boxes and serial prints ofCampbell’s soup cans produced at Warhol’s studio,known as The Factory. The counterfeit was nolonger the counterfeit if it met the expectation ofsameness. Warhol subverted the modern notion ofart, and was loved for it, not just by an unsophisti-cated public, but also by a cultural elite who sawhis work as unique in making a “new” gesture bydestroying the original and reducing art objects tothe manufacturing (duplication) principle ofequivalence. But Warhol did not stop there; he per-formed digitality as the first cyborg artist. He was amachine, no different from his constant compan-ion the tape recorder. He was only replicating whathe saw around him; he took in the images of cul-ture and spit them out again.

Theater, of course, has its visionary too. Karl Krausbrought the digital model of theater to the atten-tion of the public. He understood that the implo-sion of fiction and nonfiction into hyperrealitycould be used for purposes other than perpetuatingdominant ideology. He also understood plagiarismas a method for cultural production. These notionscame together in Kraus’s critique of the Europeanwar machine in The Last Days of Mankind. Unfor-tunately, he was unable to conceive of a way to stagethe work. He could not think of a way to release it


from hyperreality and loop it back into the physi-cal world. Part of the problem was that the workrelied too heavily on narrative structure, but mostof the problem was that no looping mechanism hadbeen constructed yet. To this day the constructionof this loop is an ongoing and increasingly urgentprocess, given pancapital’s rapid deployment of thedigital for its own perpetuation and profit.

Part IIRecombinant Theater

The complex division of labor in late capital is or-ganized around the principle of specialization. Aslong as a segment is useful, it will increase in com-plexity until a critical mass is reached: then thesegment will divide and separate, creating a newarea of specialization. During this process, mem-bers of a given segment develop numerous mod-els and applications that act as subdividers withinan area. Most of the people in these subareas con-sider themselves different from others within thespecialization, much as members of the special-ization perceive of themselves as inherently dif-ferent from other specialized segments. The con-sequence of this situation is that a profound alien-ation emerges due to competition for resourcesamong and within specializations, along with aninability to communicate effectively with one an-other due to lexical differences. Segments (andparticularly subsegments) become so specializedthat they sink into absurdity. How many timeshave we heard scholars, engineers, scientists, etc.,say with pride that there are only a few people inthe world who can understand what they do? Thissituation is an embarrassment that not onlybreeds alienation within specializations, but also


banishes interested nonspecialists (publics) fromthe stores of knowledge. To be sure, each seg-ment and subsegment has developed some use-ful element to the same extent that each has se-rious difficulties. There is no paradigm, model,or application that is not in some kind of criticaltrouble.

Happily, this crisis has been recognized over thepast few decades, but little seems to have beendone about it. The division machine has beenturned on, and there seems to be no off switch.The most common response to the problem inthe fine arts and humanities, both in the univer-sity and in the culture industry, is a call forinterdisciplinarity. For these institutions, this callis a very poor joke. Disturbing the Enlightenmenttradition of managing knowledge through spe-cialization would be disruptive to the entire poli-tics, economy, and spatial-temporal relations ofthese institutions. Second, the digital methodsneeded to establish interdisciplinary practices arenot completely accepted. Cultural education andproduction are both analogic institutions that re-ward the individual “genius” who is able to con-jure unique and original moments of complexorder, and these institutions reject, if not pun-ish, those who engage with methodologies of thecopy and with the celebration of the counter-feit. While this topic is sufficient material for abook, suffice it to say that strategies and tacticsfor unifying divisions among cultural practiceswill not come from the university or cultural in-dustry centers; rather, they will emerge from theminor sectors and nomadic vectors that placethemselves in the anarchistic and liminal zonesof digital culture.


The Theater of Everyday Life

For the past decade, Critical Art Ensemble has repeat-edly suggested that recombinant theater consistsof interwoven performative environments throughwhich participants may flow. One of these founda-tional environments is the theater of everyday life,which includes street theater and (for lack of a bet-ter term) what Alan Kaprow called “happenings.”When using the term street theater, CAE has a veryparticular meaning in mind. We do not include thetradition of political theater that presents prede-termined narratives “for the people.” This type ofpresentation is merely traditional stage theater per-formed outdoors that has more ideological flotsamthan a Broadway play. Such performances simplyimport spectacle and passivity into so-called pub-lic space. What CAE does consider street theaterare those performances that invent ephemeral, au-tonomous situations from which temporary publicrelationships emerge that can make possible criti-cal dialogue on a given issue. Traditional examplesof this type of activity come from the Living The-ater, the Theater of the Oppressed, Guerrilla ArtAction Group, Rebel Chicano Art Front, and theSituationists.

Clearly, happenings fit into this model as well. Interms of intention, the differences are subtle. Per-haps the most obvious difference, albeit superficial,is that happenings ally themselves with art dis-course, while street theater allies itself with the-ater discourse. The other difference is that whilestreet theater was not recuperated in the west—just ignored—happenings were reinvented to bet-ter serve the culture market. The art world defangedthem by turning happenings into performances and


environments into installations. Every politicallyuseful characteristic and experimental motiva-tion that happenings had were eliminated in fa-vor of recentering the artist/performer, reconsti-tuting a hushed silence from a passive audience,and reviving predetermined narrative trajecto-ries. This list is a collection of the very charac-teristics that recombinant theater leaves behind;at the same time, recombinant theater attemptsto include compelling anti-authoritarian culturalelements from other models of performative ex-ploration.

Participation, process, pedagogy, and experimen-tation are the key components for further recom-bination that come from the theater of everydaylife. Models of cultural participation are the typeof application of digital aesthetics and organiza-tion that best serve resistant practice. Recombi-nant theater begins by eliminating the privilegedposition of the director, auteur, genius, or anyother reductive, privatizing category. It under-mines that analogic moment in which unique,complex order, manifesting in human form, sepa-rates itself from the chaotic rabble, and one voicespeaks for the “betterment” of all. At that samemoment, through capital’s production of repres-sive social space, the chaotic rabble is digitizedinto audience form—a homogenized unit. In thisprocess, subjects are fragmented and only a singleline of desire is allowed expression—that line ofdegraded pleasure, that passive line of sight, thatmakes an individual a “normalized” audiencemember. This singular dimension of subjectiv-ity is replicated in all the individuals who con-stitute the social constellation, and thus becomesthe dominant trait of the whole and the part.


On the other hand, within the relativelyhorizontalized space of recombinant theater, indi-viduals are reassembled into an analogic form.Multiple lines of desire as well as numerous formsof social interaction can find expression. Underthese conditions, a loose-knit ephemeral public canemerge. An actual construction of a public (tem-porary though it may be) through an open field ofperformative practice makes possible a productivepedagogy not found in the unilateral didacticismof reactive or reactionary politicized art. In this way,a participatory process can emerge out of both ra-tional social interactions and nonrational libidinaltrafficking that creates skepticism in an individualabout the taken-for-grantedness of the social codesof a given situation. While the instigators of thisprocess do have an empowered position becausethey choose the topic and launch the event, thisdiscrepancy in power between performer and audi-ence dissolves when the two come in contact, andthus the power functions in a generative mannerrather than as one of domination. When the pro-cess functions properly, the instigators of the eventimmediately fall into a mode of deterritorialization,and the process drifts into a multiplicity of unknowndirections. No real intentionality exists, since theinteraction is process-oriented and thereby subjectto many unforseeable causalities and accidents.Only aesthetic products can be fully intentionalizedand their quality controlled.

That is why this model remains permanently ex-perimental. The method itself may not be experi-mental, but its application is. This type of perfor-mance is risky because the outcome is always un-known. Like all experiments, this one can fail, andfail in the worst sense. While failure from audience


indifference to one’s gestures is always possible,experimental performance can decline into a worst-case scenario: a raving reinforcement of authori-tarian culture. Once a discourse begins within adifferentiated public (the foundation ofinterdisciplinarity in any practical sense), there isno way to be sure that the internalized ideology ofdominant culture or other unfortunate condition-ing won’t effectively assert themselves. CAE knowsby experience that they often do; however, the pos-sibility of an emergent discourse of liberation, fol-lowed (one hopes) by the transformation of a pub-lic into a coalition, will never happen without opendialogue and minimal expression management.These are risks that must be taken.

Given such praise for the theater of everyday life,the reader must be wondering, why fix what isn’tbroken? While this model does work well forliberationist purposes, it has two tremendous short-comings: the first is that it cannot bear the burdenof a complex conceptual structure. As long as theidea the performer wants to bring to the audienceis simple and a part of participant members’ life ex-perience, the model works well. For example, CAEcarried out a guerrilla performance in Sheffield, UK,in the hope of revealing some of the hidden struc-tures of domination in everyday life. CAE chose aharmless action that took place in a location wherethe typical activities of the local population wouldnot be disturbed. The activity chosen was to giveaway beer and cigarettes. The location selected forthe action was a pedestrian mall and transporta-tion artery. Here CAE attempted to inject the ex-pressive possibilities of open exchange found in apublic bar into a space that was reserved exclusivelyfor consumption. Although the area was allegedly


a public space, no conversation, conviviality, orcoming together of diverse groups (or any othercharacteristic of bourgeois utopian public space) oc-curred there. Once this managed space was brokenby the alien gesture of offering free beer, these verysame elements of utopian public space immediatelyemerged. However, so did other restrictive struc-tures of everyday life. For example, the environ-ment that was created demonstrated male privilege.Far fewer women participated, and most of thosewho entered the environment stood at the periph-ery and observed the activity from the margins. Thissocial constellation stood out as the perfect repre-sentation of the gender hierarchy found inpangendered social space. These and other elementsof expression management in the performativerealm became immediately visible, particularly forthose in the center of the event. The most inter-esting reaction from the male participants was com-plete astonishment at the action. The whole con-text—a moment of meeting new people, havingconversations, getting drunk while waiting for thetram, getting free commodities, and so on—seemedso unbelievable that as one man put it, “It’s a dreamcome true.” Years of socialization had made it seemimpossible that members of the public could ap-propriate the space of the commodity. In this case,prior to the event, reterritorialization of the spaceof the commodity through public process could onlybe imagined in the confines of a personal, interior,dreamspace.

These are very basic observations relevant to un-derstanding and to producing social space, but aperformance such as this one could not offer evena superficial critique of how this situation had cometo pass, or explain the mechanisms through which


the ideology of social space had been internalized.In spite of the fact that the performative modelworked very well in terms of process, participation,immediacy, and pedagogy, the parameters of dis-course were limited, to say the least.

A second major problem with this model lies in itspedagogy. The theater of everyday life is limited to ev-

eryday life. Key issues in liberationist practice thatare beyond local and immediate parameters do notregister in this model. Indeed, this is a problem foractivists as well as for artists. As liberationist prac-tice faces increasingly global or specialized issues,or requires an international constituency for locallybased issues, the usefulness of the theater of every-day life begins to wane. For the theater of everydaylife to function pedagogically, the participants in-volved must have direct experience with a givenissue. For example, the spatial construction of gen-der inequality illustrated by the example above issomething everyone experiences, but does not nec-essarily recognize. Participation in the theater ofeveryday life can make the transparent codes of gen-der separation opaque and impossible to miss. Oncethese codes are perceived, a critical understandingquickly follows through dialogue. That is why thismodel of performance was used so effectively in de-veloping notions of agency and class position inlocalized third-world colonial struggles.

Unfortunately, many current issues that have drawnthe attention of liberationist cultural forces are notso localized, basic, and available. For example, therevolution in biotechnology has brought aboutnumerous social problems—most notably, the res-urrection of eugenics. While it has beenreconfigured to better fit the current market mecha-


nisms, and although it avoids calling attention toitself as overt social policy, today’s eugenics is ev-ery bit as pernicious and destructive as the first wavethat marked the late 19th and early 20th centu-ries. The problem is that this time, eugenics is aninvisible social dynamic that is quietly emergingout of the pancapitalist institutions of the economyof excess and the nuclear family. How can a peda-gogical theatrical environment be constructed inthis case? Reproductive technology, and the cur-rent direction that molecular biology and medicine(both utopian and oppressive) are taking, are fartoo removed from everyday life because these prac-tices are still limited in their deployment and theknowledge is so specialized. The idea of molecularinvasion and colonization still seems like a science-fiction scenario. On the other hand, the area ofthe biotech revolution that people seem to findmost troubling is genetically modified food produc-tion, because here there is a direct experience (anxi-ety) about the disruption of a daily ritual of eating.

Along this same line of solving the problem of theabsence of experience is the issue of constructinginternational constituencies around localized socialproblems. For example, there is an internationalmovement for the liberation of Mumia Abu Jamal.Once again, supporters are employing the tradi-tional civil rights strategy of using outsider powervectors to shame a localized offender into correct-ing an injustice. As with the civil rights movementof the 1950s and early 1960s, people with no expe-riential connection to the situation must be con-vinced to identify with it. The perceptions and re-lationships of the support contingents are com-pletely mediated. Perceptions of race relations, po-lice/civilian relationships, prison issues, etc., vary


dramatically from culture to culture and from sub-culture to subculture. The consistent local elementsof race relations, police, and prisons do not mani-fest in the same manner, because the outrage of onelocality around this set of relationships is not nec-essarily the experience of another. Consequently,one local group cannot depend on intersubjectiveexperience as a means to acquire political supportfor their cause. Globalization has created a newtheater that bursts the boundaries of the theaterof everyday life. We now have a theater of activ-ism that has emerged out of the necessity of tak-ing material life struggles into hyperreality. Ac-tivists are now more than just organizers, negotia-tors, objectors, and policy manufacturers; they arealso inventors of and actors in fully mediatedworlds, and are thereby forced into the treacheryof representation.

Because of this situation, liberationist performersnow must find a way to splice greater conceptualcomplexity and a more broadly based pedagogy intotheir performative models. CAE would like to sug-gest that one potential solution is to use elementsfrom the emerging theater of information and itsattendant technologies. Mechanisms that can de-liver specialized information in a fast, aestheticizedmanner have become increasingly necessary andmore useful than ever.

The Theater of Information

The tendency to immediately jump into what is con-sidered the cutting edge of information and com-munication technology (ICT) is typical for thosegrounded in a variety of disciplines interested inexperimentation within this genre. In the case of


the theater in particular, the tendency is to leap tothe construction of a virtual theater. ICT haspromised that a fully interactive, living, virtualtheater is just around the corner if we just stayon-line. As yet, CAE knows of no virtual theaterthat has a multifaceted, interactive social dimen-sion, and certainly nothing with any resistant po-tential; rather, the virtual theater available seemsto reinforce the worst elements of thedisembodiment of the technocratic class for thesake of greater instrumentality.

At present, virtual theater works on two fronts. Thefirst is the use of ICT as a new display technologyfor older media that intersect performance prac-tices—for example, streaming prerecorded videoover the Net. Once again the old discourse ofdemocratic TV is back, only with the added kickerthat the problem of distribution (which under-mined the video utopia of the 1970s) is solved.CAE does not want to take up space explainingwhy the Net is a poor broadcast technology; how-ever, a broadcast technology with millions of chan-nels tends to dilute the viewer base, and capital-saturated agencies will, as always, be able attractviewers more effectively than those that are im-poverished. (This is one of the ways that capitalreplicates its class system in the allegedly neutralzone of virtual space.)

The second front is virtual theater proper, whichtends to manifest in one of two ways. The first mani-festation is the virtual community. Whether a text-based or a graphic user interface is used, these simu-lations of sociability are the most profound testa-ment to the nightmare of disembodiment. Herecapital realizes its Cartesian dreams of body elimina-


tion by creating an interface that appeals solelyto the mind. Not only is the body itself eliminatedfrom the social equation, but any sharing of spaceby bodies is eliminated. Deleuze and Guattari havepersuasively argued that the matrix of authority iscentered on the body. The two most regulated el-ements of the social world, are, first, what canenter and leave the body, and second, what a bodymay be in proximity to and/or intermingle with.In the case of virtual theater, nothing is going inor out of the body, nor is it sharing space withanyone or anything other than those objects thatproduce a space designed purely for production andconsumption. In other words, those involved inthe virtual theater are nothing more than neu-tralized subjects incapable of disrupting the ma-trix of authority and thus establishing an autono-mous subjectivity. For any type of resistant activ-ity, this variety of virtual theater is useless, de-spite its democratic claims to provide creativeinteractivity. Acting in a virtual community is thevery definition of what Debord called “enrichedprivation.”

The second manifestation of virtual theater is thenetcast—using live video streaming of a local the-atrical event that is linked to virtual text-com-munication software such as an Internet RelayChat. This method invites remote viewing andmulti-user commentary. Although this type oftechnological interface is an improvement overthe virtual community of the avatar, it is still anunfortunate hypermediated version of social ac-tivity. The problems here are simple, and are re-lated to the problems of broadcasting already men-tioned. All actions and images are reduced to thesame tiny scale, and most people are not accus-


tomed to speaking conversationally in writing.Due to the intense level of technological media-tion, these productions are awkward to the ex-tent that being a virtual audience member is cer-tainly a step down from actually attending theevent. The hope here (and whether it can be re-alized in a satisfactory manner remains to be seen)is to free audience members from the limitationsof locality, yet it is difficult to know if thisliberational characteristic is worth all that mustbe sacrificed in terms of immediate experience andsocial interaction.

Another theatrical use for this technology is lessgrand in its ambitions, but it is functional. ICTcan virtually extend the spatial codings and pa-rameters of the theater space and allow for simu-lations that otherwise would not be possible. Herethe technology is used as a unidirectionalperformative component rather than as an inter-active one. Since the audience members do nothave to be at terminals and instead interact onlyin real space, the use of scale is no longer fixed,because projections can be used. For example,CAE did a performance at Rutgers University tocall attention to sperm and egg donor recruitmenton university campuses for use in neo-eugenicpractices. Using SeeUCMe, CAE was able to pro-vide the illusion that a reprotech company visit-ing Rutgers was actively recruiting a sperm donorfor a woman who was monitoring the process on-line from Florida. (In actuality, the performer wasin a back room in the building, but it read per-fectly as a transborder process.) The effectivenessof this technology was due to the looping back ofthe virtual into real space, and a surrendering ofinteractivity in favor of participation.


For the most part, virtual theater lacks all the re-deeming characteristics of theatrical practice,whether they are resistant functions or just plea-surable social functions. The short answer to thisproblem is simply to argue that the body is still thekey building block of theater, and that if perform-ers are to drift into virtuality, they should find themeans to develop feedback loops between the elec-tronic and the organic. However, CAE contendsthat there is another important piece to this puzzle:the jump from real space to virtual space is prema-ture. The virtual has never been anything morethan corporate hype to convince consumers thatthis time, the technological wish fulfillment ma-chine will be a reality. Instead, performers shouldconsider ICT’s function as an information organizer.For example, what makes video streaming inter-esting is not the broadcast potential, but its archi-val potential (the inverse manifestation of broad-cast) to allow viewers fast and immediate access todesired material (after all, the Net’s primary func-tion is to be a massive, organized file cabinet). Fur-ther, ICT as an information organizer represents ahardware/software combination that could help tosolve the conceptual problems raised in the lastsection, provided that its interconnections withorganic bodies are maintained.

ICT is not going to provide community, democ-racy, expanded consciousness, nor interactive the-ater, nor will it fulfill any other grandiose utopianwish. It will provide only very poor simulations ofthese things because these complex systems are re-duced to the singularity of information exchange.ICT is really only good for one thing—informa-tion storage, retrieval, exchange, and display. Bestof all, it does these fast. However, this one thing is


enough to offer a means to deepen the pedagogicaldimension of resistant theatrical practice.

For example, CAE did a very large-scale event en-titled Flesh Machine. During this event, CAE hopedto reveal the eugenic substrata in reprotech. Theproblem here is obvious—most audience membershave no experiential connection with reprotech,so we could not use a method to tease out whatthey already knew, but had yet to articulate. Nordid the group like the idea of presenting a manualfor the incoming audience to study (CAE did writea book on the subject that would function well inthis capacity, but it would not solve the problem ofthere being no lived experience—critical texts havevery definite limits). As Paolo Friere has pointedout, the “banking method” of education is of mod-est use in raising critical consciousness because it isnot grounded in the meaningful structures of ev-eryday life. Somehow, the collective had to devisea means to impart basic background informationon reprotech under performance conditions so thatinformation could lend support to an emerging ex-periential process. To make matters more difficult,the two had to fit together somewhat seamlessly.

CAE’s answer was to use computers to deliver andseductively display the information. The collectivecreated a CD-ROM with information on medicalprocedures, a diary of a couple going through in-vitro fertilization, an electronic children’s book, andso on. The heart of the electronic presentation wasan actual genetic screening test. A code was writ-ten for the test that allowed the computer to assessa participant’s answers, and reward he/r with a cer-tificate of genetic merit or reject he/r with a curtnotice of insufficient genetic quality. When one


takes the test, it becomes abundantly clear that itis not just a medical document. It also notes one’saesthetic traits (such as skin color and quality) andsearches for talents and abilities (intelligence, co-ordination, creativity, etc). Through this experi-ence, many participants could comprehend veryquickly and clearly the structure of genetic stratifi-cation and the markers of value latent in the test.Consequently, the audience learned how easily theflesh is commodified. This process was then rein-forced by allowing those who passed the test to pro-ceed in the event by having their blood taken forDNA extraction and amplification, and by havinga cell sample cryopreserved. During the process, theparticipants interacted not only with the perform-ers, but also with computer technicians, doctors,nurses, lab technicians, and scientists. For that pe-riod, they were immersed in the hyperreality of theflesh machine in a way that offered them an activeexperience of new eugenics and its tremendouslycomplex cultural context.

To be sure, this experiment in recombinant the-ater was conducted under the best of all possibleconditions. Both the issue under examination andthe audience for this work lent themselves to afunctional use of the theater of information. Theparticipants were overwhelmingly young andmiddle class and (as to be expected) computer lit-erate. This computer literacy translates perfectlyinto bioliteracy, since biotech is just another formof infomatics/cybernetics. Consequently, this au-dience was primed to consume this informationwith ease.

In answer to the issue of producing work that haslimited audience potential, CAE designed a sim-


pler action that could reach a broader audience.The group created the Society for ReproductiveAnachronisms (SRA). This performative counter-feit consisted of a group of activists that spoke topeople about the dangers of medical interventionin the reproductive process. In the tradition of ac-tivist groups, the public interface was designedaround an information table. The SRA had theusual pamphlets and flyers, but it also offered com-puterized information. This included informationon the positive aspects of genetic anomalies, re-productive fashion tips (such as the use of codpiecesto raise sperm count), herbal remedies for repro-ductive problems, a genetic screening test (in whicha participant was rewarded for failing), and muchmore. The main goal here was to produce an ac-tion that could be realized under almost any socialcondition. Production costs were extremely low, soany group or institution could sponsor the project.If participants had no computer skills, someone wasat the table to help them. With a very simple ges-ture, a lot of complex information could be con-veyed in an entertaining and inexpensive manner.While this piece was dialogic and the scripts wereself-generated (as with Flesh Machine), this projectdid lack the broad variety of voices that helpedmake Flesh Machine so meaningful.

Research into this recombinant type of theater isonly just beginning. Many more experiments willhave to be conducted and computer literacy willhave to increase before this type can fully and suc-cessfully be deployed in manifold situations.Whether computer literacy will grow beyond theclasses of the technocracy is unknown, so it’s pos-sible that this form of recombinant theater will notbe useful in more challenging situations. However,


where and when it does work, it contributes to aprocess in which social segments share space in agenerative way, spheres of knowledge intersect, andnew varieties of political connectedness emerge.The thinking and the doing do not end at the closeof the event, but continue into everyday life, thuscreating a never-ending theater of becoming.

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