Performing Stasis
Forms of Staying Still

Stasis describes a state of rest, of pausing, of motionlessness, or even uneventfulness, which denotes a passive side of our existence [German: Dasein]. With the modern development of accelerated time regimes, the concept of stasis has become a paradoxical figure: as a fearmongering phrase [German: Angstformel] of stagnation, it represents forms of motionlessness and lack of development and is considered a threat to social progress. In the context of “leisure” as well as “strike,” however, it represents resistant practices that place cultural norms into question and address alternative dimensions of time. In the arts, forms of stilling have been closely related to reflections on the perception and shaping of time since the 18th century. Particularly in the performing arts, whose basic principle is acting, aesthetics of stasis commonly lead to confusion and indignation. Stasis is also a performative force. But what exactly does stasis mean?

Slowness

Stasis in theater can first and foremost mean the slowing, thwarting, or prolonging of events, movements, and progressions. From Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters (Moscow, 1901) to Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (Paris, 1953) to Christoph Marthaler’s Murx the European (Berlin, 1993), there are numerous examples in which the time structure of classical drama is consistently subverted and a dramaturgy of slowness, redundancy, and plotlessness is set in place of pace, need for action, and final resolution.
Scene photo from the premiere of Christoph Marthaler’s “Murx the European” on January 16, 1993 | © David Baltzer The characters seem trapped in a situation of waiting and exhaust themselves in the repetition of common rituals. The performances of these texts regularly elicited emotional reactions ranging from tears to bursts of laughter among the audience, the basis for which cannot be attributed solely to the acting style of the respective performers but also to the dissolution of the concepts of time themselves. It is less a matter of simply being bored than of intensifying the perception of time, space, and situation. These productions can certainly lead to liminal experiences of our modern sense of time.

 

Posing

In addition, performing stasis can also mean the halting of physical movement or the sustaining of certain positions. From the tableaux vivants of the 18th century, in which costumed actors reenacted works of fine art by posing in front of an audience, to the living sculptures of today’s art world, there are numerous examples in which the deliberate stilling of human bodies is staged as an overlay of spatial and time-based art. Performance and tableau vivant for Altaroma 2020 fashion week by the students of fashion design at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, Italy, on January 1, 2020 | © picture alliance / Photoshot
In this same manner, Timm Ulrichs staged himself in a glass cube as Erstes lebendes Kunstwerk (First living artwork) in 1961; the artist duo Gilbert & George have appeared singing in galleries as costumed and doll-like stiff actors since 1969; since 2000, Erwin Wurm has set up so-called One Minute Sculptures in which museum visitors hold certain poses for one minute according to specific instructions; and the artist Vanessa Beecroft stages exposed, motionless female bodies in arrangements between anonymous uniformity and voyeurism. The apparent transformation of a human body into a living sculptural object is not simply one of the physical challenges of so-called endurance art, it is also directed toward the confusion and shifting of traditional genre boundaries. “Be a Sculpture For a Minute,” One Minute Sculpture instructions by Erwin Wurm | © Funkyxian, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Stand-in as Resistance

Finally, standing, sitting, or lying still in public spaces can generate a symbolic power that turns a performance into a form of passive resistance. Here, we are reminded of the dancer Erdem Gündüz, who on June 17, 2013, stood in front of a meter-high Atatürk poster in Istanbul’s Taksim Square for eight hours, thereby setting the scene for the internationally known Gezi Park protest movement. Erdem Gündüz (left in white shirt) in 2013 in Istanbul’s Taksim Square at the start of the Gezi Park protest movement | © Jwslubbock, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons He himself understood this action as performance, implicitly referencing forms of stasis in theater and dance such as those found in the choreography of The Show Must Go On by Jérôme Bel (2001) in which Gündüz performed. In The Show Must Go On, the dancers stare motionless into the audience for the duration of a song in a provocative manner. What could be interpreted in the theater as a reference to seeing-and-being-seen became a silent protest in a public space. The two simple acts of standing and looking revealed their own medial power: The stand-in — which is listed in Gene Sharp’s famous list of 198 Methods of Nonviolent Actions as a “physical intervention” — denotes a physical persistence in space (Sharp, 1973). It is the dispute over who owns this space, who can move within it and use it (Leigh Foster, 2003). This stand-in aims to disrupt prevailing time regimes and initiate aesthetic and political turning points.

Stasis as Countertime

With the increasing structuring and control of time in modernity and the orientation of subjects towards acceleration and efficiency, forms of countertime simultaneously arise, which can manifest themselves as forces of persistence in strikes, congestion, delays, a lack of action, exhaustion, or boredom. In the performing arts and performance art, pauses, long durations, and forms of stasis belong to such aesthetic methods. In them, we experience the subject’s limits and crises through the use of long durations, states of exhaustion, and a lack of action. They intensify perception through prolongings, delays, or changes in forms of expression. And finally, they interrupt temporal patterns of order and, thus, create conditions for their reflection, expansion, and critique.