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In Conversation with Simon Donger
Interviewed by Diana Damian
Simon Donger is a Lecturer in Scenography and Performance Arts teaching across the BA Theatre Practice and MA Advanced Theatre Practice at CSSD. Simon studied sculpture and scenography in England and Canada. He has presented conferences in UK, Portugal, Czech Republic, and Switzerland. Simon has given lectures and workshops in various institutions such as Leeds College of Art & Design, the AA School of Architecture (London), and Centre d Art de la Marechalerie du Chateau de Versailles (Paris). Currently, Simon is completing his PhD research, editing a book with Routledge on the work of ORLAN, and working on an interactive installation for the Crash!Boom!Bau Festival organized by the Bauhauslab in Jena, Germany, May 2009.
Interdisciplinarity is no longer a perspective or a method of thinking or creating art, it is a tool and, in the context of a cultural dialogue, a necessity.
The interdisciplinary seminar (IDS) started as a class within the Performance Arts course here at Central, yet its outreach and impact have changed over the years of its fast development. With a structure of visiting practitioners, lectures on contemporary interdisciplinary art and presentations, in different forms, by students in each year of study, IDS offers a platform of discussion. Its development is affecting its aims, yet it is clear that it challenges the voice of the theatre student and the limitations that it comes with.
Simon Donger looks at the history of this seminar, its growth and importance beyond Central’s educational walls, into the language of performance today.
Where did the idea come from?
My own background is somehow interdisciplinary: I studied fine arts and sculpture in particular, while training in stage design. The links between visual arts and performance have always been clear to me. Interdisciplinary Seminar (IDS) emerged first in recognition of the diversity of interests and practices within the Performance Arts student cohorts. But of course it is primarily aligned with the variety of interdisciplinary practices found in the professional world of performance. Responding to both entirely meant creating a whole new ‘module’. At the same time, a visual artist/scenographer myself, it was important that IDS reflected the many disciplines found in Theatre Practice courses. The key word is performance, but, to exist, performance requires multiple disciplines that can co-exist in all sorts of ways. In that sense, IDS does not favour any particular model of interdisciplinary practice and thinking.
What did you anticipate would branch out from the seminar?
IDS allows each participant’s understanding of the neighbouring disciplines that enable their own to enrich. It is also an opportunity for one’s practical and theoretical language to expand. And finally, it strives to introduce the disciplines that might seem the most remote in a new context relevant to performance.
Why the structure for the presentations for all three years?
The structure is progressive and generative. It is first about developing some understanding of interdisciplinarity through looking at pre-existing models/artists/movements etc….. Secondly, this understanding is owned further by trying it out practically, thus honing it experimentally. The third level is to recognize and develop interdisciplinarity in one own’s practice and approach to performance.
Should it be open to the whole university?
The university already has various schemes of seminars running all year long and those have an interesting variety of disciplines. IDS is very much context specific in a sense that it remains within the sphere of performance practice and visual arts, that is a Theatre Practice specificity.
How will it adapt to the current discussion regarding the death of postmodernism?
Such discussion is not new, really. IDS, and interdisciplinarity in general, can be seen to spring from postmodernism, but this also means that it has some roots in modernism. The current context is enriched of both, hence why some theorists like Nicholas Bourriaud are coining terms such as ‘AlterModern’, which includes a ‘cross-fertilization’ of cultures and places that is just as relevant to IDS as other present or past conceptions.
Do you think there is such thing at the death of system of thought?
No, quite the contrary, there is an emergence of a lively thinking whereby philosophy and theory are taking another route than that of psychology and the intellect, and instead address the body, sensations and emotions. In that sense, I am personally interested in the thoughts of Adriana Cavarero, Alphonso Lingis, Elizabeth Grosz, Leo Bersani, Cathryn Vasseleu and Richard Shusterman
How do you think Central received it?
CSSD is like any other institutions, it comprises of various, sometimes diverging, conceptual approaches. Some of them are holding on to past ideas that can be still seen as relevant to aspects of our field. Other approaches might be more surprising and innovative.
How do you view interdisciplinary work ?
Firstly I tend to view interdisciplinarity at the core of any collaborative process. The co-existence of disciplines in some milieu is a result of ideological compartmentalization: it serves some purposes but also neglects other possibilities. Innovative research on the other hand is increasingly seen to take place when disciplines intersect and bring new light on one another.
Secondly interdisciplinary work found within singular practitioners often reveals exciting models of practice, in the sense that the various disciplines combined disclose their prior isolation under a new critical light. To place oneself at an intersection is always risky and unstable, and it is only from this very shaky position that we can appreciate interdisciplinarity as an ethos of critical hybridization.
Do you believe there are any boundaries regarding performance art and, in general interdisciplinary? How would you define it?
No, and I don’t think it is a matter of ‘belief’. Boundaries can be seen all around us, either because they have a long tradition or because they have been newly constructed. In all cases boundaries are defined by individuals. In that sense, it is also up to us to undefine, undo, them. It all starts from wanting to go past them, seeing something else in the penumbra that lies underneath their surfaces. Yet the institutional structure of our society is still quite concerned with disciplinarity, and one’s interdisciplinary work might remain located, public wise, in one discipline only. That is to say, not all the disciplines combined in one’s practice will recognize the work. Some disciplines are more resistant to interdisciplinarity, some areas of some disciplines are still very much concerned by the ‘purity’ and ‘unity’ of their field. There is a tension inherent to interdisciplinarity whereby it strives to suspend boundaries knowing that those boundaries are still of relevance to the ideological frameworks at play in recognizing, disseminating and promoting practices.