FlamingText

Is it possible for a word to mean the opposite of itself?

The following is a Mission (or "Pronunciation") statement that accompanied a piece of performance art I saw a while back. It is reprinted verbatim with only the troupe's name removed:
Mission or (Pronunciation)
[Name Redacted] makes plays that are not plays. We make theatre that may or may not be theatre. We generate pieces that are rooted in an internal logic and rigid structure that audiences may or may not understand. However, our work does not beg to be understood. We don't care to be understood, to understand is a lie.

[Name Redacted] is an intimate, intelligent, connected group of emerging artists who create work with and for one another. We are mercurial youngsters with style and wit. We keep secrets and speak in code. Nobody is the Boss but you must Respect the Boss.

Driven by boredom and disgust for theatre, we craft fierce, audacious performance pieces. Call these pieces irreverent and disrespectful, for they can be just that. Sources of inspiration are contemporary politics, economics, literature, philosophy, religion, and illness. Etcetera etcetera, the world around us, blah blah blah. [Name Redacted] intends to explode the form, to barrel past mediocrity and stagnation, and to shove conformist theatre into a deathly abyss.

We love nothing more than a good pie in the face. Yes, and more and yes and yes.

[Name Redacted] has been getting a lot of local buzz these days among the tiny, tiny circle of people who pay attention to such things, with one local critic enthusing that their spectacular performances are "the opposite of pretentious."

It prompted me to dig up this mission or (pronunciation) statement and re-read it. It makes me wonder if there will ever come a day when forward-thinking artists will rebel against the iconoclasm and nonconformity that characterizes so much contemporary art and instead try something different.

Posted by flamingbanjo at August 15, 2008 01:31 PM