" Questions are funny beings. And sad ones, too. "

by Boris Nieslony 2008

Questions are funny beings. And sad ones, too.
They come and go. 



In the beginning there is the astonishment facing the inapprehensible, the 
epiphany, the embodied spawn of the tremendousness


The Question


With what do I protrude into the question?
And with what do you protrude into the question, being my counterpart?

When I started to research the various styles of asking questions (the art of
asking) an atrocious doubt arose in my soul. Wanting to - be - subject is more
the to aim for the impossible, it is the heard of the wanting to ask. The atrocious 
can not be represented, it is embedded into the structure of representation.
Every "real" question is invisible and not askable (like an image) is only agency. 
It should be economically in its impact, like every riddle. In the beginning 
stands the aim for a begin. 

We can assume, that every cognitive being is focusing it-s attention on any
Specific point of a somehow created reality. The focusing of attention is handled
by using an instrumentalism, that itself is a medium. The medium is the focus of the question. 

The spectrum of the media and within it is lead, on the one hand by intuition,
will, desire, interpretation and on the other hand any form of tool, instrumentalism, 
as far as any discourse about effect, efficiency, public and power.

That spoils the view on the question as a medium

The sentences in the "old school styled" questionnaires serve as blueprints for the
to developing questions. Some are already very close to the provided sentences into 
the nothing and out of the nothing. 

What-s so different in performance art then in other art genres (music, theatre, dance etx) 
Can we find the appearance of a kind of basic questioning being parallel to/within 
the "performed performances"?

And then this: the inappropriate, because, the forced interpretation, the answers, 
that can optionally spoil the questions. The ceremony of the question is vanishing behind 
the organisation of the little answers, the amassed performance, inspire of not telling/evaluating 
anything about the quality of the performance. 

The already till now asked questions are aggregations of opinions and appendages, that are connected 
to the art of performance, the interpretation being the circumvention of the setting. 

The sentences, written down in the questionnaire are, as far as I see it, only
helping contracts/constructions, that do not determine any answers (or overhasty) but, only then 
when they are precise enough to become questions, 
then they can be set into performance. Or, the result of the research shows, that they have 
nothing in common with the performance, so some kind of any other form, the setting into different 
fields/areas. (What again means nothing else, then setting the question and the absolutum.) 

The way leading to the question is as far as from each given point and it's appearance not sure at all. 
The lack is exactly the lack of the ability to ask questions, having them not or not yet enough developed.
In which way is this kind of temporary (not yet developed) relegating to the condition of the question 
and therefore the term performance?

The way leading to the question is as far as from each given point and it's appearance not sure at all. 
The lack is exactly the lack of the ability to ask questions, having them not or not yet enough developed.
In which way is this kind of temporary (not yet developed) relegating to the condition of the question 
and therefore the term performance?

How can this be thought out for the performance? Tool, business. Performance should create its appearance 
via its idea, and through and by the means of the initiating image and it's instrumentalism.
Here now originates the thought of "being as software".

To be evaluated as an accomplishment, is the material that they open up and bring into the discussion 
(e.g. the course of method by Paul Valery - Cahier and W. Benjamin - The Passages) 

The construction could open: the spectrum of ideologies, worldviews and the quarries of the private and 
collective affectations, the first information, Leitbilder
and primaries gestures of the spirit, which then some when the decision performance, first common, 
determine and cause. (And lead unquestioning to the question)

But how can any "inducement" at all being thought precausal? 

To be dealt within the performance, is the thinking of. The "memento, the keepsake“ is the product 
out of and within the performance of the purest legitimacy.

What appears within the question is the thought of, the movements, that originate gravitation, 
the space between the loss of any real experience and of one, that structures it's powerful action 
and it's negotiating projection. 

The dead structure the movements of the living. Not only on TV, it's the dead that always call 
questions into life. The only legitimate is the series. The question as a form of "Stand by modus" 
and the usage of life is the catering of thinking. 

It is a question of how every ethnologist would feel, that has to purify the asked questions from 
opinions and dissimulated judgements. Best and proven useful tools of this dissolving are: demontage 
- vivisection - copying - separating - de-mirroring - tearing apart - to fragment - to multiply - 
excrescences -deforming - etx

The question is the source of the paradox
The red king to Alice: Run as fast as can to stay at the same spot. 
performance is not free of the factors of the organisation of the material, the presentation and 
the representation, but has as the basic factor t" the ceremony of the question". Therefore there 
is at least 3 acts parallel within the same performance. 

The ceremony of the question unlike the ritual of the asking a question and unlike the organisation of 
the material as a construct of question, whereas I understand as material the presentation and 
representation alike. 

I have read and I forgot the author
"Different Adorno. 
He is not arriving with a text at his lectures, but simply with notes, from which his train of thoughts 
derives and originates in a constant addressing and communication with his audience - as a performance 
of his thinking. His lectures are philosophical improvisations; they incarnate in a non-repeatable style 
in the purest here a now.  At the same time they contain a permanent, from a atonal performance any time 
justified and proven self-reflection about the philosophizing, which maxima is: that in the true thinking 
it may not be immotile, what the outcome will be. "
That this is the appearance of the question. 
 
To formulate questions, that as the appearance of performance are the talk about them, can be ankered 
in the history of it's discourse. In this context I tend to a form of "precise missing out".

Not to pose the question not as the meaning, the category or term, but as the definition of reflection. 
And shall not questions more and more be instructions? 
Instructions of their usage.
But how can we define the character of instruction? 
Talented and beaten. 

Does one have the question, the sentence as the sojourner? When we try to come closer to that question 
and explicitly the performance as well with a certain aim or goal, one cannot perceive the question 
and implicitly not oneself. The question, the living sign is always an adjuring, a holy showing off...

Not the prying open, the drilling within the question is the more then incomprehensible, but the not 
appearing, the simply not existing, the non-existence of any question. 

Is this living organic sequence - the being within the question - a simple coincidence or the result 
of a long practise? The question- situation develops an atmosphere, that has to be called the authentic 
- the coherent use of its form. 
The perceiver and the perceived overlap. This overlapping can be defined as authentic.

Only, no question that shows being any real question can be called authentic.

Sui generis: the deep, sucking, black hole of the need (greed) for information -

For whom? For what? 

Credits and thanks to: Peter Handke / Lacan / Alice im Wunderland / Martin Seel / 
Edmon Jabes: Das Buch der Fragen / Walter Benjamin / 


Performers are funny beings. And sad ones, too.
They come and go. 

Boris Nieslony, 2008

Translation: Sibyll Kalff 2008

E. P. I. Zentrum
Europäisches Performance Institut
http://www.asa.de/