(Syn)aesthetics in Practice

Abstract

The experiential impact of (syn)aesthetic performance affects a visceral cognition which leaves its traces on the perceiver’s body via the immediacy of a corporeal memory. Put simply, we feel the performance in the moment and recall these feelings in subsequent interpretation. The nature of such appreciation engages a double-edged making-sense/sense-making process. This can affect an ineffable quality; a (syn)aesthetic-sense. The (syn)aesthetic style is a performance approach which, in form, content and methods of analysis emphasizes fused sensual experience. Although I detail three key strategies here, it is important to note that the consideration of the (syn)aesthetic hybrid, consisting of all manner of performance techniques and disciplines, highlights how (syn)aesthetically styled work results from varied artistic fusions within interdisciplinary practice. In (syn)aesthetic performance there is a constant slippage and exchange between the dominance of any one of the three key strategies surveyed here, as illustrated by all of the discussions in Part 2.

Believing in the power of theatre is like believing in religion: you have to experience its effect in order to understand the attraction of it.

(Richard Eyre and Nicholas Wright, 2000: 11)