Nonstop Languaging as Autotheory in Art and Academia
Antriana Moutoula
2019-2021
Situated in the ephemeral encounter between performer and spectator, this artistic research focuses on streams of consciousness as a form of autotheory. The term autotheory, recently explored as a feminist practice by writer and artist Lauren Fournier, refers to modes of working within art, academia, and literature, that merge the autobiographical with the theoretical (2021). Over the past two years, in a space that is both artistic and academic, I developed an autotheoretical practice in which I perform streams of consciousness by nonstop languaging my thoughts (tracing through language in real time) in simultaneously spoken and written form. In other words, I am nonstop writing and talking at the same time, trying to articulate my thoughts as they appear. In nonstop languaging, the gaps between words do not exceed the milliseconds a breath lasts or the millimetres of blank space between digitally written letters. Acknowledging how conditioned and circumstantial this practice is, I implement no further edit or rehearsal. My interest lies both in creating a language-based performance method that integrates theory with autobiography, and in exploring how the language and the content that emerges from this practice can contribute to the renegotiation of the norms, habits, protocols and parameters of knowledge production and dissemination within artistic academic discourse.