CAMPBELL, Bryan
Janitor of Lunacy: A Filibuster
Reprenant la tradition rhétorique d'obstruction législative des parlementaires américain·es de l'opposition, ce texte est d'abord une performance de Bryan Campbell : parler sans discontinuer durant 8h ou plus devant une assemblée.
Depuis le terrain d'interrelations entre corps et politique et par de joyeuses digressions, il fait l'exercice de la mise en récit de son intimité, où il est question de pratiques BDSM, de santé mentale, de consentement et de performance de genre. En jouant sur des rapports d'échelle et avec indiscipline, il abonde la pluralité et la fluidité de nos êtres.
Texte issu de la pièce chorégraphique éponyme de Bryan Campbell créée en 2021.
[note de la maison d’édition]
The filibuster is a tactic for a member of the opposition party to block passage of a law in the United States Senate. By speaking until the end of a day’s voting session, a Senator thus forces the vote’s delay, essentially “talking a bill to death.” When delivering a filibuster, US senators must speak constantly. They may not leave to go to the bathroom. They may support themselves on a table or lectern with their hands, but not with their elbows. They are allowed to drink water and milk, and may only eat hard candies from a bowl on the desk of the senior senator from Pennsylvania. Many senators undergo physical training and wear sneakers and diapers in concession to the demands of this choreographic restraint, written into US-American legislative process.
I am writing and performing a filibuster. For this performance, I will submit myself to the same physical, verbal, and dietetic constraints as a senator giving a filibuster; I will speak continuously, standing, wearing a diaper (under my trousers). The text that I deliver will be a combination of written and improvised material. It will last for eight hours in its fullest version, the length that the library of the United States Senate requires for a speech on the Senate floor to be documented as a filibuster. As a durational performance, the vulnerability of my organism, its fatigue and its rushes of adrenaline, will be part of the score. While it is suggested that audience members come for the beginning, they are entitled to come and go as they please throughout the performance.
The filibuster that I deliver will treat a multiplicity of ways that politics interacts with the body. Any given body likely finds itself at the crosswinds of many biopolitical currents crafted by nation-states, corporate entities, and religious and ethical philosophies. These vectors influence our behaviours and desires, manipulating the body itself in order to discipline, exploit, or distract. In Janitor of Lunacy: a Filibuster, I speak from the my own point of view as one of these bodies. Contrary to a senator filibustering one law in particular, I speak to the network of oppositions and alliances that constitutes how one defines and positions oneself in this complex terrain of agencies. The audience, who does this same work when reading the news, going to the doctor, or breaking the law, may see themselves mirrored.
—Bryan Campbell
Bilingual English / Français
Published by maison trouble, 2024
Design by Elorah Connil
Performance / Artists' Writings
