Stop Making Sense

Desubjectivation and Bodily Present in Karl Saks’ and Renate Keerd’s Performances

Abstract

This article reappropriates Fredric Jameson’s literary theoretical concept of affect from his 2013 book The Antinomies of Realism to describe and interpret our strictly subjective experiences, as two literary scholars, of some prominent examples of contemporary Estonian performance art – Renate Keerd’s Pure Mind (Tartu New Theatre, 2013) and Karl Saks’ Planet Alexithymia (Kanuti Gildi SAAL, 2020). We sensed that the affective space and presence we experienced in these performances reduced us as spectators exclusively to a pure bodily present of impersonal consciousness, to a state that precedes language and meaning where subjectivity is temporarily dissolved to a transformative effect. We elaborate what kind of performative features make such an affective experience possible? Which mechanisms are used to create narrative interruptions and temporal discontinuities? Which strategies lead to the disruption of “meaningful” connections and the dispersal of the so-called coherent subject? We argue that the performances of these two fundamentally different artists are a good example of how the affective dimension of (performance) art decisively transforms the ways it is possible to perceive, think, say, or do.