Project Proposal

This is a very general starting concept for my project proposal. Any suggestion, lived situation and experience that could be in a sense connected to that, or simply a comment or a critic will be more than welcome.

“Acting means to feign, to simulate, to represent, to impersonate. As Happening demonstrated, not all performing is acting.”
Michael Kirby, On Acting and Not-Acting

It is pretty unusual of me starting a proposal with a quotation I totally disagree with. What I find useful and stimulating, however, is trying to start with a debate in order to explain better my starting concept for what it will possibly become a final performance for the end of this academic year.
The word acting has maintained the same root of the word action, as they both derive from the Latin verb agere, which means to do (an action). So basically, according to the etymology, an actor does not feign, neither simulates nor represents. He does. Again, the word performance derives from the late Latin verb performare, a compound of per (till the end) and formare (to make). As a consequence, even though it might be true -as Kirby points out- that “not all performing is acting”, it turns clear that performing is more acting than either simulating or representing or impersonating.
This excursus aims to clarify my research question that lies underneath my artistic aims for the outcome of a final performance. It comes from a reflection on a situation I actually lived, which I realised being in contrast with the common definition of performance. It has been discussed many times what can be defined as performance and what cannot. I agree with the definition which intends a performance as presence. And at that time, I was actually producing absence. I was acting as I was not. Reasonably, it has been weird realizing that I was in a way erasing my presence. But I was actually dissimulating rather than hiding away or deleting my traces: there were actually several signs that indicated it. Anyway, for those who passed by that place, I was not there. I was even not existing. But even thought I was producing absence, was not I performing?
What I am questing for my final project is, in conclusion, to find an original and effective way to make a performance out of absence.
It might be seen as dated rather than not coherent in this context, but the structuralistic idea that not only does a meaning achieves its value for what it actually mean, but also for being in contrast with the other elements that coexist in the same system could be an effective starting point for this work. Clearly, working by contrasts has never been as proper as in this situation. I don’t want not to act. On the contrary I want to use acting (in the sense I specified before, as actually doing something) and I want using presence as a device in order to create a contrast that would possibly allow the audience to perceive absence as the main dramatic component of the situation.
That is finally to say, to make absence being dramatically interesting and, why not, possibly able to substitute presence in what it will turn out to be a performance.