Wildness And The Permission To Be: Reflections on an Interview with Faye Driscoll

Sarah Bodony: Our conversation explored how Faye pushes through the transactional structures of cultural institutions and creates meaning within a society that expects commodification and relies on consumerism and materialism. As I listened closely to Faye Driscoll talk, I marveled at not just the things she said, but the way she said them. She talked with her entire body, as if her whole existence was a fully embodied performance. Through the computer screen and a year full of the loss and lack of human connection, I still managed to feel her bold energy. 

SB: That feels transactional and cold to me. This is the moment where I believe as artists we have to make a choice. We can either be submissive to what is expected or we can vigorously, critically, and gracefully say, “No thank you, this can not be all life has to offer. I will not settle for this.” Art can be an active resistance to anything deemed “right” or put together by society because it is real and realness is messy. These thoughts lie at the center of Faye’s artistic lens and practice. There is a grit and provocative, unapologetic nature that exudes from Faye’s work. It mimics the truths in life that we are often too scared to touch. 

Kara Komarnitsky: This feeling of “the whore” or “the dancing monkey” privileges artistic processes that are short, discrete, and produce as much as possible in as little time as possible. They use performers and artists just enough to complete the task at hand rather than prioritizing the relationships that may form out of longer processes. In reference to the grants that fund her own work, Faye says she tries at some level to forget about them, in active resistance to those pressures to shorten her process. While she wants to keep those relationships strong in order to have the financial support to continue creating, she is also very intentional about confronting the transactional structure of this funding in her work.

SB: Life is not a series of transactions. Life does not fit in a perfect container, it spills out leaving remnants and traces wherever we go.

SB: Faye offers us what most humans shy away from or hide. The quicker we can realize how raw and awkward life is, the quicker we can start to feel a shift closer to a liberation that feels warmer and interconnected as opposed to transactional. Those moments wake us up and move us forward. They make us question and engage further. 

KK: There’s an interesting tension for artists who rely on support from institutions to present their work, but without a long-term relationship that supports their process, they often have to sacrifice depth in their work in order to be presented in the first place. This tension goes both ways, as arts institutions may try to cultivate artistic depth but are also under pressure from audiences and donors to present the new, flashy thing and bring in as many people as possible in as little time as possible. The institutions are reliant on what artists create yet still exist within the expectations of a consumerist society and may in turn pressure artists to shorten their processes. This inter-reliance and interdependency within the art world is confronted in Faye’s work, through revealing the interdependencies between performer and audience. The audience is never allowed to be passive when witnessing a Faye Driscoll piece. She often bends or breaks the fourth wall, bringing audiences into the performance with eye contact, touch, and even group choral singing. 

KK: For some, this experience can be intimidating and strange because they are used to being able to passively sit through the duration of a performance. Instead, Faye offers the experience of feeling your butt on the seat, exchanging breath with the performers, and knowing that you are influencing what is happening by being there. There’s a constant negotiation between performer and audience in each new space with its unique energy and possibly conflicting intentions. In navigating this tension in the performance space, perhaps we can learn to navigate the tension created by the greater systems that we are a part of—whether we know it or not -- and create more space for the ‘uncommodifiable.’

SB: We are not passive beings nor can we be passive anymore, it is a privilege to sit back in the passenger seat of life. While being active may be uncomfortable it opens up the space wider than any four walls can hold, eliminating a transactional experience. It is not a one and done experience that transactions imply, rather Faye’s work extends beyond and continues to sit with you. The resistance is within activating the audience in the act, as part of the experience. Our humanity demands our active participation and so does experiencing Faye’s work. So, get messy, make mistakes, get uncomfortable, because that is where the fun and truth lie.

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This selection is part of Writing about the Performing Arts at Ohio State, an interdisciplinary student-led seminar during the 2020-21 academic year. With guidance from Department of Dance Professor Karen Eliot and the Wexner Center’s Alana Ryder (Manager, Public and University Programs) and Lane Czaplinski (Director of Performing Arts), students with backgrounds in dance, economics, math, microbiology, political science, psychology, statistics, and beyond will serve as ambassadors and advocates for the arts. As a cohort, they will approach broad theoretical and philosophical issues behind contemporary performance as well as questions about the roles of arts critics and of arts criticism, especially in the era of COVID-19 and racial equity and social justice movements.

For more information, please email education@wexarts.org. Additional interviews and student writing will be presented here later in the academic year.