Dramatization and philosophy of history in Orange Book explication of a site-responsive work and its research

Abstract

The explication presents Orange Book as a piece of site-responsive public space performance, showing how similar patterns of thought and feeling emerging in both research and artwork led to elaborating the notion of an art methodology for the work. The explication further considers a process of research into drama and history in relation to contemporary performance: where narrative dramatic forms,whether organic or fragmented, show history as a fait accompli, an aesthetic orientation around open structures and non-narrative performance modes allows for a constructive, ethically directed, philosophical engagement with historical process. The explication thus demonstrates implications of biography, philosophy, history and dramatization in my search for a distinctive performance idiom.