Performance Thanatology Research Society:
A Note on the Thanatological Performance Style.

The principal theory behind Performance Thanatology is that existence does not consist merely of alive and dead, but of many levels of liveness*. By liveness we tend to mean the amount of embodied awareness of liveness, a quality therefore not easily measured and thus far indistinctly defined. Action becomes the exercise of liveness -- not merely action -- but observable action: performance.

By reaffirming ones liveness through performance (on stage) in a most exaggerated yet tangible way, it increases the amount of liveness in the performer, but also in the audience member who observes and physically or internally participates. Live performance is an effective way to generate internal conflict and visceral activity; the only way to be aware of our own liveness is in executing or witnessing the body in the performance of an action -- especially an action of extreme irony (an irony so ironic, it becomes deadly serious).

Performance Thanatology operates with a heightened sense of pleasure, a pleasure that navigates through the most obscene, uncomfortable, and disturbing aspects of the psyche in order to stimulate a deep archaic root of radical enjoyment.

The types of performance that concerns Performance Thanatology are explorations in realizing a greater percentage of experiential human potential than we normally have energy to approach. Many of us are already zombies, whether we are conscious of it or not.

There are two types of example that a Performance Thanatology event seeks to represent: realistic and exaggerated. The realistic example should be kept in the mind of performer primarily as a guidepost to ensure that the performer takes him/herself just seriously enough -- but always be aware that the realism is only an example of realism.
The form should also include elements of improvisation, which is in itself an example of reality.

There should be no exhibition of technology without human interaction of equal or greater value. The technology should never dominate the perform(er)ance, because technology is not real. That which is not real, which should be everything except the body and the improvised voice and movement, should be pointed out (mocked even) as false. This may include costume, any prepared text, the venue, and ideas.

Exaggeration is everything else: imitation style, opinions, energy, etc. The performance is exhibitionist in nature and it may be viewed as such. It can function purely as an exhibit in order to be viewed passively (to watch young men and women shunning death) or as a participatory ritual (celebration of life/death).

Invoke the phenomenology of questionable presence and the existentialism in limited human capabilities. The degree of this presence is what can be considered liveness.

*refer to Philip Auslanders book Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. Routledge 1999.