Reading room
MODULE 5
DAY 1
DAY 2 - DRAMATURGY
How has men’s pleasure shaped our dramaturgical “normal” — our appetite for climax, resolution, and release?
The Aristotelian dramaturgical model privileges build-up, tension, climax, release, and resolution. This organisation of form is so familiar that it often appears neutral, natural, even inevitable. But it is not. It mirrors a very specific experience of time, energy, and satisfaction.
The parallel with male orgasmic logic is structurally exact. Energy accumulates toward a peak; the peak becomes the point where meaning is confirmed; everything before exists to prepare it; everything after is secondary, a closure, a descent. This is not about men as individuals, nor about biology as destiny. It is about which bodily experience was universalised as a model for how time should unfold, how energy should circulate, and when something is considered complete.
This connection does not emerge in isolation. It resonates with long-standing feminist critiques of linear time, with analyses of phallocentrism that refuse caricature, and with alternative temporalities grounded in cyclical, multiple, sustained, and non-climactic experiences. It becomes visible when we notice how often “climax” functions as the key evaluative moment, how quickly “nothing happens” is framed as failure, and how duration without payoff is treated with suspicion. These are not aesthetic accidents; they are inherited expectations.
Classical Western dramaturgy emerged in contexts where male bodies were the normed subjects, male philosophers defined universality, and public speech, theatre, and theory systematically excluded other embodied experiences. Dramaturgy therefore did not simply encode narrative principles or compositional rules; it encoded a way of experiencing energy, desire, tension, and release. What we continue to call “good structure” is often nothing more than familiar satisfaction, a repetition of a dominant erotic economy of time.
This matters now because as long as dramaturgy continues to privilege climax, resolution, and release, works grounded in sustained intensity, cyclic attention, diffuse pleasure, or non-teleological energy will continue to be perceived as unfinished, confusing, or weak. Not because they lack rigour or intelligence, but because they refuse to obey the dominant organisation of desire through time.
Post-obedient dramaturgy emerges precisely from this refusal. It is not a style, a form, or a counter-canon, but a process of unlearning: unlearning the reflex to build toward climax, to justify duration through payoff, to organise material around resolution. It questions the assumption that meaning must culminate, that attention must be rewarded, that energy must be discharged in order to be valid.
Post-obedient dramaturgy works with diffusion rather than accumulation. It allows tension to circulate instead of peak. It sustains attention without promising release. It privileges duration over payoff, staying over arrival, intensity over conclusion. In doing so, it does not reject pleasure, but multiplies it: opening space for pleasures that are extended, shared, layered, and non-hierarchical.
In this sense, post-obedient dramaturgy unlearns obedience to a single, historically dominant organisation of time and desire, and reopens dramaturgy as a space where other experiences of energy, attention, and satisfaction can exist without needing to justify themselves.
The Aristotelian dramaturgical model privileges build-up, tension, climax, release, and resolution. This organisation of form is so familiar that it often appears neutral, natural, even inevitable. But it is not. It mirrors a very specific experience of time, energy, and satisfaction.
The parallel with male orgasmic logic is structurally exact. Energy accumulates toward a peak; the peak becomes the point where meaning is confirmed; everything before exists to prepare it; everything after is secondary, a closure, a descent. This is not about men as individuals, nor about biology as destiny. It is about which bodily experience was universalised as a model for how time should unfold, how energy should circulate, and when something is considered complete.
This connection does not emerge in isolation. It resonates with long-standing feminist critiques of linear time, with analyses of phallocentrism that refuse caricature, and with alternative temporalities grounded in cyclical, multiple, sustained, and non-climactic experiences. It becomes visible when we notice how often “climax” functions as the key evaluative moment, how quickly “nothing happens” is framed as failure, and how duration without payoff is treated with suspicion. These are not aesthetic accidents; they are inherited expectations.
Classical Western dramaturgy emerged in contexts where male bodies were the normed subjects, male philosophers defined universality, and public speech, theatre, and theory systematically excluded other embodied experiences. Dramaturgy therefore did not simply encode narrative principles or compositional rules; it encoded a way of experiencing energy, desire, tension, and release. What we continue to call “good structure” is often nothing more than familiar satisfaction, a repetition of a dominant erotic economy of time.
This matters now because as long as dramaturgy continues to privilege climax, resolution, and release, works grounded in sustained intensity, cyclic attention, diffuse pleasure, or non-teleological energy will continue to be perceived as unfinished, confusing, or weak. Not because they lack rigour or intelligence, but because they refuse to obey the dominant organisation of desire through time.
Post-obedient dramaturgy emerges precisely from this refusal. It is not a style, a form, or a counter-canon, but a process of unlearning: unlearning the reflex to build toward climax, to justify duration through payoff, to organise material around resolution. It questions the assumption that meaning must culminate, that attention must be rewarded, that energy must be discharged in order to be valid.
Post-obedient dramaturgy works with diffusion rather than accumulation. It allows tension to circulate instead of peak. It sustains attention without promising release. It privileges duration over payoff, staying over arrival, intensity over conclusion. In doing so, it does not reject pleasure, but multiplies it: opening space for pleasures that are extended, shared, layered, and non-hierarchical.
In this sense, post-obedient dramaturgy unlearns obedience to a single, historically dominant organisation of time and desire, and reopens dramaturgy as a space where other experiences of energy, attention, and satisfaction can exist without needing to justify themselves.
DAY 3
GESTURE
A gesture is an action that does not illustrate an idea, but holds it.
It is precise, often simple, sometimes minimal.
It exists in time. It insists. It creates a state.
For the viewer, a gesture is always a starting point.
If it doesn’t open something, then it is not a gesture. It becomes a symbol. Something closed, something fixed.
A gesture is not there to deliver meaning.
It is there to allow meaning to appear.
It leaves space.
It creates an entry.
From there, the viewer can associate, connect, interpret, build their own reading.
It remains personal in its origin, but open in its reception.
The moment everything is already defined, there is nothing left to encounter.
A gesture begins something.
It does not conclude it.
Examples of gestures
What this shows
5 prompts to create a gesture
A gesture is an action that does not illustrate an idea, but holds it.
It is precise, often simple, sometimes minimal.
It exists in time. It insists. It creates a state.
For the viewer, a gesture is always a starting point.
If it doesn’t open something, then it is not a gesture. It becomes a symbol. Something closed, something fixed.
A gesture is not there to deliver meaning.
It is there to allow meaning to appear.
It leaves space.
It creates an entry.
From there, the viewer can associate, connect, interpret, build their own reading.
It remains personal in its origin, but open in its reception.
The moment everything is already defined, there is nothing left to encounter.
A gesture begins something.
It does not conclude it.
Examples of gestures
- Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful — Marina Abramović
Repeatedly brushing her hair while repeating a sentence until the gesture turns violent. - Snowballs — David Hammons
Selling snowballs on the street, arranged by size, as if they were commodities. - I Am Still Alive — On Kawara
Sending telegrams stating only: “I am still alive.” - Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing — Francis Alÿs
Pushing a block of ice through the city until it melts completely. - One Minute Sculptures — Erwin Wurm
Holding awkward positions with everyday objects for a short duration. - Measuring the Universe — Roman Ondak
Marking visitors’ heights on the wall over time. - This Progress — Tino Sehgal
Walking through a space while having structured conversations about progress. - Inventory — Christian Boltanski
Arranging personal objects as traces of absence and presence. - Cleaning Piece — Mierle Laderman Ukeles
Cleaning as a repeated, durational gesture of care and labor. - Wish Tree — Yoko Ono
Attaching handwritten wishes to a tree, allowing accumulation to become the work. - Seedbed — Vito Acconci
Hidden beneath a ramp, speaking fantasies while visitors walk above. - One Year Performance 1980–1981 (Time Clock Piece) — Tehching Hsieh
Punching a clock every hour for one year. - I Like America and America Likes Me — Joseph Beuys
Living with a coyote in a gallery space. - Silueta Series — Ana Mendieta
Imprinting the outline of her body into landscapes. - Parangolé — Hélio Oiticica
Activating fabric structures through movement of the body. - The Maybe — Tilda Swinton
Sleeping inside a glass box in a public space. - The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk — Ulay & Abramovic
Walking from opposite ends of the Great Wall to meet and separate. - Caminhando — Lygia Clark
Cutting a Möbius strip continuously in a single gesture. - Following Piece — Sophie Calle (variation in spirit)
Following strangers to construct narrative through action. - Smashing the Mirror — Michelangelo Pistoletto
Repeatedly smashing mirrors as an act of perception.
What this shows
- A gesture can be extremely simple
- Duration transforms meaning
- Repetition creates intensity
- The body is enough
- Action precedes explanation
- Don’t try to be original. Try to be precise.
- Don’t try to express. Try to do.
- Meaning comes later. If it needs to.
5 prompts to create a gesture
- Take something that disappears. Melt, erase, consume, exhaust. Stay with it until it is gone. Don’t accelerate the process. Let time do the work.
- Repeat one action without variation. Not for 10 seconds. Long enough that it becomes something else. Notice when it shifts from doing to being.
- Take a simple action and displace it. Do it in the wrong place. At the wrong scale. With the wrong timing. Notice what changes.
- Work with accumulation. Add something, again and again. Don’t stop too early. Let quantity create meaning.
- Take something personal. Don’t explain it. Translate it into: a rhythm a repetition a constraint a physical condition Let it exist without narration.
DAY 4