Current proposal for a project on Janeness, working with Jane Frances-Dunlop

Fiona and ‘Canadian’ Jane think through and with each other. They do this in public as well as in private and sometimes, when they do this, their thoughts aren’t really done. This live thinking in a state of not doneness is the premise, procedure and product of their ‘work’, not a strategy as such but a tactic. Definitely a tactic, a way of knowing thinking or thinking what it is to be at the moment of knowing. Talking, walking, hearing and feeling it together in the company of each other and those that will join them. A conversation undone and on show. At the moment they can’t know the content. They just know that the other knows something, that they might like to know too. If theres not a plan we could call it a path, a tangent of time .

Currently they are thinking about Jane and her Janeness, where she ends and it begins, whether it possible to move this edge and what the consequences of this might be. They are reading together, at a distance trying to make (as in form, forge, and fashion) some sense that they can de or re-assemble. Their approach takes seriously Deleuze and Guattari’s proposition of the rhizome but wonders what it would be if it had a physical face and legs. A dancing methodology.
In short can Jane be a ‘thing’ that makes thoughts objects? A handle in a space that navigates its own redundancy by its sheer insistence on being.

As pilfering, parasites they would sooner borrow and barter than steal or subsume. They will operate in the space between the walls, works and will of the audience gleaning off the other duo’s and constructing there ‘self’ dependent on newly emerging references. Like much of the best of thought, the out come will probably be unashamedly ridiculous.

'I wish, Jane was’, she went.

Jane, as a name, is ingrained in us early. It is easy to read, and a welcome introduction to two such important vowels. Jane is often the girl in books playing ball or coming to tea, dressed in red, with a hat, and a cat. Perhaps.
Simple, clear, readable Jane. Useful to our early understanding of both gender and its qualities. If she is she, and he is he, then who am I, and what are we? In this context Jane acts as is an other, as in I do, but Jane does, I think, Jane thought. Doubling our means for considering our context, putting an edge on the ‘who's’ and our own sense of self. She is useful. We learn with and via Jane. Or Jane’s should we say, as each image develops stage by page, day by play. She is a multiple.

As a performer, in these books, Jane often can. Demonstrating doing and did’ing through her actions and their game. Her image not imaginary, sets texts to prescribe a space where process is post possible and passes from view to do. This is of course providing we are prepared to tag along. Its all very sensible yet what next?
We seldom ask what happens to Janes at the end of our use, as the cover shuts and space collapses are we still aware she’s there, or does she shift? Does she develop dimensions or multiply more. Dose she’s ever progress or is a different priority at play.
As our language develops she becomes dependable and constant. Evoking a texture that can be recognised else where. Her peachy skin, her numerous objects, her happy family. It might be said she was named in and of the ‘norm’. To be Janed. To by rhymed with plain and same and again and again. Yet while her normality might suggest our limit, maybe it slips its spine undefined and seeks out a subtler space.
I’d like to propose that beyond the frame,
Jane is a plain without blame.

Play on Janeness

Documentation of Rotterdam Plaza performance with Jane Fawcett, Jan 2012
Performance made for an audience that knew this specific Jane and her work, featuring this Jane as a structuring device and impetus for its content.

Coming soon. . .