Pre-script: When appropriate “Bookperformance” is called as “Author-Reader Performance” or “Reader-Author performance”. Its manifesto has 7 significant items which all together make 1.
BOOKPERFORMANCE MANIFESTO
11.11.11
1- The book, here and now, with its author and reader, either uttered or silent, is a performance. Bookperformance is a naked, fixed and textual body. If movement is impossible for a fixed body, to turn the impossible into the possible, it is necessary to attempt the weird and the absurd. In order to successfully attempt the weird and the absurd, one must possess not only a considerable intelligence but also an extraordinary courage for realizing and accepting the significant power of the weird and the absurd. To be able to do all these it is necessary to be a good reader.
2- Readership is an evolution. Authorship is a revolution. In this specific context, as is true in every context, evolution takes place within revolution. For readership and authorship, evolution is an archetypical journey whereas revolution is a self-reflexive form. The prerequisite of the two is the self: the absolute self.
3- To be or not to be is a statement about consciousness. This situational field, apart from its very self, activates the following forms and turns into their corresponding action-fields: to narrate or not to narrate, to read or not to read, to understand or not to understand. In bookperformance, to understand or not to understand means to enjoy or not to enjoy. Just as giving pleasure cannot be limited to being funny, joy cannot be limited to laughter.
4- To be realistic is a matter of choice, but to be truthful is essential. To imagine is a matter of preference but to fictionalize is an obligation. Because the objective is to create a truthful fiction. This guideline does not at all oppose the attempt at the weird and the absurd.
5- The protagonized reader’s experience of fictionalization not only corresponds to the fictionalized reader’s experience of protagonization, but is even its equivalent. In both cases, the reader is the intra-conscious reader of the bookperformance author, who can turn the impossible into the possible. No one except the intra-conscious reader could (or should) recognize who the intra-conscious reader is.
6- Creativity is an orphaned phenomenon in bookperformance. How and when it occurs determines the first and the only condition of how and when bookperformance is activated.
7- Love, here and now, between the reader and the author, is not a factual but a textual matter. This love mixes the act of reading with the act of writing. In this love, the spaces are filled in with imaginings. In this love, the negations are hidden. It is an impossible possibility to deduce a fixed-meaning (!) from this love. This love may be acted out in various ways. Such diversity will render the author authentic and the reader individualistic.
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Post-script: "Bookperformance Manifest" originated from Çiğdem y Mirol’s MA thesis on self-reflective narratives, which she also regards as artistic performances. Initially part of her academic thesis, it was subsequently published in the first volume of the Turkish version of the Çiğdem y Mirol QUARTET a fictional work titled Yüzüm Kitap (My Face Book), by Kanguru Publishing in Ankara, August 2012, pages 299-300, ISBN: 9786054623112. It was later featured in the Turkish online literary magazine Edebiyat Haber, which publishes both fiction and non-fiction. Following this, it was co-transparented (translated) into English together with Andrew Carruthers and appeared in the English online literary magazine Mascara Review, also known for publishing both fiction and non-fiction. Eventually, it was included in the English version of the first volume of the QUARTET: My Face Book, in 2014. Currently, it forms the basis of her PhD research on the theoretical construction and historical contextualization of Bookperformance. It also takes place in Bookperformance events, both in academic and non-academic contexts, as one of the main text. As a living principle offering a meta-view on life through arts and literature, it also features prominently in Bookperformance events, both in academic and non-academic contexts.