Events & The Consumer as Performer Dr Matt Frew

Lecture Format *Experiencing Events: a Review *The Time of the Neo-Tribe *Welcome to Performativity *Performing Identities & Events

*The Experience Economy - *Post-industrial world *Experiences are the new 4th offering; *Attention is all - experiencing everything *Consumer culture: *Driver of experience exonomy; world of affluence; *consumersim - an ideology where the consumer is not king; fulfilment through experiences? *Problem of hyper-consumption *Symbolic Meaning *A history and world of the sign - events mean something *Conspicuous consumption and the erosion of the old master identities *identities of display and domination *Events - a cultural field of competing cultural capital Experiencing Events: a Review

*Authenticity: *Modernity to postmodernity problem *Authentic (true, real and orignial) experience or staged authenticity *Aura to Commercial construct - disneyworld replicas *Enchantment & Alienation: *Weber to Ritzer - McDonaldized experience *Time of Cathedrals of Consumption - reenchantment and glass cage of gazing frustration Experiencing Events: a Review

*Accelerated Experiences: *Technology - modernist utopia or dystopia *An MTV’d world - technological dreamscape; distance and time overcome *Tantalized and caught in a distilled vortex of voyeurs - frustration produces purchase *Resistance: *moral panic; deviant, hedonistic and anarchic youth; * a case of objectifying and normalising identity or fluid, shifting, unstable postmodern identity (Bauman, 1996); *from bricolage to detournement’ *resistance - a way forward but managed? Experiencing Events: a Review

*Events - point to an increasing prevelence of neo-tribalism *Michel Maffesoli - the energies or dynamic of the social world is ‘imaginal’ interlinked via romaticism, sentimentalism, emotion and imaginary; *Builds on Weber’s disenchanted world and argues for ‘postmodern reenchantment’ via ‘magic, charm, vision, appearance’ (Maffesoli, 1996: 57) *Shift from Promethean values to Dionysian - from logic and values of rational work and progress to logic and values of emotional renewal, collective effervescence and reenchantment (Evans, 1997) *Live in ‘The Time of the Tribes’ (1995): *Not a fixed entity, group or organizational whole but a mind set that congregates around aesthetic taste or lifestyle preferences. * Aesthetics of body and dress, multi-faceted hedonism, ephemeral communities of consumers and fragmented friendship networks - postmodern sociality *Events reflect aesthetic, sensory hedonism an expressive individuality with collective but brief sense of belonging - ‘the resurgence of festivals of a strong orgiastic composition’ (1995: 153) The Time of the Neo-Tribe

*Performativity (Bourdieu, 1991; Butler, 1999) - more than just words and corresponding actions  The ‘ illocutionary force ’ is ‘ not bound to the person or the words themselves ’ (Poupeau, 2000: 80) but highlights the power bound to cultural fields, their institutions and representatives  Reflects an individual’s ‘habitus that recognizes and defers authority and legitimacy to those officials, practitioners or experts within the field … A form of historical faith is triggered as the words and institutional authority of the speaker is recognized producing acquiescence of actions or practices ’ (Frew, 2007: 65) *Performativity is spatially specific; we magically conform and perform in word and deed - priest/parishoner/church,, teacher/pupil/class room, trainer/client/gym Welcome to Performativity

*Events - places of neo-tribal postmodern sociality and performativity: Sociality, the sense of being with and part of others in a ‘crowd’, is expressed through performativity, the expressive use of the body to act out learned practices. (Critcher, 2000: 159) *Not an anything goes process as they imply ‘the legitimate body and the legitimate use of the body’ (Bourdieu cited in Jarvie and Maguire, 1994: 193). *Events - performative spaces that legitimate experience *Experiential new suits - ephemeral magic moments; expressive effervesent hedonism Performing Identities & Events

*Events: sites of contemporary lifestyle identities ‘a freely chosen game’ of ‘active consumers whose choice reflects a self-constructed notion of identity’ (Bennett, 1999: 607) *Neo-tribal, performative opportunities where expressive hedonism is legitimated - a self-regulating and perpetuating experiential spectacle *Externalisation where consumer is also the producer - performative ‘experiential consumption’ as neo-tribal event consumers ‘consume an experience which they help to create’ (Critcher, 2000: 159) *Experiential Events: a future *Experience economy is legitimated, contained and professionalised *Challenge is to continue to facilitate orgastic performative experience *While addressing fears over experiential performativity - tantalizing through the taboo; experiential Frankenstein? Performing Identities & Events