ABSTRACT
Commonsense definitions of circus performance often mobilize technique as a defining feature of the form. But what is technique and how does it relate to artistic expression? In what sense can technique be understood as expressive and what does it express? This paper experiments with the Heideggerian notion of technē in order to imagine circus technique as a motor for “revealing,” that is, as a method for negotiating the traffic between potentiality and actuality. The margin by which this general definition appears too general, failing to capture the specificity of what is understood as “technique” within circus vernaculars today, is the margin which this paper then goes on to investigate, wondering, along with Heidegger, about the instrumentalization and channeling of technē under capitalism. In particular, Gabriel Tarde’s theories of attention and value help pinpoint the ways in which discussions of technique in the circus field tend to erase the zone in which the technical overlaps with the pedestrian, the unspecific, and the boring. By reassessing these tacit erasures, we can reframe the question of “free” expression in circus, putting freedom, after Hannah Arendt, in opposition not to the unwilled but to the instrumental.
