ABSTRACT
We are now in a position to utilise a comprehensive grammar of performance, understanding the psychical significance of our actions as well as their physical characteristics. We have our primary actions – stillness, repetition and inconsistency – and our secondary actions – acceleration and deceleration, addition and subtraction, together with the qualifying properties of overlayering. We understand the transferences, substitutions and reversals which may effect what we do, and we realise that these characteristics of what can be done can be manifested not only in action but also in sound, or in language, or in units fusing sound and action or language and action. We are also aware now that we can magnify the significance of our actions or diminish that significance by organising how those actions occur in time. What remains is to bind these abilities together into a coherent syntax – an effective vehicle for executing our performative desires in their entirety.
