Affect, has over the last couples of years surfaced as an important term relating to event
and the emergance of something new or different. Lenghty discussions have been held, here
Mårten Spångberg offers a small contribution in relation to dance and pickpockting.

Haven't we all been deceived to turn our attention in the wrong direction, haven't we all been fooled to see the forest in front of the trees. It's a simple strategy that we all know, and we still swallow the bait; for telling jokes, producing magic or picking somebody's pockets.

A friend recently told me how he in Moscow suddenly found himself in a setup with at least three gangsters involved, out of which one was a police officer and the deceptive object was a bundle of hundred dollar bills. Excellent street theater of the 21st century and my friend, a well trained performer, was perfectly seduced to pull out his own wallet exposing his innocence including the perfect opportunity for the gangsters to snatch his euros, dollars, travel checks and visa card. Moscow is such a show.

Inevitably I come to think about an art piece by the Flemish visual artist Sven Augustijnen, L'ecole des pickpockets from 2000, where two "professional" pickpockets teach dance/performance artists their "art form". What is peculiar with this piece is, as I interpret it, that it becomes interesting exactly where it is not intended to be. The curious art of pickpocketing is here cancelled out, the mystery is gone and instead what is left is a document dealing with difference in class, morals, and understanding of distributions in society. The finesse of pickpocketing, the oblique perspective relative to an ordinary situation here transforms into a simple technique, i.e. the affectual production is transferred to effectual representation. And this is the crucial point, pickpockets work in a realm which is unrepresentational; they move in spaces which are "invisible" for the one being the object of it, and must remain so in order not to become simple technique or, in our current context, a choreography as any other. In fact the announcement given at train stations and similar semi-public spaces that the audience should look out for pickpockets is their opportunity as the public necessarily will concentrate on exactly the conventional representation of what it believes to be the identity of a pickpocket. Simultaneously, it implies that the audience concentrates on pickpockets instead of directing their attention on how local businesses rob their money on over-priced macchiato. Why airports announce that there just might be a bomb in an abandoned duffel bag is slightly more complex, but perhaps it is a matter of making the travelers so scared that they stop caring about spending their last dollars on an even more over-priced mp3 player for their youngest son. Or, since it never happens that the bags explode or something else spooky, it might just be a way of promoting the infallibility of flying, or the possible bomb in a bag deviates the attention from the real event namely to be seated 30.000 feet above ground. Airports are so no show.

If Augustijnen"s project enters a landscape of virtuosity, a related project in Spain Yo Mango does the opposite. The project aims to teach regular people to shoplift, even encourages that they do it. Not to pickpocket, which is something one does to an undefined fellow being, but to shoplift, which is a strategic activity executed on a determined situation. The center of attention is of course not civil disobedience, which for the project only functions as a mirror to activate media, but how it addresses shoplifting on a conceptual level.
Essentially the activity to shoplift, i.e. to steal something, is in this project a by-product that is needed to deviate monitoring protocols, and the actual meaning production is on the level of economic and commodity distribution, and further the possibility for affectual production, in other words, a production of the possibility to invent spaces and times that have yet to achieve their orientation, identity and name.

Through a protocol that avoids a sense of communal departure or arrival point, this last type of production is achieved with no destination or task to fulfill but only opportunities to invest in a multitude of strategies. It is central to underline how this investment is one of invention, not representation, due that the project inherently must be invisible. Every time Yo Mango is rendered visible, it surfaces an illusion of the distribution of power in respect to capitalist markets (activism as performative potential). This illusion in its turn is a remnant of an affectual instant, an echo of a "vacancy" that leaves the effectual coordination of representation ambiguous without offering a promise of a better world, another utopia, but instead the possibility of heterotopia, a dissensual cluster of worlds coinciding without coordination.

The potentiality of Yo Mango lies on two levels of distribution. First the deviation of action where shoplifting occurs as the center only in order to hide a more complex and hazardous activity, representation being mismatched to provide a time/space without prior coordination. On an economic basis the side effect occurs to be the actual, i.e. make a bomb explode over there so that we can rob the bank over here. And secondly, Yo Mango is a potentiality of subjectification, i.e. opening for the potentiality of production a new, entirely different voice. Yo Mango is as affectual production an unmasking of a given in order for a redistribution of accountability, i.e. becoming political through a meeting of two incommensurable logics. I show mine if you show yours. You first!

If one would sell the film rights of Yo Mango to Hollywood, Winona Ryder should definitely perform the female protagonist. Winona did actually not make a mistake the day she started a parallel career as shoplifter. The point must be that she needed to produce in a realm where she was not invincible (i.e. as a Hollywood star). She was searching for an event, and affectual instant where her existence was threatened, and in fact she needed to get caught. Not the first or second time, but at the moment her system functioned she needed to get caught all in order to feel the rush of existence. Winona Ryder is a typical example of the lack of reality experienced in the 90s. Her need to get caught was generated by, what Alain Badiou has coined, "the passion of the real." This is the show and the show is many things. It's your turn now!
Forget about it!

Affects cannot be produced, but are what emerges in front of us without being given a name. Affects are productivities without a manifestation that when rendered visible slip unnoticed into established modes of production, conventional economies of circulation. Protocols of identity inscribe the emerging into a language as if the emerging had already always existed. Affects are always a side effect, a by-product but only the first time, due affect repetition is consolidating whereas due alcohol repetition is resolving. Affects are always the first kiss, and never the subordinate husband asking: Do you love me?

Affects are slippery like the first kiss, they are only until the first second, and then it's all over. Affects are like serial killers, they always want to get caught after proving they exist, and then it's all over. Affects are at the end of the day rather pathetic, precisely like Winona and serial killers. Show me the reason for being lonely.

One has to be careful with the unknown, and especially careful with its names. If one is not careful with the unknown it withdraws and becomes a known unknown. If one is not careful with its names it might be that we simply mistake them for transcendence. One must be careful with affects, i.e. its name; not to confuse them for the oblique, something…, shadows, sublime, research, mystical, emotional, real, touching, religious or what have we: so interesting! Unknown.
Affects aren't possible to distill from complexity, nor does complexification produce affects. Only through a production of possibility deviated from the producing entity to, or relative, the receiving can affect emerge as a productive multitude. Affects are like picking one's own pocket. It can only fail or work as long as I don't realize it, which I can't.
Oh My God, Let's Dance. Everything else is choreography.

Måten Spångberg