Uncertain? For Sure. Limping? Certainly: Limp Thoughts on Performance Practice, Kiff Bamford

Restricted blood flow to the limbs results in claudication. Claudication makes one limp. Such limping is used by Lyotard, both as a physical manifestation and as a metaphor for thinking without certainty, in the two texts, “Apathy in Theory” and “Interview with Art Présent,” presented in this volume for the first time in English translation. They don’t present a theory of “limping” but encourage rather a multiplicity of theories which trade on the inherent excitement of the unknown, the as yet undetermined. This is the same “manner” which appealed to Lyotard in Kant’s third Critique; the same wandering attention that appealed in Freud and an openness to the sometimes uncertain encounters in art practice. In this chapter these themes from the two “new” texts will be drawn out through specific examples of performance art practice, their dissemination and attempts at a limping commentary. The vibration of inner organs fired by a sound installation, the smell of recently cut marine ply, the odd encounter of Lyotard with Augustine of Hippo via cassette recorders which should be obsolete, lay bare the body’s limits

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