Pablo Pakula
  • Home
  • About
  • Performance
    • Performance (intro)
    • INOCENTADA: inocentes, inocentes
    • FISTMASS
    • (untitled lament)
    • No place like ___
    • UNPRECEDENTED
    • a necrology: REQUIEM - DONA EIS - PROBASTI ME - TINTINABULATION - DELINEATUM EST
    • Thy light, thy flight
    • ALL TOMORROW'S TOMORROWS
    • ALL WITHIN A COLLAPSING BUILDING (a septet for the apocalypse)
    • BARLOVENTO y SOTAVENTO (un réquiem refugiado)
    • 20 x 20, swings x roundabouts
    • ANGELUS: Angels de Beer
    • YES NO BLACK WHITE
    • RAVE vs RAGE
    • Bride of Brexit
    • UNNEGATIVE
    • Masculine Expressions of my Creative Prowess >
      • About this project
    • No More These Sounds
    • HEAVY LIGHT
    • Lines and lines and lines and lines...
    • Now You Can Go
    • The Speed of Reason Produces Warning Hallucinations
    • S.o.S.S. (Sisyphus on Salisbury Sands)
    • VIDEO PIECES
    • LAND PIECES
    • MAIL PIECES
    • COLLABORATIONS
  • Pedagogy
    • Pedagogy (intro)
    • WARM-UP TO PERSONA
    • ghosts in the m-AI-chine >
      • ChatGPT-Pina
      • ChatGPT-Kaprow
    • Arte en Acción
    • GALERA PERFORMA
    • Stomping Ground!
    • Live Art for the Green Heart
  • Producing & hosting
    • Producing & hosting (intro)
    • Deep Trash Escoria
    • Theatre, Interactivity, Democracy
    • Pot Luck
    • Lifting the Curtain: On Audience and Authorship
    • Lifting the Curtain: Theatre Research @ Kent
    • Grotowski: After-Alongside-Around-Ahead
  • Publication
  • CONTACT

​UNNEGATIVE

19th July 2018
Tempting Failure, Matthew's Yard, London

​
The prefix un-.
Added to nouns, adjectives, participles, verbs, adverbs, and their derivatives.
Denoting the absence, reversal or cancellation of a quality, state or action.
Deprivation, separation or reduction to a lesser state.
A lack.
​Not.


Charging words with opposite force, the prefix un- turns everything inside-out and upside-down. It changes the positive into negative, the negative into positive. Un- is deeply transformative. It un-does, un-makes, un-breaks.

UNNEGATIVE invokes these powers as an incantation. Somewhere between sculpture and dance, this ritual-action-piece reaches towards the light, forever trying to overcome. UNNEGATIVE is about guilt and forgiveness, about shame and acceptance, and ultimately, about redemption.

This piece continues my ongoing research on ritual-based performance, the relationship between set tasks and the unrehearsable, as well as the affect materiality has on the audience.

​Sound design by Scott Wilson.


Images courtesy of Julia Bauer. 

TF18 - Day 11 Montage from Tempting Failure on Vimeo.

© COPYRIGHT 2025. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • About
  • Performance
    • Performance (intro)
    • INOCENTADA: inocentes, inocentes
    • FISTMASS
    • (untitled lament)
    • No place like ___
    • UNPRECEDENTED
    • a necrology: REQUIEM - DONA EIS - PROBASTI ME - TINTINABULATION - DELINEATUM EST
    • Thy light, thy flight
    • ALL TOMORROW'S TOMORROWS
    • ALL WITHIN A COLLAPSING BUILDING (a septet for the apocalypse)
    • BARLOVENTO y SOTAVENTO (un réquiem refugiado)
    • 20 x 20, swings x roundabouts
    • ANGELUS: Angels de Beer
    • YES NO BLACK WHITE
    • RAVE vs RAGE
    • Bride of Brexit
    • UNNEGATIVE
    • Masculine Expressions of my Creative Prowess >
      • About this project
    • No More These Sounds
    • HEAVY LIGHT
    • Lines and lines and lines and lines...
    • Now You Can Go
    • The Speed of Reason Produces Warning Hallucinations
    • S.o.S.S. (Sisyphus on Salisbury Sands)
    • VIDEO PIECES
    • LAND PIECES
    • MAIL PIECES
    • COLLABORATIONS
  • Pedagogy
    • Pedagogy (intro)
    • WARM-UP TO PERSONA
    • ghosts in the m-AI-chine >
      • ChatGPT-Pina
      • ChatGPT-Kaprow
    • Arte en Acción
    • GALERA PERFORMA
    • Stomping Ground!
    • Live Art for the Green Heart
  • Producing & hosting
    • Producing & hosting (intro)
    • Deep Trash Escoria
    • Theatre, Interactivity, Democracy
    • Pot Luck
    • Lifting the Curtain: On Audience and Authorship
    • Lifting the Curtain: Theatre Research @ Kent
    • Grotowski: After-Alongside-Around-Ahead
  • Publication
  • CONTACT