This performance was a research process and a report. “Affaction Substantiation: Transactive Social Intimacy + the Intentional Transmission of Affect(ion)” is a part of Affaction Research Center (ARC), an ongoing project actualized through arrays of social, affective, and intimate ways of performing philosophical thinking.

This performance took place over two weeks, with daily appointments offering haircuts, stick-and-poke tattoos, and drawn portraits in exchange for participation in a survey and interview process. The survey was conducted through a booklet with diagrams and questions, while the interviews were performed as conversations between me and the recipient of a haircut, tattoo, or portrait as I performed one of these three relations with / on their body. We particularly dealt with “rage” and how enragements, ragefulnesses, and ragings are seen, felt, usually starting with the personal experiences, sensations, and perceptions of the interview subject. We would then move the conversation into a broader, more speculative place, to discuss more conceptually how emotions are ontologically described, narratively materialized, controlled or not, evaluated, and so on. I was predominantly interested in each subject’s philosophical intuitions and theories. I accumulated a list of statements and beliefs about 1) causation 2) control and 3) function with regards to rage. The survey booklet was designed to turn somatic, diagrammatic, and affective responses into scores for a reporting performance.

At the end of the two weeks, I performed a presentation of the research that involved reading a written analytic paper while simultaneously embodying the scores designed by the booklet responses. The image depicts me reading part of the paper while using a cinder block to realize one of the drawings made by a participant in one of the booklets.