Archetype as Portable Role

A role can detach from a body

ANICONISM contains an unusually clear staging instruction: the role of XXXXX can be performed by anyone of any expression and in any place or time, even though the chosen staging changes the pressure around the role. The role is therefore portable while its embodiment still matters.

Wrestling makes this logic physical. SPACE FLYING TIGER 001 builds Vacío Arpista from a mask, name, gait, costume, alignment and mythology; SPACE FLYING TIGER 002 then describes selling a replica mask to a child who can “go home and be me.” Archetype becomes transmissible hardware.

Substitution without equivalence

Pseudobaggot can occupy the role of King Baggot without becoming historically identical to him. Cagliostro can operate as performer credit, occult identity, fictional figure and institutional wrapper. The role persists while the ontological status changes.

The danger

Portability is productive only while it remains visible as performance. Once a system treats the role as the person, the same mechanism becomes flattening. That is the pressure identified by TRIP ALHAZRED and Booker-Man.

Reader portability

The reader is also repeatedly cast rather than merely addressed. In INSTRUCTIONS NEVER TO DESTROY VIEW OR DUPLICATE, the work announces itself as a play, game, installation or confession for two characters and then assigns the reader both roles. See Reader / Player / Recipient.