ABSTRACT

David Crellin

Troubled Waters: The Ocean as Contested Space in California Surf Culture

California defines much of its identity in the public imagination through the sport and cultural formations of surfing. This identity has been almost exclusively associated with white men as the accepted standard bearers of surfing’s evolution and excellence. This narrative runs parallel to the larger political and social discourses of Whiteness and racialized exclusion in American society. My project, “Troubled Waters: The Ocean as Contested Space in California Surf Culture,” explores the history of racism and representation in the formation of the so-called “California Dream” of surfing, interrogating white supremacy in surf and beach popular culture along the California coast, and presents research to understand and engage surfing and surf culture through a framework of greater diversity, equity, and inclusion.

In this thesis, I will demonstrate that live performance is powerfully situated to apply insights articulated by French philosophers, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and that of Zen Buddhism, which share many similarities. I will situate the Deleuzian/Zen project in and across two contrasting productions, to illustrate its utility as a foundational strategy for the creation of new work and in order to offer an expanded way of thinking live performance potential. The first production, a post-dramatic, mediatized event, 100% City was created by Rimini Protokoll, a Berlin-based collective, and performed in over 30 cities around the world. The second production is an immersive circus-based allegory, The Show To End All Shows, imagined by Circus Contraption, a Seattle-based performance troupe, of which I was the co-founder and a principal performer. Through my analysis of these performances, I will illustrate the effectiveness of adopting a Deleuzian/Zen framework toward creating live performance that gives rise to greater inclusive, non-hegemonic freedom of expression, and offers a stronger facility for engaging with the world around us.