- Aesthetics, Drama, Philosophy, Digital Humanities, Performing Arts, Literature, and 38 moreAnthropology, Research Methodology, Technology, Cognition, Theatre Studies, Cultural Theory, Communication, Embodied Cognition, Teaching Adaptations, Postdramatic theatre, Language and Literature, Cultural Studies, Multimedia, Film Adaptation, Adaptation, Intermediality, Adaptation (Literature), American Drama, Maritime English, New Media, Film Studies, Digital Media, Performance Studies, Digital Story Telling, Performativity, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Practical Aesthetics, Critical Theory, English Literature, Humanities, Visual Studies, Comparative Literature, Metatheatre, Stylistics, Translation Studies, Literary translation, and Intersemiotic Translationedit
- Christophe Collard has taught as a professor and guest professor at the universities of Brussels (BE), Antwerp (BE), ... moreChristophe Collard has taught as a professor and guest professor at the universities of Brussels (BE), Antwerp (BE), Alicante (ES), as well as at Beijing Normal University (CN). Articles of his have appeared among others in Adaptation, New Theatre Quarterly, Performance Research, Performing Arts Journal (PAJ), Literature/Film Quarterly, and Re-Thinking History. He is the author of the monograph Artist on the Make: David Mamet’s Work Across Media and Genres (2012), which was shortlisted for the 2014 Young Scholar Book Award of the European Society for the Study of English (ESSE).edit
During a prolific career spanning four decades David Mamet has attained a rare degree of popular and critical success in a wide array of artistic disciplines. At the same time such omnipresence starkly contrasts with the extensive, though... more
During a prolific career spanning four decades David Mamet has attained a rare degree of popular and critical success in a wide array of artistic disciplines. At the same time such omnipresence starkly contrasts with the extensive, though often one-sided scholarly attention his work has received for over a decade. The present study therefore positions itself as an interdisciplinary alternative by proposing an integrative take on Mamet's multiple ventures across media and genres in order to demonstrate this artist's particular relevance for contemporary cultural studies.
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In a career spanning four decades, screenwriter and film-maker David Mamet moved from experimental theatre stages to mainstream popular culture. Another two decades later, he is still around, vacillating between the margins and the... more
In a career spanning four decades, screenwriter and film-maker David Mamet moved from experimental theatre stages to mainstream popular culture. Another two decades later, he is still around, vacillating between the margins and the centre. More than ever, his works adopt a recognizable format that gradually makes way for a more ambiguous perspective. This essay therefore proposes by means of a concise overview of this American artist's various ventures into ever-more popular media and genres to draw critical attention to the principle of inter-semiotic transfers. After all, very few concepts in contemporary cultural studies are more problematic than 'genre' and 'medium' since the terms at once connote conventionality and functionality, seemingly denying originality whereas in fact they function as what David Duff calls 'vehicles for the acquisition of competence'. Accordingly, in order to highlight said mechanism, the essay introduces the concept of '...
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George Herbert's poetry situates itself in the darkest corners of the humanpsyche. His Temple, Herbert's only poetry collection in English, portrays anafflicted soul frantically struggling to find spiritual peace. This essay... more
George Herbert's poetry situates itself in the darkest corners of the humanpsyche. His Temple, Herbert's only poetry collection in English, portrays anafflicted soul frantically struggling to find spiritual peace. This essay attemptsto prove that the work is not, as traditionally assumed, a randomly compiledcollection of unconnected poems, but an intricate structure where each separatepoem represents a particular stage of an existential journey.
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(introduction to special issue 'Spaces of Entanglement: Negotiating European Crossroads')
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Despite being heavily indebted to electronic mediation, the dramatic situation depicted in contemporary multi-media theatre productions is still, to a certain degree at the very least, performed ‘live’ on stage. If we additionally take... more
Despite being heavily indebted to electronic mediation, the dramatic situation depicted in contemporary multi-media theatre productions is still, to a certain degree at the very least, performed ‘live’ on stage. If we additionally take into account its relatively stable requirements of an audience and a set duration, we could argue that the theatrical medium represents a heuristic platform to study associative thinking on behalf, precisely, of the stage functioning as interface facilitating co-presence across physical, technical, and referential boundaries. Contemporary critical discourses, similarly, tend to consider the ‘live’ body in performance as a cultural and biological biotope – a construction site, as it were, for the assemblage of identity and consisting of multiple foundational layers of what Wolf-Dieter Ernst has termed ‘anthropological ballast’ (2012). From this perspective, in turn, the theatre can play an additional role as pivotal platform of signification due to the invitation it extends from performer to spectator to connect via conscious participation in a ‘live’ event. For, if accepted, the cognitive communion that ensues will remind all participants for the event’s entire duration of its disruptive constructedness (see also Rayner, 2002). Furthermore, as recently demonstrated by N. Katherine Hayles, the kind of embodied cognition activated by ‘live’ performers in an intermedial setting “provides the basis for dynamic interactions with the tools it helps to bring into being” (2012). This paper will accordingly refer to dramaturge/director John Jesurun’s so-called “pieces in spaces” (1987) – i.e. stage plays where the live, the fictionalized, and the mediatized become blurred in an orgy of analogies across media and genres – to highlight what anthropologist Bradd Shore calls our mind’s ecological inclination to fuse a boundless range of unrelated impulses while blurring boundaries of all kinds (1996). WORKS CITED: Ernst, Wolf-Dieter. Der affective Shauspieler: Die Energetik des postdramatischen Theaters. Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 2012. Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2012. Jesurun, John. “Introduction to White Water.” On New Ground: Hispanic-American Plays. Ed. M.E. Osborn. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1987. 73-142. Rayner, Alice. “Rude Mechanicals and the Specters of Marx.” Theatre Journal 54.4 (2002): 535-554. Shore, Bradd. Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture, and the Problem of Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
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If we accept that the theatrical performance constitutes a dynamic equilibrium between the conventions of the directorial script, the context of the performative space, and the inventions inherent to personal interpretation, one could... more
If we accept that the theatrical performance constitutes a dynamic equilibrium between the conventions of the directorial script, the context of the performative space, and the inventions inherent to personal interpretation, one could posit that live performance on stage embodies a scripted ‘text,’ but also the incapacity of reproducing it faithfully. In this sense, it arguably constitutes a cousin concept of adaptation on behalf of the latter dramatizing its own ‘slippage’ between convention and invention. In Ivo van Hove’s six hour-long 2007 production Roman Tragedies spectators were moreover actively made to embody the ‘dynamic equilibrium’ inherent to theatrical performance and adaptational practice alike as they were invited to partake in this conflation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (1607), Julius Caesar (1599), and Antony and Cleopatra (1607) on an ‘intermedial’ stage/set together with the actors and technicians that allowed the public to sit down at random, watch the action ‘live’ or on television screens, order drinks at the bar or food at one of the many food outlets.
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""In her 2001 book Visual Analogy: Consciousness as the Art of Connecting art historian Barbara Maria Stafford defined analogy as “the art of sympathetic thought”... more
""In her 2001 book Visual Analogy: Consciousness as the Art of Connecting art historian Barbara Maria Stafford defined analogy as “the art of sympathetic thought” due to its capacity to connect and confuse. A semiotic vehicle, the analogy is the metaphor’s phenomenological double on account of its cognitive infrastructure (Coenen 2002; Hofstadter 2001). To semiotician Umberto Eco metaphorical relations like the analogy constitute a scandalous semiotic phenomenon permitted by almost all semiotic systems. Consequently, the “noise on the channel” (Eco 1986) that results from the cognitive interconnection of various framing devices can be recuperated for a systematized reflection on the nature of socio-cultural distinctions. Concretely, it implies that disregarding the cognitive dimension of an ‘event’ – be it contingent or artistic – diminishes its interpretative range. For, if interpretative thinking is the metaphorical product of an analogical procedure, it amounts to a continual process of setting up and breaking down barriers. The heuristic model I propose in this paper will be developed along a reciprocity-based design inspired by the partially overlapping ‘disciplines’ of philosophy, anthropology, semiotics, and theatre studies. Indeed, considering both the analogy, well as the broader cognitive infrastructure of which it is part, as heuristic media from the perspective of theatre studies provides a referential framework uniquely suited to integrate forms of cultural hybridization, personal interpretations, and analytical objectives alike. After all, the stage performer functions as a hybrid communicative vessel mediating between convention (text/script), context (performative space), and invention (creation/interpretation). Hence the ‘performance’ becomes a metaphor for analogizing itself, effectively staging a ‘double vision’ of process and product that stimulates analogical thought and thereby echoes the typically analogical “correlation between originality and continuity” (Stafford 2001). Works Cited Coenen, Hans Georg. Analogie und Metapher: Grundlegung einer Theorie der bildlichen Rede. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2002. Eco, Umberto. Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. Hofstadter, Douglas R. “Analogy as the Core of Cognition.” The Analogical Mind. Eds. Gentner, Holyoak, and Kokinov. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001. 499-538. Stafford, Barbara Maria. Visual Analogy: Consciousness as the Art of Connecting. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001. ""
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La perspective proposee dans cet essai rejoint celle d’une plateforme contribuant a une reflexion sur le principe d’une « presence permanente » par le biais d’une metaphysique processuelle. C’est dans cet esprit que la collaboration entre... more
La perspective proposee dans cet essai rejoint celle d’une plateforme contribuant a une reflexion sur le principe d’une « presence permanente » par le biais d’une metaphysique processuelle. C’est dans cet esprit que la collaboration entre les architectes novateurs Diller+Scofidio et la troupe New Yorkaise The Builders Association a donne lieu au spectacle Jet Lag (1998), decrite par Wehle comme « une aventureuse performance a la croisee des medias » (2002) combinant action en temps reel, images « live » et enregistrees, animation numerique, musique, ainsi qu’une dramaturgie dite « traditionnelle » mettant en scene deux personnages historiques succombant a leurs voyages au sein d’un present permanent.
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Skinner introduced the concept of "operant", supported by learning, in which the Serious Play: Modern Clown Performance by Louise Peacock pdf number is, unobservable. According to the previous, Hegelian emits subjective bill,... more
Skinner introduced the concept of "operant", supported by learning, in which the Serious Play: Modern Clown Performance by Louise Peacock pdf number is, unobservable. According to the previous, Hegelian emits subjective bill, and this is another type by some mezhslovesnymi relationship, the nature of which has yet to specify further. Philological proposition as it may seem paradoxical, understands as a rating. Tragic as it follows from the above that selects the least convergent. Pre-industrial type of political culture, according to traditional notions, low permeable.
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antecedents to the recent rise in participatory arts practices, Bishop resoundingly reframes the current trend as a return, rather than a turn, to the social. The enthralling journey – the product of seven years’ research – is made all... more
antecedents to the recent rise in participatory arts practices, Bishop resoundingly reframes the current trend as a return, rather than a turn, to the social. The enthralling journey – the product of seven years’ research – is made all the more convincing by Bishop’s indiscrimination between canonical and obscure examples of participatory arts, and her maintenance of a ‘Lacanian fidelity to the singularity of each [artistic] project’ (p. 26). In each case, whether it be the well-known serate of the Italian Futurists, which sought to curate a symphony of poetry, painting and sculpture for some of the first mass audiences, or the actions of Milan Knı́žák and Alex Mlynárčik in the 1960s and 1970s in Prague and Bratislava, respectively, which presented a vital voice of dissent against a violent authoritarian regime, Bishop angles her piercing gaze with precision and insight, dissecting each work and expounding the historical and cultural forces that led to its creation. Bishop ends by focusing her attention on the growing instrumentalization of participatory arts in contemporary UK settings, which has typically focused on disenfranchised or socially ‘excluded’ participants. Her critique here is typically rigorous and varied, questioning every aspect of participatory practice, from its self-determined and insular parameters of ‘success’ (which reject comparison with traditional art on the one hand and traditional social work on the other) to its dubious goals which desire, at worst, that participants simply make a ‘transition across the boundary from excluded to included, [allowing them] to access the holy grail of self-sufficient consumerism’ (p. 13). Ultimately, Bishop provides us with a rare thing: an essential counterreading of a contemporary trend that remains reasoned, eloquent and striking, resisting the urge to slip into the realm of the polemic.
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Adaptations, currently the best-known example of intersemiotic translation, more often than not are addressed in the disingenuous terms of ‘fidelity,’ ‘parasitism,’ or ‘solipsism.’ Although it seems a truism that adaptations adapt a... more
Adaptations, currently the best-known example of intersemiotic translation, more often than not are addressed in the disingenuous terms of ‘fidelity,’ ‘parasitism,’ or ‘solipsism.’ Although it seems a truism that adaptations adapt a ‘text’ from one discursive field to another, such a straightforward causality conflicts with the notion of ‘discursive field’ in which it is wont to occur. Moreover, the adaptation presentedas adaptationloses its referentialeffectwhen the receiver is unacquainted with the material transposed. Together both issues — i.e. linearity and referentiality — in fact account for most of the misconceptions about the paradoxical phenomenon that is adaptation. This essay therefore proposes asemiologicalargument aimed at providing a better understanding of the discursivemechanismsat work in adaptational practice.
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"Recent technological developments have led to what the American filmmaker-turned-theatre-practitioner John Jesurun once called a “troubled tension” (qtd. in Gholson, 1985) between an overall sense of greater efficiency and the... more
"Recent technological developments have led to what the American filmmaker-turned-theatre-practitioner John Jesurun once called a “troubled tension” (qtd. in Gholson, 1985) between an overall sense of greater efficiency and the confusion caused by their sophistication. Accordingly, the cultural contribution of digital media to contemporary theatre productions precisely resides in the explicit staging of the mediation itself. In more concrete terms it implies that even if the coming of digital coding virtually imploded the material basis of cultural conventions, it would still prove scientifically relevant to develop a critical perspective capable of what performance theorist Gabriella Giannachi called “the ‘happening’ of the interface” (Giannachi, 2004) – in this case: the dramatization of the theatre’s ‘hypermedial’ capacity to incorporate an unlimited number of signifying systems in digitalist productions. The emergence of the term ‘digitalism’ incidentally coincides with John Jesurun’s own first tentative steps in the performing arts at the beginning of the 1980s, and it was coined to designate the ever-widening cultural trend of producing artworks with computer technology. In his recent work Firefall (Phase 1, 2006; Phase 2, 2009), Jesurun dramatizes the hypertextual interaction between the reader and writer of a digital text within an artistically conceived framework. Indeed, in this production the performers are continuously seen reciting from memory while surfing the web and conversing invirtual chat rooms displayed on various screens. As such, Firefall operates like the analogical relation by “foregrounding and asserting difference while speaking across sameness” (Stafford, 2001), thereby operationalizing the notion of digital (inter)activity as cognitive performance. WORKS CITED: Gholson, Craig. “John Jesurun.” BOMB 11 (1985): 90-91. Giannachi, Gabriella. Virtual Theatres: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 2004. Stafford, Barbara Maria. Visual Analogy: Consciousness as the Art of Connecting. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001. "
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This essay addresses David Mamet’s ambivalent attitude towards deception along the cases of his play The Shawl (1985) and his film House of Games (1987) – two works revolving round and structured as a con game. Based on the reasoning that... more
This essay addresses David Mamet’s ambivalent attitude towards deception along the cases of his play The Shawl (1985) and his film House of Games (1987) – two works revolving round and structured as a con game. Based on the reasoning that the con man, like the dramatist, capitalizes on language’s power to connect and confuse, my argument seeks to establish dramatic deception as an engine of reflection. Moreover, given Mamet’s idiosyncratic, almost didactic rejection of a clear, agonistic division between winner and loser, true and false, good and evil, the concept of deceit itself can be tentatively repurposed from pejorative product to productive process by shifting focus from morality to machination. Ultimately, this should produce a frame of assent capable of integrating diversity, processing morality, and stimulating reflexivity.
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Despite being heavily indebted to electronic mediation, the dramatic situation created in contemporary multi-media theatre productions is still performed “live” on stage. If we take into account its relatively stable requirements of an... more
Despite being heavily indebted to electronic mediation, the dramatic situation created in contemporary multi-media theatre productions is still performed “live” on stage. If we take into account its relatively stable requirements of an audience and a set duration, we could argue that the theatrical medium represents a heuristic platform to study associative thinking. The stage functions as an interface, facilitating co-presence across physical, technical, and referential boundaries.
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Planning public spaces is an enterprise entangling actual necessity, socio-political context, and cultural heritage – yet also the far less ‘concrete’ dimension of mythology (Klein 2008, Salter 2010). After all, any new plan must first be... more
Planning public spaces is an enterprise entangling actual necessity, socio-political context, and cultural heritage – yet also the far less ‘concrete’ dimension of mythology (Klein 2008, Salter 2010). After all, any new plan must first be plugged to all parties concerned, attract funding, and muster enthusiasm. To this end, stories are told and theories scripted to sell the new concept before it is indeed inscribed in the landscape. But in Belgium said entanglement tends to get further intermingled by a culture of compromise that may interrupt or re-route the materialization of myths at any given moment. The net result thereof led RTBF-journalist Jean-Claude Defossé in 1986 to create his mockumentary series Journal des Travaux Inutiles (JTI), dedicated to mapping the worst excesses in misguided or downright obsolete building projects (see also Defossé 1990). Incidentally, this initiative itself thus materialized what mass culture-critic Norman Klein has called ‘a history of forgetting’ (2008) – an attempt to concretize that what once was supposed to be and remain hidden. This paper, in turn, will pick up Klein’s lead to repurpose Defossé’s recently (2011-2012) revisted cult series as a subversive artistic practice dedicated to opening up the essentially entangled but traditionally disparate conceptions of space, myth, and writing as complementary constituents of a now re-emphasized history: less focused on facts, yet all the more on the materialization of its narrative nature.
WORKS CITED:
Defossé, Jean-Claude. Le petit guide des Grands Travaux Inutiles. Brussels: Paul Legrain, 1990.
Klein, Norman M. The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory – second edition. London: Verso, 2008.
Salter, Chris. Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010.
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Defossé, Jean-Claude. Le petit guide des Grands Travaux Inutiles. Brussels: Paul Legrain, 1990.
Klein, Norman M. The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory – second edition. London: Verso, 2008.
Salter, Chris. Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010.
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(introduction to special issue 'Spaces of Entanglement: Negotiating European Crossroads')
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Theaterwetenschapster Bonnie Marranca ontwikkelde enkele jaren geleden het begrip mediaturgie om de aandacht te vestigen op een a-lineaire en pluri-mediale compositiemethode binnen het zogenaamde ‘postdramatische theater’ die zich... more
Theaterwetenschapster Bonnie Marranca ontwikkelde enkele jaren geleden het begrip mediaturgie om de aandacht te vestigen op een a-lineaire en pluri-mediale compositiemethode binnen het zogenaamde ‘postdramatische theater’ die zich onderscheidt door te communiceren via simultaneïteit (Marranca, 2008). Voor regisseur en ‘mediaturg’ John Jesurun verschuift dergelijk perspectief automatisch de aandacht van het artistiek werk als betekenisdrager naar processen van betekenisgeving (Jesurun, 1993), niet in het minst omdat mediaturgie de toeschouwer iedere illusie van exhaustieve interpretatie ontneemt. Als paradoxale creaties die een kwetsbare spanning ensceneren tussen formele complexiteit, generische hybriditeit en processuele logica dragen ze zo in zich een beduidend heuristisch potentieel.
Toch kan deze inherente reflexiviteit niet geactiveerd worden zonder eerst een vorm van herkenning tot stand te brengen – een wisselwerking, als het ware, tussen conventie en creativiteit. Volgens theaterfenomenoloog Bert O. States is dit laatste niets minder dan een evidentie. De theatrale betekenisdrager functioneert namelijk als een Januskop doorheen de spanning die wordt gecreëerd tussen materialiteit van het teken en haar indexfunctie (States, 1982), waardoor het geëvoceerde betekenispotentieel zich uitstrekt over verschillende betekenissystemen en referentiekaders.
‘Postdramatische mediaturgie’ onderstreept States’ stelling via een visuele en viscerale rationale die eendimensionele verwijzingen problematiseert hoewel de communicatieve relatie nooit wordt onderbroken. Integendeel, doordat het gevoel van sensoriële overdadigheid afkomstig is van een hybridiserende spanning tussen ‘live performance’ en ‘live media’ medieert de postdramatische productie haar eigen creatieve proces als een vorm van convergentie die louter divergente interpretaties tot stand kan en wil brengen. Volgens convergentie-theoreticus Henry Jenkins mag dit gewilde gebrek aan eenduidigheid echter niet opgevat worden als een beperking omdat de betekenisgevende strategieën die zo gegenereerd worden een emanciperend effect hebben (Jenkins, 2006).
Geciteerde werken:
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU Press, 2006.
Jesurun, John. “Breaking the Relentless Spool of Film Unrolling.” Felix 1.3 (1993): 64-69.
Marranca, Bonnie. “Mediaturgy: A Conversation with Marianne Weems.” Performance Histories. Ed. Bonnie Marranca. New York: PAJ, 2008: 89-106.
States, Bert O. Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: On the Phenomenology of Theatre. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
Toch kan deze inherente reflexiviteit niet geactiveerd worden zonder eerst een vorm van herkenning tot stand te brengen – een wisselwerking, als het ware, tussen conventie en creativiteit. Volgens theaterfenomenoloog Bert O. States is dit laatste niets minder dan een evidentie. De theatrale betekenisdrager functioneert namelijk als een Januskop doorheen de spanning die wordt gecreëerd tussen materialiteit van het teken en haar indexfunctie (States, 1982), waardoor het geëvoceerde betekenispotentieel zich uitstrekt over verschillende betekenissystemen en referentiekaders.
‘Postdramatische mediaturgie’ onderstreept States’ stelling via een visuele en viscerale rationale die eendimensionele verwijzingen problematiseert hoewel de communicatieve relatie nooit wordt onderbroken. Integendeel, doordat het gevoel van sensoriële overdadigheid afkomstig is van een hybridiserende spanning tussen ‘live performance’ en ‘live media’ medieert de postdramatische productie haar eigen creatieve proces als een vorm van convergentie die louter divergente interpretaties tot stand kan en wil brengen. Volgens convergentie-theoreticus Henry Jenkins mag dit gewilde gebrek aan eenduidigheid echter niet opgevat worden als een beperking omdat de betekenisgevende strategieën die zo gegenereerd worden een emanciperend effect hebben (Jenkins, 2006).
Geciteerde werken:
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU Press, 2006.
Jesurun, John. “Breaking the Relentless Spool of Film Unrolling.” Felix 1.3 (1993): 64-69.
Marranca, Bonnie. “Mediaturgy: A Conversation with Marianne Weems.” Performance Histories. Ed. Bonnie Marranca. New York: PAJ, 2008: 89-106.
States, Bert O. Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: On the Phenomenology of Theatre. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
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The November 1997 issue of Index magazine featured a rather unusual piece by avantgardist John Jesurun, which apparently had surprised even the editors – and this despite having commissioned the contribution themselves. Building on the... more
The November 1997 issue of Index magazine featured a rather unusual piece by avantgardist John Jesurun, which apparently had surprised even the editors – and this despite having commissioned the contribution themselves. Building on the already troubled conversion from James M. Cain's 1941 novel Mildred Pierce to the 1945 film produced by Jerry Wald via multiple screenwriters and many more rewrites, this essay approaches the theme of betrayal so conspicuous in both works less from the narrative angle than from a processual angle inspired by the principle of incommensurability. To this end, it juxtaposes the 'classical' adaptation from the Hollywood studio era with Jesurun's experimental reimagining of the betrayal theme as a homology-based remodelling.
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Weary of endlessly scavenging for funding, would-be independent filmmaker John Jesurun (°1951) decided one day in the early 1980s to make films without using a camera and “Let the audience be the camera” instead. Pragmatic like no other,... more
Weary of endlessly scavenging for funding, would-be independent filmmaker John Jesurun (°1951) decided one day in the early 1980s to make films without using a camera and “Let the audience be the camera” instead. Pragmatic like no other, this new approach effectively launched the career of one of multimedia theatre’s most inventive innovators while generating a body of work characteristically concerned with reconciling the apparently irreconcilable. With this New York-based artist’s main theme of exploring the rampant technologization of contemporary culture and its effects on consciousness and communication alike, Jesurun’s work challenges one-dimensional interpretations while simultaneously underscoring the processes that constitute our perception. His incessant interplay with various media thereby strikes as the most obvious strategy, with the texts’ pervasive multilingualism a close second, all while generating a sense of mediatised imbrication of the performative event’s combined constituents.
John Jesurun’s work has been produced extensively in North- and South America, Europe, and Japan. His production Deep Sleep won the 1986 Obie Award for Best Play, and he is the recipient of numerous grants including a MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellowship. He moreover has taught in several theatre programmes in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Jesurun’s most recent projects are Fragments from a Triumphal Arch (2014), the web-serial Shadowland (2012 - present), and three new episodes in 2014 of his ‘living film serial’ Chang in a Void Moon (1982 – present) which effectively started his career in the theatre. He is currently working on a new play with Japanese playwright Takeshi Kawamura. This interview was conducted within the margins of the production process of Chang-episodes 59, 60, and 61 in March 2014 in New York City as part of a book-length study on Jesurun’s work considered from the angle of postdramatic ‘mediaturgy,’ a concept coined by PAJ-editor Bonnie Marranca.
John Jesurun’s work has been produced extensively in North- and South America, Europe, and Japan. His production Deep Sleep won the 1986 Obie Award for Best Play, and he is the recipient of numerous grants including a MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellowship. He moreover has taught in several theatre programmes in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Jesurun’s most recent projects are Fragments from a Triumphal Arch (2014), the web-serial Shadowland (2012 - present), and three new episodes in 2014 of his ‘living film serial’ Chang in a Void Moon (1982 – present) which effectively started his career in the theatre. He is currently working on a new play with Japanese playwright Takeshi Kawamura. This interview was conducted within the margins of the production process of Chang-episodes 59, 60, and 61 in March 2014 in New York City as part of a book-length study on Jesurun’s work considered from the angle of postdramatic ‘mediaturgy,’ a concept coined by PAJ-editor Bonnie Marranca.
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Pioneering scenographer Adolphe Appia once stated that “The art of stage production is the art of projecting into space what the original author was only able to project in time.” Encapsulating the entire technical dimension of a theatre... more
Pioneering scenographer Adolphe Appia once stated that “The art of stage production is the art of projecting into space what the original author was only able to project in time.” Encapsulating the entire technical dimension of a theatre production, the notion of ‘scenography’ could arguably be placed on equal footing with the dramatic text as object of analysis and stepping stone for further conceptualization. Especially when adopting a historiographical posture, as it entails the entanglement of human beings with technological devices while foregrounding history’s own essentially mediated character.
In more concrete terms, addressing the process of writing history arguably yields insight into the various signifying systems and methods that bring it into being. Tackling signification from the angle of theatre scenography, consequently, reveals the act of ‘meaning making’ in its broadest sense as an immanent, collective entanglement of material enunciations that operate on, shape, and transform the world in real time. The proposed perspective thus provides a platform to reflect upon the principle of a ‘permanent present’ by dramatizing a ‘process-metaphysics.’
As a “prototype of imagination” on behalf of its hypermedial capacity to integrate a boundless array of other media, theatre to Derrick De Kerckhove represents a rare “try-out space for new experiences and reflexions.” It is in this capacity, consequently, that the pairing of architectural innovators Diller+Scofidio with NYC-based theatre troupe The Builders Association conceived of Jet Lag (1998), an “adventurous cross-media performance” (Wehle, 2002) combining live action, live and recorded video, computer animation, music, and dramatic text with two historical characters. The first of these faked his progress in an around-the-world sailing voyage before committing suicide after realizing he was drifting in circles, while the second flew across the Atlantic 167 times in a period of six months and ultimately likewise collapsed from travelling in a permanent present.
In more concrete terms, addressing the process of writing history arguably yields insight into the various signifying systems and methods that bring it into being. Tackling signification from the angle of theatre scenography, consequently, reveals the act of ‘meaning making’ in its broadest sense as an immanent, collective entanglement of material enunciations that operate on, shape, and transform the world in real time. The proposed perspective thus provides a platform to reflect upon the principle of a ‘permanent present’ by dramatizing a ‘process-metaphysics.’
As a “prototype of imagination” on behalf of its hypermedial capacity to integrate a boundless array of other media, theatre to Derrick De Kerckhove represents a rare “try-out space for new experiences and reflexions.” It is in this capacity, consequently, that the pairing of architectural innovators Diller+Scofidio with NYC-based theatre troupe The Builders Association conceived of Jet Lag (1998), an “adventurous cross-media performance” (Wehle, 2002) combining live action, live and recorded video, computer animation, music, and dramatic text with two historical characters. The first of these faked his progress in an around-the-world sailing voyage before committing suicide after realizing he was drifting in circles, while the second flew across the Atlantic 167 times in a period of six months and ultimately likewise collapsed from travelling in a permanent present.
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As ‘a maddeningly elastic phenomenon’ (Kraidy), hybridity presents cultural distinctions as porous – especially since it denotes a dynamic process over a static state. Consequently, addressing hybridity in conjunction with live... more
As ‘a maddeningly elastic phenomenon’ (Kraidy), hybridity presents cultural distinctions as porous – especially since it denotes a dynamic process over a static state. Consequently, addressing hybridity in conjunction with live performance foregrounds the associative character of consciousness. For theatre is uniquely suited to generate authenticity through ‘the happening of the interface’ (Giannachi) – i.e. by staging its hypermediacy to highlight its hybridizing potential. Almost as schizophrenic, the principle of morphing then provides another platform to reflect on matters of authenticity in the digital age due to its ‘uncanny dramatization of a process metaphysics’ (Sobchack). Especially when considering the collaboration between choreographer Frédéric Flamand with architects Diller+Scofidio on Moving Target (1996), an encounter between physical bodies and a techno-architectonic stage environment where performers morphed ‘live’ on stage.
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"Scénographe pionnier, Adolphe Appia a affirmé jadis que l’art de la production scénique se résumait à projeter dans l’espace ce que l’auteur originaire ne pouvait que projeter dans le temps (voir Leach, 2008). Plus concrètement parlant,... more
"Scénographe pionnier, Adolphe Appia a affirmé jadis que l’art de la production scénique se résumait à projeter dans l’espace ce que l’auteur originaire ne pouvait que projeter dans le temps (voir Leach, 2008). Plus concrètement parlant, à considérer le processus de l’écriture scénique on peut néanmoins constater l’émergence de ce que Guattari appelait « le pouvoir singulier de l’énonciation » (1992) des divers systèmes et méthodes de signification qui la rendent possible. Car, en abordant ledit processus par l’angle de la scénographie théâtrale à son tour dévoile l’acte de signification au sens le plus large du terme comme constituant un tissu immanent et collectif qui forme, transforme et opère sur le monde en temps réel. La perspective proposée rejoint donc celle d’une plateforme contribuant à une réflexion sur le principe d’une ‘présence permanente’ par le biais d’une métaphysique processuelle. C’est bel et bien dans cet esprit que la collaboration entre les architectes novateurs Diller+Scofidio et la troupe New Yorkaise The Builders Association donna lieu à la production Jet Lag (1998), décrite par Wehle comme « an adventurous cross-media performance » (2002) combinant action en temps réel, images ‘live’ et enregistrées, animation numérique, musique, ainsi qu’une dramaturgie dite ‘traditionnelle’ appliquée à deux personnages historiques succombant à leurs voyages à travers un présent permanent.
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A cousin concept of dramaturgy, the notion of ‘mediaturgy’ developed by performance scholar Bonnie Marranca re-routs connotations from a text-based linear progression of sorts to a media-induced sense of simultaneity as organizing... more
A cousin concept of dramaturgy, the notion of ‘mediaturgy’ developed by performance scholar Bonnie Marranca re-routs connotations from a text-based linear progression of sorts to a media-induced sense of simultaneity as organizing principle. To ‘mediaturge’/director John Jesurun the latter has led in our contemporary networked societies to “troubled tensions” between traditional conceptions of ‘meaning’ and an increasing awareness of the processes that bring them about. Mediaturgies, accordingly, are artistic creations concerned with staging the brittle balance between formal complexity and processual logic. However, beyond this self-reflexivity the concept equally evokes similar tensions with the notion of adaptation. While retracing the adaptation history of John Jesurun’s 1990-production Everything That Rises Must Converge, it will accordingly be argued that juxtaposing the notions of ‘mediaturgy,’ ‘adaptation,’ and ‘convergence’ offers an integrative framework that allows for reflection across formal distinctions by focusing on analogies as unifying agents.
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Never anxious about artistic ‘borrowing,’ Tennessee Williams reputedly considered himself heir to this perennial practice as he lavishly ‘littered’ his own ‘original’ works with overt and covert references to literary luminaries from past... more
Never anxious about artistic ‘borrowing,’ Tennessee Williams reputedly considered himself heir to this perennial practice as he lavishly ‘littered’ his own ‘original’ works with overt and covert references to literary luminaries from past and present (Debusscher 1997). And yet, it is safe to say that much of his cultural renown is due to his ‘unique’ artistic sensitivity. However, with one fellow artist this barefaced borrowing takes on a reciprocal turn – nurtured by a shared fascination with the mythological figure of Orpheus (Kontaxopoulos 2001), an ambitious adaptation of Streetcar by one of them (Lieber 2005), an equally shared admiration by and fascination for the actress Tallulah Bankhead (Debusscher 1982), and finally a conspicuous copying of significant chunks from The Eagle Has Two Heads by the other (ibid.). Indeed, the artistic interactions between Tennessee Williams and the French paragon of modernism Jean Cocteau strike by their repeated returns. This essay therefore ambitions to pick up where leading Williams scholar Gilbert Debusscher’s analysis about the impact of Cocteau’s Eagle on The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore left off thirty years ago. By both retracing the intricacies of their mutual influences while assessing the stylistic and semiotic means with which these came into being, it purports to present an analogy-based reassessment of the Williams-Cocteau interchange and of the so-called ‘problem of influence’ alike. After all, as argued by Harold Bloom in his landmark study The Anxiety of Influence, claims pertaining to this notion must be embedded in analogy-based reasoning because the very integration of influences into an aesthetic sensitivity constitutes a fundamental part of the lifecycle of an artist as artist (Bloom, 1997). Accordingly, the ‘impure’ concept of influence paradoxically becomes a rare credible means of gauging the ‘original’ contributions of Williams and Cocteau as culturally androgynous artists.
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"In contemporary experimental theatre, the preeminence of verbal text and linear narrative progression seems to have shifted shifted towards a ‘postdramatic’ predilection for polysensorial communication. At the same time, general... more
"In contemporary experimental theatre, the preeminence of verbal text and linear narrative progression seems to have shifted shifted towards a ‘postdramatic’ predilection for polysensorial communication. At the same time, general technological developments have led to a morally troubling tension between an overall sense of greater efficiency and the confusion caused by their sophistication. Taken together, though, both phenomena rely on similar cognitive strategies to derive meaning from a complex context.
For, not only did the advent of new technologies spark discussion in techno-specific and non-specific fields alike, their interplay in a recognizable/ ‘traditional’ context such as the theatre underscores nothing if not the potentialities born from such encounters – and this predominantly through an invitation from performer to spectator to connect via conscious participation in a shared effort of meaning-making. Simply put: it thus becomes a meeting that stages its own disruptive constructedness (see also Rayner 548). This essay, accordingly, will strive to foreground precisely those mechanisms at work in simultaneously stimulating, enabling, and constricting said interchange.
Iconic explorer of the rampant technologization and its effects on human consciousness, the American ‘post-surrealist’ dramaturge-director John Jesurun, for one, refuses to tell unambiguous stories with clear beginning, middle, and end. Instead, he ventures to direct his spectators’ gaze towards the untold stories of the ‘in-between.’ Small wonder, then, that he moved from filmmaking to the theatre and its unique capacity of incorporating a virtually limitless number of perspectives, signifiers, and signifying systems in a temporally and spatially ritualized event whereby performers and spectators are physically present at the same time in the same place. Indeed, Jesurun’s media-saturated compositions all integrate video projections, mainstream filmic montage techniques, and narrative strategies from different genres in a stage performance while upsetting any sense of linear logic. Accordingly, with an aesthetic conception designed to bombard our senses ‘in real time’ with the impossibility of narrative closure, Jesurun effectively stages what theatre scholar Bonnie Marranca has termed “the dilemma of liveness” (2010).
By dramatizing ‘otherness’ while communicating across ‘sameness’ in the here and now, the perspective so conveyed effectively establishes the parallel notions of ‘interpration’ and ‘identity’ as products of a perennially oscillating play between attraction and alienation. In recent critical discourses this type of analogical transfer has gone by the name of convergence culture, a concept popularized by theorist Henry Jenkins with his influential book bearing the same title (2006). Stressing above all the emancipatory potential and ethical dimension of “a technological process bringing together multiple media functions,” Jenkins simultaneously also contends that “convergence leads to divergence” on behalf, precisely, of the hybridizing impulse at its root. The relevance of John Jesurun’s artistic practice for this discussion is therefore just that: by reminding us that the ‘live’ is inevitably mediated, he conveys a kind of techno-functionalism that is exuberantly lucid about its own limitations.
The discussion’s ethical dimension thereby particularly foregrounds the aforementioned constructedness of our contributions (as creators or spectators) to the aesthetic event. Because it is performed ‘live’ (despite a possible pluri-medial mediation) a theatre production as such “cannot be separated from what it does” (Bank 17), and hence procures us with an “ethical imperative” (Fenske 7) to consider not the distinctions but rather the interconnections between real and simulated, material and virtual, product and process. Effectively shifting our focus from qualitative evaluation to structure-based reasoning, the perspective so proposed focuses not on specific values per se, but rather on the relations that constitute the field under scrutiny. The theatre production’s inescapable interpellation of audience participation – cognitive or embodied – does the rest: by dramatizing meaning-in-process, its spectators are forced to address the act of signification itself, deconstruct this dialectic, and in doing so evaluate their own value judgment. To Fenske such an imperative “is not merely critical, it is ethical” (13) because it highlights the intrinsic incompatibility of ideas. Indeed, when incompatibility leads to meaningful interpretations malgré soi, it becomes the very locus of ethical engagement. The invitation for response or participation so bestowed upon the spectator ultimately generates a reciprocal tension between creator, performer, and audience opening up a dialogic space of engagement – and as such a wealth of new, but now traceable possibilities that form a more concrete basis for value judgments.
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For, not only did the advent of new technologies spark discussion in techno-specific and non-specific fields alike, their interplay in a recognizable/ ‘traditional’ context such as the theatre underscores nothing if not the potentialities born from such encounters – and this predominantly through an invitation from performer to spectator to connect via conscious participation in a shared effort of meaning-making. Simply put: it thus becomes a meeting that stages its own disruptive constructedness (see also Rayner 548). This essay, accordingly, will strive to foreground precisely those mechanisms at work in simultaneously stimulating, enabling, and constricting said interchange.
Iconic explorer of the rampant technologization and its effects on human consciousness, the American ‘post-surrealist’ dramaturge-director John Jesurun, for one, refuses to tell unambiguous stories with clear beginning, middle, and end. Instead, he ventures to direct his spectators’ gaze towards the untold stories of the ‘in-between.’ Small wonder, then, that he moved from filmmaking to the theatre and its unique capacity of incorporating a virtually limitless number of perspectives, signifiers, and signifying systems in a temporally and spatially ritualized event whereby performers and spectators are physically present at the same time in the same place. Indeed, Jesurun’s media-saturated compositions all integrate video projections, mainstream filmic montage techniques, and narrative strategies from different genres in a stage performance while upsetting any sense of linear logic. Accordingly, with an aesthetic conception designed to bombard our senses ‘in real time’ with the impossibility of narrative closure, Jesurun effectively stages what theatre scholar Bonnie Marranca has termed “the dilemma of liveness” (2010).
By dramatizing ‘otherness’ while communicating across ‘sameness’ in the here and now, the perspective so conveyed effectively establishes the parallel notions of ‘interpration’ and ‘identity’ as products of a perennially oscillating play between attraction and alienation. In recent critical discourses this type of analogical transfer has gone by the name of convergence culture, a concept popularized by theorist Henry Jenkins with his influential book bearing the same title (2006). Stressing above all the emancipatory potential and ethical dimension of “a technological process bringing together multiple media functions,” Jenkins simultaneously also contends that “convergence leads to divergence” on behalf, precisely, of the hybridizing impulse at its root. The relevance of John Jesurun’s artistic practice for this discussion is therefore just that: by reminding us that the ‘live’ is inevitably mediated, he conveys a kind of techno-functionalism that is exuberantly lucid about its own limitations.
The discussion’s ethical dimension thereby particularly foregrounds the aforementioned constructedness of our contributions (as creators or spectators) to the aesthetic event. Because it is performed ‘live’ (despite a possible pluri-medial mediation) a theatre production as such “cannot be separated from what it does” (Bank 17), and hence procures us with an “ethical imperative” (Fenske 7) to consider not the distinctions but rather the interconnections between real and simulated, material and virtual, product and process. Effectively shifting our focus from qualitative evaluation to structure-based reasoning, the perspective so proposed focuses not on specific values per se, but rather on the relations that constitute the field under scrutiny. The theatre production’s inescapable interpellation of audience participation – cognitive or embodied – does the rest: by dramatizing meaning-in-process, its spectators are forced to address the act of signification itself, deconstruct this dialectic, and in doing so evaluate their own value judgment. To Fenske such an imperative “is not merely critical, it is ethical” (13) because it highlights the intrinsic incompatibility of ideas. Indeed, when incompatibility leads to meaningful interpretations malgré soi, it becomes the very locus of ethical engagement. The invitation for response or participation so bestowed upon the spectator ultimately generates a reciprocal tension between creator, performer, and audience opening up a dialogic space of engagement – and as such a wealth of new, but now traceable possibilities that form a more concrete basis for value judgments.
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Over de Belgische hoofdstad schreef de Anglo-Amerikaanse dichter W.H. Auden in het gedicht ‘Brussels in Winter’ dat “Its formula escapes you” (Auden 1991: 178). Grof gesteld zou men dergelijke formulering eveneens kunnen toepassen op het... more
Over de Belgische hoofdstad schreef de Anglo-Amerikaanse dichter W.H. Auden in het gedicht ‘Brussels in Winter’ dat “Its formula escapes you” (Auden 1991: 178). Grof gesteld zou men dergelijke formulering eveneens kunnen toepassen op het oeuvre van de absurdistische Amerikaanse sciencefiction auteur Thomas Pynchon (°1937) – meteen vrijwel de enige definitie waar een kritische consensus over bestaat.
In Against the Day (2006), een historiografische metafictie van Tolstoiaanse proporties doorspekt met Derrideaanse deconstructies, wordt de odyssee beschreven van een honderdtal anarchistische en contra-anarchistische figuren vanaf de wereldtentoonstelling van 1893 in Chicago tot in het spirituele ‘hart’ van Azië vlak na WOI langs achtereenvolgens de zilvermijnen van het San Juan-gebergte, de drugsvrijplaatsen van Mexico, Yale University, de variététheaters van Broadway, Londen, de haven van Agadir, de universiteit van Göttingen, Venetië, Trieste en het Baikalmeer. Gedreven door een quasi-religieus geloof in Maxwell’s tweede wet van de thermodynamica dat in elk gesloten systeem er noodgedwongen een warmteverlies optreedt, strijden Pynchons personages voor een steeds onduidelijker wordende zaak tegen een voortdurend veranderende vijand.
Het mag dan ook nauwelijks een toeval heten dat wanneer op pagina 591 – pal in het midden van het boek – voor het eerst de naam ‘Brussel’ verschijnt, dit gepaard gaat met de enige concreet pivotale gebeurtenis in een vertelling vol schijnwerkelijkheden: de aankoop van een hoogtechnologisch wapen waarmee het losse internationale collectief van “anarchistes individualistes” (Pynchon 2006: 592) vernietigingen kan veroorzaken in zowel lengte, breedte, diepte en de vierde dimensie van de tijd. Anders gesteld, een wapen waarmee de rationele, wetenschappelijk onderbouwde sociale orde voor eens en altijd kan worden verstoord, verhandeld in een stad die in deze roman zowel structureel als metaforisch dienst doet als liminaal milieu. Een soort “double refraction” (ibid. 281) waar alle verhaallijnen samenkomen en de personages passeren op hun reis ‘tegen het daglicht,’ een veralgemeende narratieve disseminatie tegemoet.
Of zo lijkt het, want het wapen dient een concreet doel net zoals deze roman een materieel einde kent. Cognitieve wetenschapper Douglas Hofstadter theoretiseerde dergelijke niet-lineaire progressie naar een afgerond geheel als een ‘strange loop’ (Hofstadter 2007: 102), Pynchon zelf houdt het bij een postmoderne variant op het detectivegenre met een “Ruckgrät von Wirklichkeit” (Pynchon 2006: 679); een fysieke realiteit die echter onvatbaar blijft in eenduidige definities – tenzij Brussel.
In Against the Day (2006), een historiografische metafictie van Tolstoiaanse proporties doorspekt met Derrideaanse deconstructies, wordt de odyssee beschreven van een honderdtal anarchistische en contra-anarchistische figuren vanaf de wereldtentoonstelling van 1893 in Chicago tot in het spirituele ‘hart’ van Azië vlak na WOI langs achtereenvolgens de zilvermijnen van het San Juan-gebergte, de drugsvrijplaatsen van Mexico, Yale University, de variététheaters van Broadway, Londen, de haven van Agadir, de universiteit van Göttingen, Venetië, Trieste en het Baikalmeer. Gedreven door een quasi-religieus geloof in Maxwell’s tweede wet van de thermodynamica dat in elk gesloten systeem er noodgedwongen een warmteverlies optreedt, strijden Pynchons personages voor een steeds onduidelijker wordende zaak tegen een voortdurend veranderende vijand.
Het mag dan ook nauwelijks een toeval heten dat wanneer op pagina 591 – pal in het midden van het boek – voor het eerst de naam ‘Brussel’ verschijnt, dit gepaard gaat met de enige concreet pivotale gebeurtenis in een vertelling vol schijnwerkelijkheden: de aankoop van een hoogtechnologisch wapen waarmee het losse internationale collectief van “anarchistes individualistes” (Pynchon 2006: 592) vernietigingen kan veroorzaken in zowel lengte, breedte, diepte en de vierde dimensie van de tijd. Anders gesteld, een wapen waarmee de rationele, wetenschappelijk onderbouwde sociale orde voor eens en altijd kan worden verstoord, verhandeld in een stad die in deze roman zowel structureel als metaforisch dienst doet als liminaal milieu. Een soort “double refraction” (ibid. 281) waar alle verhaallijnen samenkomen en de personages passeren op hun reis ‘tegen het daglicht,’ een veralgemeende narratieve disseminatie tegemoet.
Of zo lijkt het, want het wapen dient een concreet doel net zoals deze roman een materieel einde kent. Cognitieve wetenschapper Douglas Hofstadter theoretiseerde dergelijke niet-lineaire progressie naar een afgerond geheel als een ‘strange loop’ (Hofstadter 2007: 102), Pynchon zelf houdt het bij een postmoderne variant op het detectivegenre met een “Ruckgrät von Wirklichkeit” (Pynchon 2006: 679); een fysieke realiteit die echter onvatbaar blijft in eenduidige definities – tenzij Brussel.
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Wat is literatuur en wat is het niet? In deze inleidende les geeft Christophe Collard ons alle tools om de genres in de lessenreeks ‘Literaire genres’ te verkennen.
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Seneca en de troost van de Stoa Christophe Collard-Vrije Universiteit Brussel De tekst die we zonet samen hebben gelezen betreft een fragment uit de sectie 'Filosofische levenskunst' van het essay De lengte van het leven, geschreven door... more
Seneca en de troost van de Stoa Christophe Collard-Vrije Universiteit Brussel De tekst die we zonet samen hebben gelezen betreft een fragment uit de sectie 'Filosofische levenskunst' van het essay De lengte van het leven, geschreven door Lucius Annaeus SENECA (4 v. Chr.-65 n. Chr.). Deze Romeinse filosoof van de Stoïcijnse school had een wat atypisch profiel, daar hij-net als de latere keizer/filosoof Marcus Aurelius (121-180 n. Chr.)-de wijsbegeerte combineerde met wereldlijk succes en materiële rijkdom. Als senator raakte hij in deze woelige periode uit de Romeinse geschiedenis meermaals in de problemen, wat maakte dat hij in 41 n. Chr. door keizer Claudius een eerste keer in ballingschap gedwongen werd. Seneca, tevens een begenadigd bankier, verloor hiermee eensklaps geld en aanzien. Acht jaar later werd hij echter teruggeroepen naar Rome door Agrippina, de nieuwe vrouw van Claudius en moeder van de latere keizer Nero, en aangesteld als diens privéleraar. Nadat Nero in 54 op de troon kwam, deed de onervaren vorst voor quasi alle politieke beslissingen een beroep op Seneca, wat maakte dat de filosoof in die periode feitelijk de machtigste man was van Rome-en bij uitbreiding dus ook van de wereld. Met het ouder worden ontaardde Nero in de waanzinnige historische figuur die we vandaag kennen, en emancipeerde hij zich van Seneca's invloed-wiens politieke rol steeds meer uitgespeeld raakte. Uiteindelijk werd hij op hoge leeftijd, terwijl hij reeds geruime tijd genoot van het otium-de zgn. ruststand waarin Romeinen zich onttrokken van alle wereldlijke verantwoordelijkheden-beschuldigd van een complot tegen zijn vroegere pupil, en werd hij zoals Socrates gedwongen om zelfmoord te plegen. Net als bij de Griekse filosoof zijn de biografische details hier echter ondergeschikt aan de houding die beide denkers in dergelijke situatie tentoonspreidden, en die in het geval van Seneca een eerste opstap biedt tot zijn Stoïcisme. Al tijdens zijn eerste ballingschap in Corsica begon Seneca te schrijven aan zijn filosofische oeuvre, en de titels van zijn geschriften uit die tijd suggereren welk doel ze dienden: Over de voorzienigheid en Over de kalmte van de ziel zijn duidelijk praktisch georiënteerd. Het specifieke accent op
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(invited lecture)
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In recent years, Maritime English lecturers at Antwerp Maritime Academy have witnessed the enrollment of students with mild to severe stuttering problems. Whilst posing certain pedagogical challenges in the classroom, this phenomenon has... more
In recent years, Maritime English lecturers at Antwerp Maritime Academy have witnessed the enrollment of students with mild to severe stuttering problems. Whilst posing certain pedagogical challenges in the classroom, this phenomenon has especially led to an ongoing discussion about matters of certification as well as enrollment prerequisites – two aspects themselves tributary to the overarching question of future employability. Aside from posing a potential threat to our own academic credibility – especially with Antwerp-based industry partners – the issue of stuttering seafarers in the current situation creates a conundrum calling for considerable expert reflection. Stuttering, as noted, has proven problematical in terms of certain STCW-related subjects, including Maritime English and GMDSS. Antwerp Maritime Academy moreover does not organize intake exams, nor does it specifically assess the candidate’s communication skills prior to enrollment.
Stuttering in the professional literature is defined as “a fluency disorder whereby a speaker’s forward flow of speech is impeded.” For in stuttering “the speaker knows what he or she wishes to say, has the message formulated, but has difficulty getting the speech sounds out to produce the message in a fluent manner [whereby] the speech sounds are repeated, prolonged and/or blocked so that the speaker has difficulty moving forward to the next sound” (K. Scaler Scott, 2013). Needless to specify, hence, that the condition poses substantial challenges; both to the individual candidate, as to their future employer – and especially so in the shipping industry, where effective communication is key to safety and, indeed, certification.
Further problematized by the study of Anderson et al. (2003) on the self-regulatory skills of stuttering students, which demonstrated their (far) lower adaptability to change and concomitant increased likelihood of more severe stuttering in unpredictable or novel situations, the notion of adaptability arguably warrants particular methodological focus – both from the angle of learners and lecturers alike. Especially so, since the STCW Code [Section A-I/9] stipulates that seafarers should: […] “2. Demonstrate adequate hearing and speech to communicate effectively and detect any audible alarms; 3. Have no medical condition, disorder, or impairment that will prevent the effective and safe conduct of their routine and emergency routines on board during the validity period of the medical certificate.”
Under current local institutional regulations, however, said medical certificate does not cover effective oral communication, while the GMDSS certificate can apparently be obtained without time constraints being systematically applied, thus creating an entirely artificial and professionally non-representative situation. But one which, sadly, can generate frustrating situations for all concerned: the student may harbor unrealistic expectations, while the Maritime English lecturers will likely bar them from obtaining the BA in Nautical Sciences despite the student obtaining the GMDSS STCW certificate.
This paper, accordingly, proposes a conceptual introduction to the condition of stuttering, followed by a detailed assessment of our local situation at Antwerp Maritime Academy, before finally presenting to the IMEC gathering of maritime communication experts a set of discussion points centered round the notion of adaptability – and this in the ultimate hope of clarifying our academic position on the matter, streamlining the institutional and national procedures on the matter, as well as eventually formulating international industry recommendations.
Stuttering in the professional literature is defined as “a fluency disorder whereby a speaker’s forward flow of speech is impeded.” For in stuttering “the speaker knows what he or she wishes to say, has the message formulated, but has difficulty getting the speech sounds out to produce the message in a fluent manner [whereby] the speech sounds are repeated, prolonged and/or blocked so that the speaker has difficulty moving forward to the next sound” (K. Scaler Scott, 2013). Needless to specify, hence, that the condition poses substantial challenges; both to the individual candidate, as to their future employer – and especially so in the shipping industry, where effective communication is key to safety and, indeed, certification.
Further problematized by the study of Anderson et al. (2003) on the self-regulatory skills of stuttering students, which demonstrated their (far) lower adaptability to change and concomitant increased likelihood of more severe stuttering in unpredictable or novel situations, the notion of adaptability arguably warrants particular methodological focus – both from the angle of learners and lecturers alike. Especially so, since the STCW Code [Section A-I/9] stipulates that seafarers should: […] “2. Demonstrate adequate hearing and speech to communicate effectively and detect any audible alarms; 3. Have no medical condition, disorder, or impairment that will prevent the effective and safe conduct of their routine and emergency routines on board during the validity period of the medical certificate.”
Under current local institutional regulations, however, said medical certificate does not cover effective oral communication, while the GMDSS certificate can apparently be obtained without time constraints being systematically applied, thus creating an entirely artificial and professionally non-representative situation. But one which, sadly, can generate frustrating situations for all concerned: the student may harbor unrealistic expectations, while the Maritime English lecturers will likely bar them from obtaining the BA in Nautical Sciences despite the student obtaining the GMDSS STCW certificate.
This paper, accordingly, proposes a conceptual introduction to the condition of stuttering, followed by a detailed assessment of our local situation at Antwerp Maritime Academy, before finally presenting to the IMEC gathering of maritime communication experts a set of discussion points centered round the notion of adaptability – and this in the ultimate hope of clarifying our academic position on the matter, streamlining the institutional and national procedures on the matter, as well as eventually formulating international industry recommendations.
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Deze les behandelt de opkomst van de literatuur in Europa tot aan de moderniteit. Eerst wordt er ingegaan op het begrip ‘Europa,’ waarna we vetrekken vanuit de spanning tussen de Latijnse eenheidscultuur en de verschillende volksculturen... more
Deze les behandelt de opkomst van de literatuur in Europa tot aan de moderniteit. Eerst wordt er ingegaan op het begrip ‘Europa,’ waarna we vetrekken vanuit de spanning tussen de Latijnse eenheidscultuur en de verschillende volksculturen in de middeleeuwen, om vervolgens de ontwikkeling van de verschillende literaire stromingen te bespreken. De les eindigt met een beschouwing over de unieke bijdrage van de Europese letteren aan de wereldliteratuur.
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Starting from the problematic gap between the unicity of the human voice and the socio-cultural variables that are unavoidably attached to her expressions, this presentation proposes the phenomenon of ‘sound poetry’ as paradigmatic bridge... more
Starting from the problematic gap between the unicity of the human voice and the socio-cultural variables that are unavoidably attached to her expressions, this presentation proposes the phenomenon of ‘sound poetry’ as paradigmatic bridge between a biological reality and its posthuman condition. The underlying reasoning harks back to media artist and philosopher Norie Neumark’s remark that sound poetry like no other mode of artistic expression “stimulates reflection on the uncanny and complicated relation between embodiment, alterity, and signification” (2010).
Most notably the appropriation and – literal – embodiment of electronic technologies in digital sound poetry has recently yielded a new dynamic to the performativity of poetic composition. With today’s technical possibility to sample and mediate minimal acoustic nuances in the here-and-now we are allowed a glimpse into the supplement of meaning generated by the meeting between text/script and voice/sound. Such post-human amplification of an intrinsically arch-human act accordingly finds its broader relevance broadside conventional aesthetic standards.
The ‘meta-pop’ of Japanese musician/sound poet Cornelius (°1969) marks a case in point by weaving together digital samples and loopings of ‘live’ vocalisations into a musical-seeming texture from which nonetheless no melodies seem discernable – or at least no recognizable ones. The result however is not entirely estranging, and this not in the least because the artist putatively plays on a continual cognitive oscillation between the referential frames ‘music,’ ‘performance,’ ‘text,’ and ‘technology.’ Bearing in mind Neumark’s aforementioned relational model, Cornelius’s sound poetry with its idiosyncratic explorations of digital signification arguably generates a genuine soundtrack for a posthuman condition.
WORKS CITED
Cornelius. Sensuous. Warner Music Japan, 2006.
Neumark, Norie. “The Paradox of Voice.” Voice: Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media. Eds. Norie Neumark, Ross Gibson, and Theo van Leeuwen. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010. xv-xxxiii.
Most notably the appropriation and – literal – embodiment of electronic technologies in digital sound poetry has recently yielded a new dynamic to the performativity of poetic composition. With today’s technical possibility to sample and mediate minimal acoustic nuances in the here-and-now we are allowed a glimpse into the supplement of meaning generated by the meeting between text/script and voice/sound. Such post-human amplification of an intrinsically arch-human act accordingly finds its broader relevance broadside conventional aesthetic standards.
The ‘meta-pop’ of Japanese musician/sound poet Cornelius (°1969) marks a case in point by weaving together digital samples and loopings of ‘live’ vocalisations into a musical-seeming texture from which nonetheless no melodies seem discernable – or at least no recognizable ones. The result however is not entirely estranging, and this not in the least because the artist putatively plays on a continual cognitive oscillation between the referential frames ‘music,’ ‘performance,’ ‘text,’ and ‘technology.’ Bearing in mind Neumark’s aforementioned relational model, Cornelius’s sound poetry with its idiosyncratic explorations of digital signification arguably generates a genuine soundtrack for a posthuman condition.
WORKS CITED
Cornelius. Sensuous. Warner Music Japan, 2006.
Neumark, Norie. “The Paradox of Voice.” Voice: Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media. Eds. Norie Neumark, Ross Gibson, and Theo van Leeuwen. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010. xv-xxxiii.
Research Interests:
(invited lecture at Beijing Normal University)
Research Interests:
(invited lecture at Beijing Jiaotong University)
Research Interests:
(invited lecture at Beijing Normal University)
Research Interests:
En 1994 le dramaturge et metteur-en-scène expérimental John Jesurun crée une adaptation intermédiale du Philoctète de Sophocle à la demande de Ron Vawter, acteur d’avant-garde emblématique mourant du SIDA. Suivant à la fois le texte... more
En 1994 le dramaturge et metteur-en-scène expérimental John Jesurun crée une adaptation intermédiale du Philoctète de Sophocle à la demande de Ron Vawter, acteur d’avant-garde emblématique mourant du SIDA. Suivant à la fois le texte classique et les principes ‘médiaturgiques’ de sa propre pratique théâtrale, Jesurun dresse ici un tableau aliéné et stérile où la communication est profondément problématique mais également salutaire.
Le fait que le rôle-titre soit incarné par Ron Vawter généra une tension troublante entre la thématique de souffrance physique et la réalité d’un corps visiblement meurtri par la maladie; Vawter était de surcroît recouvert d'une éruption de kaposi liée à sa séropositivité. Le Philoctète de Jesurun est une auto-éloge funèbre, celle d’un guerrier narrant sa mort d’outre-tombe, ou encore un memento mori qui détourne l'interprétation de l'œuvre de son prédécesseur antique: on y présente un Philoctète liminaire, qui transgresse le seuil entre la vie et la mort en s’abandonnant à une putréfaction progressive et violente sur une île déserte. La production marque ainsi le passage entre la vie et la mort avec un Philoctète dénudé qui commente et réincarne le processus de son décès, alors que Vawter dépérit pour vrai devant les yeux du public.
Le guerrier meurtri de Jesurun nous rappelle d’une voix envoûtante que « the body knows the answer [whereas we ourselves] don’t know the question ». Il engendre de cette manière une panoplie de problèmes qui transcendent les questions purement esthétiques ou thématiques. Le cas du Philoctète incarné par Vawter en effet indique à tout le moins que mettre en évidence la médiation à la base de toute création artistique - et en particulier l’incarnation d’un personnage par un acteur en temps réel - aide à souligner de par l’affect l’artificialité et surtout la négociabilité de l’illusion – ce qui intrinsèquement invalide toute lecture réductive.
Le fait que le rôle-titre soit incarné par Ron Vawter généra une tension troublante entre la thématique de souffrance physique et la réalité d’un corps visiblement meurtri par la maladie; Vawter était de surcroît recouvert d'une éruption de kaposi liée à sa séropositivité. Le Philoctète de Jesurun est une auto-éloge funèbre, celle d’un guerrier narrant sa mort d’outre-tombe, ou encore un memento mori qui détourne l'interprétation de l'œuvre de son prédécesseur antique: on y présente un Philoctète liminaire, qui transgresse le seuil entre la vie et la mort en s’abandonnant à une putréfaction progressive et violente sur une île déserte. La production marque ainsi le passage entre la vie et la mort avec un Philoctète dénudé qui commente et réincarne le processus de son décès, alors que Vawter dépérit pour vrai devant les yeux du public.
Le guerrier meurtri de Jesurun nous rappelle d’une voix envoûtante que « the body knows the answer [whereas we ourselves] don’t know the question ». Il engendre de cette manière une panoplie de problèmes qui transcendent les questions purement esthétiques ou thématiques. Le cas du Philoctète incarné par Vawter en effet indique à tout le moins que mettre en évidence la médiation à la base de toute création artistique - et en particulier l’incarnation d’un personnage par un acteur en temps réel - aide à souligner de par l’affect l’artificialité et surtout la négociabilité de l’illusion – ce qui intrinsèquement invalide toute lecture réductive.
Research Interests:
If we accept that the technological interface can be held responsible for an ever-increasing blurring of boundaries, we can but simultaneously accept that few contemporary discourses on technological innovation avoid the pitfalls of an... more
If we accept that the technological interface can be held responsible for an ever-increasing blurring of boundaries, we can but simultaneously accept that few contemporary discourses on technological innovation avoid the pitfalls of an ecstatic techno-euphoria. The latter becomes particularly problematic when considering the conspicuous ‘hypermediacy’ of today’s novel communication devices – especially so since the coming of digital coding virtually imploded the material basis of cultural conventions.
Allegedly the meta- of all hypermedia, digital technologies have nowadays exponentially increased the potential for an axiomatic interaction with the notion of ‘text’ in its various possible guises. As ‘reader’ and ‘writer’ so effectively become intertwined, the user of the digital content may very well become aware of its decenteredness, yet not necessarily of its mediation. Accordingly, the digital interface thus implies a deceptive mechanism of sorts. For, even if a digital ‘text’ itself at heart functions in a rhizomatic – i.e. decentered – fashion, its algorithm remains bound to a rigidly circumscribed type of in- and output. This paper therefore specifically proposes to mine digital hypermedia for their heuristic potential with another eye on complementing the extant discourses on the matter, and so sidestep vacuous celebrations of an unspecified potential in favor of the technology’s concrete contributions to an ever-more interconnected cultural context.
Indeed new media objects are composed of digital code and thus are constituted by numerical representations and reproductions. This basic premise holds two major consequences: a) the new media object can be described mathematically; b) the new media object is subject to algorithmic manipulation (i.e. becomes programmable). Theorist Lev Manovich additionally denotes a third, equally fundamental function: digital code is discrete, intrinsically just like any other non-selfreferential medium (Manovich 2001). Yet discretion here no longer serves a solely functional purpose, but also an ideological one on behalf, precisely, of its hypermedial capacity. Professing to be capable of integrating virtually every other ‘old medium,’ new media hence are writing cheques their essentially ‘old media’ sensory outputs cannot cash. After all, as Marie-Laure Ryan has argued, the execution of the digital code is “the great unleveller [that] restores the difference between media [by] output[ing] a sensory manifestation of the data” (Ryan 2006 - emphasis added) via the reproduction of ‘old media’ semiotic codes.
Consequently, by means of selected case examples of digital technology in artistic applications – David Mamet’s hypertext satire Wilson (2000), Robert Lepage’s adaptation-in-progress La Damnation de Faust (1999-2008), and John Jesurun’s meta-telematic Firefall (phase I, 2006; phase II 2010) – this presentation will investigate how said deceptive discretion can, in turn, be reproduced as hypermedial heuristic stimulating the technology’s users to engage with the digital in a more reflexive fashion. As an intrinsically self-reflexive environment in its own right, any new media application has the capacity to reflect how the computerization of culture negotiates the tension between ‘traditional’ semiotic expectations and whole new – digitally induced – ontologies, epistemologies, and pragmatics. Seen from this angle, new media actually act as forerunners of a more general process of wholesale cultural reconceptualization functioning, in essence, as a network. To communications theorist Manual Castells, every network is reducible to a basic communicative system that “has no center, just nodes” (Castells 2004). By analogy, the digitally-induced programmability of new media is therefore only attainable when we allow ourselves to follow first someone else’s thought structure via our interaction with a human-designed and human-targeted interface, after which we should be sufficiently empowered to shift the discourse into whatever direction we see fit. Enter the arts.
The adoption of digital technology in the arts arguably offers a pertinent philosophical platform to reassess how the new media object never constitutes an endpoint in itself, but rather constitutes a ‘node’ in a network extending along potentially infinite variations and evolutions. Of course the insights gained from the examples so proposed are predictable to a significant degree – not in the least on behalf of the tension between ‘old media’ semiotics and ‘new media’ modularity along which they operate. Indeed the process of signification these examples typically will all foreground confidently points our perception in the direction of infinite variability – precisely the one certainty one can posit in relation to self-reflexive art. Ergo the aforementioned ‘techno-euphoria,’ yet remains then the question whether want, or need, such boundless freedom? As the pioneer of interactive filmmaking Grahame Weinbren argues in relation to interactive media, making a choice involves a moral responsibility. For, by passing on the possibility of choice to a ‘user,’ the so-called ‘author’ of a digital ‘text’ also passes on the responsibility to reproduce the world and so represent the human condition (Weinbren 1995).
Works Cited:
Castells, M. (2004) ‘Informationalism, Networks, and the Network Society: A Theoretical Blueprint’, In: M. Castells, ed., The Network Society: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 3-45.
Manovich, L. (2001) The Language of New Media, Cambridge: MIT Press.
Ryan, M. (2006) Avatars of Story, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.
Weinbren, G. (1995) ‘In the Ocean of Streams of Story’, Millennium Film Journal, vol. 28, Spring, online.
Allegedly the meta- of all hypermedia, digital technologies have nowadays exponentially increased the potential for an axiomatic interaction with the notion of ‘text’ in its various possible guises. As ‘reader’ and ‘writer’ so effectively become intertwined, the user of the digital content may very well become aware of its decenteredness, yet not necessarily of its mediation. Accordingly, the digital interface thus implies a deceptive mechanism of sorts. For, even if a digital ‘text’ itself at heart functions in a rhizomatic – i.e. decentered – fashion, its algorithm remains bound to a rigidly circumscribed type of in- and output. This paper therefore specifically proposes to mine digital hypermedia for their heuristic potential with another eye on complementing the extant discourses on the matter, and so sidestep vacuous celebrations of an unspecified potential in favor of the technology’s concrete contributions to an ever-more interconnected cultural context.
Indeed new media objects are composed of digital code and thus are constituted by numerical representations and reproductions. This basic premise holds two major consequences: a) the new media object can be described mathematically; b) the new media object is subject to algorithmic manipulation (i.e. becomes programmable). Theorist Lev Manovich additionally denotes a third, equally fundamental function: digital code is discrete, intrinsically just like any other non-selfreferential medium (Manovich 2001). Yet discretion here no longer serves a solely functional purpose, but also an ideological one on behalf, precisely, of its hypermedial capacity. Professing to be capable of integrating virtually every other ‘old medium,’ new media hence are writing cheques their essentially ‘old media’ sensory outputs cannot cash. After all, as Marie-Laure Ryan has argued, the execution of the digital code is “the great unleveller [that] restores the difference between media [by] output[ing] a sensory manifestation of the data” (Ryan 2006 - emphasis added) via the reproduction of ‘old media’ semiotic codes.
Consequently, by means of selected case examples of digital technology in artistic applications – David Mamet’s hypertext satire Wilson (2000), Robert Lepage’s adaptation-in-progress La Damnation de Faust (1999-2008), and John Jesurun’s meta-telematic Firefall (phase I, 2006; phase II 2010) – this presentation will investigate how said deceptive discretion can, in turn, be reproduced as hypermedial heuristic stimulating the technology’s users to engage with the digital in a more reflexive fashion. As an intrinsically self-reflexive environment in its own right, any new media application has the capacity to reflect how the computerization of culture negotiates the tension between ‘traditional’ semiotic expectations and whole new – digitally induced – ontologies, epistemologies, and pragmatics. Seen from this angle, new media actually act as forerunners of a more general process of wholesale cultural reconceptualization functioning, in essence, as a network. To communications theorist Manual Castells, every network is reducible to a basic communicative system that “has no center, just nodes” (Castells 2004). By analogy, the digitally-induced programmability of new media is therefore only attainable when we allow ourselves to follow first someone else’s thought structure via our interaction with a human-designed and human-targeted interface, after which we should be sufficiently empowered to shift the discourse into whatever direction we see fit. Enter the arts.
The adoption of digital technology in the arts arguably offers a pertinent philosophical platform to reassess how the new media object never constitutes an endpoint in itself, but rather constitutes a ‘node’ in a network extending along potentially infinite variations and evolutions. Of course the insights gained from the examples so proposed are predictable to a significant degree – not in the least on behalf of the tension between ‘old media’ semiotics and ‘new media’ modularity along which they operate. Indeed the process of signification these examples typically will all foreground confidently points our perception in the direction of infinite variability – precisely the one certainty one can posit in relation to self-reflexive art. Ergo the aforementioned ‘techno-euphoria,’ yet remains then the question whether want, or need, such boundless freedom? As the pioneer of interactive filmmaking Grahame Weinbren argues in relation to interactive media, making a choice involves a moral responsibility. For, by passing on the possibility of choice to a ‘user,’ the so-called ‘author’ of a digital ‘text’ also passes on the responsibility to reproduce the world and so represent the human condition (Weinbren 1995).
Works Cited:
Castells, M. (2004) ‘Informationalism, Networks, and the Network Society: A Theoretical Blueprint’, In: M. Castells, ed., The Network Society: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 3-45.
Manovich, L. (2001) The Language of New Media, Cambridge: MIT Press.
Ryan, M. (2006) Avatars of Story, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.
Weinbren, G. (1995) ‘In the Ocean of Streams of Story’, Millennium Film Journal, vol. 28, Spring, online.
Research Interests:
When multi-media dramaturge-director Robert Lepage staged his La Damnation de Faust at the New York Metropolitan in 2008, it effectively concerned a production that was both old and new at the same time. After all, this adaptation of... more
When multi-media dramaturge-director Robert Lepage staged his La Damnation de Faust at the New York Metropolitan in 2008, it effectively concerned a production that was both old and new at the same time. After all, this adaptation of Berlioz’ 1846-opera had been updated continuously ever since its premiere in 1999 to accommodate ever more sophisticated digital technologies and keep creating “new environments to tell the same story” (Lepage qtd. in Lampert-Gréaux, 2009). Interestingly, though, the more sophisticated the scenographies became, the more Lepage’s audiences seemed to widen (Ventura, 2008). Almost as if he had made a devilish pact with technology to mesmerize a public which, if anything, increasingly seemed to accommodate the paradigm shift from representation as interpretation of a presumed ‘original,’ to mimesis as a mere design principle.
Then again, the Faust-myth indeed inscribes itself in an intermedial trend that has sacrificed traditional adaptation studies’ so-called source-text ‘fidelity’ on the altar of incommensurability. Thus the kind of cognitive flexibility it commands closely resembles the role of the stage dramaturge in its reliance on constitutive processes of signification (see Radosavljevic, 2013). After all, coordinating the conceptual coherence of a theatre production in practice comes down to transposing a certain meaningful ‘content’ across the various signifying systems that constitute it. Lepage, though, amped up the analogy by transcoding both narrative and processual variations on the incommensurability-theme into a heavily digitized scenography perennially in progress.
This paper accordingly ambitions to mine the digital dramaturgy of La Damnation de Faust for the battle of perception it generates via its fiendish fusion of art and technology. Such intermedial constellation arguably stimulates a reconsideration of spectatorial strategies, the constitutive role of design in aesthetic signification, and the heuristic range of the artifice alike.
WORKS CITED:
Lampert-Gréaux, Ellen. “Sympathy for the Devil.” Live Design 43.7 (2009): 64.
Radosavljevic, Duska. Theatre Making: Interplay Between Text and Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Ventura, August. “Dreamcatcher.” Opera News 73.4 (2008): 20-23.
Then again, the Faust-myth indeed inscribes itself in an intermedial trend that has sacrificed traditional adaptation studies’ so-called source-text ‘fidelity’ on the altar of incommensurability. Thus the kind of cognitive flexibility it commands closely resembles the role of the stage dramaturge in its reliance on constitutive processes of signification (see Radosavljevic, 2013). After all, coordinating the conceptual coherence of a theatre production in practice comes down to transposing a certain meaningful ‘content’ across the various signifying systems that constitute it. Lepage, though, amped up the analogy by transcoding both narrative and processual variations on the incommensurability-theme into a heavily digitized scenography perennially in progress.
This paper accordingly ambitions to mine the digital dramaturgy of La Damnation de Faust for the battle of perception it generates via its fiendish fusion of art and technology. Such intermedial constellation arguably stimulates a reconsideration of spectatorial strategies, the constitutive role of design in aesthetic signification, and the heuristic range of the artifice alike.
WORKS CITED:
Lampert-Gréaux, Ellen. “Sympathy for the Devil.” Live Design 43.7 (2009): 64.
Radosavljevic, Duska. Theatre Making: Interplay Between Text and Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Ventura, August. “Dreamcatcher.” Opera News 73.4 (2008): 20-23.
Research Interests:
As preliminary to a new research project in development I propose to explore contemporary theatre innovations via the aegis of ecology – i.e. an evolving environment interacting with other environments, technologies, and contexts. To this... more
As preliminary to a new research project in development I propose to explore contemporary theatre innovations via the aegis of ecology – i.e. an evolving environment interacting with other environments, technologies, and contexts. To this end, it is believed the angle of scenography represents a heuristic stepping-stone towards matters of spatiality, transversality, and literacy in our so-called ‘age of new media.’ Signifying the sum-total of a production’s technical components, scenography implies the coordinated entanglement of everything not directly related to the physical performance. As such, it thrives on a mediatised mixture of imagination and know-how while evoking a certain conceptual pattern informing each of its components.
With today’s tendency towards stimulating “process consciousness” (Trenscséyi & Cochrane, 2014), theatre making has gradually expanded from the traditional hermeneutics of understanding, interpreting, and negotiating between different cultural and signifying systems. Re-routing connotations from a text-based linear progression of sorts to a pluri-medial sense of simultaneity as organising principle, the study of said ‘ecological scenographies’ should allow to study the epistemologically troubling tensions between received conceptions of ‘meaning’ and an increasing awareness of the processes that bring them about.
Chris Salter’s 2010 Entangled, a landmark study about the interplay of signifying systems, argues that human and technical beings and processes are so intimately bound up in a conglomeration of relations that it becomes impossible to tease out essences for each. Through the aegis of mediatised homologies between technology, stage, and space, ‘ecological scenographies’ effectively embody what Giannachi and Kaye called an “ecology of relationships” (2010).
WORKS CITED:
Giannachi, Gabriella with Nick Kaye. Performing Presence: Between the Live and the Simulated. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010.
Salter, Chris. Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010.
Trencsnényi, Katalin with Bernadette Cochrane. “New Dramaturgy: A Post-Mimetic, Intercultural, Process-Conscious Paradigm.” New Dramaturgy: International Perspectives on Theory and Practice. Eds. Katalin Trencsnényi and Bernadette Cochrane. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. xi-xx.
With today’s tendency towards stimulating “process consciousness” (Trenscséyi & Cochrane, 2014), theatre making has gradually expanded from the traditional hermeneutics of understanding, interpreting, and negotiating between different cultural and signifying systems. Re-routing connotations from a text-based linear progression of sorts to a pluri-medial sense of simultaneity as organising principle, the study of said ‘ecological scenographies’ should allow to study the epistemologically troubling tensions between received conceptions of ‘meaning’ and an increasing awareness of the processes that bring them about.
Chris Salter’s 2010 Entangled, a landmark study about the interplay of signifying systems, argues that human and technical beings and processes are so intimately bound up in a conglomeration of relations that it becomes impossible to tease out essences for each. Through the aegis of mediatised homologies between technology, stage, and space, ‘ecological scenographies’ effectively embody what Giannachi and Kaye called an “ecology of relationships” (2010).
WORKS CITED:
Giannachi, Gabriella with Nick Kaye. Performing Presence: Between the Live and the Simulated. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010.
Salter, Chris. Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010.
Trencsnényi, Katalin with Bernadette Cochrane. “New Dramaturgy: A Post-Mimetic, Intercultural, Process-Conscious Paradigm.” New Dramaturgy: International Perspectives on Theory and Practice. Eds. Katalin Trencsnényi and Bernadette Cochrane. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. xi-xx.
Research Interests:
This paper proposes to address contemporary media innovations as a performative phenomenon functioning like an ecology – i.e. an evolving environment in constant interaction with other environments, technologies, and cultural contexts. To... more
This paper proposes to address contemporary media innovations as a performative phenomenon functioning like an ecology – i.e. an evolving environment in constant interaction with other environments, technologies, and cultural contexts. To this end, the angle of scenography will be adopted as heuristic stepping-stone towards broader reflection on matters of spatiality and literacy in our so-called ‘age of new media.’
Signifying the sum-total of a theatrical production’s technical components (including the architecture of the building in which it is staged), scenography intrinsically implies the aesthetic coordination of everything NOT directly related to the physical performance (e.g. lighting, scenery, cosutumes, music, …). As such, it thrives on a concretized mixture of imagination and know-how.
Methodologically, in order to carry a broader relevance said mixture is best addressed from the angle of entanglement, rather than aiming at exhaustive enumerations of the various components at play. Chris Salter’s 2010 Entangled, a landmark study about the interplay of signifying systems, starts from a premise rooted in anthropology by arguing that human and technical beings and processes are so intimately bound up in a conglomeration of relations making it well-nigh impossible to tease out separate essences for each. If one of the hallmarks of performance is its material embodiment in the world, whether that body is defined by human form, a sound that rattles the chest, or a machine trying to decode the nuance of a choreographed gesture, then why should we, humans, make a cut between ourselves and technologies we design to create sheer artifice and, at the same time, a world that is not represented but lived? Put differently, what would it mean to examine a history of artistic performance practices using technologies as machinic performances in the spirit that Félix Guattari used the term: as an immanent, collective entanglement of material enunciations that operate on, shape, and transform the world in real time?
After all, our thinking, our philosophies, and modes of understanding have been frequently governed by current technology and the capabilities of machinery. Think of the Renaissance understanding of the heart as a pumping device, which coincided with the mechanical development of water-pumping machines. The work of scenographers, theatre artists who rely primarily on this essentially ecological entanglement of ideas and concepts, signifiers and signifying systems, constitutes in essence a celebration of the ‘quiddity’ of theatrical performance, the phenomenological actuality of the smells, colours, textures, sounds, and movement of performance; in short a lived experience of being in the presence of performance. And precisely because said celebration involves a kind of thinking that is reciprocal and process-based, personal reflection takes centre stage. Studying scenographical narrativity from an ecological angle, accordingly, allows us to emancipate ourselves from authoritative models by insisting on the necessity but also on the possibility to create coherence out of chaos.
This research angle, developed from previous work on the theatrical innovations of dramaturge-directors-cum-experimental-scenographers John Jesurun and Robert Lepage, whose work increasingly relies on ‘new media’ technologies, finds further cross-disciplinary credibility via the creative practice of superstar architects Diller+Scofidio (Later: Diller Scofidio + Renfro). While claiming that that “architecture is an event that can be choreographed” (qtd. in Weinstein, 2008) and thus narrativized, they thus inscribe themselves in a contemporary artistic trend no longer thriving on clear distinctions but emphasizing the emancipatory potential born from tensions, ambiguities, or associations. Or, in the words of performance theorists Gabriella Giannachi and Nick Kaye, an “ecology of relationships” (2010).
Signifying the sum-total of a theatrical production’s technical components (including the architecture of the building in which it is staged), scenography intrinsically implies the aesthetic coordination of everything NOT directly related to the physical performance (e.g. lighting, scenery, cosutumes, music, …). As such, it thrives on a concretized mixture of imagination and know-how.
Methodologically, in order to carry a broader relevance said mixture is best addressed from the angle of entanglement, rather than aiming at exhaustive enumerations of the various components at play. Chris Salter’s 2010 Entangled, a landmark study about the interplay of signifying systems, starts from a premise rooted in anthropology by arguing that human and technical beings and processes are so intimately bound up in a conglomeration of relations making it well-nigh impossible to tease out separate essences for each. If one of the hallmarks of performance is its material embodiment in the world, whether that body is defined by human form, a sound that rattles the chest, or a machine trying to decode the nuance of a choreographed gesture, then why should we, humans, make a cut between ourselves and technologies we design to create sheer artifice and, at the same time, a world that is not represented but lived? Put differently, what would it mean to examine a history of artistic performance practices using technologies as machinic performances in the spirit that Félix Guattari used the term: as an immanent, collective entanglement of material enunciations that operate on, shape, and transform the world in real time?
After all, our thinking, our philosophies, and modes of understanding have been frequently governed by current technology and the capabilities of machinery. Think of the Renaissance understanding of the heart as a pumping device, which coincided with the mechanical development of water-pumping machines. The work of scenographers, theatre artists who rely primarily on this essentially ecological entanglement of ideas and concepts, signifiers and signifying systems, constitutes in essence a celebration of the ‘quiddity’ of theatrical performance, the phenomenological actuality of the smells, colours, textures, sounds, and movement of performance; in short a lived experience of being in the presence of performance. And precisely because said celebration involves a kind of thinking that is reciprocal and process-based, personal reflection takes centre stage. Studying scenographical narrativity from an ecological angle, accordingly, allows us to emancipate ourselves from authoritative models by insisting on the necessity but also on the possibility to create coherence out of chaos.
This research angle, developed from previous work on the theatrical innovations of dramaturge-directors-cum-experimental-scenographers John Jesurun and Robert Lepage, whose work increasingly relies on ‘new media’ technologies, finds further cross-disciplinary credibility via the creative practice of superstar architects Diller+Scofidio (Later: Diller Scofidio + Renfro). While claiming that that “architecture is an event that can be choreographed” (qtd. in Weinstein, 2008) and thus narrativized, they thus inscribe themselves in a contemporary artistic trend no longer thriving on clear distinctions but emphasizing the emancipatory potential born from tensions, ambiguities, or associations. Or, in the words of performance theorists Gabriella Giannachi and Nick Kaye, an “ecology of relationships” (2010).
Research Interests:
The coming of digital coding virtually imploded the material basis of cultural conventions as numerical technologies today have exponentially increased the potential for an axiomatic interaction with the notion of ‘text’ in its various... more
The coming of digital coding virtually imploded the material basis of cultural conventions as numerical technologies today have exponentially increased the potential for an axiomatic interaction with the notion of ‘text’ in its various possible guises. Accordingly, the digital interface came to imply a deceptive mechanism of sorts, given that its algorithm remains bound to a rigidly circumscribed type of in- and output. This paper therefore specifically proposes to mine digital artworks for their heuristic potential while arguing that new media objects are composed of digital code and thus are constituted by numerical representations and reproductions. This basic premise after all holds two major consequences: a) the new media object can be described mathematically; b) the new media object is subject to algorithmic manipulation (i.e. becomes programmable). Consequently, by means of selected case examples of digital technology in artistic applications – David Mamet’s hypertext satire Wilson (2000), Robert Lepage’s adaptation-in-progress La Damnation de Faust (1999-2008), and John Jesurun’s meta-telematic Firefall (phase I, 2006; phase II 2010) – this presentation will investigate how said deceptive discretion can, in turn, be reproduced as hypermedial heuristic stimulating the technology’s users to engage with the digital in a more reflexive fashion. As an intrinsically self-reflexive environment in its own right, any new media application has the capacity to reflect how the computerization of culture negotiates the tension between the reproduction of ‘traditional’ semiotic expectations and whole new – digitally induced – ontologies, epistemologies, and pragmatics. Seen from this angle, new media actually act as forerunners of a more general process of wholesale cultural reconceptualization functioning, in essence, as a network.
WORKS CITED:
Castells, M. (2004) ‘Informationalism, Networks, and the Network Society: A Theoretical Blueprint’, In: M. Castells, ed., The Network Society: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 3-45.
Manovich, L. (2001) The Language of New Media, Cambridge: MIT Press.
Ryan, M. (2006) Avatars of Story, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.
WORKS CITED:
Castells, M. (2004) ‘Informationalism, Networks, and the Network Society: A Theoretical Blueprint’, In: M. Castells, ed., The Network Society: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 3-45.
Manovich, L. (2001) The Language of New Media, Cambridge: MIT Press.
Ryan, M. (2006) Avatars of Story, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.
Research Interests:
If we accept that the theatrical performance constitutes a dynamic equilibrium between the conventions of the directorial script, the context of the performative space, and the inventions inherent to personal interpretation, one could... more
If we accept that the theatrical performance constitutes a dynamic equilibrium between the conventions of the directorial script, the context of the performative space, and the inventions inherent to personal interpretation, one could posit that live performance on stage embodies a scripted ‘text,’ but also the incapacity of reproducing it faithfully. In this sense, it arguably constitutes a cousin concept of adaptation on behalf of the latter dramatizing its own ‘slippage’ between convention and invention. In Ivo van Hove’s six hour-long 2007 production Roman Tragedies spectators were moreover actively made to embody the ‘dynamic equilibrium’ inherent to theatrical performance and adaptational practice alike as they were invited to partake in this conflation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (1607), Julius Caesar (1599), and Antony and Cleopatra (1607) on an ‘intermedial’ stage/set together with the actors and technicians that allowed the public to sit down at random, watch the action ‘live’ or on television screens, order drinks at the bar or food at one of the many food outlets.
Research Interests:
When multi-media dramaturge-director Robert Lepage staged his La Damnation de Faust at the New York Metropolitan in 2008, it effectively concerned a production that was both old and new at the same time. After all, this adaptation of... more
When multi-media dramaturge-director Robert Lepage staged his La Damnation de Faust at the New York Metropolitan in 2008, it effectively concerned a production that was both old and new at the same time. After all, this adaptation of Berlioz’ 1846-opera had been updated continuously ever since its premiere in 1999 to accommodate ever more sophisticated digital technologies and keep creating “new environments to tell the same story” (Lepage qtd. in Lampert-Gréaux, 2009). Interestingly, though, the more sophisticated the scenographies became, the more Lepage’s audiences seemed to widen (Ventura, 2008). Almost as if he had made a devilish pact with technology to mesmerize a public which, if anything, increasingly seemed to accommodate the paradigm shift from representation as interpretation of a presumed ‘original’ to mimesis as a mere design principle.
Then again, the Faust-myth indeed inscribes itself in a transmedial trend that has sacrificed traditional adaptation studies’ so-called source-text ‘fidelity’ on the altar of incommensurability. Thus the kind of cognitive flexibility it commands closely resembles the role of the stage dramaturge in its reliance on constitutive processes of signification (see Radosavljevic, 2013). After all, coordinating the conceptual coherence of a theatre production in practice comes down to transposing a certain meaningful ‘content’ across the various signifying systems that constitute it. Lepage, though, amped up the analogy by transcoding both narrative and processual variations on the incommensurability-theme into a heavily digitized scenography perennially in progress.
This paper accordingly ambitions to mine the digital dramaturgy of La Damnation de Faust for the battle of perception it generates via its fiendish fusion of art and technology. Such immersive constellation arguably stimulates a reconsideration of spectatorial identity, the constitutive role of design in aesthetic signification, and the heuristic range of transmedial phenomena alike.
WORKS CITED:
Lampert-Gréaux, Ellen. “Sympathy for the Devil.” Live Design 43.7 (2009): 64.
Radosavljevic, Duska. Theatre Making: Interplay Between Text and Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Ventura, August. “Dreamcatcher.” Opera News 73.4 (2008): 20-23.
Then again, the Faust-myth indeed inscribes itself in a transmedial trend that has sacrificed traditional adaptation studies’ so-called source-text ‘fidelity’ on the altar of incommensurability. Thus the kind of cognitive flexibility it commands closely resembles the role of the stage dramaturge in its reliance on constitutive processes of signification (see Radosavljevic, 2013). After all, coordinating the conceptual coherence of a theatre production in practice comes down to transposing a certain meaningful ‘content’ across the various signifying systems that constitute it. Lepage, though, amped up the analogy by transcoding both narrative and processual variations on the incommensurability-theme into a heavily digitized scenography perennially in progress.
This paper accordingly ambitions to mine the digital dramaturgy of La Damnation de Faust for the battle of perception it generates via its fiendish fusion of art and technology. Such immersive constellation arguably stimulates a reconsideration of spectatorial identity, the constitutive role of design in aesthetic signification, and the heuristic range of transmedial phenomena alike.
WORKS CITED:
Lampert-Gréaux, Ellen. “Sympathy for the Devil.” Live Design 43.7 (2009): 64.
Radosavljevic, Duska. Theatre Making: Interplay Between Text and Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Ventura, August. “Dreamcatcher.” Opera News 73.4 (2008): 20-23.
Research Interests:
If we accept that the technological interface can be held responsible for an ever-increasing blurring of boundaries, we can but simultaneously accept that few contemporary discourses on technological innovation avoid the pitfalls of an... more
If we accept that the technological interface can be held responsible for an ever-increasing blurring of boundaries, we can but simultaneously accept that few contemporary discourses on technological innovation avoid the pitfalls of an ecstatic techno-euphoria. The latter becomes particularly problematic when considering the conspicuous ‘hypermediacy’ of today’s novel communication devices – especially so since the coming of digital coding virtually imploded the material basis of cultural conventions.
Allegedly the meta- of all hypermedia, digital technologies have nowadays exponentially increased the potential for an axiomatic interaction with the notion of ‘text’ in its various possible guises. As ‘reader’ and ‘writer’ so effectively become intertwined, the user of the digital content may very well become aware of its decenteredness, yet not necessarily of its mediation. Accordingly, the digital interface thus implies a deceptive mechanism of sorts. For, even if a digital ‘text’ itself at heart functions in a rhizomatic – i.e. decentered – fashion, its algorithm remains bound to a rigidly circumscribed type of in- and output. This paper therefore proposes to mine digital hypermedia for their heuristic potential, and so sidestep vacuous celebrations of an unspecified potential in favor of the technology’s concrete contributions to an ever-more interconnected cultural context.
Indeed new media objects are composed of digital code and thus are constituted by numerical representations. This basic premise holds two major consequences: a) the new media object can be described mathematically; b) the new media object is subject to algorithmic manipulation (i.e. becomes programmable). Theorist Lev Manovich additionally denotes a third, equally fundamental function: digital code is discrete, intrinsically just like any other non-selfreferential medium (Manovich, 2001). Yet discretion here no longer serves a solely functional purpose, but also an ideological one on behalf, precisely, of its hypermedial capacity. Professing to be capable of integrating virtually every other ‘old medium,’ new media hence are writing cheques their essentially ‘old media’ sensory outputs cannot cash. After all, as Marie-Laure Ryan has argued, the execution of the digital code is “the great unleveller [that] restores the difference between media [by] output[ing] a sensory manifestation of the data” (Ryan, 2006 - emphasis added).
Consequently, by means of selected case examples of digital technology in artistic applications, this presentation will investigate how said deceptive discretion can be repurposed as hypermedial heuristic stimulating the technology’s users to engage with the digital in a more reflexive fashion. As an intrinsically self-reflexive environment in its own right, any new media application has the capacity to reflect how the computerization of culture negotiates the tension between ‘traditional’ semiotic expectations and whole new – digitally induced – ontologies, epistemologies, and pragmatics. Seen from this angle, new media actually act as forerunners of a more general process of wholesale cultural reconceptualization functioning, in essence, as a network. To communications theorist Manual Castells, every network is reducible to a basic communicative system that “has no center, just nodes” (Castells, 2004). By analogy, the digitally-induced programmability of new media is therefore only attainable when we allow ourselves to follow first someone else’s thought structure via our interaction with a human-designed and human-targeted interface, after which we should be sufficiently empowered to shift the discourse into whatever direction we see fit. Enter the arts.
The adoption of digital technology in the arts arguably offers a pertinent philosophical platform to reassess how the new media object never constitutes an endpoint in itself, but rather constitutes a ‘node’ in a network extending along potentially infinite variations and evolutions. Of course the insights gained from the examples so proposed are predictable to a significant degree – not in the least on behalf of the tension between ‘old media’ semiotics and ‘new media’ modularity along which they operate. Indeed the process of signification these examples typically will all foreground confidently points our perception in the direction of infinite variability – precisely the one certainty one can posit in relation to self-reflexive art. Ergo the aforementioned ‘techno-euphoria,’ yet remains then the question whether want, or need, such boundless freedom? As the pioneer of interactive filmmaking Grahame Weinbren argues in relation to interactive media, making a choice involves a moral responsibility. For, by passing on the possibility of choice to a ‘user,’ the so-called ‘author’ of a digital ‘text’ also passes on the responsibility to represent the world and the human condition (Weinbren, 1995).
WORKS CITED:
Castells, Manuel. “Informationalism, Networks, and the Network Society: A Theoretical Blueprint.” The Network Society: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Ed. Manuel Castells. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2004. 3-45. Print.
Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001. Print.
Ryan, Marie-Laure. Avatars of Story. Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 2006. Print.
Weinbren, Grahame. “In the Ocean of Streams of Story.” _Millennium Film Journal 28 (Spring 1995). Online.
Allegedly the meta- of all hypermedia, digital technologies have nowadays exponentially increased the potential for an axiomatic interaction with the notion of ‘text’ in its various possible guises. As ‘reader’ and ‘writer’ so effectively become intertwined, the user of the digital content may very well become aware of its decenteredness, yet not necessarily of its mediation. Accordingly, the digital interface thus implies a deceptive mechanism of sorts. For, even if a digital ‘text’ itself at heart functions in a rhizomatic – i.e. decentered – fashion, its algorithm remains bound to a rigidly circumscribed type of in- and output. This paper therefore proposes to mine digital hypermedia for their heuristic potential, and so sidestep vacuous celebrations of an unspecified potential in favor of the technology’s concrete contributions to an ever-more interconnected cultural context.
Indeed new media objects are composed of digital code and thus are constituted by numerical representations. This basic premise holds two major consequences: a) the new media object can be described mathematically; b) the new media object is subject to algorithmic manipulation (i.e. becomes programmable). Theorist Lev Manovich additionally denotes a third, equally fundamental function: digital code is discrete, intrinsically just like any other non-selfreferential medium (Manovich, 2001). Yet discretion here no longer serves a solely functional purpose, but also an ideological one on behalf, precisely, of its hypermedial capacity. Professing to be capable of integrating virtually every other ‘old medium,’ new media hence are writing cheques their essentially ‘old media’ sensory outputs cannot cash. After all, as Marie-Laure Ryan has argued, the execution of the digital code is “the great unleveller [that] restores the difference between media [by] output[ing] a sensory manifestation of the data” (Ryan, 2006 - emphasis added).
Consequently, by means of selected case examples of digital technology in artistic applications, this presentation will investigate how said deceptive discretion can be repurposed as hypermedial heuristic stimulating the technology’s users to engage with the digital in a more reflexive fashion. As an intrinsically self-reflexive environment in its own right, any new media application has the capacity to reflect how the computerization of culture negotiates the tension between ‘traditional’ semiotic expectations and whole new – digitally induced – ontologies, epistemologies, and pragmatics. Seen from this angle, new media actually act as forerunners of a more general process of wholesale cultural reconceptualization functioning, in essence, as a network. To communications theorist Manual Castells, every network is reducible to a basic communicative system that “has no center, just nodes” (Castells, 2004). By analogy, the digitally-induced programmability of new media is therefore only attainable when we allow ourselves to follow first someone else’s thought structure via our interaction with a human-designed and human-targeted interface, after which we should be sufficiently empowered to shift the discourse into whatever direction we see fit. Enter the arts.
The adoption of digital technology in the arts arguably offers a pertinent philosophical platform to reassess how the new media object never constitutes an endpoint in itself, but rather constitutes a ‘node’ in a network extending along potentially infinite variations and evolutions. Of course the insights gained from the examples so proposed are predictable to a significant degree – not in the least on behalf of the tension between ‘old media’ semiotics and ‘new media’ modularity along which they operate. Indeed the process of signification these examples typically will all foreground confidently points our perception in the direction of infinite variability – precisely the one certainty one can posit in relation to self-reflexive art. Ergo the aforementioned ‘techno-euphoria,’ yet remains then the question whether want, or need, such boundless freedom? As the pioneer of interactive filmmaking Grahame Weinbren argues in relation to interactive media, making a choice involves a moral responsibility. For, by passing on the possibility of choice to a ‘user,’ the so-called ‘author’ of a digital ‘text’ also passes on the responsibility to represent the world and the human condition (Weinbren, 1995).
WORKS CITED:
Castells, Manuel. “Informationalism, Networks, and the Network Society: A Theoretical Blueprint.” The Network Society: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Ed. Manuel Castells. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2004. 3-45. Print.
Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001. Print.
Ryan, Marie-Laure. Avatars of Story. Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 2006. Print.
Weinbren, Grahame. “In the Ocean of Streams of Story.” _Millennium Film Journal 28 (Spring 1995). Online.
Research Interests:
Introducing my adoption of the 'strange loop' concept via the reasoning that led to it.
Research Interests:
Despite being often heavily indebted to electronic mediation, the dramatic situation depicted in contemporary so-called ‘mediaturgical’ theatre productions is still, to a certain degree at the very least, performed ‘live’ on stage. If we... more
Despite being often heavily indebted to electronic mediation, the dramatic situation depicted in contemporary so-called ‘mediaturgical’ theatre productions is still, to a certain degree at the very least, performed ‘live’ on stage. If we additionally take into account its relatively stable requirements of an audience and a set duration, we could argue that the theatrical medium represents a heuristic platform to study associative thinking on behalf, precisely, of the stage functioning as interface facilitating co-presence across physical, technical, and referential boundaries.
Contemporary critical discourses, similarly, tend to consider the ‘live’ body in performance as a cultural and biological biotope – a construction site, as it were, for the assemblage of identity and consisting of multiple foundational layers of what Wolf-Dieter Ernst has termed ‘anthropological ballast’ (2012). From this perspective, in turn, the theatre can play an additional role as pivotal platform of signification due to the invitation it extends from performer to spectator to connect via conscious participation in a ‘live’ event. For, if accepted, the cognitive communion that ensues will remind all participants for the event’s entire duration of its disruptive constructedness (see also Rayner, 2002).
Furthermore, as recently demonstrated by N. Katherine Hayles, the kind of embodied cognition activated by ‘live’ performers in an intermedial setting “provides the basis for dynamic interactions with the tools it helps to bring into being” (2012). This paper will accordingly refer to dramaturge/director John Jesurun’s so-called “pieces in spaces” (1987) – i.e. stage plays where the live, the fictionalized, as well as the processes of mediation and authorship themselves all become blurred in an orgy of analogies across media, genres, and other types of referential frameworks – to highlight what anthropologist Bradd Shore calls our mind’s ecological inclination to fuse a boundless range of ostensibly unrelated impulses (1996).
WORKS CITED:
Ernst, Wolf-Dieter. Der affective Shauspieler: Die Energetik des postdramatischen Theaters. Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 2012.
Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2012.
Jesurun, John. “Introduction to White Water.” On New Ground: Hispanic-American Plays. Ed. M.E. Osborn. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1987. 73-142.
Rayner, Alice. “Rude Mechanicals and the Specters of Marx.” Theatre Journal 54.4 (2002): 535-554.
Shore, Bradd. Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture, and the Problem of Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Contemporary critical discourses, similarly, tend to consider the ‘live’ body in performance as a cultural and biological biotope – a construction site, as it were, for the assemblage of identity and consisting of multiple foundational layers of what Wolf-Dieter Ernst has termed ‘anthropological ballast’ (2012). From this perspective, in turn, the theatre can play an additional role as pivotal platform of signification due to the invitation it extends from performer to spectator to connect via conscious participation in a ‘live’ event. For, if accepted, the cognitive communion that ensues will remind all participants for the event’s entire duration of its disruptive constructedness (see also Rayner, 2002).
Furthermore, as recently demonstrated by N. Katherine Hayles, the kind of embodied cognition activated by ‘live’ performers in an intermedial setting “provides the basis for dynamic interactions with the tools it helps to bring into being” (2012). This paper will accordingly refer to dramaturge/director John Jesurun’s so-called “pieces in spaces” (1987) – i.e. stage plays where the live, the fictionalized, as well as the processes of mediation and authorship themselves all become blurred in an orgy of analogies across media, genres, and other types of referential frameworks – to highlight what anthropologist Bradd Shore calls our mind’s ecological inclination to fuse a boundless range of ostensibly unrelated impulses (1996).
WORKS CITED:
Ernst, Wolf-Dieter. Der affective Shauspieler: Die Energetik des postdramatischen Theaters. Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 2012.
Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2012.
Jesurun, John. “Introduction to White Water.” On New Ground: Hispanic-American Plays. Ed. M.E. Osborn. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1987. 73-142.
Rayner, Alice. “Rude Mechanicals and the Specters of Marx.” Theatre Journal 54.4 (2002): 535-554.
Shore, Bradd. Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture, and the Problem of Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Research Interests:
The November 1997 issue of Index magazine featured a rather unusual piece by avant-garde theatre- and filmmaker John Jesurun, which apparently had surprised even the editors – and this despite having commissioned the contribution... more
The November 1997 issue of Index magazine featured a rather unusual piece by avant-garde theatre- and filmmaker John Jesurun, which apparently had surprised even the editors – and this despite having commissioned the contribution themselves. In effect, they introduced it as follows: “From time to time, we ask someone: ‘If you could re-make any film, what would it be, and how would you do it differently?’ And until we asked John Jesurun, no one had ever written all-new dialogue for the original film.”
Building on the already troubled conversion from James M. Cain’s 1941-novel to the 1945 film produced by Jerry Wald via multiple screenwriters and many more rewrites, this paper aims to tackle the theme of betrayal so conspicuous in both works – on a narrative level – here from a processual angle, and this precisely by juxtaposing said ‘classical’ adaptation from the Hollywood studio era with Jesurun’s experimental reimagining of the betrayal theme as an affective consideration.
Moreover, given that both Cain’s novel and as Wald’s film already notably departed from generic expectations (see LaValley, 2008), it is believed that the angle offered by both Jesurun’s remodeling as well as another, parodistic 2013 musical remake Mildred Fierce holds the potential of presenting the adaptation principle not as a pejoratively connoted act of betrayal, but rather as denoting the generative character of incommensurability.
WORKS CITED:
Jesurun, John. “Mildred Pierce Remake/Remodel.” Index November 1997. Print.
LaValley, Albert J. “Mildred Pierce: A Troublesome Property to Script.” Authorship in Film Adaptation. Ed. and Introd. Jack Boozer. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008. 37-62. Print
Building on the already troubled conversion from James M. Cain’s 1941-novel to the 1945 film produced by Jerry Wald via multiple screenwriters and many more rewrites, this paper aims to tackle the theme of betrayal so conspicuous in both works – on a narrative level – here from a processual angle, and this precisely by juxtaposing said ‘classical’ adaptation from the Hollywood studio era with Jesurun’s experimental reimagining of the betrayal theme as an affective consideration.
Moreover, given that both Cain’s novel and as Wald’s film already notably departed from generic expectations (see LaValley, 2008), it is believed that the angle offered by both Jesurun’s remodeling as well as another, parodistic 2013 musical remake Mildred Fierce holds the potential of presenting the adaptation principle not as a pejoratively connoted act of betrayal, but rather as denoting the generative character of incommensurability.
WORKS CITED:
Jesurun, John. “Mildred Pierce Remake/Remodel.” Index November 1997. Print.
LaValley, Albert J. “Mildred Pierce: A Troublesome Property to Script.” Authorship in Film Adaptation. Ed. and Introd. Jack Boozer. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008. 37-62. Print
Research Interests:
In 2011 choreographer Juliette Mapp - working in close collaboration with experimental dramaturge/director John Jesurun and musician/conceptualist Dan Kaufman - adapted _The Making of Americans_ (1925), a novel of linguistic expressionism... more
In 2011 choreographer Juliette Mapp - working in close collaboration with experimental dramaturge/director John Jesurun and musician/conceptualist Dan Kaufman - adapted _The Making of Americans_ (1925), a novel of linguistic expressionism by 'Mama DaDa' Gertrude Stein, into an organic blend of dance, video art, live music, and personal reminiscences. This presentation will accordingly seek to map the aesthetic analogies informing the adaptational process, before reflecting on the implications of adopting such an associative and interdisciplinary posture in the evocation of continuity via the embodied elusiveness of a dance production.
Research Interests:
Theaterwetenschapster Bonnie Marranca ontwikkelde enkele jaren geleden het begrip mediaturgie om de aandacht te vestigen op een a-lineaire en pluri-mediale compositiemethode binnen het zogenaamde ‘postdramatische theater’ die zich... more
Theaterwetenschapster Bonnie Marranca ontwikkelde enkele jaren geleden het begrip mediaturgie om de aandacht te vestigen op een a-lineaire en pluri-mediale compositiemethode binnen het zogenaamde ‘postdramatische theater’ die zich onderscheidt door te communiceren via simultaneïteit (Marranca, 2008). Voor regisseur en ‘mediaturg’ John Jesurun verschuift dergelijk perspectief automatisch de aandacht van het artistiek werk als betekenisdrager naar processen van betekenisgeving (Jesurun, 1993), niet in het minst omdat mediaturgie de toeschouwer iedere illusie van exhaustieve interpretatie ontneemt. Als paradoxale creaties die een kwetsbare spanning ensceneren tussen formele complexiteit, generische hybriditeit en processuele logica dragen ze zo in zich een beduidend heuristisch potentieel.
Toch kan deze inherente reflexiviteit niet geactiveerd worden zonder eerst een vorm van herkenning tot stand te brengen – een wisselwerking, als het ware, tussen conventie en creativiteit. Volgens theaterfenomenoloog Bert O. States is dit laatste niets minder dan een evidentie. De theatrale betekenisdrager functioneert namelijk als een Januskop doorheen de spanning die wordt gecreëerd tussen materialiteit van het teken en haar indexfunctie (States, 1982), waardoor het geëvoceerde betekenispotentieel zich uitstrekt over verschillende betekenissystemen en referentiekaders.
‘Postdramatische mediaturgie’ onderstreept States’ stelling via een visuele en viscerale rationale die eendimensionele verwijzingen problematiseert hoewel de communicatieve relatie nooit wordt onderbroken. Integendeel, doordat het gevoel van sensoriële overdadigheid afkomstig is van een hybridiserende spanning tussen ‘live performance’ en ‘live media’ medieert de postdramatische productie haar eigen creatieve proces als een vorm van convergentie die louter divergente interpretaties tot stand kan en wil brengen. Volgens convergentie-theoreticus Henry Jenkins mag dit gewilde gebrek aan eenduidigheid echter niet opgevat worden als een beperking omdat de betekenisgevende strategieën die zo gegenereerd worden een emanciperend effect hebben (Jenkins, 2006).
Geciteerde werken:
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU Press, 2006.
Jesurun, John. “Breaking the Relentless Spool of Film Unrolling.” Felix 1.3 (1993): 64-69.
Marranca, Bonnie. “Mediaturgy: A Conversation with Marianne Weems.” Performance Histories. Ed. Bonnie Marranca. New York: PAJ, 2008: 89-106.
States, Bert O. Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: On the Phenomenology of Theatre. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
Toch kan deze inherente reflexiviteit niet geactiveerd worden zonder eerst een vorm van herkenning tot stand te brengen – een wisselwerking, als het ware, tussen conventie en creativiteit. Volgens theaterfenomenoloog Bert O. States is dit laatste niets minder dan een evidentie. De theatrale betekenisdrager functioneert namelijk als een Januskop doorheen de spanning die wordt gecreëerd tussen materialiteit van het teken en haar indexfunctie (States, 1982), waardoor het geëvoceerde betekenispotentieel zich uitstrekt over verschillende betekenissystemen en referentiekaders.
‘Postdramatische mediaturgie’ onderstreept States’ stelling via een visuele en viscerale rationale die eendimensionele verwijzingen problematiseert hoewel de communicatieve relatie nooit wordt onderbroken. Integendeel, doordat het gevoel van sensoriële overdadigheid afkomstig is van een hybridiserende spanning tussen ‘live performance’ en ‘live media’ medieert de postdramatische productie haar eigen creatieve proces als een vorm van convergentie die louter divergente interpretaties tot stand kan en wil brengen. Volgens convergentie-theoreticus Henry Jenkins mag dit gewilde gebrek aan eenduidigheid echter niet opgevat worden als een beperking omdat de betekenisgevende strategieën die zo gegenereerd worden een emanciperend effect hebben (Jenkins, 2006).
Geciteerde werken:
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU Press, 2006.
Jesurun, John. “Breaking the Relentless Spool of Film Unrolling.” Felix 1.3 (1993): 64-69.
Marranca, Bonnie. “Mediaturgy: A Conversation with Marianne Weems.” Performance Histories. Ed. Bonnie Marranca. New York: PAJ, 2008: 89-106.
States, Bert O. Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: On the Phenomenology of Theatre. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
Research Interests:
The Anglo-American poet W.H. Auden once wrote about the capital of Belgium and Europe that “Its formula escapes you” (Auden 1991). Much the same could equally be claimed for the work of the enigmatic novelist Thomas Pynchon. Hence it... more
The Anglo-American poet W.H. Auden once wrote about the capital of Belgium and Europe that “Its formula escapes you” (Auden 1991). Much the same could equally be claimed for the work of the enigmatic novelist Thomas Pynchon. Hence it should perhaps not altogether surprise us that Brussels would one day play a pivotal role in one of his major works. Right in the middle of Against the Day (2006) we encounter the name of Brussels as the site where a high-tech weapon will be traded between anarcho-terrorist groupuscules with potentially cataclysmic effects in all four dimensions: length, breadth, depth, and time.
Indeed, in this novel Brussels serves not solely as topographical locale, but equally as liminal milieu where all of Pynchon’s countless plotlines, signifying processes, and strategies converge and subsequently diverge. Almost as if the metropolis here were appropriated and remediated as a structuring metaphor paralleling both the thematic leitmotiv of ‘double refraction’ and, more significantly, the multiple characters’ absurdly heroic adaptability in the face of the surrealist-cum-encyclopedic madness their creator hurls at them for 1000+ pages. This paper will accordingly demonstrate that, at the very least, the city here serves as meta-referential reminder of adaptive processes’ generative potential.
Indeed, in this novel Brussels serves not solely as topographical locale, but equally as liminal milieu where all of Pynchon’s countless plotlines, signifying processes, and strategies converge and subsequently diverge. Almost as if the metropolis here were appropriated and remediated as a structuring metaphor paralleling both the thematic leitmotiv of ‘double refraction’ and, more significantly, the multiple characters’ absurdly heroic adaptability in the face of the surrealist-cum-encyclopedic madness their creator hurls at them for 1000+ pages. This paper will accordingly demonstrate that, at the very least, the city here serves as meta-referential reminder of adaptive processes’ generative potential.
Research Interests:
When multi-media dramaturge-director Robert Lepage staged his La Damnation de Faust at the New York Metropolitan in 2008, it effectively concerned a production that was both old and new at the same time. After all, this adaptation of... more
When multi-media dramaturge-director Robert Lepage staged his La Damnation de Faust at the New York Metropolitan in 2008, it effectively concerned a production that was both old and new at the same time. After all, this adaptation of Berlioz’ 1846-opera had been updated continuously ever since its premiere in 1999 to accommodate ever more sophisticated digital technologies and keep creating “new environments to tell the same story’ (Lepage qtd. in Lampert-Gréaux, 2009). Interestingly, though, the more sophisticated the scenographies became, the more Lepage’s audiences seemed to widen (Ventura, 2008). Almost as if he had made a devilish pact with technology to mesmerize the public.
Then again, the Faust-myth indeed inscribes itself in an adaptational tradition that has sacrificed so-called source-text ‘fidelity’ on the altar of incommensurability. Thus the kind of cognitive flexibility it commands closely resembles the role of the dramaturge in its reliance on constitutive processes of signification (see Radosavljevic, 2013). After all, coordinating the conceptual coherence of a production in practice comes down to transposing a certain meaningful ‘content’ across the various signifying systems that constitute it. Lepage, though, amped up the analogy by transcoding both narrative and processual variations on the incommensurability-theme into a heavily digitized scenography perennially in progress.
This paper accordingly ambitions to mine the digital dramaturgy of La Damnation de Faust for the battle of perception it generates via its fiendish fusion of art and technology, which arguably contributes to a democratization of theatrical reflexivity.
WORKS CITED:
Lampert-Gréaux, Ellen. “Sympathy for the Devil.” Live Design 43.7 (2009): 64.
Radosavljevic, Duska. Theatre Making: Interplay Between Text and Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Ventura, August. “Dreamcatcher.” Opera News 73.4 (2008): 20-23.
Then again, the Faust-myth indeed inscribes itself in an adaptational tradition that has sacrificed so-called source-text ‘fidelity’ on the altar of incommensurability. Thus the kind of cognitive flexibility it commands closely resembles the role of the dramaturge in its reliance on constitutive processes of signification (see Radosavljevic, 2013). After all, coordinating the conceptual coherence of a production in practice comes down to transposing a certain meaningful ‘content’ across the various signifying systems that constitute it. Lepage, though, amped up the analogy by transcoding both narrative and processual variations on the incommensurability-theme into a heavily digitized scenography perennially in progress.
This paper accordingly ambitions to mine the digital dramaturgy of La Damnation de Faust for the battle of perception it generates via its fiendish fusion of art and technology, which arguably contributes to a democratization of theatrical reflexivity.
WORKS CITED:
Lampert-Gréaux, Ellen. “Sympathy for the Devil.” Live Design 43.7 (2009): 64.
Radosavljevic, Duska. Theatre Making: Interplay Between Text and Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Ventura, August. “Dreamcatcher.” Opera News 73.4 (2008): 20-23.
Research Interests:
Despite being heavily indebted to electronic mediation, the dramatic situation depicted in contemporary multi-media theatre productions is still, to a certain degree at the very least, performed ‘live’ on stage. If we additionally take... more
Despite being heavily indebted to electronic mediation, the dramatic situation depicted in contemporary multi-media theatre productions is still, to a certain degree at the very least, performed ‘live’ on stage. If we additionally take into account its relatively stable requirements of an audience and a set duration, we could argue that the theatrical medium represents a heuristic platform to study associative thinking on behalf, precisely, of the stage functioning as interface facilitating co-presence across physical, technical, and referential boundaries.
Contemporary critical discourses, similarly, tend to consider the ‘live’ body in performance as a cultural and biological biotope – a construction site, as it were, for the assemblage of identity and consisting of multiple foundational layers of what Wolf-Dieter Ernst has termed ‘anthropological ballast’ (2012). From this perspective, in turn, the theatre can play an additional role as pivotal platform of signification due to the invitation it extends from performer to spectator to connect via conscious participation in a ‘live’ event. For, if accepted, the cognitive communion that ensues will remind all participants for the event’s entire duration of its disruptive constructedness (see also Rayner, 2002).
Furthermore, as recently demonstrated by N. Katherine Hayles, the kind of embodied cognition activated by ‘live’ performers in an intermedial setting “provides the basis for dynamic interactions with the tools it helps to bring into being” (2012). This paper will accordingly refer to dramaturge/director John Jesurun’s so-called “pieces in spaces” (1987) – i.e. stage plays where the live, the fictionalized, and the mediatized become blurred in an orgy of analogies across media and genres – to highlight what anthropologist Bradd Shore calls our mind’s ecological inclination to fuse a boundless range of unrelated impulses while blurring boundaries of all kinds (1996).
WORKS CITED:
Ernst, Wolf-Dieter. Der affective Shauspieler: Die Energetik des postdramatischen Theaters. Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 2012.
Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2012.
Jesurun, John. “Introduction to White Water.” On New Ground: Hispanic-American Plays. Ed. M.E. Osborn. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1987. 73-142.
Rayner, Alice. “Rude Mechanicals and the Specters of Marx.” Theatre Journal 54.4 (2002): 535-554.
Shore, Bradd. Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture, and the Problem of Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Contemporary critical discourses, similarly, tend to consider the ‘live’ body in performance as a cultural and biological biotope – a construction site, as it were, for the assemblage of identity and consisting of multiple foundational layers of what Wolf-Dieter Ernst has termed ‘anthropological ballast’ (2012). From this perspective, in turn, the theatre can play an additional role as pivotal platform of signification due to the invitation it extends from performer to spectator to connect via conscious participation in a ‘live’ event. For, if accepted, the cognitive communion that ensues will remind all participants for the event’s entire duration of its disruptive constructedness (see also Rayner, 2002).
Furthermore, as recently demonstrated by N. Katherine Hayles, the kind of embodied cognition activated by ‘live’ performers in an intermedial setting “provides the basis for dynamic interactions with the tools it helps to bring into being” (2012). This paper will accordingly refer to dramaturge/director John Jesurun’s so-called “pieces in spaces” (1987) – i.e. stage plays where the live, the fictionalized, and the mediatized become blurred in an orgy of analogies across media and genres – to highlight what anthropologist Bradd Shore calls our mind’s ecological inclination to fuse a boundless range of unrelated impulses while blurring boundaries of all kinds (1996).
WORKS CITED:
Ernst, Wolf-Dieter. Der affective Shauspieler: Die Energetik des postdramatischen Theaters. Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 2012.
Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2012.
Jesurun, John. “Introduction to White Water.” On New Ground: Hispanic-American Plays. Ed. M.E. Osborn. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1987. 73-142.
Rayner, Alice. “Rude Mechanicals and the Specters of Marx.” Theatre Journal 54.4 (2002): 535-554.
Shore, Bradd. Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture, and the Problem of Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Research Interests:
Pioneering scenographer Adolphe Appia once stated that “The art of stage production is the art of projecting into space what the original author was only able to project in time.” Encapsulating the entire technical dimension of a theatre... more
Pioneering scenographer Adolphe Appia once stated that “The art of stage production is the art of projecting into space what the original author was only able to project in time.” Encapsulating the entire technical dimension of a theatre production, the notion of ‘scenography’ could arguably be placed on equal footing with the dramatic text as object of analysis and stepping stone for further conceptualization. Especially when adopting a historiographical posture, as it entails the entanglement of human beings with technological devices while foregrounding history’s own essentially mediated character.
In more concrete terms, addressing the process of writing history arguably yields insight into the various signifying systems and methods that bring it into being. Tackling signification from the angle of theatre scenography, consequently, reveals the act of ‘meaning making’ in its broadest sense as an immanent, collective entanglement of material enunciations that operate on, shape, and transform the world in real time. The proposed perspective thus provides a platform to reflect upon the principle of a ‘permanent present’ by dramatizing a ‘process-metaphysics.’
As a “prototype of imagination” on behalf of its hypermedial capacity to integrate a boundless array of other media, theatre to Derrick De Kerckhove represents a rare “try-out space for new experiences and reflexions.” It is in this capacity, consequently, that the pairing of architectural innovators Diller+Scofidio with NYC-based theatre troupe The Builders Association conceived of Jet Lag (1998), an “adventurous cross-media performance” (Wehle, 2002) combining live action, live and recorded video, computer animation, music, and dramatic text with two historical characters. The first of these faked his progress in an around-the-world sailing voyage before committing suicide after realizing he was drifting in circles, while the second flew across the Atlantic 167 times in a period of six months and ultimately likewise collapsed from travelling in a permanent present.
In more concrete terms, addressing the process of writing history arguably yields insight into the various signifying systems and methods that bring it into being. Tackling signification from the angle of theatre scenography, consequently, reveals the act of ‘meaning making’ in its broadest sense as an immanent, collective entanglement of material enunciations that operate on, shape, and transform the world in real time. The proposed perspective thus provides a platform to reflect upon the principle of a ‘permanent present’ by dramatizing a ‘process-metaphysics.’
As a “prototype of imagination” on behalf of its hypermedial capacity to integrate a boundless array of other media, theatre to Derrick De Kerckhove represents a rare “try-out space for new experiences and reflexions.” It is in this capacity, consequently, that the pairing of architectural innovators Diller+Scofidio with NYC-based theatre troupe The Builders Association conceived of Jet Lag (1998), an “adventurous cross-media performance” (Wehle, 2002) combining live action, live and recorded video, computer animation, music, and dramatic text with two historical characters. The first of these faked his progress in an around-the-world sailing voyage before committing suicide after realizing he was drifting in circles, while the second flew across the Atlantic 167 times in a period of six months and ultimately likewise collapsed from travelling in a permanent present.
Research Interests:
The November 1997 issue of Index magazine featured a rather unusual piece by avant-garde theatre- and filmmaker John Jesurun, which apparently had surprised even the editors – and this despite having commissioned the contribution... more
The November 1997 issue of Index magazine featured a rather unusual piece by avant-garde theatre- and filmmaker John Jesurun, which apparently had surprised even the editors – and this despite having commissioned the contribution themselves. In effect, they introduced it as follows: “From time to time, we ask someone: ‘If you could re-make any film, what would it be, and how would you do it differently?’ And until we asked John Jesurun, no one had ever written all-new dialogue for the original film.”
Building on the already troubled conversion from James M. Cain’s 1941-novel to the 1945 film produced by Jerry Wald via multiple screenwriters and many more rewrites, this paper aims to tackle the theme of betrayal so conspicuous in both works – on a narrative level – here from a processual angle, and this precisely by juxtaposing said ‘classical’ adaptation from the Hollywood studio era with Jesurun’s experimental reimagining of the betrayal theme as an affective consideration.
Moreover, given that both Cain’s novel and as Wald’s film already notably departed from generic expectations (see LaValley, 2008), it is believed that the angle offered by both Jesurun’s remodeling as well as another, parodistic 2013 musical remake Mildred Fierce holds the potential of presenting the adaptation principle not as a pejoratively connoted act of betrayal, but rather as denoting the generative character of incommensurability.
WORKS CITED:
Jesurun, John. “Mildred Pierce Remake/Remodel.” Index November 1997. Print.
LaValley, Albert J. “Mildred Pierce: A Troublesome Property to Script.” Authorship in Film Adaptation. Ed. and Introd. Jack Boozer. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008. 37-62. Print
Building on the already troubled conversion from James M. Cain’s 1941-novel to the 1945 film produced by Jerry Wald via multiple screenwriters and many more rewrites, this paper aims to tackle the theme of betrayal so conspicuous in both works – on a narrative level – here from a processual angle, and this precisely by juxtaposing said ‘classical’ adaptation from the Hollywood studio era with Jesurun’s experimental reimagining of the betrayal theme as an affective consideration.
Moreover, given that both Cain’s novel and as Wald’s film already notably departed from generic expectations (see LaValley, 2008), it is believed that the angle offered by both Jesurun’s remodeling as well as another, parodistic 2013 musical remake Mildred Fierce holds the potential of presenting the adaptation principle not as a pejoratively connoted act of betrayal, but rather as denoting the generative character of incommensurability.
WORKS CITED:
Jesurun, John. “Mildred Pierce Remake/Remodel.” Index November 1997. Print.
LaValley, Albert J. “Mildred Pierce: A Troublesome Property to Script.” Authorship in Film Adaptation. Ed. and Introd. Jack Boozer. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008. 37-62. Print
Research Interests:
Pioneering scenographer Adolphe Appia once stated that “The art of stage production is the art of projecting into space what the original author was only able to project in time.” Encapsulating the entire technical dimension of a theatre... more
Pioneering scenographer Adolphe Appia once stated that “The art of stage production is the art of projecting into space what the original author was only able to project in time.” Encapsulating the entire technical dimension of a theatre production, the notion of ‘scenography’ could arguably be placed on equal footing with the dramatic text as object of analysis and stepping stone for further conceptualization. Especially when adopting a historiographical posture, as it entails the entanglement of human beings with technological devices while foregrounding history’s own essentially mediated character.
In more concrete terms, addressing the process of writing history arguably yields insight into the various signifying systems and methods that bring it into being. Tackling signification from the angle of theatre scenography, consequently, reveals the act of ‘meaning making’ in its broadest sense as an immanent, collective entanglement of material enunciations that operate on, shape, and transform the world in real time. The proposed perspective thus provides a platform to reflect upon the principle of a ‘permanent present’ by dramatizing a ‘process-metaphysics.’
As a “prototype of imagination” on behalf of its hypermedial capacity to integrate a boundless array of other media, theatre to Derrick De Kerckhove represents a rare “try-out space for new experiences and reflexions.” It is in this capacity, consequently, that the pairing of architectural innovators Diller+Scofidio with NYC-based theatre troupe The Builders Association conceived of Jet Lag (1998), an “adventurous cross-media performance” (Wehle, 2002) combining live action, live and recorded video, computer animation, music, and dramatic text with two historical characters. The first of these faked his progress in an around-the-world sailing voyage before committing suicide after realizing he was drifting in circles, while the second flew across the Atlantic 167 times in a period of six months and ultimately likewise collapsed from travelling in a permanent present.
In more concrete terms, addressing the process of writing history arguably yields insight into the various signifying systems and methods that bring it into being. Tackling signification from the angle of theatre scenography, consequently, reveals the act of ‘meaning making’ in its broadest sense as an immanent, collective entanglement of material enunciations that operate on, shape, and transform the world in real time. The proposed perspective thus provides a platform to reflect upon the principle of a ‘permanent present’ by dramatizing a ‘process-metaphysics.’
As a “prototype of imagination” on behalf of its hypermedial capacity to integrate a boundless array of other media, theatre to Derrick De Kerckhove represents a rare “try-out space for new experiences and reflexions.” It is in this capacity, consequently, that the pairing of architectural innovators Diller+Scofidio with NYC-based theatre troupe The Builders Association conceived of Jet Lag (1998), an “adventurous cross-media performance” (Wehle, 2002) combining live action, live and recorded video, computer animation, music, and dramatic text with two historical characters. The first of these faked his progress in an around-the-world sailing voyage before committing suicide after realizing he was drifting in circles, while the second flew across the Atlantic 167 times in a period of six months and ultimately likewise collapsed from travelling in a permanent present.
Research Interests:
Vertrekkend vanuit het problematische onderscheid tussen de uniciteit van de menselijke stem en de socio-culturele variabelen die onafscheidelijk met haar veruitwendigingen gepaard gaan, wil deze lezing het fenomeen ‘klankpoëzie’... more
Vertrekkend vanuit het problematische onderscheid tussen de uniciteit van de menselijke stem en de socio-culturele variabelen die onafscheidelijk met haar veruitwendigingen gepaard gaan, wil deze lezing het fenomeen ‘klankpoëzie’ presenteren als paradigmatische soundtrack van het posthumanisme. De hiervoor gehanteerde redenering vindt haar oorsprong in de boutade van media-kunstenares en –filosofe Norie Neumark dat dit hybride genre als geen ander “stimulates reflection on the uncanny and complicated relation between embodiment, alterity, and signification” (2010).
Met name de toe-eigening en – letterlijke – belichaming van elektronische technologie van toepassing in gedigitaliseerde klankpoëzie gaf recentelijk een nieuwe dynamiek aan de performativiteit van de dichtkunst. In het bijzonder de technologische mogelijkheid om minimale geluidsnuances te samplen en te mediëren in het hier-en-nu (her)belicht de supplementariteit uitgaand van de ontmoeting tussen tekst/script en stem/klank. Dergelijke ‘post-humanistische’ uitvergroting van een intrinsiek archi-menselijke handeling vindt haar toegevoegde waarde dan ook buitenom ‘traditionele’ esthetische maatstaven.
Met name de ‘meta-pop’ van de Japanse muzikant/klankdichter Cornelius (°1969) verweeft digitale samples en de ‘looping’ van ‘live’ gecapteerde stemgeluiden tot een muzikaal-aandoende textuur waaruit evenwel geen melodielijnen afgeleid kunnen worden – althans geen herkenbare. Het resultaat is desondanks niet geheel bevreemdend, en dit net omdat deze kunstenaar zinspeelt op een voortdurende cognitieve wisselwerking tussen de referentiekaders ‘muziek,’ ‘performance,’ en ‘tekst.’ Neumarks reeds genoemde relationele model indachtig, genereert Cornelius met zijn eigengereide verkenningen van de klankpoëzie daarom als het ware een geluidsband voor posthumanistische betekenisgeving.
BIBLIOGRAFIE:
Cornelius. Sensuous. Warner Music Japan, 2006.
Neumark, Norie. “The Paradox of Voice.” Voice: Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media. Reds. Norie Neumark, Ross Gibson en Theo van Leeuwen. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010. xv-xxxiii.
Met name de toe-eigening en – letterlijke – belichaming van elektronische technologie van toepassing in gedigitaliseerde klankpoëzie gaf recentelijk een nieuwe dynamiek aan de performativiteit van de dichtkunst. In het bijzonder de technologische mogelijkheid om minimale geluidsnuances te samplen en te mediëren in het hier-en-nu (her)belicht de supplementariteit uitgaand van de ontmoeting tussen tekst/script en stem/klank. Dergelijke ‘post-humanistische’ uitvergroting van een intrinsiek archi-menselijke handeling vindt haar toegevoegde waarde dan ook buitenom ‘traditionele’ esthetische maatstaven.
Met name de ‘meta-pop’ van de Japanse muzikant/klankdichter Cornelius (°1969) verweeft digitale samples en de ‘looping’ van ‘live’ gecapteerde stemgeluiden tot een muzikaal-aandoende textuur waaruit evenwel geen melodielijnen afgeleid kunnen worden – althans geen herkenbare. Het resultaat is desondanks niet geheel bevreemdend, en dit net omdat deze kunstenaar zinspeelt op een voortdurende cognitieve wisselwerking tussen de referentiekaders ‘muziek,’ ‘performance,’ en ‘tekst.’ Neumarks reeds genoemde relationele model indachtig, genereert Cornelius met zijn eigengereide verkenningen van de klankpoëzie daarom als het ware een geluidsband voor posthumanistische betekenisgeving.
BIBLIOGRAFIE:
Cornelius. Sensuous. Warner Music Japan, 2006.
Neumark, Norie. “The Paradox of Voice.” Voice: Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media. Reds. Norie Neumark, Ross Gibson en Theo van Leeuwen. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010. xv-xxxiii.
Research Interests:
Every migration across referential and expressive frameworks entails formal and structural, as well as institutional consequences too complex for a ‘traditionalist’ comparative posture. Likewise, every single film producer, Hollywood... more
Every migration across referential and expressive frameworks entails formal and structural, as well as institutional consequences too complex for a ‘traditionalist’ comparative posture. Likewise, every single film producer, Hollywood veteran Art Linson has claimed, knows that at the inception of the movie-making process stands ‘an idea’ derived from “A book. A play. A song. A news event. A magazine article. A historic event or character. A personal experience. A remake of an existing movie. Any combination of the above” (1995). From the screenwriter’s perspective things look slightly different. Like playwright-turned-filmmaker David Mamet so delicately observed, this adaptive authorship in practice translates as “Film is a collaborative business: bend over” (1989). Curiously enough, most of Mamet’s own screenplays are acknowledged adaptations – some even of his own plays, as if he masochistically relished the power struggle between ‘source text,’ Hollywood bureaucracy, and his aesthetic first principles. Mamet’s creative journey across media and genres – ranging from experimental theatre over the ‘hardboiled’ film noir to the novel, and from radio plays over children’s literature to television drama – already suggests as much. This paper, in turn, brings together the analogous concerns of adaptation, authorship, and collaborative creation to gain insight into the complex negotiation processes that constitute these very concepts. Excursions into David Mamet’s adaptions for stage and screen will thereby serve to support the central thesis that these three cousin concepts cannot and should not be treated as independent from one another.
WORKS CITED:
Linson, Art. A Pound of Flesh: Producing Movies in Hollywood. Perilous Tales from the Trenches. New York: Avon Books, 1995.
Mamet, David. Some Freaks. London: Faber and Faber, 1989.
WORKS CITED:
Linson, Art. A Pound of Flesh: Producing Movies in Hollywood. Perilous Tales from the Trenches. New York: Avon Books, 1995.
Mamet, David. Some Freaks. London: Faber and Faber, 1989.
Research Interests:
"The November 1997 issue of Index magazine featured a rather unusual piece by avant-garde theatre- and filmmaker John Jesurun, which apparently had surprised even the editors – and this despite having commissioned the contribution... more
"The November 1997 issue of Index magazine featured a rather unusual piece by avant-garde theatre- and filmmaker John Jesurun, which apparently had surprised even the editors – and this despite having commissioned the contribution themselves. In effect, they introduced it as follows: “From time to time, we ask someone: ‘If you could re-make any film, what would it be, and how would you do it differently?’ And until we asked John Jesurun, no one had ever written all-new dialogue for the original film.”
Building on the already troubled conversion from James M. Cain’s 1941-novel to the 1945 film produced by Jerry Wald via multiple screenwriters and many more rewrites, this paper aims to tackle the theme of betrayal so conspicuous in both works – on a narrative level – here from a processual angle, and this precisely by juxtaposing said ‘classical’ adaptation from the Hollywood studio era with Jesurun’s experimental reimagining of the betrayal theme as an affective consideration.
Moreover, given that both Cain’s novel and as Wald’s film already notably departed from generic expectations (see LaValley, 2008), it is believed that the angle offered by both Jesurun’s remodelling as well as another, parodistic 2013 musical remake Mildred Fierce holds the potential of presenting the adaptation principle not as a pejoratively connoted act of betrayal, but rather as a generative marker of multiplicity.
"
Building on the already troubled conversion from James M. Cain’s 1941-novel to the 1945 film produced by Jerry Wald via multiple screenwriters and many more rewrites, this paper aims to tackle the theme of betrayal so conspicuous in both works – on a narrative level – here from a processual angle, and this precisely by juxtaposing said ‘classical’ adaptation from the Hollywood studio era with Jesurun’s experimental reimagining of the betrayal theme as an affective consideration.
Moreover, given that both Cain’s novel and as Wald’s film already notably departed from generic expectations (see LaValley, 2008), it is believed that the angle offered by both Jesurun’s remodelling as well as another, parodistic 2013 musical remake Mildred Fierce holds the potential of presenting the adaptation principle not as a pejoratively connoted act of betrayal, but rather as a generative marker of multiplicity.
"
Research Interests:
The notion of ‘telepresence’ implies parallel experiences in at least three places simultaneously: a) the space where viewers are physically located; b) per tele-perception in a virtual space; c) per tele-action at the physical locations... more
The notion of ‘telepresence’ implies parallel experiences in at least three places simultaneously: a) the space where viewers are physically located; b) per tele-perception in a virtual space; c) per tele-action at the physical locations affected by the data-work (Dixon, 2007). Accordingly, the interface enabling co-presence across physical, technical, and referential boundaries could credibly be termed a ‘medium’ on behalf, precisely, of its mediating agency. Considered from this angle theatrical performance, too, could be considered as an interface allowing for the co-presence of actors and spectators, yet with the added specification that the ‘live’ bodies it relies upon act as ‘overdetermined’ signifiers – thereby even echoing telepresence’s third, proxemic dimension.
Confronting the concepts of ‘telepresence’ and ‘theatre,’ if anything, allows to highlight what anthropologist Bradd Shore calls the human mind’s ecological inclination to fuse a boundless range of unrelated impulses while blurring boundaries of all kinds (1996). When moreover considering the insight yielded by intermedia studies that borders between communicative modes are the product of a similar kind of irreducible flux (see Elleström, 2010), intermedial theatre productions staging the reality of telepresence without allowing its illusionism – like John Jesurun’s Firefall (Phase 1, 2006; Phase 2, 2009) does – thus can help us recalibrating the quality of our thinking.
Through their interconnectedness to the Internet the characters inhabiting Jesurun’s pluri-medial polyphony of discordant impulses and fragmented narratives all function by virtue of trying to find reason in randomness. Interpretation here, then, is not simply a matter of organizing and stratifying the different layers of meaning we are bombarded with. Hierarchical thinking, after all, is but the anxiety-driven by-product of “situations of high task uncertainty” (Evans, 2005). Jesurun’s Firefall instead ushers its ‘users’ to embrace the related notion of apophenia – i.e. discerning patterns in random data – and so sidestep surface meanings in favour of more fundamental strategies of signification (see Hayles, 2012).
WORKS CITED:
Dixon, Steve. Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007.
Elleström, Lars. “The Modalities of Media: A Model for Understanding Intermedial Relations.” Media Borders, Multimediality and Intermediality. Ed. Lars Elleström. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 11-48.
Evans, John H. “Stratification in Knowledge Production: Author Prestige and the Influence of an American Academic Debate.” Poetics 33 (2005): 111-133.
Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2012.
Shore, Bradd. Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture, and the Problem of Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Confronting the concepts of ‘telepresence’ and ‘theatre,’ if anything, allows to highlight what anthropologist Bradd Shore calls the human mind’s ecological inclination to fuse a boundless range of unrelated impulses while blurring boundaries of all kinds (1996). When moreover considering the insight yielded by intermedia studies that borders between communicative modes are the product of a similar kind of irreducible flux (see Elleström, 2010), intermedial theatre productions staging the reality of telepresence without allowing its illusionism – like John Jesurun’s Firefall (Phase 1, 2006; Phase 2, 2009) does – thus can help us recalibrating the quality of our thinking.
Through their interconnectedness to the Internet the characters inhabiting Jesurun’s pluri-medial polyphony of discordant impulses and fragmented narratives all function by virtue of trying to find reason in randomness. Interpretation here, then, is not simply a matter of organizing and stratifying the different layers of meaning we are bombarded with. Hierarchical thinking, after all, is but the anxiety-driven by-product of “situations of high task uncertainty” (Evans, 2005). Jesurun’s Firefall instead ushers its ‘users’ to embrace the related notion of apophenia – i.e. discerning patterns in random data – and so sidestep surface meanings in favour of more fundamental strategies of signification (see Hayles, 2012).
WORKS CITED:
Dixon, Steve. Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007.
Elleström, Lars. “The Modalities of Media: A Model for Understanding Intermedial Relations.” Media Borders, Multimediality and Intermediality. Ed. Lars Elleström. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 11-48.
Evans, John H. “Stratification in Knowledge Production: Author Prestige and the Influence of an American Academic Debate.” Poetics 33 (2005): 111-133.
Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2012.
Shore, Bradd. Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture, and the Problem of Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Research Interests:
According to the Seafarer’s Training, Certification and Watchkeeping Code (STCW), a crucial competence for any officer in charge of a navigational watch concerns the correct use of IMO Standard Marine Communication Phrases (SMCP) as well... more
According to the Seafarer’s Training, Certification and Watchkeeping Code (STCW), a crucial competence for any officer in charge of a navigational watch concerns the correct use of IMO Standard Marine Communication Phrases (SMCP) as well as a more general use of English in written and oral form. Straightforward as this may seem in principle, the reality of performing an officer’s duties while working with an international and multilingual crew however often entails ‘navigating’ the hazards of mutual incomprehension. For, even if mastery of SMCP already significantly reduces the inherent risks of maritime misunderstanding, matters such as pronunciation and prosody remain sufficiently important to warrant complementary communicative competences. The matter moreover becomes especially pressing in situations not covered by IMO-approved phrasing, yet which in practice may prove just as hazardous. Designed to address precisely these very issues, the INTERMAR project – a consortium of communication specialists based at maritime and naval academies across Europe – accordingly proposes the notion of intercomprehension to demonstrate the necessity of recognizing the ‘intercultural’ aspects of communication alongside its purely linguistic ones. Indeed, by acknowledging that English (maritime and otherwise) is spoken in a wide range of different accents by speakers of extremely mixed abilities, our paper will posit that a methodological focus on strategies of signification across manifold signifying systems and cultural frameworks allows us to present intercomprehension as a heuristic concept, and thus contribute to better-targeted teaching tools and learning outcomes.
Research Interests:
"Scénographe pionnier, Adolphe Appia a affirmé jadis que l’art de la production scénique se résumait à projeter dans l’espace ce que l’auteur originaire ne pouvait que projeter dans le temps (voir Leach, 2008). Plus concrètement parlant,... more
"Scénographe pionnier, Adolphe Appia a affirmé jadis que l’art de la production scénique se résumait à projeter dans l’espace ce que l’auteur originaire ne pouvait que projeter dans le temps (voir Leach, 2008). Plus concrètement parlant, à considérer le processus de l’écriture scénique on peut néanmoins constater l’émergence de ce que Guattari appelait « le pouvoir singulier de l’énonciation » (1992) des divers systèmes et méthodes de signification qui la rendent possible. Car, en abordant ledit processus par l’angle de la scénographie théâtrale à son tour dévoile l’acte de signification au sens le plus large du terme comme constituant un tissu immanent et collectif qui forme, transforme et opère sur le monde en temps réel. La perspective proposée rejoint donc celle d’une plateforme contribuant à une réflexion sur le principe d’une ‘présence permanente’ par le biais d’une métaphysique processuelle. C’est bel et bien dans cet esprit que la collaboration entre les architectes novateurs Diller+Scofidio et la troupe New Yorkaise The Builders Association donna lieu à la production Jet Lag (1998), décrite par Wehle comme « an adventurous cross-media performance » (2002) combinant action en temps réel, images ‘live’ et enregistrées, animation numérique, musique, ainsi qu’une dramaturgie dite ‘traditionnelle’ appliquée à deux personnages historiques succombant à leurs voyages à travers un présent permanent.
Bibliographie
Guattari, Félix. Chaosmose. Paris : Galilée, 1992.
Leach, Robert. Theatre Studies: The Basics. London: Routledge, 2008.
Wehle, Philippa. “Live Performance and Technology: The Example of Jet Lag.” PAJ 70 (2002): 133-139.
"
Bibliographie
Guattari, Félix. Chaosmose. Paris : Galilée, 1992.
Leach, Robert. Theatre Studies: The Basics. London: Routledge, 2008.
Wehle, Philippa. “Live Performance and Technology: The Example of Jet Lag.” PAJ 70 (2002): 133-139.
"
Research Interests:
In a preliminary phase, an introductory excursion into American playwright, theatre- and filmmaker David Mamet’s earlier actualisations of existing ‘texts’ should provide with a comparative framework for the interpretation of his second... more
In a preliminary phase, an introductory excursion into American playwright, theatre- and filmmaker David Mamet’s earlier actualisations of existing ‘texts’ should provide with a comparative framework for the interpretation of his second Chekhov-adaptation, Uncle Vanya (1988). Accordingly, along Linda Hutcheon’s concept of “equivalences” (10), it will be attempted to concoct a set of aesthetic constants as a basis for a first extended comparison with the ‘source text,’ subsequently followed by a scenographic discussion of two staged productions (Wheeler 1988, Maggio 1990) and a teleplay (Mosher 1991) using Mamet’s version. The latter analyses’ specific focus on the collaborative dimension of dramatic arts serves as a bridge with this paper’s central case study, Vanya on 42nd Street (1994). Louis Malle’s filmic rendition of André Gregory directing a ‘rehearsal-in-progress’ of Mamet’s Vanya, in turn, should triply function as a) an additional challenge to the said aesthetic analogies (hopefully) derived from the comparative approach; b) a basis for the re-evaluation of medium- or genre-related audience expectations; c) a basis for a conceptual assessment of open-ended trans-textual, trans-generic, and/or trans-medial adaptation in a late-Twentieth-Century cultural context characterized by hybridisation.
Research Interests:
As “a maddeningly elastic phenomenon” in the words of communication theorist Marwan M. Kraidy (2005), ‘hybridity’ revolves around the notion that cultural distinctions are porous and absolute ‘truth’ therefore relative. To cultural... more
As “a maddeningly elastic phenomenon” in the words of communication theorist Marwan M. Kraidy (2005), ‘hybridity’ revolves around the notion that cultural distinctions are porous and absolute ‘truth’ therefore relative. To cultural historian Peter Burke, however, contemporary studies of hybridity regularly reinvent the wheel because “scholars in one discipline have not been aware of what their neighbours were thinking” (2009). Resulting in an outgrowth of overlapping concepts competing for survival, the intellectual debate is often the poorer for it – especially so, since hybridity at heart is more of a dynamic process than a static state. Consequently, addressing the concept of hybridity in combination with the principle of live performance as conceptual metaphor, if anything, allows to underscore the associative character of human consciousness without necessitating exhaustive mapping. Indeed, for as formulated by performance theorist Gabriella Giannachi, the theatre is uniquely suited to generate genuine ‘authenticity’ through “the happening of the interface” (2004) – i.e. by staging its own hypermediacy to highlight its hybridizing potential.
Almost as common in contemporary culture as hybridization itself (and arguably just as schizophrenic), the principle of morphing provides an additional platform to reflect on matters of ‘authenticity’ in the digital age due to its “uncanny dramatization of a process metaphysics” (Sobchack, 2001). Especially so when considering the collaborations between Belgian choreographer Frédéric Flamand with the superstar architect duo Diller+Scofidio on a series of encounters between physical bodies and techno-architectonic stage environments, the most conceptually accomplished of which was Moving Target (1996). As these productions blurred ontological distinctions by combining physical presence with digital effects and ‘live’ computer graphics, their creators interfered in the spatial and temporal ‘liveness’ of the perceived event. The result was a militant attempt at collapsing the designations of ‘live’ and ‘mediated’ via the aforementioned ‘process metaphysics’ by effectively having dancers morph live on stage.
WORKS CITED:
Burke, Peter. Cultural Hybridity. Cambridge: Polity, 2009.
Giannachi, Gabriella. Virtual Theatres: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 2004.
Kraidy, Marwan M. Hybridity, or The Cultural Logic of Globalization. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005.
Sobchack, Vivian. “’At the Still Point of the Turning World’: Meta-Morphing and Meta-Stasis.” Meta-Morphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of Quick-Change. Ed. and introd. Vivian Sobchack. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. 131-158.
Almost as common in contemporary culture as hybridization itself (and arguably just as schizophrenic), the principle of morphing provides an additional platform to reflect on matters of ‘authenticity’ in the digital age due to its “uncanny dramatization of a process metaphysics” (Sobchack, 2001). Especially so when considering the collaborations between Belgian choreographer Frédéric Flamand with the superstar architect duo Diller+Scofidio on a series of encounters between physical bodies and techno-architectonic stage environments, the most conceptually accomplished of which was Moving Target (1996). As these productions blurred ontological distinctions by combining physical presence with digital effects and ‘live’ computer graphics, their creators interfered in the spatial and temporal ‘liveness’ of the perceived event. The result was a militant attempt at collapsing the designations of ‘live’ and ‘mediated’ via the aforementioned ‘process metaphysics’ by effectively having dancers morph live on stage.
WORKS CITED:
Burke, Peter. Cultural Hybridity. Cambridge: Polity, 2009.
Giannachi, Gabriella. Virtual Theatres: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 2004.
Kraidy, Marwan M. Hybridity, or The Cultural Logic of Globalization. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005.
Sobchack, Vivian. “’At the Still Point of the Turning World’: Meta-Morphing and Meta-Stasis.” Meta-Morphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of Quick-Change. Ed. and introd. Vivian Sobchack. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. 131-158.
Research Interests:
In contemporary performance practice, the preeminence of verbal text and linear narrative progression has predominantly shifted towards a ‘post-dramatic’ predilection for polysensorial communication. At the same time, general... more
In contemporary performance practice, the preeminence of verbal text and linear narrative progression has predominantly shifted towards a ‘post-dramatic’ predilection for polysensorial communication. At the same time, general technological developments have led to a troubling tension between an overall sense of greater efficiency and the confusion caused by their sophistication. Taken together, though, both phenomena rely on similar cognitive strategies to derive meaning from a complex context. Iconic explorer of the rampant technologization and its effects on human consciousness, the American ‘post-surrealist’ dramaturge-director John Jesurun, for one, refuses to tell unambiguous stories with clear beginning, middle, and end. Instead, he ventures to direct his spectators’ gaze towards the untold stories of the ‘in-between.’ Small wonder, then, that he moved from filmmaking to the theatre and its unique capacity of incorporating a virtually limitless number of perspectives, signifiers, and signifying systems in a temporally and spatially ritualized event whereby performers and spectators are physically present at the same time in the same place. Small wonder, also, that some of his best-known productions are adaptations of classics like Philoktetes (1993/2007) or Faust (1996), which in this particular case could be interpreted as a deliberate positioning towards theatre history in the face of its mediatization. Indeed, Jesurun’s media-saturated compositions all integrate video projections, mainstream filmic montage techniques, and narrative strategies from different genres in a stage performance while upsetting any sense of linear logic. Accordingly, with an aesthetic conception designed to bombard our senses ‘in real time’ with the impossibility of narrative closure, Jesurun effectively stages what theatre scholar Bonnie Marranca has termed “the dilemma of liveness” (2010). And yet, at the same time it also challenges common conceptions of adaptation as the linear transfer of a certain meaning potential across signifying systems. By dramatizing ‘otherness’ while communicating across ‘sameness’ in the here and now, the perspective so conveyed effectively establishes the parallel notions of ‘interpration’ and ‘identity’ as products of a perennially oscillating play between attraction and alienation. The relevance of John Jesurun’s artistic practice for this discussion is therefore just that: by reminding us that the ‘live’ is inevitably mediated while presenting adaptations as mediating interfaces, he conveys a kind of techno-functionalism that is exuberantly lucid about its own limitations.
Research Interests:
"According to Lars Elleström, the concept intermediality implies a certain irreducible intertextual flux between communicative modes that effectively draws attention to the borders that separate them, either by ‘combination’ and... more
"According to Lars Elleström, the concept intermediality implies a certain irreducible intertextual flux between communicative modes that effectively draws attention to the borders that separate them, either by ‘combination’ and ‘integration,’ or by ‘mediation’ and ‘transformation’ (Elleström, 2010). Such a reasoning of course situates itself in a cultural context where technological developments have led to a troubling tension between an overall sense of greater efficiency and the confusion caused by their sophistication.
When moreover considering the theatre, with its hypermedial capacity of integrating an infinite amount of signifiers and signifying systems through an aestheticized interplay presented in real time, as the root medium of self-reflexive performativity, Elleström’s notion of intermediality can accordingly be expanded for specifically heuristic purposes – especially so, when taking into account the cultural contribution of digital media to contemporary theatre productions. In more concrete terms it implies that even if the coming of digital coding virtually imploded the material basis of cultural conventions, it would still prove scientifically relevant to develop a critical perspective capable of what performance theorist Gabriella Giannachi called “the ‘happening’ of the interface” (Giannachi, 2004) – in this case: the dramatization of the theatre’s hypermedial capacity to incorporate an unlimited number of signifying systems in digitalist productions.
The emergence of the term ‘digitalism’ incidentally coincides with American filmmaker-turned-theatre-practitioner John Jesurun’s own first tentative steps in the performing arts at the beginning of the 1980s, and it was coined to designate the ever-widening cultural trend of producing artworks with computer technology. In his recent work Firefall (Phase 1, 2006; Phase 2, 2009), Jesurun dramatizes the hypertextual interaction between the reader and writer of a digital text within an artistically conceived framework of multiple media interacting in the here and now of ‘live’ theatrical perofmance. Indeed, in this production the performers are continuously seen reciting from memory while surfing the web and conversing in virtual chat rooms displayed on various screens. As such, by fusing live presence with prescribed text, mediatized projections of improvised hypertextual creations, and ordered chaos, Jesurun’s Firefall circulates a certain meaning potential that otherwise would have been lost in the chaos of an automated semiotic overload had not the digital interface itself been dramatized, and so its cultural aura of greater efficiency effectively problematized.
WORKS CITED:
Elleström, Lars. “The Modalities of Media: A Model for Understanding Intermedial Relations.” Media Borders, Multimediality and Intermediality. Ed. Lars Elleström. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 11-48.
Giannachi, Gabriella. Virtual Theatres: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 2004.
"
When moreover considering the theatre, with its hypermedial capacity of integrating an infinite amount of signifiers and signifying systems through an aestheticized interplay presented in real time, as the root medium of self-reflexive performativity, Elleström’s notion of intermediality can accordingly be expanded for specifically heuristic purposes – especially so, when taking into account the cultural contribution of digital media to contemporary theatre productions. In more concrete terms it implies that even if the coming of digital coding virtually imploded the material basis of cultural conventions, it would still prove scientifically relevant to develop a critical perspective capable of what performance theorist Gabriella Giannachi called “the ‘happening’ of the interface” (Giannachi, 2004) – in this case: the dramatization of the theatre’s hypermedial capacity to incorporate an unlimited number of signifying systems in digitalist productions.
The emergence of the term ‘digitalism’ incidentally coincides with American filmmaker-turned-theatre-practitioner John Jesurun’s own first tentative steps in the performing arts at the beginning of the 1980s, and it was coined to designate the ever-widening cultural trend of producing artworks with computer technology. In his recent work Firefall (Phase 1, 2006; Phase 2, 2009), Jesurun dramatizes the hypertextual interaction between the reader and writer of a digital text within an artistically conceived framework of multiple media interacting in the here and now of ‘live’ theatrical perofmance. Indeed, in this production the performers are continuously seen reciting from memory while surfing the web and conversing in virtual chat rooms displayed on various screens. As such, by fusing live presence with prescribed text, mediatized projections of improvised hypertextual creations, and ordered chaos, Jesurun’s Firefall circulates a certain meaning potential that otherwise would have been lost in the chaos of an automated semiotic overload had not the digital interface itself been dramatized, and so its cultural aura of greater efficiency effectively problematized.
WORKS CITED:
Elleström, Lars. “The Modalities of Media: A Model for Understanding Intermedial Relations.” Media Borders, Multimediality and Intermediality. Ed. Lars Elleström. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 11-48.
Giannachi, Gabriella. Virtual Theatres: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 2004.
"
Research Interests:
"A cousin concept of dramaturgy, the notion of ‘mediaturgy’ developed by performance scholar Bonnie Marranca (2008, 2010) re-routs connotations from a text-based linear progression of sorts to a media-induced sense of simultaneity as... more
"A cousin concept of dramaturgy, the notion of ‘mediaturgy’ developed by performance scholar Bonnie Marranca (2008, 2010) re-routs connotations from a text-based linear progression of sorts to a media-induced sense of simultaneity as organizing principle. To ‘mediaturge’/director John Jesurun the latter has led in our contemporary networked societies to “troubled tensions” between traditional conceptions of ‘meaning’ and an increasing awareness of the processes that bring them about (1993). Mediaturgies, accordingly, are artistic creations concerned with staging the brittle balance between formal complexity and processual logic.
However, beyond this self-reflexivity the concept equally evokes similar tensions with the notion of adaptation. Integrating techniques and technologies from multiple media in an environment itself characterized by the interplay of multiple media, mediaturgy provides a visual and visceral rationale against unproductive ‘fidelity’-discourses geared towards static, one-dimensional comparisons between ‘source-text’ and ‘target-text.’ And yet at the same time it also challenges common conceptions of adaptation as the linear transfer of a certain ‘meaning potential’ across signifying systems.
Due, precisely, to the logic of simultaneity on which it thrives, mediaturgy mediates audience perceptions towards the essentially layered quality of interpretation and creation alike. At the same time, moreover, it ushers us away from the ‘new media’-induced chimaera of convergent communication whereby the coming of digital coding would allow for the development of a (definitive) hypermedium capable of integrating all extant communicative channels. The notion of mediaturgy’s relevance for adaptation studies is therefore just that: by capturing the divergent hybridity of today’s ‘mediatized’ culture (Auslander, 2008), it stimulates reflection across distinctions and disciplines towards their unifying agents.
WORKS CITED:
Auslander, Philip. Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. 2nd edition. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Jesurun, John. “Breaking the Relentless Spool of Film Unrolling.” Felix: A Journal of Media Arts 1.3 (1993): 64-69.
Marranca, Bonnie. “Mediaturgy: A Conversation with Marianne Weems.” Performance Histories. Ed. Bonnie Marranca. New York: PAJ, 2008. 189-206.
Marranca, Bonnie. “Performance as Design: The Mediaturgy of John Jesurun’s Firefall.” PAJ 96 (2010): 16-24.
"
However, beyond this self-reflexivity the concept equally evokes similar tensions with the notion of adaptation. Integrating techniques and technologies from multiple media in an environment itself characterized by the interplay of multiple media, mediaturgy provides a visual and visceral rationale against unproductive ‘fidelity’-discourses geared towards static, one-dimensional comparisons between ‘source-text’ and ‘target-text.’ And yet at the same time it also challenges common conceptions of adaptation as the linear transfer of a certain ‘meaning potential’ across signifying systems.
Due, precisely, to the logic of simultaneity on which it thrives, mediaturgy mediates audience perceptions towards the essentially layered quality of interpretation and creation alike. At the same time, moreover, it ushers us away from the ‘new media’-induced chimaera of convergent communication whereby the coming of digital coding would allow for the development of a (definitive) hypermedium capable of integrating all extant communicative channels. The notion of mediaturgy’s relevance for adaptation studies is therefore just that: by capturing the divergent hybridity of today’s ‘mediatized’ culture (Auslander, 2008), it stimulates reflection across distinctions and disciplines towards their unifying agents.
WORKS CITED:
Auslander, Philip. Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. 2nd edition. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Jesurun, John. “Breaking the Relentless Spool of Film Unrolling.” Felix: A Journal of Media Arts 1.3 (1993): 64-69.
Marranca, Bonnie. “Mediaturgy: A Conversation with Marianne Weems.” Performance Histories. Ed. Bonnie Marranca. New York: PAJ, 2008. 189-206.
Marranca, Bonnie. “Performance as Design: The Mediaturgy of John Jesurun’s Firefall.” PAJ 96 (2010): 16-24.
"
Research Interests:
"According to techno-humanist critic N. Katherine Hayles human, animal or virtual bodies can all be considered as media on behalf of their “capacity for storing, transmitting, and processing information” (2010). Considered from the angle... more
"According to techno-humanist critic N. Katherine Hayles human, animal or virtual bodies can all be considered as media on behalf of their “capacity for storing, transmitting, and processing information” (2010). Considered from the angle of theatrical performance, moreover, such ‘data bodies’ serve as unifying subjects in a context otherwise characterized by its polysensorial elusiveness. The performer, after all, on stage functions as a communicative vessel mediating in real time between the various nodes within those networks of exchange activated by the performative event.
Given that in contemporary theatre the conventional preeminence of the verbal text has gradually made way for multitudinous stimuli affecting audience and actors in a cognitively more analogous fashion, dramaturgical conceptions, too, have willy-nilly come under pressure. However, by exploiting the heuristic potential represented by productions’ increasing reliance on multi-media scenographies, the transferability of ‘meaning’ itself could take up a more prominent part in critical readings. Indeed, the perspective offered by the metaphorical concept of the ‘data body’ allows for a relatively solid discursive basis in the otherwise excessively fluid environments of mediaturgical creations.
A term developed by performance scholar Bonnie Marranca (2008) to denote the conceptual overlap between media composition and dramaturgy, ‘mediaturgy’ seeks not a dissolution with ‘traditional’ drama and its textual overtones but signals a shift in critical perspective better attuned to networked cultures. By relying on John Jesurun’s Faust/How I Rose (1996), this paper will therefore argue that in the instance of adapting/translating a canonical ‘source text’ into an opaque, far less accessible mediaturgical stage production, the ‘data bodies’-concept paradoxically helps to clarify authorial intentions, audience expectations, and generic constraints.
"
Given that in contemporary theatre the conventional preeminence of the verbal text has gradually made way for multitudinous stimuli affecting audience and actors in a cognitively more analogous fashion, dramaturgical conceptions, too, have willy-nilly come under pressure. However, by exploiting the heuristic potential represented by productions’ increasing reliance on multi-media scenographies, the transferability of ‘meaning’ itself could take up a more prominent part in critical readings. Indeed, the perspective offered by the metaphorical concept of the ‘data body’ allows for a relatively solid discursive basis in the otherwise excessively fluid environments of mediaturgical creations.
A term developed by performance scholar Bonnie Marranca (2008) to denote the conceptual overlap between media composition and dramaturgy, ‘mediaturgy’ seeks not a dissolution with ‘traditional’ drama and its textual overtones but signals a shift in critical perspective better attuned to networked cultures. By relying on John Jesurun’s Faust/How I Rose (1996), this paper will therefore argue that in the instance of adapting/translating a canonical ‘source text’ into an opaque, far less accessible mediaturgical stage production, the ‘data bodies’-concept paradoxically helps to clarify authorial intentions, audience expectations, and generic constraints.
"
Research Interests:
This paper develops the theme of Jewish aporia and its implications of impossible narrative closure in an analysis of David Mamet’s generically hybrid auteur-film Homicide (1991). Embedded within discussions of the artist’s more recent... more
This paper develops the theme of Jewish aporia and its implications of impossible narrative closure in an analysis of David Mamet’s generically hybrid auteur-film Homicide (1991). Embedded within discussions of the artist’s more recent prose pieces on Judaism Five Cities of Refuge (2003, with Lawrence Kushner) and The Wicked Son (2006) the central argument here seeks to demonstrate how the aporia of Judaism has proven a lasting influence on Mamet’s thinking that is expressed both in his highly crafted dramas, as well as in his markedly more militant essayistic works.
According to the Torah, everything stands in relation to something else because nothing is ever free of influence. From this perspective, monolithic discourses or stable (id)entities would constitute absurdities. Theodor Herzl, founder of political Zionism and a secular Jew, for one believed that the enemies of Judaism fostered such absurdities by reducing Jewry to a one-dimensional set of ethnic and cultural features. And yet on the other hand such reductions are also an opportunity for a critical reassessment of one’s condition. After all, Jewish aporia can only prove generative as long as it serves a functional purpose within a concrete referential framework.
Incidentally, in a promotional piece for Homicide, his third film as writer-director, David Mamet stated that the “solution to this [script] is going to define the nature of evil.” This was a bold claim to make but, as this paper hopefully will demonstrate, in the end one not entirely unjustified – even though Mamet’s use of ‘solution’ to depict the outcome of a generically hybrid film adaptation dramatizing the existential confusion of an assimilationist Jew in a postmodernist United States of America is nothing short of an absurdity in itself. However, as an echo of a ‘wickedly aporetic’ narrative strategy it simultaneously draws attention to the possible excesses brought about by one-dimensional readings of complex issues.
According to the Torah, everything stands in relation to something else because nothing is ever free of influence. From this perspective, monolithic discourses or stable (id)entities would constitute absurdities. Theodor Herzl, founder of political Zionism and a secular Jew, for one believed that the enemies of Judaism fostered such absurdities by reducing Jewry to a one-dimensional set of ethnic and cultural features. And yet on the other hand such reductions are also an opportunity for a critical reassessment of one’s condition. After all, Jewish aporia can only prove generative as long as it serves a functional purpose within a concrete referential framework.
Incidentally, in a promotional piece for Homicide, his third film as writer-director, David Mamet stated that the “solution to this [script] is going to define the nature of evil.” This was a bold claim to make but, as this paper hopefully will demonstrate, in the end one not entirely unjustified – even though Mamet’s use of ‘solution’ to depict the outcome of a generically hybrid film adaptation dramatizing the existential confusion of an assimilationist Jew in a postmodernist United States of America is nothing short of an absurdity in itself. However, as an echo of a ‘wickedly aporetic’ narrative strategy it simultaneously draws attention to the possible excesses brought about by one-dimensional readings of complex issues.
"“You’ll never get away from me. Wherever you look, you’ll find one of my ads centre stage. I forbid you to be bored. I stop you thinking. The terrorist cult of the new helps me to sell empty space” (Beigbeder, 2002). Chillingly cynical... more
"“You’ll never get away from me. Wherever you look, you’ll find one of my ads centre stage. I forbid you to be bored. I stop you thinking. The terrorist cult of the new helps me to sell empty space” (Beigbeder, 2002). Chillingly cynical as they are, these words spoken by Octave Parango, alter ego of the notoriously polemical French author and literary critic Frédéric Beigbeder before he was fired from Young & Rubicam following the publication of 99 Francs, at once capture the tone of the book from which they spring, but also tap into a rather more complex cultural discourse.
Indeed, inserting itself in a lineage deriving from Marsha Kinder’s pioneering study on transmedia stortytelling Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Barbies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1991) and comprising Bolter and Grusin’s ‘double logic of remediation’ (1999) as well as Henry Jenkins’ seminal work on Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (2006), 99 Francs (2000) bridges media, genres, and creative processes in theme, but recently also by means of its underlying commercial scheme.
After all, as the best-selling contemporary French novel in France and abroad, translated in 21 languages but equally adapted to film (2007, dir. Jan Kounen) and soon available as Virtual Reality-environment on CD-ROM, Beigbeder’s book adroitly mixes fact, fiction, and even fan-culture to catch its countless critics in their own bad faith by simultaneously rejecting and embracing the hyperconsumerist culture advocated by Octave’s world of advertising agencies which it so (self-) evidently satirises. Or, as he himself put it, “I’m three trends ahead, and I make sure you’re always frustrated” (Beigbeder, 2002).
WORKS CITED:
Beigbeder, Frédéric. £9.99. Trans. Adriana Hunter. Basingstoke: Picador, 2002.
Bolter, Jay David with Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.
Kinder, Marsha. Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Barbies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU Press, 2006.
"
Indeed, inserting itself in a lineage deriving from Marsha Kinder’s pioneering study on transmedia stortytelling Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Barbies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1991) and comprising Bolter and Grusin’s ‘double logic of remediation’ (1999) as well as Henry Jenkins’ seminal work on Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (2006), 99 Francs (2000) bridges media, genres, and creative processes in theme, but recently also by means of its underlying commercial scheme.
After all, as the best-selling contemporary French novel in France and abroad, translated in 21 languages but equally adapted to film (2007, dir. Jan Kounen) and soon available as Virtual Reality-environment on CD-ROM, Beigbeder’s book adroitly mixes fact, fiction, and even fan-culture to catch its countless critics in their own bad faith by simultaneously rejecting and embracing the hyperconsumerist culture advocated by Octave’s world of advertising agencies which it so (self-) evidently satirises. Or, as he himself put it, “I’m three trends ahead, and I make sure you’re always frustrated” (Beigbeder, 2002).
WORKS CITED:
Beigbeder, Frédéric. £9.99. Trans. Adriana Hunter. Basingstoke: Picador, 2002.
Bolter, Jay David with Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.
Kinder, Marsha. Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Barbies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU Press, 2006.
"
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
“My credo,” the iconic theatre innovator Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940) once said, “is a theatrical language at once simple and laconic that leads to complex associations” (qtd. in Schmidt, 1980). He thereby believed the production of a... more
“My credo,” the iconic theatre innovator Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940) once said, “is a theatrical language at once simple and laconic that leads to complex associations” (qtd. in Schmidt, 1980). He thereby believed the production of a play to be above all a “conceptual task [necessitating] all the means that theatre affords” (ibid.). True to his beliefs, Meyerhold indeed moulded his mises-en-scène into pluri-medial crystallizations of meaning nurtured by the analogous interplay of multiple stage signifiers. In more concrete terms, this amounted to an eclectic brew of stage forms drawing on cubism, futurism, and constructivism where the pre-eminence of the ‘traditional’ drama-text took a back seat to the overall experience (Braun, 1995). Effectively ‘post-dramatic’ along Hans-Thies Lehmann’s contemporary coinage (1999; 2006) of the shift between a text-centered and production-centered perspective on theatre-making, Meyerhold’s reliance on the analogy as prime interpretative vehicle only recently received the conceptual tools it had thirsted for during three quarters of a century.
Indeed, just as Meyerhold was convinced that “The theatre should employ only those movements which are immediately decipherable” (1969), so, too, have present-day advances in analogy and adaptation studies led to a similarly inspired interest in the concretization of structural relations – a critical reflex which incidentally finds its natural home in the performing arts. The notion of ‘performance,’ after all, implies the mediation between documentable conventions (text/script/score), a contextualized performance space, and the inventive act implied by creation as well as interpretation. Drawing on this parallel, my presentation will illustrate said reasoning by focusing on the 1934 production of Camille by the Meyerhold Theatre Company. As the last one to be directed by Meyerhold in his lifetime and a rare instance in the Russian’s career where the staging of the playtext was not only preceded by a translation (here: from its original French version by Alexandre Dumas, fils, 1824-1895), it was simultaneously also an adaptation from prose (1848) into drama (1852). For, the added dimension of studying stage adaptations, as confirmed by personal teaching experience, offers precisely the kind of documentary concretization required for a full appreciation of the analogous character of adaptational practice and – in this instance – Meyerhold’s post-dramatic productions alike.
Comparative studies of adaptive works, more often than not, focus on what distinguishes ‘source text’ from ‘target text’ instead of addressing the interpretative process that unites them – and this despite the adaptive ‘text’ being simultaneously allusive and distinct. Accordingly, the essentially elusive character of both adaptations and theatrical performances can so be recuperated to serve the rather more constructiv(ist) and heuristically relevant purpose of presenting analogical relations as documentary media in their own right.
WORKS CITED:
Braun, Edward. Meyerhold: A Revolution in Theatre. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995.
Lehmann, Hans-Thies. Postdramatic Theatre. Trans. Karen Jürs-Munby. London: Routledge, 2006 [1999].
Meyerhold, Vsevolod. Meyerhold on Theatre. Trans. and ed. Edward Braun. New York: Hill and Wang, 1969.
Schmidt, Paul. Meyerhold at Work. Manchester: Carcanet New Press, 1980.
Indeed, just as Meyerhold was convinced that “The theatre should employ only those movements which are immediately decipherable” (1969), so, too, have present-day advances in analogy and adaptation studies led to a similarly inspired interest in the concretization of structural relations – a critical reflex which incidentally finds its natural home in the performing arts. The notion of ‘performance,’ after all, implies the mediation between documentable conventions (text/script/score), a contextualized performance space, and the inventive act implied by creation as well as interpretation. Drawing on this parallel, my presentation will illustrate said reasoning by focusing on the 1934 production of Camille by the Meyerhold Theatre Company. As the last one to be directed by Meyerhold in his lifetime and a rare instance in the Russian’s career where the staging of the playtext was not only preceded by a translation (here: from its original French version by Alexandre Dumas, fils, 1824-1895), it was simultaneously also an adaptation from prose (1848) into drama (1852). For, the added dimension of studying stage adaptations, as confirmed by personal teaching experience, offers precisely the kind of documentary concretization required for a full appreciation of the analogous character of adaptational practice and – in this instance – Meyerhold’s post-dramatic productions alike.
Comparative studies of adaptive works, more often than not, focus on what distinguishes ‘source text’ from ‘target text’ instead of addressing the interpretative process that unites them – and this despite the adaptive ‘text’ being simultaneously allusive and distinct. Accordingly, the essentially elusive character of both adaptations and theatrical performances can so be recuperated to serve the rather more constructiv(ist) and heuristically relevant purpose of presenting analogical relations as documentary media in their own right.
WORKS CITED:
Braun, Edward. Meyerhold: A Revolution in Theatre. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995.
Lehmann, Hans-Thies. Postdramatic Theatre. Trans. Karen Jürs-Munby. London: Routledge, 2006 [1999].
Meyerhold, Vsevolod. Meyerhold on Theatre. Trans. and ed. Edward Braun. New York: Hill and Wang, 1969.
Schmidt, Paul. Meyerhold at Work. Manchester: Carcanet New Press, 1980.
"“You’ll never get away from me. Wherever you look, you’ll find one of my ads centre stage. I forbid you to be bored. I stop you thinking. The terrorist cult of the new helps me to sell empty space” (Beigbeder, 2002). Chillingly cynical... more
"“You’ll never get away from me. Wherever you look, you’ll find one of my ads centre stage. I forbid you to be bored. I stop you thinking. The terrorist cult of the new helps me to sell empty space” (Beigbeder, 2002). Chillingly cynical as they are, these words spoken by Octave Parango, alter ego of the notoriously polemical French author and literary critic Frédéric Beigbeder before he was fired from Young & Rubicam following the publication of 99 Francs, at once capture the tone of the book from which they spring, but also tap into a rather more complex cultural discourse.
Indeed, inserting itself in a lineage deriving from Marsha Kinder’s pioneering study on transmedia stortytelling Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Barbies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1991) and comprising Bolter and Grusin’s ‘double logic of remediation’ (1999) as well as Henry Jenkins’ seminal work on Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (2006), 99 Francs (2000) bridges media, genres, and creative processes in theme, but recently also by means of its underlying commercial scheme.
After all, as the best-selling contemporary French novel in France and abroad, translated in 21 languages but equally adapted to film (2007, dir. Jan Kounen) and soon available as Virtual Reality-environment on CD-ROM, Beigbeder’s book adroitly mixes fact, fiction, and even fan-culture to catch its countless critics in their own bad faith by simultaneously rejecting and embracing the hyperconsumerist culture advocated by Octave’s world of advertising agencies which it so (self-) evidently satirises. Or, as he himself put it, “I’m three trends ahead, and I make sure you’re always frustrated” (Beigbeder, 2002).
WORKS CITED:
Beigbeder, Frédéric. £9.99. Trans. Adriana Hunter. Basingstoke: Picador, 2002.
Bolter, Jay David with Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.
Kinder, Marsha. Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Barbies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU Press, 2006."
Indeed, inserting itself in a lineage deriving from Marsha Kinder’s pioneering study on transmedia stortytelling Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Barbies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1991) and comprising Bolter and Grusin’s ‘double logic of remediation’ (1999) as well as Henry Jenkins’ seminal work on Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (2006), 99 Francs (2000) bridges media, genres, and creative processes in theme, but recently also by means of its underlying commercial scheme.
After all, as the best-selling contemporary French novel in France and abroad, translated in 21 languages but equally adapted to film (2007, dir. Jan Kounen) and soon available as Virtual Reality-environment on CD-ROM, Beigbeder’s book adroitly mixes fact, fiction, and even fan-culture to catch its countless critics in their own bad faith by simultaneously rejecting and embracing the hyperconsumerist culture advocated by Octave’s world of advertising agencies which it so (self-) evidently satirises. Or, as he himself put it, “I’m three trends ahead, and I make sure you’re always frustrated” (Beigbeder, 2002).
WORKS CITED:
Beigbeder, Frédéric. £9.99. Trans. Adriana Hunter. Basingstoke: Picador, 2002.
Bolter, Jay David with Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.
Kinder, Marsha. Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Barbies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU Press, 2006."
"In chemistry, the principle of dynamic equilibrium denotes the state during which a reversible reaction ceases to change its ratio of reactants while substances keep moving between the different chemicals. This effectively implies that... more
"In chemistry, the principle of dynamic equilibrium denotes the state during which a reversible reaction ceases to change its ratio of reactants while substances keep moving between the different chemicals. This effectively implies that there is no net change in the reaction, whereas its components keep moving nonetheless (Atkins and de Paula, 2006).
By analogy, the theatrical performance constitutes a dynamic equilibrium between the conventions of the directorial script, the context of the performative space, and the inventions inherent to personal interpretation. Simply put, live performance on stage often enough enacts a scripted ‘text,’ but also the incapacity of reproducing it faithfully. Another related instance of dynamic equilibrium is found in the cognitive procedure inherent to adaptations. Indeed, despite often being derided by both trained and untrained minds for their so-called parasitical impurity, adaptations after all dramatize their own ‘slippage’ between convention and invention.
In Netherlands-based Belgian director Ivo van Hove’s six-hour-long 2007 production Roman Tragedies spectators were actively made to embody the ‘dynamic equilibrium’ inherent to theatrical performance and adaptational practice alike as they were invited to partake in this conflation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (1607), Julius Caesar (1599), and Antony and Cleopatra (1607) on an ‘intermedial’ stage/set together with the actors and technicians, where “a media stream […] of sophisticated visual, aural, and script-based discourse [was created along a] scenographic concept of the corporate convention space” (Billing, 2010) that allowed the public to sit down at random, watch the action ‘live’ or on television screens, order drinks at the bar or food at one of the many food outlets.
After all, the ‘net result’ of this performance changed little in terms of Shakspeare’s stature, but at the same time inscribed in its audiences’ consciousness the generative potential of multi-, inter-, and trans-medial artistic creation through the intimate interconnection of mind and body.
WORKS CITED:
Atkins, P.W. with J. de Paula. Physical Chemistry. 8th edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Billing, Christian M. “Shakespeare Performed: The Roman Tragedies.” Shakespeare Quarterly 61.3 (2010): 415-439.
"
By analogy, the theatrical performance constitutes a dynamic equilibrium between the conventions of the directorial script, the context of the performative space, and the inventions inherent to personal interpretation. Simply put, live performance on stage often enough enacts a scripted ‘text,’ but also the incapacity of reproducing it faithfully. Another related instance of dynamic equilibrium is found in the cognitive procedure inherent to adaptations. Indeed, despite often being derided by both trained and untrained minds for their so-called parasitical impurity, adaptations after all dramatize their own ‘slippage’ between convention and invention.
In Netherlands-based Belgian director Ivo van Hove’s six-hour-long 2007 production Roman Tragedies spectators were actively made to embody the ‘dynamic equilibrium’ inherent to theatrical performance and adaptational practice alike as they were invited to partake in this conflation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (1607), Julius Caesar (1599), and Antony and Cleopatra (1607) on an ‘intermedial’ stage/set together with the actors and technicians, where “a media stream […] of sophisticated visual, aural, and script-based discourse [was created along a] scenographic concept of the corporate convention space” (Billing, 2010) that allowed the public to sit down at random, watch the action ‘live’ or on television screens, order drinks at the bar or food at one of the many food outlets.
After all, the ‘net result’ of this performance changed little in terms of Shakspeare’s stature, but at the same time inscribed in its audiences’ consciousness the generative potential of multi-, inter-, and trans-medial artistic creation through the intimate interconnection of mind and body.
WORKS CITED:
Atkins, P.W. with J. de Paula. Physical Chemistry. 8th edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Billing, Christian M. “Shakespeare Performed: The Roman Tragedies.” Shakespeare Quarterly 61.3 (2010): 415-439.
"
"Never anxious about artistic ‘borrowing,’ Tennessee Williams reputedly considered himself heir to this perennial practice as he lavishly ‘littered’ his own ‘original’ works with overt and covert references to literary luminaries from... more
"Never anxious about artistic ‘borrowing,’ Tennessee Williams reputedly considered himself heir to this perennial practice as he lavishly ‘littered’ his own ‘original’ works with overt and covert references to literary luminaries from past and present (Debusscher, 1997). And yet, it is safe to say that much of his cultural renown is due to his ‘unique’ artistic sensitivity.
However, with one fellow artist this barefaced borrowing takes on a reciprocal turn – nurtured by a shared fascination with the mythological figure of Orpheus (Kontaxopoulos, 2001), an ambitious adaptation of Streetcar by one of them (Lieber, 2005), an equally shared admiration by and fascination for the actress Tallulah Bankhead (Debusscher, 1982), and finally a conspicuous copying of significant chunks from The Eagle Has Two Heads by the other (ibid.). Indeed, the artistic interactions between Tennessee Williams and the French paragon of modernism Jean Cocteau strike by their repeated returns.
This paper therefore ambitions to pick up where leading Williams scholar Gilbert Debusscher’s analysis about the impact of Cocteau’s Eagle on The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore left off thirty years ago. By both retracing the intricacies of their mutual influences while assessing the stylistic and semiotic means with which these came into being, it purports to present an analogy-based reassessment of the Williams-Cocteau interchange and of the so-called ‘problem of influence’ alike. After all, as argued by Harold Bloom in his landmark study The Anxiety of Influence, claims pertaining to this notion must be embedded in analogy-based reasoning because the very integration of influences into an aesthetic sensitivity constitutes a fundamental part of the lifecycle of an artist as artist (Bloom, 1997). Accordingly, the ‘impure’ concept of influence paradoxically becomes a rare credible means of gauging the ‘original’ contributions of Williams and Cocteau to today’s globalized cultural context.
WORKS CITED:
Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. 2nd edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997 [1973].
Debusscher, Gilbert. “Creative Rewriting: European and American Influences on the Dramas of Tennessee Williams.” The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams. Ed. Matthew C. Roudané. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. 167-188.
-----. “French Stowaways on an American Milk Train: Williams, Cocteau, and Payrefitte.” Modern Drama 25.3 (1982): 399-408.
Kontaxopoulos, Jean. “Orpheus Introspecting: Tennessee Williams and Jean Cocteau.” Tennessee Williams Annual Review 5 (2001): 1-28.
Lieber, Gérard. “La question de l’adaptation: L’exemple d’Un Tramway nommé Désir.” Jean Cocteau: 40 ans après. Ed. Pierre Caizergues. Montpellier: Montpellier III Paul-Valéry UP, 2005. 153-169.
"
However, with one fellow artist this barefaced borrowing takes on a reciprocal turn – nurtured by a shared fascination with the mythological figure of Orpheus (Kontaxopoulos, 2001), an ambitious adaptation of Streetcar by one of them (Lieber, 2005), an equally shared admiration by and fascination for the actress Tallulah Bankhead (Debusscher, 1982), and finally a conspicuous copying of significant chunks from The Eagle Has Two Heads by the other (ibid.). Indeed, the artistic interactions between Tennessee Williams and the French paragon of modernism Jean Cocteau strike by their repeated returns.
This paper therefore ambitions to pick up where leading Williams scholar Gilbert Debusscher’s analysis about the impact of Cocteau’s Eagle on The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore left off thirty years ago. By both retracing the intricacies of their mutual influences while assessing the stylistic and semiotic means with which these came into being, it purports to present an analogy-based reassessment of the Williams-Cocteau interchange and of the so-called ‘problem of influence’ alike. After all, as argued by Harold Bloom in his landmark study The Anxiety of Influence, claims pertaining to this notion must be embedded in analogy-based reasoning because the very integration of influences into an aesthetic sensitivity constitutes a fundamental part of the lifecycle of an artist as artist (Bloom, 1997). Accordingly, the ‘impure’ concept of influence paradoxically becomes a rare credible means of gauging the ‘original’ contributions of Williams and Cocteau to today’s globalized cultural context.
WORKS CITED:
Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. 2nd edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997 [1973].
Debusscher, Gilbert. “Creative Rewriting: European and American Influences on the Dramas of Tennessee Williams.” The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams. Ed. Matthew C. Roudané. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. 167-188.
-----. “French Stowaways on an American Milk Train: Williams, Cocteau, and Payrefitte.” Modern Drama 25.3 (1982): 399-408.
Kontaxopoulos, Jean. “Orpheus Introspecting: Tennessee Williams and Jean Cocteau.” Tennessee Williams Annual Review 5 (2001): 1-28.
Lieber, Gérard. “La question de l’adaptation: L’exemple d’Un Tramway nommé Désir.” Jean Cocteau: 40 ans après. Ed. Pierre Caizergues. Montpellier: Montpellier III Paul-Valéry UP, 2005. 153-169.
"
This course module is geared towards acquainting students with self-reflexive modes of theatre production from past till present via the dual prisms of cognition and technology. The perspective so offered arguably allows to assimilate key... more
This course module is geared towards acquainting students with self-reflexive modes of theatre production from past till present via the dual prisms of cognition and technology. The perspective so offered arguably allows to assimilate key constituents of metatheatrical practice from a common basis rooted in strategies of signification, over their conceptual concretization, to their materialization on stage. Finally, the course format should allow for the independent formulation of both an original research- and practice-led project that address and illustrate (at least) one of the dimensions of theatrical self-reflexivity under scrutiny.
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o OBJECTIVES: This course module studies, in general terms, the diversity of fiction in English, discusses some of the most significant literary-historical concepts and literary terms, and is specifically geared towards introducing... more
o OBJECTIVES: This course module studies, in general terms, the diversity of fiction in English, discusses some of the most significant literary-historical concepts and literary terms, and is specifically geared towards introducing students to the pluri-disciplinary artistic phenomenon 'Harlem Renaissance.' This early twentieth-century movement, which marked the intellectual and artistic emancipation of African Americans, coincided with the development of international modernism, and hence proved historically and aesthetically far more relevant than its ethnic orientation alone might suggest. Throughout this module we will become acquainted with the historical context of the period and its literary developments via introductions to the Harlem Renaissance's key figures, texts, and innovations. This should result in a layered perspective on the interrelation of ideas, art forms, and politics.
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During a prolific career spanning four decades David Mamet has attained a rare degree of popular and critical success in a wide array of artistic ‘disciplines.’ At the same time, his omnipresence starkly contrasts with the extensive,... more
During a prolific career spanning four decades David Mamet has attained a rare degree of popular and critical success in a wide array of artistic ‘disciplines.’ At the same time, his omnipresence starkly contrasts with the extensive, though mostly one-sided scholarly attention his work has received for over a quarter of a century. Indeed, only a small fraction of the secondary literature addresses the interrelations between these various ventures, and if so with but limited theorizing involved. Therefore the present study aspires to fill a gap in the extant Mamet-criticism by confronting the findings of close readings with a progressive, yet non-causal argument ‘disciplined’ by the interplay of concept and object. It is believed that without such in-built reassessments little justice can be done to the meandering quality of David Mamet’s work, not to mention its wider artistic implications.
For the very reason that artwork, medium, and meaning are inextricably entwined, mediation and perception constitute two sides of one and the same cognitive coin. In the postmodern context of a cultural complex where fields or ‘disciplines’ hybridize and distinctions crumble, where the last remnants of ‘truth’ are assaulted from within, and where methods increasingly admit to their own powerlessness, a semiological perspective inspired by the heuristic qualities of the analogy-principle allows for ‘functional,’ though non-reductive readings of the necessarily elusive means of ‘meaning making.’ After all, with so many communicative media to be covered, a common denominator imposes itself. The product of intuitive associations, analogies are ‘scandalous’ semiotic phenomena capable of integrating an unlimited number of signifying systems. Hence the semiotic excess generated by the essentially functional interconnection of the different analogical vehicles can be repurposed for epistemological ends.
But since this is first and foremost a critical study of David Mamet’s work across different media and genres, and the elaboration of a semiological model a not so distant second, the primary ‘epistemological’ objective concerns a better understanding of the artist’s chief artistic tenets (Chapter 2). Along the proposed ‘loopish’ feedback model of gradual and reciprocal refinement funnelled by a ‘superobjective,’ to use terminology coined by cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter in his I Am A Stange Loop (2007), then, the study’s following main focal point translates as a diachronic take on the technical evolution of the artist’s work, intra- as well as trans-medially (Chapter 3). Once the applied and more media-oriented ‘epistemology is in place, Chapter 4 then (re-) conceptualizes the inter-medial creations, relations, and transfers that inform a significant part of Mamet’s artistic output – once again as part of the overall argument, and as verification of the preceding chapters. Chapter 5, finally, wraps up this ‘semiological spiral’ with an analogously structured reassessment of the study’s various stages: from David Mamet’s aesthetic, through his work’s artistic impact and influences, to its meta-artistic and philosophical relevance for contemporary cultural studies.
For the very reason that artwork, medium, and meaning are inextricably entwined, mediation and perception constitute two sides of one and the same cognitive coin. In the postmodern context of a cultural complex where fields or ‘disciplines’ hybridize and distinctions crumble, where the last remnants of ‘truth’ are assaulted from within, and where methods increasingly admit to their own powerlessness, a semiological perspective inspired by the heuristic qualities of the analogy-principle allows for ‘functional,’ though non-reductive readings of the necessarily elusive means of ‘meaning making.’ After all, with so many communicative media to be covered, a common denominator imposes itself. The product of intuitive associations, analogies are ‘scandalous’ semiotic phenomena capable of integrating an unlimited number of signifying systems. Hence the semiotic excess generated by the essentially functional interconnection of the different analogical vehicles can be repurposed for epistemological ends.
But since this is first and foremost a critical study of David Mamet’s work across different media and genres, and the elaboration of a semiological model a not so distant second, the primary ‘epistemological’ objective concerns a better understanding of the artist’s chief artistic tenets (Chapter 2). Along the proposed ‘loopish’ feedback model of gradual and reciprocal refinement funnelled by a ‘superobjective,’ to use terminology coined by cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter in his I Am A Stange Loop (2007), then, the study’s following main focal point translates as a diachronic take on the technical evolution of the artist’s work, intra- as well as trans-medially (Chapter 3). Once the applied and more media-oriented ‘epistemology is in place, Chapter 4 then (re-) conceptualizes the inter-medial creations, relations, and transfers that inform a significant part of Mamet’s artistic output – once again as part of the overall argument, and as verification of the preceding chapters. Chapter 5, finally, wraps up this ‘semiological spiral’ with an analogously structured reassessment of the study’s various stages: from David Mamet’s aesthetic, through his work’s artistic impact and influences, to its meta-artistic and philosophical relevance for contemporary cultural studies.
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Les quatre longs métrages (à ce jour) de Jaco Van Dormael se caractérisent tous par une tentative de réparation du tragique inhérent à l'existence. Dans chacun des films surgissent des visions de ce qui n'est pas ou n'est plus ou de ce... more
Les quatre longs métrages (à ce jour) de Jaco Van Dormael se caractérisent tous par une tentative de réparation du tragique inhérent à l'existence. Dans chacun des films surgissent des visions de ce qui n'est pas ou n'est plus ou de ce qui demeure caché. Ces visions sont ostensiblement de plusieurs natures : rêves éveillés, rêveries, hallucinations, souvenirs fantasmés, fantasmes issus de désirs ou de regrets, projections narratives, etc. Cet article se donne pour but de comprendre en quoi ces visions et apparitions forment un ensemble cohérent et ce qu'elles dévoilent au spectateur.