Philip Auslander | Georgia Institute of Technology (original) (raw)

Papers by Philip Auslander

Presence and theatricality in the discourse of performance and the visual arts

From Acting to Performance, 2002

Introduction: Disability studies in commotion with performance studies

Vito Acconci and the politics of the body in postmodern performance

JUST BE YOUR SELF" : Logocentrism and difference in performance theory

PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, 2017

What defines a digital performance? Where does it happen, who might be involved, and what does it... more What defines a digital performance? Where does it happen, who might be involved, and what does it evoke? How can we develop those specific qualities further? This course will discuss various aspects of digital performance through readings, discussions, and a final hands-on project. It will not follow a historical approach but instead focus on critical discussions of key qualities and opportunities that open up in the merging of digital technology with performance art. To facilitate these discussions, the course first looks at the components of such a performance, from actors to technology to audiences. Then, we will investigate the operations and effects of such a performance, from new practices to roles of participants and experiences. Finally, students will exemplify core elements from these discussions in an end-ofterm digital performance project. If you are interested in expression through performance, in critical discussions that bridge media studies with HCI and Performance Studies, and in experimenting with digital media, then this course might be for you. The course has no single textbook and all readings will be provided online. Learning Outcomes for LMC: Textual/Visual Analysis: Students will learn to read, analyze, and interpret not only cultural projects such as film, literature, art, and new media, but also scientific and technical documents.

The Body and the Screen: Theories of Internet Spectatorship (review)

Theatre Journal, 2009

ry” models of audience, the hugely important task for theatre and performance theoreticians is to... more ry” models of audience, the hugely important task for theatre and performance theoreticians is to explain what such a statement exemplifies: the new demands and expectations for more direct and immersive varieties of audience involvement at the scene of performance. Despite the salience of such concerns to performance studies, however, as of yet there have been few studies that aim at addressing the task at hand.

“Nothing Is Real”

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2016

L’Annuaire théâtral: Revue québécoise d’études théâtrales, 2001

Dans notre culture médiatisée, toute distinction qui existait entre événement en direct et événem... more Dans notre culture médiatisée, toute distinction qui existait entre événement en direct et événement médiatisé s’estompe, puisque l’interprétation en direct ressemble de plus en plus aux spectacles médiatisés. On le voit dans l’intrusion des technologies des médias dans toute une gamme d’événements en direct, et notamment au théâtre. On le voit aussi dans les cas où les événements en direct récréent les événements médiatisés. Dans ces cas, l’interprétation « originale » en direct n’est plus privilégiée par rapport à l’adaptation médiatisée : celle-ci est devenue le référent de celle-là.

Performance, Vermarktung und Authentizität in der populären Musik

From Acting to Performance

Aménagement des aires de livraison. Guide pour leur quantification, leur localisation et leur dim... more Aménagement des aires de livraison. Guide pour leur quantification, leur localisation et leur dimensionnement (Références CERTU N° 93, une voirie pour tous, sécurité et cohabitation sur la voie publique au-delà des conflits d'usage) L'aire de livraison est l'outil de logistique ...

International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 2005

Listening Post, a collaboration between statistician Mark Hansen and media artist Ben Rubin, samp... more Listening Post, a collaboration between statistician Mark Hansen and media artist Ben Rubin, samples conversations from public Internet chat sites. The sampled texts are displayed on small LCD screens while an artificial voice reads them aloud. The installation also generates music algorithmically from the data it samples. There are many ways one could describe or categorize Listening Post: as a highly specialized computer, as an electronic sculpture, or as an installation, for example. In some of my recent work I consider the implications of calling such pieces performances. To create a context for a discussion of Listening Post, I briefly summarize some of my thinking on performances by machines with particular attention to the questions raised by identifying machines as performers and the issue of liveness in performance. You walk into a dark, quiet room. Suspended from the ceiling are pairs of wires from which hang over 200 tiny screens. The screens are stacked above one another between the wires, like ladders; collectively they form a grid. Against a background of New Age-sounding music, sentences flash onto the screens one by one. A synthetic male voice with a vaguely British accent reads each sentence out loud as it appears on a screen, occasionally mispronouncing an idiomatic word. When the grid is full, the process starts afresh. The environment is restful and meditative; the ever-changing spoken and written messages are alternately touching, amusing, and disturbing. This is Listening Post, a collaboration between statistician Mark Hansen and media artist Ben Rubin, which I saw at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City (17 December 2002-9 March 2003). It samples conversations from public Internet chat sites then sorts and displays the results according to variable criteria: 'sometimes passages are chosen for their common length, other times for a shared subject, word, or turn of phrase' (Griffin 2002). When you enter the room, you may see and hear sentences that all begin with 'I love' ('I love you', 'I love meat', 'I love chatting'); at another moment, you may be offered numerous meditations on an entirely different subject or no single subject at all. The installation also generates music algorithmically from the data it samples. There are many ways one could describe or categorize Listening Post: as a highly specialized computer, as an electronic sculpture, or as an installation, for example. In some of my recent work (Auslander 2002a, 2002b, 5

Everybody's in Show Biz: Performing Star Identity in Popular Music

The SAGE Handbook of Popular Music, 2015

Music as Performance: Living in the Immaterial World

Theatre Survey, 2006

As a performance scholar and music lover, I find it strange that the fields of theatre and perfor... more As a performance scholar and music lover, I find it strange that the fields of theatre and performance studies historically have been reluctant to engage with musical performance. Even as theatrical a musical form as opera is generally excluded from the history of theatre, on the grounds that “the predominant force in opera was the music rather than the words,” as Vera Mowry Roberts, my theatre history professor, puts the case.1 Roberts points to the nonliterary character of music as the reason for the exclusion; I speculate that the perception of music not only as nonliterary but, more broadly, as nonmimetic may seem to place it outside the realm of theatrical representation. While performance-oriented scholars spurn music, music-oriented scholars generally spurn performance. Traditional musicologists remain focused on the textual dimensions of musical compositions, whereas scholars who look at music from the perspective of cultural studies are generally more concerned with audienc...

‘Holy Theatre’ and Catharsis

Theatre Research International, 1984

The Cradle Will Rock

Theatre Journal, 1983

The Eye of Prey: Subversions of the Postmodern

Theatre Journal, 1988

An academic directory and search engine.

TDR/The Drama Review, 2006

Milly S. Barranger's biography of Margaret Webster (1905-1972) is a straightforward, detailed rep... more Milly S. Barranger's biography of Margaret Webster (1905-1972) is a straightforward, detailed reportage on the mid-20th-century director/actor's hardworking life in the theatre. The only child of British actors Dame May Whitty and Ben Webster, Webster was a product of the "born in a trunk" upbringing common to theatre families. She launched her career as a young character actress in Britain. After a series of fortunate if somewhat accidental events, Webster landed her first job as a theatre director in Britain, and went on to gain prominence as a director of stage classics in the United States. In the 1940s, her productions of Shakespeare's less-produced history plays (Henry VIII, Richard II), as well as the more popular tragedies (Macbeth, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet), attracted the attention and approval of mainstream audiences and critics across the U.S. Webster made her name directing for the Broadway stage, the Metropolitan and New York City Operas, as well as for numerous "bus and truck" touring companies, including the short-lived Margaret Webster Shakespeare Company. She was pioneering in her risky, radical choice to cast black actors in classical productions in the early 1940s (including Paul Robeson as Othello); in the late 1940s, with Eva Le Gallienne and Cheryl Crawford, she established the illfated American Repertory Theatre, which was dedicated to producing seasons of classics. Throughout her career, Webster took on challenging acting roles in addition to directing and producing.

Going with the Flow: Performance Art and Mass Culture

TDR (1988-), 1989

These two quotations encapsulate virtually the entire history of Ameri-can performance art over t... more These two quotations encapsulate virtually the entire history of Ameri-can performance art over the last 20 years or so, the transition from the generation of conceptual performers to what Goldberg has called "the media generation" of performers (1988). Whereas the earlier generation ...

Legally Live: Performance in/of the Law

TDR (1988-), 1997

In thinking about performance in relation to American law, I choose to focus on copyright and the... more In thinking about performance in relation to American law, I choose to focus on copyright and the law of evidence because these branches of jurisprudence address that relationship most immediately. Copyright governs the ownership and circulation of cultural objects and therefore determines the conditions under which performance participates in a commodity economy. As such, it is the branch of jurisprudence that deals most directly with the status of performance in the law. Evidence law regulates "the proof used to persuade on fact questions at the trial of a lawsuit" (Rothstein 1981:I); it therefore sets conditions that regulate the conduct of trials as performances of the law. I want here to survey statutes and decisions that shed light on both performance's status in the law and the nature of legal proceedings as performance. Although copyright and evidence are separate areas of law, considering them in relation to performance reveals that memory is a thematic common to both, perhaps the central thematic of law generally. Using the thematic of memory as a pivot point, my analysis moves from a consideration of performance in relation to copyright to a discussion of what the rules of evidence tell us about legal proceedings as performance. In so doing, it also moves from considering performance primarily in terms of cultural economy to questions that touch on what Peggy Phelan calls "the ontology of performance" (1993:146-66).

Task and Vision: Willem Dafoe in "L. S. D

The Drama Review: TDR, 1985

Presence and theatricality in the discourse of performance and the visual arts

From Acting to Performance, 2002

Introduction: Disability studies in commotion with performance studies

Vito Acconci and the politics of the body in postmodern performance

JUST BE YOUR SELF" : Logocentrism and difference in performance theory

PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, 2017

What defines a digital performance? Where does it happen, who might be involved, and what does it... more What defines a digital performance? Where does it happen, who might be involved, and what does it evoke? How can we develop those specific qualities further? This course will discuss various aspects of digital performance through readings, discussions, and a final hands-on project. It will not follow a historical approach but instead focus on critical discussions of key qualities and opportunities that open up in the merging of digital technology with performance art. To facilitate these discussions, the course first looks at the components of such a performance, from actors to technology to audiences. Then, we will investigate the operations and effects of such a performance, from new practices to roles of participants and experiences. Finally, students will exemplify core elements from these discussions in an end-ofterm digital performance project. If you are interested in expression through performance, in critical discussions that bridge media studies with HCI and Performance Studies, and in experimenting with digital media, then this course might be for you. The course has no single textbook and all readings will be provided online. Learning Outcomes for LMC: Textual/Visual Analysis: Students will learn to read, analyze, and interpret not only cultural projects such as film, literature, art, and new media, but also scientific and technical documents.

The Body and the Screen: Theories of Internet Spectatorship (review)

Theatre Journal, 2009

ry” models of audience, the hugely important task for theatre and performance theoreticians is to... more ry” models of audience, the hugely important task for theatre and performance theoreticians is to explain what such a statement exemplifies: the new demands and expectations for more direct and immersive varieties of audience involvement at the scene of performance. Despite the salience of such concerns to performance studies, however, as of yet there have been few studies that aim at addressing the task at hand.

“Nothing Is Real”

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2016

L’Annuaire théâtral: Revue québécoise d’études théâtrales, 2001

Dans notre culture médiatisée, toute distinction qui existait entre événement en direct et événem... more Dans notre culture médiatisée, toute distinction qui existait entre événement en direct et événement médiatisé s’estompe, puisque l’interprétation en direct ressemble de plus en plus aux spectacles médiatisés. On le voit dans l’intrusion des technologies des médias dans toute une gamme d’événements en direct, et notamment au théâtre. On le voit aussi dans les cas où les événements en direct récréent les événements médiatisés. Dans ces cas, l’interprétation « originale » en direct n’est plus privilégiée par rapport à l’adaptation médiatisée : celle-ci est devenue le référent de celle-là.

Performance, Vermarktung und Authentizität in der populären Musik

From Acting to Performance

Aménagement des aires de livraison. Guide pour leur quantification, leur localisation et leur dim... more Aménagement des aires de livraison. Guide pour leur quantification, leur localisation et leur dimensionnement (Références CERTU N° 93, une voirie pour tous, sécurité et cohabitation sur la voie publique au-delà des conflits d'usage) L'aire de livraison est l'outil de logistique ...

International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 2005

Listening Post, a collaboration between statistician Mark Hansen and media artist Ben Rubin, samp... more Listening Post, a collaboration between statistician Mark Hansen and media artist Ben Rubin, samples conversations from public Internet chat sites. The sampled texts are displayed on small LCD screens while an artificial voice reads them aloud. The installation also generates music algorithmically from the data it samples. There are many ways one could describe or categorize Listening Post: as a highly specialized computer, as an electronic sculpture, or as an installation, for example. In some of my recent work I consider the implications of calling such pieces performances. To create a context for a discussion of Listening Post, I briefly summarize some of my thinking on performances by machines with particular attention to the questions raised by identifying machines as performers and the issue of liveness in performance. You walk into a dark, quiet room. Suspended from the ceiling are pairs of wires from which hang over 200 tiny screens. The screens are stacked above one another between the wires, like ladders; collectively they form a grid. Against a background of New Age-sounding music, sentences flash onto the screens one by one. A synthetic male voice with a vaguely British accent reads each sentence out loud as it appears on a screen, occasionally mispronouncing an idiomatic word. When the grid is full, the process starts afresh. The environment is restful and meditative; the ever-changing spoken and written messages are alternately touching, amusing, and disturbing. This is Listening Post, a collaboration between statistician Mark Hansen and media artist Ben Rubin, which I saw at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City (17 December 2002-9 March 2003). It samples conversations from public Internet chat sites then sorts and displays the results according to variable criteria: 'sometimes passages are chosen for their common length, other times for a shared subject, word, or turn of phrase' (Griffin 2002). When you enter the room, you may see and hear sentences that all begin with 'I love' ('I love you', 'I love meat', 'I love chatting'); at another moment, you may be offered numerous meditations on an entirely different subject or no single subject at all. The installation also generates music algorithmically from the data it samples. There are many ways one could describe or categorize Listening Post: as a highly specialized computer, as an electronic sculpture, or as an installation, for example. In some of my recent work (Auslander 2002a, 2002b, 5

Everybody's in Show Biz: Performing Star Identity in Popular Music

The SAGE Handbook of Popular Music, 2015

Music as Performance: Living in the Immaterial World

Theatre Survey, 2006

As a performance scholar and music lover, I find it strange that the fields of theatre and perfor... more As a performance scholar and music lover, I find it strange that the fields of theatre and performance studies historically have been reluctant to engage with musical performance. Even as theatrical a musical form as opera is generally excluded from the history of theatre, on the grounds that “the predominant force in opera was the music rather than the words,” as Vera Mowry Roberts, my theatre history professor, puts the case.1 Roberts points to the nonliterary character of music as the reason for the exclusion; I speculate that the perception of music not only as nonliterary but, more broadly, as nonmimetic may seem to place it outside the realm of theatrical representation. While performance-oriented scholars spurn music, music-oriented scholars generally spurn performance. Traditional musicologists remain focused on the textual dimensions of musical compositions, whereas scholars who look at music from the perspective of cultural studies are generally more concerned with audienc...

‘Holy Theatre’ and Catharsis

Theatre Research International, 1984

The Cradle Will Rock

Theatre Journal, 1983

The Eye of Prey: Subversions of the Postmodern

Theatre Journal, 1988

An academic directory and search engine.

TDR/The Drama Review, 2006

Milly S. Barranger's biography of Margaret Webster (1905-1972) is a straightforward, detailed rep... more Milly S. Barranger's biography of Margaret Webster (1905-1972) is a straightforward, detailed reportage on the mid-20th-century director/actor's hardworking life in the theatre. The only child of British actors Dame May Whitty and Ben Webster, Webster was a product of the "born in a trunk" upbringing common to theatre families. She launched her career as a young character actress in Britain. After a series of fortunate if somewhat accidental events, Webster landed her first job as a theatre director in Britain, and went on to gain prominence as a director of stage classics in the United States. In the 1940s, her productions of Shakespeare's less-produced history plays (Henry VIII, Richard II), as well as the more popular tragedies (Macbeth, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet), attracted the attention and approval of mainstream audiences and critics across the U.S. Webster made her name directing for the Broadway stage, the Metropolitan and New York City Operas, as well as for numerous "bus and truck" touring companies, including the short-lived Margaret Webster Shakespeare Company. She was pioneering in her risky, radical choice to cast black actors in classical productions in the early 1940s (including Paul Robeson as Othello); in the late 1940s, with Eva Le Gallienne and Cheryl Crawford, she established the illfated American Repertory Theatre, which was dedicated to producing seasons of classics. Throughout her career, Webster took on challenging acting roles in addition to directing and producing.

Going with the Flow: Performance Art and Mass Culture

TDR (1988-), 1989

These two quotations encapsulate virtually the entire history of Ameri-can performance art over t... more These two quotations encapsulate virtually the entire history of Ameri-can performance art over the last 20 years or so, the transition from the generation of conceptual performers to what Goldberg has called "the media generation" of performers (1988). Whereas the earlier generation ...

Legally Live: Performance in/of the Law

TDR (1988-), 1997

In thinking about performance in relation to American law, I choose to focus on copyright and the... more In thinking about performance in relation to American law, I choose to focus on copyright and the law of evidence because these branches of jurisprudence address that relationship most immediately. Copyright governs the ownership and circulation of cultural objects and therefore determines the conditions under which performance participates in a commodity economy. As such, it is the branch of jurisprudence that deals most directly with the status of performance in the law. Evidence law regulates "the proof used to persuade on fact questions at the trial of a lawsuit" (Rothstein 1981:I); it therefore sets conditions that regulate the conduct of trials as performances of the law. I want here to survey statutes and decisions that shed light on both performance's status in the law and the nature of legal proceedings as performance. Although copyright and evidence are separate areas of law, considering them in relation to performance reveals that memory is a thematic common to both, perhaps the central thematic of law generally. Using the thematic of memory as a pivot point, my analysis moves from a consideration of performance in relation to copyright to a discussion of what the rules of evidence tell us about legal proceedings as performance. In so doing, it also moves from considering performance primarily in terms of cultural economy to questions that touch on what Peggy Phelan calls "the ontology of performance" (1993:146-66).

Task and Vision: Willem Dafoe in "L. S. D

The Drama Review: TDR, 1985

Representing the output of the research project "Performance: Conservation, Materiality, Knowledg... more Representing the output of the research project "Performance: Conservation, Materiality, Knowledge," this second and final volume in the series Performance: The Ethics and the Politics of Conservation and Care brings together diverse voices, methods, and formats in the discussion and practice of performance conservation.

Conservators, artists, curators and scholars explore the ontology of performance art through its creation and institutionalization into an astonishing range of methods and approaches for keeping performance alive and well, whether inside museum collections or through folk traditions. Anchored in the disciplines of contemporary art conservation, art history, and performance studies, the contributions range far beyond these to include perspectives from anthropology, musicology, dance, law, heritage studies, and other fields. While its focus is on performance as understood in the context of contemporary art, the book’s notion of performance is much wider, including other media such as music, theater, and dance as well as an open-ended concept of performance as a vital force across culture(s).

While providing cutting-edge research on an emerging and important topic, this volume remains accessible to all interested readers, allowing it to serve as a singularly valuable resource for museum professionals, scholars, students, and practitioners. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003467809/performance-hanna-h%C3%B6lling-jules-pelta-feldman-emilie-magnin

From acting to performance: essays in modernism and postmodernism

SUBJECT MENTORING IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL Student teachers have always worked with professionals ... more SUBJECT MENTORING IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL Student teachers have always worked with professionals during their teaching practice, but as teacher training becomes more school based, the role of the mentor has become much more important. Even newer is the ...

Liveness: Performance in a mediatized culture

LIVENESS Reviews of the first edition: “Wide-ranging and deeply absorbing . . . a first point of re... more LIVENESS Reviews of the first edition: “Wide-ranging and deeply absorbing . . . a first point of reference for anyone interested in the meaning and prospects of performance in the contemporary world.” – Steven Connor, Birkbeck College, London “marvellously rigorous in its ...

Presence and resistance: postmodernism and cultural politics in contemporary American performance

An academic directory and search engine.

Chang and Eng Bunker, known to nineteenth-century pop culture mavens as "The Siamese Twins," were... more Chang and Eng Bunker, known to nineteenth-century pop culture mavens as "The Siamese Twins," were said to have enjoyed playing a particular trick on railway conductors. Despite their fame and considerable fortune, and their carefully-tailored double overcoat, the brothers were reputed to be frugal; when traveling by rail, they would purchase a single ticket and calmly take their seats. When the conductor approached and asked for tickets, Chang dutifully handed his over; Eng would be forced to admit that he had none. The conductor would threaten to put Eng off the train, whereupon the brothers fl ung back the coat, revealing their famous conjunction. Chang, feigning outrage, would threaten to sue the railroad for breach of contract if he, a paying customer, were refused passage along with his brother (Pingree 97). So intrigued was Mark Twain by the confusion Chang and Eng could engender that he wrote a comic character study of conjoined twins into his novel Puddin'head Wilson (1893), in which one twin (a teetotaler) could argue against unlawful incarceration for his alcoholic brother's actions while intoxicated. In both cases, the twins in question, with bodies that defy conventional understandings of what constitutes Self and Other, could through their careful performance expose that binary as artifi cial and insuffi cient, and thereby subvert legislation based on such assumptions. Although the fi rst anecdote is likely as apocryphal as the second, it nevertheless serves as a practical introduction to the sociopolitical performativity of disability, and an acknowledgement of how a savvy operator (that is, a self-conscious actor) can capitalize upon the jouissance of the socially-constructed identity to radically alter its perception, and, as a side-effect, to create quite a commotion.