Live Performance as a Multiverse: From the present moment to the transverse effect (original) (raw)
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Performing phenomenology: Negotiating presence in intermedial theatre
Foundations of Science, 2011
This paper analyzes from a pragmatic postphenomenological point of view the performative practice of CREW, a multi-disciplinary team of artists and researchers. It is our argument that this company, in its use of new immersive technologies in the context of a live stage, gives rise to a dialectics between an embodied and a disembodied perspective towards the perceived world. We will focus on W (Double U), a collaborative interactive performance, where immersive technology is used for live exchange of vision. By means of a head mounted omni-directional camera and display the fields of vision of two participants are swapped, which enables the participants to perceive the world through another person's point of view. This intermedial experience brings a classic dichotomic perception of space to falter: material reality as a 'live' condition can no longer be opposed to a virtual mediated reality. In the shifting moment between the embodied and the perceived world, on the fracture between what one sees and what one feels, the distinction between live and mediated is blurred, moreover, can no longer be made. The perception of the body is pushed to the extreme, causing a most confusing corporal awareness, a condition that intensifies the experience and causes an altered sense of presence. In a dynamic cognitive negotiation, one tends, however, to unify the divergent ontologies of the 'real' and the 'virtual' to a meaningful experience. In this respect, we refer to recent neurological experiments such as the 'rubber hand illusion' in order to clarify the spectator's tendency to fuse both ontologies and to embody a coherent image-world.
Dramatic Space and Performer ’ s Body , a Case Study (2015)
Studia Dramatica UBB, 2015
Mediated images alter the perception of the real, then again, they emphasize themselves in a dynamic manner arising critical attitude, for they compel the spectator to consider all the images entering his/her visual field, and to integrate them into his/her own reference system. As recorded images offer the possibility of simultaneous representation of parts of actors’ bodies, an interaction between virtual images and real / optical images occurs, interaction which, whether demonstrates itself compulsory, acquires a powerful dramatic finality, since the existence of a viable relation between the stage images, either virtual or real, is a sine qua non dramatic condition.
The paper explains how ‘dys-appearance’ (Leder 1990) as a mode of embodiment identifies with doubleness and alterity in mixed-media theatre. In Petros Sevastikoglou’s production of Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis (Empros Theatre, Athens 2003), the dynamic co-existence of selfhood and otherness is expressed through the process of ‘reversibility’; in a sense both physical and technological entities are divided and then reunited building up a cohesive mixed-media event. Self as one side of the Other and technological body as the other facet of the physical compose a ‘chiasmic’ (Merleau-Ponty 1964) experience on stage.
This paper provides an interpretation of the play Feng šus v gledališču brez igralca (Feng Shui in the Theatre without an Actor). The play’s distinct characteristic is the absence of the performer’s phenomenal body. The author thematises, using Erika Fischer-Lichte’s typology of the performing bodies, a unique relationship between the present semiotic and the absent phenomenal body of the performer on the one hand and the present phenomenal and semiotic body of the spectator on the other hand. In addition, he also uses elements of Eviatar Zerubavel’s cognitive sociology (meaning as a social relation between signifier and signified) and Tim Dant’s theory of material culture (the significance of an artwork as the mediating object in communication process). The author describes and explains how during the play, the spectator cognitively makes a substitution of the absent performer’s phenomenal body using her own phenomenal body, which gives new connotations to Edward Gordon Craig’s visionary statement about the theatre without use of a written play or actors.
Brazilian Journal on Presence Studies , 2020
In this paper, the so-called Crisis of Representation is discussed as a hallmark of Western Theatre and Modernity. The key hypothesis of overcoming such a crisis is investigated through the emergence of a performative turn, in which performance is understood in a broader sense derived from Performance Studies. To address this, the paper builds on authors such as Artaud, Derrida, Heidegger, Gumbrecht and Féral for a general theoretical background, and on the work of authors such as Cull, Street and others for a more specific approach concerning the field of Performance Philosophy. This paper argues that a philosophical turn in Performance Studies has happened through a radicalization of ‘Presence’.
Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, 2019
Theatre has a unique and peculiar relation to reality. While rooted in conventions of creating imaginary worlds and fictional characters, it can never hide its artificiality, and while evolving towards the 'real' here and now of performance art, it cannot shake off the theatrical and aesthetic framing devices that constitute the performative act in the first place. Such dialectical relationships have inspired many theatre scholars and are also at the heart of Campbell Edinborough's Theatrical Reality: Space, Embodiment and Empathy in Performance. This book is an engaging and original exploration of the many ways in which reality takes shape in the theatre, where each chapter twists our understanding of the 'nature' of theatrical reality, and related assumptions of how spectators experience reality. Although a familiar subject, Edinborough explicitly approaches the topic from a phenomenologically inspired perspective, asking how spectatorial engagement with bodies and spaces facilitates empathy. He sees theatre, in fact, as "a technology for producing empathic relationships" (46). While attending to the spectator's experience, the book refreshingly opts for a practitioners' point of view, focusing on how these experiences are created, and (thus) attends to the close connection between scenography and dramaturgy. Standing in line with the phenomenological inquiries of Bert O. States, and Stanton B. Garner's still inspiring Bodied Spaces (1994), both of whom are briefly mentioned by Edinborough, Theatrical Reality shows a similar affinity with bodies in/and spaces, yet attends less to dramatic theatre and embraces postmodern dance, immersive theatre and performance art instead. The book takes off with a thoughtful analysis of Peter Brook's famous opening lines in The Empty Space, and although analysed a thousand times, the author manages to evoke a specific sensitivity for the shared spaces in performance, where 'sharing' not only involves performers and spectators, but also relates to the polyphonic ways in which physical space, mental space and social space encounter one another. It is this alchemy that every theatre maker, experienced visitor and performance scholar knows intimately, but which is nevertheless hard to put into words. Edinborough takes Brook's observation as an invitation for audi