Aktuelles Sommer 2015
Öffentliche Ringvorlesung "Forensische Ästhetik: Interdisziplinäre Betrachtungen" des Graduiertenkollegs „Sichtbarkeit & Sichtbarmachung“ mit James Frieze
James Frieze: Is Paradise A Crime Scene? Participatory Performance and the Forensic Turn
Contemporary theatre, like much of contemporary culture, is obsessed with evidence, with means of detection, with the processing and circulation of information. In theatre, this obsession manifests itself as an investment in the procedural endeavour required to unmask reality. Culturally, this turn to the forensic can be situated as the latest reaction against a steady erosion of epistemological certainties. Questions about how we see and how we know are shepherded, in the forensic turn, to questions of how we verify. The age of information is, more precisely, an age of evidence, in which everything must be legibly verified. These imperatives fuel intense questioning of the boundaries of privacy, the ideology of platforms that enable the transfer of knowledge, and the substance of democratic participation. This questioning is crucial to theatre and its relationship to culture. Theatrical performance addresses these issues in ways that inform, as well as being informed by, ideas of a forensic turn. I will offer examples of performances that defy generic categorisation, arguing that these examples both deploy and disrupt forensic logic.
James Frieze is Senior Lecturer in Drama at Liverpool John Moores University, where his teaching focusses on devising, improvisation, performance theory, participatory performance. He has collaboratively devised and directed numerous site-responsive performances, including theatrical adaptations of non-fiction prose, poems, online virtual worlds and other kinds of source-text. His essays have appeared in journals including Contemporary Theatre Review, Modern Drama, Performing Arts Journal, Theatre Research International, Performing Ethos. The follow-up to his monograph Naming Theatre: Demonstrative Diagnosis in Performance (Palgrave, 2009) is in progress (under contract with Routledge): it addresses the forensic turn in contemporary performance.
Date:
Monday, June 1st, 2015
6.00 to 8.00 pm c.t.
Venue:
KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Auguststraße 69
10117 Berlin
Studiolo, Front Building
Contemporary theatre, like much of contemporary culture, is obsessed with evidence, with means of detection, with the processing and circulation of information. In theatre, this obsession manifests itself as an investment in the procedural endeavour required to unmask reality. Culturally, this turn to the forensic can be situated as the latest reaction against a steady erosion of epistemological certainties. Questions about how we see and how we know are shepherded, in the forensic turn, to questions of how we verify. The age of information is, more precisely, an age of evidence, in which everything must be legibly verified. These imperatives fuel intense questioning of the boundaries of privacy, the ideology of platforms that enable the transfer of knowledge, and the substance of democratic participation. This questioning is crucial to theatre and its relationship to culture. Theatrical performance addresses these issues in ways that inform, as well as being informed by, ideas of a forensic turn. I will offer examples of performances that defy generic categorisation, arguing that these examples both deploy and disrupt forensic logic.
James Frieze is Senior Lecturer in Drama at Liverpool John Moores University, where his teaching focusses on devising, improvisation, performance theory, participatory performance. He has collaboratively devised and directed numerous site-responsive performances, including theatrical adaptations of non-fiction prose, poems, online virtual worlds and other kinds of source-text. His essays have appeared in journals including Contemporary Theatre Review, Modern Drama, Performing Arts Journal, Theatre Research International, Performing Ethos. The follow-up to his monograph Naming Theatre: Demonstrative Diagnosis in Performance (Palgrave, 2009) is in progress (under contract with Routledge): it addresses the forensic turn in contemporary performance.
Date:
Monday, June 1st, 2015
6.00 to 8.00 pm c.t.
Venue:
KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Auguststraße 69
10117 Berlin
Studiolo, Front Building