Intermedial Performance and Politics in the Public Sphere

278 Pages·2018·5 MB·English

by  Katia Arfara

INTERMEDIAL
PERFORMANCE AND
POLITICS IN THE
PUBLIC SPHERE
EDITED BY KATIA ARFARA,
ANETA MANCEWICZ, RALF REMSHARDT
Avant-Gardes in Performance
Series Editor
Sarah Bay-Cheng
Bowdoin College
Brunswick, ME, USA
Despite the many acts of denial and resistance embodied in the phrase
“death of the avant-garde,” interest in experimental, innovative, and
politically radical performance continues to animate theatre and perfor-
mance studies. For all their attacks upon tradition and critical institutions,
the historical and subsequent avant-gardes remain critical touchstones for
continued research in the disciplines of theatre, performance studies, film
and cinema studies, media study, art history, visual studies, dance, music,
and nearly every area of the performing arts. “Avant-Gardes in
Performance” features exciting new scholarship on radical and avant-
garde performance. By engaging with the charged term “avant-garde,”
we consider performance practices and events that are formally avant-
garde, as defined by experimentation and breaks with traditional struc-
tures, practices, and content; historically avant-garde, defined within the
global aesthetic movements of the early twentieth century, including
modernism and its many global aftermaths; and politically radical, defined
by identification with extreme political movements on the right and left
alike. The series brings together close attention to a wide range of inno-
vative performances with critical analyses that challenge conventional
academic practices.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14783
Katia Arfara
Aneta Mancewicz
Ralf Remshardt
Editors
Intermedial
Performance and
Politics in the Public
Sphere
Editors
Katia Arfara Aneta Mancewicz
Onassis Cultural Center University of Birmingham
Athens, Greece Birmingham, UK
Ralf Remshardt
School of Theatre & Dance
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL, USA
Avant-Gardes in Performance
ISBN 978-3-319-75342-3 ISBN 978-3-319-75343-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75343-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018937671
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
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The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in
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Cover credit: Stavros Petropoulos / Onassis Cultural Centre
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer
International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
A
cknowledgments
The editors wish to acknowledge with gratitude the courtesies extended
by the Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens (OCC) and its Fast Forward
Festival (FFF) that made the original symposium possible from which the
book project sprang. Particular appreciation goes to Marina Troupi for her
tireless work in coordinating the symposium and securing images for this
book. Warm thanks are also due the artists, groups, and organizations who
have shared their work with us in many settings, chief among them the
FFF, as well as the photographers who generously gave their permission to
reprint pictures of events and productions.
v
c
ontents
1 Introduction: In and Out: Intermedial Practices
in the New Public Sphere 1
Katia Arfara, Aneta Mancewicz, and Ralf Remshardt
2 Intermedial Theatre in a Mediatized Culture and Society 15
Chiel Kattenbelt
3 Intermedial Performance as a Public Sphere 27
Aneta Mancewicz
4 Mirrors of Public Space: An Interview with 
Dries Verhoeven 43
Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink
5 Democracy with a Toothbrush: Protest, Performance,
and the Public Sphere 61
Christopher Balme
6 Refugee Theatre in the (Inter)medial Matrix: Die
Schutzbefohlenen and the Limits of Theatre
as Public Sphere 73
Ralf Remshardt
vii
viii CONTENTS
7 ‘Heterotopian Transformations’: An Interview with
Akira Takayama 91
Natsuko Odate
8 Troubled Feedback Loop: The Rise and Fall of Estonia
by Theatre NO99 107
Riina Oruaas
9 Between Art, Society, Representation, and Subjectivity:
Wojtek Ziemilski’s Prolog 125
Anna R. Burzyńska
10 ‘The Intimacy of Public Space’: An Interview with Kris
Verdonck 143
Kristof van Baarle
11 Empire Strikes Back: The 2014 Maidan Revolution
in Ukraine, Postmodern Spectatorship, and the Battle
of Perception in the Public Sphere 157
Olga Danylyuk
12 The Politics of the Digital Public Sphere: On Rabih
Mroué’s The Pixelated Revolution 173
Katia Arfara
13 ‘Almost Like a Teaching Play’: Daniel Wetzel/Rimini
Protokoll in a Conversation with Florian Malzacher 191
Florian Malzacher
14 Re-Materialising the Theatrical Public Sphere Through
Intermediality in Grass Stage’s World Factory 209
Zheyu Wei
CONTENT S ix
15 Intermediating Immanence: On Ho Tzu Nyen’s
Ten Thousand Tigers 229
Mi You
16 ‘Reality is the Best Scenario’: An Interview with BERLIN 245
Kurt Vanhoutte and Charlotte De Somviele
Index 259
n c
otes on ontributors
Katia Arfara is the Theatre and Dance Artistic Director of the Onassis
Cultural Centre in Athens (Greece) There she founded the Fast Forward
Festival, which commissions socially engaged public works, in 2014. She
holds an MA in theatre studies (Athens University) and a PhD in art his-
tory (Sorbonne University). Her essays have appeared in various journals
and critical anthologies. Dr Arfara is the author of the book Théâtralités
contemporaines (2011) and the editor of the special issue ‘Scènes en tran-
sition-Balkans et Grèce’ for Théâtre/Public (2016). She is a member of the
Prize Council for 2016–2018 Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics.
Christopher Balme holds the chair in theatre studies at LMU Munich
(Germany). His publications include Decolonizing the Stage: Theatrical
syncretism and postcolonial drama (1999); Pacific Performances:
Theatricality and Cross-C ultural Encounter in the South Seas (2007);
Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Studies (2008); The Theatrical Public
Sphere (2014). He is principal investigator of the ERC Advanced Grant
‘Developing Theatre: Building Expert Networks for Theatre in Emerging
Countries after 1945’.
BERLIN is a Belgian performance group that was founded in 2003 by
Bart Baele and Yves Degryse together with Caroline Rochlitz. They started
the series Holocene with the performances Jerusalem, Iqaluit, Bonanza,
Moscow, and Zvizdal. Currently, BERLIN is producing a new cycle, Horror
Vacui, of which Tagfish, Land’s End, and Perhaps All The Dragons are the
first three episodes. Focusing on a specific research question, the company
engages different media depending on the content of the project. In 2013,
xi