ABSTRACT:

Since the 1960s, all the arts have increasingly privileged performativity. The project aims to respond to this trend by using the example of theatre to develop foundations of an aesthetic of the performative. The performative art of theatre lends itself particularly well to this kind of research, since it has always been constitutively shaped by the specific relationship of textuality and performativity that prevails in any one case. Additionally, since the 1960s there has been a noticeable intensification of performative processes in theatre, as in the other arts. Theatre as performance now predominates over theatre as artefact; the work of art has been replaced by the event. The present project begins from the hypothesis that the traditional heuristic division into an aesthetic of production, an aesthetic of the work itself and an aesthetic of reception will become obsolete within an aesthetic of the performative.

In the analyses we have carried out so far, relational concepts like atmosphere, rhythm or shame have served to define more precisely the performative interaction between stage and audience, an interaction previously given the provisional label of the "between”. Our research thus focuses on the very specific relationships that can be generated, whenever performative processes are dominant,

a) between subject and object, observer and observed, audience and performers or stage action; and

b) between the physical presence of the elements presented and their semiotic character, between materiality and referentiality, signifier and signified, effect and meaning.

In the first funding period we addressed the first set of issues (a); the second period will concentrate on the second complex, (b). The research will continue to run essentially as a series of analyses of present-day performances. The results of the analyses are then linked back to the relevant theoretical models.

In the second funding period, researchers will examine the specific relationships that performances can produce between the physicality of the elements presented and their semiotic character, between materiality and referentiality, signifier and signified, effect and meaning. This will include reflection on the interrelation of reception-based and meaning-based aesthetic processes. From the results of our work so far, we can conclude that the relationship of presence and representation needs to be investigated within the framework of an aesthetic of the performative. This investigation must be carried out on various levels and with a range of different emphases so as to address the various forms of performative processes:

1. As theoretical reflection: theoretical definition of the relationship between representation and presence within an aesthetics of the performative (Prof. Dr. Erika Fischer-Lichte);

2. As the development of a method to describe the relationship between representation and presence: performativity in the theatre as an opportunity for phenomenologically oriented performance analysis (Dr. Jens Roselt);

3. As the analysis of music theatre performances with respect to the relationship between representation and presence: performativity in music theatre. Thoughts on a theory of the analysis of performances in music theatre (Dr. des. Clemens Risi);

4. As the analysis of the reciprocality between affective "intuition” and cognitive interpretation in the theatre: atmospheric perceptions in the theatre (Sabine Schouten, M.A.);

5. As the analysis of the relationship between subject and object in the spatial experience of installations: the performativity of environments as a model for an expanded concept of performance (Barbara Gronau, M.A.);

6. As an investigation of working and rehearsal processes during which text and performance arise in close connection and almost simultaneously: the action of acting as a paradigm (Dr. Christel Weiler).





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