This Artwork is Having a Rest

Both soul and art are terms with which “Western” thought makes a poetics of “energy” familiar, contrasting this to the prose of nouns. Where questions of personhood are not limited simply to oppositions between subject and object, the animate and inanimate, such a poetics engages with examples that can be discovered through their dialogue: work by Takis at Tate Modern and the Facts of Dickens’ Mr Gradgrind; or the metaphysics of clockwork in Baudelaire and the quantifications of energy by Helmholtz. In re-imagining Tylor’s fundamental notion of “animism” as itself a conceptual survival of the pre-industrial past, this article suggests that this very idea of animism already offers a vision of and for a post-industrial future

Drawing from Grotowski and Beyond: Kuo Pao Kun’s Discourse on Audiences in Singapore in the 1980s

Much has been researched on Kuo Pao Kun’s multilingualism and multiculturalism. However, as one of one of the most important Asian dramatists, the analysis of Kuo’s discourse on audiences remains largely unexplored. There is a pressing need to understand the ways which theatre practitioners imagine audiences as it points to issues of subjectivity, audience participation and social engagement, especially in a neoliberal society like Singapore where people are often positioned as docile economic subjects. Among the many Asian and Western dramatists Kuo drew inspiration from, Jerzy Grotowski was pivotal. This essay seeks to address this gap by examining how the latter’s ideas was crucial to understanding how Kuo envisioned theatre and audiences alongside his artistic practice

Performer

Il Performer, con la maiuscola, è uomo d’azione. Non è l’uomo che fa la parte di un altro. È l’attuante, il prete, il guerriero: è al di fuori dei generi artistici. Il rituale è performance, un’azione compiuta, un atto. Il rituale degenerato è uno show. Non cerco di scoprire qualcosa di nuovo, ma qualcosa di dimenticato. Una cosa talmente vecchia che tutte le distinzioni tra generi artistici non sono più valide. Io sono teacher of Performer (parlo al singolare: of Performer). Teacher – come n..