Theatre as Contagion: Making Sense of Communication in Performative Arts

Contagion is more than an epidemiological fact. The medical usage of the term is no more and no less metaphorical than in the entire history of explanations of how beliefs circulate in social interactions. The circulation of such communicable diseases and the circulation of ideas are both material and experiential. Diseases and ideas expose the power and danger of bodies in contact, as well as the fragility and tenacity of social bonds. In the case of the theatre, various tropes of contagion are to be found in both the fictional world on the stage (at least since Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex) and in many theories defining the rules of interaction between theatre audiences, fictitious characters and/or performers. In consequence, the historically changing concept of contagion has in many respects influenced how mimesis was conceived and understood. The main goal of my article is to demonstrate how the concept of contagion has changed over the last few decades and how it may influence our understanding of the idea of mimesis and participation in performative arts. This will be achieved in two steps. Firstly, I will compare the concept of contagion as the outbreak narrative that had influenced, among others, Antonin Artaud’s The Theater and the Plague with the more recent and dynamic concept of epidemic structured around the tipping point. Secondly, I will look for performative art forms with similar structure of audience responses, analyzing Mariano Pensotti’s project Sometimes I Think, I Can See You (2010), in order to demonstrate new forms of performativity and (re)presentation

After the megabyte bomb I : new systems and new catastrophes

In the article the author asks the question why and for what reasons both Lem’s science fiction novels and science essays, judged to be a proven way of investigation into human and nonhuman forms of contemporary and future life, have lost some of their intellectual or critical significance. To answer the question she revisits The Megabyte Bomb, a collection of Lem’s essays published by the turn of the 20th century, in the context of the contemporary debates about information and new media, and the relationship between technology and humanity. She posits that the global information system that is embracing every aspect of our lives has changed the traditional image of our future as catastrophe which science fiction used to describe in order to prevent it from happening. To prove it she undertakes an analysis of two recent novels depicting the Internet binges, torrents of information, and endless loops of feedback typical of the technology-driven mentality: Dave Eggers’ The Circle (2013), by many critics hailed as a Brave New World of the 21st century, and Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge (2013) where the famous attack on the WTC is shown in an entirely unexpected way - as a catastrophe without a catastrophe

Mediated experience : the viewer in the age of digital technologies

Today new digital technologies produce augmented and virtual realities so tightly entangled in the web of our corporeal experiences that it calls for a new/deeply-modified definition of both the viewer and the voyeur - two figures traditionally identified with the prototypically theatrical way of perceiving and knowing the world. To tackle the topic, the article looks closely at David Cronenberg’s novel "Consumed" (2014), a first venture of the well-known Canadian film director and screenwriter on the field of literature. The chosen form of literary fiction allows him to demonstrate how various technologies (writing, photography, social media) as well as perceptual and narrative conventions mediate human experiences, understood not only as cognitive but also affective practices

Archives of the anthropocene

Punktem wyjścia dla rozdziału "Archiwa antropocenu" jest brytyjski mockument "Wiek głupoty" ("The Age of Stupid", 2009), którego autorzy czytelnie łączą problematykę antropocenu jako najnowszej epoki w dziejach Ziemi z historycznie zmienną ideą, technologiami i protokołami porządkowania, przechowywania i przekazywania wiedzy. Pierwszy podrozdział zajmuje się kwestią konkurencyjnych definicji antropocenu i proponowanych chronologii, żeby pokazać, jak wybrane konceptualizacje tej epoki łączą się ściśle z obszarami przedmiotowymi i metodologiami konkretnych dyscyplin naukowych, uznając je za archiwa w rozumieniu Michela Foucaulta. Ten podrozdział zamyka przedstawienie stosunkowo nowej koncepcji tak zwanego niejednolitego antropocenu, która najlepiej świadczy o tym, jakie istotne zmiany zaszły ostatnio w tym, jak można rozumieć antropocen i jakie wyzwania niesie to dla tradycyjnej definicji wiedzy i akademii. Drugi i trzeci podrozdział podejmują temat krytycznych spojrzeń na antropocen: więcej-niż-antropocen i więcej-niż-ludzki antropocen. Omawiane krytyczne spojrzenia na typowe dla głównego nurtu ujęcia antropocenu proponują także nowe konceptualizacje archiwum, odpowiednio jako spekulatywnego i naturalnego (powolnego) archiwum. Podsumowująca część artykułu powraca do zaproponowanej przez Megan Boler idei "pedagogiki dyskomfortu", pokazując poznawcze korzyści w chwili, kiedy docenimy koncepcję dehumanizmu Julietty Singh jako kontekst dyskusji o antropocenie i jego archiwach.Starting with a British speculative mockumentary "The Age of Stupid"(2009), the paper "Archives of the Anthropocene" continues the film's strategy of looking comprehensively at the key issues of the Anthropocene as a new epoch in Earth's history and the archive as a historically shifting idea, technology, and set of protocols for collecting, ordering, safe-guarding and transmitting gathered knowledge. The first subchapter takes a closer look at a range of chosen mainstream definitions of the Anthropocene and the proposed chronologies in order to demonstrate how these conceptualizations intertwine with the subjects and methodological approaches of various disciplines, understood as archives in the Foucauldian sense. The subchapter closes with a recent notion of "patchy Anthropocene" which serves as a showcase of today's changes in understanding of what the Anthropocene is and what kind of challenges it poses to the traditional Western concept of knowledge and academia. The second and third subchapters focus on two critical views of the Anthropocene - the more-than-Anthropocene and the more-than-human Anthropocene. Both critical approaches to the mainstream notion also offer novel views on the archive, respectively the speculative and the natural (or slow) archives. In its final section the paper refers to Megan Boler's idea of the "pedagogy of discomfort" in order to propose Julietta Singh's concept of dehumanism as an adequate context for further discussion of the paper's main topic

Przeciwko autorytetowi tekstu I: „Opis obrazu" Heinera Mullera jako negacja teatralności tekstu

In Bildbeschreibung (Description of a Picture, 1984) Müller deliberately fails to match up with the basic tenets of the theatricality typical of a dramatic text. Simultaneously, however, he equally deliberately posits a challenge to the theatre and puts into question the dominant idea of the dramatic text and its stageability. The aim of this essay is to raise questions about the methods and principles of inscribing the author's intentions in the text and the possibility of recognizing the text's destination and stage potential. I attempt to answer these questions, reading Bildbeschreibung as a borderline case in the context of Strindberg's To Damascus and Brecht's Massnahme in order to point to the basic relationship between the texts written nowadays for the stage and the modern stage practice, since without addressing this issue it is impossible to lay grounds for a new methodology of text analysis and interpretation.In Bildbeschreibung (Description of a Picture, 1984) Müller deliberately fails to match up with the basic tenets of the theatricality typical of a dramatic text. Simultaneously, however, he equally deliberately posits a challenge to the theatre and puts into question the dominant idea of the dramatic text and its stageability. The aim of this essay is to raise questions about the methods and principles of inscribing the author's intentions in the text and the possibility of recognizing the text's destination and stage potential. I attempt to answer these questions, reading Bildbeschreibung as a borderline case in the context of Strindberg's To Damascus and Brecht's Massnahme in order to point to the basic relationship between the texts written nowadays for the stage and the modern stage practice, since without addressing this issue it is impossible to lay grounds for a new methodology of text analysis and interpretation