Former Research Focus and Past Activities
Research Focus and Events up to September 2018:
During the second funding period, RA3 continued its focus on performativity as a concept to describe the ritual, theatrical and interactive dimensions of culture and for understanding cultural change. Often conducting several projects simultaneously, several subgroups emerged, all addressing the overarching topic of the group—performativity—from diverse specific angles. The subgroups work on organizing reading sessions, reading retreats, guest lectures, workshops, and conferences. Thematically, they have been engaged in approaching performativity from the standpoint of German idealist philosophy, phenomenology, and theories of receptivity. Also, the subgroups have been examining the role of performativity in the evolving economies of the subject and modes of creating space. The projects within RA3 are realized in collaboration with other research areas and working groups within the GCSC, as well as other departments at JLU, various academic institutions, but also in close cooperation with artists. In the summer semester 2016, RA3 organised the reading retreat “The Intellectual: Economies of the Subject”, examining persuasive performances and failed performances in both the arts and real life, codified performances, the relation between discourse and performance, and the idea of participation of the audience in performances.
In June 2017, Claire Bishop joined us for a day of exchange and discussions on June 6, 2017. The event started with her morning lecture “Black Box, White Cube, Fifty Shades of Grey?” in which she presented material from her recent research. Starting out with framing the modernist paradigms of the Black Box (in theatre) and the White Cube (in the museum), she traced various temporalities and modes of attention connected to them, throughout the 19th and 20st centuries, up to our time. Focusing on what she called dance-performances in the museum (drawing especially on the examples of works by Maria Hassabi and Anne Imhof), she addressed how reception but also artistic production and spacial framing may have been influenced by recent developments such as smart phone photography and social media, suggesting that this digital realm forms a “Grey Zone” yet to be defined more closely.
In the afternoon, Claire Bishop held a Master Class with more than 20 enthusiastic participants from the GCSC as well as the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies. Apart from some topics that arose from the readings she had provided beforehand; the discussions took their departure also from the ideas Bishop had presented in the morning. She managed the heterogenous group with impressive teaching skills and created an inspiring atmosphere. The participants agreed that the day had been a great success.
In 2018, RA 3 focused on the interplay between agency, theatricality and rituality regarded from both social and artistic angles. We organised a Keynote Lecture and a Master Class with Frans-Willem Korsten from the University of Leiden and discussed modes of the theatrical and the dramatic in political and legal contexts. Furthermore, two events with philosopher Harry Lehmann in the last winter semester shed light on the recent emergence and development of contact zones and breaking points between academic research, cultural institutions and various forms of conceptual art and music. RA3 and its temporary subgroup “Evil” is also involved in the conference “Villains! Constructing Narratives of Evil”, which took place in February 2019.
Research Focus and Events up to September 2016:
During the first funding period, RA 3 focused on performativity as a concept to describe the ritual, theatrical and interactive dimensions of culture. The concept has proved to be productive also for the understanding of cultural change and will continue to be of central interest to RA 3 during the second funding period. Approaching cultural change from the perspective of performativity studies implies observing the gradual alterations of cultural processes and analysing their adaptations to equally changing cultural contexts. Such an approach highlights the interference of continuities and discontinuities, and the simultaneity of the dissimilar as fundamental features of cultural transformations. The notion of ‘ruptures’ and ‘caesurae’ are regarded as discursive and medial constructions answering to the need of reducing the complexity behind cultural change. This proposed extension of ‘performativity’ as a concept for the study of culture approximates concepts of evolution or emergence and materiality, while at the same time specifying and applying them.
Against the backdrop of current cultural, political, economic, and societal developments the possibility of cultural change and the societal efficacy of resistance, counteraction, and withdrawal is ever anew up for discussion. By engaging with diverse modes of performative practices and encounters – be it strategic, playful, carnivalesque, or refusing ones – in connection to the notions of cultural transformation and the event we are aiming at rethinking the cultural and political potency of the performativity of the body, of language, and of thought. We are doing so by looking at incitive or irritating practices within different societal arenas. In particular we are interested in understanding performativity as a political strategy by putting emphasis on the topics ‘performing politics’, ‘performing art’, and ‘performing knowledge’.
Research Focus and Events up to September 2014:
The rituals, theatricality and interactive dynamics of cultures are the key issues investigated in the research area on culture and performativity. In cultural performances such as festivities, plays, media or technology, cultures can be studied ‘in action’, as they shape, explain and unfold meaning. Since the late 1980s, performativity has become a key concept for the interdisciplinary study of cultures: performativity describes the theatricalised (re-)actualisation of socio-symbolic systems which render cultures visible to themselves and to others. Different academic disciplines cooperate in an attempt to describe the interrelationship of performativity and culture.
Originating in language philosophy (Austin’s speech act theory), the concept of performativity ‘travelled’ through cultural anthropology and history in the 1960s and theatre studies and social sciences in the 1980s and has been a part of gender studies since the 1990s. Cultural anthropology and history have studied rituals as performances providing an arena for cultural self-definition; sociology has analysed the performance of social interactions, stressing their importance for the maintenance and adaptivity of cultural patterns (de Certeau); theatre and literary studies have explored the interactive dynamics of plays and texts. Finally, gender studies (Butler) have examined the every-day role of gender in terms of a re-actualisation of socio-symbolic systems.
During the past two years, the area reflected intensely on a concept and terminology of performativity due to the current state of the theoretical debate. Therefore, the area focused on issues such as violence, the transformation of culture and media and the linkage between politics, resistance and art.
To the extent that this area focuses on the dynamic processes, which generate cultural meaning on the levels of body, narrative and image, it is linked to the research areas ‘Cultures of Knowledge, Research and Education’, ‘Culture and Narration’ and ‘Visual Cultures’.
Events up to September 2014:
2010-11-11/12/13/14 - Giessen
- Widerständiges Denken/ Thinking Resistance
2010-01-13 - Giessen
- Workshop with Thomas Weber
2010-02-17/18/19 - Giessen
- Medien.Kultur.Wandel
2010-06-21 - Giessen
- Deep Impact. Warum forschen wir?
2014-02-10 - Giessen
- Film screening: Tactical frivolity & Rhythms of resistance (Nuria Vila & Marcelo Expósito, 2007)
For further events up to September 2014 please follow this Link