Raymond Federman, Dying with Beckett

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 152-164
Author(s):  
Nathalie Camerlynck
Keyword(s):  
Terminal Illness ◽  
Death And Dying ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The One

Abstract Raymond Federman (1928–2009), known as a Beckett scholar, postmodern theorist and avant-garde novelist, was singularly devoted to the one he called Sam. Having escaped death, deportation in the Holocaust, his fiction recounts his experiences from the day of his “birth into death,” the 16th of July 1942. Writing what he called surfiction, fiction which exposes the fictionality of reality, Federman fashioned himself as a Beckett creature. This article outlines aspects of his devotion and its links to death and dying, starting with how he used Beckett’s words to confront his terminal illness.

Misreading Egypt

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Schotter
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Experimental Film ◽  
Tower Of Babel ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Sergei Eisenstein ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Modern Technologies

The first chapter of Hieroglyphic Modernisms exposes the complex history of Western misconceptions of Egyptian writing from antiquity to the present. Hieroglyphs bridge the gap between modern technologies and the ancient past, looking forward to the rise of new media and backward to the dispersal of languages in the mythical moment of the Tower of Babel. The contradictory ways in which hieroglyphs were interpreted in the West come to shape the differing ways that modernist writers and filmmakers understood the relationship between writing, film, and other new media. On the one hand, poets like Ezra Pound and film theorists like Vachel Lindsay and Sergei Eisenstein use the visual languages of China and of Egypt as a more primal or direct alternative to written words. But Freud, Proust, and the later Eisenstein conversely emphasize the phonetic qualities of Egyptian writing, its similarity to alphabetical scripts. The chapter concludes by arguing that even avant-garde invocations of hieroglyphics depend on narrative form through an examination of Hollis Frampton’s experimental film Zorns Lemma.

Sea Urchins and Circuses: The Modernist Natural Histories of Jean Painlevé and Alexander Calder

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-211
Author(s):  
Patricia E. Chu
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Sea Urchins ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Machine Age ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The One ◽  
Natural Historian

The Paris avant-garde milieu from which both Cirque Calder/Calder's Circus and Painlevé’s early films emerged was a cultural intersection of art and the twentieth-century life sciences. In turning to the style of current scientific journals, the Paris surrealists can be understood as engaging the (life) sciences not simply as a provider of normative categories of materiality to be dismissed, but as a companion in apprehending the “reality” of a world beneath the surface just as real as the one visible to the naked eye. I will focus in this essay on two modernist practices in new media in the context of the history of the life sciences: Jean Painlevé’s (1902–1989) science films and Alexander Calder's (1898–1976) work in three-dimensional moving art and performance—the Circus. In analyzing Painlevé’s work, I discuss it as exemplary of a moment when life sciences and avant-garde technical methods and philosophies created each other rather than being classified as separate categories of epistemological work. In moving from Painlevé’s films to Alexander Calder's Circus, Painlevé’s cinematography remains at the forefront; I use his film of one of Calder's performances of the Circus, a collaboration the men had taken two decades to complete. Painlevé’s depiction allows us to see the elements of Calder's work that mark it as akin to Painlevé’s own interest in a modern experimental organicism as central to the so-called machine-age. Calder's work can be understood as similarly developing an avant-garde practice along the line between the bestiary of the natural historian and the bestiary of the modern life scientist.

ALTRUISTIC AND EGOISTIC AGON IN THE EMOTIONAL CRISIS OF SUŠIĆ'S DRAMATIC PERSONS

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (7) ◽  
pp. 2361-2365
Author(s):  
Almedina Čengić
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
Artistic Creation ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Modern Process ◽  
Artistic Vision ◽  
Dramatic Characters ◽  
The One

The second half of the 20th century in Bosnian literature is marked by the new tendencies of avant-garde writers, who will create their work through a different form of artistic creation, compared to the one that was presented at the beginning of this period. It is important to clarify the specificity of the various procedures that have positively directed dramatic creativity towards the modern lines of European literary circles. Derviš Sušić (1925-1990.), the Bosnian-Herzegovinian tradition and the reality of images, presented in a completely new artistic vision, make oscillation, in the writer's creation, between the determinants of historical facts and the legacy of oral tradition. Derviš Sušić Within the avant-garde tendencies of contemporary writers of the regional region, which appear in the mid-20th century, Sušić dominates in his virtuous creations of dramatic situations and dilemmas, in which his protagonists act. In a specific presentation of crucial culmination points, within the framework of the process of "drama of the flow of consciousness," a modern process in the conduct of drama, this writer analytically approaches the individual's dialectical duplication. Through artistically shaped fragments taken from historical records, this literary virtuoso presents in his texts a culmination point of Bosnian survival, very picturesque dramatic shaped historical characters and crucial events. It is symptomatic that Susić's characters become prototypes of stage characters, without temporal or location restrictions, transmitting a universal message of a unique attitude about the value of human activity and existence, outperform stereotypical models recognizable in the additional drama literature. Through the colorful of seeing and a range of specific dramatic characters, without the diversity of their differentiation in national status or sociopolitical affiliation, this writer creates a special ambient effect in the construction of his poetic fabrics based on historical background. The task of this paper is to prove the causality and conditionality of altruistic (social) and egoistic (individual) agonies in the actions and actions of Sušić's characters, in the examples of dramatic texts "Veliki vezir" (1969) and "Posljednja ljubav Hasana Kaimija "(1973), as well as the influence of emotional indicators on the concrete initiation of the dramatic conflict. It is therefore very interesting to explore and verify the models that will dominantly dominate the regional scene for almost half a century and be accepted as models in the way of writing its contemporaries, among the readers' population, but also at the same time with very successful placement in the theater audience.

Maximus

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Byers
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Action ◽  
American Art ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Self ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
The One

This concluding chapter charts the continuing significance of the early postwar moment in Olson’s later work, particularly The Maximus Poems. The philosophical and political concerns of the American avant-garde between 1946 and 1951 play out across The Maximus Poems just as they inform later American art practices. The search of the early postwar American independent left for a source of political action rooted in the embodied individual is seen, on the one hand, to have been personified in the figure of Maximus. At the same time, Maximus’s radical ‘practice of the self’ charts a sophisticated alternative to the Enlightenment humanist subject widely critiqued in the United States in the immediate postwar period.

SEEING AND HEARING DISABILITY IN MAURICIO KAGEL'S REPERTOIRE FROM STAATSTHEATER

Tempo ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 75 (296) ◽  
pp. 7-20
Author(s):  
Bethany Younge
Keyword(s):  
Disability Studies ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The Body ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Hearing Disability ◽  
Physical Action ◽  
The One ◽  
Traditional Roles

AbstractThis article adopts a disability studies perspective to evaluate the ways in which Mauricio Kagel's Repertoire from Staatstheater reimagines human bodies. Objects and bodies interact in myriad ways within the one hundred vignettes of Repertoire: some objects hinder or aid the bodies on stage, while others become incorporated within the body, acting as a single expressive unit. My analysis demonstrates the ways in which both objects and bodies transform their traditional roles as ascribed by society, rejecting procrustean physiques. Using disability studies concepts such as embodiment and experientialism I evaluate sound and physical action as inextricable expressions of imaginative corporealities. Reflecting upon Kagel's identity as an outsider of the European avant-garde, as well as his irreverence for oppressive social institutions, I evince that other forms of hierarchical disruptions are at play, namely that abled bodies do not preside over disabled ones and notions of beauty hold no clout.

“A composItIon wrItten wIthout creatIve lImItatIons” – Wanda Landowska and concerto for harpsichord and five instruments by ManueL de Falla (1923)

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (15) ◽  
pp. 67-107
Author(s):  
Ines R. Artola
Keyword(s):  
Strict Sense ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
20Th Century Music ◽  
The Third ◽  
Word Analysis ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

The aim of the present article is the analysis of Concerto for harpsichord and five instruments by Manuel de Falla – a piece which was dedicated by the composer to Wanda Landowska, an outstanding Polish harpsichord player. The piece was meant to commemorate the friendship these two artists shared as well as their collaboration. Written in the period of 1923-1926, the Concerto was the first composition in the history of 20th century music where harpsichord was the soloist instrument. The first element of the article is the context in which the piece was written. We shall look into the musical influences that shaped its form. On the one hand, it was the music of the past: from Cancionero Felipe Pedrell through mainly Bach’s polyphony to works by Scarlatti which preceded the Classicism (this influence is particularly noticeable in the third movement of the Concerto). On the other hand, it was music from the time of de Falla: first of all – Neo-Classicism and works by Stravinsky. The author refers to historical sources – critics’ reviews, testimonies of de Falla’s contemporaries and, obviously, his own remarks as to the interpretation of the piece. Next, Inés R. Artola analyses the score in the strict sense of the word “analysis”. In this part of the article, she quotes specific fragments of the composition, which reflect both traditional musical means (counterpoint, canon, Scarlatti-style sonata form, influence of old popular music) and the avant-garde ones (polytonality, orchestration, elements of neo-classical harmony).

Reformation and Judaism

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 20-30
Author(s):  
Gerbern S. Oegema
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
The Other ◽  
Christian Zionism ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship ◽  
The One ◽  
State Of Israel ◽  
Initial Focus

The topic of this paper is the complex and ambivalent relationship between the Reformed Churches and Judaism, moving from a kind of Philo-Semitism to Christian Zionism and support for the State of Israel on the one hand, to missionary movements among Jews to anti-Judaism, and the contribution to the horrors of the Holocaust on the other hand. In between the two extremes stands the respect for the Old Testament and the neglect of the Apocrypha and other early Jewish writings. The initial focus of this article will be on what Martin Luther and Jean Calvin wrote about Judaism at the beginning of the Reformation over 500 years ago. Secondly, the article will deal with the influence of mission activity toward Jews and the emergence of Liberal Judaism as both scholarship and theology in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. Lastly, the article will address the question of how the Holocaust and subsequent Jewish-Christian dialogue have changed the course of this relationship.

Ugliness and Beauty: the Politics of Landscape in Walter Greenwood's Love on the Dole

2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-47
Author(s):  
Claire Warden
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The Other ◽  
Surrounding Area ◽  
North West ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The North ◽  
The One ◽  
The University ◽  
Open Fields

The multi-spatial landscape of the North-West of England (Manchester–Salford and the surrounding area) provides the setting for Walter Greenwood's 1934 play Love on the Dole. Both the urban industrialized cityscape and the rural countryside that surrounds it are vital framing devices for the narrative – these spaces not simply acting as backdrops but taking on character roles. In this article Claire Warden reads the play's presentation of the North through the concept of landscape theatre, on the one hand, and Raymond Williams's city–country dialogism on the other, claiming that Love on the Dole is imbued with the revolutionary possibility that defines the very landscape in which it is set. From claustrophobic working-class kitchen to the open fields of Derbyshire, Love on the Dole has a sense of spatial ambition in which Greenwood regards all landscapes as tainted by the industrial world while maintaining their capacity to function independently. Ugliness and beauty, capitalist hegemony and socialistic hopefulness reside simultaneously in this important under-researched example of twentieth-century British theatre, thereby reflecting the ambivalent, shifting landscape of the North and producing a play that cannot be easily defined artistically or politically. Claire Warden is a Lecturer in Drama at the University of Lincoln. Her work focuses on peripheral British performances in the early to mid-twentieth century. She is the author of British Avant-Garde Theatre (Palgrave MacMillan, 2012) and is currently writing Modernist and Avant-Garde Performance: an Introduction for Edinburgh University Press, to be published in 2014.

scholarly journals Art as a Critique of Language: On the Continuity of the Tradition of the Avant-Garde Aesthetic in the Modern and the Postmodern

2007 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-303
Author(s):  
Susanne Kogler
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
New Music ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Traditional Language ◽  
Art Philosophy ◽  
Language Of Music ◽  
The One

That art functions as a corrective to rational-scientific insights is one of the formative thoughts of art philosophy. The fact that artistic expression represents a corrective to linguistically-rationally affected insight also ranks among the constants of art philosophy in the 20th century. “Expression is the opponent of articulating something” can be read, for instance, in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory with regards to the character of language in art and Jean François Lyotard wrote on aesthetic experience: “What happens to us is by no means something which we would have controlled, programmed or conceptually apprehended beforehand”. The uneducible, conceptually unattainable is also at the centre of current art production of the 21st century. On the basis of Lyotard’s and Adorno’s positions, the article shows that one should acknowledge a constancy of the topos of art as non-conceptual knowledge on the one hand as the continuing function of a tradition defined from the philosophical aesthetics of modernity to post-modernity and orientated on the artistic avant-garde. On the other hand and beyond this a continuous line of tradition of New Music becomes clear, leading to the expressionistic avant-garde of the 20th century which represented the starting point for Adorno’s music philosophy, through Lyotard’s focus on John Cage, up to the avant-garde of New Music in the era of post modernity. Specific features of contemporary art, such as rebellion against linguistic standards, an understanding of expressivity that opposes the traditional language of music and operates on the verge of silence, as well as the utopian vision of a modified reality which aims at transcendency enable a conception of art as non-conceptual knowledge, corresponding with the positions of art philosophy in modernity and post-modernity in important points. The relevance of focusing on this line of tradition for musicology lies in the fact that it sheds new light on the musical avant-garde and its further function and, last but not least, that it opens new perspectives in understanding contemporary artistic productions.

scholarly journals Providing a “peaceful death” in the twenty-first century

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Evangel Sarwar
Keyword(s):  
End Of Life ◽  
Terminal Illness ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Death And Dying ◽  
Natural Course ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Dying At Home ◽  
At Home

Advances in medical technology have not only raised our expectations that medicine can perform miracles and keep us alive; it has also raised conflicts in allowing death to take its natural course. Many dilemmas are faced by physicians as well as families in end-of-life care and relieving the suffering. Ethical dilemmas about how to ensure individuals with terminal illness/end-of-life experience a “peaceful death,” when the meaning and perception of death has changed due to technology? In the past, death was expected and accepted, with rituals. Today, death has been reduced to an unheard phenomenon - shameful and forbidden. The advances in technology brought with it a change in culture of medicine from caring to curing, where medicine is expected to heal any disease. This advance has also acted as a double-edged sword, where longer lives come at the price of greater suffering, illness, and higher costs. While most Americans want to die at home, surrounded by loved ones - the “medicalization” of death does not allow the natural course of death to take place. Although recent studies indicate that more Americans are dying at home, most people still die in hospital beds – alone. This paper looks at the transition that took place in the concept of death and dying, and the impacts of technology, and makes suggestions for facilitating a “peaceful death” in the twenty-first century.

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