scholarly journals Keeping the Promise of Community: Communal Efforts on the Contemporary Zagreb Non-Institutional Scene

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2021-1) ◽  
pp. 52-62
Author(s):  
Višnja Kačić Rogošić
Keyword(s):  
A Cappella ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Intellectual Engagement ◽  
Non Invasive ◽  
Personal Commitment ◽  
Community Project ◽  
Production Platform ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Experimental Theatre ◽  
Artistic Heritage

In their 1979 manifesto, the independent experimental theatre collective Kugla glumište (Zagreb, 1975–1985) claims: “Kugla discovers images, symbols and stories that wish to be the promise of community.” The article explores the repercussions of those neo-avant- garde community efforts on the contemporary Zagreb non-institutional scene by analysing four inclusive performances which differ in motivations, aesthetic aims, production levels and participatory modes. In The Love Case of Fahrija P (2017), the ex-members of Kugla and additional co-authors stage a polylogue with the artistic heritage of the deceased Kugla glumište member Željko Zorica Šiš (1957–2013) and the inclusive procedures they devised during the 1970s. The community project 55+ (2012) by the production platform Montažstroj gathers the participants who are over 55 in workshops, public debates, celebrations, protests and a documentary to provide visibility and voice to that neglected generation. In the trilogy On Community (2010–2011), the production platform Shadow Casters tests different mechanisms of creating temporary aesthetic communities, from learning an a cappella group song to sharing secrets, on its recipients. Finally, the atmospheric inclusion of the subtly associative performance Conversing (2019) by Fourhanded offers an almost elitist opportunity of co-existing in the intimate world of private tensions. However, what they all have in common is a physically non-invasive form, emotional and/or intellectual engagement and an emphasised personal commitment that can oblige audiences to reciprocate while they join the community of experience.

The word among stones

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Barry
Keyword(s):  
Close Collaboration ◽  
Modernist Poetry ◽  
Urban Settings ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Special Regard ◽  
Artistic Heritage ◽  
Interpretive Scheme

In this chapter Peter Barry explores poems about stones, on stones and as stones. He shows how our ancestors had a special regard for stones particularly those that seemed out of place, such as glacial erratics. The Ringing Stone on Tiree is one such, bearing numerous cup marks from Neolithic times. He considers how poems have been placed in the environment on trails and paths, sometimes with a didactic purpose as part of an environmentalist interpretive scheme. Some of these have taken advantage of the expressive potential of the stones themselves, and of letter carvers who blend this with their own artistic heritage. Collaborations between carver and poet can make best use of the space between the words that come closest to Barry’s interest in avant-gardeorneo-modernist poetry(especially ‘concrete’ and ‘visual’ poetries). Barry also considers poems in urban settings, in projects involving close collaboration with councils, NGOs and communities, where the words have been incised on bridges, monuments, paths, or pavements, as by Alyson Hallett in Bath, Lemn Sissay in Manchester, Bill Herbert near Darlington, and Menna Elfyn and Gillian Clarke in Tonypandy.

Shuji, Terayama (1935–1983)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan A. Yamaji Smith
Keyword(s):  
Adult Life ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Pacific War ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Group A ◽  
Experimental Theatre ◽  
Terayama Shuji ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

Terayama Shūji was an avant-garde Japanese poet, playwright (for stage and radio), filmmaker, and photographer associated with New Wave cinema and underground theatre movements such as post-shingeki. Born in Aomori Prefecture, then raised by relatives after his father died in the Pacific War and his mother moved to distant Kyushu to work, he settled in Tokyo, where he would spend the majority of his adult life. After studying literature at Waseda University, he began writing poetry, making his mark with a major prize for new tanka writers in 1954. In 1967, with his wife Kujo Kyoko, he co-founded the experimental theatre group TenjoSajiki [天井桟敷,] usually called ‘The Gallery’ in English; the title is taken from the Japanese translation of Marcel Carné’s film Les Enfants du Paradis. The same year, he founded ‘Universal Gravitation Drama Laboratory’ [Engeki-jikkenshitsu BanyuInryoku] an experimental gallery, cinema, and theatre space which later spun off the theatre group ‘A Laboratory of Play: Ban’yuInryoku.’ His films investigate the relationship between revolution, eroticism, youth culture, family psychology, and identity. Terayama’s works explore new formal and aesthetic techniques, while simultaneously forwarding and constantly questioning the radical politics of post-Second World War avant-garde arts in Japan.

The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Western Art

2013 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Sound Art ◽  
Short Film ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Experimental Theatre

This book examines different kinds of analogies, mutual influences, integrations, and collaborations of the audio and the visual in different art forms. The contributions, written by key theoreticians and practitioners, represent state-of-the-art case studies in contemporary art, integrating music, sound, and image with key figure of modern thinking constitute a foundation for the discussion. It thus emphasizes avant-garde and experimental tendencies, while analyzing them in historical, theoretical, and critical frameworks. The book is organized around three core subjects, each of which constitutes one section of the book. The first concentrates on the interaction between seeing and hearing. Examples of classic and digital animation, video art, choreography, and music performance, which are motivated by the issue of eye versus ear perception are examined in this section. The second section explores experimental forms emanating from the expansion of the concepts of music and space to include environmental sounds, vibrating frequencies, language, human habitats, the human body, and more. The reader will find here an analysis of different manifestations of this aesthetic shift in sound art, fine art, contemporary dance, multimedia theatre, and cinema. The last section shows how the new light shed by modernism on the performative aspect of music has led it—together with sound, voice, and text—to become active in new ways in postmodern and contemporary art creation. In addition to examples of real-time performing arts such as music theatre, experimental theatre, and dance, it includes case studies that demonstrate performativity in visual poetry, short film, and cinema.

scholarly journals Norwegian Political Theatre in the 1970s: Breaking Away from the “Ibsen Tradition”

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 50
Author(s):  
Anna Watson
Keyword(s):  
Deep Sea ◽  
Living Room ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Political Theatre ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Social ◽  
Experimental Theatre ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Made In

The dominant theatre aesthetic in Norwegian theatre has been, and remains at large to be, psychological-realism and the bourgeois “living room drama”. In a Norwegian context this tradition is best represented by Henrik Ibsen’s dramas, staged at Nationaltheatret and Den Nasjonale Scene. However, throughout the 20th century there have been several attempts to break with the “Ibsen tradition”, especially among left-wing political and socially engaged theatre-makers and playwrights such as Gunvor Sartz, Olav Daalgard, and Nordahl Grieg in the 1930s, and Jens Bjørneboe and Odin Teatret in the 1960s. I argue that the clearest and most decisive break with Realism and the Aristotelian dramaturgy, in a Norwegian political theatre context, was made in the late 1970s, instigated by the independent theatre groups Perleporten Teatergruppe and Tramteatret. Their break did not only constitute an aesthetic and dramaturgical break, but also a break in organizational terms by breaking the hierarchy of the institutional theatre ‘machine’. Perleporten Teatergruppe and Tramteatret aimed at making a political, progressive theatre both in form and content. Perleporten and Tramteatret were both inspired by contemporaneous political and experimental theatre in Europe and Scandinavia as well as by the historical avant-garde experiments, and, for Tramteatret’s part, the workers' theatre movement from the 1920s and 30s in their search for a theatre that could express the social and political climate of the day. In this article, I will place Tramteatret and Perleporten Teatergruppe’s debut performances Deep Sea Thriller (1977) and Knoll og Tott (1975) within a historiographical and cultural-political context.

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