The ghosts of the avant-garde(s): exorcising experimental theater and performance

2013 ◽  
Vol 51 (05) ◽  
pp. 51-2550-51-2550
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Theater ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
And Performance

Asian American Experimental Theater and Solo Performance

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Bacalzo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Experimental Theater ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Racial Perceptions ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
A Minor

Beginning in the 1960s and continuing into the present day, a wide range of performers and playwrights have contributed to Asian American experimental theater and performance. These works tend toward plot structures that break away from realist narratives or otherwise experiment with form and content. This includes avant-garde innovations, community-based initiatives that draw on the personal experiences of workshop participants, politicized performance art pieces, spoken word solos, multimedia works, and more. Many of these artistic categories overlap, even as the works produced may look extremely different from one another. There is likewise great ethnic and experiential diversity among the performing artists: some were born in the United States while others are immigrants, permanent residents, or Asian nationals who have produced substantial amounts of works in the United States. Several of these artists raise issues of race as a principal element in the creation of their performances, while for others it is a minor consideration, or perhaps not a consideration at all. Nevertheless, since all these artists are of Asian descent, racial perceptions still inform the production, reception, and interpretation of their work.

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.

scholarly journals Fragments Over Experimental Film: Liminal Zones of Cinema, Art and Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miško Šuvaković
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Music ◽  
Experimental Film ◽  
Experimental Theater ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Experimental Art ◽  
Institutional Power ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Singular Event ◽  
Unknown Control ◽  
Second World

In what follows, I will point to theorization of concept of the experimental film. My main thesis is that experimental art is based on the project, research practice, innovation and open transgressive or subversive artworks. Art focused on subversion of institutional power features as a singular event performed within a particular social relationship, as a critical actionist, engaged, or activist practice. Transgression – literally – refers to: infraction, violation of a law or an order, while in geological terms it implies penetration and expansion of the sea over the mainland. The notion of transgression relates to excess, overrunning or, more precisely, departing the familiar for the unknown, control for freedom. Experimental art was created in different disciplines such as experimental music, experimental film, experimental theater, etc. John Cage’s concept of ‘experimental music’ has been the starting point for new experimental art and artistic practices since 1950. Experimental film (experimental, new, avant-garde or neo-avant-garde cinema) has featured since the Second World War. The concept and term describe a range of filmmaking styles which are generally quite different from, and often opposed to, the practices of mainstream commercial and documentary filmmaking and entertainment-oriented cinematography. In the second and third part of the essay, I will present an analysis of the experimental films of the artists the OHO group and Neša Paripović. Article received: December 2, 2017; Article accepted: December 18, 2017; Published online: April 15, 2018; Original scholarly paper How to cite this article: Šuvaković, Miško. "Fragments Over Experimental Film: Liminal Zones of Cinema, Art and Theory." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies no 15 (2018): . doi: 10.25038/am.v0i15.225

scholarly journals A. Blok and poetic strategies of postmodernism

2021 ◽  
pp. 153-160
Author(s):  
Неля Магомедовна Шишхова ◽  
Кирилл Николаевич Анкудинов
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
Actual Problem ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
Poetic Expression ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Postmodern Poetry ◽  
Creative Forces

Анализируется поэзия А. Блока, ее взаимосвязь с реалистическими, семантическими и перфомативными аспектами творчества русских постмодернистов. Тексты рассматриваются как способ мотивирования поэтических знаков в постмодернистской традиции. Они позволяют контекстуализировать модели выразительности в авангардистской поэзии и выделить основные парадигмы в ее трактовке, адаптировать художественные приемы и поиски нового языка. Отдельное вимание уделяется особенностям поэтического высказывания и ее взаимодействию с пространством стиха. Интерес акцентируется на диалектике разрушительных и созидательных сил в деконструктивизме наследия Вс. Некрасова, Д. Пригова, Т. Кибирова и др. Обсуждается актуальная проблема для теории современной поэзии: что стало с постмодерном как языком описания эпохи в XXI столетии. Особое внимание уделяется преемственности новых концепций с предыдущей культурной традицией в негативной и позитивной версиях. Тема особенно актуализируется благодаря выраженному стремлению представить тексты А.Блока и постмодернистской поэзии как культурное выражение новейшего времени. An analysis is made of the poetry of A. Blok, its relationship with the realistic, semantic and performance aspects of the work of Russian postmodernists. Texts are explored as a way to motivate poetic signs in the postmodern tradition. They make it possible to contextualize models of expressiveness in avant-garde poetry and highlight the main paradigms in its interpretation, adapt artistic techniques and searches for a new language. An attention is paid to the peculiarities of the poetic expression and its interaction with the space of the verse. The interest is focused on the dialectic of destructive and creative forces in the deconstruction of the legacy of Vs. Nekrasov, D. Prigov, T. Kibirov, etc. The paper discusses the actual problem for the theory of modern poetry: what has become with the postmodern as the language of describing the era in the 21st century. Particular attention is paid to the continuity of new concepts with the previous cultural tradition in negative and positive versions. The theme is especially actualized due to the expressed desire to present the texts of A. Blok and postmodern poetry as a cultural expression of modern times.

Halprin, Anna (Schuman) (1920--)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janice Ross
Keyword(s):  
Dance Education ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Community Leader ◽  
Experimental Theater ◽  
Dance Theater ◽  
Healing Ritual ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Experimental Dance ◽  
The 1960S

A dancer, choreographer, community leader, and educator, Anna Halprin helped to pioneer what she called "experimental dance" in the 1960s. After training with the modern dance performer and choreographer Doris Humphrey, she turned to dance education, fusing these dual tracks of performance and pedagogy into a practice where dance changed the dancer. Her experimental dance theater events helped prefigure happenings, performance art, and experimental theater works. Located at the boundaries between art and life, healing, ritual, and performance, Halprin created participatory site-specific dances, art events situated in the midst of urban life. Breaking down the boundaries between spectator and performer, her dance events deliberately reconfigured socially marginalized individuals as the subject and medium of performance, including people with HIV/AIDS and the aged. Beginning in the early 1960s, Halprin started offering dance workshops on the "dance deck," the dramatic outdoor wooden dance studio designed in 1953 by Arch Lauterer, the theater designer, and Lawrence Halprin, Halprin’s husband and a renowned urban designer. Halprin’s students in these early years included several who would become founders of dance minimalism, including Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, and Meredith Monk—artists who were inspired by her precedent for framing pedestrian actions as dance, relinquishing control, and embracing difficult personal history as legitimate subject matter for dance.

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