Arte e tabù: il disgusto e i limiti della rappresentazione

Referring to the notion of representation, I will argue the idea that disgust continues to constitute a limitation for art and that the presence of the disgusting can be read through the Freudian notion of taboo. The indulgence of artistic creation in disgust, in fact, would confirm the fact that only what is domesticated, thus what does not arouse authentic disgust, can be assimilated by art. On the contrary, authentic disgust remains taboo insofar as it indicates the absolutely other, the unassimilable, a non-domesticated animality extraneous to the process of civilization. It is, after all, what classical aesthetics had already shown and that today can be reread in Freudian terms.

L’art, entre jouissance et utopie selon Emmanuel Levinas

This text aims to show how, in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, the moment of jouissance is constitutive of the selfhood of the ego and conditions the very possibility of a sensitivity to the other man, and so the possibility of the ethical relation itself. These considerations on the enjoyment invited us to think artistic creation and poetry as a way to respond to anesthesia of our sensibility through knowledge, which is a characteristic of western thought for Emmanuel Levinas.

The intricacies of Being Israeli and Yemenite. An Ethnographic Study of Yemenite “Ethnic” Dance Companies in Israel

Focusing on the work of Yemenite “ethnic” dance companies in Israel, this article aims to understand how issues such as a shift in collective representations come to be invested into dance practices. In other words, it discusses how artistic creation and identity reconfigurations happen to associate in a dance form, and how an ethnographic study of dance practices and their contexts of performance may be a valuable way of accessing the dynamics of self-positioning of a group within the surrounding society. Linking together “classical” ethnography, analysis of dance products, and socio-political contextualisation, the present analysis shows that the articulation of two apparently contradictory ways of building these companies’ repertoire allows Yemenite dancers, choreographers, and also internal audience, to assume in one single dance form a sense of “being Yemenite” whilst not giving up the national dimension of their Israeli identity.

Less Is More: Audience Cognition of Comic Simplification in the Characters of Peking Opera

A simplified approach was used to determine if “Less is More” is still a trend in comics’ Peking opera characters. There were 225 website volunteers who took part in the study. Via a questionnaire survey and analysis, this study explored the feasibility of “simplification” in comedy. The results indicate that the proposed “simplifying” approach can be applied to the creation of dramatic characters, but the scale of simplification must be adjusted flexibly to suit different subjects. For audiences, there is not much recognition and sympathy for the works that are simplified in the extreme and the current symbolization. The simplification used in this study is merely the first step in testing the usefulness of simplification as an approach. It is used as a means of understanding the cognition of the audience to accept the simple features of Peking opera characters. In subsequent studies, the proposed “simplified” approach is necessary to adapt and improve with a view to practical application. It also requires an in-depth analysis of the cognitive differences of the different participants according to the cognitive and communication theories of artistic creation.

PHILOSOPHICAL RATIONALE OR INTERTEXTUAL LITERATURE

Description: this article discusses the influence of various philosophical currents on the emergence of the concept of intertext in literature, and the importance of linguistics and mythology. The article clarifies how intertext has become one of the most interesting methods of literary language, structure, and artistic creation

Badania nad totalitaryzmem — prawda historyczna i wolność indywidualna — prawo prywatne w służbie publicznej. Uwagi na tle „cywilnoprawnych” przepisów ustawy o IPN

The much-publicised and rather unfortunate amendment of 2018 to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance introduced not only the controversial and subsequently repealed penal provisions, but also the provisions on “Protection of the good name of the Republic of Poland and the Polish Nation”. According to these, protecting the good name of the Republic of Poland and the Polish Nation is subject to the provisions of the Civil Code. The intention of the lawmakers was to prevent the dissemination in public discourse of the false expression “Polish death camps” and similar expressions sometimes used to refer to Nazi German extermination camps located in the occupied territory of Poland. The provision mandating the application of the provisions of the Civil Code on personal rights to the protection of the state and nation’s good name may serve the intended purpose. However, its application may also be much broader, due to the vagueness of the wording used (“good name of the state and nation”) and the powerful protection afforded to personal rights in the Civil Code. The author discusses which provisions of the Civil Code can and which cannot be applied in this case. He also draws attention to the inadequacy of private law tools to protect public interests. He calls for a restrictive interpretation of the provision and recognizing a wide range of circumstances excluding the unlawfulness of an infringement in order to protect constitutional values such as freedom of expression, artistic creation, or scientific research.

Reliance and Confinement: Washington Allston’s Dual Attitudes Towards European Ideals in His Paintings

The paper examines the dual attitudes reflected in the artistic work of Washington Allston. Born in 1779 and died in 1843, Allston is a famous American painter and poet whose artworks are greatly shaped by European philosophical concepts and artistic traditions. Allston's inheritance of such traditions could be mainly reflected by the deliberate representation of the concept of sublimity and divinity in his artistic creation. This could be readily seen from Allston’s artistic techniques, by which he better instills his aesthetics into his religious paintings while arousing greater empathy among the audience. However, against the background of American Romanticism, Allston was faced with the conflict between conforming to the European aesthetic standards in terms of “general air” and tradition, and the dramatic departure of objects from their “proper place”. As a result, Allston resorted to the institutional liberation, thus forming his distinct artistic style with an evident feature of dual attitudes.

“Humor Saves Steps”

Marianne Moore treats humor as a way to recognize what we have in common with others and to create understanding across difference. In her early work, Moore experiments with combinations of satire and empathy. In “A Prize Bird” and “The Wood-Weasel,” she uses humor as a test of friendship, and suggests that sympathetic laughter constitutes a distinctively American approach to collaborative artistic creation. Humor in “The Pangolin,” like the artists’ tools Moore discusses in the poem, is an end in itself and a way to discover new possibilities: it marks shared humanity and unites the human with the divine. Moore’s laughter occurs when we understand intuitively what it is like to be someone else; the more apparently unlike us the other, the more satisfying the laughter. Throughout Moore’s work, humor can be read as an ars poetica, modeling the synthesis of diverse components that she performs in her poetry.

Abhinaya as Practice-as-Research

What does a collaborative process of an artistic creation entail? How does the individual components of text, music, and dance weave in a solo choreography? This article brings together the voices of the dancer (Sarkar), the choreographer (Dandavate), and the music composer (Mirle) who has also sung and is the curator of the project called Nachi Meera. This project has commissioned multiple artists working in different dance techniques to present Abhinaya-esque (meaning expressive dance works) expositions on songs by the renowned historical saint-poet Mirabai. Sarkar, Dandavate, and Mirle reflect upon their collaborative journeys in this reflective essay where the process of creating an Abhinaya is theorized as research. The dance piece itself stands by itself as a scholarly product with historical, performative, and artistic research methodologies informing the process. This article documents the collaborative process borrowing from scholar Robin Nelson’s Practice-as-Research (PaR) methodology and argues how the artistic product weaves verbal, kinesthetic, and aural communication in an iterative process of ‘doing-reflecting-reading-articulating-doing” (Nelson 32). Movement layers the intricacies of South Asian aesthetics or the Rasa theory that governs the mood of execution by the dancer. Improvisation through choreography supplements Mirabai’s lyrics and Mirle’s musical composition.

PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE FRONT LINE IN LITHUANIAN CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

The image of the front line is deeply rooted in the contemporary Lithuanian discourse about cultureand politics. The strands of its cultural landscape connect art, media, politics and history. The concept of the line here performs like a literary metaphor deeply ingrained in everyday consciousness as a defensive front line due to the painful history of the nation’s experience. The confrontation with the constant threat of the Russian Empire and the catastrophes of occupation, especially in the 20th century, drew the Lithuanian prototype of the nation’s resistance and filled the 21st-century daily discourses with reflections on the emerged meaning of the Mannerheim Line. This actualised vision travelled to the spaces of artistic creation, music, cinematography, literature, creating feelings of infinity, spaces of transcendent landscapes, bridges of time and the dramaturgy of the Baltic archetypes of contiguity. These insights aim to unfold the Lithuanian discourse of contemporary culture with the special mark of the front line.