»Una ventata di pazzia«?

Luigi Pirandello’s novels are based on scenarios of extreme emotional movement. By focusing on the novel ‚Suo marito‘, the essay will question the textual presentation of extremes, in order to point out the structural patterns in Pirandello’s writing practice with regard to the issue of emotional self-discovery of the individual. How does the emotional dynamic emerge and develop in selected sequences of scenes? And which structural characteristics or aesthetic paradigms of the representation of emotional movement can be summarized? Pirandello shows a special conception of aesthetic functionality of emotions, which in its specific character of movement reflects individual self-experience. The special analytic focus lies on the protagonist Giustino Boggiolo, whose ambition to build on his wife’s literary success and to exploit it commercially puts him into an ecstatic rush, endangering not only his own existence and self-image, but also his family.

Die Bewegung des Anderen in den Schreibszenen von Hélène Cixous

This essay explores the significance of movement and alterity in Hélène Cixous’s practice of writing, which she defines as an »exposure« to the other and as a sensitization to the present moment. The focus is on Cixous’s presentation of different modalities of being that are indissociable from the materiality of ‚écriture féminine‘. These range from the necessity for blindness in the act of writing and the discovery of imaginary worlds, to experiences of flight, sexual difference and modes of »de-selfing« in the process of writing. The transformative event-character of Cixous’s writing is foregrounded in her short story ‚Savoir‘, where the relationship between seeing and not-seeing, presence and absence, knowledge and desire is captured in the fleeting traces of the written word.

Bewegung, Mythologie der Moderne

Paul Valéryʼs remark »Nouvelle mythologie / les formes en mouvement / connaître c’est former« (1894) states the argument of the present article. Its intention is to highlight the importance of movement in modern arts and research studies. It observes the fascination which movement held for artists and scientists who were trying to comprehend the dynamics of physical and mental processes in creative work and to find appropriate forms for volatility and complexity in traditional and recent arts and media. The focal point of this article are the works of Charles Baudelaire, Hippolyte Taine and the futurist avantgarde, especially Umberto Boccioni, as well as physiological studies on the effects of huge cities, crowds, sports, acceleration, and aeroplanes (Angelo Mosso, William James). In this context, Valéry’s poems, essays and notes appear as a crossover project and Valéry himself as a protagonist of the intense dialogue between the arts, media and sciences concerningmovement as physical and mental phenomenon and stylistic challenge.

Moving is in Every Direction

Traditionally, art history divided the arts into four genres: painting and sculpture, poetry and music. Hence the art-historical canon was dominated by a strict division into the arts of space and those of time. Movement (both of an internal and externalized kind) did not find a place within this classificatory corset. In 1766, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing framed the classical art-theoretical approach through his famous text ‚Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry‘, in which he splits the arts into those unfolding in time and those unfolding in space. Lessing’s ‚Laocoon‘ is the founding text defining poetry and music as time-based, sculpture and painting as space-orientated. By 1900, this strict system of classification and hierarchization began to dissolve, giving way to cross-border experiments in the arts of the twentieth century up to the present day. This overturning of classical genre divisions between the static and the dynamic arts, between sculpture, installation, and performance enables us to examine artworks as variations of movement in terms of ‚constellations between scene and scenario‘. Furthermore, the development of movement as an artform implies the activation of the audience in participatory arts practice.

»To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.«

Focussing on the double meaning of the concept of »movement« as both physical and emotional movement within the interdisciplinary frame of literary and dance studies, this paper examines the complex connections between the representation of emotional and dance movements in Jane Austen’s novel ‚Pride and Prejudice‘ (1813) by tracing an aesthetics of restraint, reticence and control (in compliance with the code of conduct promoted by contemporary dance treatises) in Austen’s writing: in the depiction of emotions in her text, in (the delineation of) her characters’ physical and emotional behaviour, and in the almost complete absence of references to dance per se and to dancemovements in her dance scenes. Dance scenarios are mainly used to provide implicit kinetic and cultural information for the representation of her characters’ sentiments.

Notieren im Tanz

Note taking is a choreographic writing practice that implies processes of thinking, projecting and rejecting ideas. Note by note, a complex scenery of movement emerges through reflexive practices of writing, which are designed for a performative event. This article explores different forms of choreographic notation from the perspective of their performative dimensions and draws on approaches from literary theory, procedures of drafting and drawing, as well as considerations of writing as a thought process. The emphasis will be on specific examples of contemporary dance.

Schreiben mit Licht

In the 19th century, the stillness of movement during a photographic exposure required a staging based on academic traditions. Staging is the »spatialization« of a present absence – comparable to »writing« in the sense of Derrida. With the increasing mobility of camera techniques from the 20th century onwards, the focus is no longer on the reproduction of a moment, but instead on its performative invention.With the digital photography of the 21st century, a transformation from theatrical to functional staging takes place. The history of the writing scene of photography illustrates the interplay between concealment through technology and re-aestheticization, which with increasing oscillation turns into motor dizziness.

Figur – Szene – Szenario

The challenge of representing movement in literary texts involves not only a knowledge of the physical, affective, and cognitive aspects of motion, it also needs to engage with movement’s medial transformation in the act of writing. Thus, this article draws attention to the largely unnoticed importance of writing in its visual and spatial dimensions within the field of literary movement studies. The article explores the dynamic aspects of the concept of the ›figure‹ and traces its relation to the literary ›scene‹ or ›scenario‹. Drawing on contemporary literary and cultural theories of the ›scene‹ as a cognitive operation (Rancière) and engaging with examples of texts on movement (Pierre Rameau’s ‚Le Maître à Danser‘ and Jean- Georges Noverre’s ‚Lettres sur la danse‘), the aim of this article is to introduce the concept of the ›scene‹ as a (transdisciplinary) hermeneutic category for literary studies of movement in modernity.

Szenarien des Entwerfens

The contribution aims to look at the figure of the scenario as a format directed toward the future, which introduces into the choreographic process the potential agencies of singular materials and media, procedures and practices. On the one hand, the scenario connects to the context of its emergence and on the other, it emphasizes the unpredictable which occurs within the relationality of singular agencies and their assemblages. The various practices of scenography open up the spatial dimension of choreographic assignments and their negotiation within the occurring arrangements. To examine these different ideas and link them to each other, the essay looks at William Forsythe’s ‚Human Writes‘ and explores the concept of his choreographic objects as a mode of expanded choreography, as well Meg Stuart’s ‚sketches / notebook‘ as an interdisciplinary ritual.