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Chapter 38 - Men and Objects

from Part II - Our Memory: Kantor's Dead Class

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Summary

Adapting Duchamp's concept of the “readymade” object, Kantor invents the idea of “readymade” man: an actor as is. As he said in one of his New York Times interviews: “For example, there's a creature I call ‘The Found Character,’ precisely like Marcel Duchamp's ‘objets trouves.’ In folklore a ‘found’ object is believed to possess links with the world of the dead; it is purposeless, gratuitous, a pure work of art.” Tish Dace notes that “Kantor achieves an additional grotesque quality, a non-living creepiness. Kantor's fascination with found objects instead of stage props – he uses two wooden alls in place of a baby doll in the mechanical cradle, for instance – further detaches us from the action.” Although Kantor often referenced Duchamp in his international interviews, Kantor's most prominent influence was Schulz's Reality of the Lowest Rank. Like Schulz, Kantor was interested in the lowest objects, abandoned and forgotten pieces of human existence; he saw the human being as a mere replica of this overlooked detritus. Like Shulz, Kantor was also interested in objects vis-a-vis their relationship to human beings. As Richard Calvoressi puts it in his review of the Edinburgh performance of Dead Class:

The performance space is blocked with junk: heaps of dusty books, old newspapers, weird Tinguely-like machines, a fire-iron, a wooden school lavatory, a row of scratched benches. But these are not props in the normal sense; Kantor believes that they are simply there, on an equal footing with the actors. And there is a sense in which the objects in The Dead Class are actors, obstacles which threaten to take on a life of their own and dominate the human action. Kantor cultivates what he calls the “poor objects,” a real thing taken from life. […] The association and memories, the fragments of past life which rise to the surface from all this detritus, made The Dead Class an unforgettable experience and Kantor’s visit the most exciting thing that has happened to the visual arts at the Edinburgh Festival for a long time.

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The Post-traumatic Theatre of Grotowski and Kantor
History and Holocaust in 'Akropolis' and 'Dead Class'
, pp. 267 - 273
Publisher: Anthem Press
Print publication year: 2012

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