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Pathos and Melancholy: Rethinking ‘Theatre’ in Times of Doubt1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2009

HELMAR SCHRAMM  and
BARBARA SUŠEC MICHIELI
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Abstract

In times of crises and existential disorientation, the arts often lean on gestures of radical doubt, the articulation of which demands the art of masquerade, deception, diversion and dissimulation, and simultaneously includes characteristic constellations of pathos and melancholy. The authors of this article analyse different artistic projects in Slovenia, Germany, Russia and elsewhere, which were created in the breakthrough period after the fall of the Berlin Wall and connect these projects to the wider social events of the previous two decades. In their treatment of the contemporary ‘art of doubt’ they focus especially on the perspective of the political and existential and in addition point out the fundamental historical concepts of doubt which have influenced the development of theatre and experimental knowledge in Europe from the beginnings of the early modern era until today.

Type
Focus on Performance/Theatre and Philosophy
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , October 2009 , pp. 278 - 293
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2009

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References

NOTES

2 Cf. Michieli, Barbara Sušec, Marija Vera: igralka v dinamičnem labirintu kultur (Ljubljana: Slovenski gledališki muzej, 2005)Google Scholar; the title of the film is I Want to Conquer the World: A Portrait of the Actress Maria Vera (Slovenia: BELA FILM and TV Slovenia, 2006); dir. Maja Weiss, camera Bojan Kastelic.

3 See Ana Peraica, ‘Death and Advertising – An Interview with Anur Hadziomerspahic’, 16 December 2007, LabforCulture.org, available at http://www.labforculture.org/en/labforculture/blogitem/19009, accessed 15 January 2009.

4 The Russian artists Alexander Ponomarev and Arseny Mescheryakov show this symptomatology of our time in the intriguing consummate high-tech monument Shower. This interactive sculpture is arranged so that the shower cubicle may be entered; inside the cubicle are installed 235 LCD monitors with the live transmissions of 470 international TV channels; the speed and ‘temperature’ of the images are controllable via a common shower fitting (280 % 170 % 170 cm).

5 His Palais des Glaces et de la Découverte is a perfectly constructed labyrinth of mirror and glass, in which the visitors/users lose their orientation and hence simultaneously follow, via diverse screens, the artist's lecture–performances on subjects such as ‘labyrinth’, ‘experiment’, ‘performative culture’. Cf. Duyckaerts, Eric, Palais des Glaces et de la Découverte (Paris: Monografik éditions, 2007), pp. 82 ffGoogle Scholar.

6 Georg Simmel's economic reflections on the ‘Stil des Lebens’ are well worth rereading in this context. Cf. Simmel, Georg, Philosophie des Geldes (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot Verlag, 1900), pp. 480–501Google Scholar.

7 See, for example, Irwin – Kapital (Edinburgh: Co-Laborator; Ljubljana: Institut NSK, 1991) or Laibach, Kapital (London: Mute Records, 1992).

8 On Shadow Casters see Una Bauer, ‘Maieutics & synchronicity. Boris Bakal, Shadow Casters’, Frakcija, 33–4 (Winter 2004–2006), pp. 76–91, here pp. 81–2.

9 M[irsada] Lingo. ‘Tanja Miletić-Oručević, redatelj predstave Srebrenički inferno. Osječala sem obavezu da progovorim o tragediji Srebrenice’, Nezavisne novine, 23 July 2004, p. 23.

10 In the catalogue of the 52nd International Art Exhibition in Venice, further information can be found on the following artists mentioned in the text: Ignasi Aballi, Adel Abidin, AES+F, Huseyin Bahri Alptekin, David Altmejd, Sophie Calle, Eric Duyckaerts, Valie Export, Rainer Ganahl, Tomer Ganihar, Isa Genzken, Christine Hill, Irena Juzová, Julia Millner, Lars Ø. Ramberg, Monika Sosnowska, Los Torreznos, Francesco Vezzoli, Yang Zhenzong. See Storr, Robert, ed., Think with the Senses: Feel with the Mind: Art in the Present Tense (New York: Rissoli International, 2007)Google Scholar.

11 Bussmann, Georg, ‘Ex Oriente Lux . . .’ in Irwin. Galerie Bleich-Rossi. Graz, 11. April 1991–14. Mai 1991 (Graz: Editions Bleich-Rossi, 1991), n.pGoogle Scholar.

12 Katrin Busch and Iris Därmann, “pathos”. Konturen eines kulturwissenschaftlichen Grundbegriffs (transcript Verlag Bilefeld, 2007), pp. 7–27. See also Dachselt, Rainer, Pathos. Tradition und Aktualität einer vergessenen Kategorie der Poetik (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2003)Google Scholar; and Bindseil, Ilse, ‘Pathos’ in Pieger, Bruno, ed., Ästhetik und Kommunikation. Pathos. Verdacht und Versprechen (Heft 124, Vol. 35) (Berlin: Ästhetik und Kommunikation e. V., 2004)Google Scholar.

13 See Port, Ulrich: Pathosformeln. Die Tragödie und die Geschichte exaltierter Affekte (1755–1888) (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2005)Google Scholar; Haustein, Lydia, ‘Magie und digitale Bilder – Warburgs Atlas in zeitgenössischer Perspektive’, in Flach, Sabine et al. ., eds., Der Bildatlas im Wechsel der Künste und Medien (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2005), pp. 309–24Google Scholar.

14 See Weather, Winston, The Broken Word: The Communication Pathos in Modern Literature. Communicaion and the Human Condition, Vol. I. (New York, London and Paris: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1981), pp. 189–206Google Scholar; see also Hofmann, Werner, ‘Das gespaltene Pathos der Moderne’, in Herding, Klaus and Stumphaus, Bernard, eds., Pathos, Affect, Gefühl. Die Emotionen in den Künsten (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004), pp. 378–99Google Scholar; Ferguson, Harvie, Melancholy and the Critique of Modernity: Søren Kierkegaard's Religious Psychology (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. xiv–xviiGoogle Scholar.

15 Wolf Lepenies, ‘Neue Einleitung. Das Ende der Utopie und die Wiederkehr der Melancholie’, in idem, Melancholie und Gesellschaft (Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 1998), pp. vii–xxviii. Translated by the authors.

16 Slavoj Žižek compares The Measures Taken to Shakespeare's Hamlet as a work of art that ‘exemplifies the tragic dimension of modern subjectivity. See Žižek, Slavoj, Enjoy your Symptom! (New York and London: Routledge, 2008), p. 198Google Scholar.

17 Jacques Lacan, Jacques-Alain Miller and James Hulbert, ‘Desire and the Interpretation of Desire in Hamlet’, Yale French Studies, 55–6 (‘Literature and Psychoanalysis. The Question of Reading Otherwise’) (1977), pp. 11–52, here p. 39.

18 Derrida, Jacques, Specters of Marx Marx: The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International (New York and London: Routledge, 1994)Google Scholar.

19 Walter Benjamin, ‘Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels’, in idem, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. I, ed. by Rolf Tiedemann and Herman Schweppenhäuser (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991), pp. 334–5 (on Hamlet).

20 Burton, Robert, Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Faulkner, Thomas C., Kiessling, Nicolas K. and Blair, Rhonda L., with introduction and commentary by J. B. Bamborough (Oxford: Oxford University Press and Clarendon Press, 1989–94)Google Scholar.

21 Freud, Sigmund, ‘Trauer und Melancholie’, International Zeitung Psychoanalyse, 4, 6 (1917), 288–301Google Scholar. See also Alenka Zupančič, ‘“Čas je iz tira” ali časovnost v melanholiji’, Problemi, 37, 1–2 (1999), pp. 29–41.

22 Stavrakakis, Yannis, ‘Beyond the Certainty Principle: Towards a Political Reading of the Modern Experience’, Filozofski vestnik, 19, 2 (1998), pp. 179–94, here p. 188Google Scholar.

23 Cf. Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey, “Die Phantasie an die Macht” – Mai 68 in Frankreich (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995), pp. 72 ff.

24 For the problems of language and perception see Ross, Christine, The Aesthetics of Disengagement: Contemporary Art and Depression (Minneapolis Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), pp. xv–xxivGoogle Scholar.

25 See Jones, Caroline A., ‘Techno-Epistemologien der neuen Medienkunst’, in Schramm, Helmar, Schwarte, Ludger and Lazardzig, Jan, eds., Spuren der Avantgarde: Theatrum machinarum (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008) pp. 348–375, here p. 348Google Scholar.

26 Evans, Caroline, Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity and Deathliness (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

27 Ensslin, Felix, ‘Between Two Deaths: From the Mirror to Repetition’, in Ellen Blumenstein und Felix Ensslin, Between Two Deaths (Karlsruhe: Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, 2007), pp. 26–40Google Scholar.

28 Montaigne, The Essays of Montaigne, trans. by Charles Cotton, ed. William Carew Hazlitt, 1877, chap. XIX, available at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600.txt, accessed 15 January 2009.

29 See Fumaroli, Marc, ‘Foreword’, in M. A. Screech, Montaigne and Melancholy: The Wisdom of the Essays (London: Penguin Books, 1991), pp. xi–xivGoogle Scholar.

30 Cf. Jean, Clair, ‘Die Melancholie des Wissens’, in idem, ed., Melancholie. Genie und Wahnsinn in der Kunst (Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2006), pp. 200–6Google Scholar; see also Flach, Sabine and Blättler, Christine, ‘Im Licht des Schattens. Der Schatten als eigentliches Wissen in Philosophie und Kunst’, in Frölich, Margit, Gronenborn, Klaus and Visarius, Karsten, eds., Kunst der Schatten. Zur melancholischen Grundstimmung des Kinos (Marburg: Verlag Schüren, 2006), pp. 41–63Google Scholar.

31 Gregor Cerar, ‘Umreti v vesolju’, Mladina, 6 (2003), interview with Dragan Živadinov, available at http://www.mladina.si/tednik/200306/clanek/zivadinov1/, accessed 15 January 2009. Trans. Jana Renée Wilcoxen.