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Interruptions: A Research Laboratory for Theory and Practice of Theatre (Research Group Conference) | Israel Institute for Advanced Studies

Interruptions: A Research Laboratory for Theory and Practice of Theatre (Research Group Conference)

Date: 
Wed, 01/01/2020 to Thu, 02/01/2020
final_conference_poster_interruptions.jpg

 

Program >

 

Interruptions (שיבושים):

The research laboratory of artists and academics, initiated and led by Ruth Kanner and Freddie Rokem will investigate the notion of Interruptions (shibushim/שיבושים) in the performing arts. The laboratory will provide opportunities to explore and develop the common ground for the forms of thinking/doing developed and expressed in and through artistic creativity and in works of art as well as in academic reflection and research in aesthetics, performance theory and poetics; but also to clarify the differences between the creative and the interpretive processes, even drawing attention to how they ‘interrupt’ each other.

Traditionally, the caesura is a break or pause in a verse where one phrase ends and the subsequent phrase begins or where the verse meter allows for or necessitates such a break. With German Romanticism, in particular through the poet and translator Friedrich Hölderlin, the caesura became the point of departure for a more comprehensive theoretical approach to literature and theatre. Hölderlin’s often enigmatic remarks about the caesura as an interruptive device have been widely interpreted by poets, scholars and philosophers (like Paul Celan, Paul de Man, Werner Hamacher, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Rainer Nägele and others), suggesting that the break (or interruption) created by the caesura is not arresting the continuity of a text but rather serves as a device (or a feature) which structures its form or, as Hölderlin suggested in his “Remarks on Oedipus”, gives form to ‘representation itself’. 

Beginning in his early essays about Hölderlin’s ‘literary’ caesura as well as on Goethe’s “Elective Affinities” (Wahlverwandschaften), Walter Benjamin transformed this notion into a theatrical, performative idiom based on the epic theatre of Bertolt Brecht and the writings of Franz Kafka. According to Benjamin the interruption (Unterbrechung) in Brecht’s epic theatre “consists in arousing astonishment (Staunen) rather than empathy (Einfühlung)”, a re/presentation (Darstellung) of conditions rather than by developing individual, consecutive actions based on causality. In the caesura, the interruption of the continuous flow of harmony and wholeness reside the potentials of resistance and change. 

The initial triangulation of Kafka, Benjamin and Brecht serves as the basis and point of departure for the explorations and investigations we conduct in the seminar room and the studio, both practically and theoretically; also moving linguistically, geographically and historically to explore the significance of interruptions for the creation and understanding of the arts as well as for their task in our contemporary world.

 

SPEAKERS:

Vivian Liska, University of Antwerp
Paul North, Yale University
Galili Shahar, Tel Aviv University
Esa Kirkkopelto, Malmö Theatre Academy
Shirley Gal, RKT Group
Siwar Awwad, RKT Group
Tali Kark, RKT Group
Ronen Babluki, RKT Group
Adi Meirovitch, RKT Group
Arnon Rosenthal, RKT Group
Ruth Schor, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Jan Kühne, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Ira Avneri, Tel Aviv University
Daphna Ben-Shaul, Tel Aviv University
Nikolaus Müller-Schöll, Goethe University Frankfurt
Richard Gough, Journal of Performance Research UK

Organizers:
Ruth Kanner, Tel Aviv University
Freddie Rokem, Tel Aviv University

Research assistant:
Adi Chawin, Tel Aviv University

 

Reading for Vivian Liska and Paul North's lecture, "Halt!" >

Lecture recordings >