Tuesday Lectures
Fall 2018
Narration
narrate (verb) - to tell a story from your own point of view
narration (noun) - the act, action or process or an instance of narrating
The word narration is often paired with the word grand and evokes images of monumental gestures and birth of nations. Related to literary studies, it narrows down to a set of techniques (narrative point of view, narrative voice and narrative time) through which a creator presents not a, but her story: It always involves both the HOW and the WHO-WHAT. In the performing arts field, narration is still closely linked to epic drama, storytelling and collective myths. As an alternative, we propose to understand performing arts narration as a particular procedural skill of the individual artist (or group of artists) that encompasses literacy understood as capacity to read the world, agency understood as capacity to act on behalf of oneself or others, and finally capacity to situate utterance understood as visions, opinions and arguments in public space. The literacy-agency-utterance trajectory at the same time widens and narrows the focus of attention: The widening involves letting go of our obsession with stories and dramaturgy understood as autonomous organisation of aesthetic means tucked away behind closed doors, and instead question our beloved art object´s relation to work procedures and contexts widely defined. The narrowing involves not, as one might believe favouring content over form, but rather question how form and content as a unity is orchestrated as and by utterance. Brutally characterized, the concept outlined is a "cut the crap"-approach that conceptualises narration as paired with the word survival and visualized as written in blood. Like extended blood vessels connecting a heart to public space. In this Tuesday Lectures Series, narration will be approached by strong voiced guests from different fields, explored from different angles and positions, and loosely organized around the themes the spatial, the aesthetic concept and the aural. By ending the Series with a practicing attorney, we recognize and embrace the fact that theatre and performance is just as much part of real life as of the performing arts field, and that narration is equally present in both.
Sidsel Graffer and Serge von Arx
October 2. Tatjana Schneider: On Spatial Agency
October 9. Ida Müller: Scenography and Costume in the Works of Vinge/Müller
October 16. Kari Holtan & Boya Bøckman: Works by De Utvalgte
October 30. Konstantinos Thomaidis: A VOICE IS. A VOICE HAS. A VOICE DOES.
November 6. Lars Petter Hagen: The composer as curator, the curator as composer
November 27. Nicolas Herzog: Narration and the daily legal work