How do artistic practices bundle the contradictions of European-style aesthetics in order to challenge them? How is representation itself implicated in the afterlife of colonialism and subjection? What kind of change might be offered by new modes of representation and working processes? Can the concept of dramaturgy be detached from its Eurocentric content and be renewed?

The junior research group “Dramaturgies in the Afterlife of Violence: Transnational Theater between Global South and North” at the Institute for Theater Studies of Ruhr-University Bochum analyses transnational performative arts against the background of the history of violence between the so-called Global South and North. Following an expanded understanding of dramaturgy as hypothesis, the connection between artistic works and their modes of production as well as their social-environmental effects is being investigated. This connection represents a challenge for the European-Western concept of aesthetics, particularly because of the conditions characterized by the afterlife of violence. The view and research on such a wider understanding of dramaturgies combines the theoretical reflection of political art (based on the work of selected artists from Latin America and Africa), the analysis of rehearsal venues and processes (also from the regions mentioned) and the investigation of discourse-defining infrastructures of advanced contemporary theatre (as ‘gatekeepers’, i.e. European festivals and production houses).