Dramaturgies in the Afterlife of Violence

The Project

Dramaturgies in the Afterlife of Violence: Transnational Theater between Global South and North

Duration: May 01, 2023, to April 30, 2026 (first funding phase); May 01, 2026, to April 30, 2029 (second funding phase)

 

The afterlife of the unequally shared transnational history of violence affects with great urgency the performative arts, which are increasingly shaped by positions from the so-called Global South. Based on the assumption that this historicity is reflected in bodies, relations and institutions, the close connection of historical-political situation with aesthetics and conditions of production (forms of working and infrastructures) will be investigated. The aim of the junior research group is to develop a comprehensive theory and analysis of transnational theater between the Global South and the North based on three subprojects with case studies, as well as to explore the specific role of performative art from the Global South in the apparatus/dispositiv of global transnational “contemporary theater”. Although aesthetics in its European-Western conception recognizes the connection between work, mode of production, and impact, these aspects were nevertheless conceptually differentiated. Today, this separation is particularly challenged by those performative arts that emerge from the Global South but are eminently influenced by exchanges with the discourse-determining theater structures of the Global North, especially those of Europe. These performative arts illustrate that the conditions of appearance are involved in the violent history.

The aim of the junior research group is to develop a comprehensive theory and analysis of transnational theatre between the Global South and North based on three sub-projects with case studies, as well as to explore the specific role of performative art from the Global South in the dispositive of global transnational ‘contemporary theatre’. The concept of dramaturgy serves as a central tool for analyzing this far-reaching relationship and its potential for change. Because dramaturgies form the friction surface between the aesthetic work and the extra-aesthetic world from which art emerges in the first place, another goal of the junior research group is to investigate how specific dramaturgies between the Global South and the North bundle the contradictions of European-style aesthetics in order to challenge them. Therefore, the inherent asymmetries of transnational performative arts will be elaborated, and new approaches of scenic thinking-in-relation will be presented. Thus, the project also aims at detaching the concept of dramaturgy from its Eurocentric content and expanding it. And accordingly, it aims to specify what is often named ‘decolonization’ in the arts.

Three areas are at the center of the entire research project:

  • positions of selected artists and collectives from the Global South (especially Africa and Latin America),
  • corresponding regional rehearsal locations that are characterized by social-environmental engagement beyond the production of art,
  • European festivals and production houses as discourse-determining structures, so-called ‘gatekeepers’ for access to the field of “transnational contemporary theater”.

The junior research group explores these goals and objects in three subprojects with case-studies on the basis of historical and theoretical reflections: A habilitation (second book) by Leon Gabriel and two PhD projects by Balindile ka Ngcobo and Felipe dos Santos Boquimpani. Also, two student research assistants support the work: Stefanie Büttgenbach and Emma Khadija Herrmann. Overall, the group also assembles ‘best-practice’ examples for dealing with asymmetries and unequally shared responsibility in transnational work.

The methodological focus of the research group lies on aesthetic and political theory, performance analysis, field research on rehearsal processes as well as infrastructures and on discourse analysis. This connects to recent debates on dispositives, dramaturgy, rehearsal/practice, artistic research, and institution/organization. In doing so, questions of colonial legacy are explored in an approach that deals both with representational theory and representational politics: How, then, 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?