Other bodies: presence and performativity beyond the human

• Grant number: 17/07311-2
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): July 01, 2017
• Effective date (End): April 30, 2021
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Theatre
• Cooperation agreement: Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)
• Principal researcher: Antônio Carlos de Araújo Silva
• Grantee: Renan Marcondes Cevales
• Home Institution: Escola de Comunicações e Artes (ECA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 18/24837-0 - Forms of absence: dance, disappearance and recurrences, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

The project Other bodies: presence and performativity beyond the human aims at research performative works (relating to theater, dance and the visual arts) that do not present human bodies on the scene or in which bodies appear in a clearly objectified way. From the analysis and study of teh artworks, we wish to focus on conceptions of body and performance that are not essentialist and ontological, but which recognize in the absence, negation and suppression of the body ways of problematizing the following issues: a neoliberal appropriation of the performance art; the reduction of the body to an individual and fetishistic dimension of presence; the overvaluation and hierarchy of reality within artistic works.For this, it will be necessary to operate a critical turn against a certain compliment of the performative as "aesthetics of presence" (FERAL, 2008, p.209) operated by theorists such as Pheggy Phelan, Erika Fischer-Lichte and Josétte Feral as well as to an ethical and (partially) relational perspective of the work of art widely diffused through the writings of Nicolas Bourriaud. To problematize these notions, we bring the theorists Boris Groys, Claire Bishop, Philip Auslander and Hal Foster, whose fundamental analyzes of the recent production of performative art include the theoretical revaluation of the documentation of these works; the problematization of the real presupposition in the performance art and the understanding of presence as an effect.It is from these works that the conceptual issues will be raised and critically discussed:- Stifter's Dinge (2012), by Heiner Goebells.- The Metopes of the Partenon (2015), by Romeo Castellucci.- Ensaio sobre a Dádiva (2015), by Nuno Ramos.- The rite of spring (2016), from [pH2]: Estado de teatro.Having as main theoretical references the authors mentioned above, the research is based on the critical look and aesthetic analysis of these works, chosen not only for the difficulty of classification, such as video, theater, installation or dance, but also for being recent works (produced From the years 2010), to which the researcher had the chance to watch and - with the exception of Stifter's dinge - are still outside the debate in the academic scope. (AU)