BOOKS!!

Right everyone - library is totally out of books for this essay -in particular I would really like 'The Screaming Body'. Both copies are out; I've put a request on them, but if someone dear to me has one can you get in touch - or anyone really for that matter - just to see if there's any way we can share the book. THANK YOU!!

Christmas love

x x

Contact e-mail address

Ed, what is your Warwick e-mail address?
I just want to ask you a few questions.

Thank you

x

Life and Times with Artaud

1) As everyone has already noted, the scene with Colette and Artaud practising the il etait un roi de thule is perhaps the most obvious allusion to Artaud’s concepts behind the theatre of cruelty. The audience is shown the grueling, physical struggle that Colette must undergo in order to train her voice to reach Artaud’s desired standard. It is the process of rehearsal that we are asked to witness, not its outcome. The audience must endure the exhausting strains of Colette’s voice, and in this way, they suffer with her.

Perhaps another link to Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty can be seen in Prevel’s struggle. He is continually striving to become a published poet, and looks to Artaud for help. However, that he never appears to achieve this and instead is often called to be resposinble for Artaud, is perhaps evidence of Artaud’s a) rejection of language (especially poetry) and b) again a focus on the process of creating art, rather than the final product art. All art should be a struggle.

2) I’m with Matt on the film’s use of Bob Dylan. I’m not sure Artaud would have embraced this use of popular culture. The film reuses sound, rather than creating a new sound and this doesn’t fit with Artaud’s ideals. Again, in agreement with previous posts, I think that the uses of silences had the greatest impact. Colette’s performance in the theatre was entirely unaccompanied by sound, thus forcing the audience to heighten their other senses to the light and atmosphere unfolding before them. The silence here is also rather frustrating for the audience…they have heard and seen Colette rehearsing for this performance, but they never actually get to hear the final product.

3) I think the Black and White worked really well in this film. The want of colour serves as a reminder that the characters in this film are not fully engaging with the outside world. The colour and imagination exists inside their heads, rather than in reality. This pessimistic view of reality is accentuated by the lack of colour.

4) I really enjoyed the film. And while it wasn’t particularly helpful in cementing my understanding of Artaud, it at least gave me a sense of his existence and the character with whom he was aquainted during his life. So… 4/5 from me.

Life and Times with Artaud (late as ever....)

1) As in popular opinion, I found that the most obvious cinema of cruelty effect within the film was evident in the rehearsal scene between Artaud and Collette. I think that it illustrates the difference between cruelty as described by Artaud and as we may understand it now, ie there was no physical violence; the attack was instead psychological and emotional. For me, watching Collette's distress was actually more uncomfortable than I think I would have been had she been under physical attack; the raw emotion is hugely affecting and I think an excellent example of the way in which Artaud wanted theatre to affect the audience on an extreme personal level.
2)I can see that most people weren't too keen on the use of sound in the film, but I actually thought that it worked to an extent. I think, rather simplistically I'm sure (but never mind), that the juxtaposition of the folk (ish?) music worked to emphasise the rather nightmarish existence unfolding on screen. I also think that the use of perhaps unexpected music served on occasion to create an eerie and disturbing atmosphere when one considers the action it accompanies. The use of silence in the film, particularly during the sequence in the theatre, was also extremely powerful. Without sound at this point I think an audience is forced to really consider what they are looking at, to force themselves to think where they may not otherwise have to. For me silence during performance constitutes an important part of what I understand theatre of cruelty to be.
3) Having seen the film in black and white I find it impossible to imagine it presented in any other way. Not only does the stock, as has been mentioned, give the film a depressed, melancholic feel, it manages I think to create for the audience an impression of the haze (drugs, alcohol, sex etc) in which much of the lives we see must have been lived.
4) If forced to rate the film I'd give it a four. I think it's an excellent account of the way Artaud lived and worked and the effect he and his practices had on others. In this sense I think the documentary style works really well; to express the same story from Artaud's point of view wouldn't work I think; I think it is far more powerful to see his life through the eyes of someone else, albeit not impartial, and I think in this way we get a real impression of his own struggles and suffering.

Readings for week 10

Dear Artaudians

I have left 5 copies of the following readings with kate in the School office:

• Lynn MacRitchie, ‘Marina Abramovic: Exchanging Energies’ Performance Research #1.2 Routledge,1996: 27-34.
• Tanya Augsburg, ‘Orlan’s Performative Transformations of Subjectivity’ in P. Phelan and J. lane eds. The Ends of Performance, New York and London: NYU Press, 1998: 285-326
• Orlan, ‘Intervention’ in P. Phelan and J. lane eds. The Ends of Performance, New York and London: NYU Press, 1998: 315-327.
• ‘Breaking Through Language’ an interview with Mike Parr, Edward Scheer and Nick Tsoutas 100 Years of Cruelty: Essays on Artaud ed. Edward Scheer. Sydney: Power Publications and Artspace (2000)
• Edward Scheer, ‘A Vast Field of Lyrical Aggression. Recent Durational Art by Mike Parr’ Broadsheet Vol 33 Number 2. 23-7. (June-August 2004)
• Edward Scheer ‘Performing Indifference, An Interview With Stelarc’ Performance Paradigm Journal of Performance and Contemporary Culture. #1, (March 2005) www.performanceparadigm.net

please share and copy these with other students..

see you next week

ed

Essay Questions.

School of Theatre, Performance and Cultural Policy Studies

Aspects of Theatre & Performance
Autumn Term Module 2007

THEATRE AND THEORY AFTER ARTAUD

Essay Questions. Essays (c. 3000 words) are to be submitted to the Departmental office by 4pm on Monday 14th January 2008 (Week 2, Spring Term)

Choose one of the following topics:


Q1. Andre Breton once said that ‘the simplest surrealist act consists in descending to the street with revolver in hand and shooting at random, as fast as one can, into the crowd.’ (The Second Manifesto of Surrealism) What is the surrealist aesthetic in regard to performance and how is it evident in Artaud’s work (artworks, radio, film, theatre writings etc)?

Q2. In dealing with the question of mental illness and creativity, Michel Foucault asks as to the difference between ‘hallucination’ and ‘inspiration’ and says that ‘Artaud’s… madness is precisely the absence of the work of art, the reiterated presence of that absence…’ (Madness and Civilization p287) Considering Artaud’s prodigious output, how do you explain Foucault’s thesis?

Q3. ‘Smash language to touch life!’ (Artaud, ‘The Theatre and its Double’) What is the function of language in the theatre of cruelty? You may wish to consider how Artaud’s work in other media (cinema, drawing, radio, poetry) influenced his writing about the use of language in theatre.

Q4. ‘Conceived as an art form at the juncture of other signifying practices as varied as dance, music, painting, architecture and sculpture, performance seems paradoxically to correspond to the new theatre invoked by Artaud.’ (Josette Feral in Elizabeth Wright Postmodern Brecht pll5) How does Artaud’s theatre of cruelty explain developments in contemporary performance? Discuss with reference to at least 2 of the artists on the course.

Q5. In Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu Artaud calls for a reworking of the human body, in the form of a ‘body without organs’ which will liberate man and ‘teach him to dance inside out...and that inside out will be his true side out.’ (PF p79) Discuss this image in relation to the body in performance art. In what sense does performance art stage a ‘body without organs’?

Q6. Devise your own topic in association with your lecturer. NB. this must be completed and a wording agreed upon by end of week 10 in Autumn term.

Tell me when it hurts

Does anyone know where we can get the 'Tell Me When it Hurts' reading for this week from?

1. are here any cinema of cruelty effects?
2. comment on the use of sound in the film
3. how effective is the use of Black and white stock?
4. rate the film out of 5

1.The scene where Collette is performing Artaud's work there is an obvious attempt to barrage the senses. The music and visual aspects are not there to support story line and structure but to act on their own which could be seen as indicative as cinema of cruelty. My problem with it however is that it does just seem to be thrown in with little thought as if the director has gone "ok here's the bit where we show what Artaud wanted from theatre and then be done with it" Apart from that I'd say not, we experiance cruelty on characters but as a viewer we do not I don't think.

2.I found the use of sound fairly tedious which perhaps may have been the point. Actually what I found tedious was the jazz/blues music they kept slotting into the film, yes we get it it's paris, it's cool everyone smokes and has affairs and they're artists we don't need a constant reminder of that with hip music at every scene change that sees them in a cafe or a street. The sound effects such as on the train were fairly standard but I did like how the sound builded heavily at one point I seem to remember

3.Black and White stock seemed like a fairly natural choice in creating atmosphere and the sense of Paris's place in history, also at the time film noir was starting to become incredibly cool and popular I think so there is a homage to that perhaps, correct me if I'm wrong. Asthtically it created beutifull cinematography. I do think however that when making a film about artists in Paris it is a device used fairly often.

4. I'd only give the film a generous 3. It was fine, but so cliche in places it was cringe worthy (that music) As an insight to Artaud, usefull certainly but the device of telling it from Pervel's perspective I thought was a little safe. It creates a distance from the subject matter in a very easy way.

Nick.

Prevel (I think thats his name)

My life and times with Antoin Artaud. Not the life of Antoin Artaud. It was not suppose to be an in depth look at Artaud's methods but the effect he had on others, for example the anticipation Prevel has when waiting to meet him at the beginning etc etc... It is a look at how Prevel was effected by Artaud's life and supposed madness. Yes, there where moments of Artaud's method in the film but it was not the crux of the film. So if we were to look at a film point of view I find it difficult to give it less than a 4 because I found it entertaining and poignant. Yes, there are flaws but it did not detract from the enjoyment of the film.

As a way of studying Artaud there are moments where it is useful and many of his techniques where used to great effect but as an entire film it would be pointless to show a group of scholars. It would be better to show them clips of certain moments for exampl il etait un roi de thule! =D

'My Life and Times...'

I agree that this film is difficult to rate. What are we rating? The exploration of Artaud’s theory in the film, or the filmic quality of the story told? Like others in the class I found the insight into Artaud’s personal life interesting and I suppose an insight not easy to find through other means, such as writings between Artaud and contemporaries. In this sense I would give the film a 3/5 – not deserving full figures seeing as it is slow at times with irrelevant café scenes and love making (?!) I don’t think you can gain much, if anything, about Artaud’s cruelty theories however, and would rate it a 1/5 in this respect. The visual use of colour, the grainy black and white stock, and positioning of the camera throughout the film I did think had a specific artistic effect, though it is debatable how much it perpetuated Artaud’s ideas on cruelty. The black and white visually creates the bleak world that Artaud lived in, clearly expressing the extremes within which he lived and with which he struggled. The camera’s eye is Artaud’s, and so we see the world through his desolate eyes. When in public the camera is positioned so that the busyness of the world around him is something isolated from Artaud’s ‘eye’. At the train station, the camera stays still while the bustle of people rushes around it. The camera often focuses on a particular body or object such as a handbag and then follows this through the train station, giving the impression of Artaud’s scrutinising and objectifying eye isolated from the rest of society. Likewise, when Artaud and Prevel are on the train/bus the camera is positioned so that it can focus and then blur alternatively on the two men and on the busy streets behind them. The way the camera works in both these instances is to distinguish the isolated Artaud from the alien world around him. I don’t think it represents any aspect of cruelty however, just demonstrates Artaud’s artistic seclusion.

The contrast between piercing noise and blinding silence is however a clearer representation of Artaud’s ‘cruelty’. Silence and what seems like a ‘slowing down’ of the camera corresponds to the moments in the film that are most ‘cruel’. This silence is cinematic language for Artaud, where words cannot express the pain and anguish society inflicts upon us. So silence is used instead, strangely creating a noise much louder and piercing than any scream could affect. Colette silently rails at her audience, Prevel coughs and experiences near-death though with his spluttering muted, and Artaud’s funeral is filmed in absolute silence. These silences are combined with the camera seeming to either swirl around or flicker on the object, or focus on particular aspects of the scene while blurring others. I think these rare moments in the film correspond (remotely) to Artaud’s ideas on cruelty, though they could never express the visceral pain as directly as Artaud’s own live performances did.

All in all, an interesting biographic film that makes insightful decisions to express something of the ‘cruelty’ that Artaud experienced. You won’t learn much about his theories in this though other than when he screeches instructions to Colette in her rehearsal.

Artaud on film

I similarly found that the narrative style gave the film a documentary feel as opposed to a device to exploit Artaud’s theories. However it was the moment with Collette and Artaud alone in the room, whereby Artaud was continually pushing the actress to repeat the same line over and over that allied particularly to notions of cruelty. As an audience member it was uncomfortable to witness, the voice shrieking the same thing over again was piercing and completely inescapable. The apparent exhaustion of Collette as Artaud pushed her further was unsettling, her whole body was exhausted so his unforgiving attitude to her was cruel.

I would have to agree with previous responses that it was the brief moments of silence that had the most impact. The sequence of Artaud’s funeral was completely in silence, an aspect that added to the magnitude of this moment, and encouraged you to tune in on the images of the scene. Likewise Collette’s performance with the flashing lights void of any sound was interesting, you became acutely aware to the way the light fell and the shadows it created. The sounds of the harmonica that filled the movement between scenes seemed completely at odds to the atmosphere of the rest of the film, and I struggle to find the meaning or purpose behind its insertion.
Finally, I don’t think that the black and white stock particularly added anything to the film, other than maybe enforcing a bleak and dismal atmosphere that equates to Artaud’s state of mind.

With all of this in mind I would have to once again take the easy way out and give the film a moderate… three. I thought the film explored a number of interesting ideas and skimmed over Artaud’s theories, but as mentioned previously the documentary feel, for me, helped highlight how Artaud’s life was so deeply intertwined with drugs. Derrida’s purpose throughout was to find Artaud his drugs, which enabled him to function, the extent to which I hadn’t quite understood previously.

xxx

ROI DE THULEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

1. are here any cinema of cruelty effects?
2. comment on the use of sound in the film
3. how effective is the use of Black and white stock?
4. rate the film out of 5

I didn't find Cruelty effects in the film. There was a certain form of cruelty being enacted on characters, but I as a viewer did not get the same effect. Perhaps this was because of a feeling of distancing. The black and white created an almost clinical feel, a washed out life. It had quite a documentary feel to it, as perhaps was intended. Likewise, the music was jarring with the piece. A little connecting jingle between scenes. It was the silence which had more impact, eg. in the scene with Collettes silent performance and flashing images. If this form had continued in a similar way, then maybe this would be cinema of cruelty?
I give it 3 our of 5. It didn't really engage me, didn't inspire me, but thought it was an insight to Artauds life (rather than his world? his theatre?)

I still think you should watch Requim for a Dream...

Yanno

My Life and Times with Antonin Artaud

Hello Artaudies!

Although I agree that the film was more a documentary than trying to establish a complete theatre of cruelty style there were definately cruel elements. As Sarah mentioned, I found the scene with Colette particularly poignant in that as well as forcing the viewer to take on a almost voyeuristic role, I also felt highly uncomforatble throughout the whole sequence because of the clear emotional and physical strain of the performer, when she finally gave up I too felt relieved. This seemed to be in keeping with Artauds concept of cruelty as I believe it was a physical experience, in as much as I felt myself saying the words with her in my head (loser).

As noted below, I also think it was not the questionable choice of music that was powerful in this film but the use of silence. Most significantly so in the scene where Prevel is choking uncontrollably. By using silence as Artaud often chose to do in his films the gesture, facial grimaces and distorted body were the focus, and I found this silent image of the body in utter turmoil, was far more powerful than when the sound was introduced; language was un-neccessary in creating this, the image was 'universal'.

Like Grace, I also found the black and white stock effetive as a visual metaphor of Artauds state of mind; depicting it as bleak and incoherent, as the image was often distorted and grainy. I also felt it had a distancing effect for the viewer, causing them to cast a more analytical eye over the film as it was not 'realistic' in colour.

Hmm rating it is a toughy, I am going to say 3. As a film it gave a good presentation of the effect of a drug addiction, and of Artaud's way of looking at the world, however it did seem at times to undermine itself with the choice of music for example, and not give a true depiction of Artaud as a theorist, there were indeed beautiful moments but I think they could have been pushed further.

Lauren
xxxxxx

Co-presence with the spectator?

I think you're right with the black and white stock being romantic Jeremy, although I doubt that's what Artaud would have wanted. It gives the film a distanced feel from a modern audience too, perhaps helping to show that we should not expect to be able to understand Artaud's theories and practice without understanding the context they came from.

I agree with most people who've said that this film was more documentary than a film that clearly demostrated elements of the theatre of cruelty. However, I do think that at times the filming took on the challenge of putting the actor and the spectator in co-presence (obviously metaphorically rather than physically). A possible example was where Prevel is looking through the window at Colette as she gets increasingly hysterical trying to 'use her scream box' (as a side note, this is an amazing turn of phrase!), the audience joins Prevel looking into the room, making us as much spectators as much as Prevel is to the scene. Francis Vayone describes that one of Artaud's main reasons for rejecting the cinema was that it did 'not place the actor and the action in a real and direct co-presence with the spectator' (p180, 'Cinemas of Cruelty?', A Critical Reader) but here I think the film attempts to break this divide.

I would rate the film 3/5 as I think it had some interesting artistic moments and was definitely worth watching. However, I agree with others that it was quite slow moving, and sometimes lost my interest. In my opinion, the soundtrack was also very misplaced, giving the film a relaxed feel which did not suit the action.

Plus fort!!!!!!!

1. are here any cinema of cruelty effects?
2. comment on the use of sound in the film
3. how effective is the use of Black and white stock?
4. rate the film out of 5

Regrettably I will have to agree with Matt on this one the film did deserve 4 out of 5. Also I felt that the scene with the actress on stage and the flashing bulbs was a powerful moment of cruelty within the film. The use of silence and lights created an eerie atmosphere that exposes the viewer. Another moment similar to that is right at the beginning where the camera pans through the train station at eye level. The shaking and the constant switch of the camera gave a nauseating and unpleasant feel to the scene. Despite this the film itself felt more of a biopic then a delve into cruelty and that these were the only instance of theatre of cruelty within the film. It was much more a film about the relationship between Prevel and Artaud and how their friendship effected their lives.

As for the music it felt that at any moment you would hear the deep rumble and wail of a blues singer, "I got the blues, Saturday morning 9:15 etc etc... It just didn't feel appropriate. It just didn't quite suit the mood. The music at the beginning with the singer on the stage felt much more appropriate to the mood and atmosphere of the film.

As for the black and white it felt appropriate. If it had been not been in black and white it would perhaps lose some of its appeal. The black and white made the whole experience feel much more real and authentic, as well as a romantic edge to it. I understand romantic may not be the right word so feel free to comment.

Jeremy x

There once was a king of Thuleeeeeeeeee.

It's a bit keen writing this early i know, but here goes!
Firstly, I reckon it deserves a good 4 out of 5. The one point i feel is lost by the dodgy soundtrack; i did expect Bob Dylan to flounder onto our screens at any moment. However, in regards to the sound. What i found so striking was the use of silence, or almost silence. When our lovely Colette is on stage and the lights flash around her, illuminating her momentarily, there is no sound of the stage action; only the flashing of the bulbs (a sound similar to a nail being dropped on a metallic table). This obviously draws your attention to the irregular and eerie lighting bursts and almost creates a sense of frustration as the viewer is denied the opportunity to hear what she is saying.
This is the only moment that i feel is directly linked to Cinema of Cruelty (as Yann mentioned, this flashing of images is reminds me greatly of Requiem for a Dream). I find the link between this sequence and Cinema of Cruelty weak though and hard to justify.
It was interesting to see this portrayal of Artaud; a reminder that he is human. A tragic story but littered with humour (when he describes Prevel's lover as a 'gorgon'). Enough babble from me.

Love and Artaudian Kisses (in the form a gruesome and long winded scream)

Matt
xxx

P.S. Could this have been done any differently than Black and White?

(come see Edmond)

In Response to the Screening of 'My Life and Times With Antonin Artaud'

While the film acts primarily as a biopic, depicting the relationship between Antonin Artaud and Jacques Prevel up until Artaud's death on March 14th 1948, it does posses elements of The Cinema of Cruelty. The cinematic spectator witnesses, in a conventional linear progression, the growing and intensifying relationship between the artist, Artaud, and the poet, Prevel. In his lifetime Artaud expressed a disatisfaction with cinema, believing that the audience were split from representation into merely accepting realism. However, he did believe that the advancements in technology, such as ' lenses, camera positions and even different stock' ('Performance', p.55) would enable audiences to engage with the work. The viewer's vision then allowed them to become a part of the action. This is the case in 'My Life and Times with Antonin Artaud'; the film is filtered through a grainy black and white stock, which distances us from discarding the piece as Artad's unquestionable reality. Instead, it is cold, unsettling and thus acts literally and figuratively to symbolise Artaud's bleak descent into hallucinogenics and extreme illness. The external and the internal worlds of Prevel and Artaud increasingly intwine, creating a nightmarish set of images.
Sound and music acted in support of the artists' disjuncture with society. In my opinion, the blues music that was repeated at various parts of the film did not create or sustain a certain mood or atmosphere. Moreover, it completely conflicted with the emotions and images of the characters and bohemian Paris. Even so, Artaud himself would have encouraged these obscure choices, because they force the spectator to answer their own questions on what is being presented or alluded to. The characters used their own voices as tools of cruelty in keeping with Artaud's manifesto: they screech, yell, whisper and utter. Each noise layers them in unpredictability and ultimately adds to an illusion of madness.

I would rate the film as 3/5. I found it an interesting insight into the lives of many characters, but Prevel and Artaud especially: the film was well shot and effectively acted, but I think it was slow and seemingly long. Also, if Artaud's manifesto and personal beliefs are to be taken into account, 'My Life and Times With Antonin Artaud' detered too heavily from them, as it gradually became 'a slice of life'. Realism overwhlemed the surreal and abstract, giving us a biopic narrative of Artaud's life.

SCREENING TOMORROW

Dear Artaudians,

we will be looking at the Mordillat centenary project film tomorrow entitled 'My Life and Times with Antonin Artaud'. Two reasons:
its not in the library and Performance is (so you can arrange to see Performance at your own convenience)
this is a good copy (the library copy of Performance is a broadcast copy and not good quality for projection (probably ok for private screening)

so why not view both?

Questions for the Artaud film:

1. are here any cinema of cruelty effects?
2. comment on the use of sound in the film
3. how effective is the use of Black and white stock?
4. rate the film out of 5

please be brief and post yr answers on the blog

enjoy

see you next week

ed

Cinema of Cruelty?

Watch Reqium for a Dream.

Van Gogh

I've realised (really, really belatedly) that the essay 'The man suicided by society' is actually in an Artaud anthology that I have. I've read it and it is really interesting; I know people had trouble finding it so if anyone wanted to borrow it and read it you're more than welcome, just let me know.

Also, having trouble finding 'To have done with the judgement of God'. Where has anyone else found it? Thanks alot

K

The Vanguard of Progress

I find To Have Done with the Judgement of God a really unsettling piece of work. Part of this discomfort is purely aesthetic; the delivery on the recordings is harsh and aggressive. Artaud and the other performers, make the full use of range, pitch and expression (even to the point where it sounds absurd). The whole delivery of the text reminds me of the scene in My Life and Times with Antonin Artaud, where Prevel is watching through the window as Artaud makes Colette, an actress, repeatedly recite 'there once was a King of Thule', whilst he shouts 'NO..the sound must squirt out' and 'make it vibrate until the fibre of life squeals'. The directions are obscure and hard to imagine, but i get the sense that if these commands were realised, even partially, the result would be similar to the performers deliveries in To Have Done with the Judgement of God.

In contrast, i find the content less unsettling, but i am almost certain that this a contextual issue. The themes that Artaud were dealing with, such as anti-religion, anti-state and anti-America, are sentiments that feature heavily in even our pop culture: we have grown desensitised to claims such as 'God is shit'. This said, i find it interesting that it seemed to be Artaud himself (and also the director of the station) who found it 'obscene, inflammatory and blasphemous', to the point where Artaud echoed the directors very words. Perhaps the broadcast is not a shocking as Artaud would have wanted? The themes are still relevant today however, and some quotes could even be directly applicable,

'I didn't know the Americans were such a warlike people'
'I tell you that they have reinvented microbes in order to impose a new idea of god'

Whether it is shocking or not, with it's clever mix of biblical and epic imagery such as the 'crosses of the earth' and 'the kingdom of black night' contrasting the more pedestrian and base images of 'coal' and 'shit', To Have Done with the Judgement of God, is a fantastically distorted piece of writing. What i find most interesting is this interview at the end with the unnamed man asking Artaud questions. A conclusion of this sort gives the entire piece of writing context, but it is important, in my opinion to remember that has to be taken as a character rather than Artaud himself- similar to the end of a Bright Eyes song (this time done more tongue in cheek and perhaps as a slight self parody?).

http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/An-Attempt-To-Tip-The-Scales-lyrics-Bright-Eyes/D55A7C5807C5205448256C7D0007ABD2

Sorry for waffling on.

Matt

Lightning Bolt

Sorry also probably the band most worth checking out in relation to Artaud that I can think of are a band called lightning bolt. They use microphone distortion and play noise muic with elements of thrash n hardcore without falling into a cliche trap. It's very very fast and aggressive and knocks your socks off. It however is not hard to listen to and after a while kinda seeps into you creating a driving force.
x

Music

This is just a small response to the electronic/noise artist we heard on wednesday and possible artists to look at that are in some way or other in a similar vain to the viceral experiance of Artaudian theatre.

Firstly I would suggest listening to all Sonic Youth Albums at very high volume but particularly Confusion is Sex/Kill YR Idols and Daydream nation. Both albums use a huge amount of feedback and dischordal noise. The feeling gets into your gut and moves tension and pace forward with no remorse. The experiance is un apologetic but also quite uplifting. I'd recomend starting with Daydream Nation as a departure point, then onto the earlier works for a harsher more uncontrolled experiance. Plus this band are prety sweet in general.

Next I'd say look at the artist Venetian Snares. He's a break/thrashcore DJ who uses loads of samples from films to create a very unsettling atmosphere. Often it's very course and violent in it's approach and at points brutal. (he actually made an album from sounds souly taken from wound fucking....true) that aside, the music knocks you back and makes you pay attention always ready for what happens next. It may not be clever but its very affective. another dj in a similar but slightly more serious is Aaron Spectre/Drumcorps.

other bands that I think encapsulate the tone and approach of Artaudian theatre are SHELLAC, DON CABELLERO, OXES, MOGWAI, MINOR THREAT, BLACK FLAG, MILES DAVIS. Anyway I'll stop there or i'll just end up listening my favourite bands.

Nick.
x

Intellectual Madness

This won't be as linguistically profound as some of the other posts, but I have to mention something which has been in my head since the debate.

A speaker on the 'against' side of the argument pointed out that in order to make art, there needs to be an intellectual input or message, and therefore was suggesting this as a reason for L'art Brut to be a void concept.

1. This is hugely offensive in its implication that people with symptoms of 'madness' cannot be intellectual,

and

2. This speaker was implying that art is an elitist activity to be made and shared only by intellectuals.

Both of these points I refute, as Artaud himself was a very intelligent man, and indeed if we are to say that all art should be met with an intellectual eye, should there not be some kind of humiliating I.Q. test to take upon entry to an art gallery?

Emma

Madness and Art Debate

Just a couple of things I was thinking about during the debate and afterwards (on the pro side).

Considering the view of thinkers such as Sasz, Laing etc etc that perceived 'madness' as an attempt to express 'disapproved' thought led me to wonder if in fact part of the wonder of art is the ability and opportunity it affords the artist to express and explore ideas that might not otherwise be acceptable or understood by society. The use of art as a medium through which to express these ideas does not by any means indicate that an artist is mad, merely that he or she chooses this medium through which to express ideas he or she may otherwise struggle to. I would suggest that in some cases art becomes an acceptable arena for what could otherwise be unacceptable, or perhaps inexpressible. In this case 'madness' or the accusation of madness appears to me the result of incomprehension or 'blinkeredness' (really really not a word, but never mind....) on the part of the audience.

Considering also the question of inaccessibility to 'normal' society: I believe that really, pretty much all art is going to come from a place essentially inaccessible to any one part of society; one person's imagination is not the same as another's and in this sense all art comes from a different place, a different mindset than the one with which an audience will then view the piece. It is surely almost impossible for an audience to fully understand an artist's motives- the fact that this is the case in no way indicates either that the work is the result of madness or is pointless and useless within the medium. Personally I believe that one of the greatest things about art remains the fact that, whatever an artist's motivation and/or message, it is possible to interpret the same work in countless different ways.

Shakespeare without his verse

With a playwright now so universally acclaimed and interpreted, why not get rid of the language that makes up Shakespeare’s masterpieces? Yes, they are classics and masterpieces, and Artaud indeed stresses the anachronistic nature of them in a modern society, renouncing them as ‘fit for the past’ and incomprehensible to the masses, but Artaud also makes the suggestion that masterpieces can be made conscious to the masses if their ideas are spoken in their language. As Artaud says: ‘theatre is the only place in the world where a gesture, made once, is never repeated in the same way’. I believe it is possible to recreate Shakespeare in an Artaudian language, that goes deeper than one’s intellect and touches on the sensualities and emotions of all people across the world, through what Artaud calls a language somewhere between thought and gesture, which lies outside the restricted nature of words. Instead of actors focussing on the complex nuances of Shakespearean verse, they would make use of the language’s symbolism and interconnections to speak of a world they live in. Last year I saw ‘Richard the Third’ recreated into an ‘Arab Tragedy’, where Shakespeare’s text was cut and edited and translated into Arabic. The English geography, images, conceits and religious framework were reworked into the world of the Gulf today. English history was used to explore contemporary political anxieties in the Gulf and Arab region. Language was not the focus of the play; it had been rewritten. The play was created by a historical idea, much like what Artaud championed, and a theatrical language was created where Arabs as well as English (and I’m sure other nationalities) in the audience could connect with the sensuality, emotion and rhythm contained in that language, whether or not the words were understood.

Artaud's theory in relation to Shakespeare's 'Othello'

Artaud continually stressed the restrictive nature of language, campaigning against traditional masterpieces. He sighted Shakespeare as a key culprit whose work he claimed was ineffectual with the audience, undoubtedly seeming to contradict his idea of staging a Shakespeare in conjunction with his theories. However, perhaps dependent on the fact that Shakespeare plays are what I know more about, there are moments in these where I can imagine the Artaudian theory being exploited. There are parts to‘Othello’ which to me seem an obvious choice through the degeneration of the principle character’s mind. Not only does the play portray physical violence, (predominantly in the blood bath that is the final scene), but also internal torment within Othello climaxing in Act Four Scene One. The stage directions indicate ‘He falls down in a trance’, indeed a production I saw explored convulsions and physical distortions in the actor’s body, both unnerving to watch, and likewise suggesting a move into the unconscious, looking to the inner world or ‘metaphysical man’. The last scene is, fundamentally, violent in action, a literal take on the word ‘cruel’ which Artaud did not necessarily intend. However in the production I saw the audience became central to the action. They were surrounding the actors as the plot unfolded and almost became part of the carnage as blood splattered onto them. Indeed Artaud wanted his audience to be central to the action, ‘true’ theatre he claimed was dangerous, he wanted it to be immediate and completely encase the audience so as to have a profound, long term effect. Whether or not this latter idea is the case, the feeling of being trapped and immersed in the violence was prominent. Finally, I agree with Nick’s point about language for Artuad looked to the oriental way of considering the voice, where words become almost incantations arresting our sensibility and inducing trances. The rhythm, structure and continual flow of Shakespeare’s words, on one sense aligns with this, highlighting how I believe there are at least moments which suggest ‘Othello’ could be produced in an Artaudian style.

The Story of Rabbi Simeon

Many people seem to have discussed many areas of interest with regard to other programme suggestions and it appears this work has been overlooked.
This work is intruiging as (similar to Artaud's other suggestions) it creates a paradox by containing both what he is attempting to avoid and what he is attempting to achieve!
The Story of Rabbi Simeon as I understand is a late encounter one night between the Rabbi and someone who is later discovered as the Angel of Death.
"The rabbi enquired of this character who he was, and the latter replied thai he was God's messenger. "Why is it that you look so strange," the rabbi continued. On account of the talk of human beings who say "this and that we will do," and yet not one of them knows when he will be summoned to die, was the answer. When Rabbi Simeon asks to be told the date of his own death, the Angel explains that he does not have jurisdiction over righteous people. The midrash then supports this statement with this quotation from Proverbs 10:27, "The fear of the Lord prolongs life."(38) Though death may be postponed, yet none will escape this end."
This contains many of Artaud's principles regarding his idea of a Theatre of Cruelty. The work itself does not necessarily need to be restricted by the published text but rather engross itself with the subject matter, "The fear of the Lord prolongs life."
The representation of the Angel of Death can be greatly physicalised in order to prompt the question as to why the angel does look so strange and the unknown/devised quality of the angel's appearance leaves an opportunity to introduce Artaud's "objects, masks and props...stressing the physical aspect of all imagery and expression."
The stage language along with the overall style of the piece gives words "the significance they have in dreams."

This production would be the most likely candidate due to it's openness to interpretation & change and it's topicality.

As Joe said earlier on, the Fall of Jerusalem seems to be a possible performance from the programme if I was trying to achieve at least some of Artaud’s ideas in a practical sense (I don’t think it’s possible to use them all and not be contradictory). Although it is not entirely clear what Artaud is referring to in his description of what he would present from the Bible and the Scriptures of the Fall of Jerusalem (the blood flowing from it and also the prophet’s metaphysical quarrels), there are a few possible texts that he could have had in mind. One of these is in Jeremiah, a book in the Old Testament where the prophet Jeremiah prophesies and warns against the coming fall of Jerusalem. It was most likely written 6 years before the actual fall (586BC), and gives a rich visual language from the time. For example, Jeremiah 6v6-7:

This is what the LORD Almighty says:
"Cut down the trees 

and build siege ramps against Jerusalem.
This city must be punished; it is filled with oppression.
As a well pours out its water,
so she pours out her wickedness.
Violence and destruction resound in her;
her sickness and wounds are ever before me.

(you can read more at http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah%206;&version=31;)

I think that a staged performance of this could be effective if I were to the Bible as a stimulus rather than a script, and refer directly to Artaud’s notes on musical instruments in his ideas on subjects. Here he talks about musical instruments evoking ‘sensibility through the senses’ through ‘utterly unusual sound properties and vibrations’ and using ‘ancient instruments’. Of course, instruments were used much more often in warfare in this in history, and an experience of an extreme nature could be created through the use of instruments, rhythm and vibrations alongside movement and gesture to depict the fall of Jerusalem, without necessarily using words.

Programme Selection

After reviewing Artaud's proposed programme I think Buchner's Woyzeck could be the most successfully recognised in terms of the 'Theatre of Cruelty'. The play follows the protagonist Woyzeck, a military barber, who stabs to death his beloved wife in a jealous rage. The obvious violence of this play aside, what makes it, for me,a clear choice is the way Buchner focuses on the themes of maddness, the sub-conscious and the hallucinations Woyzeck suffers from, at the hands of the doctor. The emphasis on the subconscious and the psychological torment the protagonist undergoes, is almost similar to the effect Artaud wishes to evoke in his audience, and the inclusion of hullucinations could give the performance a dream-like quality; it goes beyond the conscious. This play also looks at the themes of violence and lust, socially controversial subjects that would demand the attention of the audience, and questioning their morals. I also believe Woyzeck could be just a successful if the language was indeed, disregarded, and a 'unique language' based around the body and gesture was used as the images depicted are so powerful.

For example when Woyzeck watches Marie dance with the Drum Major, it is noted that Woyzeck embodies the beat of the music and the heat of the dance, and his line 'Stab, stab the bitch dead' refrains. This could be a physically grotesque image, in which the performer is evidently tormented by the beating music, in close proximity to the audience, by using distorted, uncomfortable body movements , the characters inner suffering could be realised without the use of 'dead language'.

Titus Andronicus - Exploring Mutability

While I agree with Yann that Artaud is essentially contradicting himself in suggesting an exploration of a classical playwright like William Shakespeare, I think that Shakespeare's earliest text 'Titus Andronicus', being one of his most unknown works, is also a text that can easily apply itself to Artaud's ideas of a unique language of theatre. Perhaps the most poignant and shocking stage direction in this play comes in Act II, scene IV -'Enter the empress' sons with Lavinia, her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out, and ravished.' The fact that a leading character is created a mute by the violent and brutal actions of others fits well, I think, with Artaud's ideas of language and cruelty. Lavina's distress and pain is subsequently expressed through physicality and this comes as a stark contrast to the lyrical and poetic language employed by Shakespeare when conveying the emotions of his other charaters. An Artaudian interpretation of this text could draw out this contrast by forcing the audience to become part of Lavina's physical torment, perhaps by presenting the action not on a conventional stage, but in a crowd of people. I think to remove all language from a Shakespearian text would be to destroy it, but Titus Andronicus allows space for a 'mute' and physical exploration of pain and self-ruin in a way that most of Shakespeare's texts do not.

I saw a production of this play in 2005 at the Globe, and a similar concept was employed whereby the most brutal acts of rape and revenge occured not on the main stage but in amongst the audience members in the pit. The audience was forced to respond naturally to the effects of violence, rather than to witness them from the safety distance of conventional theatre seating.

The Staging of Bluebeard

As many of you have already noted, Artaud's manifesto for The Theatre of Cruelty appears, at times, confusing and contradictory. He is insistent on the notion of creating a new language, 'somewhere in between gesture and thought' and yet, alludes to the deconstruction of Shakespearean works in order to re-stage them. Even though the practitioner intends to re-write and revise Jacobean and Elizabethan texts, this appears to undermine his opinion that we should no longer be invested in 'mastepieces'. For this very purpose, I propose that the staging of Bluebeard would be suitable in accordance with the manifesto.

Bluebeard is a fairytale, a genre which is already fluid in structure, theme and thus, interpretation on the stage. It is quite a sinister account of a violent, dark man, who marries many young, virginal women, whom he kills in a torture chamber on their wedding night. The last bride-to-be discovers the room and attempts to flee. Artaud stressed that his Theatre of Cruelty was not to be explicitly violent or a spectacle for merely aesthetic purposes; despite the fact that Bluebeard is, indeed, physically volatile, he could deeply explore the notion of psychological torment and fantasy. Artaud's focus on 'jouissance' emphasises a clear link between the binaries of pleasure/pain, sex/violence, and many more.. Staging of a fairytale allows for the exploration of dream-like states: physical jerks, groans, exaggerated gesture and unintelligble language would create an unnerving experience for the audience, but one that would make them investigate the realms beyond real life and cultured humanity. This, I believe, was at the forefront of Artaud's intentions.

Possible selections from programme

Whilst Artaud's comment about staging shakespeare without using any of the text was no doubt deeply ironic, it may be possible to draw parrallels between his concept of the theatre of cruelty and Shakespeare's work. What I mean by this is Theatre of Cruelty's need to immerse the audiance and appeal to all the senses. When listening to Shakespeare i would argue that one of it's main forte's is to immerse the audiance member in the language. The tone, flow and highly poetic language serves to ingross the listener almost to a trance like state. This is however only a singular comparison, but throughout the works of shakespeare cruelty is experianced and portrayed in many different ways. In Hamlet there is physical violence but also an air of death and decay about the play. We also see through his works see scenes of implied incest which Artaud was very intersted in. In both I think we see a critique of the human condition without a sense of escapism.

Hey bloggers, random question I have been trying to find the Artaud Van Gogh reading everwhere, I have JSTOR'ed googled and library hunted but I can only find it in French? Does anyone know where I can find the translation, or know anyone that speaks very good French?!
Thank u!
Lauren x

Freedom to express Cruelty as effectively as possible

For some bizarre technology-related reason this didn't post last time, so here goes in attempt number two... hope it reaches you. I hate computers.

Many elements of Artaud’s First Manifesto suggest that the use of written texts would not be an element of the Theatre of Cruelty: “We shall not act a written play, but we shall make attempts at direct staging, around themes, facts, or known works” and “the old duality between author and director will be dissolved” are but two of the examples.

Although Artaud states that the program would be performed “without regard for text”, it seems an impossible task when adapting Shakespeare, other Elizabethan works and an extract from the Zohar for example, without the pieces completely losing their essence. Leon-Paul Fargue’s play may give “extreme poetic freedom” but it is still a previously written text, the same applies to a tale by the Marquis de Sade. This has lead me to the conclusion that a piece based on the tale of Bluebeard would be the best choice (am I right in thinking that the “historical records” Artaud spoke about do not exist and it is just a fairytale?); whatever the outcome, this choice leaves much room for interpretation.

Artaud would have the freedom to experiment with movement as a kind of code, a new way of recording language; he could test the effectiveness of having actors, costumes and mannequins representing set as opposed to having physical scenery; Artaud as the “unique Creator” could try his acting technique in which the actor is “rigourously denied all personal initiative”. Whereas the other pieces could work, this gives him more freedom than the rest to really implement the elements of spectacle he discusses in his First Manifesto.

Yes, it probably wouldn’t be a very good production, but its nature offers a lack of restriction.

Ben

Jerusalem!
It could be a direct conversion from history, and would escape the boundaries you would encounter by operating through any historical 'masterpiece.' It's also about a struggle for culture, between two very different groups, and could easily be represented as a struggle that's more ideological, religious and cultural than simply a war of greed and politics. Such a battle maybe could be displayed as a hunger for an Artaudian style culture that includes and yet overrides the cultures of both of the two warring sides?
The gruesome physical horror of war is also trumped by the cruelty of the emotional pressure faced by the Jews under seige who (at least in one historical instance?) took their own lives rather than surrendered themselves and their ways of life.
Plus, I think Jewish music and ritual would fit the mould perfectly.

The Seige of Jerusalem

Looking through Artaud's programme list, i find some of the choices confusing (as Yann mentioned), however, some also seem to be entirely fitting and logical. For example, the Fall of Jerusalem seems, to me anyway, to be the most appropriate selection. The Theatre of Cruelty is looking for something with relevance; something that still has a bearing on contemporary society. What Artaud remarks about Sophocles is that his language has lost touch with 'the rude and epilectic rythms of our lives', but the themes about man's fallibility are universal. This is applicable to the Fall of Jerusalem, where the notions of 'intellectual agitation' and 'metaphysical disputes' are present, but there is no restriction by a text. Artaud would be free to take a historic event and story, as widely known as the tale of Oedipus, without being limited by out of date language or stangnant dialogue.

The story has all the elemets of an Artaudian piece of theatre; the chaotic spectacle that could quite easily 'surround' the spectator and the sense of 'abandon' and 'panic' that would allow for an dramatic and intellectual piece of theatre. It is expressive in its themes and could equally be as expressive in its execution. It begins with a tall city and ends with destruction, which is a suitable metaphor for Artaud's intentions to break down of the audience sensiblities (both emotional and physical). When the audience leave the space, a physical change would have taken place, 'i propose a theatre in which violent physical images crush and hypnotise the sensibility of the spectator seized by the theatre as by a whirlwind of higher forces'.

Also, is anyone else having trouble finding the Van Gogh reading? I have tried the library and the electronic resources (Project Muse, JSTOR, Google scholar) and i cann'y seem t' find it! Any one had any luck thus far?

Love

Week 3 response...

... to which play Artaud should put on.


Artaud argued against classical texts like 'Oedipus' in "No More Masterpieces"... yet his list of plays, which include Shakespeare, for me contradicted this, and suggested he wanted to stage these masterpieces.

I'd argue that 'One of the Marquis de Sade's tales' is perhaps the play in Artaud's programme (pg.77) that is closest to some of his ideas... perhaps like the Theatre of Cruelty? The tales are full of violence and eroticism and the "externalisation of cruelty". Tales like '100 years of Sodom', feature orgies and sexual fantasies and rape.
But then, I never thought that the Theatre of Cruelty was about a physical kind of violence, not an external one. But not a pyschological violence either...

Scheer Reading for week 4

Extract from Scheer (1997) ‘The madness of the oeuvre: Artaud and Foucault’ in Foucault the Legacy. QUT Press. 1997. Clare O’Farrell ed. pp169-181.

1. Foucault's folie

In Foucault's original preface to Histoire de la folie à l'age classique, he characterises la folie for the first time as "Rien d'autre sans doute que l'absence d'oeuvre".(HF v) La folie: madness, but also a word covering a range of meanings from slight eccentricity to clinical insanity. It is here situated in a relation to oeuvre: work, product, work of art, body of work. Histoire de la folie is, at least in part, the history of this relation and its formulation in this phrase which, in its different modalities, moves through Foucault's various histoires de la folie clearing a space in which la folie can be conceptualised without confining it.

The history begins, appropriately, after the book itself when Henri Gouhier, the head of the jury which in May 1961 heard Foucault's defence of his doctoral thesis Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'age classique, which comprised the text of the first of the three different French publications of this work, said that he didn't understand what Foucault meant by defining la folie as l'absence d'oeuvre. Foucault's detailed replies can be read in his essays Le Non du père of 1962 and La Folie, l'absence d'oeuvre of 1964. In these texts Foucault demarcates the series of historical discontinuities that established the necessity of the link between the oeuvre and an understanding of the place of madness. Yet later, in the revised preface to the 1972 edition of Histoire de la folie, Foucault attempts to play down the significance of his phrase as a formulation given "un peu a l'aveugle" (somewhat unwittingly or blindly). (HF 8) Shoshana Felman has noted that in the French translation of Hegel's Encyclopoedia, the entry under "la folie" says that "blindness is the distinctive characteristic of madness". Perhaps in this later preface to his book we are reading Foucault's ironic acknowledgement that defining madness is itself a mad gesture, though not quite an acknowlegement that, as Derrida characterises it, his entire project in Histoire de la folie is mad.

In Derrida's notorious encounter with this text the phrase is "une note de base" (a fundamental motif)(C 83 tr.54) in Foucault's book. This is perhaps because he recognises its centrality to the problematical project of a history of madness and also perhaps because a certain interpretation of it neatly fits his arguments since if the absence of the oeuvre signifies "the lack of any conventionally determined structure", syntactical, narratological, aesthetic etc. "it implies that madness is both de jure and de facto excluded from Descartes' text, and from Foucault's writing about madness, both of which are inevitably bound up with 'Reason in general'."

It is a phrase which thereby threatens to conceptually undermine Foucault's entire project simply because it is a formulation of madness, a gesture of confinement. Yet the foreclosure of the project would depend on an epistemologically closed position, an absolute determination, of which this phrase constitutes only a possible and, as I will argue, inverse embodiment. It is not a blithe positivistic gesture but a negative lyrical framing which, however, with respect to at least one of its subjects, ironically serves to exclude a project which it had been the work of the book (Histoire de la folie) to re-insert into history. This 'fundamental motif' of the book reappears at its end as the structuring principle of a certain radical discursive practice, linking the themes of Histoire de la folie with the work of one of its central figures: Antonin Artaud.

Derrida's assertion of the fundamental importance of this phrase to Foucault's book is given some justification in the original preface to the 1961 publication of Histoire de la folie in which Foucault links the absence of the oeuvre to the possiblity of history itself and therefore to the production of Foucault's own oeuvre, "." (the great oeuvre of the history of the world is ineradicably accompanied by an absence of the oeuvre).(HF vi) This is based on Foucault's earlier assertion that "." (the relation of reason to unreason constitutes for Western culture one of the dimensions of its originality, it went with it well before Jerome Bosch, and will long survive Nietzsche and Artaud." (HF iii) This is the first mention of Artaud in the book and one in which he is introduced as an index of the density of the relation of reason to unreason, their proximity as well as their historical incommensurability. With Nietzsche, the name of Artaud becomes a marker in the passage of Western history which should have never appeared if his madness had silenced him as effectively as Foucault and Derrida tell us.

It is here in what Foucault calls "ce simple problème d'élocution" (this simple problem of elocution) (ibid) this intransmissibility of madness in language that we read his desire to produce an oeuvre which must remain absent, for there is no language with which to " (bring to the surface of the language of reason a division and a debate which must necessarily remain below, since this language only makes sense above and beyond them).(ibid) There is no language for the experience of la folie for it would have to be "." (sufficiently open to allow the decisive words by which the truth of la folie and reason are constituted for us to inscribe themselves there without betrayal). (ibid) The dream of madness in which the ratio wakes to find itself unharmed but none the wiser is one which continually interrupts Foucault's work, just as it haunted both Descartes' and Derrida's.

Foucault's rhythmical reiteration of the impossibility of the very book which follows this preface would seem to be a kind of textual abreacting by which responses to its propositions are anticipated and included within those propositions themselves. This strategy is, as has already been noted, everywhere evident in Artaud's oeuvre. It is his dominant stylistic method which Foucault also employs to short-circuit critical receptions based on the critique of a given position. All positions in Foucault and Artaud are contingent and polemical. Foucault's call for a new language also echoes an Artaudian theme, the repudiation of consensually determined limits, just as this language of an impossible absent book recalls his own description of Artaud's work. But before examining the deployment of Artaud's work in Histoire de la folie it may be instructive to return to Gouhier's question to ask what does Foucault mean by this phrase and why is it that Foucault links madness and the work with such insistence and therefore why, apart from the obvious contextual determinants, is the madness of Artaud invoked and not simply his life or that aspect of his experience which was irreducible to a discussion of his work?

Firstly, for the sake of clarity, the possible interpretations of "la folie... is the absence of the oeuvre" could be listed as follows:
1) that la folie and the oeuvre are de jure incommensurate or at least mutually exclusive. The thrust of Foucault's arguments is to make it impossible to determine whether or not this incommensurability also persists de facto. However the possibility that this is the case is not entirely repudiated.
2) the potential of la folie in general to dissolve the structures upon which the concept of the oeuvre is founded, since its objects are transitory, endlessly metamorphose and actively erode meaning.
3) that therefore a so called 'mad' writer or artist is in general not capable of a systematic and structured work based on "institutionalised rationalism" and that such a work would remain absent with respect to a given mad writer or artist's production seen as the site of continual displacement of processes rather than the manufacture of products.
4) that this incapacity also designates an experience utterly beyond the parameters of the oeuvre which is irrelevant to la folie as a limit experience.
5) Foucault may have had in mind certain such experiences where no works were produced at all. For example, the case of his one time friend at the Ecole Normale Superièure, Jacques Martin who suffered from severe depression and despite a brilliant mind left behind no recognised oeuvre when he suicided in 1963. The biographer David Macey says that Martin the 'philosophe sans oeuvre' represented for Foucault, as well as for Althusser another friend of Martin's, "the mirror of what they could have become. Foucault never spoke of Jacques Martin in print, but, like Althusser, he may have borrowed something from him. From 1961 onwards he would define madness as l'absence d'oeuvre."
6) As well as problematising empirical madness Foucault's aim is to expand the concept of the oeuvre and to indicate that, as with madness, the work of art is essentially and radically transgressive. Its characteristic trait is rupture, of boundaries, limits, frames. But he also asserts the role of the frame in determining what this limit is that the work must infract. This is why he insists that all achieved works are predicated on those which are unachieved. In short he is asserting the ineluctablility of aesthetic judgments in the practice of determining the status of the oeuvre.
7) Artaud is Foucault's model for these questions largely because Artaud's work repeatedly raises them as its dominant themes.

It is precisely this radical testing of the limits of the oeuvre that Artaud poses throughout his work. In his countless letters, essays and manifestoes as well as his art works with their cigarette burns in the paper, Artaud explores the space which cuts the work off from itself and its 'other', and seeks, in part, to exhume their primordial unity. However although Artaud's oeuvre corresponds to everything that Foucault wants to say about the resistance of la folie and the work to closure, Foucault's treatment of that oeuvre opens his work in Histoire de la folie to the kinds of critique that it seeks everywhere to head off. Affirmed then denied and misplaced, the oeuvre of Artaud is abolished and reinvented by Foucault to indicate both the precariousness of its existence in the world and the incisiveness of its protest against that world as well as, more generally, to show that at the heart of the very notion of the oeuvre is the always potential non-oeuvre which it is the task of that madness of language, without ground or limit, to bring into being.

Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu

Yodel, lovelies.

Here's an extract of Artaud's radio broadcast, you can download it to treasure in your hearts forever or just listen to it on the website. I'm not sure how much of the entire broadcast is here but hey, its something.

Clicky!

There's also a translated script of it here.

xL

Our man Artaud

Let this be a constant reminder of what he looks like

This blog is going to be amazing. Looking forward to the chaos.

Kindest Regards,

EM-R Whitebread.

Module Outline 2007

School of Theatre, Performance and Cultural Policy Studies

Aspects of Theatre & Performance

Autumn Term Module 2007

THEATRE AND THEORY AFTER ARTAUD

Convenor: Dr. Edward Scheer (e.scheer@warwick.ac.uk)

Timetable and Room: Wed 11.30-1.30 F25 Millburn

Introduction
This module provides students with an account of the effects of Antonin Artaud’s writings on contemporary performance practice and its theorisation. Artaud’s writing on the theatre constitutes only a fraction of his total output but its influence has been immense. This module analyses Artaud’s life and work and examines his legacy across the disciplines which comprise contemporary performance: theatre, cinema, radio/sound arts and other cultural media. We will study examples of his own film and stage performances, his various approaches to the text and the image, and some of the key theoretical and performance texts which have responded to his provocations including the work of figures such as Grotowski, and Hijikata and post-structuralist writers such as Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze. Artaud’s challenge to theatre constitutes one of the essential paradoxes of modernism: how to break out of representation and embrace the Real (the world, life etc) while remaining within the realm of the aesthetic? This question requires us to interrogate theatre at its limits.

Course Outline

Week 1 Introduction to Artaud’s life and cultural context with regard to Surrealist approaches to representation.
Suggested Reading:
- Georges Bataille, from ‘Writings on Surrealism’ (Chapter 3 Antonin Artaud. A Critical Reader)
- André Breton & André Parinaud, from Conversations: the Autobiography of Surrealism (Chapters 1 and 2 Antonin Artaud. A Critical Reader)

Week 2 Artaud’s cinema roles as the basis of a paradigm for acting. Screening of scenes from ‘Napoleon’ (dir. Abel Gance 1926) ‘La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc’ (dir. Carl Dreyer 1927) ‘My Life and Times With Antonin Artaud’ (dir Gerard Mordillat 1996).
Required Reading:
-Francis Vanoye ‘Cinemas of Cruelty?’ (Chapter 20 Antonin Artaud. A Critical Reader)
- Daryl Chin, ‘The Antonin Artaud Film Project’, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art - PAJ 56 (Volume 19, Number 2), May 1997, pp. 23-28

Week 3 The theatre essays, the 1930s and his development of an aesthetics of rigour and necessity. Artaud on stage. Performing cruelty.
Required Reading:
-Antonin Artaud, ‘The Theatre of Cruelty (First manifesto)’ and ‘No more masterpieces’ from The Theatre and Its Double
- Susan Sontag, from ‘Approaching Artaud’ (Chapter 11 Antonin Artaud. A Critical Reader)
- Gautam Dasgupta, ‘Remembering Artaud’ PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art - PAJ 56 (Volume 19, Number 2), May 1997, pp. 1-5


Week 4 Madness and cruelty. Artaud’s experiences of madness. Artaud on Van Gogh, Artaud as van Gogh. Foucaults’s theories of madness as the absence of the work of art. The theatre as work of madness.
Required Reading:
- E. Scheer, ‘Foucault/Artaud: the madness of the oeuvre’
- Sylvère Lotringer, Interview with Latremolière (Chapter 4 Antonin Artaud. A Critical Reader)
- Antonin Artaud, ‘Van Gogh the Suicide of Society’


Week 5 Performing the impossible body. The radio works. Reading ‘To have done with the Judgement of god.’ What is the body without organs? Deleuze on Artaud.
Required Reading:
- Antonin Artaud, To have done with the judgement of god
- Allen S. Weiss, ‘K’ (Chapter 17 Antonin Artaud. A Critical Reader)
- Rex Butler, ‘Non-genital thought’, 100 Years of Cruelty, pp. 23 - 57


Week 6 Reading week

Week 7 Performance, violence and convulsive aesthetics.
Screening: Performance film by Nic Roeg and Donald Cammell, Warner Brothers 1970. Cast: James Fox, Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg
Required Reading:
Colin MacCabe, from Performance BFI Film Classics Series London : British Film Institute, 1998.


Week 8 Artaud and the Visual arts. Interpreting Artaud’s drawings in terms of his theories of the image. Outsider art and the performance of the image. Derrida’s Artaud.
Required Reading:
- Jacques Derrida, from ‘To unsense the subjectile’ (Chapter 15 Antonin Artaud. A Critical Reader)
- E. Scheer ‘Sketches of the jet’ 100 Years of Cruelty: Essays on Artaud ed. Edward Scheer. Sydney: Power Publications and Artspace (2000)


Week 9 Artaud’s legacy Part 1. The limits of theatre, Doing Artaud: the failure of the 1964 RSC season of cruelty. Grotowski on Artaud.
Required Reading:
- J. Derrida, from ‘The theatre of cruelty and the closure of representation.’ (Chapter 6 Antonin Artaud. A Critical Reader)
- J. Grotowski, ‘He wasn’t entirely himself’ (Chapter 8 Antonin Artaud. A Critical Reader)
- Clive Barker, ‘Tell Me When It Hurts: The ‘Theatre Of Cruelty’ Season 30 Years On’ NTQ 46. (May 1996)

Week 10 Artaud’s legacy Part 2. Contemporary physical theatre, butoh as dance of cruelty. Is authenticity possible in theatre? Introduction to performance art. Performance art history from Joseph Beuys and Shamanism to Viennese Actionism.
- Helga Finter, from ‘Antonin Artaud and the Impossible Theatre. The Legacy of the Theatre of Cruelty’ (Chapter 7 Antonin Artaud. A Critical Reader)
- Kurihara, Nanako ‘Hijikata Tatsumi: The Words of Butoh’ TDR: The Drama Review - Volume 44, Number 1 (T 165), Spring 2000, pp. 10-28
- Lynn MacRitchie, ‘Marina Abramovic: Exchanging Energies’ Performance Research #1.2 Routledge,1996: 27-34.
- Tanya Augsburg, ‘Orlan’s Performative Transformations of Subjectivity’ in P. Phelan and J. lane eds. The Ends of Performance, New York and London: NYU Press, 1998: 285-326
- Orlan, ‘Intervention’ in P. Phelan and J. lane eds. The Ends of Performance, New York and London: NYU Press, 1998: 315-327.
- ‘Breaking Through Language’ an interview with Mike Parr, Edward Scheer and Nick Tsoutas 100 Years of Cruelty: Essays on Artaud ed. Edward Scheer. Sydney: Power Publications and Artspace (2000)

ASSESSMENT: There are three components of assessment:

(1) Exam (40%).

(2) Essay (40%) An essay of approximately 3000 words. Topics to be announced. Due Monday 14th January 2008 (Week 2, Spring Term)

(3) Class/blog participation (20%). This grade assesses contribution to the subject in terms of levels of preparedness and approach to activities and discussions. It includes the quality and cogency of blog postings.


Essential Reading

Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and Its Double . trans. Mary Caroline Richards, New York: Grove Press, 1958. See also the two anthologies Artaud Anthology. San Fransisco: City Lights Books, 1965; and Susan Sontag ed. Antonin Artaud Selected Writings. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976.

Stephen Barber, Antonin Artaud: Blows and Bombs. London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1993.

Clive Barker, ‘Tell Me When It Hurts: The ‘Theatre Of Cruelty’ Season 30 Years On’

Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference. Trans. Alan Bass. London: Routledge, 1978.

Elin Diamond, ‘The shudder of catharsis in twentieth century performance’ in Performativity and Performance, Andrew Parker and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick eds, Routledge New York and London, 1995. 152-172

Martin Esslin, Artaud. London: John Calder, 1976.

Michel Foucault, "Preface to transgression." Trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. In Language, Counter Memory, Practice. 29 52.

Foucault, ‘Conclusion’ Madness and Civilization. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Random House, 1965.

Jane Goodall, Artaud and the Gnostic Drama. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.

Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a poor theatre, trans. M. Buszewicz and J. Barba, London, Methuen, 1968.

Edward Scheer ed. 100 Years of Cruelty: essays on Artaud Sydney: Power Publications and Artspace (2000)

Edward Scheer. Ed. Antonin Artaud. A Critical Reader (London and New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis, 2004).

Allen S. Weiss, The Aesthetics of Excess. Albany: SUNY Press, 1989.