Susan Sontag

The audience then became lost and frightened as there were no signs leading them to their next destination, once again forcing them to partake in the performance. This physicalisation not only successfully involved the contemporary audience, but demonstrated the necessity of physical composition to give audiences that real experience. This use of physical composition provided immediate reaction and emotional expression through action and contrast. These elements ultimately enhanced the mood and symbolism of the performance, allowing audiences to not only partake in the production on an intimate level but also on an emotional level. Another way in which mood and symbol can be created is through the use of complicité.

In the intro to The Dramatic Imagination, John Mason Brown wrote that Robert Jones’ theatre was “an extension of life, not a duplication, a heightening rather than a reproduction” (Jones 1). Of course, we know that plays are about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. However, Jones poses the question of what can designers do to heighten the “extraordinary circumstances” to the audience without interfering the message of the show? The Dramatic Imagination focused on most aspects of artistry in the theatre, including actors and designers. As someone who does not consider myself a designer, but is an actor with a liberal arts education, this was more helpful than only focusing on scenic design. Furthermore, it supported the need for intense collaboration between all theatre artists when working on a show, a highly valued characteristic of mine.

In Notes on “Camp,” Susan Sontag cites fifty-eight characteristics of “camp sensibility.” She says the ultimate statement Camp statement is, “it’s good because it’s awful …Of course one can’t always say that. Only under certain conditions, those which I’ve tried to sketch in these notes-” the sensibility of an era is not only its most decisive, but also its most perishable, aspect. One may capture the ideas (intellectual history) and the behavior (social history) of an epoch without ever touching upon the sensibility of taste which informed those ideas, that behavior. Rare are those historical studies – which do tell us something about the sensibility of the period (Sontag, 11).

Stedman-Jones, G. (1983) cited in Making Sense Of The Arts – Resource Booklet 1, (2011) Milton Keynes, The Open University,

When anyone listens to music, they need to be aware of their own preconceptions about what constitutes as art. This is even more important when scholars look the artistic expression of another

He exclaims that we give entirely too much credit to old masterpieces of past times. Artaud even wants museums to disappear so that something new can be there. He believed the power of new art, which gave the mystery that people were greedy for, was far greater than that of masterpieces. In Artaud’s opinion, old art is simply outdated, and it does not need to be made anymore. The art of past was formatted for its time, such as the refined language in Sophocles’ Oepidus Rex. Just as it was for that time, new art should constantly be made to cater to the needs of the modern world. Old art is not bad. There is just no need for it to posted as the epitome of good art. Artaud does not want to live in the past. He wants to the live in the now. To him, if theatre ever becomes an inferior art, it is because old art has revealed to much of its illusion and falsehood. He even accuses Shakespeare for threatening the life of theatre. One of Artaud’s solution to getting rid of masterpieces was theatre of cruelty. He wanted to disrupt the relationship between and audience and performer by going beyond word and connecting with emotions. The purpose of theatre to him was to confront the audience about modern issues through a deeper level. This is how theatre could possibly put an end to war, riots, and

Susanne Langer examines and differentiates symbols from signs and says that the word “meaning” is ambiguous. The word has different meanings according to different sentences that can be structured differently. The word “mean” has different functions and was never able to be correctly identified and clarified. Langer suggests that meaning has different functions such as a logical and a psychological senses, in which the logical meaning has to do with an object and the psychological meaning has to do with a symbol. According to Langer, signs are referred to objects and symbols are referred to ideas, and humans and nature are signs. However, signs created by humans are called artificial signs and natural signs. Langer believed that the terms sign subject, and object exist and are related to a ‘sign’, and in a symbol, there are four functions such as conception, object, subject, and symbol. Langer also believed that the word ‘meaning’ has three meaning which are connotation, denotation, and notable.

Tragedy is a complex word that can be found in the most medial of tasks. Children filling up bottles of water in a refugee camp is horrific but in Africa it’s not that shocking. Susan Sontag’s “double message” (263) from her essay on “Regarding the Pain of Others” is shown in the CNN.com article “U.N. declares famine in Somalia; makes urgent appeal to save lives” due to the known situation of poverty, corruption, and a weak government. In this essay, I will address first the image and its connection to Sontag via censorship, and the shock value of the photograph. I will then address how the article complicates the photograph by deviating from the “double message”. Finally, I will address how both the photograph and the article complicate

Susan Sontag, a contemporary renowned American writer and critic, gained good reputation for her exquisite writing skills and incisive human thoughts in different genres contributions. In recent years, the “Sontag Research” has gradually become a hot topic in western and domestic literary studies. “Dr. Jekyll” was an important short story of Sontag, collected in her short story collection I, etcetera, which also aroused wide attention around the world. This paper aims to analyze the similarities and differences between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and “Dr. Jekyll” in the aspects of creation background, character images, narrative skills and theme presentations, in order to obtain further exploration of Sontag’s unique writing skills and profound

“but the sense of a capable ensemble pulling together to show mankind’s capacity for mental disintegration under the marionette-tugs of its impulses leaves you feeling curiously and rather shamefacedly invigorated.”. Another example can be seen in the film Marat/Sade by Peter Brook in 1967 which also adopts Artaud’s form of theatre and surrealism in film. Hence, establishing the influence of Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty and his techniques in the 20th/21st

The purpose of these performances is to create something that provokes the audience as well provide a deep insight into humanity. Examples of work which challenged her audience include Rhythm 0, where Abramovic allowed the public to use any of the 72 objects she provided against her and she would do nothing. In this particular experiment, Abramovic showed how with the risk of consequences, people have no limits, she experienced violence at the hands of these complete strangers as they cut her, tore her clothes and tested her resolution by aiming a pistol at her head. The experiment also demonstrated how people often objectify the female body, as Abramovic did not protest to the things done to her, people treated her as a plaything. Abramovic’s work often doesn’t have one specific purpose, as said in chapter three of Connect Art “No doubt, every person setting out to name the most important themes in art would produce a different list.” Similarly, participants in Abramovic’s performances might walk away with completely different emotions, some confused, dismissive, even angry. While others might get a sense that they were touched by her mystical, ephemeral yet strong

The play is made up of such visceral episodes, to the soldier as he “turns Ian over… and rapes him” (49), to the final scene of “Darkness/ Light” – the shift showing the passing time – and in the moments of light small snippets of anxiety, such as Ian’s repetition of the aurally violent “cunt cunt cunt cunt….”, and the next snippet the light reveals “Ian strangling himself” (59), and finally Ian cannibalising a baby (60). Kane is experimenting with the physicality of the theatre. In Artaud’s manifesto for The Theatre of the Absurd, he describes the power of theatre “for extension beyond words” and how this opens a new world of “signs” as they create a “language in space”. Kane plays on these ideas as she places the audience in direct exposure

Minimalism’s greatest contribution to performance art was its dismantling of metaphor, the creation of a purely self referential art, an art that didn’t refer to anything outside of itself. Minimalisms banishment of the figure and its reinscription of the body back onto the viewer set the groundwork for an explosion of performance art. The main catalysts for this being women artists in the 1960’s. For these artists who were already under represented within art, the banishment of the figure was a complete anathema. This wave of feminist artists was the main stimulant for performance art.

This paper will explore a range of perspectives on the relationship between the live event and the document within performance practice, specifically focus on in relation to body, time and space. Performance art is commonly known as a performance presented to a viewer within a fine art context. Through performance artists emphasize the body’s role in artistic production. Historically, performance archive has been characterized as an unfaithful representation of the momentary art experience. Yet, in contemporary art the relationship between live performance practices and documentation has progressed towards reconciliation. Whether, the performance is scripted or unscripted, the performer’s body is present or absent. Performance art can happen in any type of venue and for any length of time. Documentation of performance practice documents the actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time.

It is when the artist begins to add nuances and harmonies to the melody that the work becomes inaccessible to the unlearned ear, thus isolating a portion of the audience. When works of art are created to express the universality of humankind they are more beneficial to it. As an example, this view is dissimilar to the view if Dante, who believed that the language of a work should be elevated. Tolstoy argues the more details that are given in the work the more opportunities for disconnection from its message the audience has (391).