Essay Questions 2009

Due Week 10: Wednesday 20 May at office 9am (40%)
2500-3000 words

Choose one question from the following six questions:

1. In postdramatic form, ‘the quoted motifs, gags or names are not placed inside the frame of a coherent narrative dramaturgy, but rather serve as musical phrases in a rhythm, as elements of a scenic image collage.’ (Lehmann in reader, p168)

Discuss how two contemporary performances studied in this course engage new media technologies to inscribe the poetics of postdramatic form.


2. ‘Counter-surveillance… becomes not only about reversing the gaze but about opening a space for all sorts of reversal in relation to how the gaze and its imagery may be experienced.’ (McGrath in reader, p201)

What kinds of spaces are generated by the practices and performances of counter-surveillance artists? Account for the ways that two performances covered in this course shift the gaze of surveillance.


3. ‘“The cyborged body enters a symbiotic/parasitic relationship with information” (Stelarc 2002a). Again the body [becomes] the interface between inside and outside, between an aesthetic of appearance and one of disappearance…’
(Giannachi 2004 in reader, p60)

Is the cyborg performer symbiotic or parasitic in relation to information? How do they enact appearance and disappearance in play with such information? Discuss with relation to two examples covered in the course.


4. ‘Electronic civil disobedience performs, artistically, politically and economically, informatically, from within the world of information, acting principally at the level of the sign, performing through the modification of the meta-brand’. (Giannachi 2007 in reader, p33)

Discuss how two performances in the course have dealt with the possibility of cyber resistance or disobedience. How did they operate within, or without of, electronic space?


5. ‘The more interesting works of contemporary performance that are concerned with the problems of digital culture are in fact not disturbed by the illusions and aesthetics of the virtual, but are dealing with the material and biopolitics of embeddedness.’ (Causey in reader, p167)

Do you agree? Discuss the aesthetics of the virtual and the politics of embeddedness in relation to two performances covered in this course.


6. Devise your own question in consultation with me. The wording for this must be agreed by no later than week five.