1st Edition

Event-Space Theatre Architecture and the Historical Avant-Garde

By Dorita Hannah Copyright 2019
    402 Pages
    by Routledge

    402 Pages
    by Routledge

    As the symbolists, constructivists and surrealists of the historical avant-garde began to abandon traditional theatre spaces and embrace the more contingent locations of the theatrical and political ‘event’, the built environment of a performance became not only part of the event, but an event in and of itself.

    Event-Space radically re-evaluates the avant garde’s championing of nonrepresentational spaces, drawing on the specific fields of performance studies and architectural studies to establish a theory of ‘performative architecture’.

    ‘Event’ was of immense significance to modernism’s revolutionary agenda, resisting realism and naturalism – and, simultaneously, the monumentality of architecture itself. Event-Space analyzes a number of spatiotemporal models central to that revolution, both illuminating the history of avant-garde performance and inspiring contemporary approaches to performance space.

    PREFACE:

    TOWARD A THEORY OF ‘SPACING’ THROUGH AVANT-GARDE ACTION

    INTRODUCTION: EVENT-SPACE: A PERFORMANCE MODEL FOR ARCHITECTURE

    Architecture as Event

    Event-Space: A Useful Paradigm In Motion

    Space (becoming-performance of architecture)

    Event (becoming-architecture of performance)

    (Re)Birth of the Will-to-Destruction

    Avant-gardism and Modernism

    CHAPTER 1: DISCIPLINING THE BOURGEOIS GLORY MACHINE

    "Our provisional theatre at Bayreuth"

    The Baroque Model and Post-Revolutionary Performativity

    Garnier’s Architecture as Mise-en-scène

    The Glory Machine

    The Case of Bayreuth

    A New Public

    The Invisible Theatre

    CHAPTER 2: ABSOLUTE SPACE: UNIVERSAL LANDSCAPES

    "The Beginning… The Birth…"

    Absolute Stage Space

    Symbolist "Theatre of the Mind"

    Dancing Architectures

    Duncan’s Temple

    Spatial Rhythm and Universal Landscapes

    Adolphe Appia

    Architecture as Temple-Laboratory

    Hellerau

    Resisting the Black Void

    The New Monumentality of Absolute Space

    CHAPTER 3: ABSTRACT SPACE: TOWARD AN ARCHITECTURE OF ALIENATION

    The "Troubled Art": Avant-gardism Divided

    City as a "Montage of Attractions"

    Stage Space – Space Stage

    Bauhaus Festivities

    Total Theatre: The "Great Stage Machine"

    Architectures of Alienation

    Ghost in the Machine

    CHAPTER 4: ABJECT SPACE: TOWARD AN ARCHITECTURE OF CRUELTY

    Violence Takes Centre Stage

    Spatial Violence

    Bravo! And Boom, Boom!

    Abjection: eROTic Object

    Palace of Culture

    Enter Artaud (Flinging Bombs)

    An Architecture against Architecture

    A Site of Recovery

    Dis-eased Body

    Ex-ploding Space

    De-centring Architecture

    Cruel Machine

    CONCLUSION: MAKING ARCHITECTURE TREMBLE

    Nietzsche’s Architect(ure)

    Building Babel

    Biography

    Dorita Hannah works across the spatial, visual and performing arts as a scholar and design practitioner specializing in theatre architecture and performance design. She is a Professor affiliated with the University of Auckland (New Zealand), University of Tasmania (Australia) and Aalto University (Finland).

    "At the volatile threshold between architecture and performance today, Event-Space sets out a vital historical framework and introduces a much-needed set of conceptual tools for engaging with the interaction between spatial performativity and performance space. Introducing the transdisciplinary term, ‘Performance Design’, Hannah has established herself as a leading authority in this area, building on the work of such eminent theorists as Gilles Deleuze, Elizabeth Grosz and Bernard Tschumi. Here in Event-Space, Hannah explores three distinctive spatial models – absolute, abstract and abject – through which she forges correspondences between theatrical movements associated with symbolism, constructivism and surrealism, and architectural archetypes like the black box, industrial site and found space. Sparking with energy and a passionate commitment to both architecture and theatre, Event-Space is a must-read for all those making the spatial politics of performance their future."

    - Jane Rendell, The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London

    "Fifty years ago Peter Brook introduced us to the 'empty space'. Now, the outstanding scenographic theorist Dorita Hannah, in this important work of scholarship, gives us the 'event-space'. Drawing upon architecture and philosophy, Hannah demonstrates how space itself performs and thus must be understood as an active and dynamic aspect of theatrical, social, and political events. Ranging authoritatively from Wagner and Nietzsche through Artaud to Derrida and Eisenman, she examines the Modernist use—and misuse—of space and what that means today. This is a crucial work for understanding the complexities of contemporary performance."

    - Arnold Aronson, Columbia University