Performance Research Volume 26 Issue 5

Suddenly, the topic of the research laboratory for theory and practice in performance that had been active daily for three months at the Israeli Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, became a global reality. In October 2019, a group of researchers and artists began investigating the notion of Interruptions expressed in artistic creativity and in works of art as well as through reflection and academic research in aesthetics, performance theory and poetics. And in January 2020, as we held the symposium summarizing the initial findings of this project, we did not yet know anything about the pandemic, which is still—now, a year and a half later—a central feature of our everyday realities. This issue of PR, with its thirty contributions by scholars and artists from the initial research laboratory (which focused on the work and thinking of Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht) as well as the ‘newcomers’ from the local (Israeli) and international communities, considers the notion of Interruptions in/of performance in a broad range of historical, theoretical and political contexts.

 

READ THE EDITORIAL AND ARTICLE ABSTRACTS online

 

CONTENTS

1 Editorial: On Interruptions 

FREDDIE ROKEM 

 

8 Holding Breath: From Eyjafjallajökull to Thirumandhamkunnu 

RICHARD GOUGH 

 

19 ‘Let Demodocus rest his ringing lyre now!’ A Benjaminian refrain over the eighth book of The Odyssey 

CARLOS GUTIÉRREZ AND VALENTÍN BENAVIDES 

 

23 Plutarch’s Boat: On the spiritual sense of the scenic interruption 

ESA KIRKKOPELTO 

 

29 Performing Interruptions: The Ruth Kanner Theatre Group (RKTG) and Kafka’s An Imperial Message 

ADI CHAWIN 

 

34 Kafka’s Messages 

GALILI SHAHAR 

 

39 On ‘Halt!’ and On ‘on’: Franz Kafka’s ‘Up in the Gallery’ 

VIVIAN LISKA AND PAUL NORTH 

 

52 Life as Script: Benjamin’s study of Brecht in Svendborg 

NIKOLAUS MÜLLER-SCHÖLL 

 

58 First as Tragedy, Then as Farce: Andreas Homoki and Michael Levine’s production of Alban Berg’s ‘Wozzeck’, Zürich Opera, 2015 

DAVID LEVIN 

 

65 On Interruption: Working through the past and the arts 

MICHAL KOBIALKA 

 

72 Interrupting Everyday Life: Socio-cultural origins of the Freudian slip 

RUTH SCHOR 

 

78 Here Now Yma Nawr 

TRACY BREATHNACH EVANS 

 

82 Picturing Meditation: Corporeal mime and the performative time of photography 

COSIMO CHIARELLI 

 

86 Backstage of the Eye: On interrupting sight in order to see 

JAN KÜHNE 

 

93 Spinoza’s Concept of ‘Wonder’ as Aesthetic Interruption 

ARNON ROSENTHAL 

 

98 Selected Texts: A selection from 30 theses on interruption. Interruption as an emancipatory gap [Artist pages] 

IVANA MOMČILOVIĆ 

 

102 Liquid Social Choreography: A kinetic perspective on Israeli public space during pandemic times 

AVITAL BARAK 

 

106 Interrupted Authority: Quotable gestures of (dis)stating a state 

DAPHNA BEN-SHAUL 

 

113 ‘Ladies and Gentlemen we interrupt our program…’: News, propaganda and resistance in radio broadcasting 

MINOU ARJOMAND 

 

119 Archiving Interruption as Intervention: A protest performance 

ASHWARYA SAMKARIA 

 

122 The Song of Disobedience: Interrupting the patriarchal order in everyday spaces in Iran through feminist intervention 

SABA ZAVAREI 

 

128 Interruptions from Speech: Spillovers of sound and language. A lullaby for an era that can no longer sleep. 

ANDREA SOTO CALDERÓN & ANTONIO GÓMEZ VILLAR 

 

134 Technoparticipation 

LEE CAMPBELL 

 

137 Theatre of Countertime: Or thinking with cycloids 

JULIA SCHADE 

 

141 Interruption(s): An interview with Falk Richter on the aesthetic, social and political dimensions 

KRISTINA KOCYBA 

 

146 The ‘Freicha’ as an Interruption in/of Westernized Israeli Theatre 

NAPTHALY SHEM-TOV 

 

149 Stop the Show: The Al-Midan theatre scandal and the dynamics of delegitimization 

DORIT YERUSHALMI 

 

156 The Star that Fell into a Tear: The day Yiddish theatre collapsed on stage 

DIEGO ROTMAN 

 

160 ‘A blank page…’ or ‘Ten years since language left…’ (Artaud) 

MISCHA TWITCHIN 

 

165 Epilogue 

JAN KÜHNE 

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REVIEWS 

167 How to Resist When Resistance Feels Impossible 

CHRISTOPHER GROBE 

168 Starting from Lived Experience 

NOE MONTEZ 

170 The great contraband a person can sneak into a prison is joy 

NICHOLAS FESETTE 

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171 Thanks to IIAS 

172 Notes on Contributors