The lecture performance
: Contexts of lecturing and performing

  • Daniel Ladnar

Student thesis: Doctoral ThesisDoctor of Philosophy

Abstract

In recent years, the lecture performance has emerged as an important format in contemporary performance practice. Lecture performances incorporate elements of both the academic lecture and of artistic performance. They function simultaneously as meta-lectures and as meta-performances, and as such challenge established ideas about the production of knowledge and meaning in each of the forms to which they refer. The thesis includes detailed case studies of works by Chris Burden, Wagner-Feigl-Forschung, Jérôme Bel, Rabih Mroué, Andrea Fraser, Xavier Le Roy, geheimagentur, Joseph Beuys, Hannah Hurtzig, and Joshua Sofaer. As a hybrid format, the lecture performance always participates in more than one context. The thesis approaches the lecture performance by analysing its participation in these different contexts: contexts of lecturing – both in the university and outside of established sites of knowledge production – and contexts of performing – which include the contexts of both contemporary artistic performance and of performance history. The scope is then extended to include an analysis of further contexts that the lecture performance both establishes and participates in: contexts of making and watching performance – here, the thesis investigates the relation between artists and spectators established in lecture performances and the processes of recontextualisation that occur between live performance, documentation, and the rearticulation of documentation in a live event; contexts of addressing and instituting – here, the thesis explores how lecture performances negotiate their situation towards different institutional contexts, and how they aim to establish different kinds of publics through various ways of addressing their audiences; and finally, contexts of assembling and disseminating – here, the thesis examines how lecture performances and related forms engage with a discursive context that transcends the frame of the singular event. Finally, all of these contexts are revisited in relation to the lecture performance Would Joseph Beuys have used PowerPoint?, which is included on a DVD.
Date of Award17 Jun 2014
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • Aberystwyth University
SupervisorHeike Roms (Supervisor) & Adrian Kear (Supervisor)

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