Publication Series of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna VOLUME 19 Putting Rehearsals to the Test Practices of Rehearsal in Fine Arts, Film, Theater, Theory, and Politics Sabeth Buchmann Ilse Lafer Constanze Ruhm (Eds.) Putting Rehearsals to the Test Practices of Rehearsal in Fine Arts, Film, Theater, Theory, and Politics Putting Rehearsals to the Test Practices of Rehearsal in Fine Arts, Film, Theater, Theory, and Politics Sabeth Buchmann Ilse Lafer Constanze Ruhm (Eds.) Publication Series of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna Eva Blimlinger, Andrea B. Braidt, Karin Riegler (Series Eds.) Volume 19 On the Publication Series We are pleased to present this new volume in the publication series of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. The series, published in cooperation with our highly committed partner Sternberg Press, is devoted to central themes of con­ temporary thought about art practices and art theories. The volumes in the series comprise collected contributions on subjects that form the focus of dis­ course in terms of art theory, cultural studies, art history, and research at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and represent the quintessence of international study and discussion taking place in the respective fields. Each volume is pub­ lished in the form of an anthology, edited by staff members of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Authors of high international repute are invited to write con­ tributions dealing with the respective areas of emphasis. Research activities such as international conferences, lecture series, institute­specific research focuses, or research projects serve as points of departure for the individual volumes. With Putting Rehearsals to the Test: Practices of Rehearsal in Fine Arts, Film, Theater, Theory, and Politics we are launching volume nineteen of the series. The book presents the results of a research process that has been conducted at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in close cooperation between two depart­ ments/studios: Modern and Postmodern Art Theory Professor Sabeth Buchmann, and Constanze Ruhm, head of Digital Media Studio, have been dealing with the topic of “rehearsal” in many different formats, from many different approaches and with great dedication. Curator Ilse Lafer, who is coeditor of this volume, has also been instrumental in conceiving the exhibition that has been prepared in parallel to the publication of this volume, and which took place at VOX-­ Centre de l’image contemporaine, Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen—Université Concordia, and SBC Galerie d’art contemporain, Montreal, from September to mid December, 2016. This volume spans a broad arch from fine arts to theater, from politics to theory to film. And it presents artworks contributed by Silke Otto­Knapp, former head of the Figurative Painting studio at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and now professor at UCLA, which in a pronounced way points toward one of the central hypothesis of this book: that the practices of rehearsal not only prove to be productive fields of scholarly inquiry, they are imminent to the practices of art and thus art practices in themselves. We thank the editors of this volume, Sabeth Buchmann, Constanze Ruhm, and Ilse Lafer, for bringing together this wide range of expertise, and for their continued work on the rehearsal. Their commitment to this book project was tremendous. We thank—as always—all the partners contributing to the book, especially Sternberg Press. The Rectorate of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna Eva Blimlinger, Andrea B. Braidt, Karin Riegler Contents Putting Rehearsals to the Test: Introduction Sabeth Buchmann, Ilse Lafer, and Constanze Ruhm 10 What Your Spontaneity Is Worth to Us: Improvisation between Art and Economics Kai van Eikels 22 Shared Production (–Values) Sabeth Buchmann 32 Passion in Work Ilse Lafer 46 Contingency and Plan: Working in Theater Editors: Sabeth Buchmann, Ilse Lafer, Constanze Ruhm Annemarie Matzke 58 Editorial Coordinator: Martina Huber Proofreader: Niamh Dunphy Design: Victor Kassis, Surface, Frankfurt am Main/Berlin A Heavy Compression to Bring Out the Moments of Crisis Cover image: Silke Otto­Knapp, from the series “The Common Reader,” 2015. Eva Könnemann in Conversation Etching, ink on paper. Courtesy of the artist. with Stefanie Diekmann and Ekkehard Knörer 72 Printing: Holzhausen Druck GmbH, Wolkersdorf Binding: Buchbinderei Papyrus, Vienna The Rehearsal in Film: From the Focus on Results ISBN 978-3-95679-211-3 to a Space of Experience Rainer Bellenbaum 82 © 2016 Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, Sternberg Press All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The Rehearsal as Metaphor for Metamorphosis: The Pictorial Dramaturgy in Velázquez’s The Spinners, or The Fable of Arachne Sternberg Press Christine Lang 96 Caroline Schneider Karl­Marx­Allee 78 D-10243 Berlin The Play’s the Thing: On the Politics of Rehearsal www.sternberg­press.com José M. Bueso 108 Re-rehearsing the Test Drive Appendix Avital Ronell in Conversation with Martin Jörg Schäfer 120 Image Credits 244 Rehearsing Failure Biographies 248 Kathrin Busch 130 Acknowledgments 254 Rehearsal without Performance Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens 138 Upheaval in the Despot’s Wake: Rehearsal and Drawing in the Work of Tamar Getter Susanne Leeb 152 The Common Reader Silke Otto-Knapp 168 The Rehearsal as Form: An Essay on Yvonne Rainer’s Lives of Performers Jenny Nachtigall and Dorothea Walzer 182 In Abeyance: It Is Perhaps Now Time to Leave, Once More, the Clinic … Vincent Bonin 196 Our Attempt/Notre Tentative Achim Lengerer 212 Castingagentur: Casting as Agency Constanze Ruhm 224 Alive Supreme: On Rehearsal as Film Stephan Geene 234 Sabeth Buchmann, Ilse Lafer, and Constanze Ruhm 11 Despite the popularity of the format of rehearsal in film, theater, music, and fine art, it has been scarcely considered as a theoretical topic in contempo­ Putting rary art discourses. It is against this background that this publication—as part of an ongoing research­based project that branches out into film screenings and lecture programs1 as well as, most recently, the format of an exhibition— investigates the role as well as the function of the notion of “rehearsal,” un­ derstood as a methodology, a modus operandi, a medium, a site of represen­ Rehearsals tation and reflection for artistic production processes, and as an instrument of critique of institutional power relations. The impossibility of distinguishing between rehearsal and performance—a to the Test specific feature of the so­called post­dramatic theatre2—appears as an anal ogy to certain practices existing in an area of conflict between so­called individual/ fine arts and collective/performing arts: these practices oftentimes lean toward narrativizing as well as staging artistic events going beyond a rigid category of “artwork.” As Annemarie Matzke has shown in her instructive book Arbeit Introduction am Theater: Eine Diskursgeschichte der Probe3 and in her essay “Contingency and Plan,” published in this reader, formats of rehearsals seek to debunk the embeddedness of art into the social division of labor: “In other words, the way Sabeth Buchmann, rehearsals are conducted in the theater says something about the society in Ilse Lafer, and which this theater is made.”4 Constanze Ruhm Since this is true for other genres and media as well, the topos of rehearsal also inscribes itself into seemingly static formats such as drawing and paint­ ing—as Christine Lang points out in the case of Diego Velázquez’s The Spinners, or The Fable of Arachne (1655–60), and as Silke Otto­Knapp shows in her etching series “The Common Reader” (2015). It achieves this by turning the canvas, the paper, and/or the printing plate into the (performative) medi­ um, where the artistic labor process merges with the activity and/or work as the subject of representation. Regarding this condition, artists, activists, and theorists working with and on strategies of rehearsal focus on moments of contingency within (pre­)existing systems and schemes in order to debunk their mutual function of establish­ ing and transforming social divisions of labor that correspond with the reci­ procity of cementation and subversion of power relations. Therefore, Matzke 1 “Putting Rehearsals to the Test” was the 2 See Hans-Thies Lehmann, Das title of a series of seven evenings, Postdramatische Theater (Frankfurt am including screenings, performances, Main: Verlag der Autoren, 1999). discussions, and lectures at the mumok, 3 Annemarie Matzke, Arbeit am Theater: Vienna, with a concluding conference Eine Diskursgeschichte der Probe hosted by the Academy of Fine Arts (Bielefeld: transcript, 2012). Vienna. The series took place between 4 Annemarie Matzke, “Contingency and March and June 2013. Plan,” in this volume, 58–70. 12 Putting Rehearsals to the Test Sabeth Buchmann, Ilse Lafer, and Constanze Ruhm 13 investigates how processes of rehearsal are understood as an “attempt” or very nexus becomes a tool to figure out reasons behind the shift away from experiment” reveal processes of professionalization of the actors and actresses static aesthetic norms toward an interest in variable and alterable rules to im­ as well as the institutionalization of the theater as a genre to be distinguished provise and/or rehearse new conjunctions between artistic practices, linguis­ from the entertainment industry. Conceiving rehearsal as a practice sus­ tic structures, and daily procedures. This shift that can be seen by works in pended precisely between (pre­)determined and experimental