CULTURA 2016_271562_VOL_13_No2_GR_A5Br.indd 1 CULTURA ding thevalues andculturalphenomenainthecontempo judged tomake anovelandimportantcontributiontounderstan- the submissionofmanuscriptsbasedonoriginalresearchthatare regional andinternationalcontexts. The editorialboardencourages mote theexplorationofdifferentvalues andculturalphenomenain ted tophilosophyofcultureandthestudyvalue. Itaimstopro Axiology and Culture Founded in2004, www.peterlang.com ISBN 978-3-631-71562-8 ISBN Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Philosophy of Journal International Cultura. isasemiannualpeer-reviewed journaldevo- rary world. - 2016
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF 2 CULTURE AND AXIOLOGY CULTURA CULTURA 2016 AND AXIOLOGY OF PHILOSOPHYCULTURE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL Vol XIII 14.11.16 KW 4610:45 No 2 No CULTURA 2016_271562_VOL_13_No2_GR_A5Br.indd 1 CULTURA ted tophilosophyofcultureandthestudyvalue. Itaimstopro Axiology and Culture Founded in2004, www.peterlang.com ding thevalues andculturalphenomenainthecontempo judged tomake anovelandimportantcontributiontounderstan- the submissionofmanuscriptsbasedonoriginalresearchthatare regional andinternationalcontexts. The editorialboardencourages mote theexplorationofdifferentvalues andculturalphenomenain Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Philosophy of Journal International Cultura. isasemiannualpeer-reviewed journaldevo-
rary world. - 2016
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF 2 CULTURE AND AXIOLOGY CULTURA CULTURA 2016 AND AXIOLOGY OF PHILOSOPHYCULTURE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL Vol XIII 14.11.16 KW 4610:45 No 2 No CULTURA
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE AND AXIOLOGY Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology E-ISSN (Online): 2065-5002 ISSN (Print): 1584-1057
Advisory Board Prof. Dr. David Altman, Instituto de Ciencia Política, Universidad Catolica de Chile, Chile Prof. Emeritus Dr. Horst Baier, University of Konstanz, Germany Prof. Dr. David Cornberg, University Ming Chuan, Taiwan Prof. Dr. Paul Cruysberghs, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Prof. Dr. Nic Gianan, University of the Philippines Los Baños, Philippines Prof. Dr. Marco Ivaldo, Department of Philosophy “A. Aliotta”, University of Naples “Federico II”, Italy Prof. Dr. Michael Jennings, Princeton University, USA Prof. Dr. Maximiliano E. Korstanje, University of Palermo, Argentina Prof. Dr. Richard L. Lanigan, Southern Illinois University, USA Prof. Dr. Christian Lazzeri, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, France Prof. Dr. Massimo Leone, University of Torino, Italy Prof. Dr. Asunción López-Varela Azcárate, Complutense University, Madrid, Spain Prof. Dr. Christian Möckel, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany Prof. Dr. Devendra Nath Tiwari, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India Prof. Dr. José María Paz Gago, University of Coruña, Spain Prof. Dr. Mario Perniola, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Italy Prof. Dr. Traian D. Stănciulescu, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Iassy, Romania Prof. Dr. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, Purdue University & Ghent University
Editorial Board Editor-in-Chief: Co-Editors: Prof. dr. Nicolae Râmbu Prof. dr. Aldo Marroni Faculty of Philosophy and Social- Dipartimento di Lettere, Arti e Scienze Sociali Political Sciences Università degli Studi G. d’Annunzio Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Via dei Vestini, 31, 66100 Chieti Scalo, Italy B-dul Carol I, nr. 11, 700506 Iasi, Romania [email protected] [email protected] PD Dr. Till Kinzel Englisches Seminar Technische Universität Braunschweig, Bienroder Weg 80, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany [email protected] Editorial Assistant: Dr. Marius Sidoriuc Designer: Aritia Poenaru Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology Vol. 13, No. 2 (2016)
Editor-in-Chief Nicolae Râmbu Guest Editors: Asunción López-Varela and Ananta Charan Sukla Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
Cover Image: © Aritia Poenaru
ISSN 2065-5002 ISBN 978-3-631-71562-8 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-631-71635-9 (E-PDF) E-ISBN 978-3-631-71636-6 (EPUB) E-ISBN 978-3-631-71637-3 (MOBI) DOI 10.3726/b10729
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CROSS-CULTURAL INTERMEDIALITY: FROM PERFORMANCE TO DIGITALITY
CONTENTS
Asunción LÓPEZ-VARELA AZCÁRATE 7 Introduction: Performance, Medial Innovation and Culture
Ananta Charan SUKLA 13 Indian Intercultural Poetics: the Sanskrit Rasa-Dhvani Theory
Krishna PRAVEEN and V. Anitha DEVI 19 Kathakali: The Quintessential Classical Theatre of Kerala
Jinghua GUO 27 Adaptations of Shakespeare to Chinese Theatre
Cyril-Mary Pius OLATUNJI and Mojalefa L.J. KOENANE 43 Philosophical Rumination on Gelede: an Ultra-Spectacle Performance
María VIVES AGURRUZA 53 The Cultural Impact of the Nanking Massacre in Cinematography: On City of Life and Death (2009) and The Flowers of War (2011)
Qingben LI 67 China’s Micro Film: Socialist Cultural Production in the Micro Era
Annette THORSEN VILSLEV 77 Following Pasolini in Words, Photos, and Film, and his Perception of Cinema as Language
Adile ASLAN ALMOND 83 Reading Rainer Fassbinder’s adaptation Fontane Effi Briest
Yang GENG and Lingling PENG 103 The Time Phenomenon of Chinese Zen and Video Art in China: 1988-1998
Carolina FERNÁNDEZ CASTRILLO 125 Lyric Simultaneities: From “Words in Freedom” to Holopoetry
Janez STREHOVEC 137 Digital Art in the Artlike Culture and Networked Economy
Stefano CALZATI 153 Representations of China by Western Travellers in the Blogsphere
Horea AVRAM 173 Shared Privacy and Public Intimacy: The Hybrid Spaces of Augmented Reality Art
10.3726/CUL2016-2_77
Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 13(2)/2016: 77–82
Following Pasolini: In Words, Photos, and Film, and his Perception of Cinema as Language
Annette THORSEN VILSLEV Institut for Kunst og Kulturvidenskab, University of Copenhagen, Haderslevsgade 7, 3.tv, 1671 Copenhagen V, Denmark [email protected] ; [email protected]
Abstract. Discussing the intercultural reception of Pier Paolo Pasolini, this article looks into the intercultural and medial crossovers of his person and his work. It shows the historical particularities of Pasolini's work, and it traces layers of intermedial references in his movie production, describing the many-layered intercultural interplay. Lastly, it focuses on the discussions of media relations, and the remedialisation inherent in much of Pasolini’s work. Keywords: reception, myths, intermedialisation, and remedialisation, film as poetry
INTRODUCTION
Forty years have passed since the famous Italian movie director and poet Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) was murdered on the 2nd of November, 1975 and found dead in the district of Ostia outside Rome. The city of Bologna, where he was born, has dedicated a comprehensive homage program in his honor, stressing the importance of his work as a writer, essayist, novelist, actor, and film director. The title for the event was taken from one of Pasolini's own poems, “more modern than any modern” (“più moderno di ogni modern”)1 and described as a voyage of discovery into the impressive creative universe of one of the most important intellectuals in the 20th century.2 Also in Rome, in 2015 Pasolini has appeared in numerous places – cinemas, galleries, theatres, and exhibitions.3 Il Teatro di Roma per Pasolini (The Rome Theatre for Pasolini) has arranged for marathon-readings of his unfinisehed novel Petrolio. The readings are by many famous Italians, artists, and actors, including Pasolini's own favorite actor, Ninetto Davoli. The photographic exhibitionI tanti Pasolini (“the many Pasolinis” or“the many faces of Pasolini”) was shown at Spazio 5 just around the corner from the Vatican, describing him in single word as a multitalented genious. Indeed, Pasolini's face has become an icon in Italy, in the sense that his portraits appear not only in exhibitions and books, but also as a form of graffiti on the walls running along the Tiber in Rome. Notwithstanding all the praise, and the fact that today Pasolini’s many
77 A. Thorsen Vilslev / Following Pasolini: In Words, Photos, and Film faces are found all over Rome and Bologna, his workhas continued to maintain its degree of transgression and controversy across the boundaries of media and time.
WRITING FILM
Pasolini referred to his filmic production as a work of “writing”, possibly because of his passion for the literary fiction and poetry of Arthur Rimbaud, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Coleridge, or Novalis as well as his own poetic inclinations and literary studies at the University of Bologna. Pasolini’s image, even after his death, stress the close inter- artistic links of his oeuvre, relating it to his life and pointing to the historicity of medial configurations that Irina Rajewsky has explored. This configurations involving technical aspects as well as changing conceptions of art and media on the part of the media’s recipients and users (Rajewsky, 2005: 51) can be seen at play in Pasolini’s works, constituting “the definitive intermedial aspect […] in relation to the media product or system to which it refers.” (Rajewsky, 2005: 59). Pasolini’s work because intermedial in several ways. First because of the crucial part played by his own life on his art and in the construction of modern Italian identity, as Italian film historian, Roberto Chiesi, now in charge of the Pasolini archives in the Cineteca (film library) in Bologna, has claimed in several interviews and articles. A recent Argentina-India coproduction at Teatro di Roma, Sono Pasolini (I am Pasolini) by Giovanna Marini makes use of these intermedial aspects combining opera, music and recitation from Pasolini’sessay collection I giovani infelici (Unhappy youth) and his 1941 Friulian poems, La meglio gioventù (The best of youth), written to defend dialects against standard Italian. The choir presents itself as a sort of classic Greek choir, which comments and laments the events of Pasolini’s death.4 Worldwide, Pasolini is regarded as one of the major intellectuals as well as a major film director, alongside Jean-Luc Godard.5 His films, similar to French New Wave directors such as Goddard, are highly innovative in terms of style but also socially critical, mostly inspired by Marxism. They are frequently set in the Italian suburbs and the infamous borgate areas, in the peripheries of Rome, where Italian Neorealists, like Visconti, Lizzani, and De Sica, also sought to depict life in the margins. Pasolini collaborated with Antonioni and Fellini, and young Bertolucci became assistant in Pasolini’s own films.
78 Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 13(2)/2016: 77–82
Conservative in his defence of Catholicism within the Communist Party, progressive in his radical stylistic innovations, Pasolini was both director and actor, for example, giving life a criminal gangster ex-partisan in Carlo Lizzani's Neorealist movie, The Hunchback of Rome (Il Gobbo, from 1960). Described as a Neo-Neorealist, Pasolini always thought of himself as a poet, calling himself the force from the past (“Io sono una forza del passato”), in the collection Poesiain forma di rosa (Poetry in the shape of a rose). This crossing of boundaries in his life and in his art, is exemplified in the episodic filmLa Ricotta (Curd cheese 1962), the story of a poor hungry man, presented as an allegory of Christ’s Passion in order to criticize the film industry as well as the double standards of the Catholic Italy of the time. The film features American director Orson Welles who reads from a book Pasolini’s famous quote “Io sono una forza del passato”. The book cover shows the image of Italian actress Anna Magnani, who had played the leading role in Pasolini's second movie Mamma Roma (1962). Thus, the illustration becomes a remediation of the movie in the printed format, and the quote from the Welles reading Pasolini also hints at the intermedial relationship between film making and writing, placing the film within the book and this one within another film. And what exactly is the force of the past, “la forza del passato”? Is it the poem within the book, the book within the film? Indeed, La ricotta uses intermedial references to introduce the poetic genre as a particular force from the past barging into the new media. By interrupting the temporal flow of the storyline, this reflection on the poetic qualities of cinematography creates a space for critical reflection on the borders between artistic media. Playing on the referentiality of both the written word and the image, the film can be read as an intermedial aesthetic negotiation betweenthe cinematic and the poetic; between filmic dynamism and the statism of poetic performance, transforming the pace, the atmosphere, and the mode of representation of the movie. Another example occurs in the introduction to La Rabbia (The Rage) from 1963, where Pasolini’s voice over says “[for this purpose] I have written this film” (“ho scritto questo film”). When he says that he writes movies, he refers to the fact that he often adapts literary texts, but to the idea that visual images have narratological properties and speak a language of their own. To this purpose, Pasolini uses not just voice overs but also other stories and myths which are incorporated within his films conforming an intermedial semiotic texture. In fact, Lone Klem has
79 A. Thorsen Vilslev / Following Pasolini: In Words, Photos, and Film claimed that Pasolini has anticipated work by semiologists such Saussure, Barthes, Greimas: “long before the real breakthrough of semilogy been claiming that critical film analyses should be ‘philological’ in their image analysis” (“længe inden semiologiens gennembrud hævdet, at filmkritikken skulle være 'filologisk' i sin billedanalyse” – Klem, 1995: 195). Luciano di Giusti has claimed that in his films, Pasolini engages in semiological debates on the relation between linguistic and non-linguistic signs, using images to ‘write’ and compose his visual story (Giusti, 1983: 20). Cinema was for him a revolutionary form whichincorporates hybrid languages in order to mobilize people against capitalist exploitation. Thus, although his first films, Accattone (1961) and Mamma Roma (1962) are set in Rome or its outskirts, his later movies move outside the city and even outside Italy. Edipo Re (Oedipus Rex, 1967) is shot in Piazza Maggiore in Bologna, in different locations in Lombardy, and in Marokko (Ait-Ben-Haddouand Ouarzazate). Medea (1969) is shot in Tyrkiet (Cappadocia), Syria and Pisa. As mentioned, the intermedial appears at various levels in Pasolini’s productions. Some scenes incorporate the pictorial onto the movie, as in Accattone where there is a clear reference to Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna and his painting La lamentación de Cristo (1480). The film epigraphis, not surprisingly, some lines from Dantes Purgatorio Canto V: “O tu del Ciel, perché mi privi? / Tu te ne porti di costui l’eterno / per una lacrimetta che’l mi togli”. (“O thou from Heaven! Say wherefore hast thou robb’d me? Thou of him the eternal portion bear’st with thee away, For one poor tear that he deprives me of.”) In his biography, Enzo Siciliano describes Pasolini’s first film as a meditation on the risks of life; as when the main character, Accattone, stands with an angel statue behind him on one of the bridges crossing the Tiber in Rome, ready to jump into the waters (Siciliano, 1987: 229). Pasolini was particularly fond of Renaissance painting (Caravaggio, Merisi, or Mantegna among others). The Danish art historian Christine Marstrand has shown how the chiaroscuro style is an important influence on his films. Religious themes, homoeroticism and the use of marginal figures as main characters (such as prostitutes, vagabonds, slaves, etc.) were also used in an allegorical way to shock and mobilize his bourgeois audiences. His radical methods sought to criticize mass production and consumption as well as expose hypocrisy. Many of Pasolini's later movies mix historical, religious and literary texts, as well as mythical sources. This is the case of the films just
80 Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 13(2)/2016: 77–82 mentioned as well as Il Vangelo secondo Matteo, (The Gospel According to St. Matthew, 1964). A screening of the movie was shown in Notre Dame Cathedral in 1964 with an audience of 5000 people. The dense Biblical visual symbolismdepicts the crucification and suffering of Christ in a strange mythic universe was utterly procative for left-wing intellectuals and catholics alike (see the description of Michelle Cournot in Nouvelle Observateur 16). In general Pasolini's films cultivate the epic and the mythical simultaneously presenting the brutality of the world. Another famous example is the sexually provocative Il fiore delle Mille e unanotte (literally “the flower of the thousand and one nights” also known as Arabian Nights; 1975) was part of his Trilogy of Life, which began with The Decameron and continued with The Canterbury Tales. During his last year of life, Pasolini rejected his Triology of Life, seeing it as insufficient in its description of the extent of the decay of his contemporary society (In “Abiura della Trilogia della vita”, June 15, 1975, later published in Lettere luterane, 71-76) Increasingly violent, Salò (1975) was shown in Paris the day before Pasolini was killed on Nov. 2, 1975. The name Salò refers to a city in Northern Italy that became the capital of the puppet government that Hitler requested of Mussolini at the end of World War II. The use of intermedial techniques help Pasolini cross spatiotemporal boundaries, moving between the fascism of his own time, inextricably tied to the advancing of neo-capitalism, and the writings of the Marquis of Sade.
CONCLUSION
The remediations of Pasolini’s image, whether in theatrical, musical, or photographic form, moving between words and images, still and moving pictures, stresstheimmense popularity of this Italian artist. At times, his person becomes central. The scandals in his life, his homosexuality and hiserotic adventures, seem to blur the differences between the person and the director, moving between the intertwined social, aesthetic and political engagements of his works. Italian director, Michelangelo Antonionia once said that it was almost as if Pasolini had been made the victim of one of his own characters. Indeed, his own death seemed part of a movie scene, mythologized as if his life itself became an artwork.
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References Bondanella, Peter, Italian Cinema from Neorealism to the Present, Ungar, New York. Cuolusso, Paolo Federico di. La Città Del Cinema, Venezia: Istituto Universitario Architettura. 1995. Giusti, Luciano de. I Film di Pier Paolo Pasolini. Prefazione di Enzo Sicilanao. Gremese Editore. 1983. Klem, Lone. “Pier Paolo Pasolini.” Moderne Italiensk Litteratur 1945-1980. Eds. Hans Boll-Johansen og Lene Waage Petersen. Tiderne Skifter. 1998: 193-211. Loshitzky, Yosefa. The Radical Faces of Godard and Bertolucci. Wayne State Univ Press. 1995. Pasolini, Pier Paolo. St. Paul. Translated by Elizabeth A. Castelli Preface by Alain Badiou, Introduction by Ward Blanton. Verso. 2014. Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Poesia in forma di rosa. Milan: Garzanti. 1964: 10-18. Pennoni, Angelo, et al. (Eds.) Pier Paolo Pasolini: My Cinema. Edizioni Cineteca di Bologna and Luce Cinecittá. 2013. Rajewsky, Irina O. ”Intermediality, Intertextuality, and Remediation: A Literary Perspective on Intermediality”. Intermédialités. Histoire et théorie des arts, des lettres et des techniques 6, 2005: 43-64. Siciliano, Enzo. Pasolini, trans. John Shepley, London: Bloomsbury. 1987. Stack, Oswald. Pasolini on Pasolini: Interviews with Oswald Stack. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. 1970 (1969).
Notes
1 ”Bologna omaggia Pasolini a 40 anni dalla sua scomparsa”, ”Col progetto speciale Più moderno di ogni moderno, la città di Bologna ricorda l’intellettuale con proiezioni, letture, visite guidate e un’emozionante mostra fotografica”: http://style.corriere.it/persone/bologna- omaggia-pasolini-a-40-anni-dalla-sua-scomparsa/ Nov.2, 2015 2 ”Un viaggio alla scoperta dell’universo creativo di uno dei più importanti intellettuali del Novecento” i Più Moderno Di Ogni Moderno, Pasolini a Bologna. http://agenda.comune.bologna.it/cultura/piu-moderno-di-ogni-moderno. Nov.2, 2015. 3 At Galleria della Biblioteca Angelica, David Parenti presented "Pasolini Con la Forza dello Sguardo" and published Pasolini. Per Pura Passione with his paintings of stills of Pasolini from some of his most iconic movie scenes. 4 http://teatrodiroma.net/doc/3665/sono-pasolini 5 See http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2010julsep/pasolini.html
Annette THORSEN VILSLEV received her PhD degree in Comparative Literature from University of Copenhagen with the dissertation ”Affective World Literature” about the literary theory and novels of Japanese writer Natsume Soseki. She has been teaching world literature courses, and courses about Japanese and African literature at the University of Copenhagen. She was awarded a stipend at the Danish Academy in Rome Italy for her research into the intercultural and intermedial relation of Pier Paolo Pasolini's work in a world literary context, and has also written about his movies and texts on Africa.
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