Productive Intersections 24-26 October 2019 Book of Abstracts Plenary Lectures Kathleen Loock
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Literature and Media: productive intersections 24-26 October 2019 Book of Abstracts Plenary Lectures Kathleen Loock (Freie Universität Berlin) Repetition, Renewal, and the Serial Unfolding of Narratives on Screen This talk focuses on adaptation and seriality. Both are closely related since potentially endless serial narratives ensure their continued existence not only through the generative principle of repetition and variation but also through the renewing forces of media change. Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Fu Manchu, Superman, and Batman have become popular serial characters because of the transfer from newspaper serial (roman-feuilleton) and comic book, to film, radio, television, and video games. Whenever new media have been introduced, serialized stories are the content of choice because they are able to bind new audiences over a long period of time. Seriality can hardly be imagined without adaptation and media change. Drawing on numerous examples, this talk traces the serial dynamic and proliferation of popular narratives and characters since the mid-nineteenth century and analyzes recent trends and developments from a seriality studies perspective. Kathleen Loock is a postdoctoral researcher at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin. Her research focuses on Hollywood’s remaking practice, seriality, and the role memory and cultural repetition perform on the level of identity formation and imagined collectivization in changing historical, social, and political contexts. She is author of Kolumbus in den USA (Transcript-Verlag, 2014), co-editor of the collection Film Remakes, Adaptations, and Fan Productions: Remake/Remodel (with Constantine Verevis, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), and has edited the following special issues: Serial Narratives (LWU: Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 2014), Exploring Film Seriality (Film Studies, with Frank Krutnik, 2017), and American TV Series Revivals (Television & New Media, 2018). Andy Lavender (University of Warwick) 1 Writing experience: textual construction in contemporary multimodal performance This paper considers the status, format and work of ‘text’ in specific contemporary theatre/performance events. It does so with an eye to multimodal and intermedial production, where transactions of meaning take place through a variety of modes and media within culture. In this pluralised environment, the relation of ‘text’ to both presentation and representation is notably diverse, and frequently geared around experience. The paper discusses distinctly different instances of performance, to explore some of the textual dynamics in play. Piraeus Heterotopia (2017), conceived and directed by Akira Takayama, was a walking tour through parts of Piraeus, the port of Athens. It featured seven short prose pieces by writers based in other places, which Takayama then wove into an experiential multimedia perambulation. ear for eye (2018), by the British playwright debbie tucker green, was produced at the Royal Court Theatre in London, renowned as a ‘new writing’ venue. The play presents a series of scenes in which characters negotiate racial perspectives and prejudices. Brett Bailey’s Sanctuary (2017), produced by South Africa-based Third World Bunfight, is a performance installation in which audience members follow a designated route to move from one ‘station’ to the next. Each station features a fictional character drawn from the company’s research into experiences of migration and immigration, accompanied by a textual sign describing the figure we see before us. The three productions act as case studies for an analysis of the role of text in a postdramatic performance scene, where ‘drama’ recedes in favour of experiential engagement. Each deliberately decontextualises language, in order to recontextualise it in a specific setting. The productions turn to myth and history, in order to reverberate contemporary socio-political situations. Each draws upon witness and testimony, so that tropes of lived experience are at the centre of the work. Text is important to each piece, but is used strategically amid a larger multimodal/multimedia assemblage. The paper considers how text, in these instances, performs. Andy Lavender is Professor of Theatre & Performance and Head of the School of Theatre & Performance Studies and Cultural & Media Policy Studies at the University of Warwick. He was previously Head of the School of Arts at the University of Surrey, and Dean of Research and (before that) Head of Postgraduate Studies at Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. He publishes on contemporary theatre and performance, in particular looking at intermedial and cross-disciplinary work, new production processes, and performance in relation to the public sphere. Recent writing includes the monograph Performance in the Twenty-First Century: Theatres of Engagement (Routledge 2016), and the articles ‘Living in the Moment: Duration now and then’, Performance Research, 23:4/5, 2018, 186-190; ‘The Internet, Theatre, and Time: transmediating the theatron’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 27:3 (2017; he was also co-editor of this special issue of CTR, ‘Encountering the Digital in Performance’); and ‘Modal transpositions towards theatres of encounter, or, in praise of “media intermultimodality”’, Theatre Journal, 66: 4, 2014, 499-518. He is series editor of 4x45, published by Digital Theatre (online videos) and Routledge (print volumes). His work as a theatre director is largely in the field of devised multimedia performance, in particular using digital technologies. Recent work includes Agamemnon Redux, part of the Mask & Avatar workshop project exploring motion capture for live performance with 2 colleagues from Paris 8 and Warwick universities (presented at Issy-les-Molineaux 2017, Warwick and Athens 2018). Kelly McErlean (Dundalk Institute of Technology) A Theatre Set in Motion: The Influence of Beckett and Brecht on New Narrative Structures. My research examines the impact of both Beckett and Brecht on contemporary interactive narratives and new media storytelling structures. It examines Beckett’s ‘radical use of technology’ and the Brecht-influenced ‘new performative and technological paradigms’ of Forced Entertainment, Blast Theory and Dead Centre. The latter theatre company recently staged the world premiere of their production ‘Beckett’s Room’ at The Gate Theatre, Dublin - a play about art and resistance, staged without performers. This research compares interactive, immersive experiences to the three phases of Process Drama - orientation, experience and reflection. Alienation is further explored via the work of Irish author Francis Stuart who long courted ostracism, which he considered to be the rightful place for the artist. In ‘Black List Section H’ his alter ego ‘H’ meanders through life instinctively cutting himself off from any form of consensual societal contract. Beckett’s characters were also in a continual shift of ‘social and sexual relations’ where language was in a perpetual state of disequilibrium.’ Early 20th century photographer William Mortensen’s emphasis on form over content, the identification of geometric criteria that allowed a visual image to demand attention from the viewer. This codification of content results in an experience of participation within a picture where the eye travels along the rhythmical contours and lines which the image creates. Contemporary interactive works will also be considered. Elain Hoey is an Irish artist whose award-winning VR work ‘The Weight of Water’ builds towards an ‘empathy enhancing’ sense of presence. Her latest installation considers the notion of digital islands of thought which are intended to destabilize the VR viewer. Kelly McErlean has won several awards including a Golden Spider Award and Digital Media Award for his work in film, photography and new media. He holds a PhD in Visual Culture from the National College of Art & Design, Dublin and an MA in Mass Communications from Leicester University, UK. He has authored graduate and post-graduate courses in film and new media for national and international delivery. Working with the European Broadcasting Union, he successfully project managed eLearning and on-site contracts for many international broadcast organisations. Kelly is a full-time Programme Director and academic researcher in the Department of Creative Arts, Media and Music, Dundalk Institute of Technology, Ireland. He is an educational consultant for several UK universities and is an academic writer with Pearson. His book 'Interactive Narratives & Transmedia Storytelling' was published 2018 by Taylor & Francis, New York. 3 Conference participants Aleksandra Bida (Ryerson University) Transmedia ‘home territories’ in video games and the digital humanities Narrative games offer an exchange of information that occurs on multiple scales--from creators elaborating on what the game means to them and the learning that occurred during creation, to the users who (re)play and engage with the text, and beyond to the communities of users in online, classroom, or everyday settings who share these experiences, including those who watch gameplay videos in addition to or rather than playing. This paper will consider these scales as well as the extent to which narrative games engage with "readers" in novel ways, shaping how notions of "home" and "belonging" are re-read through interactive insights. My focus will be on games that seek to immerse individuals and communities through realistic experiences