DOCSLIB.ORG

University of Copenhagen Faculty of Humanities

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
University of Copenhagen Faculty of Humanities Disincarnation Jack Smith and the character as assemblage Tranholm, Mette Risgård Publication date: 2017 Document version Other version Document license: CC BY-NC-ND Citation for published version (APA): Tranholm, M. R. (2017). Disincarnation: Jack Smith and the character as assemblage. Det Humanistiske Fakultet, Københavns Universitet. Download date: 25. Sep. 2021 UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN FACULTY OF HUMANITIES PhD Dissertation Mette Tranholm Disincarnation Jack Smith and the character as assemblage Supervisor: Laura Luise Schultz Submitted on: 26 May 2017 Name of department: Department of Arts and Cultural Studies Author(s): Mette Tranholm Title and subtitle: Disincarnation: Jack Smith and the character as assemblage Topic description: The topic of this dissertation is the American performer, photographer, writer, and filmmaker Jack Smith. The purpose of this dissertation is - through Smith - to reach a more nuanced understading of the concept of character in performance theater. Supervisor: Laura Luise Schultz Submitted on: 26 May 2017 2 Table of contents Acknowledgements.............................................................................................................................................................7 Overall aim and research questions.................................................................................................................................9 Disincarnation in Roy Cohn/Jack Smith........................................................................................................................13 From disidentification to disincarnation (via Muñoz)...................................................................................................14 Research status: Jack Smith ..........................................................................................................................................17 Research status: The character in performance theater.................................................................................................18 Theoretical framework ..................................................................................................................................................20 Theoretical framework: Both social constructivism and new materialism...................................................................23 Itinerary .........................................................................................................................................................................29 CHAPTER 1: DISINCARNATION AS A PERFORMATIVE PRACTICE........................... 31 Introducing Jack Smith and Maria Montez..................................................................................................................31 The practice of Jack Smith............................................................................................................................................31 The reception of Smith’s practice .................................................................................................................................31 Castle of trash................................................................................................................................................................34 Performative hybrids.....................................................................................................................................................35 Maria Montez: Life and work .......................................................................................................................................36 The fabrication of stars..................................................................................................................................................40 Hollywood’s orientalism...............................................................................................................................................41 Smith’s aesthetic, politics and position on Maria Montez............................................................................................43 The beginning of a lifelong obsession ..........................................................................................................................43 The superstar character: Maria Montez.........................................................................................................................43 Cultic Diva worship ......................................................................................................................................................44 The Beautiful Book: Superstars of Cinemaroc ..............................................................................................................46 Leitmotifs in The Beautiful Book ..................................................................................................................................48 Performing politics........................................................................................................................................................51 Camp .............................................................................................................................................................................54 The politics of Smith’s practice ....................................................................................................................................56 Disincarnation: a performative practice ........................................................................................................................59 Subject- and character formations.................................................................................................................................61 Subject positions in philosophy: the Cartesian subject .................................................................................................61 19th Century: Crisis in the Cartesian subject................................................................................................................61 Subject positions in post-modernism: The nomadic subject.........................................................................................62 Character positions: Presence and authenticity in the four concepts of character ...................................................63 The classical concept of character.................................................................................................................................63 19th Century: Crisis in the classical character ..............................................................................................................65 3 The Brechtian concept of character...............................................................................................................................66 The Artaudian concept of character ..............................................................................................................................67 Artaud, performance, and the performative turn...........................................................................................................68 The postdramatic concept of character and bodily presence.........................................................................................69 Hans-Thies Lehmann and bodily presence ...................................................................................................................73 Postdramatic theater and authenticity effects................................................................................................................74 The material and discursive merge on stage .................................................................................................................74 Smith’s acting manifestos: converging character concepts..........................................................................................76 Opposites attract: Emotional identification in Smith’s Reptilian Acting Technique (R.A.T) ......................................76 Disincarnation: a material assemblage of the classical, Brechtian, Artaudian, and postdramatic concept of character ........................................................................................................................................................................83 Assemblage ...................................................................................................................................................................83 Disincarnation: a practice in constant becoming...........................................................................................................85 Becoming-woman .........................................................................................................................................................85 Body without organs (BwO): Attacking the organic subject ........................................................................................87 CHAPTER 2: DISINCARNATION: THE ETHICAL-POLITICAL POTENTIAL OF BECOMING-MONTEZ....................................................................................................... 89 Jack Smith and the disincarnation practice ..................................................................................................................89 Disincarnation and the body without organs (BwO).....................................................................................................90 Disincarnation: Becoming-Montez: A relation of desire
Load more

Recommended publications
  • NAYATT SCHOOL REDUX (Since I Can Remember)
    THE WOOSTER GROUP NAYATT SCHOOL REDUX (Since I Can Remember) DIRECTOR’S NOTE Our work on this piece began when filmmaker Ken Kobland and I set out to make an archival video reconstruction of The Wooster Group’s 1978 piece Nayatt School. Nayatt School featured Spalding Gray’s first experiments with the monologue form and included scenes from T.S. Eliot’s play The Cocktail Party. Nayatt School was the third part of a trilogy of pieces that I directed that were made around Spalding’s autobiography: his family history, his life in the theater, and his mother’s suicide. As Ken and I worked with the Nayatt School materials, we found that the surviving video and audio recordings were too fragmentary, and their original quality too poor, to make a full reconstruction. So I decided to remount Nayatt School with our present company – especially while a few of us, who were there, could still remember. We could at least fill in the gaps for an archival record and, at the same time, demonstrate our process for devising our work. Of course, in reanimating Nayatt School, we have discovered that when it is placed in a new time and context, new possibilities and resonances emerge. I recognize that we are not just making an archival record — we are in the process of making a new piece. That is the work in progress that you are about to see. work-in-progress theatro-film THE PERFORMING GARAGE May 2019 NAYATT SCHOOL REDUX (Since I Can Remember) with Ari Fliakos, Gareth Hobbs, Erin Mullin, Suzzy Roche, Scott Shepherd, Kate Valk, Omar Zubair Composed by the
    [Show full text]
  • Curriculum Vita
    LENORA CHAMPAGNE 3 Horatio Street, New York, NY 10014 212.924.6577 [email protected]; [email protected] websites: www.lenorachampagne.com; www.purchase.edu EDUCATION Ph.D. in Performance Studies, New York University, 1980 Thesis: "From `Imagination to Power' to the `Hyper-Real': May 1968 and French Theatre" Published as French Theatre Experiment Since 1968, UMI Research Press, l984 M.A. Drama, New York University, l975 B.A. English, Louisiana State University, l972 PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE—TEACHING Purchase College, State University of New York Professor and Coordinator of Theatre and Performance (presently) Kempner Distinguished Professor, 2008-2010 Royal and Shirley Durst Chair of Humanities, 2002-2004 Associate Professor, Drama Studies, Fall 2001 to Spring 2008 Assistant Professor, Drama Studies, Fall 1999 to Spring 2001 Member of Theatre and Performance, Dramatic Writing and Gender Studies Boards of Study New York University, Gallatin School for Individualized Study Adjunct Faculty, (Solo Performance Composition to graduate and undergraduate students) since 1980 Thesis and academic advisor for graduate students and for independent studies in performance art. Trinity College, Dept. of Theatre and Dance, Hartford, CT Artist-in-Residence, full-time faculty, l985 - 1989 Directed two productions annually, Main Stage and Black Box TEACHING: SOLO PERFORMANCE WORKSHOPS Trinity/LaMama, Fall 1995-2005 Sanctuary for Families, 1998-1999 (as Public Imaginations affiliated artist, Dance Theatre Workshop) Movement Research, Spring 1991-1993
    [Show full text]
  • Craig Highberger Hattie Hathaway/Brian Butterick Jackie Dearest Pictures of Ethyl in My Head
    Excerpt from When Jackie Met Ethyl / Curated by Dan Cameron, May 5 – June 1, 2016 © 2016 Howl! Arts, Inc. Excerpt from When Jackie Met Ethyl / Curated by Dan Cameron, May 5 – June 1, 2016 © 2016 Howl! Arts, Inc. Page 1 Page 1 Craig Highberger Hattie Hathaway/Brian Butterick Jackie Dearest Pictures of Ethyl in My Head Meeting Jackie Curtis during my first week at NYU Film School in 1973 and becoming his friend was one Ethyl Eichelberger, my sister, my mentor, my friend… of the most propitious things that has ever happened in my life. Knowing Jackie right after high school truly In 1986, I had the brilliant idea to do hardcore skinhead music matinees for all ages on Saturdays, at freed me, inspired my intellect, and opened my mind to possibilities I had never dreamed of. 3 p.m. at the Pyramid. Ethyl knew the club would be open early, so she came by to get ready for an early As Lily Tomlin and others clarified in my documentary, Jackie Curtis lived his life as performance art, show somewhere. I went down to the basement dressing room, when the club was packed, to talk to the rejecting conventional gender classification and shifting freely between female and male as he liked. One bands and there was Ethyl, surrounded by 25 somewhat homophobic skinhead boys with tattoos and day Jackie would be in James Dean mode, scruffy and unshaven, in blue denim and a t-shirt, with a pack bleachers who were enthralled by her and her makeup application. of Kools in one rolled-up sleeve.
    [Show full text]
  • Contributors
    Contributors Kelly Aliano received her PhD from the City University of New York Graduate Center. Her dissertation was entitled “Ridiculous Geographies: Mapping the Theatre of the Ridiculous as Radical Aesthetic.” She has taught at Hunter College and has stage-managed numerous productions throughout New York City. Patricia Badir has published on public space in medieval and Reformation dramatic entertainment in the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Exemplaria, and Theatre Survey. She also writes on religious iconography and postmedieval devotional writ- ing. She is the author of The Maudlin Impression: English Literary Images of Mary Magdalene, 1550–1700 (University of Notre Dame Press, 2009). She is currently working on playmaking and the perils of mimesis on Shakespeare’s stage and on Canadian Shakespeare in the first two decades of the twentieth century. This recent research has been published in Shakespeare Quarterly. Rosemarie K. Bank has published in Theatre Journal, Nineteenth- Century Theatre, Theatre History Studies, Essays in Theatre, Theatre Research International, Modern Drama, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Women in American Theatre, Feminist Rereadings of Modern American Drama, The American Stage, Critical Theory and Performance (both editions), Performing America, Interrogating America through Theatre and Performance, and Of Borders and Thresholds. She is the author of Theatre Culture in America, 1825– 1860 (Cambridge University Press, 1997) and is currently preparing Staging the Native, 1792–1892. A member of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre, a past fellow of the American Philosophical Society, and several times a fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, she was the editor of Theatre Survey from 2000 to 2003 and currently serves on several editorial boards.
    [Show full text]
  • Liitoja Interviews Wooster Group's Artistic Director Elizabeth Lecompte
    Interview with The Wooster Group's Artistic Director Elizabeth LeCompte The Wooster Group had its origins in The Performance Group, the ground- breaking “environmental” theatre company founded in 1967 by Richard Schechner, the legendary American experimental theatre director. Elizabeth LeCompte joined the company in 1970 and five years later began to create her own work with Spalding Gray, apart from Schechner’s company yet still in its venue, the Performing Garage, located in the SoHo district of New York City. This former factory on, yes, Wooster Street, still serves as their home base where they develop (and often perform) their work. Perhaps one day someone will write a detailed account of the rift that occurred, leading to the departure of Schechner, and the morphing of his company intoThe Wooster Group in 1980, with LeCompte as its Artistic Director. Since its beginning the ensemble has been in a continual state of flux with members involving themselves in other pursuits only to fluidly rejoin. Simultaneous to these comings and goings has been an equally constant artistic evolution that has produced a considerable body of work: nineteen meticulously crafted pieces for theatre along with eight for film/video and five for dance. Note “pieces”, not plays. The Group does not present “plays” - they serve merely as springboards for some of the most complex, fascinating, bewildering and intellectually challenging work ever seen on stage. While not courting controversy they seem unable to avoid it. Acclaimed for brilliant individual performances as well as technological wizardry, Wooster’s unique creations are seen in festivals around the world.
    [Show full text]
  • The MIT Press Spring 2021 Dear Friends and Readers, Contents
    The MIT Press Spring 2021 Dear Friends and Readers, Contents Books are carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. They are engines of change, windows to the world, “lighthouses” (as a poet said) Trade 1-32 “erected in the sea of time.” Paperback Reprints 33-36 —Barbara W. Tuchman, American historian Distributed by the MIT Press University presses are critical to the academy’s core purpose to create and share knowledge. In these extraordinary times, scholars and scientists are racing to overcome a pandemic, Boston Review 37 combat climate change, and protect civil liberties even as Goldsmiths Press 38-39 they are forced to engage in escalating information warfare. With expanding misinformation and shrinking public trust in Semiotext(e) 40-43 news media, in science and academia, and in expertise more Sternberg Press 44-58 broadly, it falls to universities and mission-driven publishers to uphold sense-making and the spreading of facts—to share Strange Attractor Press 59-61 and translate credible, research-based information in ways that Terra Nova Press 62 maximize its impact on decisions that will shape the future of humanity. University presses have a central role to play in this Urbanomic 63 cause, and the MIT Press continues to be a guiding light. As Director, I am reminded daily of the power of books for posi- Academic Trade 64-68 tive change—to create more beauty, knowing, understanding, Professional 69-91 justice, and human connection in our vast and complex world. www.dianalevine.com Amy Brand All of us at the MIT Press feel a profound responsibility to use Journals 92-94 our privileged perch for good wherever we can.
    [Show full text]
  • Elizabeth Lecompte in Rehearsal: an Intern’S Perspective
    Praxis: The Journal For Theatre, Performance Studies, and Criticism 2013 Issue Elizabeth LeCompte in Rehearsal: An Intern’s Perspective By Matthew McMahan The date is August 25th, 2009, and after touring their production of Hamlet in Gdańsk, Poland, the Wooster Group resumed rehearsals for Tennessee Williams’s Vieux Carré. I am an intern, sitting quietly in the back of the Performing Garage surrounded by rafters, metallic totems, trusses, wooden platforms (many on wheels), computer screens, microphones, folding chairs, assorted props and costume pieces strewn about the floor. On several of the LCD screens hung around the set, there is a paused clip from the Andy Warhol produced film Flesh – an image of a tan, muscular, and naked Joe Dallesandro. This image remains on the screens for the entirety of rehearsal, unacknowledged by the denizens of the Garage. When LeCompte finally arrives, carrying a few books and a bottle of Australian Malbec, she greets the crew with three pieces to consider. The first is a film clip from Farewell My Concubine, where a Peking opera actor dazzles the audience with meticulous control of his hands and gestures. While the movie is playing, LeCompte mocks the clip and the actor for his facile, unrefined gestures. Scott Shepherd agrees, noting, “I wasn’t all that impressed with the thing he’s doing with his fingers there. That doesn’t excite me.” It was the performer’s lack of precision they found so deterring. The second piece LeCompte shares is Ben Brantley’s review of JoAnne Akalaitis’s production for Shakespeare in the Park, The Bacchae.
    [Show full text]
  • The RSC & the Wooster Group's Troilus and Cressida
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Kingston University Research Repository Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance vol. 11 (26), 2014; DOI: 10.2478/mstap-2014-0006 ∗ Aneta Mancewicz Looking Back at the Audience: The RSC & The Wooster Group’s Troilus and Cressida (2012) Abstract: The controversy around the RSC & The Wooster Group’s Troilus and Cressida (Stratford-upon-Avon 2012) among the spectators and critics in Britain revealed significant differences between the UK and the US patterns of staging, spectating, and reviewing Shakespeare. The production has also exposed the gap between mainstream and avant-garde performance practices in terms of artists’ assumptions and audiences’ expectations. Reviews and blog entries written by scholars, critics, practitioners, and anonymous theatre goers were particularly disapproving of The Wooster Group’s experimentation with language, non-psychological acting, the appropriation of Native American customs, and the overall approach to the play and the very process of stage production. These points of criticism have suggested a clear perception of a successful Shakespeare production in the mainstream British theatre: a staging that approaches the text as an autonomous universe guided by realistic rules, psychological principles, and immediate political concerns. If we assume, however, that Troilus and Cressida as a play relies on the dramaturgy of cultural differences and that it consciously reflects on the notion of spectatorship, the production’s transgression of mainstream patterns of staging and spectating brings it surprisingly close to the Shakespearean source. Keywords: William Shakespeare, audience, spectating, British theatre, American theatre, avant-garde, RSC, The Wooster Group.
    [Show full text]
  • Part 2 of the Interview with Minette
    LadyLik Part-Time Lady... Full Time Queen Part 2 of the interview with Minette. be several centuries more before we see his like There is something eternal about Minette, the again. "The Ridiculous was reestablished a few years child performer in vaudeville who wasn't happy ago by Everett Quinton, Ludlam's long-time lover until she was a professional female impersonator. and co-star. The Ridiculous' current production of She starred in underground drag films by Ava-Graph Ludlam's The Mystery of Irma Vep is sold out for Studio and was the subject of a biography, Recollec- months in advance. tions of a Part-Time Lady. When we met her she To us Minette is legendary. And what becomes a hadn't performed in 20 years. In the last issue of legend most? Being with other legends. Minette has LadyLike we followed Minette's career from Phila- an eternal quality, illustrated by an incident years delphia to Providence through bars, clubs, show- after she stopped performing: "One time a boy rooms and carnival midways. This installment is all comes up to me and says, 'Weren't you Minette?' New York tales and the names in it are more familiar And I said, 'I still am.'" to LadyLike readers. After moving to New York Minette's circle grew Ms Bob: Tell me about the biography, Recollec- to include some of Manhattan's more influential tions of a Part-Time Lady. When was it published? gender interpreters. Of course, she continued to Minette: They had the publication party the 20th work with professional impersonators, like Harvey Lee and Pudgy Roberts.
    [Show full text]
  • Metropolitan Archivist, Volume 19, No. 1
    BOARD OF DIRECTORS WELCOME Rachel Chatalbash The following individuals have joined the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan President New York since June 2012 New Members John Tomasicchio Bleakley McDowell Abril Siqueiros Pamela Cruz Chris Ventura Emily Nabasny Robert Smith Vice President Clifford Allen Miwa Yokoyama Deborah Nitka Theo Roth Erin Allsop Robin Preiss Mitchell Brodsky Lauren Barnes Queens College New Student Rachel Ann Schimke Treasurer Michala Biondi Shira Bistricer Members Erin Shaw Mary Brown Caroline Curtin Erica Titkemeyer Melissa Bowling Anna Ciepiela Long Island Bridget Jivanelli Pamela Vizner Oyarce Secretary Ioannides University, Palmer Leeroy Kang Matthew Coody School of Library Pratt Institute, Deborah Marks Karen Murphy Cara Dellatte and Information School of Information Minda Matz Director, Education Committee Honora Drohan Science and Library Sciences Hallie McNeill Deborah Falik Meagan Doodian Erin Barsan Meg Milewski Ryan Anthony Donaldson Caitlin Goodman Michael Leverett Sophia Dahab Evelyn Shunaman Director, Communications Yevgeniya Gribov Dorn Nik Dragovic Committee Kate Jadwin Tina Edell Elizabeth Kaufer Other John Joseph Daniel Frett Megan Koontz Lauren Alpher Anne Petrimoulx Miriam Kahn Marina Rosenfield Leanora Lange Sarah Bost Director, Membership Committee Brigette C. Kamsler Marie Stark Richard Lee Caitlin Christian- Michael Kemezis New York University Heather Lember Lamb Janet Bunde Natalie Milbrodt Rachel Corbman Carolyn Li-Madeo Wanett Clyde Director, Outreach & Advocacy Virginia Millington
    [Show full text]
  • Inventory to Archival Boxes in the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division of the Library of Congress
    INVENTORY TO ARCHIVAL BOXES IN THE MOTION PICTURE, BROADCASTING, AND RECORDED SOUND DIVISION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Compiled by MBRS Staff (Last Update December 2017) Introduction The following is an inventory of film and television related paper and manuscript materials held by the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division of the Library of Congress. Our collection of paper materials includes continuities, scripts, tie-in-books, scrapbooks, press releases, newsreel summaries, publicity notebooks, press books, lobby cards, theater programs, production notes, and much more. These items have been acquired through copyright deposit, purchased, or gifted to the division. How to Use this Inventory The inventory is organized by box number with each letter representing a specific box type. The majority of the boxes listed include content information. Please note that over the years, the content of the boxes has been described in different ways and are not consistent. The “card” column used to refer to a set of card catalogs that documented our holdings of particular paper materials: press book, posters, continuity, reviews, and other. The majority of this information has been entered into our Merged Audiovisual Information System (MAVIS) database. Boxes indicating “MAVIS” in the last column have catalog records within the new database. To locate material, use the CTRL-F function to search the document by keyword, title, or format. Paper and manuscript materials are also listed in the MAVIS database. This database is only accessible on-site in the Moving Image Research Center. If you are unable to locate a specific item in this inventory, please contact the reading room.
    [Show full text]
  • A Time to Be Born Taylor
    A TIME TO BE BORN TAYLOR MAC IN CONVERSATION WITH BARLO PERRY On the night of the Los Angeles debut of per- In The Feminization of American Culture, her formance artist-singer-songwriter-actor-play- book about the scourge of nineteenth-century wright Taylor Mac, a catwalk was set up on the sentimentalism and its influence on contem- lounge terrace of UCLA’s Royce Hall for a pre- porary mass culture, Ann Douglas offered a show reception. Under the gimlet-eyed purview nuanced redefinition of self-love: and irrepressible judgment of a local MC—in Narcissism is best defined not as exagger- drag, sipping vodka, and throwing shade—a ated self-esteem but as a refusal to judge the self by number of girls, boys, queens, butches, and one alien, objective means, a willed inability to allow Sister of Perpetual Indulgence picked up the the world to play its customary role in the business gauntlet and displayed their fashion choices of self-evaluation. for the evening. The first walker, bespangled Douglas’ comment referred specifically head to toe, drew a sidelong glance and the to subcultures demanding societal inclusion and crack, “That’s what a glue gun can do, folks.” A narrative self-authorship, and in the 40 years duo in cardigans and pencil skirts were mildly since its publication, generations of queer per- praised: “Sensible realness! Sensible realness!” formance artist-singers have traced a zigzag After one unsteady reveler in a safari hat at- continuum of subversion and reclamation: tempted and failed to navigate the runway, our Klaus Nomi, Joey Arias, Ethyl Eichelberger, MC issued a warning: Leigh Bowery, Jimmy Skafish, Vaginal Davis, Glen Meadmore, Justin Vivian Bond, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Jibz Cameron, François THIS ONE’S TROUBLE, Chaignaud, Mykki Blanco, Daniel Hellmann, Felix Bernstein, Gabe Rubin, and many others.
    [Show full text]