“Intermedial Performativity and Contemporary Chinese Performance Arts”
This lecture is to address the issue of intermedial performativity through some examples from contemporary performance arts. As a neologism, “intermedial performativity” will be approached from the perspective of theoretical entanglements of intermediality intersected by performativity.
The following questions will be discussed:
What happens to the agents that interact with each other in the process of intermedial production? What performative effects does the mixing or do the interactions of different media bring about to the agents involved? How does the intermedial mingling serve the purpose of cultural and social intervention? One of the case studies will focus on the blending of Chinese calligraphy and Kun opera in an avantgarde Kun opera production Cang-Beng (Hiding-Flee) in 2006. The other will deal with the various adaptations of the Italian opera Turandot in different innovative forms in China since 1998, including opera at the original site, music concerts and local Chinese operas, which have not just been staged in China and in many different parts of the world, including in Europe. While the former analyzes the issues of subjectivity and contemporariness in relation to intermedial performativity, the latter interrogates the ambiguities of Chineseness in the global context.
Thursday, December 15, 2022, 1:00-2:30 p.m.
Online via Zoom
Chengzhou He, PhD of University of Oslo, is Yangtze River Distinguished Professor of English and Drama at Nanjing University, China. He is also a foreign member of Academia Europaea (the Academy of Europe). His research interests include Modern Drama/Theatre, Performance Studies and Comparative Literature. His recent monogragh is A Theory of Performativity (2022). His articles have appeared in, for example, A Journal of Feminist Studies, Gender, Place and Culture, Modern Fiction Studies, Comparative Literature Studies, Modern Language Quarterly, Comparative Drama, European Review, Orbis Litterarum and other international and Chinese academic journals.
For participation, please contact CIMIG at sandra.posch(at)uni-graz.at by December 14 to receive the Zoom-Link.