Projects Research Area 2

Circulating Narratives – Entangling Communities: Case Studies in Global Performance Art (2020-)

The Transfer Project "Circulating Narratives – Entangling Communities: Case Studies in Global Performance Art" will explore how diverse histories inform performative practices and shape communities as embodied knowledge. In collaboration with Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, the project will primarily focus on the intersections between Southeast Asian and 'Western' performative practices while addressing the blind spots in traditional historiography in 'the West' as well as the consequences of colonialism and relationships capable of advancing the deconstruction of the 'Western' canon.

Extended Audiences (2019-)

“Extended Audiences” will investigate the ways in which performances are seminal for the formation of temporal communities that both emerge from and transcend co-present theatrical communities. Issues of performance and audience involvement always have a temporal dimension: ephemeral as the moment of a recital or performance may seem, an audience’s engagement with the literary experience outlasts the actual event.

The Wandering Torso: Becoming Fragment in Early Modern Material Culture (2019-)

The aim of this project is a book-length study on the entanglement of the most famous fragment in Western culture – the so called Torso Belvedere – with the aesthetic concepts of body and materiality in the European Early Modern period. The medial and material transformations of the Torso in art and literature will be examined in the broader context of antiquity reception, medical knowledge, and cultural techniques.