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Brecht and Adorno

Brecht and Adorno. Brecht. Art is by definition a political intervention. It can never be apolitical Alienation effect “A” effect Art works producing entertainment. Theatre’s ultimate purpose is pleasure ? Anti-instrumentality of the endeavor (as opposed to fascist art?)

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Brecht and Adorno

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  1. Brecht and Adorno

  2. Brecht • Art is by definition a political intervention. It can never be apolitical • Alienation effect “A” effect • Art works producing entertainment. Theatre’s ultimate purpose is pleasure • ? Anti-instrumentality of the endeavor (as opposed to fascist art?) • Emphasis on historical specificity: each society produces its own kinds of theater • Unexamined: B does not rethink the role of science, but he proposes to apply scientific methods to social life • Influence of Brecht in the US and Latin America: tools, theater, goals. Brechtian theater contradicts the hegemonic training of actors in the US • Pleasure and politics: Marxist approach to pleasure in politics • his audience is working class • Need to work with emotions, but at distance (anti-theatrical) • Pleasure does not need justification • Theatricality trains the audience to be a good audience • About Brecht: • Contradictions rational / irrational . Reason / emotion . • working class / intellectuals

  3. Brecht’s proposal for theater • Goal: To transform audience to a state of suspicious inquiry. Make strange the ordinary • Tools: • making the state of things looks “strange.” Split between representation and the object represented? • Theater for “children of the scientific age” • Pleasures: weaker (simple) and stronger (complex) • Attitude towards society as attitude towards nature • Appeals to rationality (as opposed to the irrationality of fascism) • Anti-naturalist: making things look strange: separating the character and the actor/actress so there is no way of identify both

  4. Adorno • Art not only addresses its issues by taking them as subject • There is no un-political art, for there is no outside of society • Committed: explicit political involvement and message of art. Art as a means • Autonomous: art for art’s sake. Art as an end • even when oppositional, art is always part of society • Showing suffering as obscene • about Adorno: • ? Consumerism / victimizing? • How to talk about violence without reproducing violence? • Educating audience vs. creating work ? • Reenactment of traumatic situation can be healing:

  5. Fascism and Political Performance • Private vs. public • Private is exposed

  6. Notes to retake • Popular • Commodification of the tools • political effective • Role of the audience in live and mediated (transmitted) performance

  7. Notes on the images • The intellectuals, politics, the academy • Artists and the state. How can art be socially relevant? • Adding to the problem vs. addressing something that is silenced • Contributing to healing process • How can academic work be socially relevant? • Latour’s “factishes,” in the analysis of belief and fact

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