Peripeti

Neither fascism nor democracy*

Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0200

The article presents and discusses André Breton and Georges Bataille’s Contré Attaque project in the mid-1930s where the two Surrealists sought to find a position that was both critical towards the emerging fascist movements, a Stalinized Communist Party and a crisis-ridden liberal democracy. The brief experiment will be used in an analysis of the new contemporary fascist tendencies that have been appearing during the last ten years in the West.

Calling Heard over a Great Distance 1-8

Ane Mette Ruge — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0200

The series of pictures is the first part of a continued project.
The title Calling Heard over a Great Distance 1-8 refers to the poetical context of the project.

Conspiracy hippies and Holocaust denial

Laura Luise Schultz — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

While the artists collective Center for Political Beauty address contemporary politicians’ open or tacit denial of Holocaust and the political betrayals of the 1930s in their social interventions, the artists collective Frankfurter Hauptschule expose the intricate entanglements of fascism with hippie-inspired esotericism and a new interest in German Romanticism and Nordic mysticism among young German artists today. The article will analyze the activist practice of the two collectives and discuss what role artistic interventions into politics may play in the fight against the fascist aestheticization of the political in Benjamin’s sense.

Activist theatre and the agitprop legacy*

Matthias Warstat — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Political theatre today seems to be dominated once again by activist approaches that want to have a direct impact on political conflicts with a clear agenda. When it comes to interpreting this new liaison of theatre and activism, it seems nearly unavoidable to look back at the historical avant-gardes around 1930. With the contemporary situation as a starting point, this article analyses the agitprop tradition focusing on the German example. It discusses to what extent one can speak of an agitprop legacy in Germany despite the dissolution of the agitprop groups under the Nazi regime; when and in what this legacy becomes recognisable and how today’s activist theatre groups refer to the models, problems and crises of the historical agitprop troupes.

Staying with the trouble

Konstanze Schmitt — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Who owns Lauratibor? is the result of a collaboration between several long-standing protest movements in Reichenberger Kiez. The collectively driven opera project is a different form of activism; an opera created in self-defence, sprung from the ongoing struggle against evictions of residents and workers of all guilds in the surrounding neighbourhood of Reichenbergerstraße in Berlin-Kreuzberg.

Wem gehört Lauratibor? Eine Protest-Oper über den Ausverkauf der Stadt / Who owns Lauratibor? A protest opera about the sell-out of the city

Karen Vedel — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Forming a circle*

Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Forsøgsscenen (The Experimental Stage, 1929-31) is examined as a historically early example of community-organising artistic practice. By analysing Forsøgsscenen based on cultural objects such as their production of a little magazine, their distribution policy and their infrastructural performance, the scholarly inquiry is shifted from the reception of the artwork in theatre history, towards approaching a materialist understanding of Forsøgsscenen's production aesthetic contribution in avant-garde history. Historiographically, a comparativist perspective is employed, which finds kinship both between collective organisations in the 1930s and kinship with contemporary concepts of self-institutionalisation as counterculture: redistributive, political and institution-forming practices that unfold as a response to the common art institutions in late capitalism.

The rematerialisation of trauma: a dialogue on love

Peter Brandt / Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeld — Sun, 17 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

New World remakes, Cold-War politics, and the legacy of the Bauhaus

Isabel Wünsche — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0200

This essay explores the ways in which Cold War cultural politics have shaped the legacy, reception, and discourse on the historic Bauhaus art school, focusing on American-German relations after 1945 and the role played by former Bauhäuslers, who had emigrated to the United States in the 1930s, in recording and then reinstating the historical narrative of this art school. A closer look at the narratives and omissions concerning the Bauhaus’ ideas, ideals, and practices will help to shed more light onto the question, why, up to this day, the focus remains on the Bauhaus under Walter Gropius between 1919 and 1928, neglecting the later Dessau years under Hannes Meyer and Mies van de Rohe.

Sites and sights of tension: cultural memory of gender and colonial power in East Asia*

Gunhild Ravn Borggreen — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Taking the sculpture entitled Statue of Peace (2011) by South Korean artists Kim Seo-kyung and Kim Eun-sung as a focus point, the article explores issues of gender and colonial power in the East Asian region related to the cultural memory of “comfort women” of Korean origin. Analyses of the sculpture and its context show how geographical locations and visual representation are related to atrocities and colonial violence. It shows how the sculpture becomes both a weapon and object of violence in global solidarity.

Taboo and ignorance in Japanese war-time history

Yoshiko Shimada — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Work Bitch – a contemporary Lehrstück or how to get from I to we*

Tania Ørum — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0200

The play Work Bitch by Ida Marie Hede staged by Niels Erling at the Sort/Hvid Theatre in Copenhagen in January-February 2022 can be seen as a contemporary Lehrstück or learning play, a genre invented by Bertolt Brecht in the 1920s and 1930s. Through a series of exemplary situations, the play discusses the possibilities of liberation in today’s capitalist society.

From sensation to fluent identity – Lili Elbe’s life narrative between historical case and contemporary re-enactment*

Marianne Ølholm — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0200

From Man into Woman: Lili Elbe’s Confessions (1931) describes the Danish painter Einar Wegener’s transformation into Lili Elbe and is the first (auto)biographical narrative of a subject who undergoes gender transformation surgery. It was published in parallel versions in Danish in 1931, in German in 1932, and in English in Britain and the U.S. in 1933. In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in Lili Elbe’s life story, and the historical case has become the subject of artistic re-interpretations in several media. The novel The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff was published in the U.S. in 2000, and the Hollywood movie by the same title, directed by Tom Hooper, appeared in 2015. In 2021, a dance performance, also by the same title and choreographed by Tim Rushton, was produced by the Holstebro Dance Company. Through the different historical representations, shifts can be traced in the perception of Lili’s transition from one gender to another, from the emphasis on the surgical transformation in the original narrative to the perspective of gender-confirmation of the most recent adaptation. Furthermore, the interpretations all relate to the question of authorship and access to artistic production.

Summaries

Editorial board — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Reading guide for Peripeti #38

Editorial board — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0200

This issue consists of research articles as well as essays, interviews, and artistic contributions.
Peer reviewed articles are marked with an *.

Introduction: A historical analogy and its derived effects

Solveig Daugaard, Laura Luise Schultz, Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Kolofon P37

Thomas Rosendal Nielsen — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Peripeti 38

Temaredaktion

Sandra Buch, Solveig Gade, Lise Sofie Houe, Thomas Rosendal Nielsen, and Yvonne Schmidt.

Redaktion

Erik Exe Christoffersen, Solveig Daugaard, Michael Eigtved, Solveig Gade, Storm Møller Madsen, Thomas Rosendal Nielsen (ansv.), Signe Nygaard, Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt, Laura Luise Schultz, Josefine Brink Siem.

Korrektur:

Marianne Ølholm

Omslag:

HABITAT+Bodyscaping 2021

Nana Francisca Schottländer

Produceret af Metropolis

Foto: Marine Gastineau

Layout:

Ivan Micic

ISSN: 1604-0325

Peripeti udgives af Afdeling for Dramaturgi (Aarhus Universitet) i samarbejde med Teater- og Performancestudier (Københavns Universitet) og Den Danske Scenekunstskole. Peripeti er støttet af Statens Kunstfond og Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond.

Redaktionsadresse:

www.peripeti.dk

Peripeti

Afdeling for Dramaturgi

Institut for Kommunikation og Kultur, Aarhus Universitet

Langelandsgade 139.

DK 8000 Århus C

Redaktion: thomas.rosendal@cc.au.dk