Steadman, M (2014) Site of intimacy: space and corporality in Küsse. In: 5th Global Conference: Performance - Visual Aspects of Performance Practice, 7-9 November 2014, Prague, Czech Republic.
Abstract
This paper will address a practice-based research project that set out to explore how the performance space and the performers’ bodies can be transformed through embodying images, and to reflect upon the body and space as a site where intimacy is constructed and deconstructed. The initial theme was an impossible love affair between Franz Kafka and Felice Bauer, and in response to this theme it became evident that key metaphors was were spatial metaphors. Through a process of the compression of visual/physical metaphors, which are articulated through the interrelationship of the performers’ bodies, the archetypal image of the home was constructed through a stark Paper Room design. Bachelard suggests: ‘the house image would appear to have become the topography of the intimate being’. The Paper Room structure connotes a blank canvas filled with potential that evokes and provokes action. Throughout the performance the enactment of fantasies and desires, meetings and partings, the performers’ bodies transform and are transformed by the space. This gradually becomes un-homely or ‘unheimlich (Freud). Thus, a reversal of the metaphor of the ‘home’ as an intimate space to one of incessant physical and psychological eviction. This process revealed that metaphor is a ‘thought process’, as Serig states: ‘the idea that visual metaphor in artists’ practices connotes ‘thinking’ and ‘working processes’ rather than determining objects’. This thought process is defined by Bachelard’s notion of ‘reverie’ and the practice draws upon Release Technique as a process of embodiment of imagery, that leads to a complex visual expression that requires seeing more and sensing more, an imaginative response ‘beyond the veil of words to an intuitive apprehension’ (Perkins).
| Item Type: | Conference or Workshop Item (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Note: | This paper was part of a session entitled 'Bodies and spaces as active social sites of transformation'. Draft version of the paper is available at the URL above. |
| Keywords: | Visual Performance, Theatre, Performance, Imagery, Embodiment,Space, Metaphor |
| Subjects: | N Fine Arts > NX Arts in general |
| Divisions: | Bath School of Music and Performing Arts |
| Related URLs: | |
| Date Deposited: | 09 Apr 2015 16:07 |
| Last Modified: | 15 Aug 2021 09:39 |
| URI / Page ID: | https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/5756 |
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