Author Description

What do famous 20th century thinkers like Hannah Arendt, Guy Debord and Henri Lefebvre have to offer for a critical performance analysis today? Charlotte Gruber has taken a fresh look at their writings with respect to this question. In "InterActions" she applies her findings to the analysis of more than 12 contemporary artworks from different fields. In doing so she tackles two dominant developments in the Performing Arts: The ongoing trend to actively engage performance-participants in the performance process, and the tendency to leave common theatre buildings for innovative venues. Assisted by recent approaches from Media Studies, she scrutinizes the employment of new networking media. Her study reveals: Not only the Performing Arts but also other fields of art (Streetart, Visual Arts etc.) have to be considered for their performative potential and their extensive socio-political range. Gruber questions the term Site-Specific Art for its insufficiency to articulate this potential, which she sees in the creation, reinvention and reappropriation of public spaces. This thesis was awarded the TIN Theaterscriptieprijs 2012 by the Theater Institute of the Netherlands.