„Yvonne Rainer: Work 1961-1973“, eine der wichtigsten Quellen über die frühen Arbeiten der Tanz- und Fimkünstlerin, erschien 1974 in Halifax (Kanada) in einer von Kasper König am Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) kuratierten und produzierten Buchreihe. Die Nova Scotia Series bilden eine besondere Form von Archiv und Medium der Künstler_innen, die nicht mit einem Werk- oder Ausstellungskatalog vergleichbar sind. Sie sind es u. a. deswegen nicht, weil sie von künstlerischen Arbeiten handeln, die weniger ein abgeschlossenes Objekt als Werk umfassen, als vielmehr konzeptuelle und performative Prozesse beinhalten. Anhand von verschiedenen Materialien und einer Liste der Buchtitel rekonstruiert der Beitrag konzeptionelle Überlegungen und Kontexte sowie Produktionsprozesse und Gegenstände der Bücher.

This project is concerned with exploring the relationship between postconceptual dance and its state as object. As a practice-led research project it aims to do so both through the written thesis and through artistic practice, which is here presented as a series of video projects that extend representations of dance. Over five chapters I trace the permutation of the ‘object’ from choreographer to spectator, participant, editor, collector and ‘reframer’, arguing for the multiplicity of roles that choreographers, and by extension dancers, take on at the beginning of the 21st century. My interdisciplinary research draws from a variety of theoretical discourses including performance theory, visual cultures and critical theory, and is therefore both relevant to the field of dance studies and beyond the discipline. Given the practice-led nature of the project, my aim has been to expand choreographic performance practices and to increases the range of ‘objects’ that can be considered dance. Therefore, the project resides in the gaps and tensions between practice and theory, performance and documentation, language and dance, text and movement, choreography and objecthood. Throughout I argue that post-conceptual dance operates within an extended field in which dancers and choreographers are expanding the boundaries of the art form, making dance relevant to a broader artistic, cultural, political and social context.

[pt] Essa tese investiga a relação entre o espectador e a cena a partir de algumas experiências de dança contemporânea. Procura-se entender como os artistas trabalhados criam, cenicamente, novos modos de fazer circular afetos e sentidos convidando o espectador a se despir das posições a que tradicionalmente está atrelado, seja como alienado, seja como hermeneuta. A trajetória da coreógrafa e cineasta Yvonne Rainer é o ponto de partida para a reflexão sobre a complexa relação entre a cena e o espectador, na qual as dimensões política, afetiva e imaginária da experiência artítica se tensionam. Rainer pesquisa, desde os anos 60, formas do corpo em cena resistir à captura do olhar do espectador, através da valorização de sua materialidade. A tese procura pensar, portanto, a partir da trilha aberta pela coreógrafa, como essa noção de materialidade não se entende como uma forma que possa ser significada, mas como uma força que desestabiliza a ordem das representações e impele a novos modos de produzir e refletir acerca do sentido do mundo. A partir dos trabalhos de Rainer, Jérôme Bel e Ann Teresa de Keersmaeker, Lia Rodrigues e Israel Galván, em diálogo com o pensamento contemporâneo a respeito da relação entre arte, corpo e política, a tese se propõe a pensar, por fim, como a exposição cênica da vulnerabilidade pode ser concebida como uma estratégia de criação potente. / [en] The present thesis investigates the connections between the spectator and the scene through some experiences of contemporary dance, trying to understand how the artists here studied create, scenically, new modes of circulation of affects and senses. Thus, the spectator is invited to abandon its traditional positions in which he appears either as an alienated participant either as hermeneutist interpreting the codes of the scene. The trajectory of the choreograph and film maker Yvonne Rainer is the starting point to question the complex relationship between the scene and the spectator in wich the political, affective and imaginary aspects of the artistic experience are in permanent tension. Rainer searches since de 60 s ways to make the body resist to the capture of the spectator s gaze, by valuing it s intrinsic materiality. Trough the path opened by Rainer, the thesis wishes to understand materiality not as a form that can be signified but as a force that destabilizes the logic of representation and impele in the direction of new forms of producing and thinking about the sense of the world. Through the works of the performers Yvonne Rainer, Jérôme Bel, Ann Teresa de Keersmaeker, Lia Rodrigues and Israel Galván in dialogue with contemporary thinking about the connections between arts, politics and body the thesis intends, finally, to think of how the scenic exposure of vulnerability can be conceived as a powerful strategy of artistic creation.

<p>Opponent: Anthony Allen Öhnström</p>