Intermediality in Theatre and Performance 상호매체성 (2)

 

Intermediality in Theatre and Performance:
Definitions, Perceptions and Medial Relationships
CHIEL KATTENBELT
UTRECHT UNIVERSITY

 

 

ABSTRACT:: This article provides a brief overview of the discourse on the
relationships between the arts and media over the twentieth century, with specific
reference to the concepts of mediality: multi-, trans- and intermediality set in
discourse of arts and media relationships. I discuss the concepts, together with the
impact of the growth of media technological developments, on the perception of
audiences to the works of Wagner, Kandinsky, Meyerhold, Balázs, Eisenstein,
Brecht, and to contemporary theatre and performance-makers, before concluding
with a short presentation of my own current thinking about the concept and purpose
of intermediality.1

 

1. Extracted material used in this article was delivered at Intermediality: performance and pedagogy, at an
event funded by the Higher Education Academy subject area for Theatre, Music and Dance (Palatine)
and hosted by the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Sheffield.

 

 

A significant feature of recent art and media theoretical discourses is
recognition that the arts and media should not be studied in their own historical
developments and with their own rules and specifications, but rather in the
broader context of their differences and co-relations.

 

예술과 미디어의 이론적 담론에서 최근 중요한 것은

그것들이 역사적인 발전과 그들 자체의 규칙과 특성을 통해 연구되는 것이 아니라

상호 관련성과 그들의 차이의 맥락(콘텍스트)를 보는 것

 

 

One
contributing factor to the change in paradigm might be that our contemporary
culture has become a media culture, with all the performative features that this
entails, which is not to say a mediatized culture (Auslander, 1999).

 

현대 문화는 미디어 문화

 

 

to human individuals who stage
themselves in words, images and sounds, in order to make his or her own
experiences perceptible to the audience; and that this is done with the intention
to explore to what extent life experiences are shared with other human beings
(Seel, 1985: 127).

 

인간 경험을 수용자들이 인지할 수 있는 형태로 바꾸는 것. 그리고 나누는 것.

 

 

 

I focus my attention on three concepts of
mediality: multi-, trans- and intermediality. To phrase it very briefly,
«multimediality» refers to the occurrence where there are many media in one
and the same object; «transmediality» refers to the transfer from one medium to
another medium (media change); and «intermediality» refers to the co-relation

of media in the sense of mutual influences between media.

 

 

멀티 미디어성 - 여러가지 미디어가 하나의 오브제트에 나타날 때

트랜스 미디어성 - 하나의 미디어에서 다른 미디어로 변환되는 것 (미디어 바꾸기)

인터미디어성 - 미디어 간의 상호적인 영향력.

 

multi-, trans-, and intermediality do not exclude each other.

 

서로 배제되는 개념은 아님

 

 

 

<예술과 미디어의 관계>

 

 1. Media changes and co-relations between media are important tendencies in the
development of the arts since the beginning of the twentieth century. These are
usually associated with the blurring and crossing boundaries between media;
with the hybridization of media utterances; with intertextual relationships
between media; with intermedial relationships between media; and with an
increasing self-reference and self-reflection of the arts as media.

2. Media changes and co-relations between media have resulted in new forms of
representation; new dramaturgical strategies; new principles of structuring and
staging words, images and sounds; new ways of positioning performing bodies
in time and space; of creating time-space relationships; of developing new
modes of perception; and of generating new cultural, social and psychological
meanings.

3. Technological innovations have played and are still playing a prominent part
in the development of arts and media and in the interaction between all modern
and postmodern media.

4. The historical avant-garde created the necessary conditions under which media
change and co-relations between media could develop as important features of
modern and post-modern art, in particular as far as it is related to the exchangeability
of expressive means and aesthetic conventions between media, and to the
playful staging of signs from which modern and post-modern arts derive a preeminently
performative (not to say theatrical) and self-critical aspect.

 

 

 

2. Multimediality

 

3. Transmediality

 

4. Intermediality

 

The concept of intermediality is, like the concepts of multi- or
transmediality, used in different discourses.  여러가지 담론에서 쓰인다

This is particularly pertinent because
over many years the concept of intermediality has been so frequently used in
different discourses and in different meanings that it is almost impossible to map
out its semantic field or range. Irina Rajewski (2005: 44) is right when she states
that everybody who uses the concept intermediality is obliged to define it. As far
as the concept is used as distinct from other concepts of mediality, it emphasizes,
in particular, the aspect of mutual influence (interaction).

다른 미디어성과 변별되는 지점 > 상호적인 영향력 (상호작용)

 

For my own contribution to the art and media theoretical discourses I like to use the concept
intermediality with respect to those co-relations between different media that
result in a redefinition of the media that are influencing each other, which in turn
leads to a refreshed perception. Intermediality assumes a co-relation in the actual
sense of the word, that is to say a mutual affect. Taken together, the redefinition
of media co-relationships and a refreshed perception resulting from the corelationship
of media means that previously existing medium specific
conventions are changed, which allows for new dimensions of perception and
experience to be explored. In making this claim, I recognise that intermediality
is an operative aspect of different media,

 

>> A system or service that is operative is working or having an effect.

 

which is more closely connected to the
idea of diversity, discrepancy and hypermediacy (in the sense of Bolter and

Grusin) than to the idea of unity, harmony and transparency. Intermediality
assumes an in-between space – «an inter» – from which or within which the
mutual affects take place.
To give some historical references, the concept of intermediality today can
be more closely associated with the Bühnenkompositionen (stage compositions)
of Wassily Kandinsky (1912/1923) as opposed to the Gesamtkunstwerk of
Richard Wagner (1850) because Wagner strived with his music dramas for a
reunification and reintegration of the arts under the primacy of music. Wagner’s
aim for the «artwork of the future» of his day was for the spectator to be
immersed into the represented world. Kandinsky on the contrary strived with his
stage compositions for a theatre that could function again as «a hidden magnet»
that makes the different arts affect each other. The interplay of the arts, as
Kandinsky (in Bill, 1973: 125) imagined it, as «a dynamics of musical, pictorial
and choreographed movements» was, according to him, only possible because
each individual art had developed its own purity of ｅxpression in a relative
independence from the other arts. Kandinsky’s aim was not illusion, but the
ｅxpression of inner experiences («the vibrations of the soul»).
We may also think of the concept of «montage of attractions» which Sergej
Eisenstein (1981 [1923]: 16) developed initially for the theatre and later applied
to film: the different elements of the performance should, so to say, crash on
each other, with the result that a new energy is released, which directly, that is to
say, physically affects a shock experience. We may also think of Bertolt Brecht
(2004 [1930]: 102) who advocates in the prologue of his Mahagonny «a radical
separation of the elements» in order to thwart a melting together of the arts - as
is the aim of the Gesamtkunstwerk - and by that to prevent the spectator being
brought under control of «magic», «hypnosis» and «unworthy ecstasy». The
clear borderlines that Brecht wanted to draw should create in-between spaces,
which the spectator actively needs to fill in. Moving forward a little historically,
we may also think of the montage and fragmentation strategies, which Robert
Wilson, Alain Platel, Gerardjan Rijnders and Jan Lauwers - just to mention a few
theatre directors - used in order to knock over the traditional interruption
techniques of the theatre.
In the course of many centuries, these interruption techniques have been
developed in order to escape from the restrictions of the closed continuum of the
«here and now» in which the theatre performance takes place, without affecting
the coherency of the represented story and the causality of the represented

action. Fragmentation, repetition, duplication and slowing down are used in
order to intensify the continuity of the performance itself instead of sacrificing
this continuity for the sake of an illusion of continuity (namely the continuity of
the represented action). In contemporary theatre a notable example is the theatre

performances made by Guy Cassiers, who makes extensive use of new media
technologies in his productions in order to represent from different perspectives
the inwardness of experience and the outwardness of action. Indeed, in his
theatre performances experience and action are separated from each other in
order to connect them again in a new way. Cassiers represents different times
next to each other (spatialisation of time) as well as different worlds, of which
each world is connected with specific modes of perception and experience
(Merx, 2003/2006). We may also think of the group Hotel Modern
(http://www.hotelmodern.nl [accessed 16-02-2007]) and Carina Molier who, by
using video in their performances, confront the reality of illusion with the
illusion of reality, aware as they are of the difference between live and
mediatized representations. We may also think of the many theatre
performances, films, installations and exhibitions by Peter Greenaway who has,
like no other artist, and as an artist who works in many disciplines, examined the
possibilities of modular dramaturgy, in particular, in its application to theatre and
film. In particular, through his use of digital technologies he has significantly
extended the epical methods of representations of theatre and film. Thus, I agree
with Oosterling (2003) when he says that in art and culture philosophical
discourses today, intermediality refers particularly to the correlation between art,
science and ethics (politics) as a conscious striving for a breaking open of the
cultural value spheres or action domains. From a trans- and intermedial
perspective it is important to examine to what extent these changes and
correlations have been decisive for the development of new modes of experience
and ｅxpression. We need also to question how much the ontology of media is
relevant, assuming that the dynamics of trans- and intermedial processes
primarily concern the mutual relations between materiality, mediality and
aesthetic convention of making and perceiving.
I began this article by setting out some of the assumptions that we regularly
find in discourses on media changes and correlations between media. From a
trans- and intermedial perspective it is important to examine to what extent these
changes and correlations have been decisive for the development of new modes
of experience and ｅxpression. We need also to question how much the ontology
of media is relevant, assuming that the dynamics of trans- and intermedial
processes primarily concern the mutual relations between materiality, mediality
and aesthetic convention of making and perceiving. However, for research on
media changes and co-relations between media, the interdisciplinary arts

practice is the main point of reference.