Abstract
New dramaturgy expands beyond the theatre and stage, working on the ways in which things in each time and space are organised and produce meaning. I link this to object-oriented ontology (Morton, 2013; 2016; 2018) and the ethics of relating to things (Benso, 2000) in my discussion of three works of art in public space: House of Commons (2015) by Marianne Heske, Movimento HO (2016) by Eleonora Fabião, and The Viewer (2019) by Carole Douillard. All three works temporarily introduce specific material into a public space, working with time to open up the ‘thingliness’ (Heidegger, 2001/1971) of the material, thus changing the dramaturgy of the place and how people relate to it. The works subtly introduce the potential of experiencing reality in new ways, changing narratives through a reciprocal process of shaping and being shaped by things. This is the result of the fact that every thing is always in motion, morphing without purpose or direction. ‘Things rock’, as Timothy Morton puts it. I use Morton’s concept of tuning, and Silvia Benso’s concept of tenderness when discussing how the materials in the three works – a house, bricks and human bodies – tune into a place, and how the viewer also tunes through what Benso calls ‘tender touch’, sometimes touching the material concretely, at other times touching the common ground or breathing the same air.
Highlights
Dramaturgy in an expanded field is fundamentally concerned with how things are composed in relation to each other as a way of structuring forms of narrative and the production of meaning
Dramaturgy has traditionally been the way in which coherence and logic are shaped within a narrative
Through discourses on the Anthropocene, the post-human and post colonialism, we learn about other perspectives and ways of experiencing reality than just the (Western) human perspective
Summary
Dramaturgy in an expanded field is fundamentally concerned with how things are composed in relation to each other as a way of structuring forms of narrative and the production of meaning. I will explore how three different works of art invite audiences to experience reality in ways than can open up unknown perspectives and perceptions, through the way the artists organise or re-organise public space and give the chosen materials (a wooden house, bricks and human bodies) agency to act. In the following I will use Morton’s ideas about ‘rocking’ (Morton, 2016) and ‘tuning’ (Morton, 2018) as a way of understanding how art and the aesthetic realm give birth to new formations These concepts will be discussed in relation to Italian philosopher Silvia Benso’s (Benso, 2000) notions of tenderness as a mode of accessing and opening up the ‘thingliness’ in things, objects and materials. Alreadyness hints at our tuning to something else, which is a dance in which that something else is already, tuning to us... (Morton, 2018, p. 118)
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