Street Smart or Smart Street? Theater and environmental power

Performance Philosophy 2022-04-22

Kirsch, Sebastian

In its first part the essay reflects on an ongoing transformation in the history of power relations by commenting on a short passage from Elfriede Jelinek's 2013 theater text Die Schutzbefohlenen (Charges: The suppliants). Reading Jelinek's words as a play on Martin Heidegger's essay "Die Zeit des Weltbildes" ("The Age of the World Picture") but also on his concept of the "Gestell", the essay discusses a current crisis of pictorial framing which corresponds today's reshaping of the logics of production by digital network technologies. The essay argues that one of the most significant symptoms of this development is an extensive "deterritorialization of the street" and its milieus which for historical reasons has a great impact on contemporary theater. Finally, the processes at stake are described as effects of an increasing implementation of "environmental governmentality", a term which the essay traces back to its Foucauldian roots. The second part then focusses on "Flinn Works'" 2017 performance Global Belly which engages the audience in semi-documentary scenes on the phenomenon of surrogate motherhood, for which today sperm and egg cells are transported, mixed, discharged and returned around the globe in global operations. As will be shown here, this performance deals in fact remarkably with all the three issues developed in the first part of the essay.

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Copyright (c) 2022 Sebastian Kirsch
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Performance Philosophy; Vol. 7 No. 1 (2022): Power and Powerlessness in Performance; 66-83 2057-7176
English

UKPPY oai:ojs2.performancephilosophy.org:article/300
https://www.performancephilosophy.org/journal/article/view/300
10.21476/PP.2022.71300
1312918062

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