Product Description

The "liminal" describes a marginalized space of chaos and creative potential where nothing is fixed or certain. Liminal performance describes a range of interdisciplinary, highly experimental, performative types in theatre and performance, film and music -performances which can be seen to prioritize the body, the technological and the primordial. This text argues that traditional and contemporary critical and aesthetic theories are deficient in interpreting such works. Examples of liminal works discussed include Pina Bausch's "Tanztheater", the "Theatre of Images" of Robert Wilson and Philip Glass, the controversial "Social Sculptures" of the Viennese Actionists, Peter Greenaway's "Painterly Aesthetics", Derek Jarman's "Queer Politics", digitized sampled music and neo-gothic sound. Given the importance of the body in such performance, the "linguistic turn" present in traditional theories seems inappropriate and needs to be adjusted for an intersemiotic analysis - a significatory practice not only includes but goes beyond language. The early part of the book therefore surveys traditional aesthetics in the writings of Kant, Nietzsche and Heidegger together with contemporary aesthetics in the writings of Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard and Lyotard. This is followed by a series of case studies and, in the final chapter, a summary description of liminal performances as an emerging genre.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1407738 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 197 pages

Customer Reviews

an exciting aesthetic and critical springboard
Liminal Acts by Susan Broadhurst provides an overview of aesthetic and critical theory in order to illuminate certain contemporary movements in performance. Incorporating theatre, film and music, Broadhurst details a range of interdisciplinary and experimental performance practice using examples of diverse practitioners, from Pina Bausch to Nick Cave to elucidate her argument.

Broadhurst's theory for a liminal aesthetic appropriates Victor Turner's definition of the limen 'expressive of ambiguous identity. . . . a fructile chaos, a fertile nothingness, a storehouse of possibilities, not . . . a striving after new forms and structures'. She asserts that liminal performance puts 'greater emphasis on the corporeal, technological and chthonic'. The quintessential aesthetic features of liminal performance are defined as, hybridisation, indeterminacy, a lack of aura and the collapse of the hierarchical distinction between high and popular culture. The central characteristics of the 'genre' (for want of a better term) in all areas of performance include utilisation of the latest developments in media and digital technology which lead to increased creative possibilities. Further traits are given as experimentation, heterogeneity, innovation, marginality and an emphasis on the 'intersemiotic' (Broadhurst,1999:11-13).

Strengths of Liminal Acts are that it clarifies intersemiotic practice and analysis (where a variety of 'texts' [dance, video, digital technology etc] are interwoven to 'mean' together). It also foregrounds developments in performance modes, drawing on a wide range of international practitioners from theatre, live art, film and music. These include the Tanztheater of Pina Bausch, the 'theatre of images' of Robert Wilson and Philip Glass, the ritualistic social sculptures of the Viennese Actionists, the films of Peter Greenaway, Derek Jarman and Wim Wenders, and the digitalised sampled music and neo-gothic sound of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Einsturzende Neubauten. In doing so it provides a generic term to determine that work which is experimental, multidisciplinary and ritualistic - work which has previously been difficult to define and discuss within the boundaries of conventional critical tools and traditional performance genres.

Broadhurst's reconsideration of the theories of Kant through to Baudrillard are helpful as she highlights the need to continually reassess modes of aesthetic and critical enquiry in the light of perpetually changing times and perspectives. Just as Broadhurst points out that 'Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard and Lyotard have responded to and continued in a certain Kantian tradition', so too does she choose 'selective criteria' from the above in order to provide 'a new aesthetic form of theorization' able to, as Broadhurst, quoting Baudrillard, puts it, 'survive among the remnants' and 'play with the pieces' (1999: 24). In this respect, I believe that Broadhurst provides an exciting aesthetic and critical springboard for future performance theorists to jump on and bounce off.

Like many academic texts, it is presupposed that the reader is familiar with scholarly discourse, or at the very least attuned to its register. This aspect of the book may unsettle those less practised in such an approach, and in that I include undergraduates new to university study. Bearing this in mind, Liminal Acts is a text that will be important in academic circles, particularly to performing arts students, including drama, media, film and music, at both undergraduate and post-graduate level. Primarily useful as an academic source, Liminal Acts does extend to issues of relevance in non-academic areas. The consideration of digital sampling is particularly interesting and apposite to those with a general interest in popular music. Accordingly, this book will appeal to those with a wider interest in aesthetic theory and experimental performance in general, or in the work of the particular practitioners under examination.

Review by Josephine Machon