OBJECT: Public lecture by Yann Chateigné Tytelman

TIME: tonight at 7.30pm

LOCATION: Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam

CONTENT: Mimetic Powers: Modernity and Its Double in Art, Theater, and Anthropology

SYNOPSIS (extract): This lecture will focus on the notion of the “mask” in order to approach the theatrical dimension of works by different artists based on a look at various forms of popular rituals through specific methodologies. The lecture will be divided in three parts. 1) “Negative Joy: Art and Folk Rituals” will effectively explore the anthropological aspect of works questioning transgression and mimicry in popular culture. 2) “Effigising: A Living Iconology” will study the becoming picture of living bodies in researches activating a speculative mise en scene of history. 3) “Counterworlds: Unmasking through Unstable Identities” will interrogate the political dimension of projects by or with specific communities creating their own universe.
To be evoked, among others: fakes, copies, allegory and caricature, specters, demons, grimaces, chimeras, grotesque, aliens, science fiction, ormanent and décor, entertainment, decadence, degeneration and devolution, trickery, pop, impostures, mirrors and illusion, secessions, communes, imaginary and secret societies, fear, spectacle, joy, sublime, utopias, eccentricities, transvestite, impersonators, animals, fauns, wild men, burlesque, comedy, rock, violence, otherness, alterity, folklore, make up, parties, camp, trance, dance, and hallucination.

Voltaire’s death mask