Aesthetics of Absencce

A summary: Goebbels, Heiner. “Aesthetics of Absence: Questioning Basic Assumptions in Performing Arts”. Cornell Lecture on Contemporary Aesthetics. Cornell University. (9 March 2010). Available on: http://igcs.cornell.edu/files/2013/09/Goebbels-Cornell-Lecture18-1dnqe5j.pdf

p. 4

Friedrich Hölderlin’s “poetic logic”: “various successions in which idea and feeling and reflection develop, according to poetic logic,” which appeals to the most varied senses and modes of perception – and does not follow a linear narrative form. For Hölderlin, “poetry treats the different faculties … so that the representation of these different faculties makes a whole,” and “the connection between the more independent parts of the different faculties” is something he calls “the rhythm” (p. 237).

p. 5

Theatre as a “ thing in itself,” not as a representation or a medium to make statements about reality, is exactly what I try to offer. In such theatre the spectator is involved in a drama of experience rather than looking at drama in which psychologically motivated relationships are represented by figures on stage. This is a drama of perception. So the drama of the “media” is actually a double drama here: a drama for the actor as well as a drama for the perception of the audience.

p. 6 – 7

Black on White: Presence is doubly reduced by the rather amateurish „non-presence‟ of the musicians. They do not pretend to be anyone other than themselves as musicians in that very space and moment while we watch them. Often turning their backs towards the audience and dividing the attention of the audience. The absence here is to be found on other levels as well: as a refusal of any dramatic action.

p. 12 – 13

Absence can be understood:

as the disappearance of the actor / performer from the center of attention (or even from the stage altogether)
as a division of presence among all elements involved
as a division of the spectator‟s attention to a collective protagonist with performers who often hide their individual significance by turning their backs towards the audience
as a separation of the actors‟ voices from their bodies and of the musicians‟ sounds from their instruments
as a de-synchronization of listening and seeing, a separation or division between visual and acoustic stage
as the creation of spaces in-between, spaces of discovery, spaces in which emotion, imagination, and reflection can actually take place
as an abandonment of dramatic expression (“the drama doesn‟t happen on stage,” says Heiner Müller)
as an empty center: literally, as an empty center stage, meaning the absence of a visually centralized focus, but also as the absence of what we call a clear “theme” or message of a play
as absence of a story, or to paraphrase Gertrude Stein: “anything that is not a story can be a play”
as avoiding the things we expect, the things we have seen, the things we have heard, the things that are usually done on stage
as the presence of the other, as a confrontation with an unseen picture or an unheard word or sound

p. 14 – 15

Stifter’s Dinge: Will the spectator‟s attention endure long enough if one of the essential assumptions of theatre is neglected: the presence of an actor?

When nobody is on stage to assume the responsibility of presenting and representing, when nothing is being shown, then the spectators must discover things themselves. The audience‟s sense of discovery is finally enabled by the absence of the perfomers.

The effect of acousmatic voices eplained by Helga Finter: “the perceptive intelligence of the spectator‟s own senses actively stages the performance when the spectator weaves and reads his own audiovisual text…. ”

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