Event-Space Theatre Architecture and the Historical Avant-Garde

First published in 2014. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

As the symbolists, constructivists and surrealists of the historical avant-garde began to abandon traditional theatre spaces and embrace the more contingent locations of the theatrical and political‘event’, the built environment of a performance became not only part of the event, but an event in and of itself. Event-Space radically re-evaluates the avant garde’s championing of nonrepresentational spaces, drawing on the specific fields of performance studies and architectural studies to establish a theory of ‘performative architecture’. ‘Event’ was of immense significance to modernism’s revolutionary agenda, resisting realism and naturalism – and, simultaneously, the monumentality of architecture itself. Event-Space analyzes a number of spatiotemporal models central to that revolution, both illuminating the history of avant-garde performance and inspiring contemporary approaches to performance space.

PREFACE: TOWARD A THEORY OF ‘SPACING’ THROUGH AVANT-GARDE ACTION INTRODUCTION: EVENT-SPACE: A PERFORMANCE MODEL FOR ARCHITECTURE Architecture as Event Event-Space: A Useful Paradigm In Motion Space (becoming-performance of architecture) Event (becoming-architecture of performance) (Re)Birth of the Will-to-Destruction Avant-gardism and Modernism CHAPTER 1: DISCIPLINING THE BOURGEOIS GLORY MACHINE "Our provisional theatre at Bayreuth" The Baroque Model and Post-Revolutionary Performativity Garnier’s Architecture as Mise-en-scène The Glory Machine The Case of Bayreuth A New Public The Invisible Theatre CHAPTER 2: ABSOLUTE SPACE: UNIVERSAL LANDSCAPES "The Beginning… The Birth…" Absolute Stage Space Symbolist "Theatre of the Mind" Dancing Architectures Duncan’s Temple Spatial Rhythm and Universal Landscapes Adolphe Appia Architecture as Temple-Laboratory Hellerau Resisting the Black Void The New Monumentality of Absolute Space CHAPTER 3: ABSTRACT SPACE: TOWARD AN ARCHITECTURE OF ALIENATION The "Troubled Art": Avant-gardism Divided City as a "Montage of Attractions" Stage Space – Space Stage Bauhaus Festivities Total Theatre: The "Great Stage Machine" Architectures of Alienation Ghost in the Machine CHAPTER 4: ABJECT SPACE: TOWARD AN ARCHITECTURE OF CRUELTY Violence Takes Centre Stage Spatial Violence Bravo! And Boom, Boom! Abjection: eROTic Object Palace of Culture Enter Artaud (Flinging Bombs) An Architecture against Architecture A Site of Recovery Dis-eased Body Ex-ploding Space De-centring Architecture Cruel Machine CONCLUSION: MAKING ARCHITECTURE TREMBLE Nietzsche’s Architect(ure) Building Babel

Dorita Hannah works across the spatial, visual and performing arts as a scholar and design practitioner specializing in theatre architecture and performance design. She is a Professoraffiliated with theUniversity of Auckland(New Zealand),University of Tasmania (Australia) and Aalto University (Finland).