DC+CMI

This seminar is organized every year around a different research question and thematic based on performance theory and practice (see indicatively: ‘performance, gender, and sexuality’, ‘performance, mourning, and lament’, ‘performance and politics’). During the current academic year, the seminar’s thematic is ‘performance, space, and poetics’ and is run in collaboration with the Department of Architecture of the University of Thessaly, and the course ‘Space and Poetics’ taught by Professor Phoebe Giannisi. See: http://www.arch.uth.gr/el/studies/course/1785/7
The seminar explores space as a literary thematic, but also texts as spatial constructs. At the same time, the seminar connects literature with its performative expression in situ, while the embodied experience of place becomes the medium of literary creation. Students are introduced to the interconnected processes of reading, writing, and performance. The dialogic commentary on, and interpretation of, texts is intertwined with their live production and utterance (inside and outside of the amphitheatre), but also with theoretical tools from the fields of performance studies and poetics. In this semester, we will focus on major texts which narrate itineraries, with a particular attention on narratives of katabasis, lament, and homecoming.
The final requirements for this course are: a) the construction of a ‘book’ or of a ‘reading object’ or of a text-based sound piece, and b) a collaborative site-specific text-based performance.

Syllabus