The Conservative Avant-Garde

Isn’t the theatre and/or performance avant-garde "radical", politically and aesthetically? And aren’t conservatives on the Right? But consider how "conservative" has, over the past 35 years or so, acquired new meanings tied to "reduce, recycle, and re-use." Also consider the rise of performance studies and performance programs in academia, changing what artists learn and how they train. The result is a "nicheguarde" that is excellent rather than innovative; largely university-sourced; practising and touring repertories of "avant-garde classics" along with new works -- that turn out not to be so new after all. Is this good or bad?

Richard Schechner is University Professor of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University and Editor of The Drama Review. He has written and edited numerous books and articles on theatre and performance and is widely recognised for his pioneering role in founding the academic discipline of Performance Studies. He is also acclaimed internationally for directing radical theatre projects such as Dionysus in 69, initially with the Performance Group (founded 1967) and more recently with the East Coast Artists.

His visit to the UK is supported by the University of Kent’s School of Arts and the Leverhulme Trust and follows on from his directing of Imagining 'O' with drama staff and students in the summer.

Who Makes Architecture?

When we say a book or a poem is by a particular author, we understand clearly enough what we mean – that it has been created by an individual, to whom we believe the credit and the rights are in the first place due. On similar lines, we attribute plays, musical compositions and films to individuals. Yet a moment’s thought is enough to remind us that the realization of all works of art and human artefacts involves collaborations of widely different kinds and values.
Taking a light touch, this talk will examine the idea of authorship in one specially complex art-form, architecture, and compare it with other arts and disciplines. Why do we persist in talking of a building as “by” Norman Foster or Christopher Wren? Is the practice just a shorthand and a marketing device, or does it mean something serious? The lecturer will ask whether the tradition of biographical ascription is an adequate and honest way of thinking about how architecture gets made today, or whether there are more grown-up ways of thinking about the subject.

Andrew Saint is the General Editor of the 'Survey of London' at English Heritage. Formerly Professor or Architecture at Cambridge University, he is the author of The Image of the Architect, and Richard Norman Shaw, recently republished by Yale University Press.

The Credibility Economy and Institutional Prejudice (Click here for Podcast)

When someone speaks but is not heard because of their accent, or their sex, or the colour of their skin, they suffer a distinctive form of injustice—they are undermined as a knower. This kind of injustice, which I call testimonial injustice, is not only an ethical problem but also a political one; for citizens are not free unless they get a fair hearing when they try to contest wrongful treatment. I shall argue that not only individuals but also public institutions need to have the virtue of testimonial justice. If our police, our juries, our complaints panels lack that virtue, then some groups cannot contest. And if you can’t do that, you do not have political freedom.

The Media Magnates of Victorian Physics

H G Wells' early training in the sciences was vital for his understanding of how media worked. Late Victorian physicists were masters of public showmanship: they used ingenious optical devices to win audiences and display the exotic and transient phenomena of their new sciences. This lecture explores ways in which cinematography emerged from these scientific projects; and how display was part of the physics laboratory as well as the Victorian theatre.

Bad Journeys, Marvellous Voyages: the Homeric imperative as revealed through Malcolm Lowry, Charles Olson, and local clowns peddling a fibreglass swan from Hastings to Hackney.

Provisional outline (to be tweaked and polished):

The structure will, very roughly, move from the way that the term 'Waste Land' (much favoured by early modernism) has been adapted by grand project promoters. With the insistence, before a development blitz takes place, that 'there was nothing there'. There is a serious flaw in the pitching of 'legacy' as a value that can be imposed, top down, rather than earned by passage of time. So we are talking about a corruption of language against the poetry and metaphor of the original Homeric voyages of redemption. A recent expedition, by swan pedalo, undertaken with the film-maker Andrew Kötting, will be offered as one eccentric solution to current difficulties.