Research Kurt Vanhoutte

Abstract

Human zoo exhibitions and freak shows in the Musée du Nord, cross-dressing in 'revues fin d'années' at the Alcazar, and shadows of 'types connus' in the artistic cabaret of the Diable-au-Corps: fin-de-siècle Brussels was obsessed with stereo-'types' as they re-classified people in a shifting social context. In this project the construction, dissemination and transformation of stereo-'types' is analyzed against a background of physiognomy, a (pseudo)scientific practice that reads facial features as signifiers of character, health, class, gender, age, race etc. Physiognomy is often reduced to Lavater's famous 'Physiognomische Fragment' (1775-1778). Nevertheless, it reached new heights in the Fin de Siècle with Lombroso's facial classifications. By unveiling a network of scientists, showmen, journalists and artists in popular performance, this project demonstrates how a physiognomic body policy was closely connected to the construction and dissemination of fin-de-siècle stereo-'types' in popular performances. However, a counter-culture immediately appeared and stereo-'types' performed a new role in 'Tout-Bruxelles'. Firemen turned into firewomen and the Brussels 'ketje', an everyday working-class 'kid', was transformed into a hero. As such, this project detects the key role of fin-de-siècle stereo-'types' in popular performances staged in Brussels where they were employed as a strategy to cope with daily social struggle .

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt
• Fellow: Jonckheere Evelien

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Ideological bias concerning age, gender, ethnicity and social class is a major ethical concern in contemporary society, influencing human behaviour both at macro- and micro-levels. Recent studies have demonstrated that machine learning methods (from artificial intelligence) not only capture, but amplify the ideological biases in the data they are trained on. In this project, we aim to strategically turn this undesirable property to our advantage and exploit the study of ideological biases for visual cultures in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (c.1800-c.1940). Recent cognitive studies make clear how ideological biases largely result from processes of social learning. To study the construction and dissemination of ideological bias we put forth three case studies in crucial areas of social control: education (children's literature), mass communication (magic lantern slides and performances), and regulation (police reports). These interlinked areas of study come with a wealth of rights-free digitized material and pre-existing scholarship. Through the application of standard routines from machine learning, we aim to elicit implicit patterns and trends relating to ideological bias and confront these with received knowledge. The current project is innovative in its methodology through its study of pixel data through computer vision in the humanities which has received too little attention so far. Moreover, it uses data-driven technology to present a novel intersectional viewpoint on the construction of ideological bias in the past. Finally, by being embedded in recent cognitive studies, the project will be able to make claims on how implicit bias functioned in the past, understanding better what people thought and how such thinking structured behavioural interactions with their surrounding world.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Nanay Bence
• Co-promoter: Joosen Vanessa
• Co-promoter: Kestemont Mike
• Co-promoter: Van Damme Ilja
• Co-promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt

Research team(s)

• Centre for Philosophical Psychology

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This five-months sabbatical (1 September 2021 – 31 January 2022) allows me to work on two books. First and foremost, my aim is to produce a draft of a book on scientific fiction, Henri Robin and performing science in the nineteenth century. Henri Robin is a largely forgotten showman and demonstrator providing scientific entertainment throughout Europe for audiences to be both beguiled and informed. Robin stands out among the demonstrators of his generation because he was the first to use photographic magic lantern slide images and he probably also used the first three-lens projector, later "reinvented" in England as the groundbreaking Triunial. The book will address Robin's career in relation to changing ideas of theatricality, science and technology. I have probably assembled the biggest archive on Robin over the years, and I have published on this topic in academic journals, and hence it is possible to have a first draft ready by the end of my sabbatical on the basis of additional, targeted research in the archives. The book will be published by Brepols (TECHNE). Apart from that, I plan to write an outline of a book on recent Belgian theatre history with my colleague Karel Vanhaesebrouck (ULB) to be published with Routledge. We recently already wrote an article for the Routledge Companion on European Theatre and will expand this. The sabbatical would include two research stays, one at the Centre Alexandre Koyré in Paris, with science historian Charlotte Bigg (1-20 September) and another one at the Department of Design Media Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles, with media historian and pioneering media archaeologist Erkki Huhtamo (1 – 28 November). Finally, as coordinator of the EOS project B-magic, I will follow up on the progress of the consortium and prepare the final conference of the project in Antwerp (4-7 May 2022).

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This five-months sabbatical (1 September 2021 – 31 January 2022) allows me to work on two books. First and foremost, my aim is to produce a draft of a book on scientific fiction, Henri Robin and performing science in the nineteenth century. Henri Robin is a largely forgotten showman and demonstrator providing scientific entertainment throughout Europe for audiences to be both beguiled and informed. Robin stands out among the demonstrators of his generation because he was the first to use photographic magic lantern slide images and he probably also used the first three-lens projector, later "reinvented" in England as the groundbreaking Triunial. The book will address Robin's career in relation to changing ideas of theatricality, science and technology. I have probably assembled the biggest archive on Robin over the years, and I have published on this topic in academic journals, and hence it is possible to have a first draft ready by the end of my sabbatical on the basis of additional, targeted research in the archives. The book will be published by Brepols (TECHNE). Apart from that, I plan to write an outline of a book on recent Belgian theatre history with my colleague Karel Vanhaesebrouck (ULB) to be published with Routledge. We recently already wrote an article for the Routledge Companion on European Theatre and will expand this. The sabbatical would include two research stays, one at the Centre Alexandre Koyré in Paris, with science historian Charlotte Bigg (1-20 September) and another one at the Department of Design Media Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles, with media historian and pioneering media archaeologist Erkki Huhtamo (1 – 28 November). Finally, as coordinator of the EOS project B-magic, I will follow up on the progress of the consortium and prepare the final conference of the project in Antwerp (4-7 May 2022).

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

21st century questions about the ways in which we produce and consume our material environment have given rise to a new focus in contemporary performance art. A growing group of artists are taking the stage to explore the performative entanglement of human beings and material objects, often in order to critically question the interplay of nonhuman actors in everyday life. By doing so, these performances also ask for new modes of performance analysis and interpretation that incorporate an understanding of (nonhuman) materiality as inherently performative. To this day, most performance scholars are still of the belief that the co-presence of human beings is the most fundamental characteristic of performance art, which often results in the reduction of material objects to their decorative status or to their function as documentation of the live performance that is lost for good. This project aims to encounter these present-day performances through the recent insights of new materialism(s). New materialism is a contemporary theory that, simply put, articulates the idea that all matter has the ability to act in this world, and that agency is distributed amongst materialities in space and time. This indicates a remarkable shift: objects are no longer defined as passive things, ruled and interpreted by human subjects, but are valued as vital and unstable entities that can exert an influence on other (human) entities. Subsequently, new materialism also embodies a transversal gesture that experiences the relationship between meaning and matter, culture and nature, and subject and object as non-hierarchical and co-constitutive (Coole and Frost 2010; Dolphijn and van der Tuin 2012). By connecting these concepts of new materialism to traditional key-notions within the debate on the ontological characteristics of performance art and performance experience, this project pursues to establish a mode of analysis that allows for a focus on how human and nonhuman agencies intertwine and generate new meanings within this performative entanglement.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt
• Fellow: Roels Lieze

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Europe urgently needs to restore and intensify its engagement with its past. Time Machine will give Europe the technology to strengthen its identity against globalisation, populism and increased social exclusion, by turning its history and cultural heritage into a living resource for co-creating its future. The Large Scale Research Initiative (LSRI) will develop a large-scale digitisation and computing infrastructure mapping millennia of European historical and geographical evolution, transforming kilometres of archives, large collections from museums and libraries, and geohistorical datasets into a distributed digital information system. To succeed, a series of fundamental breakthroughs are targeted in Artificial Intelligence and ICT, making Europe the leader in the extraction and analysis of Big Data of the Past. Time Machine will drive Social Sciences and Humanities toward larger problems, allowing new interpretative models to be built on a superior scale. It will bring a new era of open access to sources, where past and on-going research are open science. This constant flux of knowledge will have a profound effect on education, encouraging reflection on long trends and sharpening critical thinking, and will act as an economic motor for new professions, services and products, impacting key sectors of European economy, including ICT, creative industries and tourism, the development of Smart Cities and land use. The CSA will develop a full LSRI proposal around the Time Machine vision. Detailed roadmaps will be prepared, organised around science and technology, operational principles and infrastructure, exploitation avenues and framework conditions. A dissemination programme aims to further strengthen the rapidly growing ecosystem, currently counting 95 research institutions, most prestigious European cultural heritage associations, large enterprises and innovative SMEs, influential business and civil society associations, and international and national institutional bodies.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Damme Ilja
• Co-promoter: Daelemans Walter
• Co-promoter: Kestemont Mike
• Co-promoter: Soens Tim
• Co-promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt
• Co-promoter: Van Hulle Dirk

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The B-magic project aims to rediscover the various functions of the lantern performance within the Belgian public sphere, in particular, its use in the transmission and negotiation of knowledge, norms and values by different societal groups. Scientists and entertainers, teachers and priests, political movements and organizations: they all used projected visual narratives to inform, entertain, educate and mobilize audiences of up to more than a thousand people per occasion. The lantern was the first visual mass medium to contest the printed word as a primary mode of information and instruction. All layers of society, both literate and illiterate, received visual information about nature, religion, science, new technologies and foreign countries. Our team therefore consists of researchers from cultural history and history of science, media and communication science, and film and theatre history. Together, we will investigate the role of the magic lantern in the first hundred years of Belgian history.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt
• Co-promoter: Van Damme Ilja

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The recent history of Western postwar dance is often construed as a one-way narrative in which the center of artistic innovation moved from the United States of America to Europe from the 1980s onwards. This stereotypical view, however, disregards the transatlantic exchanges that underlie this shift and rather reproduces what has been called the "American Century," a period that roughly started around 1900 and which marks the supposedly sweeping dominance of the United States across the globe. This project will provide a much-needed corrective to the predominant historicization of postwar dance by tracing how transatlantic currencies have been instrumental to the field as it stands now. Taking the dance scene in Belgium as an exemplary test case to investigate the formative influence of the mutual relationships with the USA, the project will illuminate a hitherto understudied part of dance history from a perspective that considers both local and international tendencies. Starting from the 1958 World Exhibition in Brussels, the period under scrutiny will run until 1991, the year when the American choreographer Mark Morris ended his term as Director of Dance at the Brussel's Royal Theatre La Monnaie and was succeeded by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and her company Rosas. Combining dance aesthetics and cultural history with archival research and in-depth interviews, the project will offer the first thorough historical study of transatlantic currencies in postwar choreography.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt
• Fellow: De Laet Timmy

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

21st century questions about the ways in which we produce and consume our material environment have given rise to a new focus in contemporary performance art. A growing group of artists are taking the stage to explore the performative entanglement of human beings and material objects, often in order to critically question the interplay of nonhuman actors in everyday life. By doing so, these performances also ask for new modes of performance analysis and interpretation that incorporate an understanding of (nonhuman) materiality as inherently performative. To this day, most performance scholars are still of the belief that the co-presence of human beings is the most fundamental characteristic of performance art, which often results in the reduction of material objects to their decorative status or to their function as documentation of the live performance that is lost for good. This project aims to encounter these present-day performances through the recent insights of new materialism(s). New materialism is a contemporary theory that, simply put, articulates the idea that all matter has the ability to act in this world, and that agency is distributed amongst materialities in space and time. This indicates a remarkable shift: objects are no longer defined as passive things, ruled and interpreted by human subjects, but are valued as vital and unstable entities that can exert an influence on other (human) entities. Subsequently, new materialism also embodies a transversal gesture that experiences the relationship between meaning and matter, culture and nature, and subject and object as non-hierarchical and co-constitutive (Coole and Frost 2010; Dolphijn and van der Tuin 2012). By connecting these concepts of new materialism to traditional key-notions within the debate on the ontological characteristics of performance art and performance experience, this project pursues to establish a mode of analysis that allows for a focus on how human and nonhuman agencies intertwine and generate new meanings within this performative entanglement.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt
• Fellow: Roels Lieze

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Soviet science fiction cinema is part of European film heritage, and was a strong influence on Eastern European 20th century science fiction cinema and its visions of the future. Today, Soviet popular culture, including science fiction cinema, dealing with the dawn of the space age, is sometimes categorized within a single archive of "cosmos-themed" Soviet popular culture. The cinematic archive of cosmos-themed films comprises over 45 entries, collected as "films on outer space" in the archives of the Television studio of the Russian Space Agency (Tvroscosmos). The archive has not yet been researched, although it is a collection which is globally exceptional in its thematic focus and genre-diversity. Outer space-related science fiction films account for approximately half of all Soviet science fiction cinematography. The genre of science fiction offered a means of visualizing the anticipated consequences of spaceflight – the so-called beginning of the space age in the 1960s, consolidating images of the (now past) future(s). This project provides research into the dynamics of these past (space) futures, in order to offer a more complex understanding of the memory processes that shape our visions of the past and its future(s). Analysis of cinematic aesthetics is used to investigate how these futures are conceived formally, and whose and which conceptualizations of the future Soviet science fiction cinema thematised, (re)created, and portrayed; to elaborate how films act as mnemonic agents, in shaping different visualizations of the past and its futures for different audiences. These questions are important for the understanding of contemporary (post-)Soviet and post-socialist nostalgia for the Soviet future. This project will examine the aesthetics of post-Sputnik (1957-1990) Soviet space-themed science fiction cinematography as memory practices, using both contextual cultural studies analysis and the methodological toolbox of neoformalist film analysis.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt
• Fellow: Majsova Natalija

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

An interdisciplinary platform for historical research on film, theatre, dance and musical performance. Cultures of Spectacles is an international interdisciplinary research community of scholars working on a diversity of spectacles. Our research is generally historic and focusses on the era from the beginning of the belle époque (appr. 1870) to the definitive breakthrough of television. Before performances or spectacles moved to the living room with the advent of television, they were the prerogative of public spaces such as cinema's, theatres, concert halls, circuses, music-halls, variety theatres and multi-functional spaces such as village halls, fairs or squares. Despite variations in their dispositive, what unites these spaces is that they host attractions, or spectacles that were either performed live or projected in front of a living audience. Individual members of these audiences usually belonged to different audience groups as well: people not only went to the theatre, but also the circus or to a music performance. Moreover, very often different forms of spectacle were often consumed in the same space and they were even part of the same show. In the early 19th century for example, films were part of variety programs; circus - and vaudeville acts were performed at fancy fairs alongside musical attractions, film screenings, freak shows, etc… Despite their commonalities, these different forms of spectacle are mostly studied separately, in well-defined academic disciplines (e.g., film -, dance -, performance – and theatre studies, cultural history, heritage studies, music history…). In bringing scholars from these different fields together, we aim to break down the disciplinary boundaries between a wide range of domains focussing on different types of spectacle and open the way for future interdisciplinary research on cultures of spectacle.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project measures the impact of the emancipation of the opera director in Antwerp's opera scene between 1972 and 1987. Video footage of productions and archival research in the yet undisclosed archives of the former KVO of Antwerp should enable us to reconstruct dramaturgical concept and mise-en-scène in both traditional readings and the more radical re-interpretations (called Regietheater) of Wagner's works, after which broader evolutions in opera direction become apparent.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

"La poésie ne s'impose plus, elle s'expose". With these words Paul Celan described in 1969 the vulnerability of poetry in modernity. Since the 20th century poetry, according to Celan, is more than ever exposed to the contingency of history. But this "exposition" can also be seen as a path towards the exhibition ("exposition" in French) of poetry, i.e. that this vulnerability of poetry can have an immediate artistic implication: what if poetry is exhibited and performed as art? In the wake of the double profile of its creator, this project aims on the one hand to investigate the history of the redefinition of poetry as an artistic practice since the core-period of the 1960s and on the other hand to propose two future applications of such a vision: a performative poetry practice called Reading Environments (RE) and a poetry-oriented exhibition methodology called Augmented Writing (AW). The RE are performances and installations based on spoken voice digital processing. The AW is a text-processing technique based on the visual superposition of different verbal materials. AW is made to be printed and exhibited. These two projects are also made to interact (e.g. an AW exhibition with a RE soundscape). By the same token and in the wake of the methodology of the whole project, halfway between theory and practice, a theoretical reflection on these applications shall be developed in parallel with a historical perspective.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt
• Fellow: De Francesco Alessandro

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The magic lantern was the most important visual entertainment and means of instruction across nineteenth-century Europe. However, despite its pervasiveness across multiple scientific, educational and popular contexts, magic lantern slides remain under-researched. Although many libraries and museums across Europe hold tens of thousands of lantern slides in their collections, a lack of standards for documentation and preservation limits the impact of existing initiatives, hinders the recognition of the object's heritage value and potential exploitation. This project addresses the sustainable preservation of this massive, untapped heritage resource.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This is a fundamental research project financed by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO). The project was subsidized after selection by the FWO-expert panel. This research community deals with Digital Humanities. Its participants examine how computational techniques can enhance and support traditional research in the humanities. This project is an interdisciplinary initiative, focussing on methodological innovation and keen on setting up collaborative initiatives with colleagues and research groups in the sciences. As digital databases become increasingly common in the humanities, it is widely recognized that Digital Humanities have been gaining momentum during the last two decades. However, digital humanities are still being confronted with numerous challenges: digital skills, such as programming, are still absent from most curricula. Moreover, research in the digital humanities is still very much fragmented, as most researchers, while having many methodological interests in common, come from very divergent backgrounds. By organizing all kinds of network activities and training events, this research community will create opportunities for a better exploitation of the available know-how and strengthen Flanders' position within the international DH-community.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project will explore the relevance of Aby Warburg's (1866 – 1929) art historical method for theater studies. Warburg sought to uncover the survival of Antiquity in a plethora of images from different origins (examples of 'high art', advertisement, astrological drawings etc.), using the returning gesture as a motif to map this survival. The notion of a survival or return of the image is anti-historicist in nature and calls for a change of the image's status from historical artifact to autonomous presence. This project proposes that gesture as a reembodiment of historical memory produces a tension between representation and presence located in the body and that this marks a parallel between the body in the image – as Warburg analyzes it – and the body on stage.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt
• Fellow: Tuypens Esther

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project will explore the relevance of Aby Warburg's (1866 – 1929) art historical method for theater studies. Warburg sought to uncover the survival of Antiquity in a plethora of images from different origins (examples of 'high art', advertisement, astrological drawings etc.), using the returning gesture as a motif to map this survival. The notion of a survival or return of the image is anti-historicist in nature and calls for a change of the image's status from historical artifact to autonomous presence. This project proposes that gesture as a reembodiment of historical memory produces a tension between representation and presence located in the body and that this marks a parallel between the body in the image – as Warburg analyzes it – and the body on stage.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt
• Fellow: Tuypens Esther

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project is aimed at a doctorate in the arts, in the field of fashion design. Its outcome will be an innovative experimental collection based on academic research and technological experimentation which - together with a description of the design processes themselves - will be reported on in a doctoral dissertation. The specific orientation of the doctorate is an integration of creative processes at the point of overlap between the practices of architecture and fashion design. The contextual academic research will concentrate on past and present forms of mutual influence and collaboration between these two artistic and technical domains; this will also include depthinterviews with prominent practitioners. Experiments will be conducted with fabrics, colors and shapes, starting from up-to-date technologies which already blur the traditional borders, and contributing to their further development. The collection to be designed and created (from drawing via try-outs to production) will experiment with the tension between innovative aesthetics, rational principles of construction, and wearability; it will make use of architectural principles adapted to clothing, and of advanced technologies, while seeking a balance with traditional materials and techniques.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt
• Fellow: Verschueren Alexandra

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This is a fundamental research project financed by the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO). The project was subsidized after selection by the FWO-expert panel.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt
• Fellow: De Laet Timmy

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Immersion evokes the sensory experience of being submerged in another world. Although this notion is commonly related to Virtual Reality, immersion is from all times. And from all media. Visual arts developed illusionist image strategies expressing an age-old wish to evoke an immediate or authentic experience beyond the limits of representation. The use of perspective and trompe l'oeil aims mostly at catching and pulling (the attention) of the viewer into the image, stretching the fictional space beyond the rim of the frame. Today this wish for an immediate experience seems to reach again a point of culmination. Digital technologies open new paths to the context of dramatic action. The fast development of immersive technologies and interaction possibilities makes the world beyond the frame accessible for the viewer who is displaced to the inside of the image. The simulated story world coincides with the physical and emotional space of the viewer - here called an immersant. These immersive environments imply new ways of storytelling. Based on a joined methodology of performance and film studies this project mounts explanation how stylistic and formal parameters of narration function in immersive environments and how this changed disposition towards the image relates to the emotional engagement (suspension of disbelief and the sense of presence in a mediated environment).

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt
• Fellow: Wynants Nele

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project is aimed at a doctorate in the arts, in the field of fashion design. Its outcome will be an innovative experimental collection based on academic research and technological experimentation which - together with a description of the design processes themselves - will be reported on in a doctoral dissertation. The specific orientation of the doctorate is an integration of creative processes at the point of overlap between the practices of architecture and fashion design. The contextual academic research will concentrate on past and present forms of mutual influence and collaboration between these two artistic and technical domains; this will also include depthinterviews with prominent practitioners. Experiments will be conducted with fabrics, colors and shapes, starting from up-to-date technologies which already blur the traditional borders, and contributing to their further development. The collection to be designed and created (from drawing via try-outs to production) will experiment with the tension between innovative aesthetics, rational principles of construction, and wearability; it will make use of architectural principles adapted to clothing, and of advanced technologies, while seeking a balance with traditional materials and techniques.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt
• Fellow: Verschueren Alexandra

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The purpose of the research is to see how the flashback operates in figurative contemporary painting and to define its meaning, form and use from a practical and a theoretical point of view. This research of the flashback will take the work of Karin Hanssen (new and existing) as a point of departure. This will undergo a comparative study with the work of other contemporary artists. The kind of image that is used as source material and selected for this research is the public conventional photographic image from the recent past (ca. 1950-ca.1980).

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt
• Co-principal investigator: Pas Johan

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This is a fundamental research project financed by the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO). The project was subsidized after selection by the FWO-expert panel.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt
• Fellow: De Laet Timmy

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The development of theatre in the twentieth century can be seen as a transition from 'dramatic' theatre to 'postdramatic' theatre. Whereas current research mainly emphasises the physicality of postdrama, this project aims to explore the consequences on the way text is handled in contemporary theatre practice. The focus of this practice based research is on the specific way time elapses in current postdramatic narratives.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Immersion evokes the sensory experience of being submerged in another world. Although this notion is commonly related to Virtual Reality, immersion is from all times. And from all media. Visual arts developed illusionist image strategies expressing an age-old wish to evoke an immediate or authentic experience beyond the limits of representation. The use of perspective and trompe l'oeil aims mostly at catching and pulling (the attention) of the viewer into the image, stretching the fictional space beyond the rim of the frame. Today this wish for an immediate experience seems to reach again a point of culmination. Digital technologies open new paths to the context of dramatic action. The fast development of immersive technologies and interaction possibilities makes the world beyond the frame accessible for the viewer who is displaced to the inside of the image. The simulated story world coincides with the physical and emotional space of the viewer - here called an immersant. These immersive environments imply new ways of storytelling. Based on a joined methodology of performance and film studies this project mounts explanation how stylistic and formal parameters of narration function in immersive environments and how this changed disposition towards the image relates to the emotional engagement (suspension of disbelief and the sense of presence in a mediated environment).

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt
• Fellow: Wynants Nele

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Important moments in the international theatre history are marked by revolutions in the use of Christian mythology (classical tragedy, baroque and romantic drama). Even in the alleged 'postmetaphysical' age concepts like 'subjectivity' and 'mythical reasoning' remain keystones of cultural studies. Especially the recent history of Flemish theatre can be seen in terms of its stance on religion. A historical parallel between the two main stages gives insight into that evolution. The first period (1965-1975) is known for the aspirations of an avant-garde that articulated the ideas of Grotowski, Artaud and Brecht with regard to notions as authenticity and emancipation. Interesting casestudies regarding myth are in the second period (1985 up till now) the works of Alain Platel, Jan Decorte, Erik De Volder and Filip Vanluchene. Working hypothesis is that the first period brings into playan antithetical position towards Christian mythology, whereas the second period reflects the untenable essence of antithetical logic. Recent theatre in other words puts forward the impossibility of binary oppositions by indicating the structural ambivalence of idealism in itself.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Den Dries Luc
• Fellow: Vanhoutte Kurt

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In the era of electronic image processing, traditional patterns of cultural representation are under review. This project will carry out a research into that change of paradigm in the artistic and receptive context of theater. Within the scope of theater semiotics, the dramatext, the scene and the theatrical body will be connected to postmodern mediatheory.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Den Dries Luc
• Fellow: Vanhoutte Kurt

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In the era of electronic image processing, traditional patterns of cultural representation are under review. This project will carry out a research into that change of paradigm in the artistic and receptive context of theater. Within the scope of theater semiotics, the dramatext, the scene and the theatrical body will be connected to postmodern mediatheory.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Den Dries Luc
• Fellow: Vanhoutte Kurt

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

• Research Project