Roberto Fratini Serafide: LITURGIES OF IMPATIENCE, lecture and discussion

April 22nd, 11.00-13.00

Trying to stigmatize the so-called “passivity” of the traditional ways of watching, the emancipation of the spectatorship turns out to be the fundamental challenge of the newest practical strategies on stage. Even the intellectual emancipation of the audience along the borders and around the performance itself – on the special stage of after-talks, try-outs, meeting with the artist and so on, is a direct consequence of the trend of participation. We will try to see in which measure and because of what the direct action of the spectator (or his passage à l’acte) involved in those practices permits a certain display of a phantasy of interaction, which is by any means a legacy of the postmodern ideology. And we will try to see at which condition and at which price the “extraterritorialization” or “extradition” of the new “watcher” can be realized out of any ideology or if the result of that emancipation would inevitably be a new settling of the spectator as the main actor on the stage. Does participation really subvert the rules of performance or is it just replacing and adapting them to any amplification of the market?

The lecture will be followed by a debate also moderated by Roberto Fratini Serafide.