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Cultural encounter and the body of the spectator

May 3, 2013

Joslin McKinney
Presentation for the joint meeting of OISTAT Performance Design and OISTAT Research 2013, Shanghai, China

In this presentation I will consider examples of scenographic spectacle in intercultural and intracultural contexts from the perspective of the spectator. In particular, I want to consider universalist tendencies of some intercultural performance which produce a bland, decentred and rather empty cultural experience and contrast that with a more nuanced experience of spectacle which troubles cultural homogeneity and opens up differences of cultural perspective.

I will draw on my own experiences as a spectator at Cirque du Soleil’s Ka (Las Vegas, USA, 2012) and at Royal de Luxe’s Sea Odyssey (Liverpool, UK, 2012) and I will focus on the spectator’s body as a site of reception and resistance. Using theories of embodied and spatial experience and concepts of spectacle, I will explore how visual spectacle might offer a meaningful exchange of differences and highlight the ways in which we are variously positioned in the world.

 




Photos: "Sea Odyssey" by Royal de Luxe, performed in Liverpool, April 2012.