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The expeditions
The base camp for the academy is the Schauspielhaus
Bochum. The six courses will be held in varied locations: in rehearsal
rooms, at coal pits and halls, archives and studios of the City
of Bochum. But the region of the Ruhrgebiet will also play an
important part in the work of the academy - as a palpable metaphor
for structural change of post-industrial societies. After the
pit-closures, after the withdrawal of capital, what is left is
a landscape used up by industry, with bare remnants of nature,
which is trying to redesign itself following ecological and aesthetic,
but by necessity also economical criteria. The era of industrialism
has left artificial patterns which did not exist before. These
cannot be deciphered by mere observation, but maybe through the
analytical examination of philosophical field-researchers. Once
a week, the Academy will go for excursions through the Ruhrgebiet.
On these outings, internationally renowned theoreticians will
act as guides and will accompany the walking and seeing with spontaneously
improvised commentaries.
Dr. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
Professor for Criticism of Art and Culture at the Department of
Performance Studies of Tisch School of Arts, and Professor for
Jewish Studies at New York University. Studied English Literature
and Folklore. Her fields of interest are Jewish social history,
regional studies and heritage politics. "Cannibal Tours"
in New Guinea, the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial
to the Holocaust, a Maasai warrior village in Kenya, international
art festivals, theme and adventure parks or a model mine in Saxonia,
she describes as appearances of one and the same industry that
markets "cultural heritage" as tourist attractions.
"When a way of life disappears with the mining economy that
once sustained it or is literally wiped out by the forestration
enterprise that replaces it, tourism is ready to step in. The
formula for revitalizing the economy of a depressed region is
the resurrection theater of the heritage industry. While tourist
attractions may seem like oases of time out, they are implicated
in a larger political economy of transnational flows of money,
people, and symbolic capital."
Mike Pearson
Director, Actor, Writer, Cardiff Originally trained as an archaeologist
he has been devising performances since 1971 with a succession
of companies including RAT Theatre, Cardiff Laboratory Theatre
and most recently Welsh company Brith Gof which is best known
for its site-specific work inspired by themes of Welsh history,
literature and political and religious dissent. His is also working
closely with artist/designer Mike Brookes on a series of performances
which concern issues of personal narrative, biography, place and
landscape and which use techniques as diverse as live radio broadcast
and computer controlled multi-screen slide projection. This work
examines the tensions and similarities between Wales' rural past
and post-industrial present. He is also writing extensively on
points of contact between the disciplines of performance and archaeology.
Mike Pearson is currently a lecturer in performance studies at
the University of Wales Aberystwyth.
Dr. Walter Siegfried,
Wanderer, Singer, Towndancer. Teaches at the Hochschule für
Kunst und Gestaltung (Academy for Art and Design), Zurich Studied
Psychology, Art History an Philosophy. From 1977, he has held
lectureships on Perception as well as Dance as Aesthetic Behaviour
at various universities. Since 1986, Walter Siegfried has been
walking through Bombay, Potsdam and Munich and has organised "walks"
with audiences. On these walks, he stages irritations to sharpen
the eye of the spectator for normally invisible micro-structures
of public order, for restraints of movement, for instructions
for perception and other secret rules of our modes of communication.
His "walking"-events work as astonishing signposts,
which points the spectator's gaze at something new, where this
gaze is not led astray by the given structures of frames, labels
and pedestals, as it would be in the closed rooms of theatres
and museums. Examples of his site-specific work are Die Stadttänzer
(The towndancers) 1987, HeimwegFragmente (Fragments of the way
home) 1989, Die Kabelseele (The soul of cable) and Soundtracks
to Reality, 1991. Recently he has created radio plays together
with Thomas Emmerling and Oliver Rauscher.
Dr. Klaus Tenfelde
Professor for Social History and Social Movement, Bochum He served
his apprenticeship and gained his first experience of the work-place
in the mining industry, then continued his studies through adult
education. He took a degree in History, German Studies, Philosophy,
Sociology and Educational Theory. Klaus Tenfelde is a profound
expert in the field of the German Workers' Movement, of the history
of economics and society of the 19th and 20th centuries, as well
as the history of mining. He has published various works on these
subjects, for example on Sozialgeschichte der Bergarbeiterschaft
an der Ruhr im 19. Jahrhundert (The social history of mine workers
from the Ruhr in the 19th century), Bonn/Bad Godesberg, 1977;
or about Arbeiter im Deutschen Kaiserreich 1871 - 1914 (Workers
in the German Empire 1871 - 1914), together with Gerhard A. Ritter,
Bonn, 1992. After holding chairs at the Universities of Innsbruck
and Bielefeld, in 1995 Klaus Tenfelde became Professor for Social
History and Social Movement at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum,
as well as head of the Institute Labour History, which is located
in Bochum.
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