The 10th Congress of the European Society of Comparative Literature: “Le jeu: Gambling, Gaming and Play in Literature”, Paris La Sorbonne, 2-6 September 2024

Maja Murnik and Janez Strehovec attended ESCL biennial congress in Paris at the Faculty of Humanities of Sorbonne University. They presented the paper, titled “A Phenomenological Approach to Gaming Worlds”

https://escl-selc.eu/next-congress/

Abstract

Janez Strehovec and Maja Murnik: A Phenomenological Approach to Gaming Worlds

The entry of modernist and neo-avant-garde literary practices into the literatures of the Realsozialismus(in the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia) led to a series of conflicts in the 1960s, 1970s and even later, when modernist authors had to defend themselves against the real socialist censors. One of their main arguments was that the world of their heroes was fictional, and the same applied to the events and situations in which they were involved. Fictional means that a particular person or action has an ontological status as-if (als-ob), which affects the reality of literary worlds. Here it is important to refer to phenomenological research, which in phenomenological aesthetics has emphasized that the nature of an artwork’s being is heterogeneous; for, besides real foreground, the work of art also contains a layer of unreal background. Analyzing the intentional world of artworks, phenomenological aesthetics likewise revealed such particular ontological forms as the unreal, quasi-real and the as-if-real. No less significantly, phenomenological investigations also raised the issue of the ontological status of the purely artificial as in the reality of “impossible” entities such as the centaur, the round square, wooden iron, and so forth. The being of these entities – as the so-called impossible objects – is again quite particular in nature; one could say that their ontological status is shifted from that of being towards nothingness. The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, having dedicated his thought precisely to nothingness – which is, in a way, essential to the being – reached farthest into these issues. In his Being and Nothingness(1943), Sartre distinguishes intermediate stages between fully positive realities and those whose positive nature of appearance-alike merely conceals the chasm of nothingness. It is this very notion that first highlighted the existence of reality as comprising the non-being phenomenological interest in these plural-mode being structures (that is, objects of art and imagination). This research is not confined to the theorists generally associated with the field of phenomenological aesthetics (such as, for instance, Roman Ingarden, Moritz Geiger, Eugen Fink, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Nicolai Hartmann), but was demonstrated also by Edmund Husserl – as it is evident in the writings from his Husserliana, Vol. XXIII under the title Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung(1980). Husserl’s major concern in this collection of his writings is with the fictional objects of imagination (in German, Fikta) in the sense of as-if-real objects, and the specificity of unreality.

The complex, by as-if-principle-infected reality also includes the game. Roger Caillois saw one of the peculiarities of the game in the fact that it involves make-believe that confirms for players the existence of imagined realities that may be set against ‘real’ life. In the presentation, the authors will discuss examples of the application of phenomenological aesthetics to the understanding of several works of Slovenian contemporary literary and new media art. Although the topics related to phenomenological aesthetics, are now seen as very distant and historical, they may be relevant to explain certain key features of new media artworks, as well as a number of new paradigms into which these works are entering in Slovenia.

Nove objave / New Publications

Mojca Puncer in Maja Murnik sta nedavno objavili poglavji v knjigi / Mojca Puncer and Maja Murnik recently published the chapters in the book:

The European Avant-Garde – A Hundred Years Later (ed. Polona Tratnik), Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2024.

https://brill.com/display/title/63237

Mojca Puncer:

Chapter 10: “The Avant-Garde Politics of Time: the Case of Post-Gravity Art”, pp. 251–273.

In: The European Avant-Garde – A Hundred Years Later

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004685871_012

Abstract

The author seeks an answer to the question of whether the 50-year post-gravity theatre project Noordung::1995–2045 by the Slovenian theatre director Dragan Živadinov (1960–) and his collaborators, visual artists Dunja Zupančič and Miha Turšič, can be described as a particular avant-garde politics of time. Using the concept of the »politics of time,« which refers to the temporal structure of social practices in their pursuit of change (Osborne), we discuss the temporality of the avant-garde in accordance with ruptural time (Benjaminʼs »now-time«) in its tension with the historical continuity of time. The text outlines the ways in which the consideration of time is an essential part of Živadinov’s work, particularly in his attention to the legacy of the so-called »historical avant-garde« in relation to utopianism (especially in Suprematism and Constructivism) and the pursuit of the future utopian moment of the »absolute now.« To this end, we attempt to demonstrate Živadinov’s affinities with both a particular Marxist, i.e. Benjaminian, and Nietzsche-Deleuzian (post-structuralist) concept of time. Special attention is given to the way in which a close examination of Živadinov’s work not only as theatrical but also as conceptual, trans-artistic, techno-scientific, socio-political, and philosophical, is essential to understanding some of his key arguments.

Maja Murnik:

Chapter 11 “Bodies-In-Freedom: from Futurist Aerial Theatre to Space Art”, pp. 274–289.

In: The European Avant-Garde – A Hundred Years Later

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004685871_013

Abstract

Firstly, the chapter will address the conceptual legacy of Italian Futurist teatro aereo (or aerial theatre) where the predecessors of art striving to literally take its feet off the ground can be found. By combining several perspectives from philosophy (Merleau-Ponty, Virilio), art history and performance studies, and by including art examples as well, the chapter will afterwards discuss several issues: (1) the problem of gravity; (2) the extensions of body and the relating issue of technology (foregrounding other forms of embodiment which extend body’s area of sensitivity); (3) the aspects of scientific abstraction (pointing out that our understanding of outer space is based on large amounts of scientific data, transmitted and translated into visualizations, comprehensible to human terrestrial experience, since outer space is abstract, constructed space (a virtual space), inaccessible to our naked-eye perception); (4) social, political and artistic aspects of liberation from gravity (e.g., autonomous astronauts initiative, culturalization of space initiative).

Strehovec’s new book

The new authored book by Janez Strehovec Contemporary Art Impacts on Scientific, Social, and Cultural Paradigms: Emerging Research and Opportunities. was published in May 2020 with the IGI Global.

Academics and students can utilize coupon code IGI40 for a 40% special discount. This discount can only be used when ordering directly through www.igi-global.com.

More about the book can be found in the recent interview with the author at IGI Global Newsroom.

New publications by Janez Strehovec

– Janez Strehovec: “Moving Images, Moving Words. On Refashioning Film in Electronic Literature”. In: Suwara, B., and Pisarski, M. (Eds.), Remediation: Crossing Discursive Boundaries. Central European Perspective, Berlin, Bratislava: Peter Lang & VEDA, Publishing House, 2019.

– Janez Strehovec: “Beseda-podoba-telo: razširjeno besedilo in nove modalnosti branja in izkušanja teksta“. Slavistična revija, 67(1), 2019, pp. 1-15. Access: https://srl.si/ojs/srl/article/view/2019-1-1-1.

Nova knjiga Mojce Puncer

Izšla je nova knjiga članice INM dr. Mojce Puncer Medprostori umetnosti, in sicer pri Založbi Sophia (Ljubljana, 2018).

Knjiga bo predstavljena v okviru okrogle mize, ki bo v petek, 23. novembra 2018, ob 12h na Pisateljskem odru Društva slovenskih pisateljev 34. slovenskega knjižnega sejma v Cankarjevem domu (Velika sprejemna dvorana).

O knjigi: http://www.zalozba-sophia.si/katalog/2018/medprostori-umetnosti

O dogodku: http://www.knjiznisejem.si/index.php/domov/za-obiskovalce/program?dogodek=umetnostbesedeoumetnosti:produkcijaumetnostiinumetniskega

16. mednarodni komparativistični kolokvij / 16th International Comparative Literature Colloquium, Vilenica 2018, Ljubljana, 5.-6. september 2018

Tema kolokvija / The theme of the colloquium: Literatura v preseku družbe, družba v preseku literature / The Crossroads of Literature and Social Praxis

Program in povzetki / Program and Abstracts: http://sdpk.si/datoteke/Vilenica%202018_Program.pdf

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Maja Murnik: Sodobne slovenske dramske pisave in družbenoangažirane uprizoritvene prakse / Contemporary Slovenian Stage-plays and the Political

Abstract

The paper stems from the awareness that in the recent decades it has no longer made sense to distinguish strictly between drama and theatre as we are dealing with “no-longer-dramatic texts” (Poschmann) and the no-longer-theatre or the postdramatic theatre (Lehmann). In the crisis of representation and the dramatic form, performative dimensions of texts come to the foreground, as texts become Barthesian open texts – heterogeneous, performative structures which are open in terms of meaning.

In the paper, we will analyze examples of “no-longer-dramatic texts” by Simona Semenič in the light of their social engagement and politicality, and we will complement these by tackling their recent socially engaged stagings in Slovenian theatre, where the textual part plays a significant role (e.g. Metamorphoses 4: Black holes, Republic of Slovenia, Odilo. Obscuration. Oratorio) and which range from simple political agitation plays to complex treatments of social themes. Who do these projects address and what are they trying to achieve?

We need to understand the scope and power of their politics and their social commitment in the light of the position of art and theatre in contemporary society, including the context of contemporary postpoliticality. Where are the loci of power today and how are they addressed by contemporary Slovenian drama and theatre; what is their stand towards them? Which strategies and tactics do Slovenian drama and theatre use in the process and what is their message for us?

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Janez Strehovec: Slovenski literarni nacionalizem kot ideološki aparat države / Slovenian Literary Nationalism as an Ideological State Apparatus

Abstract

By applying the researching devices of media studies, art theory, critical theory, philosophy, Marxian theory, cultural anthropology, and cultural studies as a theoretical background, this research paper aims to explore the Slovenian literary nationalism as one of the key Slovenian ideological state apparatuses. The criticism of literary nationalism is not directed towards literary works and the activity of writing, but to institutions that form a literary-ideological, interpretative and propaganda context in which the literary production takes place. Literary nationalism contributes to the Slovenian ideology whose stability is guaranteed by the coexistence of the cultural archaism, and the neoliberal economic and technological modernization. In Slovenian left-wing culture one can encounter political activity of the Janez Janša group of artistic activists who use cultural institutions as an alibi (and financial sponsor) for their application of the subversive affirmation, which is directed to pure political goals. The general conclusion of the analysis of both phenomena demonstrates that in Slovenia occurs cultural extremism which is politicized in its left- as well as right-wing version; its exploration is essential for the understanding of the post-communist Slovenia as well as a novel role of politicized contemporary art and literature in the present.

Welcome to the Institute of New Media Art and Electronic Literature!

It is considered as researching, teaching, organizing, creating and publishing platform in the field of new media art and e-literature. Both fields are understood in their expanded form; rather than dealing with the completed artworks and texts, the research on this platform is propelled by the question what happens to the art, textuality and literature in the world of new media, smart technologies and (social) networking, how they are formed, preserved and disseminated. The point of departure is the basic relationship between the human, her creativity, the advanced technologies, and their context, including the social and biopolitics. Such a dispositif is regarded in terms of nomadic cockpit (expression coined by Janez Strehovec).