The “Gesamtkunstwerk”

About the evolution of interdisciplinary



performance practices and the “total work of art”

envisioned by Richard Wagner.
 Richard Wagner and Modernism.

 The Gesamtkunstwerk.

 A short history of interdisciplinary

performance practices.

 Synaesthesia.

 The brand as Gesamtkunstwerk.

 Creative Task.
Modern Romanticism:
 individual subjective experience
 the sublime
 the supremacy of "Nature" as a
subject for art

 revolutionary or radical extensions

of expression

 individual liberty
Modernism is a socially progressive trend of
thought. It affirms the power of human
beings to create, to improve, and to reshape
their environment through practical
experimentation and new technology.
  spectatorship as empa
 abstraction
 estrangement
 distraction
http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/K/koss_modernism.html
 Gesamt - entire, total,
comprehensive, complete ,
whole

 Kunstwerk - artwork (usually used

to describe a grand artwork)
The Gesamtkunstwerk is a concept,
in which the individual arts are
subordinated to a common purpose.
If we consider the relation of modern art—so far as it
is truly Art—to public life, we shall recognize at once
its complete inability to affect this public life in the
sense of its own noblest endeavor. The reason
hereof is, that our modern art is a mere product of
Culture and has not sprung from Life itself; therefore,
being nothing but a hot-house plant, it cannot strike
root in the natural soil, or flourish in the natural
climate of the present. Art has become the private
property of an artist-caste; its taste it offers to those
alone who understand it; and for its understanding it
demands a special study, aloof from actual life, the
study of art-learning. (Richard Wagner, The Artwork of the Future, 1949)
“Loosely associated with synesthesia,
phantasmagoria, and psychedelia, the term
Gesamtkunstwerk often stands for a an artistic
environment or performance in which spectators
are expertly maneuvered into dumfounded
passivity by a sinister and powerful creative force.
It is often mistaken for a hazy mixture of art forms
that intoxicates those who gather in its presence,
encouraging the kind of passive aesthetic response
ascribed to the spectacle culture famously
articulated by Guy Debord in 1968.” (Juliet Koss)

Source: http://www.tagesspiegel.de/zeitung/Sonderthemen%3Bart893,2613346 (Retrieved 01/03/2010)

“Scholars and critics of German history and culture tend to treat such a
manipulation of passivity, implicitly or explicitly, as fascist, proto-fascist, or
neo-fascist, depending on the historical moment in which it occurs.
Where the modernist work is thought to aim for a bracing autonomy, forcing
spectators to sit upright in their proverbial chairs to concentrate on the
difficult activity of aesthetic reception, the Gesamtkunstwerk is believed to
know no such vigilance. It is thought, instead, to let down the guardrails
between the art forms, allowing them to intermingle in a kind of vague
interdisciplinarity that is equated with a lack of discipline.
Yet notions of artistic purity and autonomy were central to Wagner's initial
formulation in 1849. In uniting the arts the Gesamtkunstwerk would allow
each to achieve its full potential, growing stronger in the struggle to define
itself against the others. ‘By working in common,’ he declared, the art forms
each attain the capacity to be and do the very thing which, of their own and
inmost essences, they long to do and be. Each where her own capacity ends
can be absorbed into the other, proving her own purity, freedom, and
independence as that which she is.
The effort to unite the different art forms was thus predicated on their
individual refinement and purification, with the purity of each dependent on
the others’ proximity; the Gesamtkunstwerk would simultaneously sustain
and destroy the autonomy of the individual arts.”
"[...] the spectator transplants
himself upon the stage, by
means of all his visual and
aural faculties."
(Richard Wagner, The Artwork of the Future, 1849)
Immersive environments could
give birth to a new form of
participatory, interactive,
electronic theatre.
“ Tw e n tie th ce n tu ry a rtists h a ve
co n tin u e d th e e ffo rt to h e ig h te n th e
vie w e r's exp e rie n ce o f a rt b y in te g ra tin g
tra d itio n a lly se p a ra te d iscip lin e s in to
sin g le w o rks. M o d e rn exp e rie n ce , m a n y
o f th e se a rtists b e lie ve d , co u ld o n ly b e
e vo ke d th ro u g h a n a rt th a t co n ta in e d
w ith in itse lf th e co m p le te ra n g e o f
p e rce p tio n . " O ld -fa sh io n e d " fo rm s
lim ite d to w o rd s o n a p a g e , p a in t o n
ca n va s, o r m u sic fro m a n in stru m e n t,
w e re co n sid e re d in a d e q u a te fo r
ca p tu
(Randall rinMultimedia:
Packer, g th e From
sp eWagner
e d , toeVirtual
n e rg y and
Reality)

co n tra d ictio n s o f co n te m p o ra ry life .”

A Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (better
known by the recursive acronym CAVE) is an
immersive virtual reality environment where
projectors are directed to three, four, five or six
of the walls of a room-sized cube. The name is also
a reference to the allegory of the Cave in Plato's
Republic where a philosopher contemplates
perception, reality and illusion.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_Automatic_Virtual_Environment (Retrieved 02/03/2010)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKL0urEdtPU&feature=channel
Synesthesia [...] from the Ancient Greek σύν (syn),
"together," and αἴσθησις (aisthēsis), "sensation"—is a
neurologically-based condition in which stimulation of one
sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic,
involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive
pathway.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia (Retrieved 02/03/2010)
“The ‘(syn)aesthetic style’ is a contemporary
performance practice and mode of appreciation
which has emerged and developed in recent
years. [...] (syn)aesthetics describe both a
performance style (encompassing the artistic
process), and the audience receptive
experience.”
(Josephine Machon, (Syn)aesthetics and Disturbance - A Preliminary Overview)
Synaesthetic performances fuse the
aural, visual, olfactory, oral and tactile.
A leitmotif (from the German leitmotiv,
lit. "leading motif", or perhaps more
accurately "guiding motif") is a
recurring musical theme, associated
with a particular person, place, or idea.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitmotif (Retrieved 02/03/2010)
“[Synaesthetic performances] procure an
exciting, complete experience that affects a
complete perception – cerebral, corporeal
and emotional.”
(Josephine Machon, (Syn)aesthetics and Disturbance - A Preliminary Overview)
“This fusing of sense (semantic
‘meaning making’) with sense
(sensation) establishes a double-edged
rendering of making-sense/sense-making
which is important to understanding
the (syn)aesthetic strategies of
performance and appreciation.”
(Josephine Machon, (Syn)aesthetics and Disturbance - A Preliminary Overview)
Transform an empty shopping space in
central Lincoln into an all-encompassing,
multi-disciplinary, multi-sensory, immersive,
durational, total art-performance-event based
on a chosen theme and the idea of the
Gesamtkunstwerk.
 You have moderate budget for technical
equipment, costumes, lights, props, furniture,
decoration, music, promotion etc.

 You will devise and perform your

Gesamtkunstwerk as a group.

 You can employ other artists and helpers on a

voluntary basis.

 You have rental-free access to your shopping

space for 2 months in order to devise,
rehearse and perform your event.

 Your Gesamtkunstwerk should be open to the

public for at least an entire week.

 You have permission to alter your space in a way

that will reversible and acceptable for a new
tenant.
1. Find a theme, the connecting
thread and a title for your event.

2. Form groups to take over certain

tasks and the responsibility for
certain elements of the event.

3. Present and discuss your ideas.