Superfluities Redux
On culture and theatre, by George Hunka
A new journal for theatre minima and organum posts exclusively can now be found here.
Tuesday, 06 May 2008
"[Morton Feldman and Samuel Beckett] had met in Berlin in 1976. Feldman wanted to do something with Beckett for the Rome Opera. Beckett indicated that he didn’t like opera – and Feldman agreed. Out of this understanding grew the collaboration on Neither (1977), and Beckett's pleasure with that work accounts for the fact that he recommended Feldman for the music of Words and Music ten years later. ...
"[Feldman said:] 'I never liked anyone else's approach to Beckett. I felt it was a little too easy; they were treating him as if he were an existentialist hero, rather than a tragic hero. And he's a word man, a fantastic word man. And I always felt that I was a note man. I think that's what brought me to him. A kind of shared longing: this saturated, unending longing that he has, and that I have.'"
Samuel Beckett and Music
Edited by Mary Bryden
Posted at 4.14 pm in /Quotes
Permanent link to this story
Tuesday, 06 May 2008
Originally posted 13 December 2006.
Christian Schad, Zwei Mädchen (1928)
Oil on canvas, 109.5 x 80 cm.
Galerie Brockstedt, Hamburg
She does not need us for her pleasure; she needs us if she is to be
seen. Does she stay with us? Our decision, ultimately. Five years before
Germany drifts into its twelve year sleep, her face expresses a lovely,
guiltless audacity. We are rendered spectators. We can be shaken, drawn
in, if we allow it. Perhaps she will be censored, rendered invisible,
unlike the Laocoön, which the church prefers. In so
far as this is a
painting, it is a sensual Laocoön, a Laocoön of
the promise of ecstasy.
This flesh of her thigh as much non-
Perhaps Sophocles could have written a play for her as well, just as tragic. A spectator can welcome her experience as the spectator might welcome that of Oedipus.
Other material:
Organum II (in progress)
"95 Sentences About Theatre" (Prolegomena)
Posted at 9.32 am in /Organum/Gallery
Permanent link to this story
