The Reflexive Performance
credit points: 1
Prof. Daphna Ben-Shaul
Prof. Daphna Ben-Shaul is a senior lecturer in the Department of Theatre Arts at Tel Aviv University, head of the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary programs unit of the arts, and head of the actor-creator-researcher track. Her research and teaching in theater, performance, and aesthetics primarily focus on civic and political issues, reflexive performance, empty performance, creative collectives, spectatorship and participation, spatial thinking, and site-dependent performances in Israel.
“The reflexive performance” refers to art observing itself through its own medium—art that in various ways reflects and performs itself, speaks about itself, and through this cyclical movement also examines the subject’s place in the world as well as the political and social sphere. Distinct manifestations of reflexivity exist, such as painters painting themselves painting, theater-within-theater, theater-in-cinema, or performance that lays bare its own mechanisms. Yet above all, the reflexive performance is a core dimension of thinking and action present in every creative work. Our sessions will be dedicated to a tangible engagement with the discourse and key questions sparked by aesthetic reflexivity, in the form of collective immersion into a seminar of study, discussion, reading, and creative practice.
