eJournals Forum Modernes Theater 30/1-2

Forum Modernes Theater
0930-5874
2196-3517
Narr Verlag Tübingen
10.2357/FMTh-2015-0005
Es handelt sich um einen Open-Access-Artikel der unter den Bedingungen der Lizenz CC by 4.0 veröffentlicht wurde.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
An image is commonly thought of as having a flat, two-dimensional surface. However, numerous historical and contemporary artworks have successfully challenged this misleading presumption by exploring alternative ways of creating spatial and temporal images, such as the tableau vivant, holographic imaging technology and, most recently, immersive virtual environments. In line with this tendency, contemporary theatre and performance artists also play a role in expanding the definition of the image. This article analyses two contemporary theatre performances that stage the image as an event, as they ‘expand’ the image by bestowing on it the specific spatial and temporal logic of a theatrical event. Specifically, we consider how Romeo Castellucci’s M.#10 Marseille (2004) and Rabih Mroué’s So Little Time (2016) each in theirown way bring images to life within the theatre, exploring the self-reflexive and magical aspects of images, both within and outside the theatre.
2019
301-2 Balme

The Image as an Event

2019
Jeroen Coppens
The Image as an Event. The Lives of Images in M.#10 Marseille and So Little Time Jeroen Coppens (Ghent) An image is commonly thought of as having a flat, two-dimensional surface. However, numerous historical and contemporary art works have successfully challenged this misleading presumption by exploring alternative ways of creating spatial and temporal images, such as the tableau vivant, holographic imaging technology and, most recently, immersive virtual environments. In line with this tendency, contemporary theatre and performance artists also play a role in expanding the definition of the image. This article analyses two contemporary theatre performances that stage the image as an event, as they ‘ expand ’ the image by bestowing on it the specific spatial and temporal logic of a theatrical event. Specifically, we consider how Romeo Castellucci ’ s M.#10 Marseille (2004) and Rabih Mroué ’ s So Little Time (2016) each in their own way bring images to life within the theatre, exploring the self-reflexive and magical aspects of images, both within and outside the theatre. Introduction Since the turn of the millennium, visuality has been a central topic of investigation in the field of theatre studies. In dialogue with the emerging field of visual studies, theatre scholars have convincingly shown that visual experience (vision) is far from an objective and stable relationship between the spectator and the seen. Instead, it relies heavily on subjective parameters, such as race, class and gender, and on intersubjective, historically and culturally specific cultures of seeing. 1 Furthermore, theatre scholars are interested in visual studies ’ new concept of the image as an active agent in modes of meaning-making, thus acknowledging the performativity of images. Looking at images not merely as objects, but instead as events that happen, reveals interesting parallels with how theatre performances have been theorised and analysed as performances that happen live, in a specific time and space. In this article, we will explore this eventisation of the image by looking at theatre performances that stage the image within the spatial and temporal logic of the theatre. 2 Eventisation here means that the performances transform the image into a live event that unfolds in the real time and space of the theatre. In this way, the materiality of the image is subsumed under the evanescent temporality of the theatre event. Specifically, we will look at Romeo Castellucci ’ s M.#10 Marseille (2004) and Rabih Mroué ’ s So Little Time (2016), two performances that, each in their own way, stage and scrutinise the image as a theatrical event. Both performances stage the image in a self-reflexive process, questioning the subjective and intersubjective layers that influence visual experience. Moreover, Castellucci ’ s and Mroué ’ s eventisation of the image results in an animistic attitude toward the image, as their performances provide a stage to bring the image quite literally to life. The research focus is thus two-fold and considers both the selfaware and the magical aspects of staging the image within the theatre. This double focus corresponds with two influential concepts of the image that W. J. T. Mitchell formulated in Forum Modernes Theater, 30/ 1-2 (2015 [2019]), 47 - 59. Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.2357/ FMTh-2015-0005 Picture Theory (1994) and What do Pictures Want? (2005). In considering theatre as a self-critical image-producing medium, 3 embedded in cultural practices of looking and image-making, while at the same time critically engaging with image politics and politics of vision, we will look at Mitchell ’ s concept of metapictures; “ pictures that refer to themselves or to other pictures, pictures that are used to show what a picture is ” . 4 Tracing how Castellucci and Mroué create self-reflexive metapictures in the theatre will offer productive insight into how the image can become an event in the theatre. In a final step, we will further consider theatre as a space for reanimating the image and explore the lives of images in theatre, probing Mitchell ’ s concept of the image as a living organism. 5 As Castellucci and Mroué experiment with these two approaches to the image, their performances function as a laboratory for visual studies, in which they experiment with images as events and do research on their operations, their underlying politics and the lives they get to lead. Staging the Image in Romeo Castellucci ’ s M.#10 Marseille Let us begin by looking at Romeo Castellucci ’ s M.#10 Marseille. The performance is the tenth episode of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio ’ s Tragedia Endogonidia cycle, a fundamentally hybrid theatre project in which a range of different media and technologies is used on stage. The grand project consists of a total of eleven performances, each performed in a different city throughout Europe, the first one premiering in January 2002 and the last one in October 2004. Castellucci ’ s work has been characterised as highly visual and spectacular, and has thus been associated with baroque aesthetics and epistemologies. 6 Furthermore, the iconoclastic stances and the relationship between word and image in Castellucci ’ s work have Fig. 1: Still with tableau vivant, from Romeo Castellucci - M.#10 Marseille Source: Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio. 2007. Tragedia Endogonidia by Romeo Castellucci. Video by Cristiano Carloni, Stefano Franceschetti. Original music by Scott Gibbons. Rome: DVD and booklet. 48 Jeroen Coppens been studied extensively. 7 In the following, we will look at how Castellucci stages different media (sculpture, painting, photography and cinema) within the time and space of the theatre and reflects on the spatial and temporal conditions of these media, in this way creating metapictures. In a second step, we will consider the animistic aspects of Castellucci ’ s approach to images. The performance is constructed as a diptych, playing in two different theatres in Marseille. Initially, the first part of the diptych takes the form of a traditional dramatic play, staging a conversation between a married couple. The conversation is visually interspersed with tableau-like scenes of a group of men and women clothed in nineteenth-century fashion. The performance results in a series of ‘ photographic compositions ’ , each separated from the other by the closing and opening of the black theatre curtains. We see a black horse being washed with milk, a white ladder and a woman who exposes her genitals in a way similar to Gustave Courbet ’ s L ’ Origine du Monde. In the second part, we encounter an intricate choreography of light and abstract objects, obscured by a semi-transparent veil that separates the audience from the stage. Behind the veil, different semi-transparent panes in varying sizes are lowered from the ceiling, which seem to either intensify in shape or completely dissolve depending on the intensity of light. Consequently, these objects resist any easy and univocal identification. Here, Castellucci creates aesthetics similar to the abstract art of Rothko and Malevich, using only theatrical means: the theatre machinery of the stage, the wings, the stage house, ropes, projectors and lighting. In this way, the moving objects become the visual protagonists of the performance. Here, the semi-transparent veil epitomises the two-dimensionality of painting and photography within the theatre space by flattening the stage. In the final scene, Castellucci upholds the minimalistic aesthetics of Rothko and Malevich, but the veil becomes an immense projection screen. The visual montage flashes intensely and brightly, shifting in different colours and shapes, at times making it hard to keep watching the almost blinding excess of light. M.#10 Marseille takes a traditional psychological drama in the form of a conversation between a married couple as its starting point. The opening scene is characterised by the dominance of the dramatic text, accessible and relatable characters and above all a clear narrative progression. The ensuing scenes of the first and the second part can be understood as a systematic critique and disruption of this dramatic, frontal and static mode of representation. In the following analysis, we will consider how Castellucci stages other media and their images within the theatre and we will argue that the performance produces metapictures, pictures that carry an inherent reflection on their mediation, problematizing their nature as pictures. 8 At a certain point during the first scene, the dramatic exchange between both characters is visually interrupted by a number of tableaux vivants, living images enacted onstage by a group of men and women, sometimes alternating and sometimes together. The first tableau shows a 20-second still image of women in a fixed, theatrical pose. Later on in the conversation, the couple is interrupted again while the woman is cutting her partner ’ s toenails. This tableau shows ten theatrical but frozen men and women, some of whom show clear signs of arrested movement (for instance, a raised arm, an unfinished gesture or an open mouth). The opening scene ends with a dinner enacted with the participants of the tableaux, although this time they do show slight movement. Castellucci ’ s choice of the aesthetics of the tableau is interesting 49 The Image as an Event because it combines theatre, painting and sculpture in such a way that the theatre turns into a living image, a living sculpture. The use of tableaux vivants in theatrical settings is far from new. In medieval Joyous Entries, the tableau vivant was already extensively used as a means of theatrical communication, 9 and in eighteenth-century theatre the tableau became a particularly popular strategy. Diderot played an important role in this development, as he proposed a theatre aesthetic of true-to-life imitation in which the tableau played a crucial part. As it is a concentrated living image, the tableau has the capacity to highlight and intensify the dramatic action while stimulating a direct experience that absorbs the spectator. 10 Whereas Diderot recognised the tableau as a way of increasing the naturalness of theatre, Castellucci interestingly uses it to achieve a quite different effect. His tableaux vivants still highlight and intensify the events on stage, but they also introduce an important rupture in ways of seeing. Specifically, the tableau-aesthetics imports into the theatre a temporality of seeing that is not characteristic of the theatre: the temporality of time frozen, of motionless and ‘ actionless ’ time passing by. While the tableau in painting and sculpture obviously freezes movement and time in a still image, this stillness goes against theatre ’ s way of looking, as it introduces the phenomenon of looking at arrested time and movement in the theatre, as if it were a painting. Because of this collision of different temporalities, the visual image becomes a self-referential metapicture. Mitchell argues Fig. 2: Alain - Egyptian Life Class. Source: Mitchell, Picture Theory, p. 43. 50 Jeroen Coppens that this kind of image “ represents pictures as a class, the picture about pictures ” . 11 He discusses Egyptian Life Class, a cartoon by Alain depicting Ancient-Egyptian art students measuring their model with pencils and fingers. Here, two different traditions of representation collide with one another: on the one hand, painting using measurement of perspective that became paradigmatic in European art from the Renaissance era onwards and, on the other, the Ancient-Egyptian tradition of symbolic perspective. The picture shows not only its own construction, but also reveals its underlying conventions of a certain tradition of visual representation. In M.#10 Marseille, Castellucci creates hybrid metapictures by importing different media and their temporalities onto the stage. Fig. 3: Saul Steinberg - The Spiral. Source: Mitchell, Picture Theory, p. 39. This temporality of arrested time and movement is intensified even further in the photographic compositions that follow in the second scene. Here, theatre and photography interact with each other in a way that contrasts theatre ’ s live nature with photography ’ s ontology of fossilisation. 12 The different scenes consist of photogenic scenes (the washing of the horse, the ladder and the woman exposing herself) that are all fundamentally theatrical: they are staged with the intention and function of being looked at in the context of the theatre as they combine time, (slight) movement and performance. At several times during these photographic constellations, a photographer with a daguerreotype camera shows up, takes a picture (during which the theatre lights are used as an artificial flash) and freezes theatre in time, petrifying the event and arresting performative movement. Here, again, Castellucci creates metapictures that combine the conventions and temporalities of photography and theatre in such a way that they become generically self-referential. Furthermore, the photographic compositions are also formally selfreferential, as they integrate the photographer as the maker of the image on the stage. According to Mitchell, these metapictures refer to their own making 13 by revealing the process of construction of the image. In this context, he describes a drawing by Saul Steinberg that originates from a spiralling form that refers to the artist and the construction of his drawing. As such, the picture represents itself, “ creating a referential circle or mise en abîme ” . 14 The first part of the performance stages painting, sculpture and photography within the theatre as a self-reflective, intermedial constellation, in which their respective modes of operation and ways of looking interact with each other. More specifically, the spatially and temporally located logic of theatre is sharply contrasted with painting, sculpture and photography ’ s temporality of arrested time and movement. This interaction has important consequences for both the 51 The Image as an Event visuality and the modes of looking at work in M.#10 Marseille. By staging theatre as painting, sculpture and photography, the performance confronts the audience with arrested time not only in but also as performance. In this sense, Castellucci challenges theatre ’ s ontology of live performance and introduces ways of looking that pull theatre audiences out of their comfort zone. This becomes even clearer in the second part of M.#10 Marseille. In the second part of the diptych, which takes place at the Théâtre du Gymnase, Castellucci takes the interaction between theatre and painting even further, questioning theatre ’ s DNA as a live event even more. Fig. 4: Still from the second part of Romeo Castellucci - M.#10 Marseille. Source: Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio. 2007. Tragedia Endogonidia by Romeo Castellucci. Video by Cristiano Carloni, Stefano Franceschetti. Original music by Scott Gibbons. Rome: DVD and booklet. In the first scene, Castellucci creates aesthetics similar to the abstract art of Rothko and Malevich, using only theatrical means: the theatre machinery of the stage, the wings, the stage house, ropes, projectors and lighting. As such, the stage is devoid of any human presence, and the moving objects become the visual protagonists of the performance. The backstage crew moves the objects and operates the intricate light architecture, but remains hidden until the end of the show, when they appear onstage together with Lavinia Bertotti to greet the audience. 15 In carrying to its limits theatre ’ s potential to literally revive painting in a live setting, the performance shows great similarities with the Bauhaus idea of the mechanical stage (Mechanische Bühne), in which theatre becomes a visual scenography of concrete and abstract figures in space. 16 By explicitly staging theatre as painting, the performance shows an excess of the virtual over the actual 17 in which the semi-transparent veil plays a crucial role. The veil epitomises the two-dimensionality of painting and photography within the theatre space by flattening the stage. In this process, the veil becomes a medium that mediates and transforms the panels that are moving behind it: Because something is happening behind it, the veil surfaces as a medium. And because of this, what happens behind it appears in an object-like way: the moving objects do not present themselves as ecstatically present things but rather as objects in constant withdrawal. 18 In this way, the veil becomes an ‘ inconsistent intermediary ’ (inkonsistenter Vermittler) and points to a critique of the spectacle that abandons the hope of an immediate and unmediated access to reality, which André Eiermann links to the notion of ‘ postspectacular theatre ’ , a kind of theatre that critically explores mediation instead of focusing on theatre ’ s alleged immediacy. 19 In this sense, the veil visualises and embodies the interaction between painting and theatre by paradoxically obscuring the stage and the moving objects behind it. In the last scene of the performance, the live enactment of abstract painterly aesthetics is substituted for a virtual cinematic emanation, fully unsettling the traditional dramatic way of seeing. Whereas the preceding scene still used the three-dimensionality of the theatre space and flattened it using 52 Jeroen Coppens the veil, the last part exchanges the semitransparent veil for a non-transparent projection screen. Here, Castellucci reduces theatre to a two-dimensional flat surface, resembling the spatial and spectatorial logic of watching cinema. This specific intermediality of theatre and cinema thoroughly challenges the DNA of theatre as a live event: Is it still possible to speak of a live event unfolding in a delineated space and in front of an audience, when the only thing that happens is a two-dimensional projection of colours and shapes? This question is not easy to answer, but it is beyond dispute that this scene introduces a cinematic viewing experience within the theatre. Interestingly, the performance ends with the appearance of singer Lavinia Bertotti (whose role is simply called ‘ The Voice ’ ) and thus reintroduces a theatrical way of seeing. Bertotti theatrically drawing the curtains shut at the end of the performance epitomises the confrontation between cinema and theatre beautifully. M.#10 Marseille consists of an intricate integration of different non-live reproductive media (painting, photography, sculpture and cinema) into the live setting of the theatre. The performance challenges these media step by step, by theatricalizing them and making them into a live event. In this sense, M.#10 Marseille is a showpiece of an intermedial performance, in which theatre stages other media. Importantly, however, the performance also progressively questions the nature of theatre as a live event itself. In other words: the theatre functions not as an independent hypermedium that merely integrates other, non-live media, but rather as a medium that is profoundly influenced and altered by the media with which it interacts. As a result, the performance opens up an ‘ in-between ’ position 20 that not only challenges the ontologies of the various media involved, but also puts on the line traditional modes of looking at theatre, by pulling the audience out of its comfort zone. This becomes clear when we look at Mitchell ’ s last class of metapictures, which he calls dialectical images. These images “ [. . .] illustrate the co-existence of contrary or simply different readings in the single image, a phenomenon called ‘ multistability ’” . 21 As an example he refers to the infamous Duck- Rabbit, an ambiguous image representing both animals that became well-known in the field of Gestalt psychology. Mitchell argues that multistable images have a “ [. . .] discursive or contextual self-reference; [their] reflexivity depends upon [their] insertion into a reflection on the nature of visual representation ” . 22 The progressive interaction between painting, photography, sculpture, cinema and theatre in M.#10 Marseille presents us with a similar kind of self-referential multistability. In its intricate integration of these media, the performance is not completely theatre, nor is it completely photography or sculpture, painting or cinema, but something in between. In other words: the performance opens up a multistable experience that is characterised by the liveness of the theatre and the non-liveness of the other reproductive media that are staged within the setting of the performance. Similarly, Mitchell argues that the Gestalt experience can be a dialectic switching Fig. 5: Joseph Jastrow - The Duck Rabbit (1900). Source: Mitchell, Picture Theory, p. 46. 53 The Image as an Event between the different aspects of the metapicture (the duck or the rabbit, liveness or non-liveness), but it can also be a simultaneous awareness of the different layers of the image. In line with Wittgenstein, he suggests that “ [. . .] it is possible to see the drawing as ‘ the Duck-Rabbit ’ , a form which is neither one nor the other, but both or neither ” . 23 In this way, M.#10 Marseille stages the image in theatre as a clash of different temporalities, conventions and aesthetics that issues from the interaction of different media (theatre, painting, photography, sculpture and cinema). Image & Eventisation What is more, the performance is not only a hybrid that combines a live medium (theatre) and other non-live reproductive media; it is also a hybrid between the image on the one hand and theatre on the other, between visuality and event. M.#10 Marseille is devised as a performance in which the threedimensional theatre stage is gradually reduced to the two-dimensionality of the picture plane and the cinematic screen. In doing so, the performance stages the image as an event that unfolds live, in the temporary framework and the spatial logic of the theatre. In other words: the theatre creates an alternative time and space for the image, in effect contaminating the image with the temporally transient and spatially limited nature of theatre. This eventisation of the image has numerous consequences, three of which we will look at here. When discussing multistable images, Mitchell argues that they create a vortex-effect; they bring about “ [. . .] a sense that the image greets or hails or addresses us, that it takes the beholder into the game, enfolds the observer as object for the ‘ gaze ’ of the picture ” . 24 The vortex-effect can best be understood as a constant movement between being taken in by the image and having a meta-awareness about how the image operates. In this sense, the spectator is put in an in-between position, 25 in which his/ her involvement in what is seen increases and the awareness about how one sees grows as well. In the case of M.#10 Marseille, the vortex-effect creates a radically subjective way of seeing. Castellucci chooses the strategy of denarrativisation in order to play with different spectatorial attitudes. As the performance progresses more and more toward an abstract visual scenography, it moves away from narrative and its focalising logic (that was still at work in the first scene of the performance). By gradually taking away the narrative grip, M.#10 Marseille gently assigns the spectator a more active role in the process of looking, in which the subjective aspects of seeing (personal associations, connections and experiences) become more important as the performance moves to greater visual abstraction. As such, the performance introduces a new mode of subjective perception in which the spectator actively and personally engages with what is seen. In this way, it could be said that the spectator becomes the main focaliser for creating a personal narrative, a subjective meaning from what is seen. In Focalizing Bodies (2011), Maya van den Heuvel-Arad argues that the body of the performer can serve as a visual narrator and an external focaliser in narrative-based postdramatic theatre. 26 In the analysis of different case studies, she shows how the body of the performer can take on the role of a focaliser of narrative action through verbal description or bodily presence, like the camera does visually in film. 27 Focalisation is the process that draws attention to the position from which things, people and events are seen and also how this subjective position mediates the 54 Jeroen Coppens vision presented to us. Focalization helps to clarify how such subjective positions implied within the address presented to us by, for example, theatre performances, invite us to take up these positions, identifying with the point of view they present us with. 28 Although M.#10 Marseille moves beyond (visual) narrative, the narratological concept of focalisation is interesting in understanding an important shift in the focalising action that takes place during the performance. Whereas the performance opens with a classical dramatic set-up, in which the focalising agents are the performers who verbally focus the spectator ’ s attention on a narrative, the second part of the performance leaves this focalising agency completely open. Devoid of any human presence onstage, the visual scenography of light, colours and shapes no longer narrates, nor does it guide the spectator through a well-delineated dramatic action. Here, the performance merely stages the image as an affective event. As a result, the spectator is left with a radically de-narrativised visual dramaturgy that invites him/ her to take up the role of an external focaliser that falls back on subjective experiences, associations and connections in order to make sense (or even narrative meaning, if at all possible) of the image as a theatrical event. In this way, M. #10 Marseille draws attention to the subjective relation between the subject and object of seeing, illustrating the spectator ’ s constitutive relationship within representation. In addition to an increased involvement in what is seen, the eventisation of the image also (and Mitchell would argue, simultaneously) creates a meta-awareness of the mediatedness of the image; a meta-reflection on the respective spatial and temporal conditions of all media involved. As M.#10 Marseille combines temporalities that are in sharp contrast with one another, the performance effectively deconstructs image politics and the politics of vision of these media. In this way, the performance itself becomes self-reflective and brings up issues of theatre itself as an image-producing medium and its underlying politics. We have already mentioned the difficult question of the liveness of theatre in the last part of the performance, in which the audience only sees a projection of virtual forms, colours and shapes. Here, the viewer experience resembles more that of cinema than of theatre. Analogously, the different scenes of the performance create ambiguous modes of looking that vacillate between the different media, resulting in a hybrid performance that is not just theatre, painting, sculpture, photography or cinema, but a complex mixture of all of them. This intricate combination furthers an active engagement with the image, the performance pulls the audience out of its passive comfort zone, positioning the spectator between media, their temporalities and ways of looking. As such, M.#10 Marseille pushes for an active involvement of the spectator in what is seen. In this way, the performance promotes the individual gaze of the spectator to the centre of meaning-making. In its intricate staging of the image (and of media) as performance, M.#10 Marseille becomes a self-critical and self-aware visual dramaturgy, a ‘ critical vision machine ’ that reflects on the processes of making and perceiving images. 29 Rather than being a mere exercise in deconstructing ways of seeing, theatre here also becomes political, as it shows how mediation works. In positioning different media within the time and space of the theatre, M.#10 Marseille offers a reflection on the effects of mediation and even on image formation. Consequently, the performance stimulates an awareness of how images work, and can even play a part in the much debated need for ‘ visual literacy ’ , the skill of being able to read and interpret images as complex social, 55 The Image as an Event cultural and medial constructions, 30 which has, without a doubt, become paramount in today ’ s highly technological society and its cultures of mediation. Bringing Images to Life There is, however, another very important consequence of the eventisation of the image, which we will illustrate by returning to M.#10 Marseille once more. The performance accomplishes a magical fascination with the image coming to life on the theatre stage, which is not merely a mental but also a visceral, bodily act. In the different scenes, Castellucci experiments with bringing the image to life in the spatio-temporal structure of the theatre. In the first part, this happens quite literally, when the conversation of the married couple is interrupted time and again by tableaux vivants. Here, live performers turn still-life images into living images, embodying their poses and expressions in a choreography of arrested movement. This becomes even more explicit in the second part of the performance, when the visual language of minimalist painters is brought onstage and to life, visualising their paintings as choreographies that happen in the shared time and space that is typical for theatre. As such, the performance explores an animistic attitude toward the image as a live and living entity, turning theatre into a medium for (re)animating the image. This magical aspect might strike one as strange or antiquated, as contemporary Western culture is mostly critical of animistic practices, rejecting them as customs from a long-forgotten past. Nevertheless, there seems to be an animistic turn (if one wishes to think in the logic and temporality of ‘ turns ’ ) to which Marseille also testifies. Nowadays, there seems to be an impulse to attribute to objects and nonliving entities a sort of spirit and an active skill of interaction. We no longer exclusively use our cell phones to interact with other people; we also talk with the device itself. This fascination with intelligent technologies testifies to the current inclination to humanise our world of (oftentimes technological) objects. This kind of animism is of course far from new, as even the oldest civilisations attributed magical life to images, sculptures and other works of art. What is new, however, is that this animistic attitude has also become a central theme in thinking about visuality. The idea of the image as an active agent has been around for a long time in twentieth-century art history, but it has only recently been taken seriously, when William Mitchell explicitly asked the question “ What do Pictures want? ” . Mitchell proposes thinking of images as living organisms and questioning their desires as if they were alive. He describes this attitude as a ‘ double consciousness ’ ; a double take on images in contemporary culture, treating them not only as mere objects, but oftentimes also as magical entities with their own desires and powers. Mitchell describes this phenomenon as “ vacillating between magical beliefs and sceptical doubts, naive animism and hardheaded materialism, mystical and critical attitudes ” . 31 This double consciousness can be seen at work in iconophobia, the fear of the potential of images, which often results in censorship and iconoclasm. But it can also been seen in its counterpart: idolatry, the practice in which images are worshipped as mysterious godly creatures. Both practices attest to an animism that recognises the image not merely as an object, but as an entity that has powers and a life of its own. M.#10 Marseille creates this kind of double consciousness, staging the image in theatre as a self-reflective and critical device for questioning image politics and politics of vision, while at the same time 56 Jeroen Coppens reviving the image as a magical entity, as a living image that fascinates and enthrals audiences. In this way, Castellucci positions the theatre as a space both for reflection and critical thought and for poetic and mystical fascination. Steering a middle course between deconstruction and fascination, between the critical and the mystical, this approach heralds a new and interesting way of dealing with visuality, going beyond iconoscepticism and moving in the direction of an iconocritical attitude towards the image. This (re)animation of the image has become paramount in contemporary theatre, albeit that how images are brought to life takes on radically different forms. To conclude, we will look at So Little Time (2016) by Rabih Mroué, and investigate how the performance reanimates the image in a radically different way than Romeo Castellucci ’ s M. #10 Marseille. So Little Time takes as its subject matter the imagery surrounding martyrdom and, specifically, the problematic case of the Lebanese martyr Deeb Al- Asmar. He was believed to be the first martyr to die for the Palestinian cause in 1968. In 1972, a statue of him was unveiled in Beirut and the square in which it stood was renamed after him. Al-Asmar achieved a legendary status and became a symbol of the Palestinian/ Lebanese resistance. But it was a great surprise, when in 1974, during a prisoner exchange with Israel, Deeb Al- Asmar was returned to Lebanon alive. Now, the public was confronted with a presumed martyr who had not done that which defines martyrdom: namely, dying in a violent conflict. He was now a “ living martyr ” , embodying a paradox which neither he nor the Lebanese community really came to terms with. It was discussed whether his statue should be taken down or whether at least the plaque underneath it should be changed from ‘ martyr ’ to ‘ released Lebanese captive ’ . During the civil war in Lebanon, his statue was finally removed, and Al-Asmar was himself responsible for finding refuge for it in an art school. Some years later, Al- Asmar discovered that the students of the art school had made hundreds of copies of the statue to practice their craftsmanship. Frustrated by the renouncement of his legendary status, Al-Asmar self-financed an endeavour in which hundreds of these copies were installed in the city centre of Beirut at night and in great secrecy, without official approval. After some months, finally the Lebanese regime discovered that Al-Asmar was responsible for this action, ordered the statues to be removed, and ordered Al-Asmar to pay a heavy fine. In So Little Time, actress Lina Majdalanie tells this story quite like a documentary, with a very modest dramaturgy. During her story, she shows photographs of her and Rabih Mroué, and puts them in a basin with water, in which the photographs dissolve and once again become white sheets of paper. In the final scene of the performance, Majdalanie hangs them on a waxed thread one by one, creating a screen on which images of Al- Asmar, who went missing in a subsequent phase of the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict, are projected. When the performance ends, Majdalanie does not return to the stage to take a bow, alluding to the disappearance of Al-Asmar, who remains missing to this day. So Little Time raises the question of the social and cultural life of images. It shows how images are born, go through a crisis, sometimes die, and more often than not are resurrected in a different shape and form. Telling the story of Al-Asmar, Mroué shows how one man becomes a martyr, how people become symbols and how images become idols of worship. He illustrates how people take a leap of faith toward an image, but also unveils the crisis of faith that ensues when the idol transforms into idolatry. In particular, the dramaturgy of the performance suggests quite poetically that images are not 57 The Image as an Event the stable, material entities we would like them to be, but rather that they are surfaces on which communities (and, importantly, also stakeholders in a conflict) can project different values, ranging from ‘ martyr ’ and ‘ hero ’ to ‘ captive ’ , ‘ coward ’ and even ‘ spy ’ . Most importantly, the performance lays bare how communities bestow images with a life that is of course influenced by that community, but that the images nevertheless still take on a life of their own. Interestingly, the dramaturgy also has a self-reflective layer, most specifically in the fact that pictures of the artists (Rabih Mroué and Lina Majdalanie) are shown and subsequently dissolve in the basin of water. Here, the performance shows itself to be aware as a medium that, once again, ‘ reanimates ’ the image of the living martyr, of Al-Asmar as a multistable and hybrid metapicture between life and death. Conclusion Both Castellucci and Mroué stage the image in theatre as an event, albeit in different ways. Castellucci quite literally brings photography, sculpture, and abstract painting, photography and cinema to life by giving the image time and space in the theatre. Mroué, on the other hand, focuses on how images come to life, get to die and are resurrected within a social setting by unveiling the image as a surface of projection for what a community wants do with it. In this sense, both performances stage the image not as an object to be (re)mediated, but as an organism that is very much alive. Importantly, however, both performances are quite aware of their own role in the politics of image-making. Both Marseille and So Little Time engage with their own influence in reanimating and remediating images. As such, they play a crucial role in the lives that their respective images get to live. Returning to the beginning of my paper, Marseille and So Little Time show how theatre can be an interesting laboratory for studying the lives that images live, while at the same time scrutinising the different media and stakeholders that are involved in keeping images alive, killing them or reanimating them. Notes 1 See Maaike Bleeker, Visuality in the Theatre: The Locus of Looking, New York 2008. 2 I initiated this approach in the PhD research project entitled Visually Speaking. A Research into Visual Strategies of Illusions in Postdramatic Theatre (2016) at Ghent University. 3 See Bleeker, Visuality in the Theatre and Alexander Jackob and Kati Röttger, “ Einleitung: Theater, Bild und Vorstellung. Zur Inszenierung des Sehens ” , in: Kati Röttger and Alexander Jackob (eds.), Theatre und Bild. Inszenierungen des Sehens, Bielefeld 2009, pp. 7 - 39. 4 W. J. T. Mitchell, Picture Theory. Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation, Chicago 1994, p. 35. 5 See W. J. T. Mitchell, What do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images, Chicago 2005. 6 See Thomas Crombez, “ Transgressie in de Tragedia Endogonidia door Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio ” , http: / / www.zombrec.be/ srs/ srstransgressie.pdf [accessed 23 July 2017], 2006 and Jeroen Coppens, “ Folding Mutants or Crumbling Hybrids? Of Looking Baroque in Contemporary Theatre and Performance ” , in: Robrecht Vanderbeeken, Christel Stalpaert et. al. (eds.), Bastard or playmate? Adapting Theatre, Mutating Media and Contemporary Performing Arts, Amsterdam 2012, pp. 90 - 101. 7 See Gabriella Calchi Novati, “ Language under Attack: The Iconoclastic Theatre of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio ” , in: Theatre Research International, 34: 1 (2009), pp. 50 - 65 and 58 Jeroen Coppens Ruth Holdsworth, “ Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio and the Relational Image ” , in: Performance Research, 12: 4 (2007), p. 104 - 14 and Kristof Van Baarle, Language: Impossible: Giorgio Agamben en het theatre van Romeo Castellucci, AGENT 4, 2014. 8 Mitchell, Picture Theory, p. 38. 9 See Stijn Bussels and Bram Van Oostveldt, “ De traditie van de tableaux vivants bij de plechtige intochten in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden (1496 - 1635) ” , in: Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 115: 2 (2002), pp. 166 - 180. 10 See Bram Van Oostveldt, Tranen om het Alledaagse. Diderot en het verlangen naar natuurlijkheid in het Brusselse theaterleven in de achttiende eeuw, Verloren 2013, pp. 140 - 143. 11 Mitchell, Picture Theory, p. 56. 12 For an in-depth analysis of photography ’ s fossilising nature, see Roland Barthes, La Chambre Claire, Seuil 1978. He focuses on the memento mori quality of the movement. See also André Bazin, Qu ’ est-ce que le Cinéma? I. Ontologie et Langage, Les Éditions du Cerf 1958, p. 12. Bazin stresses the counterpart of that arresting process, namely photography ’ s process of mummification. 13 Mitchell, Picture Theory, p. 42. 14 Ibid., p. 56. 15 André Eiermann, Postspektakuläres Theater. Die Alterität der Aufführung und die Entgrenzung der Künste, Bielefeld 2009, p. 231. 16 See Michael Siebenbrodt and Lutz Schöbe, Bauhaus. 1919 - 1933, Parkstone International 2012, p. 178 - 179 and Eva Bajkay, “ Hungarians at the Bauhaus. ” in: Peter Weibel (ed.), Beyond Art: A Third Culture, Vienna 2005, pp. 73 - 74. 17 André Eiermann, Postspektakuläres Theater, p. 231. 18 Ibid., p. 233 (translation JC). 19 Ibid., p. 233 and 17. 20 See Kati Röttger, “ Questionner l ’„ Entre “ : Une Approche Méthodologique Pour L ’ Analyse de la Performance Intermédiale ” , in: Jean-Marc Larrue (ed.), Théâtre et Intermédialité, Villeneuve-d ’ Ascq 2015, pp. 117 - 131. 21 Mitchell, Picture Theory, p. 45. 22 Ibid., p. 56. 23 Ibid., p. 74. 24 Ibid., p. 75. 25 See also Röttger, “ Questionner l ’ Entre ” , pp. 126 - 128. 26 Maya van den Heuvel-Arrad, “ Focalizing Bodies. Visual Narratology in the Post-Dramatic Theatre. ” in: Peter Marx, Kati Röttger and Friedemann Kreuder (eds.), Kleine Mainzer Schriften zur Theaterwissenschaft. 20. Marburg 2011, pp. 12 - 13. 27 van den Heuvel-Arrad, Focalizing Bodies, p. 15. 28 Bleeker, Visuality in the Theatre, p. 28. 29 See Bleeker, Visuality in the Theatre. 30 See James Elkins, Visual Literacy, Routledge 2007. 31 W. J. T. Mitchell, What do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images, Chicago 2005, p. 7. 59 The Image as an Event