Abstracts der Vorlesungsreihe Südosteuropastudien: Theater und Musik

Karl Kaser: Visuelle Kulturen im südöstlichen Europa

27.09.2012, 18 Uhr, Don Juan Archiv Wien

In meinem Referat möchte ich mit einigen Eckpunkten einer dezentrierten Theoriebildung zur Geschichte der visuellen Kulturen im südöstlichen Europa befassen, die sich gegen eine Universalisierung westlicher visueller Kulturentwicklung wendet: These 1: Das mechanisch-reproduzierbare Bild wurde im südöstlichen Europa erst Jahrhunderte, die Fotografie einige Jahrzehnte und das digitale Bild nur mehr einige Wochen nach seiner Einführung im Westen akzeptiert. Diese These spricht für ein dynamisches Veränderungspotenzial visueller Kulturen in dieser Region. These 2: Das westliche Verlaufsmodell der Entfaltung visueller Kultur kann nicht auf die nichtwestliche Welt angewendet werden, da dies zu Erkenntnisirritationen führen muss. Seit der Einführung der Kamera sind die visuellen Kulturen des südöstlichen Europa nicht mehr unabhängig von denen des Westens, sie stellen jedoch keine Imitationen dar. Zu den zahlreichen „Widerstandsprojekten“, die bestrebt waren, den Verwestlichungstendenzen entgegenzuarbeiten, zählen die Fotoalben Sultan Abdülhamids, das kemalistische Visualisierungsprojekt oder der jugoslawische Film. These 3: Erst die Fotografie leitet die Säkularisierung visueller Kulturen im südöstlichen Europa ein. Diese These beinhaltet, dass die Sehtraditionen bis dahin von religiösen Blicken geleitet waren. These 4: Die Gesellschaften des südöstlichen Europa sind im Großen und Ganzen weniger säkular, als viele westliche Gesellschaften. Diese These argumentiert, dass in semisäkularen Gesellschaften wie den südosteuropäischen religiöse Blickweisen noch immer von Bedeutung sind. These 5: Bestimmte Arten der visuellen Repräsentation wurden zu wichtigen Instrumenten der Dokumentation und Ausübung asymmetrischer Machtbeziehungen zwischen „dem Westen“ und „dem Orient“ auf der einen und zwischen „dem Westen“ und „dem Balkan“ auf der anderen Seite. Diese These besagt nichts Anderes, als dass es der südosteuropäischen Region lediglich in einzelnen Phasen bzw. über einzelne Projekte gelungen ist, Bilder von sich selbst in der westlichen Welt zu etablieren, die nicht den gängigen Klischees entsprechen. These 6: Die Gesellschaften des südöstlichen Europa waren und sind tief patriarchalisch geprägt, was sich auch in der visuellen Repräsentation widerspiegelt. Dies drückt sich etwa in Familienfotografien oder im jugoslawischen Film, der ein beinahe ausschließlich männliches Projekt darstellte, aus.

Maximilian Hartmuth: Die kunsthistorische Entdeckung des Balkans durch die Wiener Wissenschaft nach 1850

29.11.2012, 18 Uhr, Don Juan Archiv Wien

Der Binnenbalkan war zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts einer zeitgenössischen Wortmeldung zufolge noch so wenig bekannt wie das Innere Afrikas. Die Tatsache, dass die Region überhaupt ein bedeutsames künstlerisches Erbe aufzuweisen hatte, schien nicht wenige der „Entdecker“ zu überraschen. Ihre Karrieren waren meist mit der Reichshauptstadt verbunden, deren Einrichtungen die kunsthistorische Erschließung Südosteuropas vor dem ersten Weltkrieg maßgeblich förderten. Ziel meines Vortrags ist, das wissenschaftliche Interesse an der Region nach 1850 zu verfolgen und dabei auch der Frage nachzugehen, warum sich Wien, trotz vielsprechenden Anfängen und räumlicher Nähe, nicht dauerhaft als Zentrum der Balkan-Kunstgeschichtsforschung etablieren konnte.

Alexandros Charkiolakis: The notion of the enemy in the Greek operatic world of the 19^th and 20^th centuries

24.01.2013, 18 Uhr, Don Juan Archiv Wien

Opera has been a major and vital element contributing to the firm establishment of the Greek National School during the first decade of the 20^th century, following the trends of other national schools appearing around or before that time. However, opera was not a newly-appearing trend developing during the 20^th century in Athens. Opera was well-established in the Ionian islands, both in terms of being produced and being composed, and musicians such as Pavlos Carrer, Spyridon Samaras and others created a large impact not only in the Heptanisa but also in Italy, France and elsewhere.

The national element has been present in several cases and although the Greek National School was firmly established in 1908 with a manifesto that was presented by Manolis Kalomiris, the Greek operatic world dealt with the patriotic sentiment long before that.

During several periods in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, the historical circumstances gave composers the opportunity to express themselves through the notion of the heroic, directing the subjects of their works towards the awakening of national pride, contributing to the nationalistic ideas that were developing during each period. Heroism and heroic deeds of the past were the perfect materials for this purpose.  

In this paper, I will try to show the icon, the notion of the enemy in some of these nationalistic and patriotic works.

Jelena Todorović: The Past Revisited: the Baroque allegorical theatre of the Serbian Orthodox Archbishops of Sremski Karlovci in the 18the century

11.04.2013, 18 Uhr, Don Juan Archiv Wien

The Archbishopric of Karlovci was created in the Habsburg Empire in 1690 when Patriarch Arsenije III and his Serbian subjects fled into Austrian lands ahead of the invading Ottomans. From then on, the struggle for the recognition of a minority religion in the Catholic Empire was a constant diplomatic battle, played out with spectacle and ceremony. Considering the difficult position of the Orthodox Archbishopric within the Catholic Empire, the use of different forms of ceremonial language was highly peculiar – triumphal entries, pastoral installations and allegorical theatre had a specific form of their own. They always existed in that liminal space between the political reality and political fiction reflecting the position of the Archbishopric as the shadow state within the Empire.

Like other forms of ephemeral spectacle, theatre was also used as a means of confirmation of the political status and preservation of the Archbishopric’s relative independence in the Empire. In this chapter I shall discuss the theatrical practice in the Archbishopric that began in the 1730s in the form of school theatre, which was attached to the court in Karlovci,- under the direction of Manuil Kozachinskii.

It was the arrival of Manuil Kozachinskii in 1733 that marked the foundations of Serbian school theatre and of ephemeral spectacles on a larger scale in Karlovci. Educated in the Spiritual Academy and a disciple of Prokopovich, Kozachinskii wrote such important works as a Treatise on Philosophy even before he came to Karlovci and took part in several theatre productions of the Academy. He was to write the first Serbian play, the central point of my discussion, his Tragi-comedy, or the Tale of the Tragic Death of the Emperor Uroš, stage it, and direct it in honour of his patron, Archbishop Vikentije Jovanović. On this example I would discuss the importance of the allegorical political theatre and the school drama for the spectacles of state and power in the Archbishopric.

Ana Hofman: Politics of popular music in post-Yugoslav cultural spaces

23.05.2013, 18 Uhr, Don Juan Archiv Wien

The emergence of new interpretations, the revitalization and mobilization of the socialist ideas and values ignited by the current global crisis, engenders complex memory practices in post-socialist societies. The potential of sound practices to capture the turbulence, unpredictability and elusiveness of the current global moment facilitates the mobilization of diverse temporal, spatial and affective technologies. In the post-Yugoslav spaces, these tendencies are even more apparent, since the socialist “living past” in the post-Yugoslav soundscapes has never properly been revived. As a matter of fact, on various levels it never quite stopped to exist (even during the Yugoslav war through informal musical networks, diasporic communities, illegal music markets, see Baker 2006; Vidić Rasmussen 2007). The “new sincerity,” to put it in Alexei Yurchak's words, as a new way of more radical and proactive recalling of the socialist past is spreading like a virus through the post-Yugoslav spaces, where what was dismissed as nostalgic memories of the good old days, is gaining potent social, cultural and political charge. Still, these are not unifying discourses, but essentially disperse, hybrid, contested, fluid, elusive – mediated by the polyphony of agendas and voices that can be active and also transformed in unexpected ways.

The lecture provides an overview of the existent approaches dealing with Yugoslav sound practices in post-Yugoslav spaces. It critically addresses the potentials and limits of the concept of Yugonostalgia, overemphasized in approaching the issues of music and memory politics. While there are attempts to discuss the expression, shape and constraint of emotions associated with the Yugoslav music through its social, cultural and political consequences, these remain focused either on the transnational potential of music to overcome national borders or its commercial manipulation or commodification. I propose new readings of the narratives of “nostalgic acts,” affective, emotional, irrational by employing/adapting the theories of sonic affect and its political capacity in building new socio-temporal collectivities based on shared memories. I call for taking a “holistic angle” in the current discussion concerning sound, the senses and memory, currently reduced to the concept of nostalgia. To do this, I draw on the new theoretical insights in the field of ethnomusicology, popular music, and sound studies which theorize the affective potential of sound (Michael Bull and Les Back 2003, Butler 2006, McClelland 2010, Garcia 2011). The holistic perspective enables, from the perspective of the sonic affect and other elements of affective environment, a joint deliberation of the complex narratives of heritage, tradition, memory, nostalgia, spatiality, communality, which are usually addressed separately.

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