{"id":616,"date":"2018-11-01T13:58:56","date_gmt":"2018-11-01T13:58:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/?p=616"},"modified":"2022-10-27T13:59:39","modified_gmt":"2022-10-27T13:59:39","slug":"novembre-2018-persian-hippolyte-hybrid-performance-cultures-hybrid-identity-and-hybrid-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/novembre-2018-persian-hippolyte-hybrid-performance-cultures-hybrid-identity-and-hybrid-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"Novembre 2018 – Persian Hippolyte: Hybrid Performance Cultures, Hybrid Identity, and Hybrid Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 2013,\u00a0Goosan Artistic Group, an Iranian group of performance artists, created a promenade performance based on Euripides\u2019s\u00a0Hippolytus<\/em>, in which the spectator became the actor, the actor became the director, the video installation became the corpse, and all of them together stood witness to a performative moment of history: Hippolytus awaiting his verdict in Tehran. The first encounter between the spectator and the character takes place at the very beginning of the promenade. The hyper-real mask of Hippolytus\u2019s dead face can be claimed by each member of the audience. And that is how Goosan, this small group of four young Iranian performers, call their audience to bear witness to the memory and trauma of a historic character reborn in their country, on their stage, among them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this essay, I investigate the transformation that the body of actors go through when confronted with a multitude of technologies\u2014video art, sculpture, surveillance technologies, and in-time-video projection\u2014and the ways in which acting techniques are revisited by the performers. I shall do so by acknowledging the following characteristics in the performance: Throughout the course of the performance, the audience is given the choice of experiencing death by lying on Hippolytus\u2019 death-bed, or putting on his mask, and finally by voting for his destiny, while interacting with the two actors, the director, and the assistant director. Offering the possibilities that are presented through various technologies utilised in the performance, Hippolytus<\/em>challenges its spectator, at once physically and mentally. The four members of the team are from the generation who has experienced a failed election and a failed uprising; they have experienced the consequences of decisions made for them by a government they cannot trust. Yet, they are the generation of social networks and virtual reality. Therefore, in this paper, I shall argue how, through practice of their everyday life performances, they have created a performative palimpsest of the topology of cultural memory, virtual reality, technologies, and aesthetics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


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In 2013, the\u00a0Goosan Artistic Group, a four-person troupe of Iranian performance artists, created a performance loosely based on Euripides\u2019s\u00a0Hippolytus<\/em>, in which the spectators became the actors, the actors became the directors, the video installation became the corpse, and all of them together stood witness to a performative palimpsest of cultures. They named it \u201cHippolyt<\/em>.\u201d In what follows, I shall call it \u201cthe Persian\u00a0Hippolyte<\/em>.\u201d The tripartite structure of this performance consists of the text, the body, and the technology. This Persian\u00a0Hippolyte<\/em>\u00a0performs a real-life manifestation of democracy \u2013 that is, exercising the right to vote. It also draws on the politics of the courtroom, calling upon the audience to judge and to vote. For the act of judgment lies at the heart of all three versions of the myth that inspired this performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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