Subversion and Self-Design in the Age of Digital Technology

Within contemporary globalized, mediatized, augmented and distributed environments representation is more than ever a place of negotiation of relationships between past, present and future. This may result in liberation from previously fixed boundaries and categories defining self and identity, but it could also give rise to new kinds of discipline, the kinds of discipline that Jon McKenzie so aptly describes as the discipline to ‘perform or else’. Taking several works by Lebanese artist Rabih Mroé as its point of departure this lecture elaborates on the potential of art for a critical engagement with this situation.

Maaike Bleeker is a professor of Theatre Studies, and the Head of Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University. Previously she taught at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam, the Piet Zwart Post-Graduate Program in Fine Arts in Rotterdam and the University of Amsterdam. Since 1991, she is also active as dramaturge in theatre and dance. She performed in several lecture performances and ran her own theatre company, Het Oranjehotel (1993-2000). She was the organizer of the 2011 world conference of Performance Studies international, titled Camillo 2.0: Technology, Memory, Experience in Utrecht.

She has written the book Visuality in the Theatre (Palgrave, 2008), published extensively in international journals and edited volumes and edited several books among them Anatomy Live: Performance and the Operating Theatre (AUP 2008). Maaike Bleeker is president of Performance Studies international, PSi.