Abstract
The final creative acts of French actor/writer Antonin Artaud consisted of numerous (portrait) drawings executed within Eckhartian notions of detachment and letting be. This paper suggests that these drawings articulate a metaphysical middle voice wherein the Heideggerian middle-voiced character of releasement as Gelassenheit is echoed in terms of letting-be. It is from an Eckhartian-Heideggerian releasement and experimental linguistic transformations that the Artaudian (portrait) drawings, evaluated as inseparable from his life and oeuvre, tend toward a middle voice. Along with this posit, Artaud, as a French cinema and theater actor of the continental Surrealist period is considered within the parameters of an actor in Samuel Beckett’s Theater of the Absurd. It is here and in Eckhart where Artaud’s visual middle voice also speaks from a place of experimentation and transformation, experimentation not too dissimilar to what Artaud pines for in his exhortations for the transformation of culture using alchemy as the numinous language in response to the corruption of the organism. As the thesis of this paper imparts an experimental approach to the study of Artaud’s drawings as middle voice, it does so by way of threading disparate disciplines and philosophical thinking as they apply to the impetus of the creative act and a singular enigmatic voice. Herein, the creative act from which Artaud operates will be shown in terms of Gelassenheit, and the mode of the middle voice as an operative linguistic tangentiality of the arts.
Presenters
Hazel Antaramian HofmanAdjunct Instructor, Fine, Performing, Communication Arts, Fresno City College (State Center Community College District-SCCCD), California, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2019 Special Focus—Art as Communication: The Impact of Art as a Catalyst for Social Change
KEYWORDS
Drawing, Language, Heidegger, Eckhart, Alchemy, Gelassenheit, Middle-Voice
Digital Media
This presenter hasn’t added media.
Request media and follow this presentation.
