Temporalities of Reenactment: A Speaker Series, 2011-2012

Maaike Bleeker

Theatre Studies, Utrecht University

(Un)Covering Artistic Thought Unfolding

Following a suggestion by a Dutch dance initiative named Cover, this talk proposes the idea of ‘covering’ as practiced in the context of music as perspective on artistic practices of reenactment. The term ´cover´ points to what is reenacted being artistic creations by other artists, as distinguished from the reenactment of historical situations or events. And also how reenacting these works results in new works, covers. Covers exist in a specific relationship to the original work, the cover being a remake or response to the original work from the position of another artist at a later moment in time. The notion of cover also points to how this relationship is mediated by recordings and documentation. The term ´cover version´ originates from the 1960´s when it was introduced to describe a rival version of a tune recorded to compete with an already released original version. That is, the notion of cover is closely connected to recordings and the recording industry, not to music or songs as live performance.

Maaike Bleeker is a Professor and the Chair of Theatre Studies. She studied Art History, Theatre Studies and Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam where she also completed her PhD on Visuality in the Theatre (2002). Previously, she lectured at the Department of Theatre Studies of the University of Amsterdam, The Piet Zwart Post-Graduate program in Fine Arts (Rotterdam), Media Gn: Centre for Emergent Media (Groningen), The School for New Dance Development (Amsterdam), the post graduate program Arts Performance Theatricality (Antwerp), and in the IPP Performance and Media Studies Summer School of the Johannes Gutenburg Universität, Mainz. Since 1991, she also worked as a dramaturge for various theatre directors, choreographers and visual artists. She performed in several lecture performances, ran her own theatre company (Het Oranjehotel) and translated five plays that were performed by major Dutch theatre companies. She was an Artist in Residence at the Amsterdam School for the Arts (2006-2007) and member of the jury of the Dutch National Theatre Festival TF (2007-2008).

For more information on this speaker series please see our website: http://artsresearch.ucsc.edu/vps/reenactment