Audiences’ transformative potential: A performing arts journey from Madrid to Medellín

TY - CHAP

T1 - Audiences’ transformative potential

T2 - A performing arts journey from Madrid to Medellín

AU - Martin, Diana González

PY - 2024/4/24

Y1 - 2024/4/24

N2 - This article aims to explore how transformation works in aesthetic experiences. In order to answer this huge question, I will start by defining “transformation”, taking the approaches of Richard Schechner (1994) and Erika Ficher-Lichte (2008; 2017) as my point of departure. Secondly, I will focus on how the aesthetic and ethical dimension of artistic forms is reshaped by audiences, and how audiences are impacted by these artistic forms. Specifically, I will reflect on my experiences of audience analysis of the play Donde el bosque se espesa by Micomicón in Madrid (Spain) in 2017 within the framework of the European Union project Unsettling Remembering and Social Cohesion in Transnational Europe (UNREST, 2016-2019). I will put into perspective my previous research experiences with audiences in the light of my current research collaboration with Colombian partners and their work with communities that have experienced violence during the armed conflict in that country (1960s – 2016), framed within the research project called TransMigrArts (2022-2025). In the framework of the peacebuilding process in Colombia, the research programme La Paz es una Obra de Arte (Peace is a Work of Art) LPOA (Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín) intends to transform the ways in which vulnerable communities address their difficult past using clown interventions as a tool. Finally, my proposal is epistemological, because it is concerned with the importance of acknowledging that the European academy has a lot to learn from the methodologies implemented in universities in Latin America.

AB - This article aims to explore how transformation works in aesthetic experiences. In order to answer this huge question, I will start by defining “transformation”, taking the approaches of Richard Schechner (1994) and Erika Ficher-Lichte (2008; 2017) as my point of departure. Secondly, I will focus on how the aesthetic and ethical dimension of artistic forms is reshaped by audiences, and how audiences are impacted by these artistic forms. Specifically, I will reflect on my experiences of audience analysis of the play Donde el bosque se espesa by Micomicón in Madrid (Spain) in 2017 within the framework of the European Union project Unsettling Remembering and Social Cohesion in Transnational Europe (UNREST, 2016-2019). I will put into perspective my previous research experiences with audiences in the light of my current research collaboration with Colombian partners and their work with communities that have experienced violence during the armed conflict in that country (1960s – 2016), framed within the research project called TransMigrArts (2022-2025). In the framework of the peacebuilding process in Colombia, the research programme La Paz es una Obra de Arte (Peace is a Work of Art) LPOA (Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín) intends to transform the ways in which vulnerable communities address their difficult past using clown interventions as a tool. Finally, my proposal is epistemological, because it is concerned with the importance of acknowledging that the European academy has a lot to learn from the methodologies implemented in universities in Latin America.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85197190609&partnerID=8YFLogxK

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 9782875744647

T3 - Dramaturgies Texts, Cultures and Performances

SP - 283

EP - 302

BT - On Spectatorship

A2 - Abuín González, Anxo

A2 - Pérez Rasilla, Eduardo

PB - Peter Lang

CY - Bruxelles

ER -