Led by Aura Satz.

Spring Term 2005

The course sets out to explore the catholic notion of transubstantiation as a theological, metaphorical and artistic concept of becoming-real, and how this translates into mechanics of belief, disbelief and suspension of disbelief.

Since early Christian times the consecrated host had been considered a sacramental sign or symbol. In 1311 it became a material substance capable of transforming into God’s Flesh, of becoming the real presence of Christ, whose “body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar beneath the species of bread and wine; the bread being transubstantiated into the body and the wine into blood, by Divine power.”

The course will focus on the persuasive powers of performance and, vice-versa, the debunking methods of disproof. Starting with the religious context, the course will then look at the history of magic, narratives of becoming real, and theories of performance which resist realism.

Week 1:Hoc Est Corpus (This is my Body)

The Catholic notion of the Transubstantiation as theological and metaphorical concept.

Primary Reading
Camporesi, Piero. “The Consecrated Host: A Wondrous Excess.” Fragments for a History of the Human Body. Vol. 1. Eds. M. Feher, R. Naddaff and N. Tazi. New York: Zone Books, 1989, 220-37.
Warner, Marina. “Hoc Est Corpus.” No Go to the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling and Making Mock. London:
Chatto & Windus, 1998, 126-135.
Secondary Reading
Burnham, Douglas & Enrico Giaccherini (Eds.), The Poetics of Transubstantiation: From Theology to Metaphor, Ashgate Press, 2005

Week 2: Hocus Pocus

Non-transubstantiation, Protestant disbelief and debunking mechanics. The survival of catholic transubstantiation symbolism in magic and conjuring.

Primary Reading
During, Simon. “Enchantment and Loss: Theorizing Secular Magic” in Modern Enchantments: The Cultural and Secular Power of Magic, Harvard: 2002, pp. 43-73.
Schmidt, Leigh Eric. “From Demon Possession to Magic Show: Ventriloquism, Religion, and the Enlightenment.” Church History 67, 2 (June 1998): 274-304.
Secondary Reading
Brewster, David. Letters on Natural Magic. London: John Murray, 1834.
Poulsen, Frederik. “Talking, Weeping, and Bleeding Statues: A Chapter in Religious Fraud.” Acta Archaeologica 16 (1945): 178-95.
Scot, Reginald. The Discoverie of Witchcraft. New York: Dover, 1972.
Stafford, Barbara Maria. Artful Science, The MIT Press, 1994.

Week 3: Becoming Real

Stories of dolls coming to life in childhood: Pinocchio, The Velveteen Rabbit, etc.

Primary Reading
Collodi, C. The Adventures of Pinocchio: Story of a Puppet, Trans. Nicolas J. Perella. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985.
Williams, Margery. The Velveteen rabbit, or How Toys Become Real. London: Heinemann, 1970
Films:
Walt Disney, Pinocchio (1940)
Jan Svankmajer, Little Otik (2001)
Secondary Reading
Kuznets, L.R. When Toys Come Alive: Narratives of Animation, Metamorphosis, and Development. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994.

Week 4: Pygmalionic yearning

The statue/automata and its lover, from Pygmalion to Coppelia.

Primary Reading
Bettini, Maurizio. “Loving Statues.” Identity and Alterity: Figures of the Body 1895/1995. Venice: 46th Venice Biennale, Marsilio, 1995.
Hoffmann, E.T.A. “ “The Sandman.” 1817. Tales. Ed. V. Lange. Trans. L.J. Kent and E.C. Knight. New York: Continuum, 1982, 277-308.
Secondary Reading
Carr, J.L. “Pygmalion and the Philosophes: The Animated Statue in Eighteenth-Century France.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 23 (1960): 235-55.
Bettini, Maurizio. The Portrait of the Lover, trans. Laura Gibbs. California: University of California Press,1999

Week 5: Non-Transubstantiation

Estranging performance techniques of anti-illusionism and non-becoming real: Bertolt Brecht, Edward Gordon Craig, Puppet-like acting.

Primary Reading
Craig, Edward Gordon. “The Actor and the Über-marionette.” The Mask 1, 2 (April 1908): 3-15.
Brecht, Bertolt, “On Chinese Acting", trans. E. Bentley, Brecht Sourcebook, eds. Carol Martin and Henry Bial., London and New York: Routledge, 2000, pp. 1-22.
Brecht, Bertolt. “Short Description of a New Technique of Acting which Produces the Alienation Effect,” trans. and ed. Willett, John, Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, London: Methuen, 1964, pp. 136-147
Held, Phoebe von and Aura Satz. “This is (Not), My Body: Brecht’s Anti-Religion Revisisted.” Always Both Faces. Eds. N. Bryson and A. Renton. London: Slade School of Fine Art, 2000, 94-105.

Week 6: Performing the Real

Practical seminar tbc

General Bibliography

Burnham, Douglas & Enrico Giaccherini (Eds.), The Poetics of Transubstantiation: From Theology to Metaphor, Ashgate Press, 2005
Gross, Kenneth. The Dream of the Moving Statue. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992.
Nelson, Victoria. The Secret Life of Puppets. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2002.