Summary: | “Doubleness on the New York Contemporary Experimental Stage: Bodies and Technology” explores the representations of bodies in a corpus of plays by New York artists from the “New American Avant-Garde.” Intermediality, or the co-presence or superimposition of different artistic media, creates dual bodies: technological monsters that are half-human and half-video, grotesque minotaurs at once men and puppets. A “place for viewing,” theatre, theatron, is turned by artists into a showcase displaying post-human bodies. To what extent does the use of technology annihilate or magnify the physical presence of the actor, the traditional soul and raison d’être of the art of the theatre? To answer this question, this paper focuses on works by the pioneering Wooster Group (1975-), the eminent Big Art Group (1999-) and the new rising star of the New York experimental scene, Andrew Schneider (2015-). I develop the concept of doubleness in order to define the nature of the interactions between bodies and technology in the various shows of the artists.
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