Session 9: Intellectuals and Aesthetics
Session 9: Intellectuals and Aesthetics
Chair: Eleonora Narvselius
Augusto Boal’s Intellectual Theatre Pedagogy and Its Encounters with Aristotle’s Notion of Tragedy.
Ebru Gokdag
Performing Arts Department, Anadolu University, Eskisehir, Turkey
As an intellectual Augusto Boal, creator of Theatre of the Oppressed, began his career by deconstructing the Western traditional theatre in intellectual encounters with Aristotle. To understand the originality of Boal’s intellectual theatre pedagogy, one should begin with Aristotle and his Poetics since Augusto Boal almost from the very beginning of his thinking about theatre, challenged accepted notions, which, Aristotle put forth in his Poetics. ?n this article, I will try to describe Boal’s challenge to Aristotle. Based on Aristotle’s Poetics, I will analyse the description of tragedy, briefly focusing on specific concepts and their meanings. Especially, as being the critical conscious of theatrical culture, how Aristotle, in his notions of tragedy, consciously and methodically employ the concept of catharsis and this concept’s impact on, not to reach the truth, but, to reach a palatable conclusion. Focusing, the concept of catharsis I will attempt to explore how it is used as a perfect mean to obstruct human beings increadable capacity to inquire.
Eventually, I will try to expalin why Boal’s intellectual theatre pedagogy interprets catharsis as a concept aimed at intimidation, asserting that much of Western theatre practice constitiutes a coercive system. ?n my inquiry, I will search whether there is space in Boalean poetics for the concept of catharsis. And I will try to explain A. Boal’s grounbreaking alternative concept called “dynamisation” and how it attempts to overcome audience pacification and acceptance of society as it is and motivate change in society through action. How as an intellectual Boal plays role in the contemporary theatre life in enableing the audiences to think, act and take control of the drama not only the one rehearsed in the theatre but also the one practiced in the real world.
An Intellectual in the Theatre Scene: Euripides
Suleyman Ýnceefe
Performing Arts Department, Anadolu University, Eskisehir, Turkey
Euripides (approx. 480-405 B.C) unlike the approaches of authors before him, did not work on formation of truth instead he inquried truth. Euripides, did not regard metaphysics, excluded conventions, prioritised mind criticism and scepticism. ?t can be said that Euripides is the first intellectual who has spaced the door to critical and inquiring mind. At the core of this tought lies his believe in human beings and its capabilities. Conceiving human being as a key value, dealing with it realistically, and critically inquiring its place in society and universe are the basic dynamics in the core of Euripides’s intellectual passion.
This paper studies Euripides we encounter in the depts of history and the intellectual sources he employes in his playwriting. The process the author uses in formating a dramatic text and contributions of his intellectual internalizations will be analyzed. Also, Euripides’s possible contributions to shaping and approaching today’s art and theatre with an intellectual perception will be presented.
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Architect Sinan: An Intellectual Design in 16th century Ottoman Capital
Selen Onur
Faculty of Architecture, Istanbul Kultur University, Istanbul, Turkey
An intellectual has tended to be seen as a symbol of his era, not only as an individual of extraordinary achievement in his field. His professional career must be evaluated with its extansions to the society which he was a member. In this paper, an intellectual approach in rebuilding the social and cultural life in a religion based society by an architect in a capital city like Istanbul, will be discussed. Architect Sinan, whom we see the nature of classical Ottoman society, its institutions, its creative atmosphere and its dynamic structure in his works, is a historical figure in Turkish culture today as much as in his times of 1550’s. His universality, can best be explained by the synthesis and tolerance: the two features of the Ottoman inheritance. It enlightened the Ottoman cultural background and put out a new Mediterranean rationalism; where nomad and Islamic figures met Rome and Byzantium.
The conquest of Constantinople was a milestone for Ottoman Empire and there has to be something effective to show and reflect Imperial’s power and authority in Istanbul. It is definitely true that there was a relation between the potential of Sinan’s time and his art. He didn’t get an architectural education. Working as a soldier in his young ages, Architect Sinan showed his ability by designing bridges between unreachable peaks, ships to cross the lakes. After he returned to Istanbul, he became the master architect of the Imperial. He gained his knowledge from far lands of the Imperial and came out with new ideas as he impacted on social and cultural life of the capital city by building structures for gathering the spiritual and daily life together.
Sinan’s art was based on change, search and discovery and can be described as creative and regenerative. He was an “artiste-constructeur” as Viollet-le Duc called. After thousand years Hagia Sofia was built by I. Iustinianos’s physicists and mathematicians, Architect Sinan was known to be the Euclid and the most successful engineer of his era. It was not a coincidence that unreachable examples of pattern, technic and color schemes of Turkish tile art were dressed up his works. Beyond his architectural and engineering abilities, he played a catalytic role in art and aesthetics. Until 20th c., Architect Sinan was a symbol of Turkish arcitecture, so as an intellectual wills to be.
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