AMS GROUP B: Petra's comments based on H. Belting

The notions of medium, image and body and the possibilities of theatre (as a site of transformation) .

Images happen or are negotiated between bodies and media. - Belting

So the three parameters in reception and circulation which are at stake (according to Belting) are:

1. Image(s) --> do not exist by themselves; they happen/ take place via transmission. Therefore image is framed by the terms:

• 2. Medium the agent by which images are transmitted and

• 3. Body meaning the performing or perceiving body on which images depend.

How is this important for theatrical performance? Well when brought together in the theatrical space, these parameters can “swap places” meaning when the triangle is physically put together it appears as a non-static exploration in the splitting up of both reception and circulation process, it exposes the mechanisms of medial distribution, of power and violence in our highly mediated society. It is a way of overcoming the complicated relation between the what and how of an image. (The what of an image being what the image serves as an image or to what it relates as an image is steered by the how, shaped by the visual medium in which an image resides). As we all saw with the GGP performance the “device”/”medium” became an ACTOR/(the IMAGE itself)

What striked me this week, during the reflection upon Kati’s lecture, was that this insight in visualization of circulation and perception processes/mechanisms, in theatre as a sight of transformation can not only be explored on a metatheatrical and scholarly level (analysis), it is as much a usable concept in the creative modality as a tool/strategy. There is action. Theatre being part of and present in the world, transformation and reflection.