Present-Day Trends in the Research and Creation of Living Arts in the Academia: A North American Model
Present-Day Trends in the Research and Creation of Living Arts in the Academia: A North American Model

Author(s): Liviu Dospinescu
Subject(s): Theatre, Dance, Performing Arts, Fine Arts / Performing Arts
Published by: Editura ARTES
Keywords: living arts; interdisciplinary; intercultural; University of Laval;
Summary/Abstract: This paper tackles several aspects of the ‟opening towards the Other” that has marked an emancipation trend in the arts of the stage for more than a century; I will name them living arts because, of all the arts, they are distinctly characterized by this essential quality. It also finds its meaning in the institutional decompartmentalization and the opening of disciplinary practices towards the others. Under the sign of the inherent human living presence, the living arts refer to experiences in the whole spectre of the stage arts, coming under a polymorphous subject of research as early as the former half of the 20th century. It includes the most diverse disciplinary aspects, which are no longer just those of the drama, dance and choreography, performance or music, because the disciplinary practices of the other field and also practices from more remote fields like the visual arts, the cinema or those of the languages of new technologies connected, for instance, with the complex projections on the stage or its augmentation through Virtual Reality etc. can be added to it any time. Thus, we can notice how, in an intermedial process, in the meeting of drama and film, drama, as an art of the unmediated and of the living presence, tends to leave a mark (i.e. of the living) on the spectre of the delayed presence of the film in an inter- or even transdiciplinary relation. Therefore, the paper explores phenomena around the meeting of distinct entities under the interdisciplinary and intercultural aspects that mark the strong current interest in alterity and hybridity in the stage act but also in the new modes of perception in which the spectator is invited to engage or in the new interpretation grids demanded of the researcher. I will enrich this perspective by offering a few present-day reserach and creation trends in the living arts in the academia. They are extracted from my experience of both research-creation and doctoral project coordination. I share this experience in order to reveal a distinctiveness of research and creation at University of Laval, Québec and, at a larger scale, a trend or maybe even a model for the North American space. Apart from its descriptive aspects, my paper aims at raising new questions, inspire new possibilities and reinforcing new contributions in the research and creation of living arts.

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