Erika Fischer-Lichte

Erika Fischer-Lichte (2017) at the Römerberg Talks in Frankfurt am Main

Erika Fischer-Lichte (born June 25, 1943 in Hamburg ) is a German theater scholar .

Life

Erika Fischer-Lichte studied theater studies , Slavic , German , philosophy , psychology and education at the Free University of Berlin (FU) and at the University of Hamburg from 1963 to 1970 . Fischer-Lichte was founded in 1972 in the subject Slavic Studies at the Free University Berlin on the Polish playwright Juliusz Słowacki doctorate . In 1973 she became a professor at the Institute for German Language and Literature at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main . In 1986 Fischer-Lichte took over the chair for general and comparative literature at the University of Bayreuth and in 1991 became director of the Institute for Theater Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz .

Erika Fischer-Lichte has been a professor at the Institute for Theater Studies at the Free University of Berlin since 1996 . From 1999 to 2010 Fischer-Lichte acted as spokeswoman for the DFG - Collaborative Research Center 447 Cultures of the Performative . Furthermore, Fischer-Lichte heads the research project “Aesthetic Experience as Threshold Experience” within the framework of the Collaborative Research Center Aesthetic Experience in the Sign of the Dissolution of Boundaries in the Arts and is the spokesperson for the International Research Training Group Inter Art . Since 2008 she and Gabriele Brandstetter have been leading the international research college for the interweaving of theater cultures / Interweaving Performance Cultures .

Research activity

One focus of Fischer-Lichte's research is the theoretical foundation for an aesthetics of the performative (2004). This study offers a historical-theoretical clarification of the term performance in art and art studies. Fischer-Lichte defines the performative work of art as an event that has to be considered essentially self-referential and constituting reality. This means that performative art is tied to the specific moment of its performance, that it has to be experienced and experienced, but eludes a conclusive explanation. In this way, according to Fischer-Lichte, the audience is also assigned a new position: from mere viewers they become actors, whose interaction with the performing artists only gives the work of art its concrete, unique embodiment. In a contribution from 2013, Fischer-Lichte takes up the concept of creating identity “through stylized repetition”. Fischer-Lichte sees approaches to a possible foundation of a transformation-oriented theory of theater both in speech act theory and in the theories of Judith Butler : Also viewers perform performative acts when they allow themselves to be affected, when they are affected by their spatiotemporal co-presence (with the actors) enable a performance? What role does “submission” (the audience) play to the illusions of the performance? Can perception (as a performative act) trigger identifications? Fischer-Lichte recognizes an “aesthetics of the performative” in the performing theater: The performance as such allows the audience to experience the presence of the actor and is placed (as an atmosphere) between the performance and the show. With the assumption of the "uniqueness and unrepeatability" of the experiences, the impossibility of an adequate conceptual or visual documentation, it should be recognized that access to the genre of performance requires a departure from the traditional terms "production, reception and work".

Erika Fischer-Lichte is a member of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen , the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences , Academia Europaea and the Leopoldina (since 2011), Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees of the German National Academic Foundation and Chairwoman of the European Science Council for the field of “Cultures and Cultural Production ".

Criticisms

Dirk Pilz reports in an article for the Berliner Zeitung 2010 that critics accuse the Collaborative Research Center Cultures of the Performative and its spokeswoman for an “inflated conceptual and theoretical apparatus”. As evidence, however, Pilz cites keywords that were not coined in connection with the work of the Collaborative Research Center, but much earlier. The French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy coined the term “developed community” in 1986. The term “TheatReales” can be found in a 1999 article by Hans-Thies Lehmann . In this context, theater scholar Ulf Heuner criticizes the undifferentiated evocation of terms such as transformation or delimitation and the inflationary practice of publication.

Awards

• 2006: Honorary doctorate from the University of Copenhagen
• 2010: Berlin Science Prize
• 2011: German Theater Prize Der Faust (President's Prize)
• 2018: Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Fonts

Author

• Semiotics of the theater . 3 volumes, Narr, Tübingen 1983, ISBN 978-3-8233-6321-7 (1st volume), ISBN 978-3-87808-177-7 (2nd volume), ISBN 978-3-8233-6529-7 (3rd volume),
• Story of drama . 2 volumes, UTB, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 978-3-8252-1565-1 (1st volume), ISBN 978-3-8252-1566-8 (2nd volume)
• Brief history of the German theater . UTB, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 978-3-8252-1667-2 .
• The Discovery of the Spectator: Paradigm Shift in 20th Century Theater . Francke, Tübingen 1997, ISBN 978-3-7720-2173-2 .
• The Show and the Gaze of Theater: A European Perspective (Collected Essays English). University of Iowa Press, 1997, ISBN 0-87745-608-9
• Your own theater and that of others . Francke, Tübingen / Basel 1999, ISBN 3-7720-2740-7 .
• Aesthetics of the performative . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-518-12373-4 (English edition: The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics. Routledge Chapman & Hall, London-New York 2008, ISBN 978-0-415-45856-6 .)
• Theater, Sacrifice, Ritual: Exploring Forms of Political Theater . Routledge Chapman & Hall, London / New York 2005, ISBN 978-0-415-27675-7
• Theater studies. An introduction to the basics of the subject . UTB Francke, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-8252-3103-3

Editor

• Fields of work in theater studies. Series of publications Forum Modernes Theater, Narr, Tübingen 1994, ISBN 978-3-8233-4035-5 .
• Theater avant-garde. Perception - body - language. Francke, Tübingen-Basel 1995, ISBN 978-3-8252-1807-2 .
• Staging authenticity. Francke, Tübingen-Basel 2000, ISBN 978-3-7720-8208-5 .
• Performativity and Event. Francke, Tübingen-Basel 2003, ISBN 978-3-7720-2944-8 .
• Art of performance - performance of art. Theater der Zeit, Berlin 2004, ISBN 978-3-934344-34-1 .
• Metzler Lexicon theater theory. Metzler, Stuttgart-Weimar 2005, ISBN 978-3-476-01956-1 .
• Ways of perception. Theater der Zeit, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-934344-64-8 .
• Staging festivity. Theater and festival in Europe. Francke, Tübingen-Basel 2009, ISBN 978-3-7720-8318-1 .
• The performance. Discourse - Power - Analysis. Fink, Munich [u. a.] 2012, ISBN 978-3-7705-5354-9 .

Web links

Commons : Erika Fischer-Lichte  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Erika Fischer-Lichte in the catalog of the German National Library
• Erika Fischer-Lichte in the database of renowned scientists AcademiaNet
• Prof. Dr. Dr. hc Erika Fischer-Lichte

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Erika Fischer-Lichte: Aesthetics of the Performative . edition suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 978-3-518-12373-7
2. ↑ Fischer-Lichte, 2013, p. 177
3. ↑ Erika Fischer-Lichte: The transforming power of performances. From temporary to sustainable transformations . In: K. Hasselmann (Ed.): Performing the Future. The future of performativity research . Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich 2013, pp. 177–190.
4. ↑ Fischer-Lichte, 2003, p. 97
5. ↑ Erika Fischer-Lichte: Theater as a model for an aesthetics of the performative . In: J. Kertscher, D. Mersch (Ed.): Performativity and Practice . Wilhelm Fink, Munich 2003, pp. 97–111; here p. 99f.
6. ↑ Fischer-Lichte 2003, p. 106
7. ↑ Fischer-Lichte, 2003, p. 110
8. ↑ Member entry by Prof. Dr. Erika Fischer-Lichte (with picture) at the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , accessed on July 6, 2016.
9. ↑ Dirk Pilz: We were the future . In: Berliner Zeitung , July 8, 2010.
10. ↑ "The science of the performative has long since become a performative science." Ulf Heuner: Who rules in theater and television? Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-938880-22-7 , p. 49.
11. ↑ Berlin Science Prize 2010 goes to Professor Erika Fischer-Lichte . In: Informationsdienst Wissenschaft , October 14, 2010, accessed on October 27, 2010
12. ^ German stage association: DER FAUST 2011 . accessed on January 31, 2012