The Mystery of the In-Between. A Methodological Approach to Intermedial Performance Analysis Kati Röttger (Amsterdam) How is the concept of intermediality used in theatre and performance studies? And how can we understand the notion of ‘ the in-between ’ that is at the core of intermediality? This article will develop a methodological approach to theatre practice and perception that goes beyond media difference and media comparison. I will take the very destabilizing of media difference and media identity as a phenomenological issue, and concentrate on the transactions between media, the mediated, and the observers that are activated by internal structural effects of multistability: the shifting of figure and ground, the switching of aspects. In doing so, I will argue for performance analysis that considers the whole ensemble of relations between media and between those phenomena that are brought to light by media: the interplay of seeing and speaking, of sounds and images, of words and things, the visible and the audible. Using the performance Forever Godard by Igor Bauersima, I will highlight the complex interplay between theatricality, performativity and mediality to offer a methodological approach that departs from the so-called vortex effect that brings forth processes of intermedial transfigurations in performances. (. . .) making things for people to see and at the same time making them as hard as possible for people to see. Bruce Nauman 1 How is the concept of intermediality used in theatre and performance studies? The most obvious and often used answer is a pragmatic one: the concept offers new instruments and notions to analyse the ever-increasing number of contemporary theatre productions that use various technical media such as cameras, projections, microphones, headsets etc. 2 One of the first theatre scholars to develop an intermedial approach to theatre that reflects this reality was Patrice Pavis in his book Analyzing Performance. Theatre, Dance, and Film. But already at that time he warned against confusing intermediality with multimediality, because the latter would reduce the analytical tools to pure media comparison: Intermediality “ does not mean the addition of different media concepts, nor the act of placing discrete works in relation to particular forms of media, but rather the integration of aesthetic concepts from different media into a new concept. ” 3 1. Beyond media difference In the following pages I want to develop this idea further by putting the opening question in a phenomenological light. I will take intermediality as a challenge and, at the same time, a chance to develop a vision of and a methodological approach to theatre practice and perception that goes beyond media difference and media comparison. 4 I will take the very destabilizing of media difference and media identity as a phenomenological issue, and concentrate on the transactions between media, the mediated, and the observers that are activated by Forum Modernes Theater, 28/ 2 (2013 [2018]), 105 - 116. Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen internal structural effects of multistability: the shifting of figure and ground, the switching of aspects. In doing so, I will argue for performance analysis that considers the whole ensemble of relations between media and between those phenomena that are brought to light by media: the interplay of seeing and speaking, of sounds and images, of words and things, the visible and the audible. This leads me to advocate for intermedial performance analysis as a hybrid discipline. I am aware of the complexity of this venture; because of the brevity of this article I will limit my argument at this point to one that stems from W. J. T. Mitchell ’ s quest to overcome disciplinary boundaries and to mark out heterogeneous fields of dedisciplining the divisions between verbal and visual culture. I will apply the practical methodological consequences of this quest to intermedial performance analysis, not only because I agree that there is no purity of media (McLuhan), but also because of the often quoted condition of a theatre performance as a per se mixed medium or art form. For McLuhan the human senses are fully able to translate experiences from one sensory field to another. 5 Therefore, they do not constitute closed systems that are incapable of interplay but rather open and incomplete configurations that can - because of their rationality - “ mutually translate all our senses into one another ” and thus, following Jürgen Müller, open up new dimensions of sensation and experiences in an intermedial cooperation. 6 A theatrical performance relies on both the production and the reception, and on the presence of the human body and its specific sensorium, while it is basically open to integrate all other media, including technical media. It can thus provide this capacity for translation and functions as an open, dynamic configuration of medial translations or even more precisely: transmissions. At the same time, within its historical context, a theatre performance is identical with those media that organize its structural elements into a dynamic and continual process that translates countless differentiations within them. I refer to the following words of W. J. T. Mitchell to formulate the consequences of a strict interdisciplinary approach to the kind of intermedial performance analysis that I am proposing here: T[he] decentering of the purist ’ s image of media has a number of practical consequences. It clearly obviates the need for comparison, which thrives on the model of clearly distinct systems linked by structural analogies and substantive differentiations. It also permits a critical openness to actual workings of representations and discourse, their internal dialectics of form understood as pragmatic strategies within a specific institutional history of a medium. 7 Starting from the general idea of intermedial performance analysis as a hybrid discipline I will concentrate in what follows on one aspect which, in the most logical but also most unexplained way, refers to the possible practical operations that are linked to this project: the notion of the in-between. First of all, the term “ inter ” -mediality itself already carries the notion of the in-between, expressed by the prefix ‘ inter ’ , along with the notion of the middle or mediation that is intrinsic to mediality. Second, it is this very process of inter-mediation (of translation or transmission, as I said before) between different poles that seems to be the core effect that those theatre makers who clearly admit to working artistically in an intermedial way want to extrapolate. Erwin Jans, for example, explains the intentions of his artistic collaboration with the well-known Belgian theatre director Guy Cassiers as follows: Cassiers ’ main interest is that which takes place in the space in between: between the senses, between looking and hearing, bet- 106 Kati Röttger ween image and speech, between sound and word. His performances do not use different media, they develop in between them. Because of this, his work is more intermedial than multimedial. 8 Third, this special claim to the effects of the space in between recurs in theoretical approaches to intermediality. Chapple and Kappenbelt, for example, state in their introduction to Intermediality in Theatre and Performance: “ Our thesis is that the intermedial is a space where the boundaries soften - and we are in between and within a mixing of spaces, media, and realities. ” 9 2. The problem of the in-between In the context of methodological questions concerning intermedial performance analysis, the question of the in-between is indeed central, but at the same time, because of its very unstable status, it is also unclear and imprecise and therefore still unsatisfactory. Looking for more concrete indications to fill in this vague and hybrid notion, we find in Chapple and Kattenbelt ’ s text some hints concerning the ‘ inbetween-ness ’ of intermediality itself: We locate intermediality at a meeting-point in-between the performers, the observers, and the confluence of the media involved in a performance at a particular moment in time. The intermedial inhabits a space in-between the different realities that the performance creates and thus it becomes, at the minimum, a tripartite phenomenon. Intermediality is a powerful and potentially radical force which operates in-between performer and audience; in-between theatre, performance and other media; and in-between realities - with theatre providing a staging space for the performance of intermediality. 10 Although intermediality here is a force that somehow connects perception and production, media and realities, the practical consequences for an analysis remain mysterious, because it is not clear in which kind of inbetween space this connection takes place. At the same time, we find two different qualities of the so-called space in-between: intermediality, on the one hand, seems to inhabit and operate in a space in-between, while theatre, on the other hand, provides a space, or stage, for intermediality. The question, then, is this: in what way can a theatre performance itself be described as an intermedial process? The following is an attempt to address this central question. Metaphorically speaking, this attempt is marked by searching for a mysterious light whose origin is kept invisible while it illuminates the rest of the world. In a first step I will provide preliminary definitions of mediality and intermediality in regard to theatre and performance. 11 The central idea I want to defend is that theatre is not a hypermedium that provides a (stable) staging space for performance, but is itself marked by the processual: an open, dynamic configuration of intermedial transmissions. In a second step, I will apply the preliminary definitions in an analysis of a theatre production. The example I have chosen is not very recent, but highlights the problem very well. I will refer to the 1998 Swiss multilingual theatre production Forever Godard directed by the Czech - Swiss author and director Igor Bauersima. This production is clearly meant as an homage to the film maker Jean-Luc Godard who admitted to being mainly interested in cinema that happens between the things, between the self and the other, that means the relations-in-between that cinema creates. 12 107 The Mystery of the In-Between. A Methodological Approach to Intermedial Performance Analysis 3. Towards the intermediality of theatre and performance I use a very broad definition of medium, considering it as the middle state, something intermediate in itself. Defined as such, we can say that everything we perceive we perceive by media, our eyes, our ears, technical apparatuses and so on. Media constitute in the following our perception by transmissions. Epistemologically speaking, media also open up and transmit perspectives on the world. This aspect is marked by a paradox: while media intervene in our perception of the world, they remain aisthetically neutral. The problem is that we are able to observe a medium only when it appears in a visible or audible figure, as a form (e. g. image or word) that is constituted by another medium (like a colour or voice). 13 Consequently, it is impossible to define the essence or ontology of a medium. It is only during the process of transmission into another medium that the aisthetic neutrality of a medium can break and the medium appears in a visible or audible way. Only then can we become aware of the mediality of our experience (that it is always mediated). David Bolter and Richard Grusin developed this idea of mediality as remediation. In their media historical research, they discovered that new media are never clearly defined by differentiation, but by redefining old media: “ It is that which appropriates the techniques, forms and social significance of other media and attempts to rival or refashion them in the name of the real. ” 14 This definition of mediality goes back to Marshall McLuhan. In adopting an anthropological perspective McLuhan envisages media, like the human senses, as capable of transferring experiences from one sensory (medial) field to another. Therefore, they do not form closed systems, incapable of interplay, but rather are open, incomplete configurations that mutually translate all senses (media) into one another. In this way, they work towards an active intermedial co-existence, in order to open up new dimensions of sensation and experience. This idea of active intermedial interplay or co-existence can easily be transferred to theatre and performance. Theatre, in both its productive and receptive poles, relies on the co-presence of human bodies and on their specific sensory capacities. Open to the integration of all forms of technical media, it can acquire that competence of translation that allows it to function as an open dynamic configuration of intermedial transmissions. At the same time, within its specific historical context, a theatre performance is identical with those media (such as space, body, text, sound, etc.) in which the elements characteristic of its structure are organized in a dynamic process set in motion by the constant translation of innumerable distinctions in between them to happen as a coexistent performance. But how does this process take place? 4. The interplay of mediality, performativity and theatricality The definition of theatre as an intermedial process opens up the possibility of embracing theatre performance not from within a single, universal ideal concept, but rather as an open process considered in all its potential - be it as an artefact or a ritualized repetition of particular actions; as a pantomime or a vocal performance; or as a dance or a highly technological spectacle. It is important here to repeat that a significant component of this open concept of theatre performance is the assumption that we cannot categorize things ontologically into media and non-media. In adopting this premise, I subscribe to Sibylle Krämer ’ s views voiced in her 2003 article Theses about the Role of Media-Theoretical Reflections for 108 Kati Röttger Philosophy. Here she introduces an intermedial perspective which extends my reflections on the intermediality of theatre performance in two important aspects, namely the chiasmic relationship between performativity and theatricality. The concept of performativity is defined here by the notions of embodiment and constitution. 15 Both are closely linked to the effects of mediality. Mediality reveals itself in the process of transference into another medium, in which the aisthetic neutrality (the imperceptibility) of a medium is violated when the medium appears in an audible or visible figure. To produce theatricality as a certain, exposed mode of perception the following is decisive: “ In a description, what counts as a medium and what as a form depends on the cognitive interests and the observer ’ s vantage point. ” 16 . A theatre performance can carry out and play with this process directly before the spectator ’ s eyes by staging the medial nature of visible and audible phenomena as they are transferred from one medium to another. The interplay between mediality, performativity and theatricality is always happening, but, depending on the specific aesthetics of a performance, the process of transmission and translation between media becomes more or less obvious (depending on e. g. a common illusionist staging of a dramatic text, a postdramatical performance that deconstructs unified meanings, a music theatre performance, etc.). Imagine, for example, a simple dialogue between two characters, such Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, performed on stage in an illusionistic mode. If it is played well the audience generally does not pay much attention to the transmission from the medium of the written dramatic text to the medium of the actor ’ s body and his/ her voice to the medium of the stage and from there to the audience. The evidence of this processdriven movement between text, body, stage and audience is absorbed by the meaningfulness of the words and acts the characters perform, and by the audience ’ s grasp of the coherence of the fictional narrative. But many contemporary postdramatical performances choose to stage the very interruption of meaningful processes by pointing, for instance, to the materiality of the body (such as in performances by Christoph Marthaler who works with slow motion, the interruption of the flow of the voice by practices of stammering, singing or repetition) or by splitting the audience ’ s perception by means of technical media that reproduce the actors ’ bodies in filmed images, as in performances by Guy Cassiers or others. 17 The relationship between mediality, performativity, and theatricality that is crucial to an understanding of the intermediality of a performance works differently in both cases. Yet the basic assumptions of the methodological approach apply to both. How can we explain this? An important methodological point of departure is the understanding of the medium as a figure of mediation which cannot be measured adequately in purely semiotic or technical terms. The act of transmission takes place within a particular medium in its mode of embodiment which is a modification of the trace that imprints itself on the message of the medium. Embodiment should not be understood as a preceding corporeality but rather as a mute assumption of a medium that carries out and constitutes acts. Thus, in the process of transposition from one medium into another, the medium is not a mere container for content. Embodiment denotes, rather, an alteration of the embodied in the act of transmission and of procedures in time. Consequently, media are not an a priori sign in the secondary sense or an a priori technology in the primary sense, but rather should be approached from a cultural-anthropological perspective which shows 109 The Mystery of the In-Between. A Methodological Approach to Intermedial Performance Analysis how, in an act of transmission, that which is transposed by media is at the same time cocreated and stamped by them. It is the idea of ‘ embodiment ’ as a culturally grounded activity which makes it possible to identify ‘ transmission ’ as ‘ constitution ’ . 18 This presupposition is important for an understanding of the process of intermedial communication (the relationship between the produced and the perceived) during a theatrical event. If we understand this communicative act as a mediated one, we have to admit that the bodies of the perceivers/ spectators co-constitute the event by transmitting it. This brings us to the aspect of constitution. Embodiment and transmission orient themselves towards the constitution of a (possible) world. This assumption makes it possible to conceive of a theatre performance as an event. In this case a theatre performance does not open up as a surface of signs accessible to perception by decoding. According to this premise, adopted from the theory of signs, a staging is to be understood and decoded only as a particular form of a pre-given cultural system and, within a two-world ontology, belongs to a different register of being. Through the performative understanding of theatre, however, the phenomena connected with the constitution of meaning, such as speech and image, are treated as temporally situated events. From this point of view, a theatre performance is an intermedial process that phenomenalizes, that is to say, makes the audible and the visible phenomena appear and become accessible to experience. It thereby enables participation in or, as mentioned above, the co-constitution of the theatrical event by the audience. In terms of performance, the phenomena are always richer than the concepts into which we turn them. In other words, the performative preserves a surplus with regard to that which is being performed. This surplus is intrinsic to artistic intermediation in theatre and complements the transaction in between the staged phenomena and the perceived phenomena. It becomes evident that theatre performance (providing the key scenery of distinction and visualization of different media) fulfils a paradigmatic function for every media theory. This leads us to the aspect of theatricality. Media open up and stage perspectives on the world. When we recognize that everything that is given to people in perception, and when communication and cognition is given in media, then we see that the mediality of all things given manifests this perspectivity. Media, with their potentiality of differentiation and transmission, are not considered individually since they fundamentally enter into relationships with each other. This holds true primarily for theatre and theatricality because theatricality is a mode of perception. The smallest common denominator within the study of theatricality is that it appeals to the subject to approach the world and its objects from another, ‘ different ’ perspective. 19 In this light, the concept also functions as a discursive element since it does not represent disguise or deception but rather negotiates the relationship between truth and deceit, between reality and fiction. In its function as an operational element theatricality inserts a gap between beholder and beheld that pervades their relationship with alterity, thus regulating and deregulating relations of perception: either by referring to the very status as beholder by opening up another perspective, an outsider's perspective, or by referring to the status of the beheld that ‘ breaks out of the frame ’ when it is considered to be theatrical. The pivotal point is the relationship of truth and illusion within the economy of epistemic objects, for theatricality suspends the basal constituents of the belief in perception, the ‘ deep-seated set of mute “ opinions ” implicated in our lives. ’ 20 It creates the effect of spectatorship and is at work on the 110 Kati Röttger ever unstable and shifting border between fact and fiction, reality and illusion, truth and deception, envisioning cultural acts as theatre or adapting the basic structures of theatrical settings (sceneries) to define cultural dynamics and epistemological shifts, to envision new perspectives on the world. Thus, theatricality is always functional at the borderline of the view or the perspective of the beholder to decide on truth or non-truth, reality and non-reality, fiction or non-fiction. The moment of switching from one to the other can be defined again as the moment in between, an unstable moment that enhances both - the one and the other - and negates a clear decision. Theatre nowadays plays more and more with this kind of theatricality, thereby forcing the spectators into doubtful positions. One obvious example is the production Gerucht by the Dutch performer Lotte van den Berg. In a public space, van den Berg staged a container which was totally soundproofed and transparent on one side, in which she placed the spectators who looked out at the street. It is hard to decide what is performed and what is perceived: the open space outside the container or the spectators inside. Regarding our problem of defining theatre performance as an intermedial event, we can thus say that the aspect of theatricality occurs as follows: theatre performance as an intermedial event opens up and stages perspectives on media that it discloses. Therefore, when in the act of transmission, a medium becomes a figure or a perceivable phenomenon it can also be a subject of a theoretical discussion. “ Thus, intermediality becomes an epistemic condition of the knowledge of media. ” 21 Based on the premise that perspectivity is a mode of theatricality, mediality and theatricality turn out to be epistemic conditions for intermediality. Theatre ’ s intermediality, in turn, makes it possible to discern the medial modalities within which the visible and the audible, image and speech, are disclosed. If theatre is able to stage media in the process of intermedial transmissions in terms of theatricality in order to open up different perspectives on mediality, then theatre cannot be identical with a hypermedium. It does not fulfil the function of a stable stage or platform that stays outside or frames the intermedial process of transmissions it stages. If we understand theatre as an event consisting of those media that are at work during the process of the performance, it is clearly constituted by that process of transmission between media that takes place in this moment. We will therefore never be able to refer to one original medium in the process of intermediality. This lack of an original or hyper medium is precisely the force of the in-between at the heart of the process-driven movement of transmission that takes place in intermedial performances. This circular movement driven by the never fixed in between can best be understood in the meta-picture of a vortex. 5. The Vortex Effect Let us summarize: a theatre performance is an intermedial event marked by the interplay of mediality, theatricality and performativity. Mediality is the specific quality of the medium in regard to structures, experiences and perception. Theatricality is a mode of perception. It creates the effect of spectatorship and works on the unstable border that shifts between fact and fiction, reality and illusion. Performativity defines the capacity of media to constitute possible worlds by embodying audible and visible phenomena. This aspect of medial acts that constitute meaningful configurations such as text, image and music, and take place before the eyes of the beholders is essential for an understanding of theatre as an open, dynamic configuration of intermedial transmissions. The decisive impact of this inter- 111 The Mystery of the In-Between. A Methodological Approach to Intermedial Performance Analysis medial transmission lies in the permanent transformation process of media from one to another by embodiment. For example, a written dialogue is transmitted to the space of the stage embodied by the actor ’ s movement and voice, directed to and perceived by the spectator ’ s embodied experience, translated into internal images etc. The perception of, let ’ s say, the actor ’ s body as a medium of the written text is dependent on both the spectator ’ s perspective and the method of staging. If the actor, for example steps, out of his or her role, as in a Brechtian style performance, and hints at the fictionality of the figure he or she plays, the way of constituting a ‘ world ’ by theatrical acts becomes quite clear, and the actor simultaneously appears as a visible medium of a text. This happens by means of a rupture of, or cutting through the flow of signification. If we describe this movement in the metapicture of a vortex, the most decisive aspect is the visualization of the spiral movement that presents the intermedial transfiguration process in the time of the theatrical event. During this process the perspectives of the beholders/ participants play a decisive role in the mode of theatricality. It is the beholder ’ s perspective that shifts between medium and mediated and decides to identify pictures, bodies, words, music as referring to the discourses, histories and cultures in which the event is embedded. The theatre performance as an intermedial event, in turn, not only appears to be identical with the media that constitute it, but also opens up and stages perspectives on the media by breaking up or cutting through their aisthetic neutrality. In the moment that one medium stages another (the actor ’ s body staging the text) it becomes an epistemic object, an epistemological object. This is the pre-condition for the perspectivity that is implied. The slower the movement of the transmission is carried out, the more stable is the aisthetic neutrality of the media that are involved and hence the illusionist or homo- Fig. 1: Vortex of intermediality in performance (Illustration © conception: Kai Röttger; realization: Erwan Geffroy) 112 Kati Röttger geneous effect of the performed (an effect that is more and more often seen as immediacy). I would like to call this process - following Mitchell - the “ Vortex Effect ” 22 . The vortex represents the multistability effect of intermedial performance analysis that “ takes the beholder into the game ” 23 and at the same time does not neglect the historical impact of his or her perspective and of the medial conventions that are shaping it. The dynamics of the in-between should now be a little clearer. Modifying Chapple and Kattenbelt's quotation, it can be said that intermediality is a powerful and potentially radical force that operates in between the media in the interplay of the medial processes of translation and transmission. It also operates between performer and audience by embodiment and the interplay of mediality, performativity and theatricality, thus constituting aisthetic acts of the beholder; and it operates between realities by opening up perspectives on the constitutive acts of medial world-making. All these processes, I want to add, take place between the visible and the invisible. And it is the impact of the gaze, the decision of the beholder that decides what counts as (invisible) medium and what counts as its (visible) form, and thus shifts between figure and ground. 24 6. Forever Godard or: the actor as paradigm of the in-between Forever Godard focuses on a group of actors who try to define their status between the realms of different media such as film, theatre and the actor ’ s body. The constant shifts between these realms indeed provoke a strong vortex effect, never offering the spectator a fixed departure point, but, with every shift, posing the challenge of orienting oneself in a new way. The performance constantly provokes perspective shifts between those realms by presenting the actors in diverse embodiments that, on the level of narrativity, leads to constant doubts about their state of being as actors in between reality and fiction. Most obviously this can be illustrated by the following reply of one of the female protagonists in the performance: Today you ’ re Richard III and tomorrow you ’ re alone. And they ’ re so different. But it ’ s still you. And still there is some place in between where you are not allowed to be. That ’ s fake. Why is it sometimes fake? Why do you say about an actor that he is not real? Is he pretending? 25 This concentration on the mediality of the actor does not mean that there is no relation to other media. On the contrary, intermediality in this performance is the obvious prerequisite of constantly opening up new perspectives. The very title of the theatre production suggests that Bauersima is indeed referring to the medium of film, more precisely to the cinematographic work of Jean-Luc Godard. But this does not mean that he quotes literal fragments of Godard films in his performance. Instead, for his theatre production, he uses 50 hours of video material which he filmed himself with his actors before he finally staged the play. This material forms part of the action on stage in a very special way. Its subject is a group of young people that work in a video shop. Each of them is searching for his or her own story in the medial labyrinth of social and fictional selfimages with which they are confronted. At the beginning of the theatre performance the audience that is clearly located in a theatre is confronted with a cinematic situation: on a big screen it watches the scenes in the video shop that were filmed beforehand. We see the actors - called Tim, Lily, Pat and so on - talking with each other, improvising, filming each other, while in the background the 113 The Mystery of the In-Between. A Methodological Approach to Intermedial Performance Analysis image of Godard giving an interview is shown on television. At the moment when the group finds a theatre director and hires two actors, the ‘ real ’ theatre performance begins. The performance is also about this group of young people now rehearsing their as yet ‘ unfinished ’ performance. While the actors are improvising on stage, some of the film sequences in the video shop are projected on the screen at the back of the stage. But also sequences from silent films are shown that force the actors on stage into a dialogue with the film images. This ‘ story ’ reveals a kind of obsession with a constant ‘ inbetweenness ’ that Bauersima executes. During the performance not only the actors but also the spectators are confronted with a permanent switching of mediated realities: the realities of video, film, theatre and ‘ real life ’ on the one hand, and the reality of the actor between live body and body image, between real life and fictive role, on the other. The video material is filmed in a documentary style and seems to present ‘ real life ’ people who work in the video shop and want to become actors. When the same people appear live on stage they perform the search for the right way to represent their characters as actors. The performance thus creates permanent shifts from an assumed reality to a state of fiction that is revealed only in the moment when the situation is transposed into another level of mediality. In one scene, for example, the audience sees two actors fighting about who will take over the leading role in the play. Only when the theatre director intervenes and comments on their acting, does the audience realize that this must be a rehearsal. But even this is not clear because - following the logic of the whole performance - the intervention of the theatre director could also be a part of the final play. The spectator is constantly confronted with the transformation of the actors' bodies in different media and, simultaneously, by different levels of reality or fiction. The interpretation of this is left ‘ in between ’ . Another example is the first filmed sequence with which the audience is confronted. Here we see the ‘ actors ’ sitting at a table and discussing the question of fake or real in playing a role on a screen. The scene is set in the video shop with its shelves filled with videos and DVDs. The covers of these videos and DVDs show various images of film stars in their roles. What is at stake here is the mediality of the image that is made visible by the intermedial, cyclical transference from one medium to the other: the filmed image the spectator is watching, the images on the DVDs, the images the actors embody, and finally the spoken words all address the problem of image-making. They reveal the very medial process of image-making. The audience literally forms part of the process of embodiment in medial transactions and the constitution of realities. This happens by medial processes of structuring the visible field (the epistemic factor of theatricality) and by intermedial processes of transformation (evoking the mediality of the phenomena we perceive), thereby challenging the spectator ’ s gaze to make a choice based on his or her own epistemological perspective. Notes 1 Bruce Nauman, interview by Jane Livingston, 1972, in: Jane Livingston and Marcia Tucker, Bruce Nauman: Work from 1965 to1972, exh. cat. Los Angeles: County Museum of Art, 1972, p.11. 2 Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatisches Theater, Frankfurt am Main 1999, p. 413. Some examples are: Alvis Hermannis (Letvia), Fura dels Baus (Spain/ Catalonia), Robert Lepage (Canada), Frank Castorf (Germany), René Pollesch (Germany), The Wooster Group (USA), José Montalvo (France), Do- 114 Kati Röttger minique Hervieu (France), Guy Cassiers (Belgium), Ivo van Hove (Netherlands), etc. 3 Patrice Pavis, Analyzing Performance. Theatre, Dance, and Film, Ann Arbor 2003, p. 49. 4 See also Christopher Balme ’ s critique of media difference in his article “ Intermediality: Rethinking the Relationship between Theatre and Media, ” electr. Review Thewis, 01/ 04. 5 McLuhan uses the example of language to explain this process: “ Language is metaphor in the sense that it not only stores but translates experience from one mode into another. ” Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy. The making of typographic man, Toronto 1966, p. 13. 6 These, in turn, include the questions, principles and concepts that were developed in the course of their history, each in its own context. Jürgen E. Müller, “ Intermedialität als poetologisches und mediengeschichtliches Konzept ” , in: Jörg Helbig, (ed.), Intermedialität. Theorie und Praxis eines interdisziplinären Forschungsgebiets. Berlin 1998, p. 15 - 30. 7 W. J.T Mitchell, Picture Theory. Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation, Chicago 1995, p. 97 8 Erwin Jans, “ Guy Cassier ’ s poetica van de verwondering ” , in Chiel Kattenbelt et al. (eds.), Theater & Openbaarheid, Toneelacademie Maastricht/ Theaterinstituut Nederland 2006, p. 178 - 191, here p. 187. (transl. from Dutch by K. R.) 9 Frieda Chapple & Chiel Kattenbelt, “ Key issues in Intermediality in Theatre and Performance ” , in Frieda Chapple & Chiel Kattenbelt (eds.), Intermediality in Theatre and Performance, Amsterdam-New York 2006, p. 11 - 26, here p. 12. 10 Ibid. 11 The terms ‘ theatre performance ’ or ‘ theatre ’ or ‘ performance ’ are chosen because of the culturally different academic approaches to these terms. In a European context theatre is often understood as a medium of performance (as in Chapple & Kattenbelt 2006), in English the term ‘ performance ’ has a very broad meaning, which also includes social practice. In this context I use the term mostly to denote theatre performance. 12 Jean-Luc Godard, Einführung in eine wahre Geschichte des Kinos, Frankfurt am Main 1984, 145. Transl. K. R. 13 See also Sybille Krämer: “ Media work like window-panes: the more transparent they are, the better they fulfil their tasks. ” Sybille Krämer, “ Das Medium als Spur und als Apparat ” , in Sybille Krämer (ed.), Medien, Computer, Realität. Wirklichkeitsvorstellungen und Neue Medien, Frankfurt am Main 1998, p. 73 - 74, here p. 74. All Krämer quotations were translated from the German by Mateusz Borowski 14 Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1999, p. 65. 15 I am following Judith Butler ’ s concept of performativity that she elaborated in Bodies that Matter. 16 Sybille Krämer, “ Erfüllen Medien eine Konstitutionsleistung? Thesen über die Rolle medientheoretischer Erwägungen beim Philosophieren ” , in Stefan Münker et al. (eds), Medienphilosophie. Beiträge zur Klärung eines Begriffs, Frankfurt am Main 2003, p. 78 - 90, here p. 82 17 See more examples in Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatisches Theater. 18 Krämer, “ Thesen ” , p. 64. 19 Elizabeth Burns, Theatricality. A Study of Convention in the Theatre and in Social Life. London 1972, p. 11 and 13. 20 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible. Followed by working notes, ed. Claude Lefort, transl. Alphonso Lingis, Evanston 1968, p. 3. 21 Sybille Krämer, “ Sprache-Stimme-Schrift: Sieben Gedanken über Performativität als Medialität ” , in: Uwe Wirth (ed.), Performanz. Zwischen Sprachphilosophie und Kulturwissenschaften, Frankfurt am Main 2002, p. 323 - 346, here p. 34 22 Mitchell, Picture Theory, p. 75 23 Ibid. 24 I would like to refer here to Ludwig Wittgenstein ’ s idea of the “ aspect ” he points to using the example of the “ Duck-Rabbit ” , a drawing that, depending on the aspect of 115 The Mystery of the In-Between. A Methodological Approach to Intermedial Performance Analysis perception, can identified as either a duck or a rabbit. (Philosophical Investigations, Figure 7, 1953). See also Mitchell, Picture Theory, p. 49 - 57 on the duck-rabbit drawing as a metapicture. 25 Quotation from th performance Forever Godard, recorded on 13. 2. 2003. 116 Kati Röttger