TY - ICOMM

T1 - STAGING URBAN EUROPE

T2 - BODILY, DISCURSIVE AND SCALAR POLITICS OF COMMUNITY THEATRE

AU - Gehlshøj, Peter Koch

PY - 2016

Y1 - 2016

N2 - This thesis explores the counter-territorialising potential of artistic practices in urban space with offset in the community theatre of the Creative Europe (CE) co-funded Cooperation Project CARAVAN NEXT. This case is chosen because it bridges the local and the EU scale and links multiple cities transnationally, offering insight from the perspective of European policymakers, culture professionals and urban dwellers. I examine how conflictual discourses of bodily and scalar politics revolving around community theatre negotiate reterritorialisations. I adopt a multidisciplinary theoreti- cal approach to cover the variety of factors that interplay in CARAVAN, including: 1) globalisation and geographical scales; 2) contemporary consensual governance and politics of dissensus; and 3) discursive constructions of place and community. Through Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), I argue that CE’s discourse, as it shifts CARAVAN’s, could succeed in naturalising competitive creativity and economy on multiple scalar levels. However, as my CDA shows, where CE’s discourse abates cultural logics through the ambiguous parallel application of economic logics and quasi-Kantian aesthetics, the CARAVAN discourse mainly downplays cultural logics in order to privilege a focus on social responsibility. Through phenomenological per- formance analysis, I point to four tactics applied in CARAVAN’s community theatre, arguing that, by engaging in the everyday, art can produce spaces for renegotiating discursive hegemonies. The overall conclusion of my research is that, in this early phase of CARAVAN, the EU framework’s attempts at reterritorialising the local are challenged. Yet, in the long run, there is a hazard that CE discourses, so far only adopted sporadically by CARAVAN, can come to reshape local practices of involved partners and communities.

AB - This thesis explores the counter-territorialising potential of artistic practices in urban space with offset in the community theatre of the Creative Europe (CE) co-funded Cooperation Project CARAVAN NEXT. This case is chosen because it bridges the local and the EU scale and links multiple cities transnationally, offering insight from the perspective of European policymakers, culture professionals and urban dwellers. I examine how conflictual discourses of bodily and scalar politics revolving around community theatre negotiate reterritorialisations. I adopt a multidisciplinary theoreti- cal approach to cover the variety of factors that interplay in CARAVAN, including: 1) globalisation and geographical scales; 2) contemporary consensual governance and politics of dissensus; and 3) discursive constructions of place and community. Through Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), I argue that CE’s discourse, as it shifts CARAVAN’s, could succeed in naturalising competitive creativity and economy on multiple scalar levels. However, as my CDA shows, where CE’s discourse abates cultural logics through the ambiguous parallel application of economic logics and quasi-Kantian aesthetics, the CARAVAN discourse mainly downplays cultural logics in order to privilege a focus on social responsibility. Through phenomenological per- formance analysis, I point to four tactics applied in CARAVAN’s community theatre, arguing that, by engaging in the everyday, art can produce spaces for renegotiating discursive hegemonies. The overall conclusion of my research is that, in this early phase of CARAVAN, the EU framework’s attempts at reterritorialising the local are challenged. Yet, in the long run, there is a hazard that CE discourses, so far only adopted sporadically by CARAVAN, can come to reshape local practices of involved partners and communities.

UR - https://www.4cities.eu/master-thesis/#2016

M3 - Net publication - Internet publication

PB - 4Cities Euromaster

ER -