Ghosted Corpses: Performing bodies, material landscapes / Kairschner, Shawn

Kairschner, Shawn, «Ghosted Corpses: Performing bodies, material landscapes». Performance Research, 8,  2, (2003), pp. 14-20

Abstract

This article examines the intersection of naturalist theatre, forensic photography, and the materiality of the body in late 19th-century Paris. It explores how theatre, particularly André Antoine’s Théâtre-Libre, and the Paris Morgue’s public corpse displays, both employed visual framing techniques that rendered bodies as objects of scientific and aesthetic scrutiny. By linking photographic realism to naturalist performance, the article highlights how these spaces cultivated a forensic gaze that sought hidden truths within bodily surfaces. Ultimately, it argues that theatre and photography share a spectral quality, where bodies are simultaneously present and ghostly, subject to processes of fixation and erasure.

Other data

ISSN: 1352-8165
DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2003.10871922
URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2003.10871922
Language: EN
key: P4KK223S