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Re-Animations or: How to use dead things by Miriam Sachs
Thursday, 27 April 2017, 3pm, CASiLaC Seminar Room, ORB 124, UCC.
Re-Animations or: How to use dead things
The German poet Heinrich von Kleist often created heroes who receive their mission in a state of absence: his characters are not conscious – in mind, or sometimes even in body – at the climax of the texts. They fall in love while dreaming, marry while in a faint, and even the act of procreation happens unconsciously or even in the absence of the person him or herself. The morning after comes a rude awakening which leaves the protagonists slowly regaining consciousness before starting on their cumbersome journeys back to the lost paradise. In their oscillation between awareness and unconsciousness, Kleist's vacated bodies and needy gods, lost minds and shattered frames, machinists and marionettes seem like predecessors of computer era users and avatars who are being used and who are using each other in reciprocal dependency. Who leads, who follows? And is there the possibility of a “reboot”, a new beginning to life? And, if so, why not pick up the pieces and use them in a new composition?
Miriam Sachs - Berlin author, director and scenographer - has been engaged with aspects of Kleist in various disciplines. Her earliest appearance was a lecture performance in Gunther von Hagens’ exhibition Body Worlds, and she reanimates poets and writers in animation picture-pieces. Her novel Kleist in meiner Küche [Kleist in My Kitchen] sees Heinrich von Kleist appear in Berlin in 2011 - 200 years after his suicide. Are these occasions of crossovers or borderline infringements?
For examples of her animation work, see the following links:
During her talk, Sachs will speak about her approach to Kleist and Kafka, and about her very own process of reanimation which is a tightrope walk between literature and fanfiction, remodelling and reshaping, bridging the broad fields of docu-fiction, fake art and falsification.
Thursday 27th April, 2017, 3pm
CASiLaC Seminar Room, ORB 1.24
This event has been organised by the Department of German and the CASiLaC, School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures
ALL WELCOME!!