Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture

Description

Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture addresses what may be the single most important question facing all kinds of performance today. What is the status of live performance in a culture dominated by mass media and digital technologies? Since its first appearance, Philip Auslander’s groundbreaking book has helped to reconfigure a new area of study. Looking at specific instances of live performance such as theatre, music, sport, and courtroom testimony, Liveness offers penetrating insights into media culture, suggesting that media technology has encroached on live events to the point where many are hardly live at all. In this new edition, the author thoroughly updates his provocative argument to take into account the impact of the internet, and cultural, social, and legal developments. He also addresses the situation of live performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. In tackling some of the last great shibboleths surrounding the high cultural status of the live event, this classic book will continue to shape opinion and to provoke lively debate on a crucial artistic dilemma: what is live performance and what can it mean to us now? This extensively revised, new edition of Liveness is an essential read for all students and scholars of performance-based courses. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Preface to the third edition Acknowledgments 1. Introduction The chapters Notes References 2. Live performance in a mediatized culture The cultural economy of live performance: representation and repetition The ephemerality and distribution of live and mediatized performance Against ontology TeeVee's playhouse The mediatization of live performance Liveness in the age of the internet Proof of life: pandemic performance (a postscript) On a personal note Notes References 3. Liveness and discourses of authenticity in music The cultural economy of music Live music and mediatization Musical authenticities The paradox of authenticity Creditworthiness Instrumentality, authenticity, and electronic music Skill versus control: new paradigms of musicianship Notes References 4. Legally live: law, performance, memory TeeVee's courthouse, or the resistible rise of the videotape trial Pandemic proceedings You don't own me: performance and copyright Performance as intellectual property: common law copyright, unfair competition, right of publicity, trademark The Gollum problem Law and remembrance Notes References 5. Conclusion References Index