The Exposed Body of the Spectator

I propose some theoretical and political insights into the contemporary mutations of the spectatorial paradigm (which is constantly evolving, as demonstrated by the recent SGP, which operates a biopolitical selection within the spectatorial body). In particular, taking up some of the ideas developed in my recent book Surviving Theatre (Routledge, 2021), I am interested in investigating what happens when it is the spectator's body that is 'exposed', the object of investigation and the true focus of the experimental performance laboratory: a body illuminated by performance rather than a humble presence at its margins. This shift has had an important 'democratic' value in the 20th century, a proactive recognition of its power, ineliminable from theatre. But what other effects has a paradigm of 'spectatorial exposure', in which the spectator is integrated in real time into the cybernetic mechanism of performance? These questions inevitably intersect aesthetics and politics, as well as the fate of the spectator as the theatre's unknown: the spectator as potentiality. Whether this spectator can somehow be taken over by theatre studies or performance studies is another question that persists at the edge of my intervention. The artists discussed in the essay are Marina Abramovic, Dora Garcia and LIGNA collective.