Unity as the unpredictability of multiplicity. Examples of Film-documented Field Work in Performative Arts Lecture with Screenings in the frame of the WAAE Summit “Arts, Nature, Technology, Education: Harmony in Unity”, 17–19 October, 2024, Athens, Greece

16:00 Lecture with Screenings from the Lab Inter Arts, Salzburg
Conference Site: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Abstract excerpt

From a cultural anthropological perspective, the idea of unity is a millennia-old phenomenon, for example, with cultures living close to nature, often based on holistic world views. In some Western traditions of thought, various cultural and artistic currents have tried to recapture an integral view of things, also the view of unity, albeit with a different slant. Unity appears as the unpredictability of multiplicity. This interwoven idea allows diversity and polyvalence to exist in unified forms. Against this philosophical-aesthetic background excerpts from cross-over projects in performative arts are presented and discussed, field work in the context of arts education, carried out with people from various fields of study, work and life. The aim of the work is to develop and apply integral forms of cultural and social participation with artistic means in the unpredictability of diversity.

In some so-called Western traditions of thought, various cultural and artistic currents in the 20th and 21st centuries have tried to recapture an integral view of things, also the view of unity, albeit with a different slant, such as the Dada movement or the metaphorical model of the rhizome according to G. Deleuze and others. In contrast to holistic worldviews, some concepts of the 20th and 21st centuries do not appear as unity in the 'classical' sense, but rather as the unpredictability of multiplicity. This interwoven idea allows diversity to exist in the unified form. It seeks contingencies (in the sense of “everything could also be different”), not causalities; it seeks polyvalence, not unambiguity.