Events Calendar – British School at Athens
Book Launch and artistic interventions in the garden – performance, screening, panel discussion
“Beckett’s Breath: Anti-theatricality and the Visual Arts” | Dr Sozita Goudouna
The British School at Athens, in partnership with the British Council, Edinburgh University Press and Nissos Academic Publishing, hosts the Greek book launch of Dr. Sozita Goudouna’s book «Η Αναπνοή του Μπέκετ» (“Beckett’s Breath”). A panel discussion will be held with Prof Richard Gough (editor Performance Research Journal) Prof Pamela Karantonis (Head of Department, Theater and Performance Goldsmiths University), Prof Nikos Navridis (Athens School of Fine Arts) and Dr Thomas Symeonidis (Athens School of Fine Arts). Artistic interventions include Maria Louizou’s “6 Breaths Per Minute” and “Desert Breath” by D.A.ST. Arteam, Danae Stratou, Alexandra Stratou, and Stella Konstantinidis.
This survey is regarded as the first monograph on one of the shortest plays ever written. According to William Hutchings’ review at the Comparative Drama Conference Series 15, Goudouna’s book is surely the most ever said about the least in the entire history of literary criticism.
Samuel Beckett, one of the most prominent playwrights of the twentieth century, wrote a thirty-second playlet for the stage that does not include actors, text, characters or drama but only stage directions. Breath (1969) is the focus and the only theatrical text examined in this study, which demonstrates how the piece became emblematic of the interdisciplinary exchanges that occur in Beckett’s later writings, and of the cross-fertilisation of the theatre with the visual arts. The book attends to fifty breath-related artworks (including sculpture, painting, new media, sound art, performance art) and contextualises Beckett’s Breath within the intermedial and high-modernist discourse thereby contributing to the expanding field of intermedial Beckett criticism.
For more information on the book please visit: «Η Αναπνοή του Μπέκετ. Αντιθεατρικότητα και εικαστικές τέχνες» Nisos Press
BSA Upper House Garden, in-person only
18:00-21:00
Please register to attend:
When: 9 May @ 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm EEST
Where: British School at Athens, Upper House Garden – Athens – Souedias 52