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The Beckett effect : the work of Stan Douglas, Paul Chan, and Tania Bruguera

University of British Columbia

This dissertation on the “Beckett effect” explores the continuing impact of Samuel Beckett’s literary and dramatic texts on contemporary art practices. Since the 1960s, visual artists working in a variety of media have turned to Beckett’s literary productions as sources. I propose that the mediating function of Beckett’s texts extends beyond influence to produce a plurality of functions in the visual arts, which I have identified as the “Beckett effect.” By setting influence aside, I am able to ask: what is the art historical and theoretical significance of the frequency of the use of Beckett’s texts within contemporary art practices? How have these texts dispersed across North American and European contemporary art practices? Exactly what do Beckett’s writings offer contemporary visual artists? More specifically, this dissertation focuses on the effect of Beckett's interventions into the works of three artists: Stan Douglas (b. 1960), Paul Chan (b. 1973), and Tania Bruguera (b. 1968). I first explore Beckett’s reverberations in the visual arts with particular attention to the dispersal of his texts among key artists beginning in the sixties. From there, I argue that Beckett’s oeuvre constitutes a critical intervention into our understanding of contemporary modes of being subjects. Using Beckett’s texts, Douglas, Chan and Bruguera made films, videos, multi-media installations, and theatrical adaptations that allow the viewer to experience the work of art as an immersion in both the historical sense of time and their own present predicament(s). As such, Beckett’s texts serve the visual artist as the means to negotiate between a socially engaged practice and the specific, political or social issue they seek to address. When these artists use Beckett, the work of art moves away from the primacy of vision so that the viewer’s contemporary political and social contexts may be considered.

Text

2024-03-31

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/71345

Art History

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/