TWIN FIGURE OF MIMESIS
Essays&Script

This could be said to be the story about the Twin Figure of Mimesis.

The mimetic figure Alterity is something as odd as a twin considerably older than its sibling. Alterity is a liberating figure born in the instant we model a copy of the world; a fetish, an image or a story. It is the necessary intervention of fiction, dislodging reality from itself in order to render it open for reflection, interpretation, and imagery.

The figure Identity is the younger twin, operating in the very end of the mimetic road. If Alterity works within the gap between reality and copy, then the mission of Identity is the re-appropriation of the figure. Whereas the older twin opens the gate for our gaze to probe into the potential of the un-knowable, the younger one closes it again in the name of Identification and Knowledge.

The publication Twin Figure of Mimesis is a scripted journey through the landscape of performative mimetics. Written as a double bill, where a collection of essays meets a scripted version of a performative work, the book aims to discuss and problematize a platonic paradigm in performing arts, organising the world in truth and false, original and copy. Opposed to this, the texts address various alternative concepts of mimesis. Not the double as a more or less authentic copy of an original - only validated in its relation to a master signifier - but the double/figure/image as alterity; an autonomous “thing” existing in the world on its own premises.

Suggesting this as the foundation for a new set of objectives, devoted to the production of alterity rather than of identity and identification, the essays reflect what would be a relevant tropology, apparatus and set of tools.

The essays are written in dialogue with, and responded by, Goran Sergej Pristas, Bojana Cvejic, Benamin Noys and Peggy Phelan. Preface by Austin Gross.

Realeased by Skogen Community Press November 2018