The Mediated Past

Working from the idea of a dystopian society, it becomes interesting to examine the ramifications surrounding the media. Looking at examples such as North Korea, or even Nazi Germany, it is possible to rewrite the past by manipulating the present. For example, Hitler managed to spin Germany’s failures in WWI by using the Jews as a scapegoat. Developing this idea, exploring the relationship between manipulating media and the truth can cause questions to be raised about the authenticity of past mediated events. There are several conspiracy theories suggesting the fabrication of the moon landing, JFK’s assassination and many more events in history. What if those theories are true? The piece should examine this, perhaps exposing the staged nature of historical events. Looking at performances such as Virtuoso (working title), who expose the façade that is theatre by rejecting realism, and leaving the technical workings of their performance exposed (cameras, wires, markings on the floor etc) , it was established that adopting a Grotowski style attitude toward representations of realism would encourage the audience to question the dependability of the mediated news they consume each day.
Virtuoso (working title) also revealed the manipulation of every day on screen imagery by creating images that appeared real on the televisions but the live bodies in the space created a surreal tableau for the audience to witness. This could be utilised within our piece by recreating scenes from history, or manipulating bodies in the space to recreate historical events, just with different outcomes, or by completely fabricating the event. For example the moon landing again, if it were to be recreated in front of the audience, on the tvs, but the live space remained a television set, with lives bodies placed at different angels to create on screen perspective. Again this would hopefully encourage the audience to question the authenticity of the media.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *