V. Kiseev

Site-Specific Performance in Creative Work of Meredith Monk

The article discusses issues in the renewal of musical theater that are vividly manifested in the American artistic culture of the second half of the 20th - early 21st century and associated with the introduction to the art of a new form of representation - performance. On the example of musical and theatrical compositions by Meredith Monk, an original type of performance is explored – site-specific. The author reveals the features of his embodiment in the field of musical composition, and, exploring the musical and theatrical works of M. Monk in the context of other arts, proves that these works are based on aesthetic principles formulated by New York conceptualists and minimalists. The article is justified the definition of performance (and, accordingly, the site-specific performance) as a form of presentation, an alternative to academic musical and theatrical performance. Its characteristic, different from the performance properties are indicated. Particular attention is paid to the study of the problem of searching by the composer for original methods of influencing the viewer. The author comes to the conclusion that in M. Monk’s compositions immerses the viewer in a specially modeled artistic space, which pushes the viewer’s consciousness to the mental construction of the meaning of work. The author’s “mapping” technique used in site-specific performances (M. Monk’s term) contributes to activating the process of mapping seemingly scattered events into memory and establishing conceptual links between them.

Key words

modern musical theater, site-specific performance, Meredith Monk.

• Read full article