Meditations on the Mask
Mirosław Kocur
miroslaw.kocur@uwr.edu.plUniversity of Wrocław (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7329-122X
Abstract
Instead of a typical review of a research monograph, this article proposes deliberations on selected motifs from Wojciech Dudzik’s book Maska w kulturze współczesnej Europy: Teorie i praktyka [The Mask in Contemporary European Culture: Theories and Practice] (Warsaw, 2020). Although this subjective choice of themes only partially reflects the variety of problems discussed by Dudzik, thise article situates a number of issues in broader contexts: (1) Recent research has shown a surprising ambivalence towards the pandemic face mask as a protection against infection. (2) Present-day devil masks seem to continue the ancient tradition of the mask as a fear-inducing object. (3) European performative practices ignore the insides of masks, unlike in the East, where they are important to actors, stimulating spiritual contact with previous wearers. (4) Sight bimodality is crucial for performing in a mask. (5) In the digital world, the biometric mask takes power over the individual’s bodily identity.
Keywords:
mask, art of transformation, sight bimodality, face mask, biometric maskReferences
Budzowska, Małgorzata, Katarzyna Chiżyńska i Jadwiga Czerwińska. Starożytny teatr i dramat w świetle pism scholiastów: Leksykon. Łódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2020.
Google Scholar
Daucé, Emmanuel, Pierre Albiges and Laurent U. Perrinet. „A dual foveal-peripheral visual processing model implements efficient saccade selection”. Journal of Vision 20, no. 8 (August 2020). https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.20.8.22.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.20.8.22
Google Scholar
Dudzik, Wojciech, red. Paradoksy maski: Antologia. Wybór i tłumaczenie Wojciech Dudzik, Agata Łuksza i Dorota Sosnowska, przy współpracy Amudeny Rutkowskiej. Wstęp Wojciech Dudzik. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2018.
Google Scholar
Dudzik, Wojciech. Maska w kulturze współczesnej Europy: Teorie i praktyki. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2020.
Google Scholar
Fischer, Emma P., Martin C. Fischer, David Grass, Isaac Henrion, Warren S. Warren and Eric Westman. “Low-cost measurement of face mask efficacy for filtering expelled droplets during speech”. Science Advances 6, no. 36 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abd3083.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abd3083
Google Scholar
Kocur, Mirosław. Teatr antycznej Grecji. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2001.
Google Scholar
Kocur, Mirosław. Źródła teatru. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2013.
Google Scholar
Livingstone, Margaret. Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing. New York: Abrams, 2014.
Google Scholar
Roussi, Antoaneta. “Resisting the rise of facial recognition”. Nature, no. 587 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03188-2.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03188-2
Google Scholar
Zuboff, Shoshana. Wiek kapitalizmu inwigilacji: Walka o przyszłość ludzkości na nowej granicy władzy. Tłumaczenie Alicja Unterschuetz. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Zysk i S-ka, 2020.
Google Scholar
Żeromska, Estera. Japoński teatr klasyczny: Korzenie i metamorfozy, t. 1, Nō, kyōgen. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Trio, 2010.
Google Scholar
Żeromska, Estera. Maska na japońskiej scenie: Od pradziejów do powstania teatru nō: Historia japońskiej maski i związanej z nią tradycji widowiskowej. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Trio, 2003.
Google Scholar
Authors
Mirosław Kocurmiroslaw.kocur@uwr.edu.pl
University of Wrocław Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7329-122X
Theatre director and scholar, previously civil engineer. He took his MS (1979) in the Civil Engineering Department at the Wroclaw University of Technology, his MFA (1986) in the Department of Play Directing at the Theatre Academy of Cracow and his PhD (1999) in the Department of Philology at the University of Wrocław, Poland. His doctorate, “Practice of the Ancient Theatre,” was the basis for a critically acclaimed book Ancient Greek Theatre (in Polish, Teatr antycznej Grecji, Wrocław 2001: Academic Book Award 2001 (Ministry of Education and Sport), the Best Book of 2001 Award (Brilliant of the Year)). His book Źródła teatru (2013) has been translated into English: On the Origins of the Theater, trans. by David Malcolm (Peter Lang, 2016).
http://kocur.uni.wroc.pl/
Statistics
Abstract views: 340PDF downloads: 297
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Mirosław Kocur
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The author grants a royalty-free nonexclusive license (CC BY 4.0) to use the article in Pamiętnik Teatralny, retains full copyright, and agrees to identify the work as first having been published in Pamiętnik Teatralny should it be published or used again (download licence agreement). By submitting an article the author agrees to make it available under CC BY 4.0 license.
From issue 1/2018 to 3/2022 all articles were published under a Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. During this period the authors granted a royalty-free nonexclusive license (CC BY-ND 4.0) to use their article in Pamiętnik Teatralny, retained full copyright, and agreed to identify the work as first having been published in our journal should it be published or used again.
