Artistic production has always expressed the forms in which we know, explore, and sense the world we live in. The current practice of research in the arts consciously assumes this exploration. In the past decades the focus on research in the domain of the arts has grown – as well as its role in universities and other research contexts – expressing its engagement with the realities of the world at large.

‘In The Making’ will address how artists conduct their research. Guest artist researchers and artist researchers from Leiden University will present their projects, approaches, methods and results. Each session will address questions inherent to these projects. ‘In The Making’ aims to deepen a perspective which conceives of artistic practice not as the sole product of individual visionaries but as a collective endeavor embedded in society. It addresses the role of art in the construction of the present and the creation of possible futures.

In the Making #6: Anna Scott, Jed Wentz, Laila Neuman, Emma Williams

Art Without Soul? Embodiment and Historical Performance

The public series In the Making, organized by the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts and art institute West The Hague, presents different practices of research in the arts. Join this next session “Art Without Soul? Embodiment and Historical Performance”.

Modern performance critics often scorn nineteenth-century actors and musicians, assuming that because they placed emphasis on exaggerated shapes and gestures they were merely showboating — engaging in empty posturing — rather than performing from the soul. Treatises of the period, however, suggest that this visual and sonic hyper-physicality was the means by which these performers generated, channeled, and communicated emotion; that they understood their art as originating not from the soul but from the body. Engaging with these practices today, therefore, is a necessarily embodied rather than abstract, intellectual endeavor; one that handles the performing body (both past and present) as a rich, creative resource rather than a soulless distraction.

About the speakers

Laila Cathleen Neuman is a singer and PhD candidate at ACPA, Leiden University. Her research focuses on the theatrical legacy of the Dutch actor Johannes Jelgerhuis (1770-1836) as a source of stagecraft for performers.

Emma Williams performs with several leading period instrument groups. She is researching the vocal nature of early-19C violin playing through embodying historical acting practices in her PhD at Leiden University. She co-founded MusicBox, a collective that breaks down barriers surrounding classical music, which is both a concert series in The Hague and a podcast called Outside the MusicBox.

Jed Wentz is university lecturer at ACPA and is artistic advisor to the Utrecht Early Music Festival. He has recorded more than 40 CDs with various Early Music ensembles including his own (Music ad Rhenum), has conducted staged opera performances and published in journal like Early Music, Cambridge Opera Journal and Music in Art.

Anna Scott is Assistant Professor at ACPA, and staff at The Royal Conservatory of The Hague. Her research interests include nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century performance practices, particularly in the Brahms-Schumann circle; music, conflict, and wartime culture in Austro-German contexts (c. 1850-1950); recording processes, past and present; radical alternatives to prevailing performance norms; the intersection of performance and Western socio-political norms.

Tickets are free for students, teaching staff and alumni of Leiden University, the Royal Academy of Art and the Royal Conservatoire The Hague. Regular tickets are €5.

About ACPA

The Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) is a research institute within the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University, where it offers composers, performing artists, visual artists and (graphic) designers the opportunity to perform research in and through artistic practice.

The University of the Arts The Hague (which is made up of the KABK and the Royal Conservatoire) has a unique collaboration with Leiden University. The collaboration is realised in the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA), which provides artistic research and education in the arts.

ACPA also offers education in the arts for Leiden University students, and provides academic electives for students of the University of the Arts The Hague.