We all know about mixed media artworks and now it has a name; “Gesamtkunstwerk” or total work of art. Before we begin, let’s take a crash course into what the terms actually is. A Gesamtkunstwerk is a work of art that makes use of all or many art forms or strives to do so. The term is a German word which has come to be accepted in English as a term in aesthetics.
The term was first used by the German writer and philosopher K. F. E. Trahndorff in an essay in 1827. The German opera composer Richard Wagner used the term in two 1849 essays. It is unclear whether Wagner knew of Trahndorff’s essay. The word has become particularly associated
with Wagner’s aesthetic ideals. In the twentieth century, some writers applied
the term to some forms of architecture.
Before Wagner, some elements of opera reform, seeking a more “classical” formula, had begun at the end of the 18th century. After the lengthy domination of opera seria, and the da capo aria, a movement began to advance the librettist and the composer in relation to the singers, and to return the drama to a more intense and less moralistic focus. In lay man terms Gesamtkunstwerk, (which roughly translates as a “total work of art”) describes an artwork, design, or creative process where different art forms are combined to create a single cohesive whole.
There are going to be two blog posts on this topic and each will tackle a different aspect/media object in relation to the topic.
For the first part we were asked to select an example of your own work and analyse it through the lenses of medium specificity and gesamtkunstwerk? What is special about your medium, how is it connected to other media? How would your work change if you used different tools? Is your work a gesamtkunstwerk? Would you consider turning it into one? What would change?
Just like Wagner, I consider theatre to fall under the category of gesamtkunstwerk. Being a theatre actor and director, I directed and wrote a play on the ongoing Kashmir issue. Instead of picking sides or giving a biased review I went for an unexpected approach. Being an admirer of radio dramas, I encompassed that into the story itself.
Here is a like to the play;
The story plays our like a radio drama and the I wanted to make a statement on media as to how to depict such events. For example, the ongoing Kashmir issues plays out differently for everyone. The Indian media depicts it differently, the Pakistan does something to evoke their people and while those living there, they experience something entirely different. Being a puppeteer, the medium I opted was a shadow theatre performance.
The play mostly relied on sound effects and music and was devoid of any such dialogues (the only ones were archive news bulletins). My goals was for the whole play to work like a radio drama, where the visuals and optical sound would submerge the audience into a fantasy of their own and image their own scenes according to the sound and hence create a more immersive experience. All of them organically bolstered the experience of the other medium and that is the beauty of it.
My ideals/work do align with being a Gesamtkunstwerk, for example the play combined different mediums i.e. lights, paper, music, foleys, puppetry etc. I can agree to an extent by what Armheim said;
“Not only does speech limit the motion picture to an art of dramatic portraiture, it also interferes with the expression of the image”.
If I were to attempt a similar story, I would opt for an installation art as a medium instead and would have used newspapers and lights for shadows to create it. Then again it might have had not been much more effective.
References
Anon., 2022. Britanica. [Online]
Available at: https://www.britannica.com/art/theater-building/German-Romanticism-and-Naturalism#ref464013
Lockspieser, E., 2022. Britancia. [Online]
Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Claude-Debussy
Arsalan Awais 