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Eirini Kartsaki
I am a performance practitioner, writer and lecturer. As a practitioner I have been extensively involved in devising, directing and performing work, approaching practice as a generative and critical research methodology. I have a passion for contemporary writing, which embraces experimentation, creativity and a shift in the role of the reader. Other areas of interest: live art, solo performance and physical approaches to performance.
My performance work, which is about and from the body, explores the thrill and wonder of eroticism, discovering, through the physicality of movement and the repetitive storytelling that ultimately, what we want is to want.It combines fictional and autobiographical narratives with coarse imagery in order to explore the solitude of desiring and the enigmatic nature of wanting.
I have presented my work in conferences (Performance Studies International 13, New York, Repeat Repeat, Chester University, Live Performance Practice as Research, Royal Holloway, London) and various UK venues (V&A, The Basement, Whitechapel Gallery, Camden People's Theatre, Arnolfini, Bristol, East End Collaborations).
I have studied Theatre and Performance in Greece and the UK and have finished my doctoral research project at Queen Mary, University of London. I have taught as a Visiting Lecturer for the MA Dance Theatre: The Body in Performance. I have been the course leader of BA in Performing Arts at the University of Bedfordshire, Faculty of Creative Arts, Technologies and Science. I am currently a Senior Lecturer in Drama at Anglia Ruskin University, Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences.
Phone: 7845046726
Address: Flat 16, Strand Building
29 Urswick Road
My performance work, which is about and from the body, explores the thrill and wonder of eroticism, discovering, through the physicality of movement and the repetitive storytelling that ultimately, what we want is to want.It combines fictional and autobiographical narratives with coarse imagery in order to explore the solitude of desiring and the enigmatic nature of wanting.
I have presented my work in conferences (Performance Studies International 13, New York, Repeat Repeat, Chester University, Live Performance Practice as Research, Royal Holloway, London) and various UK venues (V&A, The Basement, Whitechapel Gallery, Camden People's Theatre, Arnolfini, Bristol, East End Collaborations).
I have studied Theatre and Performance in Greece and the UK and have finished my doctoral research project at Queen Mary, University of London. I have taught as a Visiting Lecturer for the MA Dance Theatre: The Body in Performance. I have been the course leader of BA in Performing Arts at the University of Bedfordshire, Faculty of Creative Arts, Technologies and Science. I am currently a Senior Lecturer in Drama at Anglia Ruskin University, Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences.
Phone: 7845046726
Address: Flat 16, Strand Building
29 Urswick Road
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“Beautifully written, this book lingers, leans in, and takes its time. Brimming with deep and precise probing, Kartsaki compels us to think again about what happens in the interval of a minor gesture, repeated. Back and forth, to the side and among media -- painting, performance, installation, dance, writing -- this book charts ricochet and makes a sustained critical and experiential contribution to the scholarly exploration of repetition essential to theatre and performance studies. For Kartsaki, repetition’s force is the force of desire, and she rides that desire through a rigorously visceral engagement with art, performance, and philosophy. As she says: “This discourse is personal, performative and wants stuff.” Fair enough. It gets the stuff that it wants. And we, as readers, find ourselves wanting more. If you like this book, as I do, read it twice. In her words, this time, “linger, lean in, take your time.” (Professor Rebecca Schneider, Professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Brown University)
“Eirini Kartsaki’s book, Repetition in Performance: Returns and Invisible Forces, offers the reader a passionate, critical and intimate excavation of the structure and force of experience revealed by repetition in performance. Whether new to repetition as a structure that produces and perpetuates desire (‘what we really want is to keep wanting’) or returning to remind oneself of the insistent ‘lean in’ that repetition activates, Kartsaki’s book offers the reader an original intervention in this critical area of performance analysis through its engagement with a diverse and relevant range of practices, artists and theories in order to reconsider (again and again) the pleasures of performance, of reading and spectating, and the radical force of time made present through repetition.” (Dr Sara Jane Bailes, Reader in Theatre & Performance Studies (English), University of Sussex)
“Persuasively weaving together practitioner, spectator and writerly strategies and experiences, Kartsaki’s book is as elegant and lucid a guide to performed repetition – and the pleasures of performance more generally – as we could wish for.” (Joe Kelleher, Professor of Theatre and Performance, University of Roehampton, UK)
It argues that the movement of the Lacanian drive towards and away from the object of desire resembles, in this case, the spectator's experience of repetition. The shape of this experience could be described as a circular path; the aim of repetition is to perpetuate this movement to and from the object of desire, which is the fulfillment of repetition's promise for satisfaction.
Lacan draws an important distinction between the drive's aim and goal, which is significant in the understanding of repetition: the aim is the mission itself, the itinerary, in other words, what we intend to do, while the goal the final destination. The article uses this distinction to analyse iFeel2, which raises questions about the spectatorial experience, examined here as an experience of desire, a perpetual process towards searching for satisfaction. In this process, the object of desire is always already lost and desire's fulfillment untenable.
The article, finally, draws on Žižek's reading of the Lacanian drive to discuss the above and makes use of Greek philosopher Zeno's paradoxes to demonstrate the type of interminable race repetition sets in motion, as well as an understanding of the unrepresentability of the present. Desire's paradox is further theorised by Shoshana Felman's writing on the myth of Don Juan. The article concludes that repetition in this case both stages and produces desire, which is untenable, the object of which is already lost in this interminable race for pleasure. It argues that repetition make a promise, the promise of satisfaction, which is inherently perverse; the breach of such promise enables the perpetuation of the process of wanting which enables an experience of circular paths of pleasure. The pleasure of the Lacanian circular path is thus the pleasure of desiring itself, structured by repetition.
With essays and other contributions by: Nicola Conibere, Maddy Costa, Diana Damian Martin, Eirini Kartsaki, Joe Kelleher, Shahram Khosravi, Giulia Palladini, Mary Paterson, Marco Pustianaz, Anahid Ravanpoor, Holly Revell and Jemima Yong
Published by Live Art Development Agency
https://www.tarafatehi.com/mishandled-archive-book
My research will look at the collaboratively devised Lone Twin Theatre work entitled Trilogy, directed by Gary Winters and Gregg Whelan with David Williams as the dramaturg of the piece. The research will focus on structure, aesthetics and the devising process, as well as the ways in which the company has created and uses a very distinct vocabulary in terms of language and movement. It will include an interview with members of the company and observation of their creative processes in rehearsal (initial contact with the company has already been made). Thus, an understanding of the conceptual approaches and methodologies espoused by the company as a means to generating information necessary for formulating a grounded epistemological frame for interrogating and critiquing works in this field will be the centre of this research."
intimacy’ to take place. Adrian Howells, on the other hand, thinks of One-on-One as offering an ‘authentic and nourishing experience of exchange’ (2009: 34). Readings of ethical issues at stake/played out/tangled up in One-on-One performance are emerging at quick-speed, due to the current lure of the form and the multiplicity
of appropriations of the One-on-One performance construction. Dominic Johnson argues that, although the tendency is to read such encounters in terms of intimacy, the One-on-One performance experience could be ‘partly boring, partly threatening, possibly embarrassing or uncomfortable’; and those difficulties might
‘resolve themselves into an experience of beauty or wonder, however slight’ (2009: 39).
Acknowledging and celebrating the fluid parameters and unfixed definitive terms of One-on-One work, this issue of Performing Ethos aims at initiating a dialogue about notions of desire, reciprocity and ethics. It seeks to explore the particular and ever-changing relationship between the performer and spectator in the
One-on-One encounter; a relationship that demands further critical consideration, especially in relation to industry, commodification and affective labour.
It is published in the journal accompanying Thomas Hirschhorn's Eternal Flame project, presented at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2014.
“Beautifully written, this book lingers, leans in, and takes its time. Brimming with deep and precise probing, Kartsaki compels us to think again about what happens in the interval of a minor gesture, repeated. Back and forth, to the side and among media -- painting, performance, installation, dance, writing -- this book charts ricochet and makes a sustained critical and experiential contribution to the scholarly exploration of repetition essential to theatre and performance studies. For Kartsaki, repetition’s force is the force of desire, and she rides that desire through a rigorously visceral engagement with art, performance, and philosophy. As she says: “This discourse is personal, performative and wants stuff.” Fair enough. It gets the stuff that it wants. And we, as readers, find ourselves wanting more. If you like this book, as I do, read it twice. In her words, this time, “linger, lean in, take your time.” (Professor Rebecca Schneider, Professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Brown University)
“Eirini Kartsaki’s book, Repetition in Performance: Returns and Invisible Forces, offers the reader a passionate, critical and intimate excavation of the structure and force of experience revealed by repetition in performance. Whether new to repetition as a structure that produces and perpetuates desire (‘what we really want is to keep wanting’) or returning to remind oneself of the insistent ‘lean in’ that repetition activates, Kartsaki’s book offers the reader an original intervention in this critical area of performance analysis through its engagement with a diverse and relevant range of practices, artists and theories in order to reconsider (again and again) the pleasures of performance, of reading and spectating, and the radical force of time made present through repetition.” (Dr Sara Jane Bailes, Reader in Theatre & Performance Studies (English), University of Sussex)
“Persuasively weaving together practitioner, spectator and writerly strategies and experiences, Kartsaki’s book is as elegant and lucid a guide to performed repetition – and the pleasures of performance more generally – as we could wish for.” (Joe Kelleher, Professor of Theatre and Performance, University of Roehampton, UK)
It argues that the movement of the Lacanian drive towards and away from the object of desire resembles, in this case, the spectator's experience of repetition. The shape of this experience could be described as a circular path; the aim of repetition is to perpetuate this movement to and from the object of desire, which is the fulfillment of repetition's promise for satisfaction.
Lacan draws an important distinction between the drive's aim and goal, which is significant in the understanding of repetition: the aim is the mission itself, the itinerary, in other words, what we intend to do, while the goal the final destination. The article uses this distinction to analyse iFeel2, which raises questions about the spectatorial experience, examined here as an experience of desire, a perpetual process towards searching for satisfaction. In this process, the object of desire is always already lost and desire's fulfillment untenable.
The article, finally, draws on Žižek's reading of the Lacanian drive to discuss the above and makes use of Greek philosopher Zeno's paradoxes to demonstrate the type of interminable race repetition sets in motion, as well as an understanding of the unrepresentability of the present. Desire's paradox is further theorised by Shoshana Felman's writing on the myth of Don Juan. The article concludes that repetition in this case both stages and produces desire, which is untenable, the object of which is already lost in this interminable race for pleasure. It argues that repetition make a promise, the promise of satisfaction, which is inherently perverse; the breach of such promise enables the perpetuation of the process of wanting which enables an experience of circular paths of pleasure. The pleasure of the Lacanian circular path is thus the pleasure of desiring itself, structured by repetition.
With essays and other contributions by: Nicola Conibere, Maddy Costa, Diana Damian Martin, Eirini Kartsaki, Joe Kelleher, Shahram Khosravi, Giulia Palladini, Mary Paterson, Marco Pustianaz, Anahid Ravanpoor, Holly Revell and Jemima Yong
Published by Live Art Development Agency
https://www.tarafatehi.com/mishandled-archive-book
My research will look at the collaboratively devised Lone Twin Theatre work entitled Trilogy, directed by Gary Winters and Gregg Whelan with David Williams as the dramaturg of the piece. The research will focus on structure, aesthetics and the devising process, as well as the ways in which the company has created and uses a very distinct vocabulary in terms of language and movement. It will include an interview with members of the company and observation of their creative processes in rehearsal (initial contact with the company has already been made). Thus, an understanding of the conceptual approaches and methodologies espoused by the company as a means to generating information necessary for formulating a grounded epistemological frame for interrogating and critiquing works in this field will be the centre of this research."
intimacy’ to take place. Adrian Howells, on the other hand, thinks of One-on-One as offering an ‘authentic and nourishing experience of exchange’ (2009: 34). Readings of ethical issues at stake/played out/tangled up in One-on-One performance are emerging at quick-speed, due to the current lure of the form and the multiplicity
of appropriations of the One-on-One performance construction. Dominic Johnson argues that, although the tendency is to read such encounters in terms of intimacy, the One-on-One performance experience could be ‘partly boring, partly threatening, possibly embarrassing or uncomfortable’; and those difficulties might
‘resolve themselves into an experience of beauty or wonder, however slight’ (2009: 39).
Acknowledging and celebrating the fluid parameters and unfixed definitive terms of One-on-One work, this issue of Performing Ethos aims at initiating a dialogue about notions of desire, reciprocity and ethics. It seeks to explore the particular and ever-changing relationship between the performer and spectator in the
One-on-One encounter; a relationship that demands further critical consideration, especially in relation to industry, commodification and affective labour.
It is published in the journal accompanying Thomas Hirschhorn's Eternal Flame project, presented at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2014.