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Bodies in suspension
the aesthetics of doubt in honour bound
pp. 146-161
Abstract
As with the bitterly ironic words, Work Makes Man Free, above the gates of Auschwitz, the gates of the prison at Guantanamo Bay are adorned with a sign saying, Honour Bound to Defend Freedom. From this text, theatre director Nigel Jamison took his title for a dance theatre work that explored the conditions under which Australian citizen David Hicks could be imprisoned at Guantanamo without trial. Hicks's case was one of the most prominent to expose the political and ethical gaps in human rights discourses under the new regimes of torture imposed by the US government on the post-9/11 global mediascape. Utilizing dance, digital technology and verbatim theatre, Jamison began Honour Bound with a simple proposition: he saw the image of "this human figure spinning and turning in a void' and, with Garry Stewart, tried to activate the sensory deprivations of a body denied expression by what Giorgio Agamben has called "a zone of exception' (Phillips, 2006).
Publication details
Published in:
Broadhurst Susan, Machon Josephine (2009) Sensualities/textualities and technologies: writings of the body in 21st century performance. Dordrecht, Springer.
Pages: 146-161
Full citation:
Fensham Rachel (2009) „Bodies in suspension: the aesthetics of doubt in honour bound“, In: S. Broadhurst & J. Machon (eds.), Sensualities/textualities and technologies, Dordrecht, Springer, 146–161.