Peter Weiss

The volume explores Peter Weiss's experimental and engaged art & thought just over thirty years after his death. The twelve papers are divided into two equal halves. In the first section, entitled "Essay und Prosa – Experimente mit Subjekt, Kunst und Politik", six scholars investigate Peter Weiss's essayistic and fictional writing, its cultural and artistic context, and its legacy for literature up to the 21st century. Lesser-known articles in Swedish and seminal interventions in the public debates of the 1960s, experimental prose and canonical novels, are thus reinterpreted using the tools of contemporary literary theory. In the second section, a further six scholars examine Weiss’s cinematographic and theatrical work and his reflections on media and performance. These contributions give new insights into Weiss’s documentary films, revolutionary dramas, and media aesthetics and politics, as well as their influence up to the present day. Under the title "Performative Engagements: Film, Theater, Medien", contributions are brought together that range from earlier models, such as Hoelderlin, Artaud, and Brecht, to contemporaries like Pier Paolo Pasolini, and finally to today's theatre, with Milo Rau.