Wurst Storm Rising

Our subject is the legacy of Dada implicit to the Burning Man phenomenon. Animate in the provocative output of fin-de-siècle French Symbolist writer and puppeteer Alfred Jarry, and filtered through the antics of the San Francisco Cacophony Society, Dada is foundational to the cultural aesthetic of Burning Man, by which we mean the event in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert playa (Black Rock City) and a global network of “burn” events. We address the significance of the Cacophony Society expedition that inaugurated the desert phase of Burning Man in 1990, “Zone Trip # 4: Bad Day at Black Rock.” Integral to the surreal tourism ventured by Cacophonists prior to the inception of Burning Man, and pivotal to its desert phase, the Zone Trip kindled “Burner” culture on the Black Rock playa and abroad. Exploring the Dadaist impulse affecting Black Rock City and woven into a worldwide network, informed by interpretative and applied methods, the article addresses art projects (including those designed and implemented by Vitos) at three regional events—Israel’s Midburn and Germany’s Burning Bär and Kiez Burn—visited in 2018 and 2019 as part of a multisited ethnography of the Burning Man movement. As these projects illustrate, the ghost of Jarry haunts, as the spirit of Dada animates, the transnational “burnscape.”

Blicke von der Veranda: Luxustourismus in den Alpen der Jahrhundertwende

Grand hotels had first been a metropolitan phenomenon before they emerged in remote regions of the Alps between the 1880s and the 1930s. This essay explores how these semi-public spaces and early places of modernity engaged with alpine scenery and shaped the very industry of mountain tourism. It analyses the relationship between elite tourism and the natural and social environment of the Alps. The success of mountain grand hotels was tied to increasing industrialization and a new understanding of travel. Their thoughtful detachment from space, time, and society was an expression of a business as much as of social philosophy. Throughout the fin-de-siècle, mountains served as a backdrop for the narrative of the époque’s scientific and technical progress and became subject to rational interpretation and economic exploitation. Mountain grand hotels were not only a key component of tourism infrastructure, but also the bold expression of a presumptuous occupation of spaces set away for tourism. Natural space had widely been turned into social space for visual and leisurely consumption, raising questions of authority, priority, appropriation, and imposition. By mapping the perception of mountains along the history of mountain grand hotels, this essay studies the sites, gazes, and environments of mountain tourism at the fin-de-siècle. It examines how the history of the mountain grand hotel conflates with the forces of colonialism, and capitalism and showcases how these spaces reflect the socio-economic transformations that ultimately paved the way for mountain mass tourism.

Widok z werandy. Turystyka luksusowa w Alpach przełomu wieków

Grand hotels had first been a metropolitan phenomenon before they emerged in remote regions of the Alps between the 1880s and the 1930s. This essay explores how these semi-public spaces and early places of modernity engaged with alpine scenery and shaped the very industry of mountain tourism. It analyses the relationship between elite tourism and the natural and social environment of the Alps. The success of mountain grand hotels was tied to increasing industrialization and a new understanding of travel. Their thoughtful detachment from space, time, and society was an expression of a business as much as of social philosophy. Throughout the fin-de-siècle, mountains served as a backdrop for the narrative of the époque’s scientific and technical progress and became subject to rational interpretation and economic exploitation. Mountain grand hotels were not only a key component of tourism infrastructure, but also the bold expression of a presumptuous occupation of spaces set away for tourism. Natural space had widely been turned into social space for visual and leisurely consumption, raising questions of authority, priority, appropriation, and imposition. By mapping the perception of mountains along the history of mountain grand hotels, this essay studies the sites, gazes, and environments of mountain tourism at the fin-de-siècle. It examines how the history of the mountain grand hotel conflates with the forces of colonialism, and capitalism and showcases how these spaces reflect the socio-economic transformations that ultimately paved the way for mountain mass tourism.

Playing Upon Biographical Myths: William Shakespeare and Lesia Ukrainka as Characters in Contemporary Drama

The article sets out to explore two plays by contemporary playwrights, one American (Don Nigro, Loves Labours Wonne), the other Ukrainian (Neda Nezhdana, And Still I will Betray You), focusing on William Shakespeare and Lesia Ukrainka, respectively, within the framework of “the author as character” subgenre of fictional (imaginative) biography. Accordingly, the article considers the correlation between the factual and the fi ctional as one of its foci of attention. Drawing upon a variety of theoretical approaches (Paul Franssen, Ton Hoenselaars, Ira Nadel, Aleid Fokkema, Michael MacKeon, Ina Shabert and others), the article summarizes the principal characteristics of “the author as character” subgenre and proceeds to discuss how they operate in the dramas under scrutiny. The analysis makes it abundantly clear that in Nigro’s and Nezhdana’s plays the balance between fact and fi ction is defi nitively tipped in favor of the latter. By centering their (quasi) biographical plays on highly mythologized artists of national standing, both dramatists aimed at demythologizing these cult fi gures, inevitably placing them, however, within new mythical plots combining a Neo-Romantic vision of the artist as demiurge, with a Neo-Baroque as well as fin de siècle apology of death and a postmodern denial of one objective reality.

CAMINHOS DE TRANSGRESSÃO: A HEROÍNA QUE OUSA E DESAFIA NA OBRA-PRIMA DE KATE CHOPIN

Kate Chopin se tornou uma importante escritora da literatura realista dos Estados Unidos, no século XIX, por abordar a temática de conscientização feminina em sua obra. O universo feminino de suas narrativas constitui-se de personagens que buscam liberdade e autoafirmação em meio à hostilidade da dominação masculina na cultura fin de siècle. O despertar (1899), a obra-prima da autora, escandalizou a sociedade sulista estadunidense e foi considerado por grande parte da crítica como um romance vulgar e imoral, por tratar de questões como a independência afetiva, financeira e sexual da protagonista Edna Pontellier, que percorre um caminho transgressor em busca da emancipação. Nesse sentido, o presente trabalho objetiva apresentar a trajetória de emancipação feminina da heroína, que rompe com o estereótipo de mulher ideal construído pela ideologia patriarcal, por meio de atitudes consideradas subversivas para a época. Para tanto, a análise será embasada pelos pressupostos teóricos de Virginia Wolf (1942) acerca da imagem do anjo do Lar, de Wendy Martin (1988) em relação às personagens femininas da obra, de Antônio Candido (1976), Edward Morgan Forster (2005) e Ruth Miguel (2016) sobre a personagem de ficção e de Gérard Genette (1972) a respeito do foco narrativo.