The poetics and politics of boredom in Yvonne Rainer's dance and film ; Poétique et politique de l'ennui dans la danse et le cinéma d'Yvonne Rainer

Abstract

The multiplicity of Yvonne Rainer's art and intellectual works - in dance, performance, film, theoretic and poetic writings - makes her one of the essential artists in the history of art. As instigator of the post-modern paradigm shift in the dance scene, she pulled out movements from everyday life and put them at the core of her choreographic work, creating a radical juxtaposition to texts, pictures and objects. In the seventies, she became one of the main figures of experimental and independent cinema. Her polyphonic and reflexive cinematographic works entered in a dialogue with feminist, queer and postcolonial theories and struggles. The present thesis explores the notion of subjectivity and emotion in the film and dance of Rainer. Indeed, she has given the impulse for a radical renewal of the use of emotional material, which she considered as a given fact and an objective reality, in the artistic practice. In a context where boredom imposed itself as the dominant emotional style in the American artistic avant-garde after 1945, the artist offered a sensitive material experience. In particular, she created an acute conscience of time and put her audience in a specific emotional disposition, boredom, that can be described as tedious, cold and ordinary altogether. Then, in echo with women's cinema, she explored boredom both as a process of subjectivation and as a strategy of subversion. Navigating between individual and collective dimensions, this research explores the aesthetic, political and personal stakes around the expression of boredom in Yvonne Rainer's work. ; Danse, performance, cinéma, écrits théoriques et poétiques : dans la multiplicité de sa création artistique et intellectuelle, Yvonne Rainer s'impose comme une artiste cardinale dans l'histoire de l'art. Instigatrice du changement de paradigme postmoderne en danse, elle arrache le geste ordinaire à la vie quotidienne pour le placer au cœur de la création chorégraphique, en radicale juxtaposition avec des textes, des images et des objets. À partir ...