Paper short abstract:

This paper is building around a series of key ethnographic moments during the rehearsal of a contemporary opera. The visual storytelling of the creation process will be intertwined with a commentary on the conduciveness of epiphanies on the team, on the singers, and on my documentation methods.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is building around a series of key ethnographic moments during the rehearsal of the Parsifal staged by Jonathan Meese in 2017. Attending and assisting to the creative process of a prominent visual and performance artist over more than three years, documenting and experiencing the complex interactions of the experimented team around him, I took part in regular bouts of collective epiphanies. The rehearsal in Vienna was the peak time of the creative dispositive that was crystallized around the artist. Analyzing the key features of this generative constellation of actors consisted most crucially in finding out how those moments were sparked and sustained — in particular how the artist and his entourage were modulating the volume of his presence and how he would let the work unfold around the meeting tables, during various artistic interventions and on the rehearsal stage.

Affected by this atmosphere - and by the temporality of the rehearsal process -, my ethnographic method underwent a considerable change as I started introducing to my field notes drawings and watercolors. These drawings complemented the usual writing and photography, which, I found out, were not as efficient in order to capture those fleeting and singular moments. This epistemological epiphany should, I believe, be attributed to the atmosphere pertaining to this artistic production setting. During the presentation, the visual storytelling of the rehearsal/creation process of the opera in Vienna will be intertwined with a commentary of the conduciveness of epiphanies on the production team, on the singers, as well as on the documentation methods of the ethnographer.