Form, content, feeling, perception, knowledge ~ theatre notes

Monday, July 11, 2011

Form, content, feeling, perception, knowledge

If in art we are comparing a cat with another cat, or a flower with another flower, the artistic form as such is not constructed solely of the moment of cross-breeding; those are merely detonators for triggering much larger explosions, entryways into knowledge, explorations of the new.

By refuting emotion or ideology in art, we are also refuting the knowledge of form, the purpose of knowledge, and the path of experience that leads to the perception of the world.

Form and content are then separated from each other. The brilliant formula is actually a formula of capitulation: it divides the realm of art - destroys the wholeness of perception....

Art cognizes by implementing old models in new ways and by creating new ones. Art moves, transforming. It changes its methods, but the past does not cease to exist. Art moves using its old vocabulary and reinterpreting old structures and, at the same time, it seems to be static. It changes fast, changes not for the sake of changing, but to impart the sensation of things in their difference through rearrangement.

Viktor Shklovsky: Bowstring: On the Dissimilarity of the Similar

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