Nele Wynants

Abstract

The proposed study will map and analyze the way spiritualism, popular entertainment, science and religion was dynamically interconnected in Belgium between 1830 and 1930. It departs from the hypothesis that performative and theatrical aspects of spiritualism were essential in its rise and popularity, and yet at the same time contributed to its downfall. This focus on performance will place the known actors in the field of spiritualism in a new light and is key to understanding their specific interactions. This research will unearth the relationships between mediums and spiritualists, professional show people and involved scientific and religious individuals, who kept spiritualism alive through performing it and by surrounding these performances in lively debate. The geographical focus is placed on Belgium, a country with multiple cultural contexts and a crossroads for transnational influences. Furthermore, the vibrant Belgian spiritualist scene has yet to be thoroughly researched. This study aims to situate spiritualism in relation to popular performance culture and analyze the role of show people in the rise and fall of spiritualism, nuancing and adjusting dominant narratives about the role of different actors, the class they may have belonged to, and the place of women in spiritualism. It also aims to develop a better understanding of the role of technological media in creating effects, searching for empirical evidence and unmasking the séances.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Wynants Nele
• Co-promoter: Jonckheere Evelien
• Co-promoter: Van Osselaer Tine
• Fellow: Welslau Hannah

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts (ARIA)

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

SciFair will conduct pioneering research on the role itinerant showpeople played in the transmission and popularisation of science, technology and visual culture at North-Western European fairgrounds between 1850 and 1914. At a time when modern communication media were not yet in place and only a minority of the population could read, large groups of people were actually dependent on travelling performances and displays for information: in so-called anatomical cabinets, zoological and anthropological museums and scientific theatres, show people demonstrated 'wonders of nature' and spectacular scientific developments. The project advances the hypothesis that the fair in this period was not merely a local folk tradition, but a hub for international exchange in which itinerant entertainment played a pivotal and modernising role in the circulation and popularisation of science amongst people across the social spectrum, relying on efficient international networks. In order to test this hypothesis, the project will bring together a multilingual and multidisciplinary team of researchers that will combine methodologies from theatre and performance studies with perspectives from history of science, media studies and digital humanities to analyse practices of science performance across national boundaries and map transnational networks of North-Western European fairground theatres. SciFair will not only study explicit didactic discourses but also analyse how implicit knowledge and social values of health, gender, nation, class or race were challenged or reinforced. By analysing the fair as a performative event, the project will contribute to our understanding of the social and cultural role of the fair in the circulation of knowledge, media and visual culture.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Wynants Nele

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts (ARIA)

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This subproject of Science at the Fair (www.scifair.eu) examines a neglected aspect of the social, cultural and artistic role of women in fairground communities and their impact on the circulation of knowledge and visual culture in nineteenth-century Europe. As in other cultural fields, the role of women in nineteenth-century show business is poorly documented. Iconographic sources such as paintings, posters, prints or photographs give us a clue, but should be interpreted with caution. Depictions of women in appealing fairground advertisements confirm and often reinforce a number of stereotypes. The female performer is mostly portrayed as the graceful assistant. Dressed in glamorous, revealing costumes, her role seems reduced to assisting her husband, shifting props onto and off the stage. In other instances, her elegant body is being sawn into pieces. However, in itinerant show business families, women traditionally participated in all aspects of the business, while their names were rarely mentioned in the records. Moreover, fairground communities allowed and encouraged women to perform whatever role befitted them on stage, including all the traditionally male jobs off-stage, such as driving vehicles and doing manual work, as well as maintaining the financial and domestic side of life and, in some cases, travelling the world. This project aims to reassess these notorious female stereotypes in the historiography of popular science performance and, by extension, draw attention to the company, the family, the troupe, and the unseen people in the wings of the travelling theatre.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Wynants Nele
• Fellow: Wynants Nele

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts (ARIA)

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This PhD project will investigate areas of exchange and confrontation between scientists and fairground entertainment in the realm of the supernatural such as mediums communicating with the dead, electric girls, sleepwalkers and seers. Initially introduced as entertainment, by the end of the 19th century the practice aroused the interest of religious and scientific authorities alike. It is well known that spiritualists frequently used explanations based on scientific concepts such as fluids, waves, rays, etc. The scientists themselves were also familiar with the spiritualists' ambitions to communicate from a distance. Like most spiritualists, some scientists were keen to place the manifestations of the spirit within the framework of natural phenomena. By focusing on the physical effects produced by mediums – challenging the laws of gravity, the appearance of objects, the production of ectoplasms – spiritualism revived the hope of a reconciliation between science and religion, alongside its social ambitions of solidarity, women's rights, education and egalitarianism. Across the continent, these advances and novelties blurred the borders between the natural and the supernatural; between science, religion and entertainment. This project aims to advance an interpretation of the ways in which supernatural phenomena were analysed and framed, with a focus on identifying various attempts to scientifically explore and explain the supernatural. The goal here is not a matter of pronouncing on the reality of occult phenomena, but of reconstructing a key moment in cultural history through the traces and documents left by the protagonists.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Wynants Nele
• Fellow: Welslau Hannah

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts (ARIA)

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Immersion evokes the sensory experience of being submerged in another world. Although this notion is commonly related to Virtual Reality, immersion is from all times. And from all media. Visual arts developed illusionist image strategies expressing an age-old wish to evoke an immediate or authentic experience beyond the limits of representation. The use of perspective and trompe l'oeil aims mostly at catching and pulling (the attention) of the viewer into the image, stretching the fictional space beyond the rim of the frame. Today this wish for an immediate experience seems to reach again a point of culmination. Digital technologies open new paths to the context of dramatic action. The fast development of immersive technologies and interaction possibilities makes the world beyond the frame accessible for the viewer who is displaced to the inside of the image. The simulated story world coincides with the physical and emotional space of the viewer - here called an immersant. These immersive environments imply new ways of storytelling. Based on a joined methodology of performance and film studies this project mounts explanation how stylistic and formal parameters of narration function in immersive environments and how this changed disposition towards the image relates to the emotional engagement (suspension of disbelief and the sense of presence in a mediated environment).

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt
• Fellow: Wynants Nele

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Immersion evokes the sensory experience of being submerged in another world. Although this notion is commonly related to Virtual Reality, immersion is from all times. And from all media. Visual arts developed illusionist image strategies expressing an age-old wish to evoke an immediate or authentic experience beyond the limits of representation. The use of perspective and trompe l'oeil aims mostly at catching and pulling (the attention) of the viewer into the image, stretching the fictional space beyond the rim of the frame. Today this wish for an immediate experience seems to reach again a point of culmination. Digital technologies open new paths to the context of dramatic action. The fast development of immersive technologies and interaction possibilities makes the world beyond the frame accessible for the viewer who is displaced to the inside of the image. The simulated story world coincides with the physical and emotional space of the viewer - here called an immersant. These immersive environments imply new ways of storytelling. Based on a joined methodology of performance and film studies this project mounts explanation how stylistic and formal parameters of narration function in immersive environments and how this changed disposition towards the image relates to the emotional engagement (suspension of disbelief and the sense of presence in a mediated environment).

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt
• Fellow: Wynants Nele

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project