Abstract

Bernhard Waldenfels’ idea of deconstruction as a “responsive event”, on the one hand, applies as an approach to the special format of the interdisciplinary conference Wahlverwandtschaften at the festival steirischer herbst ’09, and to its thematic leitmotif All the Same – What is valid if everything is equal and valid? On the other hand, the occurrence of the responsive, of response and responsibility is put in correspondence with contemporary performance practice. Here, Waldenfels’ Phänomenologie der Aufmerksamkeit and especially his term “kinetic epoché” makes us acutely aware of contemporary dance and theatre aesthetics which are withdrawal-oriented – as the text strives to point out by example of the performances by Forced Entertainment and by Philipp Gehmacher and Vladimir Miller, which were shown during the festival