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State of the Arts: An Ethnography of German Theatre and Migration (Theatre and Performance Theory)
£69.40
This is a bold and wide-ranging account of the unique German public theatre system through the prism of a migrant artistic institution in the western post-industrial Ruhr region. State of the Arts analyses how artistic traditions have responded to social change, racism, and cosmopolitan anxieties and recounts how critical contemporary cultural production positions itself in relation to the tumultuous history of German state patronage, difficult heritage, and self-cultivation through the arts. Jonas Tinius’ fieldwork with professional actors, directors, cultural policy makers, and activists unravels how they constitute theatre as a site for extra-ordinary ethical conduct and how they grapple with the pervasive German cultural tradition of Bildung, or self-cultivation through the arts. Tinius shows how anthropological methods provide a way to understand the entanglement of cultural policy, institution-building, and subject-formation. An ambitious and interdisciplinary study, the work demonstrates the crucial role of artistic intellectuals in society.
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by Kurt Kästner
I had the pleasure of attending a seminar with the author at QMU in London in 2022 where he spoke about his work with the RUHRORTER theatre in Mühlheim, Germany. As a first-generation immigrant, with a strong belief in the three “trans” of theatre (transcend, transgress and transform), his work immediately resonated with me. I have continued to follow the author’s career since then and was very excited by the publication of State of the Arts (although less so by the price tag). In the end I bought the book as an early birthday present to myself and was not disappointed. State of the Arts is a rich and multifaceted study of the state, the arts, theatre and migration. By focussing on the Theater an der Ruhr, the author situates his study in the lived experience of a remarkable group of artists, but then asks powerful questions about the state of the arts more generally, which will hopefully prompt an important and timely wider debate. This book will no doubt be on reading lists for anthropology students for years to come, but should be of interest to anyone with a passion for the arts. I highly recommend it.