Kornélia Deres

Recent tendencies in examining performative cultures and visual technologies recognize the importance of phenomenological analyses of performing and spectating bodies, political and material analyses of the power relations of technological environments, as well as the socio-cultural relevance of historical spectatorships. Popular performances often served as effective means of knowledge transmission, especially regarding new visual knowledge, offering interconnections of image technologies, theatricality, and scientific findings. Therefore, the aim of the proposed research project is to focus on the contact zones in which practices of visuality, science, and magic formed spectatorships in Hungarian performative cultures during the first half of the long nineteenth century. Following the routes and impacts of stage magicians, experimental physicists, and science popularisers in Pest-Buda, the research is to be based on the interrelated fields of performative spectatorships, circulating new visual experiences, and popular performances’ role in knowledge transmission as well as in national or imperial identity building.