Abstract
This essay explores image configurations that have the potential to explode their artistic frameworks and the public spheres that normally contain and regulate them. The power of the image lies not in the work itself but in its interaction with the public sphere in which the images are debated. This chapter discusses how one theatrical image—the spectacle of Muhammad’s decapitated head in Hans Neuenfels’s production of Idomeneo, staged at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin—was catapulted out of its theatro-aesthetic frame, led to a theatre scandal of global resonance, and fed into what is described here as the transnational public sphere .
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Balme, C. (2017). Dangerous Images: Theatre and the Transnational Public Sphere. In: Gluhovic, M., Menon, J. (eds) Performing the Secular. Contemporary Performance InterActions. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49608-9_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49608-9_3
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