Josephine Meckseper’s 2017-18 film, „PELLE[A]S“ (42 min.) condenses the action of the Belgian Symbolist playwright Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1892 drama „Pelléas et Mélisande“ into eleven scenes set against the backdrop of the United States presidential inauguration on January 20, 2017, and the Women’s March the next day.
 
Filmed on location in Washington, DC, and in the artist’s New York studio, „PELLEA[S]“ explores relations of gender and power in the context of political upheaval. Visually stunning in its treatment of architectural spaces and its engagement with the formal languages of twentieth-century cinema from Rossellini to Hitchcock to Fassbinder, the film features Arnold Schoenberg’s symphonic poem „Pelléas et Mélisande“ (1903) as its soundtrack, while a voiceover paraphrases the dramatic action and presents citations from the writings of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.
The panel discussion will include historian Michael Steinberg (Brown University) and ECS faculty members Brigid Doherty (German and Art & Archaeology), Jan-Werner Mueller (Politics), Spyros Papapetros (Architecture), and Effie Rentzou (French & Italian).
Reception to immediately follow. Open to the public.