Rochester's World: the world of a/the monkey. An anatomy of baroque theatricality

Pol Dehert
Promotors: Rudolf De Smet, Karel Vanhaesebrouck

This project aims to uncover the interferences between the seventeenth-century visual regime, the knowledge-theoretical context of the time and the artistic praxis of Baroque theatre. The starting point for this research is the life and work of John Wilmot (1647-1680), nicknamed The Monkey and also Earl of Rochester at the court of Charles II. Various researchers with an artistic and/or scientific background will try to reconstruct the mental, intellectual and tactile universe of the Monkey from three angles: 1. an art-historical angle that attempts to uncover the visual grammar of the Baroque (and its transhistorical repercussions); 2. a philosophical angle that examines the influence of various dissident intellectual currents in seventeenth-century Europe; and 3. a science-historical angle that examines the knowledge-theoretical influence of various scientific developments on the visual regime of the time. The Monkey's work will thus be radically embedded in its environment. On the basis of the findings of this cultural-historical research, an interface will be created which playfully - in accordance with Baroque poetics - makes these data available and above all usable. This interface will be the working tool in the actual artistic research, where attempts will be made to give the cultural-historical findings a concrete form in an artistic event.