1. Cirque du Soleil-
Contemporary Circus
A phenomenon of low culture or a paradigm of
postmodern eclecticism?

2. • Contemporary Circus
• “Low” Culture/ Popular Culture
• Postmodernism
• Cirque du Soleil: Solstrom - A cosmic Wind
• The making of Solstrom
• Discussion

8. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_circus (Retrieved: 18/04/2010)

9. Nofit State Circus

10. Tiger Lillies
Fan-Atticks

25. Connotations of low/popular culture:
artificial, bad taste, basic instinct, camp, cheap, commercial,
conventional, common, derivative, entertaining, formulaic,
gratuitous, low budget, lurid, mass, ordinary, popular,
proletariat, prurient, sensationalist, shocking, stereotype,
trash, under-the-counter, underground, vulgar

26. • Interconnection
• Eclecticism

27. “The erasure of the dichotomy between
high art and low art may be the most clear
distinction between modernism and
postmodernism […] and forms part of
postmodernism’s general inclusivity as
opposed to modernism’s exclusivity or
elitism.”
Source: http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/08/17/reaching-toward-postmodernism/ (Retrieved: 17/04/2010)

28. Andy Warhol: Campbell’s Tomato Juice Box 1964 Roy Lichtenstein: Drowning Girl 1963

29. Eclecticism is “the borrowing of a variety
of different sources and combining them.”
Source: Hume, Helen D. (1998). The Art Teacher's Book of Lists. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.