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Chris Grobe

@cgrobe.bsky.social

Theorist/historian of performance. ART OF CONFESSION (http://bit.ly/2BALZDt). Now writing on tech and the arts, politics and performance.

827 Posts501 Follower307 Folgt
Chris Grobe@cgrobe.bsky.social · last mo.

The fact that THE PITT got nearly 50% of *all* nominations in its category for supporting/guest//actor/actress (12 of 26!!) tells you as much about that show's narrative structure as about its quality. It is the quintessential ensemble show.

Chris Grobe@cgrobe.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Today's the day I finally start writing a part of my book I've been working myself up to for months. It's about non-academic (esp. elite liberal) theories of political performance, and it's called... "Ezra Klein, Performance Theorist."

Chris Grobe@cgrobe.bsky.social · 7mo ago

I just published a thing I’m proud of: An article called “Botface” about (1) how humans behave when impersonating robots; (2) how it derives from blackface; and (3) how it contributes to the weird racialization of robots and AI. Please read, please share! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Botface | Critical Inquiry: Vol 52, No 2

Abstract Evidently, people love watching others pretend to be robots. This article uncovers hidden links between this practice and blackface performance, then theorizes the two as similarly metatheatr...

journals.uchicago.edu

Chris Grobe@cgrobe.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Five years ago today, I was slated to teach theories of play in a course called "The Performance of Politics." Instead, we sat and watched rioters storm the Capitol. A year later, I published "The Deep, Dark Play of the US Capitol Riots." I still stand by its conclusions. doi.org/10.1080/1352...

The opening paragraph of "The Deep Dark Play of the US Capitol Riots"Two concluding paragraphs from "The Deep Dark Play of the US Capitol Riots"
Chris Grobe@cgrobe.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Credit where credit is due: this a thoughtful, non-doom-hype-y article on higher ed and AI. In the year of our lord 2025! Bonus points for not mentioning a single Ivy. Colleges mentioned include: Wyoming, UCSD, Western Ontario, Vanderbilt, and Illinois State. www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...

Professors are turning to this old-school method to stop AI use on exams

A small but growing number of educators are experimenting with oral exams to circumvent the temptations presented by powerful AI platforms.

washingtonpost.com

Chris Grobe@cgrobe.bsky.social · 11mo ago

There’s a good poem about this: www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On

Before the apocalypse, there was the apocalypse of boats: boats of prisoners, boats cracking under sky-iron, boats making corpses bloom like algae on the shore. There was the apocalypse of the taxi dr...

poetryfoundation.org

Judah Grunstein@judah-grunstein.bsky.social · 11mo ago

The world isn't coming to an end, my corner of the world is. Alternatively, the world is always coming to an end, and it's each generation's responsibility to rebuild it.

Chris Grobe@cgrobe.bsky.social · last yr.

There’s nothing strange or “hypothetical” about this notion in a theater context. The idea that self-consciousness is the enemy and that actors need to travel some via negativa to strip it away — this is the post-Romantic consensus in actor training and acting theory.

Ted Underwood@tedunderwood.com · last yr.

Kleist "On the Marionette Theater" hits different in the chatbot era. Thirty years ago the notion that expression might be more fluent and graceful *without* self-consciousness was just an amusing Romantic-era hypothetical. Now, it's part of our daily routine. 15orient.com/files/kleist...

And the advantage that this puppet would have over a human dancer? The advantage? First of all, a negative one, my excellent friend, namely, this, that it would never be self–conscious. For self-consciousness arises, as you know, when the soul (vis motrix) is situated in some other point than in the centre of gravity of the movement. Now, as the operator has absolutely, by dint of the wire or string, no other point in his power than this one: all remaining limbs are, as they should be, dead, pure pendula, and so follow the simple law of gravity; an excellent characteristic that one looks for in vain among the greatest part of our dancers.
Chris Grobe@cgrobe.bsky.social · last yr.

On the dangers of making your work “relevant” to AI: “Like LLMs themselves, which deskill human writing and pollute the corpus of text on which LLMs continue to be trained, AI-relevant research also risks eroding its own foundations in now unfundable and ‘irrelevant’ research.”

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Chris Grobe@cgrobe.bsky.social · last yr.

Typing out a text message to myself (my way of keeping certain things handy), I nearly jump out of my skin when those three dots appear. Someone is typing! (I am.) Anyway, a psychoanalyst would have a field day with this.