Tomaž Toporišič

Tomaž Toporišič is a dramaturge, translator, theatre theoretician and critic. His primary research interests are the contemporary performing arts and literature, specifically the interaction between the two fields. From 1997 to 2003 he was the artistic director of the Mladinsko Theatre. In 1995 he co-founded Exodos Festival of Contemporary Performing arts, has published numerous papers and four books on contemporary plays, theatre and performing arts. Currently he is a dramaturge of the Mladinsko Theatre in Ljubljana and a professor in Cultural Studies department at University of Primorska in Koper.

Tomaž Toporišič’s paper "What happened to criticism?" explores the field of art criticism and its crisis through the prism of intertextuality, intermediality, corporate capitalism and (inter)criticism. In mediatized culture, these phenomena have undermined critical approaches to art and eroded the consensus on what criticism is. At the same time, during the second half of the 20th century, the space available to criticism has radically diminished. Critique and critical approach have been, on the one hand, proclaimed an unnecessary relic from the past, while on the other, criticism has been re-positioned, becoming in the process a special form of cultural participation. This has produced a situation in which criticism has been shorn of its "performative" aspect because the authoritarian position of gazing at cultural phenomena from a distance is alien to it.