Semanalysis of Non-Technological Performance Arts Created by U.S Based Iranian Artists According to Julia Kristeva's Approach (during the Early Decades of the 21st Century)

Kristeva considers text to be a process of interaction between subjects and texts that creates new and endless significances. U.S. based Iranian artists, with transcultural situation, appear in the texts of their performance arts, apply objects, texts and the symbolic in transformed ways, and challenge previous significances and create new ones. In this research we concentrate on those performances in which the artist as subject performs and answer these questions, “How artists apply the above-mentioned factors including body, language, acting and objects, in order to express their concerns?” And “what is the role of each factor in the transposition of the symbolic and creation of intertextuality stemmed from the artist’s liminal status?” The aim of this research is to figure out the stance of U.S. based Iranian artists regarding the symbolic of their motherland and host country, and also, to understand the liminal space of their performance arts as Iranian artists and members of immigrants’ society present in the international arena. In this study, the research method is descriptive-analytical and the library and field methods have been used in collecting data; thus, according to Kristeva’s intertextual approach and semanalysis, and concerning her viewpoints on liminal status of immigrants, we analyze and interpret a few samples of performance arts in two categories of language-based and action-based works. Based on the research findings, in language- based performances, the relativity of the power of language is proposed, and the subject is the “Other”, who supplies the symbolic in the format of objects and incidents in a significant way. On the other hand, in action-based performances, although the subject evades linguistic solutions, it still has to utilize the symbolic in action format. Furthermore, the body reminds us of the physical aspect of “Chora” and objects take on symbolic aspects that imply social limitations and suppressions.