Korean German Funding Programme; PI: Prof. Eckart Voigts
Adaptation theory has grown vastly complex during the last two decades. In theory, it has the vocabulary and methodology to talk about a host of diverse phenomena of adaptation in all kinds of media, directions, forms, and cultures. In practice, however, a surprisingly high amount of case studies still focusses on "traditional" media (film, narrative fiction, comics), one direction (fiction/comic to film), and Anglophone cultures, some notable exceptions on, for example, drama, dance, memes, or recursive modes notwithstanding. On top, there is a strong tendency to treat texts and works as "closed" artefacts, resulting in a focus on plots, characters, themes, and motifs.
In contrast, this project looks at the multi-directional, multi-cultural, recursive, and processual adaptation of martial arts and fighting techniques (incl. styles, techniques, forms, aesthetics) in movies from all over the world. Most martial arts are in themselves adaptive and open, with surprising universal similarities in core principles (but not so surprising considering that all human bodies have some universal characteristics); martial arts movies, though, have to navigate between this adaptability of their content matter and the much more rigid demands of genre, audience expectations, and cultural contexts and traditions. The transcultural adaptation, medialization, and aesthetics of martial arts is therefore a fertile case study for grasping and illustrating the complex reality of contemporary adaptation practices.
