ABSTRACT
The concept of mimesis sheds light on reenactment as an aesthetic practice of appropriating past realities and reveals the fundamental link between the past event and its representation in the present. The debate about the nature and function of mimesis goes back to Plato and Aristotle, who addressed the relationship between the idea, the real, and the represented in visual art, historiography, literature, and performance. Essentially, the debate shows that mimesis is the foundation upon which concepts of reality rest, focusing on the ways in which an object is translated into another medium. While Plato in the 4th century bc treats mimesis (derived from mimesthai, to imitate) as a process that is doomed to fail because it cannot overcome the difference between the original and its copy, his student Aristotle emphasizes the creative dimension of mimesis. To Aristotle we owe the identification of mimesis as a fundamental feature of human behavior, as well as the recognition of mimesis as a creative act. Aristotle defines the product of mimesis not in terms of its deficiency with regards to the original but rather in terms of its potential.
