Performance Studies

Voix de femmes songhay-zarma du Niger - entre normes et transgressions

by Sandra Bornand

published in "Femmes de paroles - Voix énonciatives et pragmatique des formes de discours", "Cahiers des mondes anciens", 3 / 2012

Au moment du remariage d’un homme, on observe – chez les Songhay-Zarma du Niger – un rituel spécifique aux mariages... more Au moment du remariage d’un homme, on observe – chez les Songhay-Zarma du Niger – un rituel spécifique aux mariages polygames, le marcanda, où les femmes, divisées entre « grandes » et « petites » épouses, se lancent dans une joute verbale d’insultes, puis chantent ensemble. Au sein de ce rituel, des chanteuses d’origine captives peuvent parfois venir chanter des chants grivois. Elles y évoquent ce dont on ne parle pas dans la vie quotidienne : la sexualité. Dans cet article, j’analyserai – sur la base d’une approche énonciative et pragmatique – le dernier chant d’une performance qui en totalise trente-deux. Celui-ci est particulièrement intéressant, car il débouche sur une altercation qui nous permettra de montrer comment ces chants de captives obéissent à des normes, bien qu’ils s’inscrivent dans la transgression, et comment cet espace transgressif, s’il est délimité, est sans cesse renégocié.

The Influence of Art and Performance on the Rise of American Independent Cinema

by Tom Tenney

The Playces of Parkour

by Robert Finch

Pedagogy and performativity: Rendering laboratory lives in the documentary" Naturally obsessed: the making of a scientist".

by Natasha Myers

Can Photographs Make It So? Several Outbreaks of Valie Export’s Genital Panic,” in Hilde van Gelder and Helen Weestgeest, eds., Photography between Poetics and Politics. (Leuven: University Press Leuven, 2008)

by Mechtild Widrich

Differs in some parts from the revised version of 2012, particularly at the end.

Employing the term "performative" I look at the Marina Abramovic's restaging of Valie Export's Genital Panic... more Employing the term "performative" I look at the Marina Abramovic's restaging of Valie Export's Genital Panic at the Guggenheim Museum--I discuss the relationship between the photographs that were staged in the photographer's studio in Vienna, the claims of an actual action (first said to have happened in a porn cinema, a story later changed to "art cinema"--with various dates), and Abramovic's decisions to include the historiography of the piece in her performance. The text is relevant for the discussion of photography versus live event, but I am also trying to figure out how the imagine a performance as ONE work through sometimes conflicting fragments.

Martha@Martha: A seance with Richard Move

by Selby Wynn Schwartz

Embodiment, Transparency and the Disclosiveness of Failure

by Shaun May

Published in 'Body, Space and Technology' Vol. 11, Issue 1.
Cite as "May, S. (2012) 'Embodiment, Transparency and the Disclosiveness of Failure', Body Space and Technology 11/01

In this paper, I want to argue that embodiment is characterised by a plasticity which entails that it can include both... more In this paper, I want to argue that embodiment is characterised by a plasticity which entails that it can include both the biological limb and the 'artificial' tool, as evidenced by recent research in cognitive science. Moreover, I want to claim that it is only in failure that the embodied limb and tool are phenomenologically distinct. I will go on to argue that this claim is essential for understanding the phenomenon of failed embodiment, such as that found within the clowning tradition, before concluding with a short provocation regarding the social and political implications of such a view.

Silence, Rape and Politics in Measure for Measure : Close Readings in Theatre History

by Pascale Aebischer

Agency, Performance and Recitation as Textual Tradition in Mesopotamia. An Akkadian Text of the Late Babylonian Period to Make a Woman Conceive (in preparation).

by M. Erica Couto-Ferreira

In Magali de Haro Sanchez (ed), Écrire la magie dans l’Antiquité – Scrivere la magia nell’antichità. Proceedings of the International Workshop (Liège, October 13-15, 2011). Liège: Presses universitaires de Liège (PULG – Sciences Humaines).

'Hand in Hand' (2008) Exhibition Catelogue

by Shigeyuki Kihara

‘Hand in Hand’ is a group exhibition which explores the experiences of Indigenous and ‘queer’ artists from Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific, curated by Jenny Fraser and Shigeyuki Kihara.

The ‘Hand in Hand’ exhibition was formerly staged at Performance Space and Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative - both venues based in Sydney later toured to the University of Tasmania Plimsoll Gallery, Tasmania, Australia in 2008.

Krpič, T. 2010. Your Body, My Pain: Marginal Auto-reflexive Body Techniques and Construction of Feelings in Body Art Performance. Družboslovne razprave 26 (63): 49-62.

by Tomaž Krpič

Abstract

Nick Crossley’s concept of marginal reflexive body techniques is used to develop the concept of... more Abstract

Nick Crossley’s concept of marginal reflexive body techniques is used to develop the concept of auto-reflexive body techniques, whose primary purpose is to work back upon the body of an acting individual, so as to modify, maintain, or thematise the body of the actor in some way, yet nevertheless with the intention to induce certain emotions, feelings, thoughts and agencies, in another individual. The author defines the body art performance as an artistic, social, cultural and political phenomenon where body art performers produce an event on their own body by using different repulsive marginal auto-reflexive body techniques as an investment of (unpleasant) feelings and emotions in the bodies of spectators. Body art performance additionally serves as a vehicle for the expression of private concerns about common matters in public.


Key words

marginal reflexive body techniques, auto-reflexive body techniques, pain, emotions, body art performance, audience, Nick Crossley.

Roses for the Revolution: An Ethno Poetic Critical Drama

by Ulises Moreno Tabarez

Published in International Review of Qualitative Research, Volume 4, Number 4,

Representations of Mexican revolutionary hero, Emiliano Zapata, migrate across the Mexico/US borders. His specters... more Representations of Mexican revolutionary hero, Emiliano Zapata, migrate across the Mexico/US borders. His specters inform and reflect sexual identities migrating across these borderlands. Theoretically guided by Madison’s model of performative writing and Muñoz’s disidentification, this experimental project highlights and challenges the heteronormativity that pervades these migratory representations and the discursive practices that bring them to life. Through a performative writing exercise, I travel through theory and time to (re)present the figure of Zapata in an intimate love story whose backdrop is violence and war.

Historical Re-enacting and Affective Authority: Performing the American Civil War

by brad west

In applying performance analysis to the nation, cultural sociology has provided nationalism scholars with a powerful... more In applying performance analysis to the nation, cultural sociology has provided nationalism scholars with a powerful alternative to ritual studies in accounting for symbolic power. However, I argue that this perspective is limited by conceiving of
performance as the sum of its production and reception by audiences. This paper examines American Civil War re-enacting to highlight the need for also considering the experience of participants themselves in national performances. Through
ethnography and interviews with Civil War re-enactors local to Gettysburg I outline how attaining a sense of ‘living history’ provides an affective authority for re-enactors in interpreting the past. This motivates re-enactors to undertake voluntary educational activities, including at schools and museums, where orthodox understandings of the past are promoted. This particularly occurs through challenging the dominant belief
that the war was fought over the issue of slavery.

Popping and Other Dis/Appearing Acts

by Naomi Elizabeth Bragin

Manifesto for a Theatre of Immanence: Parts I & II

by Laura Cull

Presented as part of ‘Manifesto for a theatre of immanence: Deleuze and the problem of representation’, 4th International Deleuze Studies Conference: Creation, Crisis, Critique, Copenhagen Business School, June 27 – 29 2011

Spazio urbano e spazio teatrale nell’organizzazione dello spettacolo dal vivo

by Marco Serino

by Marco Serino, published in "TAFTER JOURNAL", n. 38, August 2011, ISSN 1974-563X

This article retraces the relationship, both theoretical and practical, between performances and urban space. It tries... more This article retraces the relationship, both theoretical and practical, between performances and urban space. It tries to connect issues from theatre history and architecture with those which relate mostly to sociology, starting from the fact that the location of the places of performance within an urban or regional area is a matter of how cultural practices interact with social organization.

Contemporary Walking Practices and the Situationist International: The Politics of Perambulating the Boundaries Between Art and Life

by Simone Hancox

Published in Contemporary Theatre Review (forthcoming 2012)

This article analyses the continuing relevance of the Situationist International (1957- 1972) to contemporary... more This article analyses the continuing relevance of the Situationist International (1957- 1972) to contemporary walking-based practices. I draw on my personal experiences of two walks, one created by Wrights & Sites and another by Townley and Bradby, as well as interviews with the artists. The Situationists strived for the revolutionary overhaul of society through eradicating capitalism; they aimed to abolish art and make everyone an artist, and to demolish cities and rebuild them afresh. By contrast, these contemporary artists create structures for individuals to engage with the city in alternative, personal and creative ways. They prefer to blur, not dissolve, the boundaries between art and the life, and seek to use the city differently rather than alter it physically. Consequently, the latter may be seen as politically weak or diffuse in comparison to the original avant-garde. Nonetheless, I argue for the political potential of these performative walking practices, and explore how and why they generate a new kind of politico-aesthetic engagement with the contemporary city; an engagement that is contingent upon the personal response of the participant as well as the artists’ framing of the walks as art. This paper contributes to the expanding field of performance-based scholarship on walking, politics and art.

Book Review: Performance, Ethics and Spectatorship in a Global Age, by Helena Grehan

by Simone Hancox

Book review of Helena Grehan's (2009) monograph.

‘Ambivalence’, ‘shame’, ‘responsibility’...

These abstract nouns recur throughout Performance, Ethics and... more ‘Ambivalence’, ‘shame’, ‘responsibility’...

These abstract nouns recur throughout Performance, Ethics and Spectatorship in a Global Age. They reveal a state that is not in direct conjunction with the themes of the arts practices discussed in the book but rather the spectators’ conditions on bearing witness to and reflecting upon their experiences of these works.  Helena Grehan’s methodology is a re-thinking and application of Levinasian ethics to contemporary arts, predominantly interrogating the efficacy of ‘politically inflected’ performance/theatre to render ethics palpable. In so doing she questions how such works engender a sense of responsibility in their audience, and their potential to incite political agency [...]

El Corán no puede estar en silencio. Una lectura etnoescenológica del Islâm

by Antonio De Diego

published in 'Revista el Sotano', nº 5. April, 2012. pp. 9-16. ISSN 2173-8939.

Este trabajo es una pequeña introducción a una lectura etnoescenológica de la recitación coránica haciendo énfasis en... more Este trabajo es una pequeña introducción a una lectura etnoescenológica de la recitación coránica haciendo énfasis en el concepto de "invocación deseante".

Перформансы в оспариваемых пространствах: стратегии и тактики (случай постсоветской реновации Казани) (Performances in contested spaces: a case study of post-Soviet renovation of Kazan)

by Alexandra Yatsyk

A report at the XIII International Scientific Conference ‘Modernization of economics and society’, Moscow, April 3-5

В докладе предпринимается попытка осмыслить практики гражданского активизма в отношении оспариваемых городских... more В докладе предпринимается попытка осмыслить практики гражданского активизма в отношении оспариваемых городских пространств с позиции культурсоциологической перспективы, как событий – перформансов. Эмпирической базой работы явились случаи протестных акций 2010 – 2011 годов, организованные в защиту исторического центра Казани, которые анализируются как «успешные» или «убедительные» в своем воздействии на городские власти. На основании интервью с организаторами протестов демонстрируется логика выстраивания подобных акций как стратегий (оспаривание в суде, пикеты, коммеморативные шествия) и тактик (рефлексия в жанре личных дневников в социальных интернет-сетях). На примере практик экскурсий по «утраченным местам» Казани, в разных их форматах (экскурсии для «простых жителей» и для Президента Республики и мэра города) обсуждаются характеристики составляющих эти перформансы элементов, где «мизансцене» (в терминологии Дж.Александера), включая участвующую в ней аудиторию/публику, – отводится значимая роль. Показывается, что в ситуации подобной актуализации, посредством коммеморативных практик, опыта сообщества, воплощенного в физическом пространстве города, и само положение физического тела
публики оказывается важным. Способ апроприации пространства – через соразмерный человеческому телу масштаб, ритм, способ восприятия (передвижение, не опосредованное техникой) – оказываются действенными инструментами разделения коллективных представлений о городе (во всяком случае, декларативного) разными публиками, и представляется участникам протестов – акторам перформансов, - существенной характеристикой, влияющей на их «убедительность».