Performance Philosophy (E-Journal)
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Are We Still in Touch? Towards Inter-embodied Dramaturgies in Participatory Performance Practices
Full text linkThis article introduces inter-embodied dramaturgies as a theoretical and practical framework for understanding interrelational dynamics in participatory performance practices. Drawing on the Practice-as-Research (PaR) project From Haptic Deprivation to Haptic Possibilities, the discussion centres on Are We Still in Touch?, a case study investigating the convergence of participatory dynamics in workshop and performance formats. The work invites participants to explore self-directed touch as a method for embodied presence, relational dynamics, and inquiry, even in the absence of physical contact with others. Grounded in Merleau-Ponty’s fleshy intersubjectivity, refined by Sarah Ahmed and Jackie Stacey’s inter-embodied differentiation, and Ahmed’s ethics of encounters, the proposed methodology aims to foster ethical awareness through embodied attention in encountering the self and, by extension, others. In dialogue with Maaike Bleeker’s “doing dramaturgy” and Vida Midgelow’s “dramaturgical consciousness”, inter-embodied dramaturgies position embodiment as dynamic relationality, differentiation, responsiveness, and care, expanding the roles of performer-facilitator and participants as co-creators. By unpacking performative facilitation and somatically inspired witnessing methods alongside participants’ contributions, this project proposes the potential of self-directed touch in cultivating empathy, inclusivity, and social change. The article concludes by outlining wider applications of inter-embodied dramaturgies within and beyond performance contexts, proposing a praxis of being-with others differently.
I Love to You and Cut on Me: A Call from the Surface
No full textI used to see the bleeding wound in performance art as a conduit that transforms and transfers a sense of pain. Yet, developing this idea further via Jean Baudrillard’s reformulation of reality and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s conception of pain, I contend in this article that the act of wounding—whether performed on skin or latex—is also where ethical and philosophical dialogues take place. Drawing on performances by SUKA OFF, VestAndPage, and Franko B, I argue that wounds in these works do not reveal trauma or inner pain but instead operate as sites of painful (hyper)reality where pain is enacted, not expressed, and where the distinction between real and simulated sensation collapses. Taking a different route from Peggy Phelan, who theorizes the ungraspable depth of vision, love, and subjectivity, I shift attention from the wound as a vanishing point of interiority to its emergence as a surface that seduces, generates affect and relational force. In these performances, wound becomes a situation where pain is encountered through a reversible operation and creative enactment—a cut that realizes pain through appearance rather than through reference to an autonomous suffering subject.
The wound, like the proposition “to” in Luce Irigaray’s phrasing “I love to you,” sustains an intersubjective relation that resists possessive logic. Understanding Irigaray’s approach through the lens of Baudrillard’s theory of seduction, the wounded surface, as a seductive plane of simulation, gains an ethical dimension, seducing both performer and audience into uncertain reciprocity. Far from indexing hidden depth, torn latex and dripping blood mobilize affect at the level of surface, compelling response without grounding it in trauma. From this perspective, a wound is not merely a conduit but an ethical relation calling for mutual engagement.
Decolonising the Stage: Ritualised Knowledge in the Theatre Initiation Process
Full text linkInitiation ceremonies in theatre education have been met with many assumptions that have been proven to be widely held. Some of these assumptions include views that the ceremonies are heathenistic, unnecessary, and even unprofessional due to their occurrence at the start of theatre training rather than at its conclusion, as is common in other professions. Through an integration of specific African philosophical frameworks, we discover and reveal the profound cultural and pedagogical significance of these rituals and their implications for decolonial practices in theatre. Central to this exploration is the concept of Ubuntu, which emphasises interconnectedness with its maxim “I am because we are.” It positions initiation rituals as a means of integrating new members into a communal fold, as is also obtainable in the African rites of passage, which mark significant transitions across life phases. This has transformative goals similar to those of theatre initiation practices. Additionally, the mytho-ritual framework, rooted in African mythology and prevalent in the works of African playwrights like Wole Soyinka and Femi Osofisan, is examined for its resonance with these initiation practices. This paper highlights how theatre initiation ceremonies offer unique insights that challenge and enrich global performance discourses by situating these indigenous philosophies within the broader context of performance philosophy. The research thus provides a critical lens for reimagining theatre education as a site of decolonial praxis and cultural affirmation
A mater of loss
Full text linkHow can one imagine speaking to grief using language? How do we hold such a thing within language, imperial language no less? When we centre grief, do we make it generic? When you say grief and I say grief, is it even possible to mean the same thing? What is missing when we say grief, when we gather to contemplate grief, when we claim to research grief? This article explores these and other questions in a multidisciplinary format combining film, images and autobiographical writing
D.E.A.D.line
No full textThe last years the so-called phenomenon “glacier funerals” has appeared and spread globally with the most famous one happening in Iceland (Ok-glacier) in August 2019, followed by amongst others, funerals in Switzerland (Piezol glacier), Mexico (Ayoloco glacier) the United States (Clark glacier). It is one way to cope with ecological grief, an emotional response to the (future) impact of so-called anthropogenic climate change. The funerals differ in execution, but they remain rituals usually performed for humans and are “projected” on glacial beings. This works powerfully for creating awareness of glacier loss and climate change as such. The declared deaths of the glaciers are defined as the loss of the status as a glacier by scientists and are measurable. In this article, I am in for a search for a way to emerge rituals with mountains and glaciers as collaborators, based on a rather personal, partly autobiographic, artistic, and poetic approach, which leads to a better understanding of caring for a mountain and a glacier and bridges the gap between abstract measurable knowledge and a public in a way that it makes the impact of anthropogenic climate collapse sensible.
How to Wash a Body
Full text linkIt is common to learn about natural body care and bathing rituals through end-of-life doula training. At the time of my training in 2020/2021, I hadn’t washed a dead body yet, so I practiced what I was learning on my partner and later described the event in “How to Wash a Body.” The literary examples I’ve come across so far that recount this act of care often describe the uncanny aspects of encountering the loved one’s body becoming corpse. I wanted to emphasize the reverse: the current aliveness of my partner, awareness and forms of preparedness for my/another’s death, and how learning and performing such acts of care like washing a beloved’s body is an integral part of grieving and reconnection in the chain of events following their death.
Performative Utopias: Making Space, Taking Time, Doing Differently?
Full text linkIn an increasingly dystopian world, the notion of ‘utopia’ might seem all but obliterated, yet at the same time, it has become a productive concept for social theory and cultural practice. Joining many utopian revivalists who have addressed utopias as real, critical, minor, or sustainable, this essay makes the case that utopia could also be fruit-fully understood as a matter of performance, or ‘doing differently’—not in the sense of representing let alone feigning, that is, but as bringing something into being. Noting a shared suspicion over both ideas (“only performative,” “just a utopia”), the essay’s two central sections ask how each concept could shed light on the other’s perceived blind spots. Defining performativity as a ‘doing of things,’ first, the very opposition of utopia and reality opens out toward a dramaturgy of real-world utopias at different stages of their performance: people ‘do’ something, and it begins to look like some ‘thing.’ Based on definitions of utopia as a ‘no-place’ that is ‘not-yet,’ second, the ‘realities’ that make it impossible are identified with all those routines that actively take the time, space, and energy from doing anything more aspirational. Hence performative utopias are located in oppositional practices that begin with simply taking the time and making the space
Hilos/Threads: Appropriating the public space through collective weaving and grieving in the context of feminicide in Mexico
Full text linkThrough a decolonial feminist lens this paper unpacks the artistic project Sangre de mi sangre (“blood of my blood”). understood as an art protest by the feminist Mexican art collective Colectiva Hilos (“threads collective”). This work situates Sangre de mi sangre in the history of feminist textile artistic interventions, and specifically within those interventions that aim to take the public space in the context of gender violence. The work of Colectiva Hilos is also socio-politically situated in the history of Latin American political artistic interventions in the context of extreme forms of violence such as feminicide (killing of women because of their gender) and forced disappearance, and forms part of a plural and vibrant feminist movement present across the region. The members of the collective seek to repair the social fabric through collective weaving while using this long red textile to make visible the absences of those who have been victims of disappearance and feminicide in Mexico. Violence is an experience that has meant a fracture of our relations. This is also a painful experience. Where there is pain, there is loss and the need for grieving. This work considers decolonial thinker Rolando Vázquez’s (2018) ideas on healing and grieving to unpack the power of repair in the work of Colectiva Hilos
Under the Banner of Grief
Full text linkGrief is a radically social phenomenon that can be used to connect the unique experiences of individuals across space, time, and place. Organizers and activists within various social justice movements have used collective grief and public mourning to transform political landscapes and to process systemic forms of oppression. Understanding the ways that grief is central to organizing and activism deserves critical analysis. Pairing death doula activism with Stop Cop City organizing, I argue that grief and mourning is foundational to activism and organizing and I intend to examine what can be learned from frontline organizers who both respond to and hold compounded grief with and for others while holding solidarity and action at the center.