Performance Philosophy (E-Journal)
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Haunting Europe: Bodies, Borders, and the Arts of Commemoration
Full text linkIn the last decade, more than 70,000 people have died while attempting to cross an international border. Half of these deaths occurred in the Mediterranean, the world’s deadliest border zone. In response to the alarming number of border deaths, artists and activists have staged various interventions aimed at publicly commemorating the dead while calling attention to the structural violence of militarized borders and racialized membership. This article examines three such interventions in Europe, focusing on the Berlin-based Center for Political Beauty’s The Dead are Coming campaign, as well as Asmat, a short film by Ethiopian-Italian director Dagmawi Yimer, and Turkish visual artist Banu Cennetoğlu’s The List. It argues that acts of mourning and memorialization can bolster claims for more inclusive forms of citizenship and political community by destabilizing ethnocentric and territorially bounded conceptions of membership, identity, and solidarity
Philosophy with All the Feels
Full text linkThis piece is written to be performed in front of an audience. It can also be read as a paper, in the way that a play is written to be performed but can also be read as a script. Like a play, it includes stage directions. These are designed to draw attention to the actions of the speaker and the responses of the audience. The piece plays with form in order to explore the role of performance and communication style in our philosophical work. Both content and performance (including staging, sound and imagery) affect how the audience receives and responds to the work. In the course of the piece, I try to show how audience feelings matter in philosophy, and why they are worthy of further examination. Alongside the usual philosophical objectives, I hope to make the audience feel entertained, attentive, and open to new experiences. I aim for us to experience and accomplish something together.
performancephilosophy: Some Perspectives on the Helsinki Biennale 2022
Full text linkA deliberate formation of the first part of my title, with no upper-case letters and no space between the words, indicates a desire to bring the two terms closer together, but without any further amalgamation. They are still recognisable in their original meaning and allowed to flow into each other’s terrain. In this light, I examine performancephilosophy within the context of a third P (Problems), one that served as the focus of the Helsinki conference in 2022. My analysis deals with how key problems were addressed throughout the program in terms of their format and content. Reference will be made to other Performance Philosophy Biennales and Interim events that reflected similar concerns and offered innovative solutions. During the course of this ReView I shall also refer to Roland Barthes’ use of the term “idiorrhythm” in order to give a theoretical slant to my perspectives and to support proposals for the possible implementation of solutions to these problems in the future
Echoes in the Bone: Nelisiwe Xaba’s Sakhozi Says “Non” to the Venus and the Capture of Performance’s Immaterial Remains
Full text linkIf it is true that performance remains, what do we make of these remains when subsumed into the house of culture such as the museum? Beyond reiterating the storied debates about the ontology of performance as (either) disappearing and/or remaining, I maintain, through a reading of Nelisiwe Xaba’s dance work entitled Sakhozi Says “Non” to the Venus (2010)that the machinations of antiblack capitalism co-opt all sides of the debate. In this case, an argument previously made about performance ephemera’s resistance of capital now endows capital. That is, while those non-reproductive and immaterial aspects of performance may have promised a way out of capture, it is precisely that refusal which becomes attractive for institutional possession and co-optation. Both the non-reproductive and reproductive accounts of performance’s ontology are susceptible to capture. I focus on dance performance to present a broader understanding of what counts as (immaterial) remains in performance theory and archival studies. This is also to draw attention to the renewed mode of salvaging ownership of repatriated African objects by inviting African performers to surrogate, or act as substitutes for those remains/materials and in the process, restoring white psychic rehabilitation and redeeming enduring European colonial violence.
Unidentified Verbal Objects: How do words perform?
Full text linkThis article considers how artistically performative practices, especially the scenic embodiment of words, problematizes our accustomed understanding of language, both in a philosophical and an everyday sense. In classical phenomenology à la Heidegger or Merleau-Ponty, language is considered a medium of the process of appearing or expression. As I try to sustain, language should instead be understood as the medium of appearing; not as the primary medium, nor as a medium among others, but as an intrinsic aspect of all appearing, no matter what its medium, user, or level of development. This conclusion, if it holds, leads towards an expanded idea of language where being linguistic and being or having a body coincide. The idea is sustained by evidence rising out of consideration of the basic corporeal operations of a scenic performer as they try to embody their textual material performatively. Through this idea, the article seeks a reconciliation to a debate between post-structuralist and post-humanist thought regarding the role and scope of language in knowledge formation
Responsible Knowing in Partnering
No full textHow partners encounter each other plays a role in whether they will be able to sustain their interaction. How partners go about maintaining their interaction reveals features of their epistemological system, particularly with respect to factors like what they know, what they take to be relevant to the interpretation, and what they value. In this way, the value system (what partners want) and the epistemological system (what partners know) intersect. By focusing on the role of reasoning and understanding, I believe we stand to gain a clearer picture of how expectations about interactions inform the dynamics between partners. This, in turn, affords a picture of what partners can actually achieve in and through their connection. I am particularly interested in considering what features of interaction are necessary for maximizing the affordances of the partnership. I say this not as a utilitarian interested in maximizing good simpliciter, but as a social epistemologist thinking about the contingent goods that are present in relation (e.g. care). The epistemic picture assumes that there are things that are knowable in dancing together, while the ethical picture assumes that partners are responsible for the things they ought to know
An Art in Sharing: Reflections on Somatic Attention and Queer Choreographies
Full text linkLooks at the ways in which the queer is performed, choreographed and received in contemporary art, particularly in relation to the ways in which connection functions in dancing and dance reception. Particular emphasis is given to the concept of intersubjectivity and its connective function, using theories taken from Hannah Arendt and Emmanuel Levinas. Examples of artworks by Forest V. Kapo, val smith are discussed. The concept of somatic attention is addressed, the ways in which somatics is a normative system that often generalises and promotes bodies that are homogenous, a-historical and so-called natural. Another central concept is kinaesthetic queerness and the role it might play in de-naturalising somatics and somatic attention. A brief history of how somatics came to the shores of Aotearoa New Zealand is included. A first-person account of the choreographic artwork Moving Backwards (2019) by Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz is included, exploring moving backwards as a way to physically perform resistance, challenge progress and encourage strange encounters that might be points of departure for the unexpected. The final section explores aspects of dancing and dance reception that are unchosen, employing theories of encounter gleaned from Levinas, arguing that his idea of appeal or call and response is an interesting model for the reception of dance
“We are Performance Philosophy Problems”: Towards an accessible Performance Philosophy?
Full text linkThis article originates from a KeyGroup presentation at the June 2022 Performance Philosophy Problems conference in Helsinki in which the performers of Different Light Theatre Company, a learning-disabled theatre company based in Christchurch, New Zealand, interrogated the conference process, proposing their own research questions for the conference participants as well as questions about theatre, Zoom, and thinking. At the conclusion of the presentation, Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca, asked how ‘we’ (academics and the learning-disabled) can be together in conferences in meaningful and inclusive ways. Two separate pieces form a response to Maoilearca’s question: one from McCaffrey and the other from Maguire-Rosier and Gibson, all participants of the KeyGroup.
McCaffrey starts and ends with videos of performance (and transcription). Firstly the video message sent by Different Light to the Helsinki conference and secondly The Journeyings of Different Light at the ADSA (Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies) conference at the University of Auckland, New Zealand in December 2022. The performance questions the company\u27s self or ‘voice’ as determined by the negotiation between the learning-disabled artists, the facilitation of a non-disabled director, and the reception of the performance by a (primarily) non-disabled audience. The middle section is an account by McCaffrey as an ‘unreliable director’ of the processes and politics of making learning-disabled theatre. It performatively demonstrates how the voices of the performers are ‘problems’ for theatrical performance, for an academic conference, and for performance philosophy. Maguire-Rosier and Gibson’s easy-read “story” introduces a dance theatre project in Australia (Days Like These) and a socially engaged theatre project in the USA (To Whom I May Concern) to open up scholarship to people usually excluded from academia due to the density of academic language. Although we keep the offerings separate, both advance the idea that learning-disabled theatre and theatres where people show and share disability and diagnoses of dementia disturb some of the key assumptions of theatre and performance studies, notably ‘withness’ and ‘aboutness’. In terms of ‘withusness’, learning disabled theatre provokes a reconsideration of long-held assumptions concerning liveness and co-presence
Love and Theft in Dance Economies
Full text linkThe emergence of blockchain dance tokens is reshaping the dynamics of race in short-form dance videos within digital economies. While blockchain technologies primarily have been associated with cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, they are changing the arts sector, particularly dance and choreography. This transformation has significant implications for understanding the valorization of Black labor and aesthetics. By examining two distinct choreographic initiatives, we can grasp the profound impact of blockchain cultural production and distribution ecosystems. One example is the work of JaQuel Knight, renowned for choreographing iconic music videos, including Beyoncé’s. Knight\u27s efforts to copyright his dances and empower Black choreographers reflect a shift towards artist ownership of dance steps. Another case study involves the Renegade dance, initially popularized on TikTok. Despite its viral success, choreographer Jalaiah Harmon struggled for recognition. Now, with the advent of dance Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), artists can monetize their work and bridge the gap between labor and circulation. These innovative legal and financial pathways mark the emergence of crypto-choreographies, enabling Black artists to reimagine and carry out a post-extractive dance world. This transcends conventional debates of dance appreciation versus appropriation, signaling a transformative shift in aesthetic economies and the limits of choreographic copyright law
Exhausting the (Human) Problem: A Performable Dys/Solution
Full text linkWhat happens when exhaustion becomes not defeat but necessity? This article explores exhaustion as both existential condition and methodological proposition—a way to sidestep the human(ist) problem of solutionism. Through the sculptural works of Berlinde De Bruyckere, where organic and synthetic matters merge in states of suspension, we witness exhaustion’s capacity to reshape relations between bodies, forms, and forces.
What emerges when we stay with overwhelming complexity as less defined, less Self? Following theoretical threads from Deleuze to Barad, from crip theory to affect studies, this piece traces how exhaustion operates as both performative principle and performable potential. Its double movement—simultaneously giving in and giving out—creates possibilities for thinking and feeling otherwise.
De Bruyckere’s headless forms, rendered through wax, animal hide, cloth, and metal, materialize exhaustion through specific formal choices: suspension, fragmentation, drooping, wounding. Their plastic techniques translate into corporeal masses of alternative enfleshments that resist both completion and categorization. Here exhaustion becomes a disabling condition of human morphologies and mythologies.
What deformations of the human become possible in this suspense? How might “crip sustainability” transform praxis so the impossible can be reabsorbed in the real? Through close attention to matter’s micropolitical attunements—barely perceptible shifts in how things move and hold still—we learn to notice what trembles at attention’s edge. This article proposes exhaustion as radical accessibility: a way of relating otherwise that holds space for all forms of access, all modes of being and unbecoming, all ways matter finds to persist beyond prescribed understanding