Performance Philosophy – serie

Performance and Temporalisation features a collection of scholars and artists writing about the coming forth of time as human experience. Whether drawing, designing, watching performance, being baptised, playing cricket, dancing, eating, walking or looking at caves, each explores the making of time through their art, scholarship and everyday lives.

The first edited volume to examine philosopher Slavoj Žižek's influence on, and his relevance for, theatre and performance studies. Featuring a brand new essay from Žižek himself, this is an indispensable contribution to the emerging field of Performance Philosophy.

Adorno and Performance offers the first comprehensive examination of the vital role of performance within the philosophy of Theodor W. Adorno. Capacious in its ramifications for contemporary life, the term 'performance' here unlocks Adorno's dialectical thought process, which aimed at overcoming the stultifying uniformity of instrumental reason.

This book illuminates the relationship between philosophy and experimental choreographic practice today in the works of leading European choreographers. A discussion of key issues in contemporary performance from the viewpoint of Deleuze, Spinoza and Bergson is accompanied by intricate analyses of seven groundbreaking dance performances.

Encounters in Performance Philosophy is a collection of 14 essays by international researchers which demonstrates the vitality of the field of Performance Philosophy. The essays address a wide range of concerns common to performance and philosophy including: the body, language, performativity, mimesis and tragedy.

This book is concerned with such questions as the following: What is the life of the past in the present? How might “the theatre of death” and “the uncanny in mimesis” allow us to conceive of the afterlife of a supposedly ephemeral art practice? How might a theatrical iconology engage with such fundamental social relations as those between the living and the dead? Distinct from the dominant expectation that actors should appear life-like onstage, why is it that some theatre artists – from Craig to Castellucci – have conceived of the actor in the image of the dead? Furthermore, how might an iconology of the actor allow us to imagine the afterlife of an apparently ephemeral art practice? This book explores such questions through the implications of the twofold analogy proposed in its very title: as theatre is to the uncanny, so death is to mimesis; and as theatre is to mimesis, so death is to the uncanny.Walter Benjamin once observed that: “The point at issuein the theatre today can be more accurately defined in relation to the stage than to the play. It concerns the filling-in of the orchestra pit. The abyss which separates the actors from the audience like the dead from the living…” If the relation between the living and the dead can be thought of in terms of an analogy with ancient theatre, how might avant-garde theatre be thought of in terms of this same relation “today”?

This book explores the intersection between apophaticism - negative theology - and performance. While apophaticism in literature and critical theory may have had its heyday in the heady debates about negative theology and deconstruction in the 1990s, negative ways of knowing and speaking have continued to structure conversations in theatre and performance studies around issues of embodiment, the non- and post-human, objects, archives, the ethics of otherness in intercultural research, and the unreadable and inaccessible in the work of minority artists. A great part of the history of apophaticism lies in mystic literature. With the rise of the New Age movement, which claimed historical mysticism as part of its genealogy, apophaticism has often been sidelined as spirituality rather than serious study.This book argues that the apophatic continues to exert a strong influence on the discourse and culture of Western literature and especially performance, and that by reassessing this ancient form of negative epistemology, artists, scholars, students, and teachers alike can more deeply engage forms of unknowing through what cannot be said and cannot be represented in language, on the stage, and in every aspect of social life.

This book presents a compilation of articles on the subject of game studies written over the last ten years. These texts reflect a decade of research in European computer game studies from a theoretical perspective that combines philosophy, cultural studies, visual studies, and media studies in a way that is unique to a specific type of media theory developed in Germany over the last thirty years. This theory differs quite significantly from media studies as usually conceived in Anglo-American academia, providing new perspectives that are rooted in continental philosophical traditions ranging from phenomenology to post-structuralism and newer forms of “presence studies” in aesthetic theory.The book provides (1) an introduction to a continental approach to game philosophy; (2) an aesthetic theory of computer games rooted in concepts of performativity and epistemology; and (3) an introduction to an interdisciplinary approach to game studies that is based on philosophical perspectives on the subject matter.

Actors and the Art of Performance: Under Exposure combines the author's two main biographical paths: her professional commitment to the fields of both theatre and philosophy. The art of acting on stage is analysed here not only from the theoretical perspective of a spectator, but also from the perspective of the actor. The author draws on her experience as both a theatre actor and a university professor whose teachings in the art of acting rely heavily on her own experience and also on her philosophical knowledge. The book is unique not only in terms of its content but also in terms of its style. Written in a multiplicity of voices, the text oscillates between philosophical reasoning and narrative forms of writing, including micro-narratives, fables, parables, and inter alia by Carroll, Hoffmann and Kleist. Hence the book claims that a trans-disciplinary dialogue between the art of acting and the art of philosophical thinking calls for an aesthetical research that questions and begins to seek alternatives to traditionally established and ingrained formats of philosophy.

Representing the first comprehensive analysis of Gaga and Ohad Naharin's aesthetic approach, this book follows the sensual and mental emphases of the movement research practiced by dancers of the Batsheva Dance Company. Considering the body as a means of expression, Embodied Philosophy in Dance deciphers forms of meaning in dance as a medium for perception and realization within the body. In doing so, the book addresses embodied philosophies of mind, hermeneutics, pragmatism, and social theories in order to illuminate the perceptual experience of dancing. It also reveals the interconnections between physical and mental processes of reasoning and explores the nature of physical intelligence.

Performance and Temporalisation features a collection of scholars and artists writing about the coming forth of time as human experience. Whether drawing, designing, watching performance, being baptised, playing cricket, dancing, eating, walking or looking at caves, each explores the making of time through their art, scholarship and everyday lives.

The first edited volume to examine philosopher Slavoj Žižek's influence on, and his relevance for, theatre and performance studies. Featuring a brand new essay from Žižek himself, this is an indispensable contribution to the emerging field of Performance Philosophy.

Adorno and Performance offers the first comprehensive examination of the vital role of performance within the philosophy of Theodor W. Adorno. Capacious in its ramifications for contemporary life, the term 'performance' here unlocks Adorno's dialectical thought process, which aimed at overcoming the stultifying uniformity of instrumental reason.

Encounters in Performance Philosophy is a collection of 14 essays by international researchers which demonstrates the vitality of the field of Performance Philosophy. The essays address a wide range of concerns common to performance and philosophy including: the body, language, performativity, mimesis and tragedy.

This book illuminates the relationship between philosophy and experimental choreographic practice today in the works of leading European choreographers. A discussion of key issues in contemporary performance from the viewpoint of Deleuze, Spinoza and Bergson is accompanied by intricate analyses of seven groundbreaking dance performances.

This book is concerned with such questions as the following: What is the life of the past in the present? How might “the theatre of death” and “the uncanny in mimesis” allow us to conceive of the afterlife of a supposedly ephemeral art practice? How might a theatrical iconology engage with such fundamental social relations as those between the living and the dead? Distinct from the dominant expectation that actors should appear life-like onstage, why is it that some theatre artists – from Craig to Castellucci – have conceived of the actor in the image of the dead? Furthermore, how might an iconology of the actor allow us to imagine the afterlife of an apparently ephemeral art practice? This book explores such questions through the implications of the twofold analogy proposed in its very title: as theatre is to the uncanny, so death is to mimesis; and as theatre is to mimesis, so death is to the uncanny.Walter Benjamin once observed that: “The point at issuein the theatre today can be more accurately defined in relation to the stage than to the play. It concerns the filling-in of the orchestra pit. The abyss which separates the actors from the audience like the dead from the living…” If the relation between the living and the dead can be thought of in terms of an analogy with ancient theatre, how might avant-garde theatre be thought of in terms of this same relation “today”?

This book combines performance analysis with contemporary political philosophy to advance new ways of understanding both political performance and the performativity of the politics of the street.Our times are pre-eminently political times and have drawn radical responses from many theatre and performance practitioners. However, a decade of conflict in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the eruption of new social movements around the world, the growth of anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation struggles, the upsurge of protests against the blockades of neoliberalism, and the rising tide of dissent and anger against corporate power, with its exorbitant social costs, have left theatre and performance scholarship confronting something of a dilemma: how to theorize the political antagonisms of our day? Drawing on the resources of ‘post-Marxist’ political thinkers such as Chantal Mouffe and Jacques Rancière, the book explores how new theoretical horizons have been made available for performance analysis.

This book offers a glimpse of new perspectives on how philosophy performs in the gaps between thinking and acting. Bringing together perspectives from world-renowned contemporary philosophers and theorists – including Judith Butler, Alphonso Lingis, Catherine Malabou, Jon McKenzie, Martin Puchner, and Avital Ronell – this book engages with the emerging field of performance philosophy, exploring the fruitful encounters being opened across disciplines by this constantly evolving approach. Intersecting dramatic techniques with theoretical reflections, scholars from diverse geographical and institutional locations come together to trace the transfers between French theory and contemporary Anglo-American philosophical and performance practices in order to challenge conventional approaches to knowledge. Through the crossings of different voices and views, the reader will be led to explore the in-between territories where performance meets traditionally philosophical tools and mediums, such as writing, discipline, plasticity, politics, or care.

Representing the first comprehensive analysis of Gaga and Ohad Naharin's aesthetic approach, this book follows the sensual and mental emphases of the movement research practiced by dancers of the Batsheva Dance Company. Considering the body as a means of expression, Embodied Philosophy in Dance deciphers forms of meaning in dance as a medium for perception and realization within the body. In doing so, the book addresses embodied philosophies of mind, hermeneutics, pragmatism, and social theories in order to illuminate the perceptual experience of dancing. It also reveals the interconnections between physical and mental processes of reasoning and explores the nature of physical intelligence.

This book combines performance analysis with contemporary political philosophy to advance new ways of understanding both political performance and the performativity of the politics of the street.Our times are pre-eminently political times and have drawn radical responses from many theatre and performance practitioners. However, a decade of conflict in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the eruption of new social movements around the world, the growth of anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation struggles, the upsurge of protests against the blockades of neoliberalism, and the rising tide of dissent and anger against corporate power, with its exorbitant social costs, have left theatre and performance scholarship confronting something of a dilemma: how to theorize the political antagonisms of our day? Drawing on the resources of ‘post-Marxist’ political thinkers such as Chantal Mouffe and Jacques Rancière, the book explores how new theoretical horizons have been made available for performance analysis.

This book offers a glimpse of new perspectives on how philosophy performs in the gaps between thinking and acting. Bringing together perspectives from world-renowned contemporary philosophers and theorists – including Judith Butler, Alphonso Lingis, Catherine Malabou, Jon McKenzie, Martin Puchner, and Avital Ronell – this book engages with the emerging field of performance philosophy, exploring the fruitful encounters being opened across disciplines by this constantly evolving approach. Intersecting dramatic techniques with theoretical reflections, scholars from diverse geographical and institutional locations come together to trace the transfers between French theory and contemporary Anglo-American philosophical and performance practices in order to challenge conventional approaches to knowledge. Through the crossings of different voices and views, the reader will be led to explore the in-between territories where performance meets traditionally philosophical tools and mediums, such as writing, discipline, plasticity, politics, or care.

Through an exploration of both practice and theory, this book investigates the relationship between listening and the theatrical encounter in the context of Western theatre and performance. Rather than looking to the stage for a politics or ethics of performance, Rajni Shah asks what work needs to happen in order for the stage itself to appear, exploring some of the factors that might allow or prevent a group of individuals to gather together as an ‘audience’. Shah proposes that the theatrical encounter is a structure that prioritises the attentive over the declarative; each of the five chapters is an exploration of this proposition. The first two chapters propose readings for the terms ‘listening’ and ‘audience’, drawing primarily on Gemma Corradi Fiumara’s writing about the philosophy of listening and Stanley Cavell’s writing about being-in-audience. The third chapter reflects on the work of Lying Fallow, the first of two practice elements which were part of this research, asking whether and how this project aligns with the modes of listening that Shah has proposed thus far, and introducing Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s writing about the preposition ‘beside’ in relation to being-in-audience. In the fourth chapter, Shah examines the role of the invitation in setting up the parameters for being-in-audience, in relation to Sara Ahmed’s writing about arrival and encounter. And in the final chapter the second practice element, Experiments in Listening, operates to expand our thinking about where and how the work of being-in-audience takes place.Blending the boundaries of theoretical, creative and practice-based artistic work, this book is accompanied by a series of five zines. These describe an embodied experience of knowledge from a personal perspective, both playfully and seriously following a line of enquiry developed in each of the chapters.

Salomo Friedlaender/Mynona (1871–1946) was a prominent, eccentric and influential figure in late Imperial Germany, Expressionism, Dadaism, and the Weimar Republic. He wrote and published works of philosophy, novels, parodies and satirical so-called grotesque tales, which he wrote under the pseudonym “Mynona”—the German word for anonymous, anonym, spelled backwards. Currently being rediscovered in his native language, F/M and his work are still generally unknown, and none of his philosophical texts have been translated.The Critical Introduction to Salomo Friedlaender/Mynona: Twentieth-Century Performance Philosopher is the first English book introducing F/M’s philosophical works. The volume includes three introductory framing chapters of historical context, contemporary relevance and pertinence to the performance philosophy of F/M. The book also contains original translations of select passages from his most significant philosophical texts: Schöpferische Indifferenz/Creative Indifference, (first published in 1918), the later Das magische Ich/The Magic I (1935) and his very last essay Ideenmagie/Idea Magic (1945/46), as well as translations of select correspondence with well-known cultural personalities of the time.Recognised as having inspired Walter Benjamin, F/M was also a forerunner of both performance philosophy and gender theory, and a major influence in the development of Gestalt therapy. Furthermore, not only did F/M belong to the first generation of avid Nietzsche readers, but he was also a lifelong tireless interpreter of Immanuel Kant and Schopenhauer. F/M’s extraordinary voice is of significant interest to Nietzsche and Kant Studies and sheds light on their respective relevance for a performance-oriented approach to philosophy.

Jacques Rancière has been hugely influential in the field of political philosophy and aesthetics. This edited collection is the first to investigate the points of contact between the work of Rancière and the field of theatre and performance studies. Recent scholarly works in this discipline have drawn upon concepts from Rancière’s writing, from theatrocracy to emancipated spectators, to investigate problems of audience, participation, politics and aesthetics. Before these concepts and critical tools peel away from the works through which they emerged, this book seeks a detailed critical assessment of the works themselves and their implications for theatre and performance studies. The collection examines the critical and analytical interventions that have been made to date and looks forward towards challenges to the future uses of Rancière’s work in performance and theatre studies. It also considers a wide range of performance work, from a performance for the residents of a Victorian workhouse to the activist performances of Liberate Tate. This collection includes work by ten scholars and is an essential resource for researchers and academics working in areas of performance and aesthetics, performance and activism, and performance and philosophy.

Jacques Rancière has been hugely influential in the field of political philosophy and aesthetics. This edited collection is the first to investigate the points of contact between the work of Rancière and the field of theatre and performance studies. Recent scholarly works in this discipline have drawn upon concepts from Rancière’s writing, from theatrocracy to emancipated spectators, to investigate problems of audience, participation, politics and aesthetics. Before these concepts and critical tools peel away from the works through which they emerged, this book seeks a detailed critical assessment of the works themselves and their implications for theatre and performance studies. The collection examines the critical and analytical interventions that have been made to date and looks forward towards challenges to the future uses of Rancière’s work in performance and theatre studies. It also considers a wide range of performance work, from a performance for the residents of a Victorian workhouse to the activist performances of Liberate Tate. This collection includes work by ten scholars and is an essential resource for researchers and academics working in areas of performance and aesthetics, performance and activism, and performance and philosophy.

In Being and Time, Martin Heidegger developed a way of considering human existence as ‘being there’, a process of interrelationships with aspects of the environment in which the very process itself constitutes the essence of human being. From Heidegger to Performance engages with this radical perspective and consider Heidegger’s thinking in relation to different senses of performance, from the familiar, such as theatrical contexts of dance, live art and theatre, to explorations of modes of being within these performative situations. The contributors engage with a wide variety of topics from clowning to questions of linguistic construction; from the phenomenology of objects in stage space to the ephemerality of performance; from the performance of personal memory to the anxiety of the moment of choice in performing a complex movement. This book explores the ways in which Heidegger’s work and ideas of performance and performativity intersect, across their various senses and usages and will be useful to scholars, teachers and students who are interested in thinking about performance, and themselves as performative, in new ways.

Embodying Wittgenstein’s own aphorism of “you’d be surprised,” this collection of original essays by both artists and academics explores the significance of Wittgenstein’s writings across a diverse field of performance practices, including poetics and choreography, theatre, and psychotherapy, as well as reflections on political thought and ChatGPT. Fundamentally, the collection shifts the discussion of philosophy and performance away from the well-established distinction between Analytic and Continental traditions to offer examples of Wittgenstein’s inspiration in and for the different practices that are explored in each essay. Between Wittgenstein’s proposals in the Tractatus that “the world is all that is the case” and in the Philosophical Investigations that “words are also deeds,” how might the thought of philosophical questions already inform those of and for performance? How do conceptions of the limits of the one articulate those of the other? And how might such questions be not simply a matter of philosophy or performance alone, but indeed of and for performance philosophy? Contributors: Né Barros, Charles Bernstein, Simon Bowes, Jonathan Burrows, Miles Champion, Will Daddario, Veronika Darida, Françoise Davoine, Peter S. Dillard, Signe Gjessing, Kenneth Goldsmith, Derek Gottlieb, Anthony Howell, Sam Kinchin-Smith, Alice Lagaay, Sue MacLaine, Ray Monk, Bernard Müller, Marjorie Perloff, Tom Raworth, Max Richter, Bo Tarenskeen, The Aesthetics Group (Dublin), Mischa Twitchin, Lukas M. Verburgt, Peter Verburgt.

This book unfolds the theory of enduramorphosis, an emergent strangeness that arises in an endurance performance when the body is pushed to its limit and reacts. Artist Chelsea Coon works across performance and lens-based extensions in photography, video, livestream, digital arts, and new media. Through her work, Coon explores how enduramorphosis is manifested differently across divergent performances. Written from a first-person perspective, this book presents an accessible intellectual exploration of the process and conceptualization of provocative and profound performances. Chelsea Coon combines powerful emotional resonance with physical and psychological extremes, giving the reader insights into the phenomenon of enduramorphosis and a rare glimpse into the motivations, feelings, desires and visceral excesses experienced by the performing body as it undergoes a transformation that lasts.

This is a book about what becomes of the truth when it succumbs to generational memory loss and to the fictions that intervene to cause and fill the gaps. It is a book about the impossibility of writing an autobiography when there is a prepossessing cultural and familial 'we' interfering with the 'I' and an 'I' that does not know itself as a self, except metastatically — as people and characters it has played but not actually been.A highly original combination of close readings and performative autobiography, this book takes performance philosophy to an alternative next step, by having its ideas read back to it by experience, and through assorted fictions. It is a philosophical thought experiment in uncertainty whose literary, theatrical, and cinematic trappings illustrate and finally become what this uncertainty is, the thought experiment having become the life that was, that came before, and that outlives the 'I am'.