Abstracts for PPP2022 conference, 17 June 2022

Published 13.4.2022 | Updated 10.6.2022

A Key Group 4: Martin Lee Mueller, Heli Aaltonen and David Abram

The Shuddering Wonder of the Earth, Breathing: Conjuring Cultural Metamorphosis in an Era of Ecological Breakdown

Elisa Aaltola’s book Varieties of Empathy: Moral Psychology and Animal Ethics (2018) makes an important argument about the role of emotions, and particularly empathy, in directing our morality and moral agency. She writes: “[E]motions and forms of empathy rescue us from detachment, numbness and objectification of the others and enable the sort of moral agency resistant to subjugation and violence” (Aaltola, 2018, 2). Our concern is with how to develop such empathic orientation toward the wider living world through ways of working with both reflection and performance, speech and embodied participation, sound and movement and contemplative silence. We wonder how performing animal perspectives or telling stories about experiences with non-human others – animal, plant, fungi, river, mountain, lake – would help us build more caring and humane relationships with the more-than-human commonwealth of life. Humans are “storytelling animals”, Martin Lee Mueller argues at length in Being Salmon, Being Human (2017). David Abram (2010) insists that in order to “restore” the health of the living land, we must also engage in the work of “restorying”. While stories are implicit in much philosophical reflection and argumentation, we wish to work with the magic of storytelling; they live also in the act of performing, in the textures and rhythms of voice, body, and even the surrounding spaces. Stories hold the potential to bring both performers and listeners into a mutually created sense of wonder, what Neil Evernden calls “the absence of interpretation” (1985). To develop an attitude where wonder may strike, is to step aside from constricting one’s lived reality to custom and habit, to the familiar, to complacency. Evernden writes: “Relieved of the cultural context which declares that this is important and that that is not … one is simply aware of what is.” In a time when powerful cultural narratives still proclaim human exceptionalism at the expense of the larger living world, the seemingly simple counsel of what is assumes political force: In a time of rampant ecological upheaval, we simply can no longer assume that we already know what this living world is, how we are of it, or even what it is to be human. How then, can we fully know – or even imagine – just what or who are these Others (the other creaturely forms of sensitivity and sentience) with whom we share this whirling sphere of life?

Through our various approaches to working between academia and performance, we explore fresh ways of speaking, writing, and teaching, ways that evoke a deeper participation and kinship with the breathing earth.

Biographies: Martin Lee Mueller is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Teacher Education and School Research at the University of Oslo. The stage adaptation of his Nautilus Book Award-winning book, Being Salmon, Being Human has been touring across Scandinavia, the UK, and North America since 2016. Mueller’s book also inspired the virtual reality artwork “The Bone”, a collaborative project with Chilean artist Michelle-Marie Letelier and the Berlin-based Interactive Multimedia Foundation (2019). Mueller’s writing has been called “game-changing culture-shifting, ethical and eloquent, opening the way toward a more mature natural science”. He interweaves moral philosophy, earth systems science, indigenous perspectives, ecoliteracy and ecopoetry. Mueller is co-founder of the Small Earth Institute. http://www.beingsalmonbeinghuman.com 

Heli Aaltonen PhD is associate professor of Drama and Theatre Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. She is a youth theatre researcher, performing storyteller and animation theatre practitioner. She is teaching artist with a specialization in storytelling, animation theatre, acting methods, applied theatre practices, practice as research method, and encounters between ecology and performative art forms. She leads a research project – Performing Arts and Sustainability – in her department. She was a co-editor and writer in two special numbers of ecological drama work in Nordic Drama Journal, Green Drama (3/2015), and Drama and Sustainability (2/2020). Email: heli.aaltonen@ntnu.no

Aaltonen, H. (2021) Celebrating neighbourhood birds: performing equality in avian-human performance. In Van Vuuren, P. J., Rasmussen, B., Khala, A. (Eds.) Theatre and democracy: building democracy in post-war and post-democratic contexts. Cappelen Damm, 217-237.

Aaltonen, H. (2015) Manifesto for green drama. Drama: nordisk dramapedagogisk tidskrift, 6-7.  

David Abram is a cultural ecologist and geophilosopher whose work has helped catalyze the emergence of several fields of study, including the burgeoning field of ecopsychology, along with ecophenomenology and ecolinguistics. He is author of The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World (Vintage, 1996) and Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (Vintage, 2011). The former book is considered a generative work and continues to inform and inspire scholars across disciplines, and the latter is reflected in the 2018 film Becoming Animal, by Peter Mettler and Emma Davie. Abram also is founder and creative director of the Alliance for Wild Ethics (AWE), a consortium that employs the arts and the natural sciences ‘to ease the spreading devastation of the animate earth through a rapid transformation of society,’ especially ‘through a rejuvenation of oral culture – the culture of face-to-face and face-to-place storytelling’ (http://wildethics.org/the-alliance/).

Eeva Anttila; Rose Martin and Charlotte Nielsen

Performing difference in/through dance: meanings, insights, and propositions

This presentation is based on the authors’ collaborative research on the notion of “performing difference.” As dance scholars and educators, they situate this research in the field of dance, with a special focus on pedagogical contexts. They have utilized several theories pertaining to performance, performativity, difference, and identity (including Austin 1975; Bolt 2008; Butler 1988, 1990; Deleuze 1994; Fisher-Lichte 2008; Goffman 1959) and connected them with the notion of dialogical, or third space (Bhabha 1990, 1994), as a particular condition for artistic and pedagogical encounters in dance. The central motivating question for this research has been: How could the notion of performing difference in the context of dance education lean on and lead towards dialogical (third) spaces as source of learning and living together? As a critical starting point, the authors have departed from the conception of identity as a phenomenon that rests upon categories grounded within observable traits and qualities, upon belonging based on similarities and exclusion based on that which is different. Instead, they reconsider the notion of identity as a shifting and transforming process that remains in an ever-fluid state. They have then focused on embodied, performative acts that are shared with others, as well as on the experience of performing, understood as being seen. They propose that when being seen is coupled with witnessing others performing, that is, seeing, a possibility for shared, or third space may emerge. In such a space something new may emerge, and (cultural) difference may become articulated, sensed, and ultimately welcomed. However, the emergence of such a space, and then, performing difference within this space, entails certain conditions: supporting constant variation, exploration, and experimentation, encouraging bending and breaking of norms and habits, and not only a tolerance for difference to be performed, but rather a celebration of difference being performed. During this presentation the authors will discuss the insights that this research, based on literary sources, their professional experiences and collegial dialogue has generated. They will also discuss how each of them have applied the notion of performing difference within their professional practices and share examples from research work in which these notions have been central. In dialogue with the conference participants, they hope to discuss the significance of the notion of performing difference in various artistic and pedagogical contexts.

Biographies: Eeva Anttila is professor in dance pedagogy, Theatre Academy, University of Arts Helsinki, Rose Martin is Associate Professor of Arts Education with a focus on Multiculturalism, Department for Teacher Education, NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Charlotte Svendler Nielsen, Associate Professor in educational studies focusing on dance and Head of Studies at the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, University of Copenhagen.

Marcelo Garza Montalvo

Danza as Cosmovision

Danza is a rich tradition of ceremonial dance rooted in Mexica, Azteca, Tolteca, Chichimeca, and other Indigenous Anahuacan lineages. Contemporary danzantes (dancers) and calpultin (communities) continue to practice and protect this sacred knowledge throughout Anahuac/Turtle Island (Central/North America) despite centuries of settler colonialism and genocide.

Contemporary danza is descended from generations of danzante ancestors whose resiliency, creativity and vision guided a process of encoding Indigenous knowledge in covert ways, to survive/resist the ongoing invasion of Cemanahuac/Abya Yala (the Americas) by European settlers. Through embodied practices of dance, music, poetry, and artesanfa (craft work), danzantes continue to water the seeds of ancestral memory – awakening huehuetlahtolli (original instructions) in community and in ceremony. As a young danzante and Ethnic Studies scholar, my work traces how danza is an embodied, ceremonial and communal way of knowing. Through my dissertation project, I evidence the ways in which danza serves as a decolonial practice, theory, and pedagogy – as a resistant way of producing and transmitting Indigenous epistemologies amidst a coloniality of power and knowledge. This presentation will focus on the ways in which danza embodies an Anahuacan cosmovisi6n. Through danza theory and praxis, I ask: what is cosmovisi6n? How does it relate to questions of art, science and philosophy? To questions of knowledge and power? How do we translate this concept? Both linguistically and conceptually? I posit that we must translate cosmovisi6n as both “cosmology” and “worldview” – invoking fields of astrophysics, theology, philosophy and cognitive linguistics in particular. Through this transdisciplinary analysis I seek to trace the political and epistemic contours of cosmovisi6n as a site of the colonial difference (Mignolo 2005), and therefore as a locus of decolonial struggle. I begin by reading cosmovisi6n through a history of Western science and critical discourses of cosmology, before turning to decolonial considerations of cosmovisi6n as worldview. With this more robust analytic of cosmovisi6n I return to danza as a ceremonial, communal and embodied way of knowing an Anahuacan cosmovisi6n.

Biography: Marcelo Garzo Montalvo (he/they) is a musician, danzante (ceremonial dancer), and Ethnic Studies scholar-activist. Their teaching and research focus on comparative and critical Black, Indigenous, Latinx and Ethnic Studies and Dance and Performance Studies. They hold a B.A., M.A. and PhD in Comparative Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley. His dissertation, Mitotiliztli < –> Teochitontequiza: Danza as a Way of Knowing (2020), explores Anahuacan ceremonial dance (Danza Mexica-Azteca-Tolteca-Chichimeca) as an embodied form of Indigenous science, philosophy, art, spirituality and politics. His other fields of study include critical science and technology studies, decoloniality and social movements for food, healing, environmental and ecological justice. He is a first-generation Chilean-American of Mapuche and Spanish descent.

Ofri Cnaani

Embodied Partialities: Body in Algorithms

The increasing complexity of the body as a data-subject constantly asks for reconsideration of the critical terminologies that pays attention to the impulse of capital as it intimately circulates the body. How can we get in touch with the shifting conditions created by large-scale computation through what our bodies know, and can we situate new modes of data governance as a problem of and in the body?

I use two recent technologies and a series of performative encounters to observe the promise of frictionless movement as shaped by the capitalist sensorium. First, I look at Contactless technologies that have emerged from the financial terrain and proliferated the urban environments. Contactless seeks contact, yet not of the fleshy kind; it always retains a critical distance between body and object. Then, I annotate the phenomenon of ‘Auto Sync’, a common feature in a family of ‘quantified-self’ technologies. Here the fantasy of smooth movement doesn’t stop in the urban milieu but vibrates in our bodies and creeps under the skin.

Although appeared as ‘intervention-free’ zones, the synched movement and the contactless spaces aren’t vacuumed spaces. In them, there is a hyper-activity of governance without spectacle. The corporal aspects of ‘Algorithmic Governmentality’ (Antoinette Rouvroy) proposes that computational processes of hyper-disadjointment through farming raw data from the somatic, trouble the radical proposition of Deleuze’s notion of ‘Body Without Organs’. I turn to Gilbert Simondon’s notion of Transduction as a conception that allows rethinking the continuum of body, matter and data. Locating the Simondonian transduction within the somatic, situates our thinking before the binary of inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion, mattering and not-mattering. As such, it problematizes the limits of what counts as a body.

I propose Embodied Partialities as a framework that embarks from the new relations between skin and surface, body and calculus, as well as between bodies in the urban milieu. Thinking through the partiality of the ‘almost-touch’ and the automated sync, I propose a thread that navigates along with the experiential, sensorial and spatial knowledges towards a conceptual model of knowledge production that operates from a state of intellectual partiality. It takes the condition of partial touchability and new measures of closeness as a new area of chorea-spatial epistemology. Such modality identifies the potential of friction in the seamless flow of data-capital- corporeal transactions. It is the quiet listening to the movement of the skin and the calculus, as for all our concerns there is always something that drops out.

Biography: Ofri Cnaani is an artist and researcher currently living in London. She works in time-based media, performances, and installations. She is currently a Ph.D. researcher and an associate lecturer at the Visual Cultures Department, Goldsmiths, University of London. Cnaani’s work has appeared at Tate Britain, UK; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC; Inhotim Institute, Brazil; Amos Rex Museum, Helsinki; Kiasma Museum, Helsinki; PS1/MoMA, NYC; BMW Guggenheim Lab, NYC; The Moscow Biennial; The Kitchen, NYC; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Arnolfini Foundation Museum, Bristol; Tel Aviv Museum among others. Until her recently, Cnaani was a faculty at the School of Visual Arts’s Visual and Critical Studies (NYC). At SVA she also ran the ‘City as Site: Performance + Social interventions’ program. In 2016 she co-founded, with Roxana Fabius, the ‘Unforgettables Reading/Working Group’ at A.LR Gallery, NYC.

Sophie Seita and Naomi Woo

The Minutes of the Hildegard of Bingen Society for Gardening Companions 

Following Performance Philosophy Problems’ instigation “how does Performance Philosophy Collaborate?” -we propose a participatory performance-lecture about The Hildegard von Bingen Society for Gardening Companions, a collective secret society of queer and female gardeners, artists, and musicians, founded by Hildegard von Bingen in the 11th century. Our lecture addresses two key problems in the disciplines of performance and philosophy: “How do we receive knowledge about the past?” and “How do we collaborate outside boundaries of space, time, and human agency?” In response to the first question, we propose performance as a way of knowing about past events, including those for which little or no archival material or documentation exists, including the secret society on which our presentation is based. With our audience, we’re staging a performative gathering-a real or imagined meeting of the society. Through this process, we’re actively gaining new and essential knowledge of the past, addressing issues such as gender, sexuality, healing, botany, dreams, friendship, skill-sharing, and isolation. We believe this performative and speculative gathering of knowledge is especially worthwhile in the context of histories that have been and continue to be obscured and suppressed or that may never have been allowed to come to fruition, such as those by and about LGBTQ+ and BIPOC communities. In response to the second question, we see this project as an active collaboration with previous society members, including cyanotype photographer Anna Atkins, scientific illustrator Maria Sybilla Merian, Chinese courtesan and poet Xue Susu, among others. In addition to presenting our speculative history of the society, including a detailed account of our performative research methods, we invite the audience to participate with us in a re-performed society meeting: thus contributing to further research.

Biography: Sophie Seita works with language on the page, in performance, and in video, often through translation, research, and queer-feminist collaborations. She’s the author of, most recently, My Little Enlightenment Plays: A Lecture Performance (Other Forms, 2019) and Provisional Avant-Gardes (Stanford University Press, 2019). She teaches at Boston University and co-runs the interdisciplinary Sound/Text seminar at Harvard.

Naomi Woo is a musician, performer, and researcher. She resides on Treaty One Territory, where she is the Assistant Conductor of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and Music Director of Sistema Winnipeg. She is also an artist with Tangram, an ensemble devoted to celebrating the vitality of Chinese cultures, and creating new music by transnational Chinese creators.

Bernhard Sieber; Leon Gabriel; Julia Schade; Joana Tischkau; Marten Weise and Marcel Zaes

Being-Without. Gathering in Synchronous Isolation

As a catalyst, the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated and aggravated many existing problems. The panel focuses on one aspect which is in direct contact with, and has consequences for, the conception of theatre as a form of gathering: We are increasingly in a state of synchronized, yet remote isolation. This state is itself, on the one hand, an intensification of the reduction to (liberalist)

Western individuality, but on the other hand, it is also a chance for new modes of collaboration. The pandemic brought forward the different digital, technical, and non-traditional ways of performing that have already been established, and are used to co-work artistically, scholarly, and politically. Whereas performance studies were highly influenced by the notion of “being-with” (Nancy 2000), the panel will sharpen the “being-without” as a mode of coexistence which strives for possibilities and interstices of synchronicity in isolation. The contributions take different positions as the format itself will comment upon the panelists’ own synchronous working conditions:

The starting point of the panel consists in Julia Schade’s elaborations on the idea of temporality that comes with the notions of synchronicity and a-synchronicity, offering a reading of time that bears in itself its own undoing via performance practices and performance thinking.

In an artistic intervention, Marcel Zaes introduces his project “Metric Displacement”, in which he reflects the influence of specific places for beats. Being assembled, differently located beats can only be experienced together in digital space.

Subsequently, Leon Gabriel develops the notion of the assembly itself with regard to theatre. In contrast to a shallow promise of ‘the’ public realm and of self-sufficient presence, assemblies can be understood as sites of contested appearances as well as more­ than-human gatherings (‘assemblages’).

This is followed up by Bernhard Siebert who investigates how performances, under pandemic conditions, make themselves independent from their connection to the machineries built into theatre spaces, and how this technical equipment is set free to be used in another way.

Joana Tischkau shows, in her artistic intervention, how the techniques of lip-synching and citing gestures can be choreographically organized in order to shift the representation of practices, identities, and different temporalities.

Lastly, Marten Weise thinks that the very notion of the dialogue is worth a reconsideration under these circumstances. A performance-philosophical thinking of the dialogue might offer a different notion of ‘presence’, and of the possibility of encounters beyond all-too-known concepts of theatre.

Biographies: Bernhard Siebert (1980), holds an M.A. in Theatre Studies, and pursues a Ph.D. project on stage machinery

Leon Gabriel (1984) holds a Ph.D. in Theatre, Film and Media Studies. In 2019, he organized the conference “Limits of Representation” (Ruhrtriennale).

Julia Schade (1988) holds an M.A. in Theatre, Film and Media Studies. Her Ph.D. thesis was evaluated “with distinction”, rigorosum upcoming.

Joana Tischkau (1983), holds an M.A. in Choreography and Performance. Her works are coproduced by Mousonturm Frankfurt, HAU Berlin, and others.

Marten Weise (1989) holds an M.A. in Comparative Literature and Theatre, Film and Media Studies. He is associated member in the Ph.D. network “The Knowledge of Literature”.

Marcel Zaes (1984) holds M.A.s in Music & Media Arts, and in Music Composition. He pursues his Ph.D. in Music & Multimedia Composition at Brown University.

Pablo Alvez Artinproces

Dialogue, not dialectics – the infinite (but conditioned) set of asymptotical performative solutions to a philosophical problem

This presentation describes an exercise of interplay between a problem (can ethics empower aesthetics and artistic possibilities?”), which is philosophical by nature, and performance art as a means to answer such a question. Our point is that, even if we “mind the gap” and choose to take as an assumption the non-miscibility of (and non-interchangeability between) philosophy and performance art (which itself is debatable and shows this whole reflection is, too, but an exercise), we can validly refuse a univocal entitlement of philosophy to comment on art when the inverse operation is forbidden. Much on the contrary we show how experiments in performance art can not only help shed light on concepts traditionally seen as belonging to philosophy and the synapses established among them but can also “retell” the narrative present in philosophical discourse. But we also show how going back to text and from text again to experimental performance art can shed light (and consolidate some convictions about what might be the (un)necessary and (in)sufficient conditions to define performance art, such as presence, immediacy, non­ representation, activity/passivity or the visual. This loop between philosophy and performance art is a dialogical one, not a dialectical one, as the initial problem does not immolate itself in a single solution, but rather remains open-ended, yielding potentially infinite performative solutions (without meaning that any performative experiment or outcome is a solution to the initial problem). This eternal feed is actually consistent both with the irreconcilable nature of philosophy and performance art, and with the fact that the rapport between the two can be an eternally enriching one – hence hinting at a “third way” that no longer focuses on minding the gap. In the process, we put into question the dichotomist association of philosophy as theory, as opposed to performance as practice, showing that performance art also emanates theory, just as writing, reading and (especially) translating philosophy largely belong to the realm of practice. As a reference in ethics we take Totality and Infinity by Emanuel Levinas. As a reference to aesthetics we take our own experiments in performance art. We seek inspiration on Denis Guenoun’s analysis on art, acting and inspiration, as he himself gets inspired by his readings on Levinas.

Biography: Pablo Alvez Artinprocess is a performance artist, an artist-researcher, a phd in poverty economics, a former university teacher, etc. I am carrying out a doctoral research under the supervision of Laura Cull (University of Surrey and Amsterdam University of the Arts) and KAti Rottger (Amsterdam University) on the relation between levinassian ethics and (my) experimental performance art. My latest publication is “Levinas, art and performance : re-reading « La realite et son ombre » from the lenses of« Totalite et infini » ” in Lorelle, P. (2020), Considerations phenomenologiques sur le monde. My latest performance creation is “phenomenologie de l’eros” and it was prized by Gulbenkian Foundation and counts on the production support of Kanal – Centre Pompidou in Brussels.

Eliane Beaufils

How to gather and sympoi:ese

This communication aims at studying the conjunction of two concepts, “sympoi:esis” and “gathering” by performance and philosophy. I refer to the concepts as conceived by Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour respectively. Both concepts are intended to be new ways of thinking­ acting in the context of the Chthulu – or the Anthropocene. This thinking tries to avoid a certain monadological tendency of criticism by starting from the web of relationalities in which every subject is caught or which he wants to develop. These concepts are themselves the result of a collection of thoughts and the performances can show the pluralities of inspirations that run through them. Moreover performances can obviously unfold the potentialities of the concepts, thicken them, embody them. I would like to draw on three examples of performances that probe what the act of gathering and acting sympoi:etically brings into play. By “bringing into play” I mean that the performances do not simply prolong or incorporate reflections that precede them, that they do not think “about” objects or speak “about” them. But they are themselves works of gathering and sympoi:esis that furthermore call on the spectators to co-think and find co-impulses for their action. In Mass Bloom Exploration by the Recoil collective, it is particularly important to analyse how the dancer acts with worms and with spectators. The performance New Skin by Hanna de Meyer takes a more speculative turn in an attempt to speak sym-poetically with humans and non-humans. Language and body then become energeia (Humboldt). Finally, Fidelio or a German Nightmare does not opt for a poetic and non-human path but for a gathering of the very human: the Hauen und Stechen collective brings together essential discourses that have crossed modernity. The show makes the spectators experience them: they are indeed brought together into a “we” and brought to study what this “we” still holds during the performance. By their different sympoi:etic gatherings, the performances philosophically and performatively explore the relations that contemporaries can/should hold on to.

Biography: Eliane Beaufils is Maitre de conferences HDR in Theater and Performance Studies at the University Paris 8. She studied German Studies, Politics, Media- und Theater Studies at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques and at the University Paris Sorbonne. Her habilitation research was centered on poetic critical languages on stage. The topic of the PhD was Violence on Contemporary German Stages (Violences sur les scenes allemandes, Paris: PUPS, 2010). She published among other works the books Being-With in Contemporary Performing Arts (with Eva Holling, Berlin, 2018), Scenes en partage (with Alix de Morant, Montpellier, 2018) and Quand la scene fait appel. Le theatre contemporain et le poetique (Paris, 2014) as well as articles about contemporary theater and performance, aesthetics of violence, poetic and critical thought, togetherness in contemporary performative works.

Marja-Liisa Honkasalo

Being ill as a challenge for performance philosophy

Illness and cure are social and cultural fields, which pose continuous challenges for phenomenology, performance art and various approaches in technosciences and the STS. The questions are timely for all of them. Interestingly, the field of health care is a flourishing garden of materiality, messiness and bricolage, all of them sources for both theorizing and the art. However, for the most, in these fields the questions are tackled separately. The experience of illness has been of interest for phenomenology, whereas the cure and the healing practices have served as a source for performance art and practices, for other inquiries in the era of the technological change with its innumerable innovations. It is hard to find art works or philosophical surfaces between them.
Because of the situation, also the discussion between phenomenology and performance art is weak. This paper addresses the problems from the perspective of all three. It is based on three performance cases in this field, on own ethnographic work and on selected phenomenological and Latourian-inspired literature.

Biography: Marja-Liisa Honkasalo, MD., PhD., visiting scholar at the University of the Arts. As an ethnographer, she works currently on the intercorporal boundaries of the mind together with Live Artists in the project Body and the Other – Lived Impossibilities. After having worked as Professor of Medical Anthropology in Linkoping, Sweden, she was invited to Finland as Professor of Health, Art and Wellbeing in 2010. Academy research fellow 1999, fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advances Studies. Awarded with the internationally distinguished Steve Polgar Professional Prize, for the article “Grips and Ties. Agency, Uncertainty and Suffering in North Karelia.” She engages public intellectual concerns not only with the specialized debates of academic anthropology and health research, but also with the larger issues that touch upon social, political, and cultural aspects of contemporary life.

Edward Spence

Philosophy Plays

This paper provides an explanatory rationale within a theoretical philosophical framework for the Philosophy Plays project, conceived as a Way of Life and a form of communal therapy for the mind. The object of the Philosophy Plays is to introduce philosophy to the general public through philosophical presentations by professional philosophers incorporating drama. The Philosophy Plays project first conceived and introduced in Sydney, Australia by Edward Spence has created a public domain for philosophy where relevant issues and topics of public interest and importance, such as love, immortality, happiness, friendship, religion, knowledge, trust, pets, morality, technology, and corruption can be presented by professional philosophers and discussed in an open forum with members of the general public. The Philosophy Plays, like Platonic dialogues, seek to engage their audiences both intellectually (primarily through the philosophical talk) and emotionally (primarily through dramatic plays). Like Plato’s dialogues, from which they draw their inspiration, the Philosophy Plays which combine dialectic (the philosophical talk) with rhetoric (the drama) seek to engage their public audiences in a realistic and shared lived experience thus rendering philosophy a practical and meaningful activity for all participants, conceived as a way of life. Responding to the conference question “is there thinking within performance that presents problems that standard philosophy cannot approach and philosophical problems that can only be processed through performance philosophy” the presentation will demonstrate that philosophy, as conceived by the Hellenistic philosophers and specifically, the Stoics, as a Way of Life, can more effectively be expressed through a combination of philosophy and performance in the form of Philosophy Plays in public venues. Through performance philosophy becomes, as intended by the Stoics, a form of “public therapy of the mind”.

Biography: Dr Edward H. Spence is Honorary Research Associate, the Department of Philosophy, University of Sydney, and Charles Sturt University, and Research Associate at the 4TU.Centre for Ethics and Technology, Netherlands. He is author of several books including, Stoics and Technology (forthcoming), The Serpent in the Garden: Media Corruption in the Age of Information (in press), Ethics in a Digital Era (2018), Media Markets and Morals (2011), Ethics Within Reason: A Neo-Gewirthian Approach (2006) Advertising Ethics (2005) and Corruption and Anti-Corruption: A Philosophical Approach (2005). He is the founder of the Theatre of Philosophy project that aims at the introduction of philosophy to the general public through drama and audience participation through discussion. Several of his philosophy plays have been performed at Arts and Cultural Festivals throughout Australia and the USA.

Rico Gutschmidt and Irida Altman

The Philosophic Performative: Rethinking Metaphysics through a Palimpsestic Principle

Taking as a starting point Hadot’s “There are Nowadays Professors of Philosophy, But Not Philosophers”, we believe there are certain philosophical issues that cannot be researched through purely academic means. Take the issue of pseudo-problems raised by Rudolf Carnap. For him, metaphysical problems can be dissolved into pseudo-problems by showing they emerge only through a misuse of language. While this general claim is not very plausible, some seemingly nonsensical fundamental questions do exist in metaphysics. For example, why is there anything at all and not rather nothing? Any answer would presuppose a first cause or principle or something existent whatsoever. Though this question thus constitutes a pseudo-problem in Carnap’s sense, it still appears important enough not to simply be dismissed. We believe questions and issues such as these are best addressed in an attitude of the ‘philosophic performative’, which could be thought of as a distant descendent of the Socratic method. At a minimum, the philosophic performative has the philosopher appropriately confronting themselves and others in daily life with these issues, a process which over time can lead to the development of a theoretical standpoint. Textually, the philosophic performative has the writer-philosopher strive to create a ‘self-controverting discourse’ (to borrow a term from Monroe Beardsley) that aims to evoke within the reader a cluster response of confusion, strife, curiosity, ingenuity, and insight. Termed ‘performative insight’, this response includes not only the deliberate-rational effort of epistemological understanding but also an accidental-arational input arising from the personal encounter of the reader with the text. For us, the philosophic performative can therefore tackle issues deemed nonsensical at the theoretical level (such as Carnap’s pseudo-problems) by evoking performative insight that transforms the reader in a philosophically significant way. Many literary works might claim transformation or insight as their goal, but they induce only controlled quantities of confusion and strife (examples range from the lowly metaphor, to irony, poems, aphorisms, allegory, to dialogues, dialectics, to comedy and satire). A smaller number of texts, such as those by Thoreau and Macedonio Fernandez on the literary side, or Nietzsche and Wittgenstein on the philosophical, derive their enduring allure from thoroughly self-controverting-initially confusing but eventually insightful-discourses. The study of such discourses leads us to the concept of an underlying ‘palimpsestic principle’, as a literary and performative device aimed at evoking performative insight.

Biographies: Rico Gutschmidt 2009 PhD (Philosophy) at the University of Bonn, Dissertation on reductionism in Physics; 2015 Habilitation (Philosophy) at the Dresden University of Technology, Thesis about the late Heidegger and a post-theistic understanding of religiosity; works on Skepticism (ancient and modern), Wittgenstein, Cavell, Philosophy of Religion, Negative Theology, Heidegger, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Physics.

Irida Altman has been a doctoral student in the History and Philosophy of Mathematical Sciences since 2021. She holds a doctorate in Mathematics, and has spent a number of years as a freelance artist and writer. She works on poststructuralist hermeneutics, mathematical textuality, temporality, and self-controverting narratives. She is interested in the performative potential of conventionally non-performative situations.

Theron Schmidt

By the time you read this it is too late: The problem of the online lecture 

Performance is that which attempts to hold that within which it itself is held. This may take the form of an explicit theatricality, foregrounding and reflecting upon the conditions of being seen and being heard, of the speech and appearance of an actor – which can have both dramatic as well as political dimensions (Arendt [1958] 1998; Schmidt 2017). Or it may take the form of an intentional or habitual performativity, generating the conditions which it purports to describe (Butler 2015; Paavolainen 2018). Performance-writing and performance-lectures are well­ developed strategies for attempting this reflexive double-hold, in which the content reshapes the container of delivery such that it becomes an instance of that which it is also describing. Performance writing foregrounds ‘the transformative play of text as performance’ (Allsopp 1999, 79), emphasizing ‘writing as doing’ as much as ‘writing as meaning’ (Pollock [1995] 1998, 75), and treating the encounter with and through writing as ‘event’ in its own right (Heathfield 2006). Putting these approaches into practice, an artist like John Hall might use the dimensions and affordances of the printed page as a space to enact, not just describe, the encounters it produces (Hall 2004), or the lecture performances of Rabih Mroue simultaneously describe the effects of representation and participate generatively within their own representational dispositifs (Mroue and Martin 2012; Mroue and Saneh [2005] 2013). How might these strategies be engaged in relation to the ‘problems’ of online teaching? That is to say, the problems of asynchronous engagement, distraction, remoteness and spatiotemporal ‘lag’? Rather than obstacles to the apprehension of the subject of performance, could these aspects of the online experience themselves by the subject of the performative act of ‘lecturing’, taking itself as an example to be explored for its pedagogical as well as eventual potential? Continuing my own series of performance-lectures for Performance Philosophy events (The state of images’, London 2012; ‘Some people will do anything to keep themselves from being moved’, Surrey 2013; ‘Blackout: Thinking with darkness’, Chicago 2015), this online performance-lecture is about these conditions of online gathering, even as it is itself held within them.

Biography: Theron Schmidt lives and works on unceded Gadigal land. He teaches creative activism, performance writing, and collaborative practice at UNSW Sydney, and has published widely on contemporary theatre and performance, participatory art, and politically engaged performance. He is an Editor of the journal Performance Philosophy and an Associate Editor of Performance Research. His performance writing explores language and embodied experience in relation to the circumstances of the theatre-event, combining live and pre­recorded speech, environmental sound, and movement. These have included Crowd Study: Imagined Communities (2007), This text bears false witness (2009), The state of images (2012), Some people will do anything to keep themselves from being moved (2013), and BLACKOUT: Thinking with darkness (2015).

Key Group 5: Claudia Ricca, Dami Bacchiddu, María Eugenia Cairo, Camila Kevorkian, Belén Martinez, Florencia Mazzadi, Guiomar Peñafort, Florencia Pumilla and Martina Prystupa

Hacia Helsinki – Helsinki Bound

Lagunaries arises as a practice in common from an online virtuality imposed in the context of isolation by the Covid-19 pandemic. Taking possible affections, bodies, knowledge and genealogies as repertoires, we look for altered ways to make the word act [to speak out], breaking the hegemonic devices that allow the transmission of knowledge and being together, while hacking its binary logic. This group laboratory made up of dancers, performers, educators, researchers, filmmakers and archivists, takes the construction of collective knowledge and the potential of the virtual body as its nodal axis of research.

We perform theories, we investigate modes of escaping the lineal narrativity, using polyphonic and choral forms of thinking / moving / saying / existing. We inhabit the irony of a virtuality that imposes a distance on us and at the same time it hacks all geographical borders. A practice that does not yet have a name, a performance that is always provisional, weaving voices and actions through listening and activating our own and other people’s writings.

We ask ourselves: What is knowing/knowledge? What/where is its archive? How is collective knowledge built? What do we need to know about the other to build a common doing, an affection? What can a collective body do? What can a virtual/digital encounter achieve?  What will change when we meet in person?

Hacia Helsinki / Helsinki Bound is a series of online encounters, between January and May 2021, through which to expand our enquiries. In April/May, we will meet for the first time in person, at the Helsinki and Finlandia Streets, in Villa Carlos Paz, Argentina.  In June, during the Philosophy Performance Problems 2021 Conference, we will host an online space where we will share a reel of our in-person encounter, while we carry out a live intervention using texts, readings, sounds and actions to create a cartographic sketch around our research questions. The audience will also be able to intervene during the live performance.

Hacia Helsinki / Helsinki Bound is what happens to this territory built in virtuality as we move closer to an in-person encounter and beyond. Nine beings, the desire for a journey towards a common geography/knowledge/territory.
Keyword: Collecting knowledge

Biographies: Lagunaries (2020) is a collective/laboratory for rehearsals in movement. We were not united by love, but by horror: horror of normative pedagogy and disembodied theory. During an online seminar promising an alternative way of looking at theory and contemporary art, but that turned out to be linear and hierarchical, we got together as a collective to rehearse possible iterations of those theories and texts, but using our body, dance and personal genealogies. Our collective has never met in person, but has developed a distinctive series of exercises and mechanisms through which to explore the limits of our personal and collective journeys as artists, archivists, educators, dancers, choreographers, actors, students and researchers. We presented our work at the Mendoza provincial book fare during October 2020. Helsinki Bound will be the first time we meet in person. 

Dami Bacchiddu was born in Buenos Aires in 1992 and studied visual arts at the Leopoldo Marechal Art School, Musical Education at the Alberto Ginastera Music Conservatory and has a bachelor’s degree in arts, a postgraduate degree on Contemporary Artistic Practices and a Diploma on Art and Education from the University of San Martin. Their artistic interests have focused on interdisciplinary and new approaches to printmaking, anthropological theatre and performance, prioritizing activism, educational and artistic approaches to their work.

María Eugenia Cairo lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her artistic training includes an elementary piano teacher qualification, academic and independent studies of contemporary dance and visual arts, and a postgraduate degree in education.  Her current research interests focus on artistic practice as a vital practice and on the collective as a way of socializing the vital and circulating affect. She is currently studying a Diploma in Contemporary Art, is a member of Lagunaries and the maternal 7×24 collective // @mariaeugenia_cairo// FB María Eugenia Cairo

Camila Kevorkian. Artist, anarchivist, researcher and educator based in Mendoza. Since 2011 has been developing her personal practice through contemporary uses of visual archives and their relationship between care and affections and politics of nomadism as  pedagogical practice and creative strategy. In 2020 she set up @trabajopractico, eLearning (inter)space on contemporary artistic practices and currently works in collaboration with IC Visual Lab developing “CRITICAL EYE. Visual Archives for Education”.

Belén Martínez Gibilisco was born in Tucumán, Argentina and works as a theatre director, playwright and actress. She trained at the Faculty of Arts of the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán (UNT), where she obtained her Professor’s Diploma in theatre and dramatic interpretation. Her work is oriented to documentary theatre, researching the tensions and limits between reality and fiction. She has worked in community theatre and non-formal artistic education throughout Tucumán since 2009.

Florencia Mazzadi is a historian, art curator, and advisor in matters of public defense related to justice and race for migrant people in Argentina. Head of Center for Research on Film, Human Rights and Migration, Director of CineMigrante IFF, an annual interdisciplinary work programme, a space of convergence for artists, thinkers, curators, activists, and different civil society organizations focused on effecting and setting up dialogues with society in general, aimed at the reconstruction of collective imageries. // Web: cinemigrante.org / IG: @cinemigrante / Fb: CineMigrante

Guiomar Peñafort, an Argentine-latinx artist, received her Professor’s Diploma in classical, jazz and contemporary dance in her native province of San Juan and studied cinema and television at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. She has developed a career as a musical theatre actor, dance teacher and audiovisual maker. She moved to Buenos Aires in 2008 where she worked at AFSCA, protecting audiences’ communication rights and since 2013 started to incorporate gender perspectives and cultural activism in her cultural practices. 

Martina Prystupa is a dancer, creator, researcher and educator from Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has a BA in Performing Arts from Universidad Nacional de San Martín. She is particularly interested in movement research through dance improvisation and the relation between the perception of the global body and the environment (space and living matter). She has worked in dance, theatre, cinema and performance productions. As a teacher, she guides practices of conscious physical training and movement research. 

Florencia Pumilla is an artist, educator and researcher, based in Santa Rosa, La Pampa, since 2009. She has a degree in Engraving and a Specialization in Performance Studies from the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. She is a member of the “Bonus Track” research team investigating drifting as a methodological strategy. She also participates in other collectives and production and research groups in La Pampa, Córdoba and online, including Lagunaries.

Claudia Ricca is a researcher, artist, educator and local activist from Buenos Aires. She holds a degree in Anthropology from Trent University, Canada, an MA in Gender and Politics from the University of London and has worked for more than twenty years on environmental and human rights in Europe and Latin America. She has developed her research and artistic practices with other feminist artists and academics from a wide range of disciplines and has published several academic articles since 2017. 

Bruce Barton; Annette Arlander; Johanna Householder and Michelle Man

The Sharing of Work/ The Work of Sharing: engaging Artistic Research 

A defining characteristic of artistic research is the rejection of simple binaries, in pursuit of a complex, interwoven relationship between theoria, praxis and poiesis. This is, no doubt, a point of philosophical inquiry. However, for those who identify as practicing artist-scholars, it is also a recurring practical challenge, particularly within academic conference situations. How can artistic research practices be effectively shared in contexts that traditionally prioritize scholarly papers and presentations? Early in its evolution, the Artistic Research Working Group (ARWG) of Performance Studies international (PSi) initiated what was called the Porous Studio, an attempt to create a studio-like setting within and during the PSi conference. Participating artist-scholars, as well as local artists from the conference host country, were invited to share their work in ways that, similar to the presentation of papers and panels, elicited direct critical response from those in attendance. Building upon this project, the ARWG has continued to experiment with models of exchange, leading within recent years to a three-part engagement that we initially called “Perform­ Respond-Extract,” and most recently identified as “Perform-Respond-Extend.” Both models involve structured, interactive engagement between group members, including preparatory work prior to the gathering, artistic presentation during the conference, and reflective documentation after the event. The next full PSi ARWG meeting will take place during the summer of 2021. At the Performing Philosophy Conference, our panel will offer a concentrated version of some of the working group’s key processes by a reduced number of its longer-term members. Conference delegates will be welcome to participate as observers and respondents. Details of the ARWG’s history can be found on our blog.: https://psi-artistic-research-working-group.blogspot.com.

Biographies: Bruce Barton is a director, playwright, dramaturg and scholar whose creative practice, practice-based research, and teaching focuses on physical dramaturgies in devised and intermedial performance. His writing on performance has been published in major scholarly and professional journals in Canada and internationally, and he is the author or contributing editor of seven books. He is the Co-Artistic Director of the award-winning Vertical City, an interdisciplinary performance hub preoccupied with exploring the potential of/in/for intimacy in immersive and participatory performance contexts. He is also the Director of the School of Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Calgary, and a co-convenor of the Artistic Research Working Group of Performance Studies international (PSi).

Annette Arlander: Visiting Researcher, University of the Arts Helsinki (Finland), and a co-convenor of the Artistic Research Working Group of Performance Studies international (PSi).

Johanna Householder: Professor Emerita, OCAD University (Canada), and a co-convenor of the Artistic Research Working Group of Performance Studies international (PSi).

Michelle Man: Senior Lecturer, Edge Hill University (UK).

Eva Maria Gauss

Basic Lessons in Problem-Solving and Orientation in Discourse: Experiences from the “Conversation Garden”

Comprehension sometimes becomes a problem itself: conversations, discussions and debates quickly become complex and confusing. If there are then issues at stake that are controversial and have a moral dimension, often the concrete problems can no longer be solved. Instead, there is not only a concrete “problem of action”, but comprehension itself has become a problem. The project “Conversation Garden” responds to this: In an open-air audio exhibition in the idyllic and centrally located Old Botanical Garden, stories and statements will be heard, geographical Maps and QR codes are available, even a participation with the voice online shall be possible. “Voices on the Corona Crisis.”

In the lecture I will introduce the project: What sensory transmission of discourse does the project work with? How were paths and courses created? According to which principles of diagrammatics are the interconnections of topics and attitudes of conversation represented here and made tangible for park visitors?

The project is an attempt to put this question to the test: Is there a need for new forms of communicative representation for a social discourse of complex theoretical, ethical and political issues? Is it possible to walk through an argumentation? And what it does it do with your attitude? What is the metaphor and the phyical action of having a different perspective? What is a visual perspective and how can I adopt the perspective of another ethical point of view?

The project is presented and shown in an online lecture. More information coming soon on: https://www.uni-marburg.de/de/fb09/igs/arbeitsgruppen/sprechwissenschaft insitutional email: eva.gauss@uni-marburg.de

Biography: Eva Maria Gauss is currently working on her PHD the University of Marburg “Body concepts in voice training for actors/actresses”. She completed her Magistra Philosophy{Theatre Studies in Bielefeld, Vienna and Leipzig, and her second 5 years-degree in Speech and Voice Studies in Halle. From 1996 to 2006 she was in independent (physical) theater productions as actress, dramaturg, director also touring with numerous international performances. Since 2006 she is working on lecture-performances etc. as “performative sense-making” (also under the double name “Petra Lum”). From 2005 to 2010 she worked in the program area of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes, in 2011 she founded the festival for performative philosophy [soundcheck philosophie] and Expedition Philosophie e.V. She teaches at various universities and institutions, including philosophy and performance, speech education and rhetoric. Often we solve problems by discussion – not so easy, as the Covid crisis has shown. In 2021, the city of Marburg (Germany, 80,000 inhabitants/ university city) experiences an experiment of Performative Philosophy, which can even respect the rules of Social Distancing: The Conversation Garden.

Bibiana Bragagnolo

The concept of declassification as an emancipatory approach for musical performance

This paper presentation is part of an Artistic Research project that proposes to use the concept of declassification (Gutierrez, 2007) as a possibility to the development of emancipatory tools for music performance. This research is developed in a Federal University in Brazil and this declassificatory positioning also encompasses a decolonial perspective. Musical performance, mainly in the field of classical music (which is the most commonly musical genre present in Brazilian universities), has a very classified aspect, that ends up to restrict musical practices and also impose a colonized way of musical playing. For that reason, thinking about emancipatory possibilities for musical performance is not just important, but also urgent, principally in the global South. To explain our proposition, in a first moment we expose the problem of the actual musical epistemology and draw a path to what Gutierrez (2007) understands as epistemography, which we propose as an epistemological and methodological possibility to rethink musical performance in the Brazilian context. For that, our main theoretical basis will be the works of the researcher Antonio Garcia Gutierrez (2007, 2020), with the concepts of declassification, epistemography and logic pluralism, and of the sociologist Boaventura de Souza Santos (2005, 2009), mainly with the concepts of his sociology of absences and sociology of emergence. After the presentation of the problems related to the classification and its consequences in the musical field, we can understand the necessity to rethink musical performance in the light of the concept of declassification. Then, two main strategies of declassification proposed by Gutierrez (2007) will be described (the oxymoron and the use of polysemic terms) and brought to the musical context, showing a possible way to the development of new performative paths. At last, we present the application of this theoretical background in the construction of a musical performance, called “Assemblagem Sonora” (Sonorous Assemblage in English), that uses both the oxymoron and the polysemic terms in its conception. This paper presentation shows the first results of a major research that articulates musical practice and theory and where these two spheres are inseparable and feeds each other mutually.

Biography: Bibiana Bragagnolo is Doctor in Musicology by Federal University of Paraiba (Brazil), oriented by Dr. Didier Guigue, and with some exchange period at Aveiro University, financed by CAPES and oriented by Dr. Luca Chiantore. Bibiana has developed activities as pianist, mostly in the group of experimental music “Artesanato Furioso” and in the theater, and as a researcher, mainly in the fields of the insertion of performance in musical analysis and artistic research. In 2018, she received the TeMA prize in Brazil for her paper “The sonorous contrasts in Contrastes by Marisa Rezende” and in 2015 she was the soloist in the Brazilian premiere of the Concert for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra by John Cage. Since 2019 Bibiana is adjunct professor in the Arts Department of Federal University of Mato Grosso (Brazil) acting in the fields of performance, piano and musical education.

Nadja Ben Khelifa; Etienne Allaix and Jorg Sternagel

Poetics of Friction

What are the problems in our current lifeworld? And how can they be addressed, worked on (or even be solved)? What are the possibilities and difficulties of Performance Philosophy in contributing to reflections on the crisis-ridden, everyday situations we are in, with our very embodied existences, and with our thoughts, fears, hopes (and even prayers), inside and outside art and academia? How does “making sense” unfold if mutual understanding is not only unsettled, clouded, misdirected, overwhelmed, but if, in addition, the goodwill to understand is withheld altogether? Called by these questions that we will put into practice, our panel attempts to collaboratively work on corresponding responses within a poetics of friction that is rehearsed, acted out, and tried out in a setting where forces come into play that resist relative motions of solid approaches and beliefs sliding against each other. But the call to questions cannot be Socratic in order to put the questioner into question and to fall into a genuine multi-medial, multi­ sensory conversation that hopes to increasingly lose control in favour of hermeneutic friction.

Whereas the three panelists – a multimedia artist, a cultural theorist, and a philosopher – call with their spoken words, screened images and handout materials, the members of the audience respond to these calls: Like the wheel that needs the concrete surface against its rubber to spin in movement, or the piece of wood that needs the woodstick rotating against its bark to spark a flame, members of Performance Philosophy need frictions with which both Performance artists and Philosophy scholars slide against each other to spin, to move, to carry on, to reflect, to struggle, to doubt, to aim, to spark flames of inspiration. While the sources of such an inspiration are manifold, three of them come into movement and display during the rehearsal: (1) images and texts from Surrealist collages (Allaix), (2) diagrams and texts from traditional and radical hermeneutics (Ben Khelifa), and (3) passages and pamphlets from communist and feminist manifestos (Sternagel).

Biographies: Etienne Allaix (M.F.A.), , includes objects, images, site specific installations in his process and questions the human memory, focusing on its flaws and the creative potential of its delusion. After having integrated writing in his pictorial language, he is currently working on his first novel. Web: etienneallaix.com Nadja Ben Khelifa (M.A.) finalizes her PhD thesis on the mediality of nation. Recent publications include the contribution »Der Mini Senso, oder: Simon (Says)« to the collection Die Gegenstande unserer Kindheit (2019). At PP in Prague, she contributed to The Golem Project. Jorg Sternagel (Dr. phil. habil.) focuses on philosophies of alterity. Recent publications include the co-authored contribution »The Philosophy of Mediality« to The Routledge Companion to Performance Philosophy (2020). For PP in Prague, he initiated The Golem Project. Web: joerg.sternagel.de.

Jan-Tage Kühling and Renata Gaspar

Following Non-human Collaboration: naming, producing, tracing

‘Collaboration’ designates the paradoxical claim of striving for a kind of fundamental dignity within ‘collaboration’ while never being able to achieve it in yet another turn of internalization of the neoliberal work ethics: To collaborate does not only mean to produce but also to be ‘on time’ with each other or even ‘ahead of time’. It demands an ultimate sacrifice: our collective subjectivity and the subject of our collectivity. Ethical collaboration seems impossible – the ends of collaboration oppose the frame that is enabling it in the first place.

That problem is even more pressing with non-humans entering ‘collaboration’: not having (linguistic) agency, not being perceived as ‘producing beings’, our collaborative relations within artistic and thus, also institutional practice, cannot, it seems, transcend this performative contradiction: Even as we may speak, as Laura Cull does, of ‘interspecies collaboration’, as long as they being settled within the field of the arts, the non-human, as hard we try, stay objects for us. Can this problem be solved? No. To deal with this paradox, philosophy can but name that relation ‘non-work’, ‘impossible collaboration’, or ‘real collaboration’ and thus arrives only at circumventing the problem epistemically, but never solving it. But still: artists do, and so do the non-human, the non-human animals, stones, plants, water, meteors, piles, rivers, the ghosts, and others. Being situated in this place between praxis and poiesis, between what belongs to the public and what is originally part of the Oikos, the ‘doing’ of art is situated in this between that is not only in between human and non-human but also between modes of being and creating, repetition and expression; performance as a manifestation of that place in between, a manifestation of going further where our linguistic and epistemic faculties come to an end.

Where does that leave us scholars of performance? In between doing and naming: in reiterating and retracing rather than thinking ‘ahead’; in repeating and highlighting what is there already, not in conceptualizing what the non-human and their human partners might come up to or might not do. In looking closer and humbly following their lead: to hope and explore and trust art’s and performance’s intuition for modes of being-together that already do and maybe always have transcend(ed) the epistemic, performative, and economic dead-ends of (non-human) collaboration.

Biographies: Jan-Tage is a performance-scholar. He holds an M.A. in Applied Theatre Studies ULU Giessen). Currently, he is pursuing his Ph.D. in Dance Studies at Free University Berlin on the performative implications of the Anthropocene concept. His research is funded by the Heinrich Boll Foundation (2017-2020). He has worked as a dance and performance director, dramaturg, and culture maker in Germany and Poland. From 2015-2017 he was part of the managing team of Centrum Amarant in Poznan, Poland – a venue for culture, art and neighborhood, where he was responsible for the program of performance-in-context. (www.jan-tage.com)

Renata’s work focuses on spatial practices through collaborative, discursive, and processual modes of engagement with art-making. (www.renatagaspar.com)

Laura Budriesi

Beyond the species’ boundary: performers and activists in action 

During this pandemic, the virus has been shown to overcome species barriers: the virus infects through species but at the same time makes “contagion” manifest as a condition of all living beings. For several years, the “animal question” has taken a certain degree, though it is far from having a strictly political weight. I believe that in this delicate moment the human/ non-human relationship needs a supplement of reflection: on this basis some scholars have indicated the role of performance as research method to generate important reponses to the question of the animal. To give space to these reflections, an expanded notion of performance is needed (expansion on the concept of performance) such as that found in Animal Performance Studies (Puchner, Chaudhuri, Cull), an idea of society that includes non-humans (Dominique Lestel ethno-ethnologies) and the thought of some philosophers such as Jean Christophe Bailly (Le parti pris des animaux, 2013) Also in this historical moment, the performance philosophy can try to reflect on the identity of the post­ anthropocentric subject (Braidotti) and on the body as a medium for a transformation of the subject itself. The areas of investigation I would like to focus on are the following: performance and anti-speciesist political action. The first tries to give embodied reality to the fragility of inter­ species barriers, the second to make the suffering of the body universal. / Art Oriente Objet (Marion Laval-Jeantet and Benoit Mangin) develops performative art practices engaging with political and environmental issues since the early 1990s and in the performance “May the Horse Live in Me” (2011) the artist Laval-Jeantet has injected in his body some horse plasma: an experiment on posthuman subjectivity in which modification occurs from within, such as the recent work on the microbiota in which the microbe is an actor “May the Rain Forest Live in Me” (or “May the Pygmy Live in Me”). The other example concerns a 2012 anti-speciesist political performance conducted on a human “guinea pig”, in which an “Occupy Green Hill” activist voluntarily underwent a series of invasive tests commonly performed on animals for the making of cosmetics (irritants in the eyes and on the skin). These are examples that want to bring to the fore how living matter – including human flesh – is all in connection. My speech at the conference may include the recitation of some fragments of a play by Catherine Zambon: Et les animaux reapparurent (2020).

Biography: Laura Budriesi (PhD) has been a researcher since 2017 at the Department of Arts – University of Bologna where she teaches “Scenography: elements, theory, history”. Her research interests intertwine Performance and Theatre Studies and Animal Studies, with particular reference to animality on the contemporary scene. On the subject she is organizing the Conference: “The scene of the non-human in an anthropological and philosophical frame” (May 2021), at the Dams in Bologna and is the author of numerous essays including: Animalizing the scene., In «Culture teatrali », 29, 2020; Becoming an animal. Performance as metamorphosis in La passione e il Metodo, Genoa, Akropolis Libri, 2019. In 2019 he gave a speech at Trinity College (Dublin) during the conference “Art in the Anthropocene”.

Einav Katan-Schmid; Ilya Vidrin and Aili Bresnahan

Problems of grounding ethics: performative rehearsal

Problem: When people discuss ethics, they often begin with a moral dilemma that requires immediate action (exigence). We propose to take a step backward, to examine the rehearsal that lays groundwork for ethical practice. What, precisely, are the steps that we should take to prepare the ground for ethical action? How can we scaffold and then pre-practice, ethics? What are some formal and informal modes, intentions, goals, and attitudes we might employ while doing this?
What might we borrow from dance and performance practices? What from philosophy and from politics? How does movement and the body figure into this approach? These are some of the things we would like to explore. In particular, we will use three ideas to help focus our thinking, discussion, and embodied movement in connection with three grounding practices: 1. Backgrounds and Assumptions, 2. Intentions and Goal-Setting, 3. Pre-Practice. We will explore these ideas within both discussion and a performative movement practice. Einav Katan-Schmid, Aili Bresnahan, and Ilya Vidrin, will lead the discussion and demonstrations of each of these sections and invite the participants’ performative interaction and response as well. 1. Background and Assumptions: It is our view that ethical work cannot proceed if some pre-work is not done to acknowledge the differences in values and beliefs, and thus to interrogate one’s one background, assumptions and habits of interaction. Much like stretching and a gentle openness warm-up, this section of the workshop will explore this aspect as it arises to block fruitful ethical interaction.

Here, we would like to interact aspects of self-awareness and a distinguishing between habitual and attentive response with the unfolding of somatic attention and bodily presence. 2. Intentions and Goal-Setting: It is our understanding that ethical (and aesthetic) exchange and outcomes improve in dance and in life when positive, caring, and harmonious intentions are set and expressed ahead of times and potential obstacles anticipated. This work builds on the work done in 1, above to identify one’s cultural biases and attitudinal obstacles to communicative and ethical flow. Here we will explore aspects of partnering and physical consent and will associate them with explorative attitudes in ethics and aesthetics for leading a mutual exchange. 3. Pre-Practice: We can now begin to apply our former agreements and understanding as practice. This is where norm­ building lives. To identify, establish, and maintain norms, we invite participants into simple movement exercises that can be done together or individually using household items including doors, chairs, and broomsticks.

Biographies: Dr. Aili Bresnahan – Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Dayton and U.S. Fulbright Research Scholar at the University of Roehampton.

Dr. Einav Katan-Schmid – Independent Researcher, Choreographer and Dramaturge based in Berlin.

Dr. Ilya Vidrin – Postdoctoral Associate in Theatre and Creative Practice Leadership at Northeastern University.

Mischa Twitchin

“This time the end is going to burn up the means” (Artaud to Breton, 23.8.37)

Is “reality” a matter of and for perception or, rather, revelation? Ostensibly, the latter accesses what is “beyond” experience; at least, as this is standardly understood in terms of the former. Often the latter is thought to require an initiation, or illumination, together with some sort of performed practice, whether of ascesis or of excess. The former, by contrast, is supposed to be a matter of and for “common sense”. In this presentation, I wish to go back to the mid-1930s and reflect on how Artaud explored the conditions of and for what he then called “new revelations of being” in relation to certain of his contemporaries (besides certain of our own); to reflect on how questions of magic interweave with metaphysics, and performance with those of philosophy. Artaud’s testimony is that of one who “struggled to try to exist”, but who also realised that he no longer wanted to be subjected to a “delirious illusion of being in the world [that] screened reality”. Besides a question of “reading” the Tarot, what kind of reality is susceptible to the action of spells, to an enacted address that goes beyond correspondence and that evokes a “collaboration” with mystical powers? What kind of care, in thinking through “planetary problems”, is both exposed and demanded by such spells, even as they have now been appropriated (as Derrida, for example, ironically observed at MoMA) by the art world? By contrast (as Derrida, again, observes), in the “light” of modernity, “the question remains and comes back: what can be the limits of a demystification?” The question may – or may not – be concerned, then, with what is enduringly Kantian, as much as Artaudian, in the thought of “performance philosophy”. After all, what has always still to be understood concerning understanding in the oscillations of “performance philosophy”; not least, concerning (after Derrida) a, perhaps not so recent, “apocalyptic tone… adopted in philosophy”?  

Biography: Dr Mischa Twitchin is a lecturer in the Theatre and Performance Dept., at Goldsmiths, University of London: https://www.gold.ac.uk/theatre­ performance/staff/twitchin-dr-mischa/. His book, “The Theatre of Death – the Uncanny in Mimesis: Tadeusz Kantor, Aby Warburg and an Iconology of the Actor” is published by Palgrave Macmillan in their Performance Philosophy series; and examples of his own performance- and essay-films can be seen on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/userl 3124826/videos.

Riku Laakkonen

How agency can be studied when doing the art of expressive objects?

How agency can be studied when doing the art of expressive objects?

The concept of agency has become a source of increasing strain and confusion in social thought. When different theories try to talk about agency, in many times they lose a sense of the dynamic interplay among different dimensions and of how this interplay varies within different structural contexts of action. In my workshop I will be mapping the possible conditions for agency when using demoted objects as artistic tools to perform.

I am doing my artistic research in collaboration with objects and with old people who have dementia. Dementia is generally associated with pathological changes in people, s cognitive functions such as diminishing memory functions and diminishing abilities to plan and execute tasks. My study is interested how the art of expressive objects can build old person, s (fluid/fuzzy/potential) agency. The art of object expression is a new form of object and puppet theatre which is challenging a classical status of spectator and is instead building a new partnership, even a body-partnership (Tervo 2006) between an object, object animator and a spect-animator (participator-spectator). Spect-animator,s concept I have developed from Brazilian theatre director Augusto Baal’s (2002, 2008) term ‘spect-actor’ because of the participant’s active role in the process.

The objects I am using are almost all used and some of them have been broken, so they are ‘alienated’ from their original use. Jane Bennett (2015) describes how an object changes into a demoted object. An object that is defective changes in its unrepairable state and at the same time the object is free from the changes to a demoted object. Bennett describes how the demoted object rises paradoxically into a new position and changes in our meeting with the object, becoming a more active partner.

My workshop will focus on the bodily-material interaction of human subjects and objects. It poses a question, how is it possible that objects have an impact on their human users and examines the preconditions of active efficacy of objects. Workshop will establish both objects and bodies as material entities related in a causal interaction with each other and to produce practical knowledge and to intervene between body and environment. Existing theoretical perspectives on agency are critiqued, particularly in relation to rationality, language and individualized agency.

Biography: Riku Laakkonen is a puppeteer, director, actor, and teacher. After studying at DAMU (Theatre Academy of Music and Art) in Prague, Theatre Laboratory ECS, Metropolia University of Applied Sciences and Turku University of Applied Sciences he has been working with both professionals and amateurs. Over the years he has used puppetry as a working method for example with prisoners, refugees and mental health rehabilitees. He is the founder of the Street Theatre Festival Summer Street (Kesakatu) in Akaa (a town near to Tampere) and is one of the founder members of the Centre of Stage Animation Research (founded 2007) and co-operative Kiito (founded 2011). Riku has teached puppetry and acting from pre-school to university level. He started his doctoral studies in the research of arts at the Tampere University in August 2020.

Esa Kirkkopelto

Floating bodies, Performing signifiers

The presentation demonstrates how the scenic performance problematizes our conceptions of body and language. “Floating signifier” is an element that in the structuralism refers to the symbolic power of the signifying system itself (Levi-Strauss). The familiarity between these entities and the performing body has been noticed (Kristeva, Gil, Butler) but barely explained, notably regarding the nature of that transformation a signifier or a body goes through, as it moves from discursive order to artistic one or vice-versa. Between those orders, we encounter a truly problematic entity, that is neither linguistic nor corporeal, not at least in any given sense. How to conceive the materiality of a body that cannot be touched? How to conceive the linguistic nature of meaningless entities? How to understand the constitutive function of entities that only exist through their reproduction? The presentation aims at reproducing that entity in a classroom setting and bringing it forth in a manner allowing us to reflect and study it together.

Biography: Esa Kirkkopelto (born 1965) is philosopher, artist-researcher and performing artist. Currently, he works as a professor of artistic research at the Malmo Theatre Academy (Lund University). Previously, he worked at the University of the Arts Helsinki, first as a professor of artistic research (2007-2017), then as the head of the post-doc Centre for Artistic Research (CfAR, 2017-2018). He also holds the title of docent in aesthetics at the University of Helsinki. He is the leader of a collective research project Actor’s Art in Modern Times on the psychophysical actor training (2008-2011), the initiator of the International Platform for Performer Training (since 2014), core-convener or the Performance Philosophy association and the founding member of the Other Spaces live art group (2004-). His research focuses on the deconstruction of the performing body both in theory and in practice.

Maarit Rankanen and Katariina Numminen

Friends of a friend -demonstration lecture 

What? We propose a live composition by bringing to interaction components from our individual artistic researches and build on a set of simple tasks, partly involving the audience. We will reflect this live composition from two different AR standpoints: Rankanen’s, in the field of dance and choreography, discussing Japanese concept ma, betweenness and acting intuition and Numminen’s, thinking the composition from the perspective of interruption & gesture as dramaturgical concepts. Katariina’s questions How is dramaturgical, compositional thinking gestural and bodily? What kind of gestures does interruption create? What kind of gestural energies are involved in the interruptive gesture itself? What possible performative ways are there to interpret the spacing, s p a c i n g, as Walter Benjamin describes the Brechtian dramaturgy? How to make dramaturgy, compositional logic or ethos of a piece – often understood as hidden structure visible or tangible? What if one would understand the dramaturgy of a piece not as it’s skeleton, but as a skin? Mammu’s questions The research questions are focused on dancer’s embodied experience of inner and outer space framed with Japanese concept ma. Concepts to be explored: Ma rai: Japanese concept for an interval in time and space, Emptiness, pause, gap between two forms. Ningen: Watsuji’s concept of human being. The Japanese word ningen is composed of the characters for person and between signifying the individual and social at the same time. Acting intuition: Nishida’s use of this term refers to a state of bodymind when knowing and acting occur at one and the same time, without separation. Embryologial understanding about space before structures. How? We plan to combine elements from our respective practices in eclectic and playful way. As two friend’s friends, when the common acquaintance is not present, we are trying to find out, what are the shared interests, what are not. The structure and the tasks of the live composition stem from our artistic & AR practices. The demonstration consists of series of simple tasks, enjoying the gaps and the frictions. Why? How can we do artistic research in the area of performing arts collectively? How could we enjoy ( = love and hate and keep doing) the friction, the thinking together the same manner we do, when we work together in rehearsal process? How to embody theories and concepts of artistic research? We also wish to bridge the reflexive thinking and making to create situations, structures that they could interact as lively as possible.

Biographies: Katariina Numminen is a Helsinki based performance maker, director and dramaturg and doctoral candidate in Tutke, Uniarts Helsinki. In her practice, she has worked with documentary material, focusing on voice and sound in the performance and radical use of classical dramatic texts. Her interests include live composition, live dramaturgy and task-based ways of working. She was a professor of dramaturgy in Uniarts Helsinki 2014-2019 and has written about theatre and dramaturgy and co-edited two books.

Mammu Rankanen is Helsinki based dancer, choreographer and pedagogue and doctoral candidate in Tutke, Uniarts Helsinki. She has strong background in somatic methods and Asian practices. Her research focus on bodily silent knowledge and embodied relationship with space framed with Japanese time space concept ma. Her research interest is the wisdom of body and its interaction with the world.

Zohar Frank

Present Absent Reconsidered

Presence does not only determine a level of proximity but also, in this pandemic-defined time, the level of possible contagion and the necessity for distance and borders, both personal and national ones. Since March 2020 Being-with and Being-there-alongside are positions that cannot be taken for granted. The present-absent, or absent-present, has become the new normal way of communication, while the other’s appearance, or performance if you will, has become mediated, whether through technology, or through the masks that cover our faces when in public. Yet the contagion that presence can cause or enable, is not only the diseased kind but also the one of affect, emotion, sensation. Presence becomes a category of proximity but also of liveness. Why else would it feel different to watch a recording of a talk or a performance than to be “present” at the times of its occurrence, even when it is technologically mediated? And does our resort to the use of technology truly re-defines the present-absent and the notion of ephemerality?

Thinking with Philip Auslander on liveness and performance documentation, with the Heideggerian Mitsein, and with the performance work of artist and COVID-19 nurse Devynn Emory, this paper will treat the absent presence, or the present absence, not as a construct of thought or as a substitution, but rather as a state of being, a taking place in the world that is very much present. The lack of clarity as to the format of the conference, whether it will be at all possible to be there in person, and if so under which circumstances and restrictions, further complicates, as well as dictates, the character of this presentation, as I take into consideration the necessity of being myself present absent, whether in a hybrid format or remotely.

Biography: Zohar Frank is a PhD candidate in the department of Theater Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University, where she studies performance through the lenses of phenomenology, deconstruction, and psychoanalysis. Her dissertation project focuses on representations of the body seen through the notions of the Freudian uncanny and the Lacanian extimacy. Prior to pursuing graduate studies, Zohar has been involved in dance making as a performer, choreographer, dramaturg and educator. She holds an MA in Theater Arts and Performance Studies from Brown University, an MA in Philosophy and a BA in History from Tel Aviv University.In Phaedrus, Plato advocates for the supremacy of presence over absence when he argues for the unmediated truth of speech, as opposed to the mediation of writing. The presence of the speaker does not mean the same for Aristotle, who believes that there are no unmediated forms, since we are always already within representation, and even less to Derrida, who altogether questions the notion of origin. Philosophical concerns aside, it seems that in the pre-pandemic era, not so long ago and yet mentally very distant, presence, or “the state of being with or in the same place as a person or thing” as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, never meant what it does today.

Catherine Koekoek; Liselot van de Geer and Jasmina Ibrahimovic

Navigating post-truth’s groundless contestation: learning from community theatre

Since 2016, the year of the Brexit referendum and the Trump election, a rich public and academic discourse emerged on the concept of post-truth. We argue that post-truth politics problematises received ideas about democratic theory and practice, and undermines both agonistic and deliberative responses. As such, it cannot be faced by theory alone. This contribution presents a collaboration between participatory community theatre Het Rotterdams Wijktheater (RWT) and philosophical research into post-truth and democracy. It suggests that exploring the dynamics of community theatre enables us to better navigate the challenges post-truth presents to democracy. Political-philosophical analyses of post-truth can be divided into two extremes. On one side, post­ truth is seen as ultimate danger for democracy. This ‘deliberative’ position holds that democratic power can only be legitimised with a mutual orientation towards rationality and truth. On the other, the ‘agonistic’ position sees post-truth as a democratisation: truth is itself understood as a ‘power-game’ that can always be re-politicised. Post-truth politics contests democratic norms in name of the people. At the same time it undermines democratic institutions and procedures that allow people to participate in self-government in the first place. By in this way undermining democratic procedures in name of democracy, post-truth politics can simultaneously be seen as a form of democratisation and as a threat to the very possibility of democracy. We argue that meaningful democratic politics needs both popular contestation and procedural institutionalisation. Post-truth (like agonism in overdrive) emphasises only contestation. How, then, to allow for agonistic critique, without lapsing into post-truth’s groundless contestation? How to (re-)create democratic institutions, while acknowledging the need for ongoing, agonistic challenge? This question is faced continuously at RWT. Community theatre is often associated with agonistic politics: it challenges hegemonic narratives by allowing people to tell their stories that were previously unheard. While appreciating this, we suggest that we can also learn from the dynamics inside the theatre, between institution and contestation. Actors perform another version of themselves: a written and directed version. It is vital that this version can be challenged. But the organisation and directors of RWT also provide the conditions of possibility for the story to be told on stage at all. By exploring this dynamic in dialogue between philosophy and performance, we look for situated ways to reorient democracy in light of post-truth’s groundless contestation.

Biographies: Catherine Koekoek holds degrees in both architecture and philosophy. She works on her PhD on post-truth politics at the Erasmus School of Philosophy, Rotterdam. The PhD project addresses the consequences of post-truth politics for political thought and action, exploring ways to better engage with it at community theatre Het Rotterdams Wijktheater.

Liselot van de Geer graduated as theatre director at the Tilburg Academy for Theatre in 2016 and directs plays for, among others, Het Rotterdams Wijktheater. Her work addresses societal issues from a personal perspective, starting from real-life stories and experiences.

Jasmina Ibrahimovic is managing director of Het Rotterdams Wijktheater. She also works as the overall dramaturg and programmer for the International Community Arts Festival (ICAF) and is a guest lecturer on community arts at several Dutch art academies.

Maya Tångeberg-Grischin and Anna Thüring

Haunted Earth, Haunting Questions

The presentation approaches the question of collaboration between philosophy, performance philosophy and performance from different angles. It builds around a theatrical production directed by Maya Tangeberg-Grischin in Kerala, India. The Haunted Earth (Boothavista Bhoomi in Malayalam) that had its premiere at the Natyasasthra Theatre, in Kadampadzhipuram village in February 2015. After the premiere, the performance toured in Kerala and other parts of India. The Haunted Earth is based on Bhagavad Gita and the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna. The traditional religious and philosophical text is transposed to contemporary discussion of terrorism and fundamentalism by adding a character of the Researcher. The text is written by Maya Tangeberg-Grischin and it uses three languages: Sanskrit, Malayalam, and English. During the rehearsals, the role and lines of the Researcher were revised in collaboration with Keralan actor and director Narippatta Raju and the analysis of the Sanskrit text was refined with scholar Indira N. The characters of Krishna and Arjuna were performed by Ajith Kannan and Prasanth Namboothri. The Bhagavad Gita, part of the Mahabharata epic, is a Sanskrit language Hindu script that consists of 700 verses or shlokas. It consists of Krishna’s advice to Arjuna before the battle in which he is about to fight against his relatives. It can be seen as a speech act to get the hesitant Arjuna back to the battlefield. The text is deeply rooted in Hindu philosophy, especially to the concept of dharma and the duty of a person belonging to a particular caste. In contemporary Indian discussion the caste behaviour code is still relevant even if it is also strongly challenged. Several transgressions and transformations emerged both in the process and reception of the performances. In addition to contemporary ethical and philosophical considerations, the production questioned how Indian philosophy could be expressed by physical means. Indian classical performance tradition has found many abstract and visual images for the Bhagavad Gita but its essence has not become physical, meaning that the actions and emotions are shown with the entire body, not only by hands and face as in Indian classical theatre and dance. The production aimed to combine physicalization (Verkorperlichung) and contemporary aspects on the theme without forgetting the respect and understanding of cultural and philosophical traditions. The presentation is a collaboration in itself, taking a form of a dialogue between Maya Tangeberg­ Grischin and Anna Thuring who had an opportunity to follow and document the rehearsals during two weeks and to see the final production in India.

Biographies: Maya Tangeberg-Grischin is a physical theatre director, performer, scholar and writer based in Berlin, Germany. She has lived and worked in several European countries, as well as in India where she has studied the traditional performance forms and techniques for a number of years and directed several contemporary productions for Indian actors. She completed her Doctorate in Theatre Arts at University of the Arts Theatre Academy in 2011.

Anna Thuring, Ph.D. (from University of Helsinki in 2000) is a researcher and lecturer specialising on physical theatre, Asian performance and intercultural currents in performance field.