Drama

This article focuses upon the artistic practice of internationally renowned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and his installation ‘Sunflower Seeds’ (2010–11) that took place as part of London Tate Modern’s Unilever Series. Simone considers how Ai’s place-based installation works in tandem with his media-centric tactics to both reproduce and challenge dominant western geopolitical imaginations (Dittmer 2010) of China and ‘Chineseness’. She argues that Ai uses his success and status as an international artist and activist to perform a simultaneous Chinese and global identity, an identity that is self-consciously narrated and performed through global communications media. Ai actively facilitates his own transnational networks – mainly via the Internet and followers of his work – in order to disseminate information, maintain visibility and, most vitally, communicate freedom of expression as both a Chinese national and global citizen. Simone uncovers how Ai encourages his audiences to question their own ethical imperative to act, speak or protest on behalf of the Chinese (global) citizen by unveiling politico-economic connections between western and eastern citizens and forging material and imagined proximity

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

One-to-one performance has emerged as a significant form in recent years, but has not been accompanied by commensurate scholarly attention. One-to-one performances are often promoted on a promise of intimacy, a unique meeting offering the spectator a charged affective experience. However, economic and structural parameters governing the interaction, and physical and psychic boundaries put in place by spectator and performer, tend to militate against ‘intimacy’ as commonly understood. Nevertheless, spectator accounts often report a powerful engagement with something uniquely personal. While the subjectivity of such accounts can be perceived as problematic for scholarly analysis, this article suggests that it may be harnessed in a phenomenological approach that draws on a series of accounts from a single spectator to explore common features of multiple singular experiences. Moreover, this method offers a potentially fruitful pathway for building a picture of spectators’ relationship with this form. Applying this approach to my own experiences, I argue that the intimacy that transpires is largely manifested as self-encounter, though the potential for intersubjective sharing remains.

One-to-one performance has emerged as a significant form in recent years, but has not been accompanied by commensurate scholarly attention. One-to-one performances are often promoted on a promise of intimacy, a unique meeting offering the spectator a charged affective experience. However, economic and structural parameters governing the interaction, and physical and psychic boundaries put in place by spectator and performer, tend to militate against 'intimacy' as commonly understood. Nevertheless, spectator accounts often report a powerful engagement with something uniquely personal. While the subjectivity of such accounts can be perceived as problematic for scholarly analysis, this article suggests that it may be harnessed in a phenomenological approach that draws on a series of accounts from a single spectator to explore common features of multiple singular experiences. Moreover, this method offers a potentially fruitful pathway for building a picture of spectators' re...

According to Bourdieu, the `collective intellectual' resembles the sports team in terms of the spirit which drives it (in this case the `scientific spirit', in the sense that Bachelard used the term), the collectivist attitudes implied by its activity, and the form of apprenticeship involved - constant, intensive and regular training. The combination of these elements gives rise to gestures and syntheses which are constantly, incessantly repeated to the point where they become a habitus (what Bourdieu called the scientific habitus); it also creates the mutually supportive force, mobilized in its practical, articulate and coherent mode, which Bourdieu believed a research centre - a specific form taken by the collective intellectual in the scientific sphere - should constitute. His prime concern, a principle evident from the start both in his experience of teaching and in the first research projects he led in Algeria, was in fact to establish and institutionalize a collective ...

This thesis focuses on the experience of ‘presentness’ in the performance context, drawing on theoretical investigation, case studies and research through practice to consider how performance can invite the spectator into awareness of bodied co-presence in a shared space of being. Following Serres and Sheets-Johnstone, it argues that sensing and animation are primary in the subject’s awareness of her own being, and key to a sense of presence-in-the-world. Performance, encouraging attention to its own present moment, can offer a privileged context for this bodily awareness of being. Phenomenology is proposed as a key mode of analysis of the performance experience of both performer and spectator, as well as central to my concern in practice with bringing awareness to a shared present moment. Case studies from my own and other artists’ practice are informed by engagement with philosophical analyses of co-presence (Lévinas, Irigaray, Nancy), considering how particular forms may invite sensory attention to the spectator’s own being as well as to the performance. Analysis of one-to-one performances, and durational performances involving materials, investigates whether and how these modes can invite spectators into a sense of being-present-with, and/or self-presence. The central performance element in the submission raises the question of how mind and materials ‘think’ together, and how conceptual ideas may be advanced through practical thinking, as well as vice versa. This reflection is taken up in a consideration (following Sheets-Johnstone and Ingold) of how moving allows us a sense of being in the world, how thinking operates on multiple levels, in body as well as intellect, and how ‘thinking’ may be apparent in the movement of working with materials, and in the moving body itself. Finally, it is argued that by inviting the spectator into this sensory, bodily enmeshed apprehension of being-in-the-world, performance can return us to the space of everyday wonder.

This dissertation focuses on an applied theatre project, Young Voices that has attempted to develop a method, which inquires how performance forms can facilitate youth inclusion. Issues related to young people have been discussed extensively throughout time and within many disciplines. Stanley Cohen (1972), J.J Arnett (1999), Sharon Nichols and Thomas Good (2004) and Monica Barry (2005), have examined the ‘anxieties’ that are often associated with the perceived image of young people in society and how these may often lead to their social exclusion. This method is to be used by youth workers with their role as ‘intercessors’ between young people and the adults that surround them (i.e. their parents, guardians, teachers); it adopts Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) ethos, uses elements of his Forum Theatre (FT) workshop techniques and the theory/technique of verbatim theatre. The project’s research process is in the form of applied and verbatim theatre workshops; performance presentation and a performance lecture addressed to youth workers. The method looks at increasing and facilitating communication between various isolated adolescent groups through applied theatre using various ‘Boalian’ workshop techniques and FT to identify the participants ‘oppressions’. It intends at facilitating communication through applied theatre and verbatim theatre between youth and youth workers, by capturing the participants ‘oppressions’ and presenting them to an audience of their peers and youth workers. And it aims at facilitating communication through the combination of applied theatre and verbatim theatre with the attempt of beginning to bridge the gap amongst young people and the adults around them, through a recommended step by suggesting the involvement of the participant’s surrounding adults. The Young Voices method has been developed from the collaboration of several youth groups from around Scarborough and its district. The complete process attempts to assist teenagers in discussing their concerns from their own perspectives towards empowering them and raising awareness about how their opinions should be required for matters that concern them.

In this paper I explore the concepts of sound and silence focusing upon creative modalities for the dissemination of oral history materials. In doing so I focus upon two sound installations: 'Witness'(2000)by Susan Hiller, in which second-hand accounts of extra-terrestrial sightings were exhibited; and 'The Young Voices Soundscape'(2012), in which I exhibited a collection of sound recordings of young people’s first-hand accounts of concerns about their social inclusion. In particular, I examine Hiller’s methods of preserving, managing, curating and distributing the various materials generated through the collection of oral histories, which have been catalytic to my own work. The concepts of sound and silence are approached within the context of uncovering silent histories as a practice of oral historythat gives ‘voice’ to stories that might otherwise remain unheard. Drawing upon a number of theoretical frameworks including the philosophies of sound art as well as pos...

In this paper I explore the concepts of sound and silence focusing upon creative modalities for the dissemination of oral history materials. In doing so I focus upon two sound installations: Witness (2000) by Susan Hiller, in which second-hand accounts of extra-terrestrial sightings were exhibited; and The Young Voices Soundscape (2012), in which I exhibited a collection of sound recordings of young people’s first-hand accounts of concerns about their social inclusion. In particular, I examine Hiller’s methods of preserving, managing, curating and distributing the various materials generated through the collection of oral histories, which have been catalytic to my own work. The concepts of sound and silence are approached within the context of uncovering silent histories as a practice of oral history that gives ‘voice’ to stories that might otherwise remain unheard. Drawing upon a number of theoretical frameworks including the philosophies of sound art as well as poststructuralist a...

This short article appeared as part of a forum of postgraduates and early-career researchers on the topic of academic publishing, curated by Charlotte Bell. It arose from the understanding that emerging scholars today are navigating a particularly challenging career landscape. As new technologies and shifts in institutional support structures affect all aspects of academic activities, including publishing, these changes are felt perhaps most strongly by those who are near the beginning of their careers. This forum is intended to create a space for airing concerns, challenges, and also senses of possibility and transformation. http://www.contemporarytheatrereview.org/2015/forum-on-academic-publishing/