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Forum

Performing Viral Pandemics?

Started by aha. Last reply by aha May 11, 2020. 2 Replies

Hi.Hopefully all is well!The shorty is a suggestion to start an online conversation group to elaborate questions from theCovid-19 oriented period and Performance Philosophy?eg. Intra-Active Virome?…Continue

We all have the same dream?

Started by Egemen Kalyon Apr 2, 2020. 0 Replies

Hello, "We all have the same dream" is my project that aims to create an archive from the dreams of our era and reinterpret Jung's "collective unconscious" concepts with performance and performing…Continue

Circus and Its Others 2020, UC Davis CFP

Started by Ante Ursic Mar 15, 2020. 0 Replies

Circus and its Others 2020November 12-15University of California, DavisRevised Proposal Deadline: April 15, 2020Launched in 2014, the Circus and its Others research project explores the ways in which…Continue

Tags: critical, ethnic, queer, performance, animal

Blog Posts

"Further Evidence on the Meaning of Musical Performance" Working Paper

Posted by Phillip Cartwright on January 15, 2020 at 21:28 0 Comments

Karolina Nevoina and I are pleased to announce availability of our working paper, "Further Evidence on the Meaning of Musical Performance". Special thanks to Professor Aaron Williamon and the Royal College of Music, Centre for Performance Science.…

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Division of Labor - Denis Beaubois

Posted by Gabrielle Senza on February 23, 2018 at 0:36 0 Comments

I just came across Denis Beaubois, an Australian multidisciplinary artist whose work, Currency - Division of Labor might be of interest to researchers here.

It is a series of video/performance works that use the division of labor model in capitalism as a structural tool for performance.

From his website:

The Division of labour work explores…

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Events

Videos

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Video from preview showings of ORIGIN at PS1, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Embassy Theatre London, June 9-10 2013. The final performance took place at BuildingBloqs, Walthamstow, London, September 27, 2013

This piece explores the possibilities of binding in performance. This performance is predicated on the act of binding amplifying a ritual field, just as a magnetic field is amplified by winding current-carrying wire around an electromagnet . A sufficiently close audience receives a physical experience of this field, thus experiencing the performance within their body. The performer becomes a kind of biological amplifier.

This theory of binding producing a field is not arrived at by analogy, but by a close examination of the function of all cultural binding practices. In cultures widespread in time and geography, there are practices of binding people and objects. From Ancient Greek Kolossoi, to Polynesian god figures, to Wicca, all these practices are designed to contain and direct energy, whether in objects or people.

Is there a connection between the ritual practice of encircling objects with cord, the encirclement of a magnet in current-carrying wire to produce a magnetic field, and the bondage practitioners who speak of the rope 'carrying energy' between bodies? Personal experience has shown that the physical effects of being bound are profound and hypnotic.*

Japanese bondage developed out of a martial art of torture into an often erotic art of energetic communication between bodies.

Bondage is also taboo. Taboos form a system of anti-rules: they itemize those behaviours that are circumscribed by a community. Rarely are taboos completely outlawed. Often, they are is merely controlled, exercised by monopoly, or in secret: killing is illegal, except where it is done in contemporary societies by the Sate in war or executions, or in older societies by way of sacrifice. Taboos are used in many cultures. for working magic. They gain their power precisely from their suppression by the community.

In this performance, the taboo associations of sadomasochism and torture are deployed against the hold of vague, mystical notions as 'freedom' and 'the individual' exemplified in the figure of the artist. Here, these notions are unraveled by binding the artist in complicit surrender. When she emerges from her bonds she has been physically changed: tight binding produces powerful energetic changes in the body. (Email me for details of findings of EEG research recently carried out at studiozeroorezoiduts@gmail.com). By surrender, then, the artist's body becomes an agent of material, kinaesthetic change within the performance space, and within the bodies of the assembled audience.

The performance inhabits the tension between spiritual and political realities, questioning conventional notions of what it is to be an individual, to make one's mark. What it might mean to testify experience differently? To be marked, instead of marking? To overcome wilfulness through surrender? What might we achieve by surrendering our 'selves'?

The soundtrack is produced by a bull roarer. I discovered bullroarers while researching electromagnetism in relation to cultural binding practices. The bull roarer (or rhomb) is a spinning instrument, usually made of a flat piece of wood attached to a cord. It appears in cultures around the world. Aboriginals give these toys to newly circumcised males to ease pain. The infant Dionysus was given a rhomb by the Titans to as an instrument to hypnotize him and dull his senses. Researcher Bethe Hagens suggests that bullroarers and their counterparts, buzzers (also found in cultures throughout the world and popular children's toys everywhere), are so widespread because they are manmade expressions of the cosmic spiral, their timbre expressing the inhalation and exhalation of magical breathing. Their use was a passport into a sonopoietic sphere, in which mystical experience could occur.




*Panicke

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