Performance Philosophy is an international research network for the field of Performance Philosophy. The network is open to all researchers concerned with the relationship between performance & philosophy.

The network was founded by eleven core conveners in the summer of 2012 and was formally launched on the 3rd September 2012. Eleven new conveners were appointed in September 2017, with two of the founding conveners stepping down.

Aims

The core aims of Performance Philosophy are:

• To nurture and develop the emerging field of Performance Philosophy internationally;

• To facilitate the exchange of ideas and practices related to Performance Philosophy between international researchers including students, emerging scholars, established scholars and practitioners.

Activities

The core activities of Performance Philosophy are:

• To establish and maintain an international network of Performance Philosophy researchers

• To facilitate communication in the field of Performance Philosophy through a website and mailing list

• To create and maintain a high-quality peer-reviewed journal and to use the journal as a platform to showcase the best original research in the field of Performance Philosophy, including practice-based research 

• To initiate and develop a high-quality book series with an esteemed publisher and to publish monographs and edited collections that make an original and important contributions to the field of Performance Philosophy 

• To host and to support network members to host high-quality research events on Performance Philosophy, such as symposia, conference, festivals, seminars, and summer schools.

Values

Performance Philosophy takes an inclusive, interdisciplinary and pluralist approach to the field. The network welcomes members concerned with any aspect of philosophy, whether from the Continental or Analytic traditions, and with any discipline or definition of performance, including but not limited to drama, theatre, dance, performance art, live art, and music. The only criteria for membership and participation is an interest in the field and an openness to the breadth and variety of different approaches to Performance Philosophy that the field encompasses.

 Performance Philosophy also aims to be financially inclusive. Performance Philosophy is not a profit-making organization, and it is free to become a member of Performance Philosophy, including access to the network website and mailing list. By the same token, Performance Philosophy cannot offer funding support to network members or research groups within the network. All Performance Philosophy events must be self-funded.

Structure

Performance Philosophy is structured as a network, made up of: 

• self-organizing research groups, and

• a committee of core convenors.                  

The research groups within the network can either be geographic or institution based (eg. the Brown group) and/or thematic or based on the work of a particular performance philosopher (eg. the Deleuze and Performance group). Any member or group of members can apply to create a new research group via the website.

The role of the convenors is to oversee the functioning of the network as a whole and to lead on the development of Performance Philosophy projects such as the website, journal, book series and events. 

Core Conveners

Meghan Moe Beitiks (USA) is an artist working with associations and disassociations of culture/nature/structure.  She analyzes perceptions of ecology though the lenses of site, history, emotions, and her own body in order to produce work that analyzes relationships with the non-human.  She's particularly excited about the dialogue at PP and is hoping to support new ways of enabling and encouraging it through various platforms. She was a Fulbright Student Fellow, a recipient of the Claire Rosen and Samuel Edes Foundation Prize for Emerging Artists, and a MacDowell Colony fellow. She exhibited her work at the I-Park Environmental Art Biennale, Grace Exhibition Space in Brooklyn, Defibrillator Performance Art Gallery in Chicago, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the House of Artists in Moscow, and other locations in California, Chicago, Australia and the UK. She received her BA in Theater Arts from the University of California, Santa Cruz and her MFA in Performance Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Grand Valley State University.  www.meghanmoebeitiks.com

Hilan Bensusan (Brazil)

Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca (UK) is Reader in Theatre & Performance and Director of the Centre for Performance Philosophy at the University of Surrey, UK. She did a BA in Fine Art at the Slade (UCL) – starting out as a painter before developing an interdisciplinary practice combining performance, installation, photography, video and writing. She continued to work as a practicing artist – performing at TATE Britain and the Serpentine amongst other places – whilst doing an MA in Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, and then a PhD in the Drama Department at Exeter. Her PhD was on the implications of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze for the concept of ‘presence’ in performance. During her PhD she edited the volume Deleuze and Performance (EUP, 2009). An expanded and re-structured version of her doctoral research was then published as her first monograph: Theatres of Immanence: Deleuze and the Ethics of Performance (Palgrave, 2012). Her other publications include: Encounters in Performance Philosophy (2014), co-edited with Alice Lagaay; and Manifesto Now! Instructions for Performance, Philosophy, Politics (2013), co-edited with Will Daddario. Laura is founding co-editor of the Performance Philosophy book series with Palgrave-Springer; and founding co-editor of the Performance Philosophy journal. She co-organized the inaugural Performance Philosophy conference at Surrey in 2013 and the 2^nd biennial conference in Chicago in 2015. https://www.surrey.ac.uk/GSA/People/laura_cull/

Luciana da Costa Dias (Brazil) is core founder of the Performing Arts Post-Graduate Program at the Federal University of Ouro Preto (PPGAC/ UFOP), in Brazil, working at UFOP as Associate Professor of Aesthetic and Theatre Theory since 2011. She is also a founder member of the Brazilian research group: "APORIA: Philosophy and Theatre Studies” since 2014. Her doctoral degree in Philosophy is from University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), having developed her doctoral studies, partially, with a DAAD scholarship, at the Freiburg Universität, under the supervision of Dr. Günther Figal. She also has extensive training in visual arts, painting, theatre and art history from EAV - School of Visual Arts of Parque Lage, in Rio de Janeiro. Luciana's research activities are focused on a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach to art and modernity in Heidegger. For her post doctoral research, she is particularly interested in the crisis of modernity (as a metaphysical crisis and its possible overcoming in art) through the works of Nietzsche and Artaud; as well as in a transversal perspective on art/performance - as an immediacy of presence - and how this might affect theatre studies.

Will Daddario (USA) is author of Baroque, Venice, Theatre, Philosophy (Palgrave 2017), co-editor with Karoline Gritzner of Adorno and Performance (2014) and with Laura Cull of Manifesto Now! Instructions for Performance, Philosophy, Politics (2013). He is the Chair of the Performance and Philosophy Working Group within Performance Studies international, co-editor (with Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca and Alice Lagaay) of the Performance Philosophy Book Series, and a founding member of the international research network Performance Philosophy. Research interests include: The poetry, theatre, and philosophy of Jay Wright; Performance Philosophy in Everyday Life; Art and Performance of Kent Monkman (Two-Spirit Cree Painter/Performer); Baroque Venice; Theodor W. Adorno; Michel Foucault; Ancient Greek Philosophy (specifically Cynicism); Experimental Archival Methodologies.

Stuart Grant (Australia) I am a Senior Lecturer in performance at Monash University. I write about performance phenomenology, site-specific performance, musical theatre, and a bunch of other more or less related topics. I play in the electronic punk band The Primitive Calculators and direct the ecological performance company, the Environmental Performance Authority. I am currently leading a project on experimental music in China, and facilitating collaborations between Australian and Chinese experimental musicians. As a convenor in PP I would like to seek out international networking opportunities, get involved in exploring possibilities with social media platforms, lend a hand with journal reviewing, and work to increase the presence of the organisation outside of the UK and US. One day we may be able to bring the biennial conference to Australia.

Karoline Gritzner (Austria/UK) is Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Studies and member of the Performance and Politics International (PPi) Research Centre at Aberystwyth University (Wales) (http://performanceandpolitics.aber.ac.uk/). She is the author of Adorno and Modern Theatre: The Drama of the Damaged Self in Bond, Rudkin, Barker, and Kane (Palgrave 2015), co-editor with Will Daddario of Adorno and Performance (2014), editor of Eroticism and Death in Theatre and Performance (2010) and co-editor with David Ian Rabey of Theatre of Catastrophe: New Essays on Howard Barker (2006). Her other publications include two co-edited issues of Performance Research: On Philosophy and Participation with Laura Cull (2011) and On Dramaturgy with Heike Roms and Patrick Primavesi (2009). Research interests include: critical theory, Frankfurt School (especially Adorno), continental philosophy, the sublime, tragedy, aesthetic theory, Georg Büchner, Howard Barker’s art of the theatre, modern and contemporary European drama.

Wade Hollingshaus (USA) is the chair of Brigham Young University’s department of Theatre and Media Arts. He holds an M.A. in Scandinavian Studies from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. in Theatre Historiography and Performance Studies from the University of Minnesota. In his principal appointment, Wade teaches courses in performance studies, theatre historiography, literary and cultural theory, dramaturgy, and directing. He is an affiliate faculty member in the European Studies program, for which he teaches a course in Finnish Literature. He was also recently appointed as an Alcuin Fellow in the Honors Department, for which he co-teaches a course on literature and biology. In 2013, Wade published his first book: Philosophizing Rock Performance: Dylan, Hendrix, Bowie. Further work has been published in Theatre Topics, Scandinavian Studies, Review: The Journal of Dramaturgy, The Journal of Religion and Theatre, The Journal of Finnish Studies, TDR, Theatre Journal, and Ecumenica. Recently he co-edited a special section on “Performance Philosophy Pedagogy” for Theatre Topics. His new book project discusses musician Peter Gabriel and the theatricality of his work. He also publishes on Finnish theatre and performance. Wade currently serves in the American Society of Theatre Research as their liaison with the Theatre Library Association.

Einav Katan-Schmid (Germany) is a Postdoctoral Research Associate, at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Since I am coming from the practical dance world and have been leading my academic profession in philosophy, my main focus of research is philosophy of dance. My work is in the intersection of practice with theory and deals with questions that have both artistic and philosophical implications. I explore embodied practices as techniques of thinking and inquire their social, physical, and cognitive intervention. My book “Embodied Philosophy in Dance; Gaga and Ohad Naharin’s Movement Research” was published with the PP book series with Palgrave Macmillan (2016).  Currently, I work with the Excellence Cluster; an Interdisciplinary Laboratory at Humboldt University of Berlin. I collaborate with the research group gamelab.berlin, where we design and stage research for movement possibilities and dancing in VR. Our project, "Playing with Virtual Realities," questions how technology and embodied practices design and enact imagination and perceptual experience. I am passionate about interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary projects. Coming from in between disciplines and from diverse cultures of research and expression, I am always looking for the possibilities and the conditions that enable everybody to express the variety of their curiosities, knowledge, and expertise at their best.

Eve Katsouraki (UK)

Esa Kirkkopelto (Finland) is a philosopher, an artist-researcher and the convener of Other Spaces live art group. Since 2007, he has been working at the University of the Arts Helsinki as professor of artistic research. Currently he is in charge of developing the post-doc Centre for Artistic Research (C-FAR). His research focuses on the deconstruction of the performing body both in theory and in practice. He is the leader of a collective research project “Actor´s Art in Modern Times” on the psychophysical actor training (since 2008), and a member of the editorial board of Theatre, Dance and Performance Training and Performance Philosophy Journal and Performance Philosophy Journal. He is also the initiator of the International Platform for Performer Training. Having passed his PhD in philosophy at the University of Strasbourg, he is the author of Le théâtre de l´expérience. Contributions à la théorie de la scène (Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne 2008), as well as of many articles on philosophy of theatre, poetics, and politics.

Alice Koubová (Czech Republic) is a senior researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences and lecturer at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. She has published Self-Identity and Powerlessness (Brill), and other books and papers on contemporary philosophy, post-phenomenology, ethics and performance. As an active practitioner in ludic theatre, Alice authors performances straddling the borders of philosophy and theatre. Her activities in the Performance Philosophy network include organising and co-organising conferences (Gnothi seauton, Ethics of Play, Observe! Imitate? Be yourself!, Playful communication, The Ludic Stance, Self and Imitation, How Does Performance Philosophy Act? Ethos, Ethics, Ethnography), which challenge the petrified habits of academic gatherings. Her goal is to not only foster Performance Philosophy activities in Central Europe but also to create a robust institutional platform initiating research stays, long term programmes, and short events for PP members and related researchers. She also wishes to continue to support local public, less academic activities focused on the development of civic society and public discussion. For her work, Alice was awarded Libellus Primus Price (2008) and Otto Wichterle Award (2014). For more details, see: 

http://web.flu.cas.cz/filosofievexperimentu/

http://oskf.flu.cas.cz/en/lide/alice-koubova2-2 http://www.interactingwiththeinnerpartner.org

Alice Lagaay (Germany) is professor of Cultural Philosophy and Aesthetics in the design department at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg. She is a founding member of Performance Philosophy and a co-editor of the Performance Philosophy book series at Palgrave Macmillan. Before moving to her current position in Hamburg has taught philosophy, media theory and cultural studies at universities in Berlin, Bremen, and Friedrichhafen. Her PhD (2007) was on the philosophy of voice and her post-doctoral research on figures of “negative performance”, with a special focus, in recent years, on the notion of “Creative Indifference” as formulated by the expressionist philosopher Salomo Friedlaender, whose philosophical works Alice is helping to translate. During her years at the philosophy department of the University of Bremen, Alice worked closely with the Centre for Performance Studies and the theatre ensemble Theater der Versammlung directed by Jörg Holkenbrink. Together they have been actively involved in developing and applying modes of performative teaching, especially focusing on the teaching and generating of philosophical content. See: http://performancematters-thejournal.com/index.php/pm/article/view/38

John Ó Maoilearca (UK) is Professor of Film and Television Studies at Kingston University, London. He has also taught philosophy and film theory at the University of Sunderland, England and the University of Dundee, Scotland. He has published ten books, including (as author) Bergson and Philosophy (2000), Post-Continental Philosophy: An Outline (2006), Philosophy and the Moving Image: Refractions of Reality (2010), and (as editor) Laruelle and Non-Philosophy (2012) and The Bloomsbury Companion to Continental Philosophy (2013). His latest book is All Thoughts Are Equal: Laruelle and Nonhuman Philosophy (University of Minnesota Press, 2015), which deals with performativity and non-standard philosophies.

Ramona Mosse (Germany)

Theron Schmidt (USA/UK/Australia) works internationally as an artist, teacher, and writer. He has published widely on contemporary theatre and performance, participatory art practices, and politically engaged performance.  He is one of the editors of the journal Performance Philosophy (performancephilosophy.org/journal), and is also a frequent contributor and editorial board member for Performance Research and editor of Contemporary Theatre Review’s online Interventions (contemporarytheatrereview.org). In addition to his academic research, he has written widely about contemporary performance and live art for a variety of publications, including magazines and artist books, and also as part of innovative critical writing projects that foster interaction between scholars, artists, and publics. He also makes performance as a solo and collaborative artist.

Anna Street (France) holds a double-doctorate from the University of Paris – Sorbonne (English Studies – Theater) and from the University of Kent (Comparative Literature) and a Masters in Philosophy from the Sorbonne. Her current work traces a parallel between the development of theories of comedy and philosophy’s increasing reliance upon dramatic techniques. Focusing on the rise of serious comedy in post-war European theater, she demonstrates how comedy’s challenging of ideological principles engages in practices that are both essentially self-reflective and necessarily dramatic, implicating performance as integral to the act of thinking. She is the English-language translator for Les petits Platons, a book collection designed to playfully present philosophy to children. She is co-editor of Inter Views in Performance Philosophy, forthcoming with Palgrave in 2017. Member of the Sorbonne research group VALE and co-convenor of the working group Genres of Dramatic Thought within the Performance Philosophy network, she actively organizes and participates in conferences around the globe and is particularly devoted to the promotion of intercultural and interdisciplinary exchanges related to philosophical reflection and performance. http://paris-sorbonne.academia.edu/AnnaStreet

Dan Watt (UK)

Naomi Woo (Canada/UK) Originally from Canada, I am a pianist, conductor, and researcher, currently completing a PhD at Cambridge. My current research uses methodology from literary criticism, queer theory, performance studies, and auto-ethnography to explore the impossible in piano etudes by composers including John Cage, György Ligeti, and Nicole Lizée. Previously, I have studied mathematics, philosophy, and music at Yale University and Université de Montréal. As a pianist and conductor, I frequently engage in multidisciplinary and research-oriented performance. In particular, my ongoing collaboration with Sasha Amaya, tick tock, is an ideas and performance lab for sonic and choreographic arts, focused on producing, interpreting, and devising. www.naomiwoo.com

Mi You (Germany/China) is a Beijing-born curator, researcher, and academic staff at Academy of Media Arts Cologne, where she lectures on arts and media theory. She has worked as curator of artistic research projects shown in Shenzhen/Hong Kong Bi-City Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (2007), Istanbul Design Biennale (2012), Lisbon Triennale and Athens Biennale (2013), v2_lab for the unstable media (2015), SAVVY Contemporary (2016), among others. Her long-term research and curatorial project takes the Silk Road as a figuration for deep-time, deep-space, de-centralized and nomadic imageries. Under this rubric she has curated a series of performative programs at Asian Culture Center Theater in Gwangju, South Korea and the inaugural Ulaanbaatar International Media Art Festival, Mongolia (2016). Her academic interests are in performance philosophy, science and technology studies, as well as the philosophy of immanence in Eastern and Western traditions. Her writings appear on Performance Research, PARSE, MaHKUscript: Journal of Fine Art Research, among others. She is fellow of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Germany), and serves as director of Arthub (Shanghai) and advisor to The Institute for Provocation (Beijing). Within PP, she would like to create a two-way dialogue with discourses from non-West thinkers/practitioners by hosting or supporting interim events (particularly in East Asia and Germany).

Past conveners

Kélina Gotman (2012-2017)

Freddie Rokem (2012-2017)

The Performance Philosophy logo was created by Paul Jackel - studio pj Berlin - and facilitated by Alice Lagaay with generous funding from the University of Bremen, Germany.