CPR Conferences archive
Mapping Performance Research #1
October 2005
seminar collaboration with Performance Research Laboratory (PRL), University of Leeds
How is performance research variously conducted across the world? And how is it articulated within or in relation to higher education? This invited international seminar is designed to bring some specific instances into extended mutual dialogue, to further our understanding of how performance research actually happens, and what forces determine what it can be.
The aim of this one-day seminar is to gain a genealogical understanding of three specific instances, rather than pursue protocols for a united discipline. Recent models for such enquiry include Shannon Jackson’s Professing Performance (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Simon Shepherd and Mick Wallis’s Drama, Theatre, Performance (Routledge New Critical Idiom, 2004).
The three speakers will address some key questions, to characterise performance research as it is in their own institutional nexus. Each address will be scrutinised by two key respondents. The seminar is open to an audience of academics and practitioners, and will include opportunities for plenary discussion.
Mapping Performance #1 will be followed by Mapping Performance #2 in October 2006. In all eight respondents from five continents will contribute to this first PRL+CPR Performance Enquiry. Key questions include:
conditions for emergence -
how did this instance of performance research emerge in the academy? were there precursor disciplines or fields of study? how was its emergence framed by the changing historic role of the universities? did it need to negotiate authority as a discipline, and negotiate disciplinary boundaries? did it need to negotiate specific relationships of exclusion or inclusion with respect to performance practice, cultural industries, official cultural programmes and policy, or historic performance cultures? how does the emergence of performance research in the academy articulate with more general movements in the local and international academy?
situation -
to what extent is performance research in this instance primarily understood as a discipline or as a field of study? to what extent might it be seen as a local variation of North American ‘performance studies’? how is it situated within the academy understood as a global business? how does performance research in this particular institutional situation relate to the national picture? what is its relationship with performance research outside the academy? what opportunities, from this perspective, exist or might be developed for productive dialogue within the field of performance research, and beyond?
critical margins -
what does performance research in this instance refuse to be? what threatens it? where might it go? and what stands in its way? are there, as in North America and the UK, critical fracture lines such as academy/practice, art/craft?
objects of study, protocols and optics -
does performance research in this instance primarily understand ‘performance’ as an optic or as an object of study? what methodologies does it typically deploy, and what is its methodological history? how do such frames as ethics, politics, professional development, national culture, economic constraints, social mission, articulate the discipline or field? how does ‘performance’ situate itself as a term in relation to others such as ‘theatre’? is its polyvalency in the English language, as ‘shows’, ‘doing’ and ‘efficiency’ enabling, distracting or irrelevant? what effect has the language community and issues of translation had on the emergence and character of performance theory in this instance?
personnel -
who typically conducts performance research in this instance? are they also, or chiefly, artistic practitioners? are they drawn from other disciplines? what happens to graduates from the discipline – how do they come to be researchers? how do non-academic practitioner-researchers articulate with the academy?
The seminar will be documented for later dissemination.
More information on Mapping Performance Research #1 is available at
www.leeds.ac.uk/paci/Confrences%20and%20Events/mappingdetails.htm,
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/paci/mappingregister.htm
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