Performance Research Journal

The Dynamic Interchange between Scholarship and Practice

INCREASING TO SIX ISSUES IN 2012!

AIMS AND SCOPE

Performance Research is a specialist journal published six times a year which aims to promote a dynamic interchange between scholarship and practice in the expanding field of performance.

Interdisciplinary in vision and international in scope its emphasis is on contemporary performance within changing world cultures. Although Performance Research is published in English we welcome submissions in the contributor's preferred language and encourage submissions which challenge the boundaries between disciplines and genres.

The journal has received a great deal of praise for its subject matter and the visual and textual layout of the material. Institutional and Individual subscriptions continue to rise.

The most cost-effective way to subscribe is through membership of CPR.

Mae deuddegfed gyfrol Performance Research wrthi’n cael ei chyhoeddi ar hyn o bryd (2007) a, hyd yn hyn cyhoeddwyd deunaw rhifyn ar hugain, bob un â’i thema benodol sy’n ymwneud ag ymarfer ac ymchwil yn y celfyddydau perfformiadol cyfoes. Mae pob rhifyn yn cynnwys erthyglau beirniadol ac ysgolheigaidd, tudalennau i’r artist, adolygiadau, dogfennaeth a chyfweliadau.

SUBMISSIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS

Performance Research mainly publishes material relating to the theme of each issue. However, a section of each issue is dedicated to 'off theme' material. For details of our upcoming themes, please contact our Administrator.

We are currently seeking submissions on all areas of performance research, practice and scholarship from artists, scholars, curators and critics and invite submissions and proposals for forthcoming issues.

As well as substantial essays, interviews, reviews and documentation we welcome proposals using visual, graphic and photographic forms, including photo essays and original artwork which extends the possibilities for the visual page. We are also interested in proposals for collaborations between artists and critics.

Proposals may be submitted to the Administrator at the address below on one sheet of A4 or by e-mail attachment containing an abstract, proposed word count and description.

Editors:
Richard Gough , Artistic Director, Centre for Performance Research and Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK
Ric Allsopp , Founder of Writing Research Associates and Research Fellow, Dartington College of Arts, Totnes, Devon, UK

Proposals, suggestions, contributions and enquiries about submission to the journal should be sent to the journal administrator:

Sandra Laureri
Performance Research
Penglais Campus, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion,
Wales, SY23 3AJ, UK
telephone: +44 (0) 1970 628716
fax: +44 (0) 1970 622132
e-mail: performance-research@aber.ac.uk

PLEASE NOTE: The Administrator is unable to deal with subscription enquiries.

If you would like to subscribe to ‘Performance Research’, have any enquiries regarding your current CPR subscription or would like to purchase back issues, please contact Helen Gethin at: info@thecpr.org.uk

For contents lists of available back issues and to order these past issues, please contact Helen Gethin at CPR or order directly from the bookshop section of this website: www.performancebooks.co.uk

The price for an individual journal subscription via the publisher (6 issues) is £101 however CPR Members can pay the hugely discounted price of £60. To become a CPR member from £10 and subscribe to the journal please contact CPR : info@thecpr.org.uk

Recent Issues...

16.3 On Participation & Synchronization
eds. Bettina Brandl-Risi & Kai van Eikels (September 2011)

In our understanding, 'participation' refers to the behaviour of individuals or collectives at the intercept of activity and passivity, of being-moved and moving. Participation does not necessarily imply being involved with groups, institutions, or communities. Participation occurs where an agent receives the impression that his or her own way of undergoing, experiencing and acting takes place in a 'real' or 'virtual' proximity to that of others. Instead of reducing this proximity to a pre-figuration of unity (as in many concepts of 'community'), this issue of Performance Research examines how differences become functional or unfold an organizational potential in processes of participation, without ever vanishing. Synchronizations of actions are key to whether people are motivated to participate, whether offers of participation are accepted or denied, whether participatory efforts are sustained or short-lived. But they also help to set up and model the situational environment of a participatory process, and influence the 'course' of such a process and the performative 'architecture' of the collective. This rethinking of participation allows for a reconsideration of notions of the performer, the audience, the public, equality and performance itself.

16.4 On Participation & Philosophy
eds. Laura Cull and Karoline Gritzner (December 2011)

On Participation and Philosophy aims to instigate reflection and debate on the relationship between performance and philosophy from the perspective of the contested concept of 'participation'. Through a combination of contributions from artists - such as Felix Barret of Punchdrunk and Lone Twin - and scholars, the issue examines ways in which modes of participatory performance engage philosophical concepts and, vice versa, how various philosophical approaches to the theme of participation have engaged art and performance. Individual contributions, for example, foreground the shared concern with participation as a means to investigate the points of dialogue and dissonance between Merleau-Ponty and Felix Ruckert; Jean-Luc Nancy and Rimini Protokoll; Deleuze and Grotowski; Rancière and Boal; Adorno and Group Material, and much more.

17.1 On Failure
eds. Róisín O'Gorman and Margaret Werry (February 2012)

To speak of failure is to invite stigma; yet failure saturates our lives, shapes our experience and delineates the contours of our institutions. This special issue aims to face failure head on, to study, theorize and even cultivate it, to see if performance might provide us with a metaphor and methodology for failure. Focusing in particular on pedagogy, these essays, dialogues, ethnographies and theoretical reflections, tap into the analytic power of failure to chart the social, political and affective terrain in which we teach and perform. For these authors, failure is neither a dead end nor a pit-stop on the path to success but a generative, subversive force.
Performance Research has currently published its fifteenth volume and to date fifty two-thematically-based issues on contemporary performance arts practice and research. Each issue contains critical and scholarly articles, artist's pages, reviews, documentation and interviews.

Forthcoming Issues...

17.2 On Foot
eds. Carl Lavery and Nicolas Whybrow (April 2012)

The aim of this issue is to rethink the expressive and perceptive potential of the foot in contemporary performance. Contributors will reflect on a variety of foot-based practices and processes as both dramaturgy - in theatre, dance, performance and film - and in everyday life activities such as running and walking. They will also contemplate the metaphorical significance of the foot in phrases such as footwork, footnotes, footage and in the technical vocabulary associated with the foot as a mode of rhythmic measurement in music and poetry. The issue hopes to draw attention to the foot's aesthetic and political capacities for perceiving and (re)arranging the world.

17.3 On Technology & Memory
eds. Maaike Bleeker and Ric Allsopp (June 2012)

This issue engages with the complex interactions between humans and technological developments and how these interactions transform the way memory is shaped. From the first occurrence of tools to the complex interactions between humans and digital technologies, our consciousness, our ways of thinking and imagining, are the product of our co-evolution with technology. On Technology & Memory approaches this co-evolution from the vantage point of performance as artistic practice, as embodiment of culturally specific symbolic systems, and as functional technology. The material collected in this issue is a selection of presentations and shifts presented at PSi#17 Camillo 2.0: Technology, Memory, Experience.

17.4 On Ecology
eds. Stephen Bottoms, Aaron Franks and Paula Kramer (August 2012)

How do we live on earth?

In recent years, a broad and growing range of performance events and processes has sought to re-imagine the position of humans in the natural world. Where the traditional Western view has been to see ourselves as the central players on a stage with a green backdrop, current thinking and experimentation often emphasize the diverse ways in which we are implicated in, responsible for and responsive to the systems and processes that constitute life on earth. Who are the other actors -- animal, vegetable, mineral, structural -- whose existence impacts on ours, and is impacted upon by us? How is ecological consciousness and connectivity currently manifesting in performance studies and its related contexts?

Performance Research is published bi-monthly by Routledge Journals, Taylor and Francis Ltd.

Performance Research Books
Inside Performance Practice

Performance Research Books publishes generously illustrated and finely designed books that present documentation and analysis of contemporary performance practice – through the work of individual artists, companies and ensembles. Each publication combines texts, scores and critical reflection on a distinctive body of work, together with scholarly and theoretical analysis of the practice, the voices of practitioners, the view of the makers and the evidence of the work.

Performance Research Books publishes and commissions work that stems from a scholarly engagement with artist-led research and practice. Each publication seeks a lively conversation between theory and practice and the work is revealed and illuminated through dialogue and discourse exploring a variety of formats: interviews, photo-essays, performance texts, scenographic designs, scores, notes and critical analysis.

Performance Research Books is an independent venture of Performance Research, a specialist journal founded in 1996 and published bi-monthly (from 2012) which aims to promote a dynamic interchange between scholarship and practice in the expanding field of performance. Interdisciplinary in vision and international in scope, its emphasis is on contemporary performance arts within changing cultures.

Performance Research Books follows and expands the policy of the journal, but opens into publishing monographs, bookworks, and singular works on distinctive practice.

Performance Research Books is an imprint of ARC, a division of the Centre for Performance Research Ltd, an educational charity limited by guarantee. The Centre for Performance Research is located in Wales and works internationally.

e-mail Siu-lin Rawlinson at - performanceresearchbooks@aber.ac.uk