19 Jun Performance, Politics and Practice
Dr. Ninotchka Bennahum, Theater & Dance
bennahum@theaterdance.ucsb.edu
Dr. Stephanie Batiste, English & Black Studies
sbatiste@english.ucsb.edu
Dr. Ruth Hellier-Tinoco, Music
rhellier-tinoco@music.ucsb.edu
Relationships between and explorations of performance and politics form the core of this new Research Focus Group. Working at the intersection of scholarship, artistic practice, and political life, we aim to explore embodied practice-performance as a vehicle for shaping, crafting, structuring, and transmitting cultural values and identities. We place a particular emphasis on knowledge and aesthetics of transformational, explorational, and anti-normative media dealing with resistance, activism, and celebration. We encompass notions of “is performance,” i.e. conventional manifestations such as theater, dance, music, spoken word, puppetry, performance art, film; and notions of “as performance,” i.e. any act, expression, and behavior that may be analyzed through a lens of performance.
We are interested in a performance-research-activism paradigm, and in agential objects and scenes: performance as a concrete method, strategy, or tactic of the body, such that a performer uses their body to publicly target, manipulate, expand, or deconstruct dominant or limiting social policies or beliefs; and public expressions that become political when they contest dominant social ideologies and/or strengthen marginalized communities.
Contexts range from the personal and local to the transnational, global, site-specific, and virtual. The principal focus is on contemporary, 21st century contexts. Historical contexts that are brought into relation and dialogue with contemporary contexts are welcomed.
Although we necessarily embrace many methodologies, we place an emphasis on praxis—the connectedness of theory and practice—therefore aiming to include performative formats, live performances, and workshops that explore the ontological and epistemological issues at stake.
EVERYONE WELCOME.
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UPCOMING EVENTS: