Performance and Posthumanism: Staging Prototypes of Composite Bodies

Description

Recent technological and scientific developments have demonstrated a condition that has already long been upon us. We have entered a posthuman era, an assertion shared by an increasing number of thinkers such as N. Katherine Hayles, Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Richard Grusin, and Bernard Stiegler. The performing arts have reacted to these developments by increasingly opening up their traditionally ‘human’ domain to non-human others. Both philosophy and performing arts thus question what it means to be human from a posthumanist point of view and how the agency of non-humans – be they technology, objects, animals, or other forms of being – ‘works’ on both an ontological and performative level. The contributions in this volume brings together scholars, dramaturgs, and artists, uniting their reflections on the consequences of the posthuman condition for creative practices, spectatorship, and knowledge. Acknowledgements Contents Notes on Contributors List of Figures Performance and Posthumanism: Co-Creation, Response-Ability and Epistemologies A Genealogy of Posthuman Research Posthumanism Brings Two Tendencies Together Does It Matter? On Things and Objects Realigning Action and Movement on the Posthuman Stage PART I: Co-Creation with Thingly Matter (Dramaturgies) Contemporary Posthumanist Performing Arts PART II: Response-Ability in Thingly Variations (Politics and Ethics) PART III: Posthuman Epistemologies: The Politics of Knowledge Transmission Coda Works Cited Co-creation with Thingly Matter: Dramaturgies 9 Variations on Things and Performance The Apparatus Variation Variation on the Apparatus Variation The Commodity Variation The Dispossession Variation The Decolonizing Variation The Ethical Variation The Anti-Personhood Variation The Lines-Of-Flight Variation The Final Quote Variation References Does the Donkey Act? Balthazar as Protagonist The Modern Human-Animal Divide The Balthazar Project The Pragmatic Individuality of Organism and Umwelt Performance Ethology, the Specificity of Donkeys Interspecies Identification in Theatre with Humorous Results Whitehead’s Cosmology of Action The Ontogenetic Dimension of Interspecies Performance Action References Latent Performances. Conditions for Some Things to Happen The Latent Performance Lexicon References Aesthetics of Mykorrhiza. The Practice of Apparatus Against Aboutness Mycorrhiza: An Apparatus Mycorrhiza: An Aesthetic Following Mushrooms References On Composite Bodies and New Media Dramaturgy Introduction References Response-Ability in Thingly Variations: Politics and Ethics Decoding Effet Papillon, a Choreography for Three Dancers Inspired by the World of Video Games Contemporary Bodies Effet Papillon—Creation Process Sensors and Computer Programming: Towards a Dramaturgy of Simulacra On Their Wings References The Refrain and the Territory of the Posthuman Conclusion: The Climate Crisis and the Precarious Creation of the Unknown References The Right to Remain Forgotten and the Data Crimes of Post-digital Culture: A Ceaseless Traumatic Event The Rights of the Data-Subject Within the Internet Folds of Social Media Droit à l’oubli (The Right to Be Forgotten) The Authenticity of the Virtual (The Techno-Memory of Drones and the Selfie) Image Crimes Conclusion References The Biography of a Digital Device: The Interwovenness of Human and Non-human Movements in Production and Distribution Processes as Thematized in the Artwork Rare Earthenware by Unknown Fields Reconfigurations of the Real and the Possible Emerging Landscapes at the Point of Intersection of Terraforming and Material Autonomy The Biography of Things The Material Backbone of Digital Culture References Tentacular Thinking-With-Things in Storied Places. Parliament of Things (2019) by Building Conversation Facilitating Conversations and Co-creating Conversational Performances with Building Conversation Resurging9 ‘Lost Words’ in Conversational Practices/Performances Developing a Grammar of Animacy in the Wood Wide Web Animating a Grammar of Animacy in Conversational Practices/Performances Resurging Knowledge Through Tentacular Thinking-With-Things Things Emerging as Mediators in a Parliament of Things Tentacular Thinking-With-Flora in the Storied Place of the Botanical Garden New Modes of Activism: Silent Revolt of Interconnectivity Through Art-Science-Activist Worldings References Posthuman Epistemologies: The Politics of Knowledge Transmission The Point of the Matter: Performativity in Scientific Practices Introduction The Problem of Knowledge Production: Finding or Constructing Proof The Problem of Knowledge Production: Making Matter Perform Re-Imagining Knowledge Transmission: From One-Way Channels to Open-Endedness Re-imagining Knowledge Transmission: Re-enactment as a Non-representational Approach Knowledge Production in Practice: What Mathematicians Do Knowledge Production in Practice: Collaborations Between Technological and Human Agents Some Further Thoughts, Rather Random, yet Organized More Thoughts Again, Rather Abstract and One After Another References Music Notation and Distributed Creativity: The Textility of Score Annotation Case Study 1: To My Father for Clarinet and Piano Case Study 2: The Instant Composers Pool Orchestra Itinerary (An)notation Conclusion References Spectators in the Laboratory: Between Theatre and Technoscience Artists and/or Scientists Experiments and Experiences Laboratory of Social Imagination Conclusion References A Hybrid Device to Choreograph the Gaze: Embodying Vision Through a Historical Discourse on Optics in Benjamin Vandewalle’s Peri-Sphere Investigating Vision Exploring Parameters of Perception Different Angles References Index