Potentials of Performance

In this final year of the project (2011/2012) the Performance Matters organisers will work in collaboration with others to investigate the as yet undocumented, unspoken and unrealized potentials of performance.

More specifically, we will explore the question of the democratic value of performance, both nationally and internationally. What is the potential of performance to transform the ways in which we participate in civic society? How does performance suggest we may act as valued members of a democratic polis both within and without institutional and professional frameworks? And what kind of a future does performance promise in its present-day testing of limits of the social, the cultural, the vital and the critical? What does it hold in store?

These questions will be explored through two key activities. Firstly, the team will work on a significant publication that will cohere and extend the many contributions to the project over its previous two years and, secondly, the project's research students will curate a themed series of public talk events.