Trashing Performance
Performance has long suffered a history of critical trashings. As Jonas Barish argues in his magisterial study from 1981 The Antitheatrical Prejudice, ‘theatre’ has long been approached in various world cultures as a sign of value-less activity, whilst performance art in the west has, up until very recently, suffered critical and institutional neglect as “the runt of the litter of contemporary art” (Phelan, Unmarked). But to what degree have things changed with the recent embrace of performance in the institutions of contemporary culture? Is performance – by dint of its fleeting, transient ontology – always consigned to its fate as so much cultural detritus? Or is it the case that certain forms of performance have now won critical approval whilst others continue to languish unacknowledged and under-supported?
The research activities grouped under the heading of Trashing Performance partly reflect upon this changing status of performance in the contemporary world. But the purpose is not simply to call for recognition of work that fails to register on the contemporary critic’s radar. It is also to explore strategies of ‘trashing’ adopted by artists themselves; to explore how performers have productively come to “use what somebody else didn’t”, and to deliberately work in genres and modes deemed unserious, minor, or ‘merely’ entertaining by formal and institutional authorities. Trashing Performance addresses issues raised by the choices that such artists make. These include the desirability, or otherwise, of operating without official recognition and approval; the gendered, racialised, sexualised and classed meanings of being ‘trashy’; the possibilities afforded within low genres of performance including cabaret, folk and popular performance; subcultural work by queer and feminist artists; amateur aesthetics; and the potentials of impropriety and marginality.
Overall it is envisaged that the research processes addressing this theme will open up broader questions of the ethics and politics of ‘trash’ performance in the production of the democratic public sphere. Work begins on this theme in 2010 with public manifestations in 2011.