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PERFORMANCE RESEARCH JOURNAL
NEW CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Vol. 28, No. 8: ‘ON HABIT’
(Dec 2023)

Proposal Deadline: 20 February 2023

Edited by Frank Camilleri (University of Malta) and John-David Dewsbury (UNSW Canberra)

This issue of Performance Research aims to consider – and in some cases to ‘reconfigure’ – the role played by habit in performance practices and studies. In addition to the exploration of the rich connections and overlaps between habits and performance as practices of repetition, enactment and embodiment, the aim is to contextualize and balance the predominant view that habits are obstacles in restraining innovation and freedom in behaviour and imagination. Far from arresting creativity, the power of habit can be located in its stabilizing capacity that enables generative change in processes like training, composition (including devising and adaptation), directing, writing, rehearsing, performing and indeed living. The intimate links between habits and material environment are also pertinent to site-sensitive issues of staging, design and location.
Clare Carlisle outlines some possible manifestations of habit in human behaviour, ranging from the individual to the collective, from active to passive habituations, from the source of certain actions to the result of others, from aptitudes or skills to tendencies and inclinations, from nervous tics to routines (2014: 7). It is through a study of such manifestations that a complex appreciation of habit emerges. In acting, dancing and performing, patterns of habitual use are generally frowned upon in conditioning movement and thus limiting the exploration and range of other possibilities. On the other hand, the actual practices themselves have always embraced a more integrated understanding that combines supposedly ‘bad habits’ (for example, automatic and ‘mindless’ behaviour) with ‘good practice’ (for example, mindful awareness) (cf. Marshall 2008: 97–9). This issue of Performance Research delves deeper into the nature of habits by engaging with a broader and more nuanced understanding of the processes, mechanisms and potentials involved.
The dynamics of habit are relational (in always being relative and/or comparable to other elements) and situated (in being cued by, and in affecting, material setting). The spatio-temporal context of such dynamics alludes to what in fields of study like philosophy, human geography, sociology and psychology is often referred to as the ‘milieu’ of habits, which indexes the material surroundings that frame and shape human behaviour. The implications of the milieus of studios (for training, devising and rehearsing), of technical and design workshops, of theatres and other spaces of performance, are many and far-reaching. Foremost among these are questions of agency as distributed across bodies and environment (including objects, technology and landscapes), which in turn point to a broader and complex understanding of habit on a human–non-human continuum. In the context of performance, such a conceptualization of agency has further radical ramifications that involve notions of intentionality, consciousness, awareness and voluntary action. It is for this reason that a reappraisal of habit in performance processes is long overdue.
Apart from some isolated writings, including Camilleri (2013: 46–8, 2018) in the context of performer training and Dewsbury (2012) within the broader field of performance, very little has been written about the complex characteristics and implications of habits – a subject that has seen an upsurge of critical interest of late. This issue of Performance Research aims to complement this body of work as well as to redress the lacuna in the context of performance by providing multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary reflections on the topic.

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Habit can be interpreted as providing a fuller and more dynamic picture of the complex entanglements and overlaps with other areas of human activity, especially with pedagogical processes like training and transformational practices like performance. The picture that emerges from a more nuanced reading is thus one where habit mediates and/or contrasts nature and culture (life), inside and outside (space), freedom and necessity (dynamics), perception and memory (experience), past and future (time), and, crucially in the context of performer processes, psycho and physical, body and mind. 
This issue of Performance Research welcomes contributions and will present the broadest possible perspectives that consider habit as idea and phenomenon in performance studies. Topics may include but are not limited to:

-	Processes and repertoires of habit: generation, development, disruption 
-	Practitioners of habit in the arts, sports, architecture, the military, economy and so on
-	Habit and behaviour: mechanicity and spontaneity, mindlessness and mindfulness
-	Habit, technique and skilled behaviour 
-	Habit and expertise: mastery/automaticity in practice, virtuosic action
-	Habit in practice/practices of repetition and routine: ritual, custom, discipline 
-	Habit and improvisation, for example, found movement in aesthetic performance
-	Habit and training/pedagogy/education
-	Habit and scenographic milieus
-	Habit and cognition
-	Habit and affect
-	Habit and time: the present instance of past and future occurrences
-	Habit and place: inside, outside and in-between
-	Habit, habitat and habitus: habituation and inhabitation
-	Habit and ideology
-	Habit and gender
-	Habit and nature
-	Habit and politics
-	Habit and economics
-	Habit and the moral/ethical/spiritual life
-	Habit and ecology
-	Performative materialisms of habit
-	Habit and technology
-	Habit and algorithms

We invite proposals for articles and shorter essays and provocations, including artist pages and other contributions that use distinctive layouts and typographies.
We anticipate attracting interdisciplinary contributions from areas such as theatre studies, dance studies, music studies, performance studies, art, human geography, political science, sociology, philosophy, politics and cultural studies. Accordingly, we will explore possibilities of interaction between the proposals received.

References
Camilleri, Frank (2013) ‘Habitational action: Beyond inner and outer action’, Theatre,
Dance and Performance Training 4(1): 30–51.

Camilleri, Frank (2018) ‘On habit and performer training’, Theatre, Dance and
Performance Training 9(1): 36–52.

Carlisle, Clare (2014) On Habit, London: Routledge.

Dewsbury, J-D. (2012) ‘Affective habit ecologies: Material dispositions and immanent
inhabitations’, Performance Research 17(4): 74–82.

Marshall, Lorna (2008) The Body Speaks, rev. edn, London: Methuen.


Format
Please send 300- to 400-word abstracts (with a 100-word author bio) for critical essays, artist pages, interviews, practice-research essays or provocations that attend to (but are not limited to) any aspect of the above.


Issue Contacts:
All proposals, submissions and general enquiries should be sent direct to Performance Research at: [log in to unmask]
Issue-related enquiries should be directed to the issue editors via:
[log in to unmask]  

Schedule:
Proposals: February 2023
First drafts: May 2023
Final drafts: July 2023
Publication: Dec 2023

General Guidelines for Submissions: 
• Before submitting a proposal, we encourage you to visit our website (www.performance-research.org ) and familiarize yourself with the journal. 
• Proposals will be accepted by email (Microsoft Word or Rich Text Format (RTF)).
 Proposals should not exceed one A4 side. 
• Please include your surname in the file name of the document you send. 
• Please include the issue title and issue number in the subject line of your email. 
• Submission of images and other visual material is welcome provided that all attachments do not exceed 5 MB, and there is a maximum of five images. 
• Submission of a proposal will be taken to imply that it presents original, unpublished work not under consideration for publication elsewhere. 
• If your proposal is accepted, you will be invited to submit an article in the first draft by the deadline indicated above. On the final acceptance of a completed article, you will be asked to sign an author agreement in order for your work to be published in Performance Research.

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