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Dear Dance HE
We are inviting you to contribute to an online interactive blog called ‘Activist Performance’. This is an open-access, interactive forum for researchers, activists and artists which aims to share documentation of theatre and performance activism past and present.
We are responding to a century that has witnessed a proliferation of theatrical forms of activism, from the occupation of Seattle by an emergent global justice movement in 1999 to the more recent uprisings across the Arab world that led to a million citizens gathering in Tahrir Square in Cairo in 2011. Artists and performance groups have played an active role in protest events, drawing on bodies, text, image, movement as imaginative projections against the perceived order of things, and as tactical interventions and communicative tools.
This blog offers the idea of ‘gesture’ as an open-ended stimulus for contributors. Gestures of protest in recent times – camping, occupying, marching, striking, moving in cells (to avoid kettling for example), swarming, dancing, going in disguise, impersonating, playing, staging, chanting, networking, blogging, hacking, tweeting – carry traces of former activist modes, and extend the domains of activism from the public life of the street and the theatre stage, to the private domain of the mobile phone and laptop. This blog explores both the historical traces and contemporary manifestation of gestures of protest.
The aims of the blog are to understand protest movements better, share ideas and stimulate ongoing research and activism. The blog will remain ‘live’ until December 2013, and then be archived as an open access resource. It can be accessed here:http://activistperformance.wordpress.com/
If you would like to contribute to the blog, email one of us to be registered as an author:
We invite you to add to, develop and comment on existing content as you see fit. Posts are not limited in length. Brief comments and responses are very welcome – as are longer posts that describe protest gestures in more detail. Feel free to add photos, clips, links, DIY guides, proposals for action, performance essays …
This blog is part of a research project that complements and feeds into a special issue of the journal Contemporary Theatre Review . For more information about this, see ‘back story’ of the blog.
Activist Performance Workshop/Seminar – 10th July 2013 – in collaboration with MadLab Manchester - SAVE THE DATE
We are facilitating a collective blogging workshop with a group of artists, activists, researchers. This event will take place from 2pm - 5pm on 10th July 2013, at MadLab in the Northern Quarter of city centre Manchester (click here for directions). Please bring ideas for protest gestures to research, and also (if you have one) a laptop or tablet with wireless capability, as well as any other materials that might form the stimulus for your own or other people’s blogging ...Tea and coffee provided!
The day-time activity will be following by an Evening Seminar (6 – 8pm) at which there will be a series of short presentations about activist performance.
If you would like to attend either or both of the (free) events please email:[log in to unmask]
We very much look forward to hearing your questions, comments or blog posts in response to this invitation. If you have any questions please get in touch.
Best wishes
Jenny Hughes
Laurence Malt
Simon Parry
http://activistperformance.wordpress.com/
@ActivistPerform
P.S. In the development of the idea, we have thought about gestures as a series of verbs:
Brand
Camp
Chant
Dance
Dig
Disguise
Eat
Fast
Grow
Hack
Hug
Immolate
Impersonate
Improvise
Joke
Kettle
Knit
March
Mask
Mutilate
Occupy
Party
Picket
Play
Police
Post
Preach
Rehearse
Sew
Sing
Sit
Speak (including the ‘people microphones’ of Occupy)
Spin
Strike
Stop
Swarm
Trick
Tweet
Walk
Work
Workshop
Write