(The second of two online lectures on dramaturgies of temporality for the pedagogic programme Movimento Ritmico, convened by Associazione Raffaello Sanzio, Cesena, Italy, 14th and 15th May 2020) I have three things to note as introduction to this second lecture on dramatic rhythm. The first is that the lecture is concerned mainly with experience and … Continue reading On Dramatic Rhythm. 2. Theatres of powerlessness →

(The first of two online lectures on dramaturgies of temporality for the pedagogic programme Movimento Ritmico, convened by Associazione Raffaello Sanzio, Cesena, Italy, 14th and 15th May 2020)   Over these two lectures I aim to consider ‘dramatic rhythm’ – the temporal form and structure of enacted or presented events – in relation to modes … Continue reading On Dramatic Rhythm. 1. Last night’s audience →

Draft of text published in All for All! – Kinkaleri, ed. Piersandra Di Matteo, bruno: Venice, 2018 There is usually no mistaking the declared ‘politics’ of the more spectacular sort of cultural event, the arts festival for instance, or even the individual multi-part art project. Such operations have their ways of letting us know what … Continue reading Really saying something →

  (Paper for the Documenting Performance Working Group, Wayward Temporalities, TaPRA conference, University of Exeter, September 2019) In what follows I shall be discussing a couple of moving image works, each in their way contemporary cinematic reconstructions of historical events, both working in an explicit performance documentation mode, both playing with the temporalities of acting … Continue reading The picture of someone’s back →

Rose English, Plato's Chair, Vancouver 1983. Photo: Eric Metcalfe (Presentation for Hear Tell: Describing, Reporting, Narrating, TaPRA Documenting Performance, Tate Exchange, 13th May 2019) Description At the Richard Saltoun gallery in London, March-April 2019, there are three CDs with headphones mounted on a wall, at which a visitor can listen to audio recordings of different … Continue reading A principled hesitancy →

There should be an image here of the stage area for Daniel Kitson’s Keep, a memento of a south London performance of the show from early January this year. A small table and chair towards the front. Further back, directly behind, an impressive-looking piece of heavy furniture: a carpentered index card filing cabinet, some of … Continue reading Other people’s stories →

  Some of what I recall, from the year nearly gone. In Susanne Kennedy’s Women in Trouble (Volksbühne, Berlin. January) the central character is multiplying. There is another her in the next chamber, conducting what looks like the same conversation in a similar t-shirt, latex mask, wig. The chambers – rooms – are on a … Continue reading Particulars of the explosion →

Performance documentation. 1968. A photograph of a crowd, people together in a space. Some sort of stage area. Those in the dark around the edges are watching. Those in the middle, in the light, are letting themselves be watched, talking to each other, or just hanging out. Several of the people in the central, lit … Continue reading Taking the actors seriously →

Tomorrow I fly to Italy, but today I am in London, at Chisenhale Gallery again, among objects this time. The objects are arranged to be seen, on display, but not for appreciation it seems. Nor are they arranged for use, or not quite. Rather they are distributed – spaced out around the room – on … Continue reading Showing the instruments →

A photograph of a dog, and then another photo, and then a photo of another dog, then both dogs, then a close-up of a dog’s nose, in the back garden of a suburban house somewhere. Turkish tea glasses, from close-up, and then a vitrine in an art gallery, framed texts or pictures on the wall … Continue reading The irreplaceable constitutes the everyday →