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Showroom Detours

SHIFT DATE       25.6    SHIFT TIME      21:30 - 00:30    SHIFT VENUE      Zagreb Youth Theater STUDIO 1     NOTE opening

SHIFT DATE (2) 26.6    SHIFT TIME (2) 17:00 - 20:00    SHIFT VENUE (2) Zagreb Youth Theater STUDIO 1     NOTE installation

SHIFT DATE (3) 26.6    SHIFT TIME (3) 21:30 - 00:30    SHIFT VENUE (3) Zagreb Youth Theater STUDIO 1     NOTE installation

SHIFT DATE (4) 27.6    SHIFT TIME (4) 17:00 - 20:00    SHIFT VENUE (4) Zagreb Youth Theater STUDIO 1     NOTE installation

SHIFT DATE (5) 27.6    SHIFT TIME (5) 21:30 - 00:30    SHIFT VENUE (5) Zagreb Youth Theater STUDIO 1     NOTE closing

SHIFT CURATOR Showroom Aberystwyth

SHIFT PARTICIPANTS Showroom Aberystwyth: RICHARD ALLEN, KASIA COLEMAN, DANIEL LADNAR, GARETH LLŶR EVANS, ESTHER PILKINGTON and LOUISE RITCHIE; with ANDREW FILMER, ADRIAN KEAR, HEIKE ROMS

SHIFT ABSTRACT

The Showroom Short Cuts and Detours projects aim to shift the role of research within the conference: whereas usually a conference is perceived as an event where research is presented, we aim to establish a space where research is (re)enacted. Hence, the conference itself, the performativity and performance of knowledge in the field of performance studies, becomes the focus of this research.

Research here is understood not only as theoretical engagement, but as a practice that oscillates between theoretical and artistic approaches. For us, there is no strict border between theory and practice: theory does not exist independently from the various forms in which it is presented, and this presentation is always already aesthetic. Similarly, artistic practice is never independent from theoretical engagement, but always also another formulation of theory.

The question of documentation that is elementary for Performance Studies is also crucial to this project. It is here applied not only to artistic performance but also to other live events at the respective conferences. The question of misrepresentation has to be negotiated in all documentary efforts, especially in the field of Performance Studies, where Peggy Phelan’s statement that performance cannot be documented without becoming something else is one of the most frequently quoted (and contested) propositions.

The idea of a detour, in contrast to the short cut, reflects both on the PSi #15 Conference theme of Misperfomance in addition to the practicalities and the possible aesthetic questions arising from the attempt to represent one conference in the context of another, one place in another place. While the possibility of misrepresentations and mismapping are already inherent in the Short Cuts project, for the Detours project they are deliberate strategies. In a quasi-Situationist move, the map of the Living Landscapes Conference in Aberystwyth will be adopted to PSi #15.

We will lose our way … again. We will lead other people astray. On this detour, what will we find?

If, as Walter Benjamin implies in Berlin Childhood, you need to learn to lose your way in order to experience a place in depth, a misperformance becomes an aesthetic strategy. On our way from Aberystwyth to Zagreb, intriguingly, that is, from A to Z, we might discover America.