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Budapest W3: Performing Arts - Class Notes

Performance and/as Research

Art Market Budapest

 The relationship between performance and research 

  • What is performative about (even conventional) academic research (ethnographic research or oral history or interview)?
  • How do we incorporate performance (or performative elements) into "research"? In what sense, and to what extent, an art/performance piece can be also a scholarly work?
Performance as a lense through which to look at disability and mental illness, as well as doing research on these subjects

Exploring examples of performance-research (or research-performance); Are you getting ready to think about your performance research projects?

- Ethnography, Oral History and Performance

R.D. Laing: What we label as madness could be a way of acting out difficult experiences and relationship; an individual might create a false self in order to deal with particular situation, which can lead to an existential crises. 

> Mental illness not as an essential characteristics, but rather performed in certain social contexts

David Cooper: Madness as a way of speaking 'the unsayable truth in an unspeakable situation'; A 'mentally ill' individual is then able to express what would normally not be acceptable to society; echoing the tradition of 'the mad seer/artist'

> A 'mad' person is in fact a truth-sayer 

Thomas Scheff: A society often places the label of "mental illness" on those who exhibit certain behaviours that it views as deviant; What we call "mental illness" is the performance of behaviour which are learnt from childhood, and enable the individual to take on a particular role within the society

Goffman: Mental illness is a metaphor of the self

How does performance or performative approaches help these authors to understand mental illness or insanity? How does their approach change the existing understanding of insanity and/or mental illness of that time?

Rosenhan - pseudopatients no longer had to perform once they were inside
Butler - perform gender on stage with no consequences compared to real life
> Mental health - performance will be read as real because of the location and institution as well as audience

How does Scott's discussion on Performative Regulation in Reinventive Institution help us to reflect on our own claim on/approach to our mental health and personal growth? In what sense our pursuit of psychological well-being (health) is also a part of the biopolitical regulation/discipline mechanism?

Norms become internalised, performance is perpetual until this becomes the self
The notion of positive discipline - norm, value to avoid negative consequences 
Positive self-improvement has forceful power in contemporary society 
Anxiety and depression are a consequence of academic rigour (insecurity and vulnerability are exploited for academic purposes, confidence must be performed)
Treating depression because it is one of the major obstacles of production 

Solving societal problems as an individual (THIS IS NEOLIBERALISM) 

In E. P. Johnson podcast - he says that we are within capitalism, and instead we can work together within it 

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Walking as metho
"Performativity of walking" and "Walking as research practice" 

What kind of knowledge do we produce/practice through walking?

How does 'walking' shed light upon the relationship between disability and performance?

How does disability bear upon walking as performance/practice?

Butler walking video - Walking as a political act - the interaction of disabled people and 'abled' people - living in a community/world where people help each other - how disability can make able-bodied people acutely aware of their own bodies, and what emotional response this garners from them - performing mental health, performing disability, as the antidote to the restrictive yet acceptable performances of the 'norm' - social isolation by society for disabled people (architecture, career opportunities and urban planning) and for mentally ill people (asylums) as though keeping them out of the public eye makes 'abled' people more comfortable 

Social norms of what kind of dependence is independent 
Ethics of the human subject in it's relation to the other
What is the problem with being compared to an animal? What is humanities relationship to animals?

Workshop idea - how many ways can you walk down a street? What can a body do?




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