Performance Philosophy: The Young

7-8 February 2014 | Groningen, The Netherlands

Venue: Academy Building (University of Groningen) and Grand Theatre Groningen

Co-production: University of Groningen, ICOG and Performance Philosophy

With the support of: Grand Theatre Groningen

Co-Curation: Dr Danae Theodoridou, Dr Efrosini Protopapa, Dr Konstantina Georgelou

Organizing team: Anna Buskens, Annemiek Lely, Daphne Smets, Francine Nijp, Leen van der Meiden, Romana Fennema

Keynote speakers:Dr. Pascal Gielen (University of Groningen, NL) and Prof. Dr. Bojana Kunst (Justus LiebigUniversity of Giessen, GE).

Research Report

Thematic Scope & Curatorial Vision

Roland Barthes refers to research processes that are based on the unity of their groups of authors, rather than a theme, and he specifically focuses on groups comprising postgraduate students. The success of a piece of research, he posits, does not lie in its ‘result’ (publication), as is usually believed, but in its reflexive nature. Therefore, the early (more reflexive perhaps) stages of research are not necessarily less important than the latter stages, its conclusions. To create space for the presentation of young subjects’ initial research means for Barthes to combat repressions and release not only those ‘young presenters’, the authors of the texts, but also their readers, who are similarly caught up in the division of specialized languages. Barthes thus criticizes in his text the tendency of educational institutions of his time to demand from students to continually report their research in order to evidence it, as it compromises the ‘desire’ and social aspect inherent to it, that includes the researchers as well as the living community of readers and spectators. As research subjects, these students, Barthes believes, are dedicated to the separation of discourses: on one side the discourse of scientificity, and on the other the discourse of desire, of writing. As they seek to renew writing and reading, as they seek to write research rather than report it, ‘the young’ do not substitute older constraints of interpretation with newer ones, but allow us to imagine how a free reading might exist, devoid of norms, overflowing and dispersed.

Drawing on Barthes’s ideas, ‘Performance Philosophy: The Young’ constituted a platform dedicated to young critical voices, aiming to facilitate an exchange of ideas and practices related to performance philosophy between international MA students of very distinct art programmes (both theoretical and practical) from six European Academic Institutions: University of Antwerp (BE), ArtEZ (NL), Justus Liebig University of Giessen (GE), University of Groningen (NL), University of Roehampton (UK) and University of Utrecht (NL).

Today conferences are usually bereft of researchers who are young, meaning in an early stage of their research path and perhaps not yet assimilated by standardized research methods and outcomes. At the same time, Performance Philosophy is a relevantly young field of research that implies performance as a way of thinking and thinking or philosophy as performance. This means that thinking and doing as well as writing and the event become intersected areas.

‘Performance Philosophy: The Young’ was inspired and produced by these thoughts and conditions, seeking to create a platform not necessarily for something ‘new’ to emerge, but for ‘young’ structures and poetics of discourse to take place. As Barthes puts it “it is just when research manages to link its object to its discourse and to dispossess our knowledge by the light it casts on objects not so much unknown as unexpected – it is at just this moment that research becomes a true interlocution, a task in behalf of others, in a word: a social production”.

Approaches and insights

Against this background, students from the six institutions shared paper presentations, panels or other experimental modes of research presentation, related to the work undertaken in the frame of their studies. The presentations overall addressed:

•concepts in theory and practice

•dramaturgical practices or paradigms of practice-as-research where theoretical and artistic ideas intertwine

•suggestions for understanding practice through theory/theorizing practice

•suggestions for expanding philosophical concepts and ideas through artistic practices and the works of specific artists

•critical theory, aesthetics and performance

More specifically:

•Keynote presentations: Within the frame of arts and sociology, Pascal Gielen explored the notion of the camp as a metaphor to describe the contemporary global condition of life and the state, and question how artists may react to this situation. Bojana Kunst discussed the relationship between performance and philosophy as a friendship based on their mutual commitment to act, claiming that they are both active practices, shaping, changing, moulding, stretching, slowing down, accelerating, breaking up or shortening the event, connecting materialities, objects, bodies and languages.

•Student presentations: Organised in panels or performance lectures and practice-based presentations, MA students dealt with topics around the politics of representation; the theatricality of bodies, stages, and images; the human and the machine in theatre; masculinity and femininity in performance; presence and virtuality; meaning, language and communication; intuition and analysis in performance practices.

•Roundtable discussion: A closing discussion with members of staff from the participating institutions tackled questions about the field of performance philosophy, the voice of the young researcher within the institution of the university, and issues that arose from student presentations throughout the conference.

For more information about the event:

Documentation and further developments

All the above activities were documented through photography and video recordings.

Moreover, we facilitated a workshop - presentation entitled “Connecting Performance Philosophies: Remembering Groningen/Imagining Athens” at the Performance Philosophy Interim event that took place in Athens (15-16 March 2014).In this workshop-presentation, we reflected on two perspectives offered by the interim event that took place in Groningen:i)performance philosophy as a young 'discipline', and ii) methods and ideas around performance philosophy that are specifically manifested by the ways such a field is practiced by 'the young',understood less as an age range and more as a stage in research, the initial steps of a research process (MA studies). Through sharing ideas, discussions andprocesses, and even messages sent to Athens from the participants of the event in Groningen we sought to situate performance philosophy and 'the young' inthe context of education (arts and humanities) in central Europe today. In this frame, and aligning with the aims of the interim event of Athens, we engaged in practicalexercises with the participants that aimed towards concrete imaginings of educational, artistic and research environments. We invited and facilitated acollective speculation on alternative teaching, proximity learning, philosophical schools of thought, affirmative arguments, paradoxa of difference and imaginativeconcepts.

For more information about this event:

Lastly, we aim to further expand the project and its research explorations by continuing this exchange platform on a yearly basis. We are already in discussions with the colleagues of the rest institutions involved about the organization of the conference in the next years in the Universities of Antwerp and Giessen.

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