Description
This edition of Performance Research offers critical examinations of contemporary performances of protest across the globe. Protest can be understood as theatre, and more particularly as a form of public manifestation that draws upon a wide repertoire of representational devices. This edition asks how protest feels, and who is doing the feeling? It considers the performativity of protest. It pays particular regard to the extent to which protest achieves change and the ways in which historical protests help to inform judgements of the conduct, legitimacy and efficacy of current protest actions. What historical instances are invoked to draw comparisons to current forms of activism and resistance? How do contemporary protests draw on historical repertoires of protest that reflect or extend beyond their specific political contexts? Do protest strategies and tactics need to evolve as languages of protest become a default mode of mainstream political discourse?
CONTENTS
READ THE EDITORIAL AND ABSTRACTS ONLINE
Editorial: On Protest
1 ANDY LAVENDER AND JULIA PEETZ
13 On the Ends and Endings of Protest
MATT JONES AND JIMENA ORTUZAR
26 Performing Democracy: Non-verbal protest through
a democratic lens
SELEN A. ERCAN, HANS ASENBAUM AND RICARDO F.
MENDONÇA
38 On the ‘Doing’ of ‘Something’: A theoretical defence of
‘performative protest’
TEEMU PAAVOLAINEN
48 Gaming Protest
ANDREW LENNON
51 The Deep, Dark Play of the US Capitol Riots
CHRISTOPHER GROBE
63 Games and Playfulness: Bodiless solidarity in Hong Kong and
Mainland China
YIOU PENELOPE PENG AND LUOLIN ZHAO
71 Digital Contention in Latin America: Material and affective
infrastructures to address online activism as performance
MARTÍN ZÍCARI
81 ‘Shut Up and Dance’
TOM HASTINGS
90 What the heck? – hacking HEK [Artist pages]
Garrett Lynch IRL
92 Performance and Protest as Creative World-Building for
Black Liberation: A conversation with artist/activist Jordan
Occasionally
JOY BROOKE FAIRFIELD
98 Policing Exhibit B in St Denis and Paris: Afterlives of the
French Imperial state at the theatre doors
CAOIMHE MADER MCGUINNESS
105 The Power of Unwanted Presence: The performance
aesthetics of women’s protests in Iran
AZADEH GANJEH
112 Shifting Boundaries of ‘Perceived’ Legitimacy: Animative
scenarios from the farmers’ protests in India
UPASANA MAHANTA AND GARGI BHARADWAJ
122 COVID-19 Protests and the Performative Force of Untruth:
Some Arendtian intimations
GURUR ERTEM
125 Banners and Memes: The rhetoric of protests in defence of
democracy and women’s rights in Poland in 2015 and 2020
AGNIESZKA KAMPKA
136 We Will Outlive the Blood You Bleed [Artist pages]
JAMIE LEWIS-HADLEY
138 The Remnant of My Volition (Force Majeure) [Artist pages]
MORGAN WONG
139 Gezi’s Many Women in Red: A genealogy of an icon from
street to stage
PIETER VERSTRAETE
150 South Africa’s Student Activist Turn in the Decolonial Present
AYLWYN M. WALSH
161 I am Queen Mary: On sustained protest and Denmark’s
‘colonial amnesia’
HELENE GRØN
167 Protesting Venetians: A carnival attitude
PETER O’ROURKE
172 A Maiden Speech: This is an emergency
LENA ŠIMIĆ
177 When Theatre Can Wait: The ambiguity of silence in activist
theatre
RÉKA POLONYI
180 The Politics of Urban Silence: Sound installation [Artist pages]
ANDROMACHI VRAKATSELI
……………………………………………………………………………………
REVIEWS
182 The Formation of Identity and the Disruption of Colonial
Ideological Hegemony
OFOSUWA M. ABIOLA
183 A Radical Imagination
HONEY CRAWFORD
185 After the Ordinary
TOM HASTINGS
……………………………………………………………………………………
187 Notes on Contributors