Description
On Proximity addresses the affects and politics of forms of closeness and distance in a variety of cultural practices. Prompted by the pervasiveness of performance strategies declaring themselves immersive or participatory, and the fascination with connectivity evident in contemporary curatorial discourse, the issue puts critical pressure on binaries such as passivity/activity, consumption/production, and freedom/control by attending to the plurality of relational positions that are created through cultural practice. The articles in this issue explore how a range of forms and modes of proximity are made manifest in art, theatre and performance in different social and historical contexts. From the dramaturgy of psychosis and the curating of fictional lives, to online intimacies, the social praxis of song, and contemporary political cultures, On Proximity is itself an exercise in exploring the potentialities of bringing diverse subjects, objects and disciplines into closer relation.
Editorial
Ben Cranfield, Louise Owen
Performing ‘Posthuman’ Spectatorship : Digital proximity and variable agencies
William W. Lewis
The Aura of the Aural
Ella Finer
Man Digs Pond : Performing social labour as a poetics of dwelling
Bruno Roubicek
Proximity and the Viewer in Contemporary Curating Practices
Deborah Schultz
The Ethics of Mislocalized Selfhood : Proprioceptive drifting towards the virtual other
Liam Jarvis
More than Touching with the Eyes : Proximity and puppet-theatre-for-one
Caroline Astell-Burt
Governing by Proximity : On distance and proximity in the criminal trial
Erik Mattsson
A Director in Search of a Narrative : Reality-testing in Katie Mitchell’s Cleansed
Leah Sidi
Intimate Listening
Peader Kirk, Teoma J. Naccarato, John MacCallum
Wheatcroft and Whythorne’s ‘Passports in Rhyme’ : Place in seventeenth-century village performance
Susan Wiseman
Getting Up-close and Personal with Aunt May and Uncle Jim : Some thoughts on how to deal with your audience in the 1960s
Patrick van Rossem
Some Bodies : Distance, separation and ambivalence in Nicola Conibere’s Assembly
Nicola Conibere
A Manifesto to Decolonise Walking : Approximate steps
Sharanya
Proximity and Dissonance in Internet-situated Performance : Rhiannon Armstrong’s International Archive of Things Left Unsaid and Jane Frances Dunlop’s charisma (for jbm & ml)
Jane Frances Dunlop
You, The Public : Grammars of address in Stewart Lee’s stand-up
Emma Bennett
‘When “Lady in Red” Plays, Dance with the Person Next to You’ : The politics of proximity in Kim Noble’s You’re Not Alone
Poppy Corbett
The Ballad of Isosceles
Alison E. Matthews
Mind the Gap : Unfolding the proximities of the curatorial
Ben Cranfield
The Trump is Present
Tony Perucci
The Way You Look (at me) Tonight (review)
So-Rim Lee
Decoding the Political Implications of Immersive Theatre
Jenny Roche
