Description
On Children features critical analyses and practice-research interrogations on the politics and aesthetics of children in performance. It gathers new insights from international researchers and artists who work with children and seeks to draw up some of the epistemological and ontological borders of the child and childhood in relation to both historical and contemporary conceptualizations of children. Moving beyond well-established pedagogical paradigms of children’s participation in performance within the field, the issue poses questions of adult–child transvestism; queering children; the political and cultural rights of children; children as activists and collaborators; and children and radical immanence. Transnational in scope, with contributions from Australia, Canada, Greece, India, Italy, the Netherlands, the USA and the UK, this issue charts the multifaceted work of children in a wide range of performance practices as well as corresponding theoretical approaches across the fields of philosophy, gender studies, psychoanalysis, childhood studies, feminism, disability studies and political theory. On Children opens up new ways of working with and critically reflecting on children in performance.
At the moment that ‘On Children’ was being published, news organizations were reporting appalling images of refugee children in cages at the US border.
As editors of an issue that depended for its very creation on the participation and contribution of children – and at its very heart is concerned with children’s rights – the editors of ‘On Children’ felt that what was happening in the US was something that could not be ignored.
Editor Adele Senior has set up a Facebook fundraising page for KIND (Kids in Need of Defense) a US non-profit organziation that serves as the leading organization for the protection of children who enter the US immigration system alone and strives to ensure that no such child appears in immigration court without representation. It aims to achieve fundamental fairness through high-quality legal representation and by advancing the child’s best interests, safety and well-being.
C/PR will donate any profit made from sales of the issue through its bookshop to the campaign. If you wish to make a donation via C/PR please add an extra amount to the funds that you send for the purchase of the issue and the profit plus your additional payment will be transferred to the fund.
To find out more about KIND
To make a donation to KIND via Facebook
On Children : Editorial
Adele Senior, Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent
Child & Co : In the company of your own making
Alan Read
‘Build Your Own Keynote’, Child & Co : In the company of your own making
Neal Anderson, Hedda Fletcher-Watson, Minny Fletcher-Watson, Elisabeth Anna Mastrokalou, Elisabeth Anna Mastrokalou, Lili Osborne
‘Age Transvestism’ in Contemporary Performance and Live Art With Children
Adele Senior
Delicate Faces, Virtuosic Bodies : Imagined childhood in Gotipua performances
Krittika Mondal
So Cute, So Creepy : Children undoing the human in Het Hamilton Complex
Isis Germano
Children’s Queered Voicings : Questions of (voiced) power
Yvon Bonenfant
Children, Performance and Ecology
Sarah Hopfinger
The Errant Method as a ‘Children’s Art Theatre’
Chiara Guidi, Cristina Ventrucci
Do Algorithms Dance? Viral Kids and Contagious Scripts : The infantile logic of spreadable media
Bryoni Trezise
Lookout [artist’s pages]
Andy Field
SOUR VS SOUR [artist’s pages]
Hannah Jickling, Helen Reed, Big Rock Candy Mountain
Haunting Dreams of a Wild Future : or What children have to teach us about politics
Gigi Argyropoulou
A Plea for Transgenerational Research in Live Art
Sibylle Peters, Theatre of Research
How to Talk About Gender Equality With a 9‑year-old : Performing feminist values for children
Elena Marchevska
The Child as Art Object in Tino Sehgal’s Ann Lee, Ann Lee & Marcel and This Progress : A reflection
Antje Hildebrandt
Open Your Eyes : Working with my children on Sit with me for a moment and remember
Michael Pinchbeck
Afterword : Children ruin everything!
Gary Anderson
