Im pleased to announce that I will present a research paper “On the dynamic of perception, power and exclusion – ‘sensory fields’, ‘experience fields’ and ‘body techniques’ as performance analytical and epistemological tools” at the Congress of the International Federation for Theatre Research in Belgrade on Monday 9 July 2018. Hope to see you at the General Panel Session 1, Panel 12 at 14:00-15:30!
Please see below for the abstract.
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Panel 12. Disciplinary Migrations
Chair: Maja Milatović Ovadia, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
Bertie Ferdman, City University of New York and Jovana Stokić, City University of New York
“Disciplinary Migrations: Issues in Contemporary Performance Art Research”
Joonas Lahtinen, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
“On the dynamic of perception, power and exclusion – ‘sensory fields’, ‘experience fields’ and ‘body techniques’ as performance analytical and epistemological tools”
Felisberto Da Costa, University of São Paulo USP and Maria Helena Bastos, University of São Paulo USP
“The mask as a dramaturgical device in contemporaneity”
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Abstract
“On the dynamic of perception, power and exclusion – ‘sensory fields’, ‘experience fields’ and ‘body techniques’ as performance analytical and epistemological tools”
In the wake of poststructuralist thought, it has become commonplace for us theatre scholars to acknowledge the interconnectedness of perception, knowledge, culture, and power in performance making and analysis. However, in our field, relatively little attention has been paid to explaining the functioning of the human perceptual apparatus through which we sense and make sense of reality and of artistic performances. Such explanatory efforts could open up new possibilities for addressing processes of exclusion, inclusion and “othering” both in performance situations and beyond them.
In this paper, I present a novel analytical framework for locating and interrogating ways in which performance events engage and affect the participants, and for understanding the culture-bound dynamic of perception, power, knowledge and the body in contemporary performance practice. My framework is based on a detailed view of our bodily and cognitive ways of sensing and making sense of reality i.e. of how our experiences and knowledges take form through the interaction between our bodies, the environment, and culture. Drawing especially from Jacques Rancière’s, Marcel Mauss’s, and Michel Foucault’s views of human perception and experience, the main concepts – or “tools“ – of this framework are ”sensory fields“, “experience fields” and ”body techniques“.
I suggest that the crucial ideological assumptions as well as the processes of exclusion, inclusion and “othering” in any performance are not to be seen solely in their “goals” or “themes” but, even more distinctly, in the modes of bodily participation that the performance employs. Thus, my framework takes the bodily dimension – what is actually done to and expected from the bodies of the participants during the performance event – as the starting point for critical analysis. I conclude my paper by outlining how the concepts ”sensory fields“, “experience fields”, and ”body techniques“ have informed my PhD research project at the University of Helsinki.
