ABSTRACT
Performance philosophy may be thought of as a travelling companion to phenomenology, process philosophy, the New Materialism(s) and aesthetics. It concerns itself with the actions of specific bodies in specific ecologies of affects, and not an abstract or idealised model of 'the body'. In the short decades since the emergence of Performance Philosophy few definitions of the field have been proposed. Its borders are unstable, its laws and customs remain unsettled. This may provoke criticism and questions of performance philosophy’s legitimacy. It may also be seen as an index of healthy growth and adaptation. Because performance philosophy is still something of a ‘wild frontier’ it is a zone where fundamental questions can be re-posed concerning the nature of wisdom and love, life and knowledge, legitimacy and truth.
If we begin with the hypothesis that love and wisdom are not co-extensive with verbal communication, then philosophy may be legitimately pursued by performative means. These non-standard modes of philosophising may be partly amenable to verbal expression but there is no a priori reason to suppose they are fully commensurable with speech, let alone amenable to general definition. Definitions sit best with things having no specific location and little prospect of change: this is good and useful in the case of geometric and atomic structures. But offer a definition of justice or philosophy or friendship and you will soon make enemies. With this in mind we invite colleagues to enact and unfold a set of trajectories rather than to describe or 'define' their work in words alone. We especially welcome poetic, musical, kinetic and gestural arts but contributions may take any form which responds to the words 'Passion and Grief'' in a span of less than fifteen minutes.
We chose passion and grief because they are disruptive currencies. They are traded at all levels from the sub-egoic through the personal to the tribal, national, and fully international levels. They feature as both effects and as motors in family dynamics, in cycles of revenge, in the largest geopolitical struggles. Passion and grief not only seem un-necessary for biological life, they frequently threaten it. Yet vanishingly few people are convinced enough by philosophical arguments for a ‘quiet soul’ to perform the exercises to support one. A life devoid of passion or grief would seem impoverished. Whether one views these turbulent affects as the bad news we don’t want to live without or as the engines of higher culture, they inhabit philosophy as an ineradicable black-market haunts all states and empires. We aim to consider this under-zone on its own terms as a resource for non-sanity, which may be as different from insanity as much as reason.
This round-table session aims to bind theory with demonstrations of transferable techniques for cross-disciplinary research. Dialogue has its place here of course, but beyond words there are performances via which the non-human world (traditionally the 'objects of knowledge) might find articulation on their own terms. We invite participants to explore spaces between human and non-human agents, opening up a variety of possible and impossible re-configurings” (Hinton 2013:182); ''bursting open, and scattering […] to effect a complete reorganization of meaning” (Barad 2017:41
Confributing Performing Philosophers:
Mark D. PRICE
Will DADDARIO
Ami SKÅNBERG
Elisabeth SCHÄFER
Liv Kristin HOLMBERG
Anna Viola HALLBERG
Lasciatemi morire.
Exploring the 17th century ornament TRILLO through Claudio Monteverdi's Lamento di Ariana (Belgrano 2011. doc. diss. p. 183-185).
