Blood is polyvalent, it moves, flows, transfers, is pumped and pours, but it also sticks, plugs, clots and coagulates. The visibility of blood exposes the fragility of boundaries and the permeability of bodies, offering both a fluid potentiality and a threat. The fluidity of blood challenges the notion of stable systems. The many meanings ascribed to blood are far from stable or self-evident. Through a performance studies lens, 'On Blood' invites interdisciplinary discussions and new perspectives on how blood is read and positioned as a bodily substance, material property and metaphor in areas such as religious festivals and contexts, menstrual performances, political activism, professional wrestling, live art and pop culture.

As the extractive economies of sharing and experience continue to encroach upon and profit from every available form of sociality, what are the prospects for the long-cherished modalities of performance, such as encounter, gathering, congregation and assembly? Post-pandemic, what kinds of affects and effects might be generated by coming together otherwise – or simply to become intimate in unfamiliar ways? Taking meeting as a blurry genre that encompasses a host of ways in which collectivity for humans and the more-than-human are negotiated, this issue brings together reflections on a set of singular places, events, spaces and actions that share a commitment to reparative and regenerative forms of contact. 

We live in a world of unpredictability, fracture and powerlessness. Acts of violence, invasion and oppression, both seen and unseen, pervade all aspects of life and threaten the viability of the planet. Yet, perhaps because of this powerlessness and fracture, this is also a time of solidarity, of acts of resistance both large and small, and of friendship, love and bravery. The contributions to ‘On Invasion’ negotiate in creative and provocative ways this confusing and confounding time and in doing so they ask us to consider the role, value and power of art to intervene, to destabilize, to disrupt and to question the status quo.