Performance Research Volume 29 Issue 3

When we think of performance in terms of ‘In Extremis’, we conjure up Dante’s Inferno, Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, Beckett’s The Unnamable (L’Innommable), the works of Raffaello Sanzio and Romeo Castellucci, and great Greek tragedies. We imagine dismemberment, bodily fluids, torture, pain, loss and fiery excess. If, however, we read it as arriving at the point of ‘extreme hardship or suffering’ rather than at the point of ‘death’, what acts of performance, and art practice more broadly, assist us to understand these confronting scenarios as edges rather than endings? The contributions to this issue negotiate these different understandings of ‘In Extremis’ and in doing so engage us in important considerations of the necessity of art in the current fraught global context.

 

READ THE EDITORIAL AND ABSTRACTS ONLINE

 

1 1 In Extremis: What to do, think and feel during times of

perpetual crisis

CHARLES GREEN AND HELENA GREHAN

 

PART I: FRONT ROW

 

7 Speculative Sites and Slippery Temporalities: The expansive

possibilities of binaural sound for navigating and inhabiting

disaster

SARAH WALKER

 

15 Bad Feelings: Extreme affective dramaturgies in Alistair

McDowall’s all of it

ISABEL STUART

 

24 Now I am Ready to Die [Artist pages]

LINDA DUVALL

 

PART II: OPAQUE SUBJECTS

 

28 Pojhian: A supplication performance-ritual in extremis

PARAMITHA DYAH FITRIASARI, BUDI IRAWANTO AND

AGUSTINUS PAULUS UMBU TALI

 

36 Slow Scenes of Care: Exploring performance's critical

slowness

MARTINA GIMPLINGER

 

44 Virtual (Re)Scaling of the Wetlands In Extremis: Jakob Kudsk

Steensen’s immersive installation Berl-Berl

JUSTYNA STĘPIEŃ

 

53 Medusa [Artist page]

DENNIS DEL FAVERO

 

54 Confessions of a Cannibal: In extremis performance and

Theatre of the Real

SUZANNE LITTLE

 

63 Dual Claire: Directing digital humans in the Anthropocene

ELENI TIMPLALEXI WITH NATALIA ARSENOPOULOU,

DIMITRIOS CHARITOS, PENNY PAPAGEORGOPOULOU

AND CHARALAMPOS RIZOPOULOS

 

PART III: MARKING TIME

 

74 Unbounding [sic] Prometheus: Notes of an engagement

ARAVIND ENRIQUE ADYANTHAYA

 

83 Marking Tidetime: Mudlarking as intertidal performance

[Artist pages]

SARAH BLISSETT

 

90 Anthropoiesis: Slow listening to scalar extremes at the

Venice Biennial

ALYS DAROY, LEO MURRAY, KATHRYN TREES AND

JOSHUA ZEUNERT

 

99 Silver Halide Crystals and Ionizing Radiation: A coordinated

performance towards materially witnessing nuclear

imperialism

FIONA AMUNDSEN

 

109 Extreme Performance Rituals at the Green New Theater

Symposium: New work by Greer Sikes (SPLOSH!) and Eva

Margarita (Entierro)

JOY BROOKE FAIRFIELD

 

121 Thoughts on the Aftermath of an Explosion [Artist pages]

ELENI TSAMADIA

 

127 Extremely Cute: Performance and giving in to fatal or vital

weaknesses

KAI VAN EIKELS

 

137 Between ‘Artivism’ and ‘Actionism’: Feminist performance in

postmillennial China

FABRIZIO MASSINI

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REVIEWS

 

147 Looking Back and Facing Forward: How to learn from

pandemic theatre

KIMBERLEY MCLEOD

 

148 Can Stories Save Us?

WENDY ARONS

 

150 Witnesses of a Quantum Revolution

ANDREA BRUNELLO

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152 Notes on Contributors