Performance Research Volume 12 Issue 4

On Objects

Issue editors: Laurie Beth Clarke, Richard Gough & Daniel Watt

ISBN: 978-0-415-44161

On Objects explores the various transformations of the object in theatre and performance, from sacred to sacrilegious, fetishised to worthless, functional to aesthetic, craft to commodity, unstable yet enduring. The issue examines the presence of objects in a variety of theatrical and performance media from Futurism and Surrealism to forms of puppet theatre, the Bio-objects of Tadeusz Kantor, the collections of Sigmund Freud, surfaces and identities of virtual objects, and the museum as object and artefact refuge. Things as diverse as popcorn, biomechanics and eyes are considered alongside the designation of objects and their relation to the stage, from Heidegger's things to the ghostly trace of Derrida, from the body without organs of Deleuze and Guattari to Bachelard's dreamy geometry of shells. On Objects questions how the study and deployment of objects is differently inflected across established disciplines (art, theatre, history, archaeology, anthropology, sociology) and emerging interdisciplines (performance studies, food studies, tourism studies), evoking shadowy performance spaces crammed with forgotten memories, props and ephemera, from the cultural margins.

Editorial: Opening Remarks on a Private Collection

Laurie Beth Clark, Richard Gough, Daniel Watt

pp. 1 - 3

The Pleasure of Objectification: A spectator's guide

Anna Fenmore

pp. 4 - 13

Notes on Adhesion: The object of art and the work of art after conceptualism

Michael Jay McClure

pp. 14 - 23

Object Drawing

Bill Prosser

pp. 24 - 29

Object Lessons and Performative Relations: Residue, reliability and self-sufficiency

Jessica Wyman

pp. 30 - 36

Performing Objecthood: Museums, architecture and the play of artefactuality

Naomi Stead

pp. 37 - 46

The Virtual Cabinet of Dr Freud

Robert John Brocklehurst

pp. 47 - 57

Bake n' Quake: Objects, surfaces and identity distortion in Id Software's Quake III Arena

Stephen Turk

pp. 58 - 66

The Role of Objects in Bataille's Story of the Eye

Rina Arya

pp. 67 - 77

Tadeusz Kantor: Collector and Historian

Michal Kobialka

pp. 78 - 96

Tracing/Training Rebellion: Object work in Meyerhold's biomechanics

Jonathan Pitches

pp. 97 - 103

Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio and the Relational Image

Ruth Holdsworth

pp. 104 - 114

The Use of Objects in Sintesi of the Italian Futurists

Gordon Ramsay

pp. 115 - 122

Puppetry and the Destruction of the Object

Matthew Isaac Cohen

pp. 123 - 131

Acting with Puppets and Objects: Representation and perception in Robert Lepage's The Far Side of the Moon

James Reynolds

pp. 132 - 142

Designed for Disappearance: The U.S. military field telephone TA-312/PT and the performance principle of torture

Michael Peterson

pp. 143 - 150

Catalyst, Praxis, Habitat: Performative objects in Chinese time-based art

Meiling Cheng

pp. 151 - 166

Popica/Popcorn: Resistance and ritual performance

Myron M. Beasley

pp. 167 - 172

Notes on Contributors

pp. 173 - 174