Performance Research Volume 20 Issue 3

On Ruins and Ruination

Issue editors: Carl Lavery and Richard Gough

ISSN: 1352-8165 (2015) 20:3

In recent years there has been an explosion of interest in ruins and ruination by artists and theorists. But where does our contemporary fascination with ruins come from? What are its causes and contradictions, along with its politics, economics, ecologics?  Why now? How does it relate to other historical epoques, no less beset with what Rose Macaulay termed ruinenlust? And, perhaps most urgently, what are we meant do with this decay? How to live in a world of ruins? While many of these questions have been approached by different disciplines and subject fields, this edition of Performance Research sets out to explore the specific contribution that Theatre and Performance Studies, with its unique methodologies and practices, might make to our current obsession with ruins and ruination.  Contributions include essays on photography, writing, theatre-making, ecology, aesthetics, autobiography, dark tourism, heritage sites and cities.

Introduction

Carl Lavery, Richard Gough

pp. 1 - 8

The Lesson of Anatomy 1974/2014

Mike Pearson

pp. 9 - 17

The Regenerative Ruination of Romeo Castellucci

Timmy De Laet, Edith Cassiers

pp. 18 - 28

Ruin Lust and the Council Estate : Nostalgia and ruin in Arinze Kene’s God’s Property

Katie Beswick

pp. 29 - 38

‘Terremoto: Utopia, memory, and the unfinished in Sicily'

David Williams

pp. 39 - 49

Watermarked : ‘Venice really lives up to its postcard beauty’

Nicolas Whybrow

pp. 50 - 57

The Ruin in Question

Hayden Lorimer, Simon Murray

pp. 58 - 66

Sites of Dereliction : Beginnings and allies of performance

Phil Smith

pp. 67 - 74

Trümmer Geographies : Teufelsberg as a site of forgetting

Benedict Anderson

pp. 75 - 82

Ruined Landscapes and Residual Architecture : Affect and palimpsest in trauma tourism

Laurie Beth Clark

pp. 83 - 93

The Ruin as Memorial – The Memorial as Ruin

Silke Arnold-de Simine

pp. 94 - 102

St Peter’s Seminary, Cardross : The ruin of modernism

David Archibald, Johnny Rodger

pp. 103 - 111

A Future for Hashima : Pornography, representation and time

Carl Lavery, Lee Hassall

pp. 112 - 125

Photography, Performance, Ruin : Performing photography in site of architecture

Ian Wiblin

pp. 126 - 134

Cruising the Queer Ruins of New York’s Abandoned Waterfront

Fiona Anderson

pp. 135 - 144

Ruins Recast : Appropriated and fabricated ruins in the work of Scott Myles

Dominic Paterson

pp. 145 - 153

Artist's pages

Eleanor Bowen

pp. 154 - 159

Genet’s Cycle of Ruins

Esther Belvis Pons

pp. 160 - 162

Quake City

Sharon Mazer

pp. 163 - 172

Ruin Hermeneutic

Sophie Sleigh-Johnson

pp. 173 - 178

Excavating Performance Contexts : Performative Monuments: The rematerialisation of public art by Mechtild Widrich (review)

Jessica Santone

pp. 179 - 180

Notes on Contributors

pp. 181 - 182