The Role of Performance in Environmental Humanities: The Case of Joan Jonas’s Moving Off the Land II (original) (raw)

A Matter of Relationships: Dramatising, Staging and Planning Ecological Performances

Itinera

This article aims to explore patterns of the creative process in which performance faces ecological thought, placing about sustainability strategies. Many scholars have investigated the relationship between theatre and ecology since the end of the XXth century. Two positions have emerged strongly: ecology as a metaphor (Marranca) or as a performative tool (Chaudhuri). We will reflect on more recent points of view (Giannachi Stewart, Theresa J May, Baz Kershaw) and try to relate them to sustainability science (Bologna). Then, it will be important to focus on two phases of the creative process, dramatization, and staging, to understand the evolution of artistic practices about environmental issues. Finally, we are going to apply the methodological pattern outlined by the theoretical and practical analysis to two case studies: weLAND (2021), a contemporary circus show that staged climate migration, and La möa (2022), a choreographic work in nature that embodied the relationships in th...

The Poetry of 'Performing the Ecology of Place'

Abstract: Performing the Ecology of Place: Embodying an Eco-Cultural 'Living History' on Lasqueti Island/Xwe'etay[i] involved the creation of a one-time cross-generational, outdoor, community performance event that endeavored to allow for a deeper understanding of the relationships locals held with the place and culture in existence on the unique ‘off-the-grid’ island of Lasqueti/Xwe'etay, in the area now recognized by many as British Columbia, Canada.

The performance ‘apparatus’: performance and its documentation as ecological practice

Green Letters, 2016

The performance score for Water Carry, printed above, refers to the first in an evolving suite of performances and events collectively titled Guddling About: Experiments in vital materialism with particular regard to water. The performances were instigated by me and my regular (human) collaborator, Nick Millar, initially with rivers in Canada and subsequently with various watercourses in Scotland and Spain. 1 Guddling About is an ongoing project where performance and performance documentation are used to explore human-water interdependencies (and by extension human-environment interdependencies) in specific material and cultural contexts. In this essay, I reflect on the potential of Guddling About as an ecological practice. In using the term 'ecological practice' I wish to distinguish our work from ecoactivist practices whose aim is to address directly issues such as human-induced climate change or to advocate for and enact 'greener' ways of living. Rather, I use 'ecological' in an expanded sense influenced by Deleuze/Guattari, Gregory Bateson, Jane Bennett and others working in the field of human-environment interrelations. My definition of ecological entails an aspiration for a way of being in/with the universe that dissolves nature/culture and human/nonhuman binaries, but which acknowledges differences, antagonisms and contradictions, rather than seeking resolution or transcendence. Guddling About attempts to tangle with the messiness and paradoxes of living 'ecologically' (for instance, the inherent paradox of flying from Scotland to Canada to undertake an artists' residency in 'ecological practice'). It attempts to confront and negotiate the problematics of 'being human' in a more-thanhuman universe. The value of our practice as 'ecological' resides, I suggest, in the complex and shifting relationships that continually unfold among the performances and their documentationdocumentation which manifests as written scores and descriptions, sets of instructions, photographs, sound recordings, watermarks, and more. I reflect on

Aquapelagic Assemblages: Performing Water Ecology with Harmattan Theater

The 2004 Tsunami devastated large swaths of Asia. Harmattan Theater was formed in response to rising ocean impact on coastal ecologies. This paper elaborates the philosophical, theoretical underpinnings of slow walk as an ecological practice of engagement with landscapes. How can coastal communities interact with their fragile realities. Slow movement as philosophical immersion is a powerful way to mark, remember, evoke, commemorate, mourn and educate ourselves about maritime pasts, and the catastrophic implications of climate change.

Let's (be) play(ed by) an ocean: of situated actions within ecological sound art

Stefánsdóttir, H. S. (2020) Let’s (be) Play(ed by) an Ocean: Of Situated Actions Within Ecological Sound Art. In: G. D. Hansson, G. and A. Hultqvist (eds.), ‘Compositional’ Becoming, Complexity and Critique. Art Monitor. Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg Press, 2020

This chapter investigates participatory sense-making within ecological sound art. The field links to “a broader set of cultural practices in which the imperial power of ‘the human’ over the rest of the world is shifting in favor of what we might call a more eco-systemic engagement” (Hogg, 2013). In summer 2018, the project sent poet Gunnar D. Hansson, composer Anders Hultqvist and ecological sound artists Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir and Stefan Östersjö on a search for the sounds of the book Tapeshavet (Hansson, 2017), through the artistic method of activation. This chapter analyses the processes of such participatory sense-making, which springs out of an ecological-enactive approach. Based on this the author puts forth and argues for the concept of multi-entity performance (Rawlings, personal communication, May, 2019; Stefánsdóttir, 2019a) as a technique as well as analytical and conceptual stance, thus showing through doing that the ecological-enactive approach has the power of “providing one with new tools and technology and new understandings of processes, in any musical environment and its collaborative creativity, where things happen in the connection” (Stefánsdóttir, 2019b).

Initial reflections on site-performances in the sea

Academia Letters, 2021

The current short paper forms an initial reflection on performative art practices which integrate sea as medium, condition and active agent of the final work of art. The sensory and situated aspects of the sea as an immersive environment will be used as a critical platform which blends the fleshy and the intellectual across the intersections of performance art, site-specific practices and audiovisual/locative media. This is an ongoing arts-based research, which has my latest performative works across lands and waters as starting platforms. Thus, at the current moment, the paper intends to create a foundational reflection across similar performative actions in the sea carried out by selected contemporary artists. Since 2019, I have used verbs and prepositions as methodological devices with embodied and performative potential: drifting, floating, walking, standing or into, across, with are verbs and prepositions that highlight conceptual, methodological and technological aspects of selected site-performances between the artist and the sea.

Sensitive Territories: Performative research and artistic interventions

This paper presents the actions in the Project Breeze: sensitive territories, contributing for the discussion about democracy and social actions in the public sphere. BREEZE is a research project and artistic creation inserted in the fields of art, politics, science and nature. Methodologically founded on the Performance practice as research, we propose that political, poetical, aesthetical and cognitive issues may emerge from immersive experiences as a field of creative possibilities and of construction of critical thinking, contributing to the methodologies of research in Arts and to new mechanisms and creation devices. By proposing itself in this research field, BREEZE aims to dialogue with the Arts issues in the Anthropocene area, investigating new methodologies and practices about the relations of art with and for the nature and discuss social actions in the public sphere. As Chantal Mouffe (2007) says, the “public space” is not a place of consensus, but rather a battle camp where different hegemonic projects confront each other (…); the public spaces are always plural. We can also say they are complex territories, as proposed by Richard Sennett. Rather, sensitive territories permeated by subjectivities and sensorialities. Composed of a transdisciplinary research network which involves artists from different areas such as audiovisual, body arts, art and technology, visual arts and music, technologists, geographers, urbanists and residents of the studied regions, the project proposes a collaborative practice of investigations and creation.