Abstract: Christopher Dingwall-Jones addresses contemporary psychiatric discourse in Scotland through the prism of performance, both live and recorded, in his paper "Representational tactics: approaching two Scottish performances of mental illness through the work of Michel de Certeau". Productions by the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) and Theatre NEMO are contrasted to highlight the contingencies, schemes and appropriations which accompany any public discussion of mental health issues. Dingwall-Jones grounds his argument in Michel de Certeau’s theories of ‘strategies’ and ‘tactics’. The works of NTS and Theatre NEMO are thus framed within an arena where psychiatrists, patients, scholars, performers and audiences enact multiple complex inter-relationships. These networks are used to problematise the simplification of rhetorics around mental illness, presenting it as always partial, always contingent.
Abstract: David Overend, in “World Wide Wandering: e-drifting in Paris and London”, explores the ‘e-drift’ as a form of Situationism for the twenty-first century. Nicolas Bourriaud and Michel de Certeau provide a subversive jumping-off point for a new form of urban wandering, where iPhones, Google Maps and Rightmove are used to trouble the politics of contemporary urban living. Overend’s playful and provocative paper questions old perceptions of the local versus the global, and finds a transgressive power in the harnessing of technology.
Abstract: In Re-reading Mary Wigman’s Hexentanz II (1926): the influence of the non-Western ‘Other’ on movement practice in early modern German dance, Lito Tsitsou and Lucy Weir argue that Wigman’s dance work is a seminal example of the social and aesthetic conditions of the early twentieth century. Utilising Edward Said’s notion of the Orientalist ‘Other’, the authors interrogate the link between the primitive and terrifying nature of Wigman’s choreography and the construction of a new style and technique of early modern dance that ultimately became known as ‘German’.
Abstract: Holly Patrick and Caroline Bowditch produce an exciting addition to recent discussion of equality within the arts in Scotland, in Developing professional equality: an analysis of a social movement in the Scottish dance industry. Via an autoethnographic approach, the authors argue that Scotland may be considered a ‘hotspot’ for disabled dancers due to the existence of advocacy both within and outwith the dance scene and the lack of a national disability arts organisation. In particular, this latter factor is highlighted as a key element in ‘mainstreaming’ the issue of disability in the arts, and raises valuable questions as to the future of professional and vocational disabled dancers in Scotland and further afield.
Abstract: The complete abstracts from the recent symposium, The Making of Performance: Stories of Performing Physicalities, held at the University of Glasgow on 22nd June 2013, focus on a range of social and sociological aspects of physical performance and experience. Anna Birch examines the role of the body as an archival artefact; Simon Murray reflects on the upsurge in physical theatres as cultural production; Bethany Whiteside takes a Bourdieusian perspective to interrogate ‘Scottishness’ in Highland Dancing practice; Lito Tsitsou and Lucy Weir provide a re-reading of Mary Wigman’s Hexantanz as simultaneously German and Orientalist; Ramsay Burt draws on Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and post-colonial studies to examine the effects of institutional power on Black British Dance; and Romany Dear and Dominic Paterson respond to a shared experience of a recent dance workshop by Yvonne Rainer.
Abstract: Elaine Moohan reviews Our Ancient National Airs: Scottish Song Collecting from the Enlightenment to the Romantic Era by Karen McAulay (Ashgate)
Abstract: Marc Silberschatz reviews Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances by Robin Nelson (Palgrave Macmillan)
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