The problem of presence: liveness and performativity

Magdalena UK Online Bodies on Live Festival 2021

https://themagdalenaproject.org/ur/node/3505

The issue of liveness in performance led to suggestions that these vacant rifts or erasures in space can be inhabited, by embodying the ruptures created by the pandemic. My paper “Power, privilege and performative wokeness” commissioned by Critical Path, Sydney, describes the collective debate on how the pandemic has transformed the very nature of performance, and more importantly, how we frame our work on a virtual stage. Though I share a few key outcomes of that conference (dan_s lab 2020 conference) my panel presentation for Bodies on live will present my own ideas and experiences and how the pandemic has changed my own outlook on making work. I will be sharing how performance and art have always been, and now more than ever have become anchors in my life, and discovered, during the long solitude and isolation of 2020/21, that the quiet of non- performance does not reflect aridity or stagnation in art.