Re-enactment / Repetition / Reiteration / Re-performance as embodied research

The following is a call for contributions to a session at the AAANZ conference in November, in Brisbane.

This panel explores the widespread phenomenon of re-enactment as a tactic of embodied research in performance art history.

Performance re-enactment (or “re-performance”) has emerged since the turn of the century as an arena of practice and scholarship, an embodied means of “doing” historical research as well as a way of critically reflecting on ephemeral artworks from the past.

Recent texts have begun to unpick the multiple layers of mediation that produce, and emerge from, re-enactment practices (Jones and Heathfield 2012; Santone 2008). Reenactment inevitably raises questions about authenticity and the primacy of “unmediated” experience versus the role of documentation. As Jonathan Walley writes, the motivation for carrying out a re-enactment may begin with a desire to access an “authentic” experience of a past work of ephemeral art, but the physical-material practice of actually executing a re-enactment can prove unpredictably generative of insights that go far
beyond the historical (Walley 2013).

Contributions are invited for this panel involving (but not limited to):

  • Description and analysis of specific re-enactment projects as creative practicebased
    research;
  • Discussion of the phenomenon of re-enactment as it has developed in recent
    decades;
  • Exploration of intergenerational connections in re-enactment processes;
  • Analysis of the “event score” as a tool for codifying performance practices;
  • Theoretical investigations into iteration, repetition and difference triggered by
    a consideration of re-enactment;
  • Enquiry into the impact of and on archives when re-enactment is used as a
    tool for historical research;
  • Exploration of specific contributions to this field from Australia and New
    Zealand.

We also invite non-traditional and performative presentations which physically enact or re-enact as their creative / scholarly contributions to this panel (pending technical feasibility and approval of the AAANZ conference convenors).

Proposals should be sent to the convenors:

Dr Lucas Ihlein (University of Wollongong) and Louise Curham (University of
Canberra)
Email: lucasi@uow.edu.au

Due: 28th August 2015

Proposals should consist of the following:

1. Completed session participation proposal form, or an email that provides the
required information.
2. An abstract of the proposed paper, of no more than 400 words.
3. A brief biographical statement outlining any institutional affiliation/s and area/s of
expertise.