PERFORMANCE RESEARCH
VOL.27 ISSUE 4
ON PROTEST

Editor: Andy Lavender,
Julia Peetz
Published by Routledge
188 pages
ISSN: 1352-8165 (2023) 27:4
Softcover

Price: 95 lei


This edition of Performance Research offers critical examinations of contemporary performances of protest across the globe. Protest can be understood as theatre, and more particularly as a form of public manifestation that draws upon a wide repertoire of representational devices. This edition asks how protest feels, and who is doing the feeling? It considers the performativity of protest. It pays particular regard to the extent to which protest achieves change and the ways in which historical protests help to inform judgements of the conduct, legitimacy and efficacy of current protest actions. What historical instances are invoked to draw comparisons to current forms of activism and resistance? How do contemporary protests draw on historical repertoires of protest that reflect or extend beyond their specific political contexts? Do protest strategies and tactics need to evolve as languages of protest become a default mode of mainstream political discourse?

p.1 Editorial: On Protest
ANDY LAVENDER AND JULIA PEETZ

p.13 On the Ends and Endings of Protest
MATT JONES AND JIMENA ORTUZAR

p.26 Performing Democracy: Non-verbal protest through a democratic lens
SELEN A. ERCAN, HANS ASENBAUM AND RICARDO F. MENDONÇA

p.38 On the ‘Doing’ of ‘Something’: A theoretical defence of ‘performative protest’
TEEMU PAAVOLAINEN

p.48 Gaming Protest
ANDREW LENNON

p.51 The Deep, Dark Play of the US Capitol Riots
CHRISTOPHER GROBE

p.63 Games and Playfulness: Bodiless solidarity in Hong Kong and Mainland China
YIOU PENELOPE PENG AND LUOLIN ZHAO

p.71 Digital Contention in Latin America: Material and affective infrastructures to address online activism as performance
MARTÍN ZÍCARI

p.81 ‘Shut Up and Dance’
TOM HASTINGS

p.90 What the heck? – hacking HEK [Artist pages]
Garrett Lynch IRL

p.92 Performance and Protest as Creative World-Building for Black Liberation: A conversation with artist/activist Jordan Occasionally
JOY BROOKE FAIRFIELD

p.98 Policing Exhibit B in St Denis and Paris: Afterlives of the French Imperial state at the theatre doors
CAOIMHE MADER MCGUINNESS

p.105 The Power of Unwanted Presence: The performance aesthetics of women’s protests in Iran
AZADEH GANJEH

p.112 Shifting Boundaries of ‘Perceived’ Legitimacy: Animative scenarios from the farmers’ protests in India
UPASANA MAHANTA AND GARGI BHARADWAJ

p.122 COVID-19 Protests and the Performative Force of Untruth: Some Arendtian intimations
GURUR ERTEM

p.125 Banners and Memes: The rhetoric of protests in defence of democracy and women's rights in Poland in 2015 and 2020
AGNIESZKA KAMPKA

p.136 We Will Outlive the Blood You Bleed [Artist pages]
JAMIE LEWIS-HADLEY
p.138 The Remnant of My Volition (Force Majeure) [Artist pages]
MORGAN WONG

p.139 Gezi’s Many Women in Red: A genealogy of an icon from street to stage
PIETER VERSTRAETE

p.150 South Africa’s Student Activist Turn in the Decolonial Present
AYLWYN M. WALSH

p.161 I am Queen Mary: On sustained protest and Denmark’s ‘colonial amnesia’
HELENE GRØN

p.167 Protesting Venetians: A carnival attitude
PETER O’ROURKE

p.172 A Maiden Speech: This is an emergency
LENA ŠIMI?

p.177 When Theatre Can Wait: The ambiguity of silence in activist theatre
RÉKA POLONYI

p.180 The Politics of Urban Silence: Sound installation [Artist pages]
ANDROMACHI VRAKATSELI

REVIEWS

182 The Formation of Identity and the Disruption of Colonial Ideological Hegemony
OFOSUWA M. ABIOLA

183 A Radical Imagination
HONEY CRAWFORD

185 After the Ordinary
TOM HASTINGS