Performance writing

An experimental, interdisciplinary approach that explores the intersections between text, performance, and other media. A ‘fluid conceptual framework though which to observe and articulate the transformations a text undergoes and elicits as it moves through forms, methods, and modes of practice.’ (Carpenter 2019)

Influenced by avant-garde movements like Fluxus, concrete poetry, happenings; connections to experimental theatre and performance art.

Many portions of the resulting thesis underwent multiple iterations. Passages were read, underlined, discussed, overheard, remembered, spoken, written by hand, typed, blogged, copied, pasted, tagged, encoded, animated, uploaded, downloaded, run, parsed, projected, published, presented in artist’s talks, rewritten, presented in academic papers, read silently, read aloud, represented in a performance script, read aloud in multiple voices, listened to live, watched on screen, interacted with, edited, re-purposed, re-mixed, and so on. — J.R. Carpenter, “Writing on the Cusp of Becoming Something Else” (2019)

• [⎈] Explore the tension between scripted or planned writing and improvisation/spontaneity in performance. Attend to questions of fixity, structure, and emergence.
• [?] How does performance writing blur the lines between text, speech, and embodied action?
• [?] What role does liveness and ephemerality play in performance writing? How does the transience of performance interact with the qualities of text?

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