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The Curatorial and Dialogic Research Practices of Performing Idea

Taking place within Performance Matters (PM), the four-year AHRC funded project I co-directed, this research investigated the cultural value of performance through curatorial practice and dialogic exchange. In 2009-10 I was the lead-curator of Performing Idea (PI): researching, formulating, realising and chairing an eight-day public event combining performance lectures and redos, a five-day international symposium, and a workshop series all at Toynbee Studios London, alongside a screening and film archive at Whitechapel Gallery. Given the increased assimilation of live art into museums, archives, historical and critical discourse and art markets, PI’s research imperative was to test the terms and limits of these incorporations through focused multi-format interdisciplinary exchanges. The PM Archive (40 DVDs and an edited exchange with my co-directors on PM’s cultural contribution) evidences this work and is located in 15 key art and educational archives globally (1). As part of PI, I curated a series of creative dialogues (2) and pursued my own research exchange with choreographer Jonathan Burrows through published letters, workshops and a performance lecture. (3) Here, I interrogate the relations between language and movement to identify the affective forces of radical contemporary choreographies. Letters from this exchange were later published in a refereed journal. A subsequent PI series of documentary films I made with photographer Hugo Glendinning - screened at Whitechapel Gallery, published as Performance Dialogues (DVDs) - reveals and questions the place of performance in the thought of three influential intellectual figures, expanding its discursive field (4).

1. Performing Idea, Performance Matters Archive 2010-11.

2. Performing Idea curated dialogue projects: www.thisisperformancematters.co.uk/performing-idea/words-and-images.html

(Static Copy)

3. Jonathan Burrows and Adrian Heathfield, ‘Moving Writing’, Choreographic Practices, Vol.4, No.2, Intellect, 2013. Performance Lecture, ‘holding them in front of you’: DVD 1 of Archive.

4. Performance Dialogues (2010-13), filmed discursive encounters with: Hélène Cixous, Alphonso Lingis, Brian Massumi.