Technologized Animality: Performance beyond Humanity
Jennifer Parker-Starbuck
Examining cross-species performance encounters of ‘technologized animality’ (between humans, animals and technologies), this talk frames a ‘becoming-animate’ that takes place through ideas of representation, presentation, and dissention in performance.
A Department of Drama research event | |
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Date | 23 November 2016 |
Time | 16:30 |
Place | Alexander Building TS2 Examining cross-species performance encounters of ‘technologized animality’ (between humans, animals and technologies), this talk frames a ‘becoming-animate’ that takes place through ideas of representation, presentation, and dissention in performance. In an age described as the Anthropocene, the non-human animal figures crucially in political and ethical imaginings of any possible future, and this talk frames certain forms of techno-animality on what Ranciere calls a ‘political stage’ as a form of dissensus. Animals are frequently subsumed within hybridized/technologized practices, yet this talk argues that if considered as dissenting figures, animals might disrupt growing conflations between animals and technologies. Analysing the proliferation of performance engagements with animality, including: bio-technological experimentations, “dead” animals (a turn to taxidermy), robotic/technologized animals, living animals, and human-animal hybrids, this paper navigates a shifting terrain to foreground how animality is shaping human-centric performance practices and lives. In (Korean/US) artist Doo Sung Yoo’s animal-machine hybrids, specifically his robotic pig-heart jellyfish, “animals,” controlled by humans, are at their least “animal,” but it is this disturbance to form that provokes its possibility as dissenting agent in Anthropocentric work.Professor Jennifer Parker-Starbuck is Head of the Drama Department, University of Roehampton, London, and co-Editor of Theatre Journal. She is the author of Cyborg Theatre: Corporeal/Technological Intersections in Multimedia Performance, co-author of Performance and Media: Taxonomies for a Changing Field, co-editor of Performing Animality: Animals in Performance Practices. |
Provider | Department of Drama |
Event details
Location:
Alexander Building TS2