1.1 General overview

1.1.5 Performative Turn



The whole point of analysing the Performative Arts is that they are inherently ephemeral and not reproducible. As a result, the researcher, teacher or learner must be aware that they are working on an absence and on what has taken place but is no longer.

This is an inherent characteristic of the Performative Arts that Performance Studies has taken into account since its emergence in the late 1960s, as Roselee Goldberg explains in Performance Art, From Futurism to the Present (Goldberg, 2011: 7). This was the time when performance art was recognised as "a medium of an artistic expression" in its own right and named as such.

The first theoretical work was carried out and published at this time, including those of the American director Richard Schechner and the English anthropologist Victor Turner, who considered theatre, like dance and music, to be primarily performative artistic activities; consequently, they favoured, among other things, a phenomenological approach to performances that integrated the analysis of their reception. In line with their reflections, several researchers have produced theoretical works that highlight and analyse these artistic practices' performative aspects. Among them and others, we can mention several researchers: the Canadian Josette Féral, the Argentinean Jorge Dubatti, the French Patrice Pavis and Anne Ubersfeld, and the American André Lepecki.

The emergence of this new field of study and research has led to a gradual theoretical shift, from Theatre Studies in particular to Performance Studies, called "Performative Turn" (Davis, 2008). This gave rise to a hybrid scientific approach named "Theatrology" (Pavis, 2022: 381), which combines several methodological approaches that are no longer solely centred on the document at the origin of the performance (for example, the text for theatre or the score for music) but also focused on the analysis of the reception, a study of the creative process and a phenomenological investigation of the realisation of the performance.

This "performative turn" has also been accelerated in recent years by the abundance of digital documents and data related to live performance, particularly the large number of audiovisual recordings that can be easily made today, even with a simple telephone. These digital documents are, without a doubt, the 'best sign' of what the performative event may have been because they show a certain number of elements and characteristics that it was not previously possible to record precisely, such as the audience's reactions, comic effects, etc. The performative turn is then also helping build a better knowledge and protection of Cultural Heritage (OER 6) linked with performing Arts.

In the case of digital documents and data, it is also possible to apply computer and automatic processing to facilitate and improve their analysis. This is why performance studies are also the subject of recent research in the field of digital humanities (Ioana Galleron, Clarisse Bardiot, Cécile Chantraine Braillon, Miguel Escobar Varela), particularly about the analysis of live performance videos, including the development of the e-spectator tool.
References: 
  • Goldberg, R. (2001). La Performance ; du futurisme à nos jours , (Performance Art from Futurism to the Present, 1988): Vol. Grand format (Thames And Hudson).

  • Davis, Tracy. 2008. « Introduction: the Pirouette, Detour, Revolution, Deflection, Deviation, Tack, and Yaw of the Performative Turn ». Dans The Cambridge Companion of Performance Studies, édité par Tracy Davis, 1-8. Cambridge et New York: Cambridge University Press.