Performance Research Volume 23 Issue 8

On Disfiguration

Issue editors: Stephen Barber & Richard Gough

ISSN: 1352-8165 (2018) 23:8

Disfiguration involves a distinctive process whereby the body in performance, or an existing artwork, may be subject to an intervention which intentionally overhauls, distorts or betrays it; disfiguration may ‘twist’ the original work, to use the term of the artist Richard Hawkins. The body may also inflict its own disfigurations, and display or project them in performance. This issue opens up ground for original explorations and interrogations of disfiguration as an idea, procedure or entity with an often-intimate and beguiling approach to performance. Disfiguration resonates with seminal bodies of performance work such as those of Antonin Artaud, Tatsumi Hijikata and Ko Murobushi, but also forms a vitally aberrant strand in contemporary performance, including its digital art dimensions. Research into disfiguration may explore the work of theorists such as Bataille, but also entails the formulation of new kinds of corporeal analysis. The essays and artists’ pages in this issue engage with preoccupations with disfiguration in multiple and often-contrary ways. In all of its manifestations, disfiguration marks a transmutation in the status of the body which performances envision, archive, excavate or sound.

Editorial : On disfiguration

Stephen Barber, Richard Gough

pp. 1 - 6

Richard Hawkins and the Disfiguration of the Archive

Stephen Barber

pp. 7 - 10

Delectable Parts [artist’s pages]

Richard Hawkins

pp. 11 - 14

Processes of Corporeal Corruption and Objective Disfiguration : in Tatsumi Hijikata’s 1960s Butoh

Katja Centonze

pp. 15 - 22

Processes of Disfiguration within the Dance of Kō Murobushi

Romina Sylvia Achatz

pp. 23 - 30

From the Figure to the Cipher : Figuration, disfiguration and the limits of visibility

Marielle Pelissero

pp. 31 - 38

Disfiguration, Obliteration : What remains of the body in the works of Unica Zürn and VALIE EXPORT

Rose-Anne Gush

pp. 39 - 48

The Wall of History

Jeremy Biles

pp. 49 - 50

Breaking the Mirror

Francesca Steele

pp. 51 - 58

Rescaling the Private : Extimate miniaturization in the theatre of Niwa Gekidan Penino

Corey Wakeling

pp. 59 - 66

Android Corporeality, Transhuman Performance and the Japanese ‘Mind’

Yuji Sone

pp. 67 - 73

Performing Sufi Disfiguration : Transformation of the self

Esra Çizmeci

pp. 74 - 82

For the Love of Elu : Steven Cohen’s gentle endocannibalism

Robyn Sassen

pp. 83 - 87

Monstrosity : The face of war

Mischa Twitchin

pp. 88 - 94

The Torture of the 100 Pieces : A work in progress by Martin Bladh and Karolina Urbaniak

Martin Bladh

pp. 95 - 103

Apocalipsis Cum Disfiguris [artist’s pages]

Hans-Peter Litscher

pp. 104 - 107

Performing Disfiguration : Staging of relationalities in Pottan Teyyam

Akhila Vimal C.

pp. 108 - 114

Theatre, Representation and the ‘Other’ : Recent books on theatre and disability [review]

Morgan Batch

pp. 115 - 116

Notes on Contributors

pp. 117 - 118