As we navigate the complexities of breathing in a world marked by social upheaval and environmental challenges, this issue seeks to illuminate the transformative power of breath in shaping our understanding of the performing arts. By bridging the gap between art, aesthetics and science, the issue promotes interdisciplinary scholarship and encourages new perspectives on the significance of respiration in artistic practices. International authors consider the cultural, historical and social implications of breath, highlighting its significance in different artistic traditions and contemporary movements. Through a diverse array of contributions, they examine the intersections of breath with themes of colonialism, racialization, politics of asphyxiation, necropolitics, resistance and artificial intelligence. The issue attempts to challenge conventional understandings of breath and respiration, fostering innovative dialogues around these concepts in the context of art and performance. 

What is the current state of music performance studies, how did it reach this point and where is it headed? In this special issue, we offer a comprehensive overview of the field, showcasing how its exponents engage imaginatively and critically with music performance across myriad different artistic contexts and asking how it can address some of the challenges, complexities and uncertainties we face in the twenty-first century. We re-evaluate music’s present place within the wider field of performance studies and explore how it might speak to other constituent arts to enhance and advance future transdisciplinary inquiry.

In an age of durational and perpetual crises, where corpses – human and more-than-human – pile around us, the boundaries are thin between ghosts and those they might be haunting. This issue of Performance Research revisits ghosts from the perspective of capitalist ruins, corpses of extinct animals and poisoned habitats, phantom narratives, digital selves and expiring planets. Rather than focusing on Derridean hauntology and the historical discourses of vanishing, we revisit ghosts and ghosting from the expanded scope of more-than-human performance and amid the troubled age of the Anthropocene to consider who or what is haunting, especially by going beyond the ghosts of ‘grievable’ humans.