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
