Title:
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Manoeuvre : discursive performance
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The portfolio of published work focuses upon my own artistic methodology and
approach to contemporary art practice that I have termed 'discursive
performance'. This has been established through my manipulation of the
guided-walk form that I have distinguished from other categories of
'performance art' or 'live art' by describing as 'manoeuvres'. Each 'manoeuvre'
has involved the recitation of quotations each of which have been brought to
bear upon the route through pre-designed association with particular stopping
points en route. The quotations have been culled from various subjects and
amount to a discursive web of information. Through this 'discursive
performance' (the combinations of documentation, textual exploration, guide-publication
and live presentation), the suite of publications proposes my work as
a new mode of performative practice based upon the politics of the 'de-centred
body' and the performativity (doing) of 'history'. The utilisation of the walking
tour as a vehicle to understand this has also offered this practice up to public
scrutiny. The work has been registered in academic journals on History,
Architecture, Geography and Contemporary Art as a new approach to
understanding concepts of 'space', 'place', 'memory', and 'history'. The accrued
programme of work forms a plank in an argument for experiential knowledge
which is heteroglossic in nature, and which tests generalised notions of
'interdisciplinarity', 'site-specificity', 'performance', 'poetry' and the 'memorial'
analysed in terms of the following threads: 'zone'; 'place' and 'history'. The
published work forms a methodology that has emerged over time as a
resistance to notions of 'objecthood' in art. In turn, this methodology (discursive
performance) has made possible new works of imagination (each 'manoeuvre').
This performative approach utilises process in the public realm to open out
discursive potential to both producer and participant.
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