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I was appointed as Professor of Performance Studies in July 2004, following five years as Chair in Drama at the University of Manchester. My research focuses on post-war experimental performance, with emphasis on relationships between theatre and the development of ideas and practices in sculpture, architectural theory, conceptual and performance art, experimental music, installation, video art and video installation.
My recent work has focused on site-specific performance, multi-media practices, performance art and the commissioning and editing of performance documentation. This work has led to a wide range of publications as well as the creation of research-based multi-media performances shown in London, Dresden and Beijing.
My current research includes a large-scale international and interdisciplinary project, Performing Presence: from the Live to the Simulated, managed in collaboration with Gabriella Giannachi (Senior Lecturer in Drama, Exeter), Mel Slater (Professor of Virtual Environments, University College London) and Michael Shanks (Professor of Classics and Cultural Anthropology, Stanford University, California). This project has received a major award of £275,000 from the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council. Running from 1st September 2005 to 31st August 2009, Performing Presence will investigate the performance of presence in live, mediated and simulated environments in collaboration with leading international artists including The Builders Association, Gary Hill, Lynn Hershman, Monika Fleishmann, Paul Sermon and Andrea Zapp. Further information and resources related to the project are available at the linked project sites http://www.ex.ac.uk/performing-presence (Exeter) and http://presence.stanford.edu (Stanford).
With Dr. Gabriella Giannachi, I am also co-director of the School’s recently created research Centre for Intermedia which aims to promote advanced transdisciplinary research in performance and the arts through collaborations between artists, academics and scientists from a range of disciplines. I would welcome enquiries regarding any of the research projects below or the Centre for Intermedia. If you are interested in pursuing postgraduate research in any of my areas of interest please don’t hesitate to contact me. If you may be interested in working with the Performing Presence team at Exeter as a doctoral student, please feel free to contact myself, Gabriella Giannachi or the Performing Presence project secretary.
Collaborative research projects:
Performing Presence: from the Live to the Simulated - http://www.ex.ac.uk/performing-presence/ and http://presence.stanford.edu Orienting the Future: Design for Non-Places - http://ace.caad.ed.ac.uk/NonPlace/ Books:
(2002, co-authored with Gabriella Giannachi) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde: Italian Experimental Performance After 1970, Frankfurt: Peter Lang AG. (2000) Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation, London & New York: Routledge, 2000. (1996) Art into Theatre: Performance Interviews and Documents, Amsterdam: Routledge/Harwood, 1996. (1994) Postmodernism and Performance, London & New York: MacMillan & St. Martin's Press. Special issues of journals:
(ed.) (1998) Performance Research 3:1, 'On America' (1998) (ed.) (1994) Contemporary Theatre Review 2:2, 'British Live Art: Essays and Documentation' Selected articles:
(2002) 'Performing the City', Urban Design Quarterly, no. 82, 27-30. (2000) ‘Intermedia and Location’, Degrés: Revue De Synthèse À Orientation Sémiologique (Brussels), section ‘b’, 1-17 (1999) ‘Performance Architecture’, Performance Index: catalogue/newspaper (Basel). (1998) ‘Cultural Transmissions: An Interview with Xu Bing’, Performance Research, vol.3 no.1, 44-51. (1997) ‘Jan Lauwers/Needcompany - Snakesong/Le Desir’, Performance Research, vol.2 no.1, 23-30. Some forthcoming publications:
Multi-Media Performance: video - installation - theatre (single authored book for Routledge) ‘Hardware in Real Time: Performance and the Place of Video,’ an article in Contemporary Theatre Review 15:1 (2005) ‘Performed Ecologies: Body, Material, Architecture,’ a chapter in Performing Nature: Explorations in Ecology & the Arts, edited by Gabriella Giannachi & Nigel Stewart (Peter Lang AG, Frankfurt, 2005). ‘Postmodern/Greenberg,’ an article in the art journal Area Revue)s( (Paris) (2005) ‘Body/Site: Performing Material Place,’ a chapter in the forthcoming book Installation Art, edited by Frans Jacobi (The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art, Copenhagen, late 2005) 'Displaced Events: Photographic Memory and Conceptual Art,' a chapter in Locating Memory: Photographic Acts, edited by Annette Kuhn (Transaction Publishers, Rutgers New Jersey, 2006).
