How does the cumulative and iterative practice of “re-search” question and perhaps unsettle accepted epistemological paradigms, inviting the researcher to consider the interconnected mechanisms that make up theoretical and creative activity?

This training event explores the ways in which the process of research engages with the practice of moving between different materials that often overlap, intersect and accumulate. It encourages postgraduate researchers in the Arts and in the Humanities to consider the implications of attending to the “gaps” in between materials and perspectives, and of “re-searching” and “re-writing” knowledges and experiences across different mediatic, historical, cultural, artistic and philosophical frameworks and paradigms.

The workshop

This workshop will bring into dialogue different perspectives on “re-searching” and “re-writing” knowledges through short provocations and discussion of selected texts (to be distributed to the participants in advance).

Participants are encouraged to bring material from their own research projects for discussion in small groups.

This event is co-led by Dr Daniela Perazzo Domm (Kingston University), Dr Diana Damian Martin (Central School of Speech and Drama), Dr Eleanor Roberts (University of Roehampton) and Dr Nik Wakefield (University of Portsmouth).

Provocation topics:

Diana Damian Martin will discuss processes of re-writing, in relation to queer temporalities, unmasterful poetics and geo-political fictions, specifically related to transnational research.

Daniela Perazzo Domm will interrogate the place of uncertainty and precarity in the process of re-search, questioning what possibilities might be opened up by an approach to thinking and researching that refuses mastery and embraces indeterminacy, vulnerability and discomfort.

Eleanor Roberts will interrogate concepts of authenticity in archival research. Particularly, she will discuss speculative, automythological and decentred performance practices which enact active politics of refusal – and how they may brush up against the fraught terrain of so-called 'post-truth'.

Nik Wakefield will discuss a return to a practice research performance. Remaking the work provided an opportunity to address findings from the first iteration, specifically in a certain moment that navigated visibility and disclosure in relation to running and inability.

Workshop structure

You are invited to bring material and questions from your own PhD research that address or intersect with the themes above. Following the provocations (approx. 10 minutes each), we will break-out into rooms which will offer participants the opportunity to present their engagement with and perspective on the event’s theme, including (but not limited to) those addressed by the provocations and suggested resources. This will develop small-group discussions, which will then be briefly shared with the whole group (in the main Zoom meeting) to conclude the event.

Event participants will have temporary access to view Onyeka Igwe’s film A So-Called Archive online as part of the suggested resources. An access code will be provided in the run up to the event.

Suggested resources

Singh, J. (2018) Unthinking Mastery: Dehumanism and Decolonial Entanglements. Durham and London: Duke University Press – Introduction pp. 1-28. 978-0-8223-6939-4_601.pdf (dukeupress.edu)

Shah, R., Singh, J. and 周 Gibbons F. (2021) “Episode Three: Julietta Singh”, Performance Philosophy, 6(1), p. 13 March 2021. https://www.performancephilosophy.org/journal/article/view/340

A So-Called Archive (2020) directed by Onyeka Igwe [Film]. London: LUX. (2020). https://lux.org.uk/work/a-so-called-archive

This event is hosted by Kingston University London and is funded by the TECHNE doctoral training partnership. It is open to PhD students in the arts and humanities at all stages of their research.

Registration is required: please use the registration link on this page (selecting the option that applies to you: TECHNE PhD student or other postgraduate researcher).

A Zoom link to join the event will be provided following registration.

If you would like more information, please email the organiser, Dr Daniela Perazzo Domm (d.perazzodomm@kingston.ac.uk).

Organisers’ biographies

Dr Daniela Perazzo Domm is Senior Lecturer in Dance at Kingston University London and Postgraduate Research Coordinator for the School of Arts, Culture and Communication. Her research interrogates the intersections of the aesthetic and the political in contemporary choreography. She writes on the po(i)etic, critical and ethical potentialities of experimental and collaborative dance practices. Her publications include articles in Performance Philosophy, Performance Research, Dance Research Journal, Choreographic Practices and Contemporary Theatre Review. Her first monograph, Jonathan Burrows: Towards a Minor Dance, was published by Palgrave in 2019. She is co-convenor of the Theatre, Performance and Philosophy working group of the Theatre and Performance Research Association and long-time collaborator of Triennale Milano Teatro.

Dr Diana Damian Martin is an artist and researcher. She is Senior Lecturer in Performance Arts at Central School of Speech and Drama, where she currently leads the BA (Hons) Contemporary Performance Practice-Performance Arts course. She is Editor of Margins for Performance Philosophy Journal and a member of Performance Studies International’s Future Advisory Board. Her work concerns itself with collective critical epistemologies, queer and feminist modes of exchange and practice, and the ecological and representational poetics of migration, with a focus on Eastern Europe. Her work is often collaborative, and she is involved in a number of groups including action group Migrants in Culture, the collective The Department of Feminist Conversations, critical cooperative Critical Interruptions and practice research collective Generative Constraints. She is editor of States of Wake: Dedicating Performance (performance space, 2018) and co-editor of Critical Interruptions Vol 1: Steakhouse Live (LADA, 2018). She has published articles for Global Performance Studies, Contemporary Theatre Review, Performance Philosophy and Performance Research and has contributed to numerous books and artistic projects.

Dr Eleanor Roberts is Senior Lecturer at University of Roehampton. Her work so far has focused on performance and visual art in the 1960s and 1970s, conceptual and participatory art, contemporary queer and feminist live art, and practices of institutional critique. Recent publications include those in the collections Live Art in the UK: Contemporary Performances of Precarity (2020) and Performance, Subjectivity and Experimentation (2020). She was collaborator with Prof. Lois Weaver on Are We There Yet? A Study Room Guide on Live Art and Feminism (2014) and was co-curator of the Google Cultural Institute exhibition Live Art and Feminism in the UK (2015).

Dr Nik Wakefield is Senior Lecturer in the School of Art, Design and Performance at University of Portsmouth. He is a researcher, artist and writer working mostly in performance but also across dance, theatre and visual art. His research is concerned with theoretical issues of time and ecology in contemporary performance and art practices. Wakefield’s solo and collaborative performances have been shown in UK, USA and Europe. His writing has been published in journals such as Performance Research, Maska, Choreographic Practices, Contemporary Theatre Review and TDR. He is co-convener of the working group in Theatre, Performance and Philosophy in the Theatre and Performance Research Association.