Performance art Books

Book SynopsisSovereign Acts explores how artists, activists, and audiences performed and interpreted sovereignty struggles in the Panama Canal Zone over the last century. By demonstrating the place of performance in the legal landscape of U.S. Empire, Zien transforms our understanding of U.S. imperialism in the Panama Canal Zone and the Caribbean. Trade Review"By pairing archival research with the analysis of a fascinating array of theatrical and political performances, built environment, and civic recreation, Zien innovatively posits the construction of citizenship and belonging in Panama’s Canal Zone throughout the 20th century as an intricate, performative process. A must-read for anyone interested in sites of contested sovereignty." -- Camilla Stevens * author of Family and Identity in Contemporary Cuban and Puerto Rican Drama *"Examines the 'performance' of claims to the Canal Zone in popular entertainments, civic pageantry, and other realms reflecting the competing interests of Panamanians, West Indian laborers, and white U.S. citizens; covers 1903 to 1999." * Chronicle *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations and Tables Note on Text List of Abbreviations Introduction: Setting the Scene of Sovereignty 1 Sovereignty’s Mise-en-scène: The Necessary Aesthetics of New Empire 2 Entertaining Sovereignty: The Politics of Recreation in the Panama Canal Zone 3 Beyond Sovereignty: Black Cosmopolitanism and Cultural Diplomacy in Concert 4 National Theatre and Popular Sovereignty: Staging el pueblo panameño 5 Staging Sovereignty and Memory in the Panama Canal Handover Coda: After Sovereignty Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisSovereign Acts explores how artists, activists, and audiences performed and interpreted sovereignty struggles in the Panama Canal Zone over the last century. By demonstrating the place of performance in the legal landscape of U.S. Empire, Zien transforms our understanding of U.S. imperialism in the Panama Canal Zone and the Caribbean. Trade Review"By pairing archival research with the analysis of a fascinating array of theatrical and political performances, built environment, and civic recreation, Zien innovatively posits the construction of citizenship and belonging in Panama’s Canal Zone throughout the 20th century as an intricate, performative process. A must-read for anyone interested in sites of contested sovereignty." -- Camilla Stevens * author of Family and Identity in Contemporary Cuban and Puerto Rican Drama *"Examines the 'performance' of claims to the Canal Zone in popular entertainments, civic pageantry, and other realms reflecting the competing interests of Panamanians, West Indian laborers, and white U.S. citizens; covers 1903 to 1999." * Chronicle *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations and Tables Note on Text List of Abbreviations Introduction: Setting the Scene of Sovereignty 1 Sovereignty’s Mise-en-scène: The Necessary Aesthetics of New Empire 2 Entertaining Sovereignty: The Politics of Recreation in the Panama Canal Zone 3 Beyond Sovereignty: Black Cosmopolitanism and Cultural Diplomacy in Concert 4 National Theatre and Popular Sovereignty: Staging el pueblo panameño 5 Staging Sovereignty and Memory in the Panama Canal Handover Coda: After Sovereignty Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAnalyses how artists and activists of recent decades reference earlier freedom movements in order to imagine and produce a more expansive and inclusive democracy. Through an exploration of the way that black movements create circuits connecting people across space and time, Colbert offers important interventions into performance, literary, diaspora, and American studies.Trade Review"Colbert engages with cultural narratives that cross disciplinary boundaries; Black Movements will influence the field because it offers a unique way to think about processes and products of black artistic thought." -- Anita Gonzalez * University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and co-author of Black Performance Theory *"With rigor and creativity, Soyica Diggs Colbert weaves together debates in performance studies, black studies, and American studies. Black Movements offers a new way to think about race, time, history, and performance in the contemporary moment and will have a lasting influence." -- Shane Vogel * author of The Scene of Harlem Cabaret: Race, Sexuality, Performance *"It is a significant book, one that should be read alongside the scholarship of Saidiya Hartman, Daphne Brooks, Amber Jamilla Musser and other black feminist thinkers. Like Beyoncé reflecting back on Josephine Baker, Black Movements’s looks to the legacies of black performance in order to imagine and build black futures." * Journal of American Drama and Theatre *"Colbert’s 2017 book is especially exigent because it challenges the fixity of black death in a contemporary moment where black life is continuously expected to end abruptly. Whether this anticipation comes from video circulations of encounters with police or the Sate’s neglect of a predominantly black city’s contaminated water system, Colbert challenges this anticipated permanence to black death in Black Movements via analyses of literature, popular culture, and history. In doing so, she presents freedom as a multimodal phenomenon – through performance, film, literature, music, and prophecy." * Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Webs of Affiliation1 Flying Africans in Spaceships2 Entrapping and Ensnaring Entanglements3 Prophesying in Octavia Butler’s Parable Series4 MarchingEpilogue: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”: Locating the Future of Black Studies NotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisEmpress Elisabeth of Austria (1837-1898), wife of Habsburg Emperor Francis Joseph I, was celebrated as the most beautiful woman in Europe. Glamorous painted portraits by Franz Xaver Winterhalter and widely collected photographs spread news of her beauty, and the twentieth-century German-language film trilogy Sissi (1955-57) cemented this legacy. Despite the enduring fascination with the empress, art historians have never considered Elisabeth’s role in producing her public portraiture or the influence of her creation. The Celebrity Monarch reveals how portraits of Elisabeth transformed monarchs from divinely appointed sovereigns to public personalities whose daily lives were consumed by spectators. With resources ranging from the paintings of Gustav Klimt and Elisabeth’s private collection of celebrity photography to twenty-first century collages and films by T. J. Wilcox, this book positions Elisabeth herself as the primary engineer of her public image and argues for the widespread influence of her construction on both modern art and the emerging phenomenon of celebrity. Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter One: Staging the State Portrait Chapter Two: Styling Authenticity: The Boundless Hair of the Celebrity Monarch Chapter Three: The Imaginary Empress: Photomontage and the Simulation of Intimacy Chapter Four: Elisabeth and the Modernist Imagination of Anton Romako Chapter Five: Sissi in New York: T. J. Wilcox and Elisabeth’s Descendants in the United States Endnotes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisPiercing Time examines the role of photography in documenting urban change by juxtaposing contemporary ‘rephotographs’ taken by the author with images of nineteenth-century Paris taken by Charles Marville, who worked under Georges Haussmann, and corresponding photographs by Eugène Atget taken in the early twentieth century. Revisiting the sites of Marville’s photographs with a black cloth, tripod and view camera, Peter Sramek creates here a visually stunning book that investigates how urban development, the use of photography as a documentary medium and the representation of urban space reflect attitudes towards the city. The essays that run alongside these fascinating images discuss subjects such as the aesthetics of ruins and the documentation of the demolitions that preceded Haussmannization, as well as the different approaches taken by Marville and Atget to their work. The book also includes contemporary interviews with local Parisians, extracts from Haussmann’s own writing and historical maps that allow for an intriguing look at the shifting city plan. Sure to be of interest to lovers of the city, be they Parisians or visitors, Piercing Time provides a unique snapshot of historical changes of the past 150 years. But it will also be of enduring value to scholars. The accurate cataloguing and high quality reproductions of the images make it a resource for a significant portion of the Marville collection in the Musée Carnavalet, and it will aid further research in urban history and change in Paris over the past century and a half. Photographers will be drawn to the book for its new thinking in relation to documentary methodologies.Trade Review'This is an interesting and entertaining book that complements Walter Benjamin's The Arcades Project (CH, Apr'OO, 37-4262). Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers.' -- Choice, B. P. Chalifour'A handsome and hefty volume' -- Prefix Photo, Andrea PicardTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction A Paris Diagonal Rephotographic Practices Marville Rephotographs Paris: 1865 and 1877 Atget and Rephotography Methodologies Performing the City: Cultural Heritage and Modernity Avenue de l’Opéra Le Percement de l’avenue de l’Opéra Charles Marville and the Aesthetics of Ruins – Shalini Le Gall Halles - Auxerre Constructing Nineteenth-Century Paris through Cartography and Photography – Min Kyung Lee Ile-de-la-Cité Saint-Séverin - Place Maubert Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève La Bièvre - Rue Monge Saint-Marcel - Gobelins The Marville Archive Technical Notes Bibliography Indexes

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Book SynopsisRon Athey is an iconic figure in contemporary art and performance. In his frequently bloody portrayals of life, death, crisis and fortitude in the time of AIDS, Athey calls into question the limits of artistic practice. These limits enable Athey to explore key themes including gender, sexuality, radical sex, queer activism, post-punk and industrial culture, tattooing and body modification, ritual and religion. This landmark publication includes Athey’s own writings, commissioned essays by maverick artists and leading academics and full-colour images of Athey’s art and performances since the early 1980s. The diverse range of artistic and critical contributors to the book reflects Athey’s creative and cultural impact, among them musician Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons who contributed a foreword.Trade Review“Pleading in the Blood offers a remarkable and enduring contribution to literatures on performance and contemporary art... The potency of myth in Ron Athey’s work is the problem tackled by this formidable new book.” -- Contemporary Theatre Review'The seventeen extensive essays from underworld luminaries of art and music attempt to nail Athey’s ethos and individual practice ... This book being undeniably a celebration of Athey’s life.' -- Trebuchet, Drum Major Russell MacEwan'The performance artist is given space to tell his own childhood which is fitting as both now literary image and visual image are under Athey’s control. The whole book appears a lesson in discipline. It seeks to dispel myth.' -- Lambda Literary, Richard Maguire'A beautifully illustrated catalogue raisonné in which Athey’s extensive oeuvre is analyzed, placing him alongside Jean Genet, Antonin Artaud and Yukio Mishima, as well as contemporary art-world figures Chris Burden and Bob Flanagan.' -- John Killacky, American Theatre'This collection is, remarkably, the first such set of essays devoted to Athey’s work, studded with, even more remarkably, photographs from across a career characterized by a resistance of the production of images and traces generally associated with the business of performance art.' -- Rain Taxi, Spencer Dew'Without a doubt, the standard for any future writings on Athey will be the challenging, poly-vocal, and powerful testament offered by 'Pleading in the Blood'.' -- Contemporary Theatre Review, David J. Getsy'What I admire most about 'Pleading in the Blood', and Athey’s work in general, is its deep embrace of the paradoxical, the “impulse to experience the miraculous” through the enactment of “visual atrocity” deriving from the alchemical—the artist’s ability to turn the epic failure of a family prophesy into its own form of revelation.' -- Jane Ursula Harris, Cultural PoliticsTable of ContentsForeword – Antony Hegarty Introduction: Towards a Moral and Just Psychopathology – Dominic Johnson Gifts of the Spirit – Ron Athey 'There are Many Ways to say Hallelujah!' – Catherine (Saalfield) Gund 'Does a Bloody Towel Represent the Ideals of the American People?': Ron Athey and the Culture Wars – Dominic Johnson Bombs Away in Front-Line Suburbia – Homi K. Bhabha Deliverance: The 'Torture Trilogy' in Retrospect – Ron Athey The Irreplaceable Bodies: Resistance Through Ferocious Fragility – Julie Tolentino Athey-ism, Collaboration and Hustler White – Bruce LaBruce Sex with Ron – Jennifer Doyle The Man and His Tattoos (By the Man Who Did Them) – Alex Binnie The Milk Factory on Winchester – Matthew Goulish Flash: On Photographing Ron Athey – Catherine Opie How Ron Athey Makes Me Feel: The Political Potential of Upsetting Art – Amelia Jones Raised in the Lord: Revelations at the Knee of Miss Velma – Ron Athey Joyce: The Violent Disbelief of Ron Athey – Lydia Lunch Judas Cradle: Invasive Resonance – Juliana Snapper Illicit Transit – Adrian Heathfield By Word of Mouth: Ron Athey's Self-Obliteration – Tim Etchells The New Barbarians: A Declaration of Poetic Disobedience from The New Border – Guillermo Gomez-Peña

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Book SynopsisThe twenty-first century is already riddled with protests demanding social justice, and in every instance, young people are leading the charge. But in addition to protesters who take to the streets with handmade placards are young adults who engage in less obvious change-making tactics. In Speaking Truths, sociologist Valerie Chepp goes behind-the-scenes to uncover how spoken word poetry—and young people’s participation in it—contributes to a broader understanding of contemporary social justice activism, including this generation’s attention to the political importance of identity, well-being, and love. Drawing upon detailed observations and in-depth interviews, Chepp tells the story of a diverse group of young adults from Washington, D.C. who use spoken word to create a more just and equitable world. Outlining the contours of this approach, she interrogates spoken word activism’s emphasis on personal storytelling and “truth,” the strategic uses of aesthetics and emotions to politically engage across difference, and the significance of healing in sustainable movements for change. Weaving together their poetry and personally told stories, Chepp shows how poets tap into the beautiful, emotional, personal, and therapeutic features of spoken word to empathically connect with others, advance intersectional and systemic analyses of inequality, and make social justice messages relatable across a diverse public. By creating allies and forging connections based on friendship, professional commitments, lived experiences, emotions, artistic kinship, and political views, this activist approach is highly integrated into the everyday lives of its practitioners, online and face-to-face. Chepp argues that spoken word activism is a product of, and a call to action against, the neoliberal era in which poets have come of age, characterized by widening structural inequalities and increasing economic and social vulnerability. She illustrates how this deeply personal and intimate activist approach borrows from, builds upon, and diverges from previous social movement paradigms. Spotlighting the complexity and mutual influence of modern-day activism and the world in which it unfolds, Speaking Truths contributes to our understanding of contemporary social change-making and how neoliberalism has shaped this political generation’s experiences with social injustice.Trade Review"Speaking Truths provides a nuanced examination of the inner workings of spoken word activism, draws clear connections to a diverse body of sociological theory, and perhaps most importantly, firmly situates creative activism as a meaningful form of social justice work." — Julie Gouweloos, Mobilization "This beautifully written work deftly interweaves vignettes and poems to illustrate the culture of spoken word in meticulous detail."— Jerusha O. Conner, author of The New Student Activists: The Rise of Neoactivism on College and University Campuses. "In this timely and deeply incisive investigation of poet-activists in Washington, D.C., Chepp illuminates the capacity of spoken word to transcend single-axis identity politics and create visionary, intersectional coalitions." — Patrick Ryan Grzanka, Editor of Intersectionality: Foundations and Frontiers "Valerie Chepp’s Speaking Truths beautifully adds to the growing literature on poetry slams, spoken word, and their surrounding communities. By exploring young poets as social justice activists, Chepp reminds us of the arts' undying capacity to imagine and build new, just, and more equitable worlds. Speaking Truths is a necessary offering in the burgeoning sub field of slam and spoken word studies." — Javon Johnson, author of Killing Poetry: Blackness and the Making of Slam and Spoken Word Communities New Books Network: New Books in Popular Culture interview with Valerie Chepp— New Books Network: New Books in Popular CultureTable of ContentsList of Tables Preface 1 Spoken Word Activism: Young Adults and Social Justice in the Age of Neoliberalism 2 Spinning Stories from Words Got Spit: Researching a Verbal Arts Community 3 Speaking Truths: Experiential Knowledge, Embodied Testimony, and Activist Storytelling 4 Creative Politics: Art, Justice, and Empathic Possibilities 5 Healing Justice: The Politics of Healthy Selves and Communities 6 #Activism and Beyond: Sustainability and Social Change in a Digital World 104 7 Intersectionality as Activist Strategy: Toward a New Identity Politics Appendix A: Doing Ethnographic Research in the Era of Social Media Appendix B: Core Sample by Venue Participation Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisSince the 1970s, Swiss artist Manon has been confronting observers with their own vision. Her performances raise question about the boundary between staging and exhibitionism. Always challenging and at times highly subversive, her performances question power structures and put gender identities to discussion. Following-up on the previous volume Manon - A Person, published in 2008, this new volume introduces her work of the past decade to a wider audience. At the core is Hotel Dolores, a series of installations and performances staged at closed-down hotels in the Swiss spa town of Baden between 2008 and 2011. Photographs of venues and Manon's performances are completed by her conceptual sketches and other documents. Concise essays on aspects of Manon's art and vision round out this book. Text in English, French and German.

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