‘Contemporary performance’, Nicola Shaughnessy suggests, ‘is increasingly engaged in dialogue with, and seeking inspiration from, the affective practices of applied and social modes of theatre and performance, as a radical aesthetic begins to emerge from what might become a new avant-garde, one which is perhaps more concerned with individual than collective emancipation’ (p. 158). While this statement sums up the motivation behind the publication of Shaughnessy's Applying Performance, it also opens up new approaches to participatory performance with interdisciplinary support from fine-art as well as performing-art discourses.
Even though the radical aesthetic of applied performance, which the author calls ‘emerging’, is arguably getting quite old by now, Shaughnessy's valuable and fresh perspective, at least from the viewpoint of performance studies, broadens the continuum of artistic examples of, and interdisciplinary approaches to, socially engaged practices. The greater part of the book consists of case studies and at least half of these can be categorized as installations as well as performance. The author also follows up the interartistic outreach in reference to writings that have been instrumental in the social turn of curatorial practices, such as Nicholas Bourriaud's relational aesthetics and Claire Bishop's ideas of collaborative and participatory art.
It was about time to open up the interface between performance and art studies, as applied initiatives have been decisive in the development both of art movements and of performance movements since at least the 1950s. However, when Shaughnessy ‘sets the scene’ with a historical and typological context of applied performance, she reiterates the UK bias, for which the field and discourse lean heavily toward educational and communal projects at the expense of more radical and political work. It is noteworthy how dominant the affective turn is in British discourse on applied theatre in a time of pioneering performance-based political revolutions on streets and squares around the world. A history of applied performance without key references to South America and Africa is misleading, even though this may partially be due to the editorial use of generic rubrics, such as ‘histories and contexts of applied performance’, which can be found in the first chapter of the book.
More substantial, though, are the interdisciplinary contributions in subsequent chapters, including an attempt to reframe methodological discourses in performance studies, which is motivated by the development of applied performance. In several case studies of recent performance projects, Shaughnessy establishes refreshing discussions by means of cognitive science, not least with support from Bruce McConachie. Habitual performance analyses on psychoanalytical premises are challenged by Shaughnessy, who adopts critical counterpoints borrowed from cognitive inroads, which are concerned with intersubjective and mind/body-related matters in affective and therapeutic practices rather than in the subconscious.
Applying Performance opens out a topical landscape of applied practices in the UK that will hopefully yield new and more pertinent approaches to the expanding field of socially engaged art. My guess is that this field will invigorate a performative turn in which genres, discourses and higher-education institutions will undergo increasing interconnections in programmes of applied studies.
