Under Construction

Performing Critical Identity
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-3-03897-499-4
Verlag: MDPI AG

Buch, Englisch, 228 Seiten, Format (B × H): 175 mm x 250 mm, Gewicht: 770 g

While, currently, identitarian ideologies and essentialist notions of identity that tend to simplify and reduce life experience to simple factors are globally regaining massive attention, it is becoming inevitable to recollect the thorough discussions of identity concepts in the past three decades. This also calls for an ever-keener awareness of and capacity to deal with the complexity and diversity of the world we live in. Artists play a major role in the potential reflection and transformation of perceptions and conceptions of the world—musicians, dancers, choreographers, spoken word artists, performance artists, actors, and also fine art, installation, media artists, and photographers. “Performing critical identity” points to performative practices of artists that bring to the fore a critical (self-) awareness and (self-) positioning concerning identification and belonging. Social identities such as gender, sexuality, race, class, dis/ability, age, or non/religiosity are closely linked to the historical, social, regional, and political dimensions of their formation. From this perspective, identities are hardly one-dimensional, but complex and intersectional, and are to be thought of as a process of identification and belonging rather than as a consistent essence. As different, maybe contradictory among themselves, as they are, the performative works of artists such as Lerato Shadi, Liad Hussein Kantorowicz, Nora Chipaumire, Shu Lea Cheang, Zanele Muholi, Ohno Kazuo, Anohni Hegarty, Neo Hülcker, “We’re Muslim. Don’t Panic”, or of theatre collectives such as RambaZamba and Thikwa Theater in Berlin or Theater Hora in Zurich, to name but a very small, quite random selection of artists, share a critical approach towards hegemonic norms or stereotyping of identities and their representations and empower diversity.

This edition puts a specific focus on the performativity of the aesthetic practices and wants to explore different artistic approaches, strategies, tactics, and perspectives of artists when they address identity issues, when they target power relations and structures of oppression and inequality, and when they empower concepts of diversity.

Zielgruppe

Professionals/Scholars

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kohl, Marie-Anne

Über Autor(innen)

Kohl, Marie-Anne
Marie-Anne Kohl has been a member of the research and teaching staff and Managing Director of the Research Institute for Music Theatre Studies (fimt) at the University of Bayreuth (Germany) since 2015. Her key research interests encompass Gender Studies, Voice and Vocal Music, Music and Decoloniality, Performance Studies, Talent Shows, Media and Popular Culture, Music and Globalisation. From 2012 till 2015 she was co-director and chief curator of the Berlin-based feminist art space alpha nova-kulturwerkstatt & galerie futura. Kohl is a member of the academic boards of Jahrbuch Musik und Gender and European Journal of Musicology and a member of the Cluster of Excellence Africa Multiple. She is co-editor of recently published Power to the People? Patronage, Intervention and Transformation in African Performative Arts (Matatu/ Brill), and Ghosts, Spectres, Revenants. Hauntology as a Means to Think and Feel Future (iwalewabooks). Her current research project ”Talent Shows as Glocal Music Theater” had been funded by the VolkswagenStiftung.