Representing Pasts – Visioning Futures

Abstract

How can sensory engagement in performance help audiences understand or redefine liminal sites of distance in contemporary contexts? If a level of untouchability is perhaps inevitable in understanding distant places, can performance, in reference to Derrida, explore the interval or spacing between two surfaces that becomes the very conditions of contact? This creative-critical paper will explore three UK-based performances that respond to contemporary migration and conflict: Now is the Time to Say Nothing by Caroline Williams and Reem Karssli, Flight by Vox Motus and Palmyra by Bert and Nasi. Through their sensory methodologies, each of these performances use tactics to recreate a distant places or sites that navigate liminality. “Distance is a factor in all art” (Bullough p.90) and in these performances an oscillation takes place between distance and closeness. These works are aesthetically rendering distant places, but conversely their subject matters are over represented and mediated in a UK context and therefore possess a semblance of closeness to the original site or situation in question. In this oscillation, these performances do the work of perceiving distance, allowing those who are participating in the works to assess their own positionality on the threshold of liminality. The performances possess an aesthetic rendering of another location, where they problematise or look to shift the location where they are ostensibly set. Considering this another place-based engagement, this paper will look at what emerges when distance becomes the explicit concern of the dramaturgy.