Papers by Dr. Daniel Oliver
This thesis focuses on contemporary participatory performance in which participation is facilitat... more This thesis focuses on contemporary participatory performance in which participation is facilitated awkwardly, and in which awkward modes of participation are welcomed and encouraged. My use of the term 'awkward' here is not so much in reference to embarrassment, uneasiness, or social faux-par, though I do observe and critically respond to such phenomena throughout. Instead, the term 'awkward' is predominantly employed as an adjective in line with the dictionary definition 'causing difficulty; hard to do or deal with' or 'not smooth or graceful; ungainly'. Such awkwardness is framed as productive because of its disruptive relation with the smooth running of inter-relational encounters. These disruptions, I argue, in turn encourage critical reflection on our co-presence with others without removing us from that co-presence. Thus it allows for necessary affective and critical work to occur within the participatory performance itself as opposed to being delegated to those not involved and encountering the performances through secondary sources. This focus on awkwardness in contemporary participatory performance occurs in response to what art critic Claire Bishop and others have defined as the 'Social Turn' in art and performance. This 'turn' refers to the increased critical, curatorial and cultural attention given to socially engaged, participatory and relational art practices since the late 1990s. The key aim of this project is to refocus this attention onto practitioners that, in my reading, have a productively awkward relation with its rhetoric, ideologies and socio-politics. My approach to these practices is often supported by the writings of Slavoj Žižek, especially his employment and supplement of Lacanian psychoanalysis. His theories of the 'big Other' and its 'super-egoic injunctions', of over-identification, of the 'real', 'symbolic' and 'imaginary' registers that structure our reality are worked-through as I develop my own theories of agency, reality and fantasy, desire, and socio-political efficacy through critical engagement with awkward participatory performance. PREFACE THE ROLE OF DYSPRAXIA IN THIS THESIS .
Performance Research, Jun 24, 2014
Žižek and Performance, 2014
This (group) self-interview is the responsive document coming forth from the post-conference cama... more This (group) self-interview is the responsive document coming forth from the post-conference camaraderie. The four “Žižekian Performers” – found with themselves personally, creatively, and academically following the 2014 International Žižek Studies Conference. As a self-interview document that mimics the gameplay of Žižek himself in his own self-interview from his The Metastases of Enjoyment (1994) where he puts on the guise of the “big Other” to examine himself, we four performers here examine ourselves, each other, our work, and each other’s work to produce this post-partum collaborative essay. In our collective project, we outline our individual performances from the Conference, each stake a claim and personal response to the critical question of what is a “Žižekian Performance,” and identify and discuss other synergies that emerged and exist amid our work in the form of cross-examinations and self-examinations. Ultimately, this group’s self-interview blazes the way for performance to interpenetrate the “Žižekian” and to intervene wherever theory, investigation, and presentation may lie.
Zizek and Performance, Oct 2014
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Papers by Dr. Daniel Oliver