Elvira Crois: An Affective Perspective on Participation in Performing Arts and Academia

My dissertation inquires into the aesthetics of audience participation in performing arts. I take on the hypothesis that the role of the performer as a guide highly impacts these aesthetics. In order to understand what performers, in their capacity as a guide, exactly do, I look into performer training. This has led me to formulate an affective perspective on audience participation, i.e. I consider participation both to be performative and observational; it propels a person to listen and respond– to be attentive, to sense whilst being articulate and articulating propositions (Latour 2004). This allows me to frame the interaction between audience and performers, but is also eloquently suited to the interaction I have sought out as a researcher with my research subjects, who are Katrien Oosterlinck (BE), Sarah John (AU/DK) and Seppe Baeyens (BE). From the outset of my project, I have pursued an accompanying approach as a metamethodology (Refslund, et al. 2016). This participatory approach has allowed me to incorporate a variety of research positions and qualitative research methods from the fields of anthropology and social sciences.

My main challenge in regards to participation at the moment is how to untangle the different relations that I have built with my case studies, which, though all participatory, still highly differ from each other. Furthermore, I am pondering on the appropriate place within the frame of my dissertation for an international sharing practice that I coordinate and in which all of my case studies are involved. In 2020-2021 this interdisciplinary project, under the title of 'Participatory Practice: Bridging Youth Work and the Arts', gathers youth workers, performing artists, youngsters and academics to exchange participatory methods and reflect on commonalities and differences in their work as facilitators

Karen Nordentoft: Cultural Participations and Participatory Cultures in DK Cultural Centres

Cultural centres have a long history as places providing for citizen-practiced creativity, activism, community-work, learning and togetherness in combination with presentations of art works in a variety of formats. DELTAG, the research and development project that I am associated with, is the first of its kind to cast light on cultural centres nationwide across Denmark. In my presentation I will give a brief overview of the project, then go on to share some results from our recent survey and an example of an observation, I did on a field trip. Finally, I would like to open up for a discussion of how to leap from the level of data and analysis to thematizing participation (and the facilitation of it) in the light of values at play.

About the presenters:

Elvira Crois is a doctoral researcher in theatre studies at University of Antwerp, Belgium. Through a participatory approach, her research inquires into performer training for interactive performing arts in order to provide an analysis of the aesthetics of audience participation. The research is affiliated with the practices of Katrien Oosterlinck (BE), Sarah John (AU/DK) and Seppe Baeyens (BE). Before entering academia, she worked as a socio-cultural worker at GC De Kriekelaar in Schaarbeek, Brussels. Since 2012 she’s been involved in several international theatre exchanges, most notably through her organising role in Apaya Network, a European network of young artists and researchers who explore the senses and interaction.

Karen Nordentoft is a PhD student employed at Aesthetics and Culture, Institute of Communication and Culture, Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University. She enrolled August 2019 and is attached to DELTAG, a joint project of Aarhus University and Kulturhusene i Danmark (KHiD, Cultural Centres in Denmark). Her supervisors are Professor Birgit Eriksson (main) and Associate Professor Louise Ejgod Hansen. Before entering academia, she worked in the field of arts and culture (as director of a film festival for 20 years, project manager and more).

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