sprat

mmmmm, picture! i saw her speak a year or so ago - so hot, so much presence. plus, she totally decimated those who questioned her "right" to make certain statements - *hee*.

and WOW - you are in performance studies too? how completely exciting! i am in the ma/phd program for ps in the states. i teach undergraduates in various courses. the performance ethnography lesson is simply a component of the ps unit in a larger communications survey course. performance ethnography is all about participant observation, subjectivity and subjective ways of knowing, personal narrative, critical & self-reflexive performance, (re)locating the body in story, political performance, recording performativity in everyday life -- etc. i am specifically showing how anna devare smith embodies those she interviewed & shows all sides of the issue - both humanizing and problematizing the various dynamics at work in the la riots. in addition, i assigned a wonderful piece by dwight conquergood (a god among p ethnos) on the moral and ethical responsibilities of pe, especially how to avoid the 4 major pitfalls and work to create truly dialogic performance. it bears alot of similarity to oral history, at least methodologically, but it differs in strategy and use, i suppose. also, it differs from anthropological ethno in both intention and method, but i suspect you already know about this.

i'm not sure if any of that is clear, but since you do ps hopefully it is slightly coherent.

my (intended) specialty is body reclamation - how pple reclaim their bodies after trauma through "mutilating" acts such as tattoos, piercings, scarifications, and cutting. my project is still in its infancy, but for the ethno portion i plan to do interviews & take photos & recreate them in perf. i am doing a show this semester from my personal writing, which includes similar themes.

omg, how huge is this comment? ok, now what do you do in the ps world? what is your interest? influences?

Re JH: I saw her in 2001. She was great - totally made a conference I was at worthwhile for me. Esp 'cos she offered to read an essay of mine when we spoke... *sigh*

PS stuff - I'm in the PS program at Uni of Sydney. Our PhD programs differ greatly from those of the USA - the biggest difference being there's no coursework for us. I'm starting my 3rd year of what will end up taking me about 5, I think.

My work is on the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade (see link below) and discourses of community that circulate around this event. I am particularly interested in the embodied experience of pride - how the performance event impacts on people's notions of pride and how this is expressed as a committment to community/ies. It's particuarly interesting at the moment because the organising body of the Parade (and the wider month-long event) fell apart last year - major financial collapse. A new org came together to take it on and how they have attempted to define and regulate community has been v interesting.

I don't do any performance myself (too chicken-shit) but I do participate in the Parade each year and that is the methodological basis of my work so it ties in v tightly with what you are saying about PE.

I teach also - politics and performance (from Russian agit prop to recent street protests against "war on terrorism"); performing Australian identity (using Geertz's work on sensibility to discuss how we approach and understand the concept of aussie-ness)

::Edited to actually insert the link::

Go here for SGLMG

[Edited on Mar 01, 2004 9:54PM]