VOLUME II | MAY 2021 PERFORMANCE OF THE REAL PERFORMING ECOLOGIES CLIMATE CHANGE AND ANIMAL REALISM | BREATH AND ATMOSPHERE DECOLONIAL PERFORMANCE PRACTICES | ECOLOGICAL THINKING AND EMBODIED PRACTICE INTIMACY AND VIBRANT LANDSCAPES | CHOREOGRAPHIES OF PARTICIPATORY ECOLOGIES THEATRICAL LANDSCAPES AND CLIMATE CHANGE | AFFECTIVE ECOLOGY IN EMBODYING CHARACTER PERFORMATIVE INGESTION AND ECOLOGICAL CRISIS | VIDEO GAMES AND ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS 2 SITE RESPONSIVE PERFORMANCE AND CLIMATE CHANGE | PUPPETRY AND ECOPSYCHOLOGY VISUAL NARRATIVE AND THE POST-HUMAN | EMPATHY AND SITE SPECIFIC ART PRACTICE PERFORMANCE OF THE REAL This edited volume is © the Performance of the Real Research Theme, University of Otago. Authors retain individual copyright over their original intellectual property. Papers re-printed from this volume should acknowledge the original source. All copyrighted materials included in this volume appear on the unde standing that permission from the reproduction of these materials has been obtained individually by the author in whose work they appear. The opinions expressed in this volume are those of the authors alone, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Performance of the Real Research Theme. Published by: The Performance of the Real Research Theme, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand ISSN 2463-6207 ISBN 978-0-473-57527-4 2 PERFORMING ECOLOGIES - SPECIAL ISSUE PERFORMANCE OF THE REAL VOLUME II MAY 2021 PERFORMING ECOLOGIES SPECIAL ISSUE 6 THE AIR BETWEEN US Carol Brown 14 VISUAL NARRATIVES & THE POSTHUMAN: MAKING INTERSPECIES CONNECTIONS BETWEEN CRYPTIC CREATURES AND HUMANS TANGIBLE. Suus Agnes Claessen PERFORMANCE AND CLIMATE CHANGE: EVOKING THEATRICAL LANDSCAPES TO 24 INVESTIGATE CLIMATE CHANGE Linda Hassall COPEING: PARTICIPATORY PERFORMANCE EXPERIMENTS FOR TAKING CARE OF… 32 Christina Houghton 41 DECOLONIAL PERFORMANCE PRACTICE: WITNESSING WITH AN ETHIC OF INCOMMENSURABILITY Morgan Johnson 48 THE MATTER OF FASCIA: ECOLOGICAL THINKING THROUGH EMBODIED PRACTICE Kerstin Kussmaul 61 SOUNDING WALKS: EVOKING EMPATHY THROUGH SOCIAL, SOUND AND WALKING PRACTICES Caroline McCaw & Vicki Smith 71 STILLNESS, TOUCH AND CULTIVATING INTIMACY WITH “VIBRANT” LANDSCAPES Miriam Marler 80 AWKWARD TEXTS: PERFORMatIVE INGESTION IN THE WORK OF PERFORMANCE ARTIST KRISTIN PREvaLLET AND POET JULIANA SpaHR Robyn Maree Pickens 88 BIRD WINGS AND PUPPET STRINGS: PUPPETRY, ECOPSYCHOLOGY AND STORY Sky River 95 ALEXIS WRIGHT’S THE SWAN BOOK: NARRATING CLIMATE CHANGE AND ANIMIST REALISM Priyanka Shivadas 102 TO BE AND NOT TO BE: THE SELF AND THE OTHER, TWIN ELEMENTS IN THE AFFECTIVE ECOLOGY OF EMBODYING A CHARACTER, (WITH APOLOGIES TO WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE) Adriann Smith 113 PRESENT IN PLACE: LIVELY POTENTIALS OF SITE-RESPONSIVE PERFORMANCE IN AN ERA OF ENVIRONMENtaL CRISIS Gretel Taylor 122 BALANCING ACT: PLAYING VIDEO GAME ECOLOGIES James Tregonning 3 PERFORMANCE OF THE REAL WELCOME / HAERE MAI The current ecological crisis has become a major contention, forming a variety of compelling performances which mediate and serve a complex nexus of political, ethical and social agendas. Indeed, many writers on ecology are increasingly arguing that we have to face the fact that the world is, so to speak, “in the shit”, and that, somehow, we have to learn to live with/in it. In addition to attracting considerable media and scholarly attention this problem has sparked considerable activism and protest worldwide. Significant questions have been raised around how performance – in a broad sense – might contribute to the discussion and work towards a more promising ecological future. The articles in this special issue were originally presented as papers at the Performing Ecologies conference hosted by the Performance of the Real Theme in Dunedin in November 2018. By drawing together scholars and creative practitioners from a variety of fields and artforms to focus on the subject of ‘performing ecologies’, this interdisciplinary journal edition provokes consideration of the role, importance and impact of performance and creative practice in our ‘learning to live with/in’ this ecological crisis. The papers discuss various ways in which ‘performing ecologies’ enable exploration of alternatives to dichotomies such as human and non-human, or human and nature. Performance forms such as dance, theatre, puppetry, playwriting, music and gaming are discussed in terms of their enabling critique of human exceptionalism and people’s ability to find alternate ways of being and belonging in a more- than-human world. This special issue is dedicated to Prof Phil Bishop, who was a wonderful keynote panel presenter at the conference that has given rise to this special issue. JENNIFER CATTERMOLE, HILARY HALBA, SOFIA KALOGEROPOULOU, HAZEL TUCKER Editors 4 PERFORMING ECOLOGIES - SPECIAL ISSUE PERFORMANCE OF THE REAL The Performance the Real Research Theme is a multidisciplinary project that investigates why representations and performances of the real are particularly compelling. At its core is the study of how performance and performativity, in its many cultural, aesthetic and social forms and discourses represents, critiques, enacts/re-enacts and constructs/reconstructs the real. This project includes the investigation of the impulses, desires and/or social and political impetuses behind the drive to represent the real. The team of researchers offers the first project of its kind by comprehending the ethical, relational, political, social or formal issues involved in representing the real. DIRECTOR Dr Suzanne Little (Theatre Studies) STEERING COMMITTEE Dr Jennifer Cattermole (Music) Dr Christina Ergler (Geography) Associate Professor Hilary Halba (Theatre Studies) Sofia Kalogeropoulou (Dance) Dr Karyn Paringatai (Te Tumu: School of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies) Professor Hazel Tucker (Tourism) Dr Suzanne Wardell (Social Anthropology) WEBSITE www.otago.ac.nz/performance-of-the-real/ TWITTER @performingreal FACEBOOK Performance of the Real 5 PERFORMANCE OF THE REAL Carol Brown THE AIR BETWEEN US ABSTRACT A phenomenology of atmospheric experience is often performed in dance tasking, but how might scientific understandings of meteorological change catalyse new dramaturgies of relation between breath and atmo- sphere drawing attention to our changing climate? In this writing, I discuss the dramaturgy for LungSong, a performance research project that draws together the labour of atmospheric science, place-responsive dance, videography and sound. The meteorological turn in art raises critical questions about the relation between performance and science, particularly in how we address changing architectures of air. Whilst methods and practices of choreography may provide opportunities for freeing the breath, global research into atmospheric change evidences planetary breathing that is in peril. Ground truthing in weather and at- mospheric science calibrates the findings of remote instruments such as satellites, with land-based testing such as weather balloons. Specialising in measuring CFCs, Ozone, UV light levels and greenhouse gases, NIWA’s atmospheric research station in Lauder is well known for its ground truth data. In collaboration with scientists at the station, LungSong developed choreographic thinking for reconfiguring relations be- tween ground and sky, human and non-human breathing, corporeal and cosmological systems of breath, in an atmosphere that is shared. Situating the research praxis through intercultural and interdisciplinary research, through partnership with indigenous artists, professional dancers, and scientists, the emergent dramaturgy culminated in an audiowalk, public talk, video installation and rooftop performance. Keywords: Atmosphere; Choreography; Eco-Sexuality; Cosmology; Hau; Breath You are longitude and latitude, anthropomorphic models, it has been, until a set of speeds and slownesses relatively recently, outside representation. Tom between unformed particles, a set Cohen and Claire Colebrook, in the Foreword of nonsubjectified affects. You have to Art and the Anthropocene (Turpin & Davis the individuality of a day, a season, a year, a life – a climate, a wind, a fog, 2015), describe the current state of depletion, a swarm, a pack (regardless of its decay, mutation and exhaustion resulting from regularity). (Deleuze 1987) Climate Chaos as calling for new modes of address. What, we ask ourselves, can the arts Our bodies, suffused with atmospheres, ancestors do? In particular, how might choreographic and chemical compounds produced by sunlight thinking, applied through an intercultural and are ‘meteorontological’1 (Wallace Art Trust 2018). interdisciplinary research project addressing We are the weather. And yet an apocalypse of our aerial bloodstream through place-based the skies threatens the futures of our children. performance and media, propose new perceptual Though life on earth may cease to exist as a result thresholds for reckoning with the temper(ature) of the warming atmospheric system, the planet of our times? will continue long after we have gone (McKenzie 2019). Critically, climate change concerns material LungSong is a multi-modal interdisciplinary agencies that impact on biomass and energy, collaboration that has emerged through our it erases borders, geological and nanographic concerns to confront the question of the sensual time, and accelerates extinction events. Though address of performance from within a condition the era of climate change has mutated systems of climate emergency. As a creative team of we