Trashing Performance explores academic approaches to performance in the new field of 'performance studies' and the growing acceptance, reception and valorisation of the medium in society. It explores mainstream versus underground, academic versus popular, elitist versus trash, and questions the cultural mechanism that define these labels, and how and where performance practice can stand.
It is part of Performance Matters, a three-year (2009-2012) creative research project, a collaboration between Goldsmiths and Roehampton University, and the Live Art Development Agency.
"Profound shifts in the cultural status and presence of performance have recently been manifested through a number of related phenomena including the museological, archival and curatorial assimilation of Live Art; an increased profile of performance aesthetics within visual arts, theatre and contemporary dance practice; a 'performative turn' in critical theory and cultural studies; and a re-evaluation of performance phenomena that have hitherto been marginalised by critical consideration." (Performance Matters website).
I assisted the Trash Salon, where associate researchers explored notions of 'trash' in relation to performance and where invited to present wasted, new and experimental or rejected works; and Performance Doesn't Matter by cabaret collective Eat Your Heart Out (See photographs). The first was framed as an academic event, the second as a show, but it was really interesting to see how successfully their themes and concerns overlaped. The researchers where practice-based, performers themselves standing at a position of reflection, engaging in critical thinking, aiming to debate and 'make sense' of their chosen rejected/potential, saved-from-the-trash pieces. The salon setting proved quite unfitting for difficult to label approaches and experiments across research and practice, which at the same time seemed to be the point, to loosen the comfortability, strict expectations and rigidity of academia to allow the trash in and reflect upon its status, legitimacy and potential.
At the Trash Salon I noticed the recurring theme of the personal, intimate, bodily, sexual, emotional and vulnerable, which came to light in a setting that allowed the expression of that which we are not sure should be discussed publicly.
The Show by Eat Your Heart Out was hillarious, making fun of academics, artists and itself, very ironic and critical. The world of drag queens and cabaret came to life as a counterpart to the formal talks in a piece that entertained and humorously disrespected and insulted elitist ideas surrounding 'performance art' and the world of academia. On a stage, dressed-up, with make-up and heels these performers demonstrated through their stage presence and attitude how performance matters, florusishes in the margins, and cannot be reduced to academic discourse.
