CFP: Performance Research: On Anthropomorphism

Performance Research   Vol. 20 No.2: 'On Anthropomorphism' (April 2015)
Edited by Richard Allen (University of Worcester) and Shaun May (University of Kent)

Proposal Deadline: 6 June 2014  

The term ‘anthropomorphism’ relates to a complex of interesting and mutually contradictory ideas, which this issue aims to explore. On the one hand it is used to refer to something that resembles a human, and on the other hand it refers to our natural tendency to read human characteristics in the non-human object or animal. An interrogation of anthropomorphism suggests that there is not a singular line dividing the human from the non-human but a vast terrain that houses the comical, the uncanny and the abject. In a reversal of Bergson’s famous maxim (1980), Simon Critchley argues that the thing that gives us the impression of being human invokes laughter (2002: 58), but Masahiro Mori’s ‘uncanny valley’ suggests that the almost-human object is often repellent (1970). Moreover, in the anthropomorphic animal we sometimes glimpse the reflection of mammalian urges and finitude that, in our ambitions for transcendence, we humans often strive to forget.  

Bruno Latour complicates things further when he insists that ‘anthropos and morphos together mean either that which has human shape or that which gives shape to humans’ (2009: 237). Homo sapiens, more than any other creature, exists in a world of artefacts -- objects that are arguably both man-made and man-making. Yet the environmental crisis surrounding us demands that we move beyond practical utility and relate to the more-than-human world in terms of its more-than-humanness. In this way, the demand of ecology might be understood as a demand to critically examine this anthropomorphism. What precisely this involves, and whether it is actually possible, are open questions that the proposed issue hopes to address.  

In short, the aim of this issue is to elucidate anthropomorphism in its multitude of aspects, thereby shedding light on discourses around object theatre and ecological performance that aim to understand the more-than-human world in a way that goes beyond ‘mere’ anthropomorphism. To do this it will draw on voices from a range of disciplines including performance studies, fine art, sociology, philosophy, ecology and psychology. Each in its own way grapples with the boundaries between the anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic -- often disagreeing about where one draws the line and what traversing it tells us about humanity and the world beyond it. In doing so, this issue of Performance Research 'On Anthropomorphism’ will open up perspectives on contemporary, cross-disciplinary and experimental performance and their relation to discourses on, and beyond, anthropomorphism.  

Practitioners and work that contributors might touch on include, but are by no means limited to:  Miet Warlop’s sequences of object actions and materially obscured human figures; Philippe Quesne and Vivarium Studio’s dense object-led dramaturgies and ecological images; the shifting human figure through Dieter Roth’s large scale video installation Diaries;Haroon Mirza’ssculptural sound installations of drones, buzzes and beeps; Phia Ménard’s dancing bags in L’après-midi d’un foehnand Vortex; Paul McCarthy’s animated humanoids and performance masks and props; Jan Svankmajer’s stop-motion animation; Nathaniel Mellor’s Shakespeare-performing robot heads and what Nenagh Watson calls ‘Ephemeral Animation’.  

We invite contributions that interrogate any of the ideas and practices mentioned above, and particularly ones that address any or all of the following areas:  

Looking Humanlike
Questions of design: architecture, objects and interaction

Sounding Humanlike
Questions of the voice: screaming, humming and droning

Thinking Humanlike
Questions of cognition: philosophy, psychology and forgetting

Becoming Humanlike
Questions of performance and making: process, acting and ritual

Being Humanlike
Questions of ontology: presence, laughter and the uncanny

Creaturely Life
Questions of the animal and the human: zoomorphism, representation and the monstrous

Material Anthropomorphism 
Questions of the object: material culture, anthropology and agency

Anthropocentricism
Questions of politics: sociological, the anthropocene and non-anthropocentric practices

Ecology and Anthropomorphism:
Questions of systems: networks, assemblages, weather

‘On Anthropomorphism’ invites artists, poets, practitioners, theorists and writers to submit proposals for unpublished and critical articles (between 2,000 and 6,000 words), documents, texts or artist's pages, which address anthropomorphism in relation to contemporary performance practices.

References

Bergson, H. (1980) Laughter, John Hopkins University Press.

Critchley, S. (2002) On Humour, Routledge. Latour, B. (2009) ‘Where are the missing masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artefacts’, in F. Candlin and R. Guins (eds) The Object Reader, Routledge.

Mori M. (1970) ‘The uncanny valley’, trans. K. MacDorman and T. Minato, Energy7(4): 33—5.

Schedule
Proposals: 6 June 2014
First Drafts: September 2014
Final Drafts: December 2014
Publication Date: April 2015

ALL proposals, submissions and general enquiries should be sent direct to: Rosa Bekkenkamp: [email protected]

Issue-related enquiries should be directed to the Issue Editors: Richard Allen ([email protected]) and Shaun May ([email protected])

General Guidelines for Submissions:

• Proposals will be accepted by e-mail (MS-Word or RTF). Proposals should not exceed one A4 side.
• Please DO NOT send images electronically without prior agreement.
• Please note that submission of a proposal will be taken to imply that it presents original, unpublished work not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
• If your proposal is accepted, you will be invited to submit an article in first draft by the deadline indicated above. On the final acceptance of a completed article you will be asked to sign an author agreement in order for your work to be published in Performance Research.