Laura Cull
Doing Performance Philosophy: attention, collaboration and the missing &
In this talk I will provide a series of reflections on the emerging area of study known as ‘Performance Philosophy’. But rather than doing this by providing a definition of performance philosophy – or indeed, either of its constituent terms – I will explore what happens if we begin with a kind of performative contradiction; namely the hypothesis that: “Not knowing what performance philosophy is, is the only valid starting point from which to do it”. Starting from here I will go on to examine what might be at stake in the at once seemingly banal and potentially radical idea that ‘performance thinks’ - with attention and collaboration as two possible modes for this thought that does not merely apply existing philosophy but does philosophy, performs it, in new ways.
Readings
Cull, Laura. 2014. 'Performance Philosophy: Staging a New Field', in Encounters in Performance Philosophy, co-edited by Laura Cull and Alice Lagaay, London and New York: Palgrave 2015, pp.15-38.
Bergson, Henri. 'The Perception of Change', in Henri Bergson: Key Writings. London and New York: Bloomsbury 2002, pp. 303-326.
Goulish, Matthew. 'Imitating Dominique', in Small Acts of Repair: Performance, Ecology and Goat Island. London and New York: Routledge 2007, pp. 156-160.
Biography
Laura Cull is Head of the Department of Theatre & Dance at the University of Surrey, UK. Her most recent books are Theatres of Immanence: Deleuze and the Ethics of Performance (2012) and Encounters in Performance Philosophy (2014) co-edited with Alice Lagaay. Her other publications include Deleuze and Performance (2009) and Manifesto Now! Instructions for Performance, Philosophy, Politics (2013) co-edited with Will Daddario. She is core convener of Performance Philosophy and joint series editor of the Performance Philosophy book series with Palgrave.
John Ó Maoilearca
Equalized Thought: Laruelle's Serial Model and Cinema
When speaking about his more ‘experimental texts’ in one interview, Laruelle recounts his ongoing project to ‘treat philosophy as a material, and thus also as a materiality – without preoccupying oneself with the aims of philosophy, of its dignity, of its quasi-theological ends, of philosophical virtues, wisdom etc.’ He then adds: ‘what interests me is philosophy as the material for an art, at the limit, an art.’
Yet what is true of these ‘experimental texts’ (that aim for art) is also true of all Laruelle’s works in as much as they partake in the same experiment: to demonstrate a new ‘posture’ as regards what philosophy is – both as a material and how it can be reviewed using art practices, such as photography (as outlined in his The Concept of Non-Photography and Photo-Fiction) or music. Hence, in his 2011 text Anti-Badiou, for instance, non-philosophy’s ‘initial project’ was, he says, to serialize the standard tonality of the philosophical scale -- to treat all of its pitches equally, as parameters or variables, so as to make heard a music other than the classical....’ In this talk I will examine this conceptual serialism in the context of Laruelle's 'democracy' of thought that attempts to equalise each and every philosophy - as materials for art. I will also take film art, specifically the case of parametric film-editing, as an alternative model for such serialism, whereby an equality of editing can create a democracy amongst images.
Readings
Laruelle, François. Anti-Badiou: The Introduction of Maoism into Philosophy. Trans. by Robin Mackay. London et al.: Bloomsbury 2013.
Ó Maoileaca, John. All Thoughts Are Equal: Laruelle and Nonhuman Philosophy. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press 2015. Forthcoming.
Biography
John Ó Maoilearca (John Mullarkey) is Professor of Film and Television Studies at Kingston University, London. He has also taught philosophy and film theory at the University of Sunderland, England and the University of Dundee, Scotland. He has published ten books, including (as author) Bergson and Philosophy (2000), Post-Continental Philosophy: An Outline (2006), Philosophy and the Moving Image: Refractions of Reality (2010), and (as editor) Laruelle and Non-Philosophy (2012) and The Bloomsbury Companion to Continental Philosophy (2013). His latest book is entitled, All Thoughts Are Equal: Laruelle and Nonhuman Philosophy (University of Minnesota Press, 2015).