Call for Papers for the Experimental Symposium
“The theatre, a behavioural laboratory for climate change?”
Conference organised by Eliane Beaufils, Barbara Bonnefoy and Oulmann Zerhouni, at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme-Paris Nord, on the 21st to the 24th of October 2020.
The starting point of this research is a study of theatrical forms that confront the climate catastrophe and the crisis of the human relationship with the environment. It focuses more specifically on the question of whether theatre can contribute to changing behaviour.
The question might seem very naïve, given the recurrent disappointments that the various theatres described as political during the 20th century have reserved for their most ardent advocates. Wasn’t the Brechtian theatre in particular driven by a desire to explore material behaviour and “thinking behaviour”, in order to reflect on and transform them? The stage was the place of “intervening thought", with a more or less direct influence on the actions of the spectators. The idea that awareness can contribute to the rapid and detectable change of individual actions has since been disappointed, strongly tempered or has shown its limits – in social psychology as well as in art studies. In this context, different questions can be raised, especially on how to evaluate the effects of an artistic work.
It is therefore not without a touch of paradox and utopia that the colloquium would like to undertake in October the study of apparatuses that attempt to act in spite of everything. This question is acutely relevant for most researchers confronted with climate change, as it cannot be reduced to a political change. Thus Carl Lavery entitled his latest book: Performance and Ecology : What Can Theater Do ?
In the first place, the conference would like to study all theatrical experiments that use the knowledge and bodies of the spectators beyond their reflection, by asking them to participate. This focus is due to the colossal difficulty of thinking about climate change, to the ostensible failure of extra-theatrical didactic avenues (IPCC researchers' appeals, reports, etc.) and to the recurrent paralysis observed among informed politicians and fellow citizens.
In order to study the way in which new behaviours could be set in motion, it also seems relevant to cross the knowledge of the theatre with that of the social sciences, particularly social psychology, which is the complementary field of research of this conference.
As a result, the symposium will include:
- a theoretical component focusing on participatory theatres in relation to global warming,
- and an inter-disciplinary and practical component aimed at intersecting knowledge and ideas.
The participants in the symposium (artists, students and researchers) will reflect on ways of making these crossings and will try to test initial research results or hypotheses developed by different social science researchers in artistic workshops.
Marilyn Strathern's idea that the stories we know enable us to tell other stories inspires the following idea: Laboratory theatres or psychological laboratories could inspire artistic laboratories with regard to climate change.
In this way, an attempt will be made to move closer to a capability research: research that would not only make observations and recommendations but would also contribute to the development of the arts and the capacities of individuals with regard to global warming.
In order to better grasp the thought process that led to the concept of this experimental colloquium, a few theoretical considerations have to be recalled.
1) Prelude - An object that exceeds thought and abilities
It is necessary to come back to the extreme difficulty of confronting (oneself to) global warming, as it shows the urgency to invest in this field of cross research. The climatic object escapes the very character of an “object”: it can’t be an “ob-ject” that would be placed “before/ob” oneself, in a place where one can contemplate it from the position of subject and grasp it by thought. It undermines the Cartesian position of the thinking subject who cannot grasp the contents and arrange them as usual on a scene of thought. Thinking the global warming goes hand in hand with becoming aware of Gaïa (Lovelock, Latour). In this process, awareness is brought to the fact that each individual is part of a living and moving whole which, beyond systemic characteristics, is also driven by entropic dynamics.
If it is not possible to think the "being-togetherness in Gaïa", at least we can begin to experience it and act according to Gaia, or even with her. For example, by developing new gestures or interacting differently with others, we can facilitate the elaboration of new actions. This way, we can also change the meaning of notions, like interdependence and co-presence. This means being a part of a dynamic whole in a capacitative way and becoming an ecocritical subject (Posthumus).
It is important to study the extent to which participatory apparatuses make it possible to avoid frontal arrangements between artists and spectators that would somehow redouble the frontality of thought, as well as the opposition subject/object, nature/culture. Aren’t participatory theatres making the spectators become dramatic subjects again, resulting in a very anthropocentric display? The subject of dramatic narrations often relates to a traditional ethic, in a way that was already challenged by Hans Jonas : the traditional ethic starts from human subjects in relation to other human subjects within human socialities and according to a principle of equality. It does not take into account non-human living beings, let alone water, wind and geological materials; it does not consider time outside the temporality of human actions; it is situated on the human scale and not on microscopic or planetary scales that go far beyond the scope of individual action and human temporalities. The question even arises as to whether it is possible to envisage, i.e. to inscribe ecocritical subjects in societies as we know them.
It is certain that the alarming findings of scientists refer largely to traditional ethics, since it is the responsibility of the citizens of the globalized world that is being targeted - each person to a different extent. The question therefore arises as to how theatre performances could focus on human behaviour and (power) apparatuses that go beyond individuals without returning to the perspectives of traditional ethics. How can we disconnect ourselves from the modes of judgement regarding action? And how can we in turn reinvent this action?
This is where theatre can intersect with other human sciences, which seek to study, invent or predict other types of behaviour and relationships. Although social sciences are often bound to ethics and anthropocentric categories, it would be all the more interesting to see how sociological or psycho-sociological questions can feed into practice-as-research and in return be also affected or shifted by them.
To cope with a changing environment, the current state of psychological knowledge suggests that individuals' self-regulatory abilities are essential: these abilities result from the way individuals adjust their level of physiological activation in response to environmental stressors (e.g., Porges, 2007). Repeated exposure to stressors, leading to chronic overactivation of these self-regulatory mechanisms, results in an alteration of the neural structures involved in self-regulation, leading to maladaptive behaviours. In other words, stress would go hand in hand with avoidance and withdrawal strategies and would threaten the development of new supportive social structures. Empathetic processes are related to self-regulatory abilities because they are necessary for identifying and understanding the emotional states and needs of others, thus ensuring cooperation and maintaining group survival. These problems are obviously accentuated when the survival of the group is linked to that of the environment comprising “all others”. Theatrical performances could allow spectators to experience and reflect on these capacities, either by challenging a reluctant audience or by stimulating existent willingness to invent new abilities.
2) The study of behavioural change and theatre
The research conducted in the context of the conference will focus on apparatuses that would be linked to aesthetic behavioural laboratories. If we start from the idea that we need to invent new relationships with others - with living and non-living beings and with things - such an invention itself would in fact be more of a praxis, an experiment. Ideally, it could leave room for all participants to react without hindrance, to inject individual creativity, and to contribute to the co-creation of worlds in a way that is itself co-creative. This latitude may be left open by procedural apparatuses.
To this day, only a few art projects explore the relationship to global warming in this way. Since 2001, the Critical Art Ensemble has, for example, designed complex devices such as GenTerra with the help of biologists, which aim to test the behaviour of participants in transgenic experiments that hybridize animal and plant strains. Participants are even called upon to take responsibility for triggering or propagating the experiments. In a way, this work extends scientific tests by other means. It carefully blurs the boundaries between science, ethics and aesthetics. Its effect is primarily ethical and aesthetic, but it requires complex reflection on the part of the spectators.
It thus resembles other examples of laboratory theatres carried out in the past. Jochen Gerz with Purple Cross for Absent Now (1979) and Rod Dickinson with The Milgram Re-enactment (2002) have proposed performances derived from Stanley Milgram's famous experiment on obedience to authority; Richard Serra reproduced the prisoner’s dilemma in 1974 ; and in his performance Repetition from 2005, Artur Zmijewski used the psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo's test known as the “Stanford Prison Experiment” in which the roles of prisoners and guards were randomly assigned.
So, there have been performances derived from scientific experiments. The results of these experiments, however, were known. The outcome of the artistic experiments was fairly predictable, and the scientific results influenced the reactions of some participants. Playing with scientific modalities also contributes to the playfulness of the aesthetic experience.
However, it would be interesting to conceive apparatuses that are not based on previously known scientific experiments. Like many other participatory theatres, these approaches would draw on the freedom of interpretation and positioning of the receiver. It thus would also rely on the playful nature of an action that certainly has an end - since the interest would lie in an experimental relationship with human/non-human environments - but on an action that does not follow a pure scientific rationality or a need for results.
The difficulties of composing such apparatuses with an indeterminate outcome should not be underestimated. Participatory arts specialist Kai van Eikels points out the problems of manipulating reactions, or of biases introduced by the expectations nourished by the spectators. Art is perhaps not always the space where the criteria of judgement are put out of play. Being invited to build new relationships with other people or living beings might also be uncomfortable. These difficulties will have to be analysed in theatre studies as well as in social psychology or ergonomics, by being related to specific performances.
3) From laboratory to laboratory
But laboratory theatres can perhaps initiate encounters, curiosities and questions. Perhaps they could even give rise to desires, if only the desire to communicate what one has experienced to others, and thus to inflect the narrative of oneself, of one's ideas, which would bring performative identity into play.
They would then be likely to open up a field of study to the experimental social sciences. Not only would it be interesting to analyse modes of participation and reception from the point of view of social psychology, geography and ergonomics, but the artistic works could give the idea of experiments to be carried out in a more precise way in a psychology laboratory according to the criteria of the discipline. The sharing of methodologies which has already begun with interviewing and reception studies could be extended to other areas.
Perhaps theatre could even be conceived as an epistemological tool in its own right for such sciences, as shown by the recent experiment conducted by Yann Calbérac and Michel Lussaut. In their two-part participatory show "Faire monde commun", the geographers accompanied by two artists invited spectators to experiment with their relationship to the space on the stage and analyse their reactions.
Given the low number of practice-as-research projects based on social science knowledge with regard to global warming, it would undoubtedly be interesting to study how we could draw inspiration from the questions developed in social science to develop new artistic devices. Thus the conference calls upon any researcher in social psychology, geography, sociology or ergonomics who would like to share research or problems relating to behavioural changes in relation to global warming, and who would like these questions to give rise to theatrical experiments in which they could take part. It also urgently appeals to researchers interested in the methodologies of practise-as-research.
For example, the project's psychology partners intend to revisit studies that have shown a negative relationship between authoritarian attitudes and ecology – notably because of the belief in the human right to dispose of animals and their environment because of their superiority, as well as the link between authoritarianism, stress regulation, and prosocial attitudes. Thus, according to Oulmann Zerhouni, for example, it would be appropriate to test the capacity of play and performance to promote (i) the emergence of prosocial behaviour by training empathic resonance and/or (ii) better regulation of environmental stress, but also another relationship with living organisms and more broadly with the ecosystem.
More generally, the project of cross methodologies and fields of research would make it possible to develop a line of research around the processes at stake in participatory performances, according to their various modalities, the personalities of the performers or moderators, and their various locations, in cultural establishments, in urban public space, or in more "natural" spaces.
Last but not least, workshops bringing together researchers and students from various disciplines will be conducted during the symposium by artists and artist-researchers in an attempt to explore in practice how these questions and needs for scientific experiments could inspire scenic devices. The research-creation workshops initiated during the colloquium will be extended as far as possible in the form of university or extra-university workshops (residencies) taking place between January and June 2021. They should give rise to performances in various venues in Paris but grouped together under the umbrella of a colloquium-festival in 2021.
The receptions would be analysed by various means (aesthetic, psychological, geographical, sociological) during these performances and prior to the colloquium-festival, which will attempt to provide analytical feedback and deepen certain reflections from the first colloquium.
Proposals for contributions may be inspired by the following axes and questions :
1/ performance studies, theater studies, art history :
- What are the specificities of participatory theatricality, its potential, risks and limits, particularly in view of global warming?
- What are the (recurrent) difficulties encountered by political or critical mechanisms?
- What participatory experiments have been carried out with regard to global warming? We could also take into consideration works that do not primarily focus on change, while opening up to future behaviours: Dying Together by Lotte van den Berg, Pillow Talks by Begüm Erciyas or 1968, by the Norwegian collective by proxy.
2/ Crossing methodological tools :
- it would be very helpful for performance studies to reflect on the psychological and philosophical concepts such as potentia (Spinoza, Deleuze), pro-activity, or capacity (Cynthia Fleury); on their foundations or stimuli, on the forms they can take, on their structures or vectors, which will allow the development of tools for the analysis of artistic devices.
- it is necessary to think in reverse about what inhibits thought, action and participation.
- the concept of resonance developed by Lorenz Aggerman (theater studies) and Hartmut Rosa (sociology) seems likely to take on multiple forms during performances : it can be understood in relation to other people and the environment in the broadest sense. What methodological applications could be developed from this concept ?
3/ social sciences
- it is essential to confront psychosocial, ergonomic or geographical questions that would be interesting to carry out or develop during stage experiments.
- It would be helpful to make an analytical return on the artistic experiments carried out with regard to global warming from the point of view of experimental social sciences. The analyses could consider the project of Yann Calbérac and Michel Lussault in geography, and those made in sociology or political science by Bruno Latour, François Ribac, or Dominique Bourg.
The various lines of questioning will give rise to several interdisciplinary round tables throughout the conference.
Proposals for contributions may be sent to Eliane Beaufils, Oulmann Zerhouni and Barbara Bonnefoy until 3 July 2020, accompanied by a short biobibliography. Proposals should be at least 300 words in length and should specify the nature of the contribution: long lecture (30 min), short lecture (15 min) or participation in a round-table discussion.
Responses will be sent in mid-July. Registration for the workshops will open in September. The workshops will be led by the artists and researchers Ivana Müller, Halory Goerger, Billinger&Schulz, Flore Garcin-Marrou, Alix de Morant and Chloé Déchery.
Eliane Beaufils eliane.beaufils03@univ-paris8.fr , Oulmann Zerhouni zerhounioulmann@gmail.com, Barbara Bonnefoy barbara.bonnefoy@gmail.com