The Future of Performance in the Era of Global Surveillance Lecture

The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center presented the lecture The Future of Performance in the Era of Global Surveillance, livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Tuesday 20 September 2016 at 9 a.m. PDT (Los Angeles) / 11 a.m. CDT (Chicago) / 12 p.m. EDT (New York). Share your thoughts on Twitter and Instagram with #howlround.

James Harding’s lecture considers the future of theatre and performance in light of the expansive collecting and marketing of data by private corporations that cater to government agencies. Whatever its earlier forms, surveillance as a contemporary socio-political phenomenon is now less concerned today with real-time observation than with the collection of processable data that can be packaged as a commodity and marketed globally as a tool for manipulation, security and political control. Followed by a dialogue with Peter Eckersall.

James Harding teaches Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland. Recent publications include: The Ghosts of the Avant-Garde(s): Exorcising Experimental Theatre and Performance (Michigan, 2013).

Hosted by the PhD Program in Theatre at The Graduate Center CUNY and The Segal Center.

James M. Harding is the author of The Ghosts of the Avant-Garde(s): Exorcising Experimental Theatre and Performance (Michigan, 2013), Cutting Performances: Collage Events, Feminist Artists and the American Avant-Garde (Michigan, 2010), and Adorno and “A Writing of the Ruins”: Essays on Modern Aesthetics and Anglo-American Literature and Culture (SUNY, 1997). He is an internationally known scholar whose work focuses on the history of experimental theatre, on post 9/11 theatre and performance, on the intersection of surveillance and performance, and on performance studies more generally. His articles have appeared in TDR, Performance International, Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Modern Drama, and PMLA. He is currently finishing a new monograph tentatively entitled Performance, Transparency, and the Cultures of Surveillance and a co-edited anthology entitled Center-Staging the Sixties: Mainstream and Popular Performance in a Turbulent Decade.

Peter Eckersall is Professor of Asian Theatre at the Graduate Centre, City University of New York. Recent publications include We’re People Who Do Shows, Back to Back Theatre: Performance, Politics, Visibility (co-edited with Helena Grehan, Performance Research Books, 2013), Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific: Regional Modernities in the Global Era (co-authored with Denise Varney, Barbara Hatley, and Chris Hudson, Palgrave 2013) and Performativity and Event in 1960s Japan: City, Body, Memory (Palgrave 2013). He was the cofounder of Dramaturgies and was the resident dramaturg for the performance group Not Yet It’s Difficult.

About HowlRound TV

HowlRound TV is a global, commons-based peer produced, open access livestreaming and video archive project stewarded by the nonprofit HowlRound. HowlRound TV is a free and shared resource for live conversations and performances relevant to the world's performing arts and cultural fields. Its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and to develop our knowledge commons collectively. Participate in a community of peer organizations revolutionizing the flow of information, knowledge, and access in our field by becoming a producer and co-producing with us. Learn more by going to our participate page. For any other queries, email [email protected], or call Vijay Mathew at +1 917.686.3185 Signal/WhatsApp. View the video archive of past events.