ABSTRACT

In this chapter, the author compares the performance with practice as a basis for performance as research, gesturing towards what may be an impossibly radical notion of experimentation in practice. The distinction between 'performance as research' and 'practice as research' is usually glossed as a regional difference with little conceptual substance. The author reflects on the distinct lineages of performance and practice in contemporary thought, in order to show why it is necessary to think 'practice' and not just 'performance' as research; to demonstrate that the former is in a certain sense the more radical proposition; and to explore a few of its implications. He takes the most intimate, private-seeming, inward-directed practice and analyse it from the perspective of its implications as a representation circulating in a public sphere. The radical implications of conceiving practice as research are evident as soon as the author thinks about duration.