ABSTRACT
This chapter progresses from the question of artistic responses to 9/11 – the lack of which represented a kind of secondary civil crisis for New York in 2001-02 – to a consideration of event theory and the philosophy of the gift in relation to the dilemma of response.1 This shall entail a discussion of the post-structuralist critique of speech act theory. The actual performance materials to which I shall refer do not issue from the contemporary moment. They are, nevertheless, theoretically and historically relevant. To approach the question of movement’s transmission I shall turn to the Bateson/Mead film Learning to Dance in Bali (1936-39), and I shall conclude with Tatsumi Hijikata’s buto performance in the film Navel and A-Bomb (1960).
