ABSTRACT
This chapter continues the discussion introduced in Chapter 1 in which applied performance activity is viewed as creating a space of potentiality. The appreciation of space as a liminal milieu – a temporary, facilitated environment – is developed further to examine how performance activity can create atmospheres of recovery. Analysis of the inter-human recovery-orientated attunement experienced during the theatre-making process of The Antidote is extended to ideas of attuning to the nonhuman in the example of FK Alexander’s performance of Recovery, in which objects generating sound generated the felt experience. The politics of these arts practices are framed as providing alternative milieus, or atmospheres, that can support the development of recovery identity as well as creating an ‘aesthetics of critical visibility’ (Fisher 2017) that provokes us to examine how we approach practices of wellbeing in society.
