Award Information
The proposed project investigates the role of embodied performance in community mobilizations for social change. Preliminary research in South Africa has shown that citizens are adapting anti-apartheid performances and creating new forms in response to present conditions. I will conduct a year of research involving participant-observation, interviews, archival research and visual methodologies to situate contemporary performance activism within a longer historical trajectory. I will observe contemporary protest performances in the internal practices, external interactions, and daily routines of a community organization. Archival research will provide historical comparisons with apartheid-era protest performances. Through its focus on the performance aspects of collective action, this project will contribute to studies of social movements, political performance and the moving body.