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Tuesday April 30, 2024 | Home > Performing Presence > Research Students > Laura Cull |
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Laura CullI am an artist-researcher, with interests in the potential relationships between the theory and practice of performance, between Live Art and theatre, and between performance processes and ethical investigation. I studied Fine Art at the Slade School, 1998-2002, during which time my creative practice broadened its scope - from an initial concentration on painting and drawing, towards an open use of various media and methods, including performance, installation and writing. After completing a BA at the Slade, I continued to practice as a professional artist whilst studying, part-time, for an MA in Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, 2002-2004. My research at Goldsmiths focussed on Continental Philosophy and specifically investigated the attitude to the mind/body distinction of a number of thinkers including: Nietzsche, Freud and Bataille. Becoming increasingly devoted to explorations through performance, I began work on a new piece in the summer of 2004, in parallel with my final MA thesis project on Bataille. The performance: ÔThe Scene at the SavoyÕ started as a performed reading of the Introduction to BatailleÕs 1934 novel, Blue of Noon. Through the course of multiple re-presentations, the work has since transformed into a series of corporeal experiments, motivated by an interest in the nature of the economy between audience and performer. In April 2004, I took up the role of Project Officer for the PARIP (Practice as Research in Performance) research project based in the Department of Drama at the University of Bristol (see www.bris.ac.uk/parip). I am joining the Performing Presence project as a PhD researcher. On application, my thesis was given the provisional title: ‘In the presence of others: performance practice as ethical investigation, from Brecht to Forced Entertainment’. It seems to me that in debates around the notion of presence, it is all too quickly assumed that presence is necessarily a characteristic of what is often referred to as ‘traditional performance’. However, I would contend that the relation between performer and audience in such performances is considerably more complex than this assumption implies. Presence can be seen to be deferred, confounded and destabilised by performance when this relation is thought as subject to psychic as well as technological mediation. |