Performance philosopher Laura Cull and Fevered Sleep’s artistic director David Harradine reflect on their joint project Sheep Pig Goat, teasing out themes such as Laruelle’s non-philosophy (the proposition that philosophy can be done as well as read) and interspecies improvisation. They discuss how opening a research and performance space to both humans and animals created shifts in perspective for all concerned.
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Sheep Pig Goat video and project credits
This talk was part of Crossing Borders 2017 and was presented in partnership with London Contemporary Dance School.
David Harradine is co-artistic director of Fevered Sleep, making performance, film, installation, books and digital art. Fevered Sleep’s practice is research led, collaborative, and cross-disciplinary. It appears in very diverse places, from theatres, galleries and cinemas, to beaches, parks, schools and the spaces of everyday life: in people’s homes, on phones, online. It’s created collaborativel,y with artists, scientists, academics, children, professionals and non-professionals, who enter the work as research partners, co-creators, performers, thinkers, writers and participants.
This practice – which is concerned with making thoughtful, complex, empathetic, political art – explores a number of recurring themes: the connections between the human and more-than-human worlds, and how deeply identity develops in relation to place; intergenerational relationships and the life course, from childhood to death; and science/scientific phenomena (with subjects as diverse as the theory of biophilia, particle physics and X-ray crystallography).
David is also Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.
Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca is Head of the Department of Theatre & Dance and Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Surrey.
She is author of ‘Theatres of Immanence: Deleuze and the Ethics of Performance’ (2012); editor of ‘Deleuze and Performance’ (2009) and co-editor of ‘Encounters in Performance Philosophy’ (2014) with Alice Lagaay and ‘Manifesto Now! Instructions for Performance, Philosophy, Politics’ (2013) with Will Daddario.
She is a founding convener of the professional association, Performance Philosophy (http://www.performancephilosophy.org); joint series editor of the Performance Philosophy book series with Palgrave Macmillan and joint editor of the Performance Philosophy journal launched in 2015.
