Putting out the chairs

• Published in: Stedelijk studies 2015-09, Vol.1
• Main Author: Kelleher, Joe
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 2405-7177; 2405-7177
• DOI: 10.54533/StedStud.vol003.art16

When I was invited to consider contributing an essay to this performance-themed issue of Stedelijk Studies, I was, at the time, deep into a rather intensive summer spent visiting a number of festivals—annuals and biennials mostly, dedicated to theater and performance, or to visual arts—largely around Europe. The experiences were, as might be imagined, highly diverse; but what has remained consistent through these travels—across the range of work I was encountering, but also in my own motivation to encounter it, to attend, and then to think with and through the various theaters and anti-theaters, shows and performances, exhibitions and installations, and what have you—was a sustained sense of the work itself as a source (indeed, a wealth of sources) of what we might be bound these days to refer to as “knowledge production.”