Writing for Performance: Embodied Creativity

• In Event: Rethinking Pecha Kucha as Inquiry: Intersecting Multisensory Preparation and Performances to Construct Knowledge

Abstract

Objectives
This presentation combines performance poetry with a pecha kucha presentation format to highlight the rhythmic power and performativity of both pecha kucha and performance poetry as increasingly popular forms of research presentation and dissemination.

Theoretical Framework
This presentation draws on performance studies scholarship, in particular the performance ethnography scholarship of Madison (2010) and Spry (2001), in its celebration of performance poetry as one of the original forms of public performance. Somers-Willett (2009) reminds us of the ways in which contemporary performance poetry can be marketed to both scholarly and mainstream audiences. Activist research that uses arts based approaches like slam and performance poetry understands its border-crossing and public pedagogical power, disciplinarily, creatively and politically. This presentation will draw on a new performance writing text for its discussion of how both pecha kucha and performance are reaching new audiences (in and outside of academia) in effective ways.

Modes of Inquiry
Short forms such as pecha kucha and performance poetry are gaining traction in the academy in which dissemination and public scholarship are new and important goals for many. Spry (2001) has articulated the ways in which autoethnography and other performance ethnography “originates as a discourse from the margins of dominant culture” (p. 710), and slam as a variant of performative arts based research. Drawing on the multiple perspectives that performance poetry allows, this presentation evokes the aesthetics, empathy and evocative nature of autoethnographic performance, and equally draws upon the discourse analysis to ethnographically embed and critically analyze these observations.

Data Sources
In keeping with pecha kucha style, this presentation will include images from popular culture and performance/drama education in which the performative nature of teaching, learning and education scholarship are all informed by – and also inform – the ways in which culture is constructed and performed. Using pecha kucha as an innovative scholarly form of inquiry, the intersection of performance, autoethnography, and visual culture offers multisensory ways into research creation and new knowledge construction and dissemination.

Results and/or Conclusions
Performance theory, autoethnography, and gender and feminist research all offer evolving lenses to investigate the multitude of queer voices and politics increasingly available to researchers and students in our scholarly and activist work. The pecha kucha format allows a distillation of those voices and perspectives as a performative snapshot of a research study.


Scholarly Significance
This style of presentation articulates both the scholarship and need for multiplicity of voices and subjectivities in the work of arts based and arts informed research. Methodological, epistemological and formal diversities are expanding the field in increasingly diverse and dynamic ways, and performance poetry, pecha kucha and other ‘short forms’ contribute importantly to the performative and scholarly robustness of arts-based research.

Author

• Anne M. Harris, Monash University