Writing in the air. Reflections on performance and writing

Abstract

This essay aims the complex relationship between writing and performance, problematizing the way in which these practices relate to the ephemeral, the ineffable, and that which disappears. Through the metaphor of "writing in the air" and the exemplification with the works by postgraduate students of a writing workshop on performance studies at the UNC, an attempt is made to account for the operations that unfold in the process of performance writing, and there recognize there not a betrayal of the unrepeatability of the performative act but rather the generation of a "widening" space that feeds on what has happened, so as to prologue other universes through which the sense effects of that first performance event expand. Based on essays by Peggy Phelan and Rebecca Schneidder that problematize this question, we are interested in demonstrating the pertinence of the link between writing and performance as a profitable association that generates expansive territories and multiplies the effects of these two practices that come into relation. Bringing into discussion some of the conceptualizations that underlie this crossroads, our essay leads to the assessment of dialogical potentialities for these two spheres and also suggests some ideas from which this relationship could nourish new genres and formats for research and reflection studies on performances.