How do you articulate and define performance-as-research? How can performance-as-research open up possibilities for novel ways of understanding the synergy between artistic practice and theoretical inquiry?

The often uneasy binary between arts practice and the institutions of academe in the United States is perhaps even greater than the dichotomy existing between theory and practice. How might rigorous and innovative research occur within traditionally regarded performance pieces? Also, how might methods from other disciplines such as New Media Studies, Architecture, Anthropology, Education, and the Visual Arts consider their research as performative, expanding more traditional approaches within the field?

We welcome new forms of textual analysis and documentation, including the traditional academic article; we also desire to widen the aperture of performance writing, offering a continually evolving set of requirements and thus are looking for submissions of artistic and academic research presented in all formats, including traditional, creative, innovative, and integrative.

We ask for submissions in these five areas:

Articles
Multimedia/Digital Explorations
Visual Art
Performance Reviews
Book Reviews

If your investigation/project falls outside these categories but you believe may still exist within the spirit of the journal, please feel free to contact us.  

Articles

We welcome articles that engage with the prompt below:

When we write about performance, what happens to that performance? How does our writing about performance re-perform, redefine, and recreate the work? In this process, what does the source material now become? In what ways can the language we use to document or describe what happens in a specific space and temporality radically open up the work and its associative discourse/s, rather than act as a restraining force through analysis? There are many languages to explore and utilize in this investigation. We invite experiments in writing about/for/in performance. We invite the act of writing as research in itself, as a way to infiltrate, aerate, and celebrate the discoveries embedded in the process of making--and presenting--artistic work. Please see guidelines for specifications and style expectations.


Multimedia/Digital Explorations:

For digital content we additionally ponder: in what ways can digital content as performance and research open up a new realm of accessibility and inclusivity? How does a different form of accessibility via digital technology influence the work itself or how the work is perceived? How does your digital work dismantle, spur, or re-imagine research? How does your work “perform” digital research? Does your art function as an experiment? How do you identify yourself as a researching performance artist by the context and framing of your work? Who or what is the subject of the research? We invite exploration of these and other questions through various multimedia and digital media, including but not limited to: video, web-based pieces, photo essays, audio recording and graphic recording. Please see guidelines for specifications and style expectations.


Visual Art

PARtake contends that various modes of visual art have the ability to act as a form of performance in itself, detached from any formal exhibition of said work. Offering this as a challenge to prospective artists and critics, we welcome photo documentation of visual artworks that have been approached as a form of research-based inquiry (loosely construed). We welcome work from artists with or without accompanying written documentation explaining and/or critiquing the artwork as performance. Please see guidelines for specifications and style expectations.


Performance Reviews

To assess the state of the field and the ways in which artists engage in multiple modes of expressing narrative, we invite performance reviews of events used in/as research as well as those created specifically for exhibition and/or entertainment. We welcome performance reviews from various fields. Our performance reviews section will be published on an ongoing basis, beginning in April of 2016, so that we may exhibit criticism and exploration of works still in recent memory or continuing to perform. Please see guidelines for specifications and style expectations.

Book Reviews: We publish reviews of books relevant to performance in general, with a specific interest in Performance-As-Research, Performance Philosophy, Performance and Technology, and Performance Studies, broadly defined. Please see guidelines for format and submission process.