The Difference of Performance as Research

Abstract

This article considers the proposition that performance as research is a series of embodied repetitions in time, on both micro (bodies, movements, sounds, improvisations, moments) and macro (events, productions, projects, installations) levels, in search of a series of differences. It investigates the proposition in terms of Bergson's notion of ‘creative evolution’ and Deleuze's engagement with it, and is concerned with questions such as: what nature of differences does performance as research give rise to? Where do the differences lie, in the repetitions or in the spaces in between? And is there a point at which the unleashing of differences is exhausted, a point at which, perhaps, the evolution becomes an involution, either a shrinkage of difference, an inverted return to the same, or, in the Deleuzian sense, a new production no longer dependent on differentiation but on transversal modes of becoming?