The Performance Studies International conference’s theme “OverFlow” takes a reverse view on the political tropes customary in “times of crisis” – “OverFlow” focuses on abundance, transgression, and leakage instead of the usually evoked themes of lack, restriction, and loss.
Cathy O’Carroll’s paper – ‘When the Amateur appears on the Scene: Leakage and Transgression between memorial, drama and personal testimony’ – Responded to the overall conference theme of ‘Overflow’ examining the ‘overflow’ between performance, memory and ritual in Ireland Shed a Tear? by Michael Collins and These Rooms by ANU and CoisCéam Dance Theatre.
“I pursue the interconnection of amateurism, motivation and intervention through philosopher Bernard Stiegler’s theoretical construction of ‘the amateur’ […] Amateur participation acts within a libidinal economy of desire producing an abundance that represents a redemptive milieu within our exhausted economy of creative capital. This is a motivational force, that overflows the boundaries of passive spectatorship to initiate further doing in the world; to open both work and world to beneficent processes of psycho social transformation.” (Cathy O’Carroll, 2017)
The Aesthetics Research Group 