chr 500-0bchr 500-0bchr 500-0bchr 500-0b
  • Home
  • About
    • DSI-NRF Flagship
    • Partnerships
    • Funders
    • Staff
    • Reports
  • Research Platforms
    • Areas of Focus
      • Aesthetic Education and the Becoming Technical of the Human
      • Migrating Violence
      • Political Theory and Philosophy
      • Visual History and Theory
      • Kinetic Objects
      • Communicating the Humanities
    • NRF SARChI Chair in Visual History & Theory
      • Postgraduate bursaries and postdoctoral fellowships in Visual History & Theory
      • Postgraduate Module In Visual History, 2023 (HIS 735/835)
    • Andrew W. Mellon Chair of Aesthetic Theory and Material Performance
    • Factory of the Arts
      • About the Factory of the Arts
      • Convening the Factory of the Arts
      • Artists in Residence
    • Laboratory of Kinetic Objects
    • Other Universals
    • Seminar Programme
    • Publications
  • Greatmore
  • Fellowship Programme
    • Fellows
    • Winter School
    • Visiting Scholars
  • Media
    • Video
    • Podcast
    • Galleries
    • Film
  • Events
    • Workshops
    • Conferences
    • Lectures
    • Special Meetings
    • Colloquia
    • Seminars
    • Exhibitions
    • Arts Events
  • News
  • Contact
✕

PAN: A Performance Lecture

Critical Times December 2019 cover image

The CHR warmly congratulates Professor Jane Taylor on winning the UWC Arts Faculty’s research award within the creative arts category. Professor Taylor was awarded the award for Creative Research for her paper “PAN: A Performance Lecture” published in Critical Times (2019) 2:3: 493-517.

The paper is a combination of a playscript exploring the intersections of performance theory, Primate research, AI and race theory in the early twentieth century, as well as a theoretical discussion of these terrains, with some close analysis of the meaning of the history of cybernetics and AI for the debate.

Abstract:

In this text, the script of a performance/lecture, which combines live puppetry, digital film, and a lecture, is paired with a prefatory essay that seeks to address the theoretical questions raised by the play about embodiment, mind, AI, and the staging of consciousness. The play was performed at the Centre for the Less Good Idea, an arts laboratory, in Maboneng, Johannesburg, South Africa, in October 2018. In the play, two characters stand in as the early pioneers of primate research, Wolfgang Köhler (an early Gestalt psychologist) and Jane Goodall, whose observational fieldwork shifted primate studies profoundly. These two distinctive intellects advanced the commitment of the human species to work toward the preservation of, and engagement with, higher primates and in such ways altered our apprehension of the limits of the human through a challenge posed by our closest nonhuman kin. The play also explores the research of Norbert Wiener, the pioneer of the field of cybernetics (a term that he invented). Wiener inaugurated the massive proliferation of research into “feedback” theory, which he saw as fundamental to mechanic intelligence. In such terms, Wiener too was thinking about the limits of the human. The play introduces some discussion of artistic responses to these fields of inquiry through exploring the writings of Samuel Beckett and J. M. Coetzee. The play also addresses ethical questions about the uses of research. Both Wiener and Köhler used their work on the humanities in order to address our obligation to the human. At the same time, the play addresses our relations to those who, for reasons of ideology, “fall” outside of our definitions of the fully human. Much of the persuasive power of the work arises from the uncanny performances and in particular the staging of a life-sized wooden chimpanzee puppet. In this sense, the work makes an argument about meaning as embodied.

READ HERE

Jane Taylor

Andrew W. Mellon Chair of Aesthetic Theory and Material Performance
Convenor of LoKO

VIEW PROFILE
Share
0

Recent News

September 26, 2023

On Non Western Marxisms


Read more

Images: Nafasi Academy. Credit: Kim Gurney

September 21, 2023

Publication announcement: Dr Kim Gurney, ‘Epistemic Disobedience’.


Read more
September 20, 2023

Award Announcement: Aja Marneweck, “Best Faculty Academic Impact: Creative Arts Output Award 2022.”


Read more
September 7, 2023

Oscillations Workshop: Sonic Inquiries and Practices


Read more

Research Platforms

  • NRF SARChI Chair in Visual History and Theory
  • Andrew W. Mellon Chair of Aesthetic Theory and Material Performance
  • Factory of the Arts
  • Laboratory of Kinetic Objects
  • Seminar Programme
  • Publications

Recently Added

  • On Non Western Marxisms
    September 26, 2023
  • Publication announcement: Dr Kim Gurney, ‘Epistemic Disobedience’.
    September 21, 2023
  • Award Announcement: Aja Marneweck, “Best Faculty Academic Impact: Creative Arts Output Award 2022.”
    September 20, 2023
✕

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER


Stay up to date with the latest news and developments from the Centre for Humanities Research.



© 2017 The Centre for Humanities Research. All Rights Reserved. Designed By Spotkolours Design