To Be Powerful Without the Means of Power

<i>aCORdo</i> by Alice Ripoll and <i>Azdora</i> by Markus Öhrn

Authors

  • Silvia Bottiroli
  • Livia Andrea Piazza

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Abstract

This article inquires into the tension between power as restriction and power as empowerment, as investigated by means of performance in two works: aCORdo by Alice Ripoll and Azdora by Markus Öhrn. These works, which offer a glimpse of the possible shifts from ‘power over’ to ‘power to,’ are put into dialogue with feminist thinkers Luisa Muraro and Rosi Braidotti. Their concepts of authority as a way ‘to be powerful without the means of power’ and of potentia as ‘the capability of enduring and resisting’ are oriented to think power as oriented to the construction of possibilities and relationships. The two performances give to these concepts a body marked by a specific identity: the poor man of colour and the industrious housewife. Yet, rather than setting at the centre the bodies themselves, the works complexify the relationships around them. Through the theatre device, they flip around a set of relations between fixed identities and open them up to often unnoticed ways of performing power and authority, embed their transformation process in a radical relationality, and set the conditions for the experience of an affirmative potentia.

Author Biographies

Silvia Bottiroli

Silvia Bottiroli, PhD, lives in Bologna and works as an independent curator, researcher, organizer and educator in the field of performing arts. Her current research is focused on the politics of performativity and spectatorship and on the intersections between artistic and curatorial practices and education.  She was the artistic director of DAS Theatre in Amsterdam (2018–2021) and of Santarcangelo Festival (2012–2016). She curated various artistic, discursive, and educational platforms, collaborating among others with Kunsten Festival des Arts (Brussels), Vooruit (Ghent), Homo Novus Festival (Riga) and School of Visual Theatre (Jerusalem). Since 2011 she has taught Methodology, Critique, and Research in the Arts at Bocconi University in Milan and since 2019 she has cocurated together with Kee Hong Low the programme For the Time Being for Freespace in Hong Kong.

Livia Andrea Piazza

Livia Andrea Piazza (Brussels/Giessen) works as researcher and practitioner in the field of performing arts. Since 2019, she has been a research and teaching fellow for Artistic Practice at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies (Justus Liebig University) in Giessen; and since 2018 she has taught at Bocconi University (Milan). She holds a PhD in Cultural Studies (Leuphana University Lüneburg, 2015) and her current academic research focusses on the political economy of performance. She has engaged with different collective research platforms (a.o. Aleppo/Brussels, Critical Practice Made in YU) and, as a practitioner, she has worked as an independent dramaturg and as a curator for discursive programs within festivals and art institutions, such as Santarcangelo Festival (IT), Homo Novus Festival (LV), DAS Theatre (NL), a.pass (BE), PACT Zollverein (DE).

References

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Bishop, Claire. 2012. Artificial Hells: Participatory art and the politics of spectatorship. London: Verso.

Braidotti, Rosi. 2019. Materialismo radicale: itinerari etici per cyborg e cattive ragazze. Milano: Mimesis.

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Butler, Judith, and Athena Athanasiou. 2013. Dispossession: The performative in the political. Cambridge: Polity.

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Lorey, Isabell. 2015. State of Insecurity: Government of the Precarious. London: Verso.

Miti di Romagna. “Azdora. La padrona della cucina.” Accessed August 6, 2021. http://www.mitidiromagna.it/azdora.asp

Muraro, Luisa. 2017. Autorità. Torino: Lexis.

Puar, Jasbir. 2012. “Precarity Talk: A Virtual Roundtable with Laurent Berlant, Judith Butler, Bojana Cvejić, Isabell Lorey, Jasbir Puar and Ana Vujanović.” TDR/The Drama Review 56 (4): 163–177. https://doi.org/10.1162/DRAM_a_00221

Santarcangelo Festival. 2015. Markus Öhrn / Azdora project. Vimeo, 2015. Accessed August 6, 2021. https://vimeo.com/140811087

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Published

22-04-2022

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 1 (2022): Power and Powerlessness in Performance

Section

Articles

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Copyright (c) 2022 Livia Andrea Piazza, Silvia Bottiroli

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