On Ice

Gough, R (2013) On Ice. UNSPECIFIED. (In Press)

Abstract / Summary

This special issue of the journal Performance Research - On Ice is one theme within a quartet: Fire, Ice, Hunger and Thirst scheduled for 2013- 15., As General Editor of Performance Research, Gough has had overall responsibility for all 32 issues of the journal published in this REF period (the journal now comprises six issues per volume together with a an annual PR book equivalent to another three issues) and has co-edited issues annually and contributed to several. However, the issues On Fire and On Ice are solo edited and contain extended editorials together with a substantive framing introductory article. The themes are testament to a curatorial vision of the journal that pushes boundaries of the discipline and create opportunities for interdisciplinary research, thinking (and writing) outside convention, collaboration between academic enquiry and artistic research and the generation of new knowledge., This issue contains reflective and speculative works on performance and ice - written or curated from a contemporary perspective AND historical accounts and in-depth critiques of ice and theatre across time and cultures, from ritual to folk customs, to performance art, civic ceremony, climate-change awareness and the use of ice and performance in acts of protest, contemplation, resistance and defiance. The editorial frames these issues and includes introductory comments to each contribution., Gough’s own article speculates on what possibilities might exist for theatre/performance to take on the condition of ice - strength and fragility, exquisite structure yet impermanence, being ephemeral and transient, able to suspend time and yet release time in unmeasured duration, retaining disinterest and distance. It focuses on the relationship with time and the potential for ice to capture time with clinical disinterest and yet release time in unpredictable measure through melting and sublimation, thawing duration, traceless disappearance. Ice freezes time and ice, like fire, transforms life.

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