Performing trauma:
​exploring new forms of reenactment and assessing the possibilities of staging distress
DAISY CROOKE, JEMIMA WILSON, JOSE HOPKINS & MARIA SOWTER​

After an initial group discussion on Jeremy Deller’s 2001 participatory art project The Battle of Orgreave (as represented by Mike Figgis’ documentary),[1] it emerged that we had a shared interest in the concept of reenactment. Labelled by Claire Bishop as ‘ethically commendable’[2] and ‘irrefutably political,’[3] Deller’s celebrated work served as a point of departure for further discussions on the ethics of participation and the potential for reenactment to act as a vehicle for communicating and processing traumatic memory. We will explore the definitions of applied performance and reenactment, before carrying out research into different forms and sites of reenactment in the context of trauma. Via four different investigations, spanning sexual abuse, illegal abortion, forced displacement and war fatalities, we plan to analyse the ethics and forms of different approaches to reenacting and staging traumatic memories.

In order to justify a focus on reenactment within the framework of applied performance, it is necessary to explore the definition of both terms. The emergence of applied performance can be located in the so-called ‘social turn’[4] in the arts that occurred in the 1990s. This movement can be characterised as a shift away from traditional, aesthetically focused analyses of art towards interdisciplinary cultural practices that challenge authority and encourage participation.[5] This is also echoed in Tim Prentki’s definition of applied performance as ‘any art form that requires an audience, that makes a deliberate intervention in a social context,’[6] and it is with this expanded meaning that we will approach our research. In a similar vein, we are also in favour of broadening the definition of reenactment. Traditionally, reenactment is characterised as the physical acting out of a past event: Jennifer Allen argues that ‘reenactment uses the body as a medium for reproducing the past,’[7] while Louis van den Hengel characterises reenactment as ‘mobilizing the body’s affects across the boundaries of the present and the past.’[8] However, in an age of social media where people habitually perform themselves online, we want to expand this concept of the making and reception of applied theatre to include the online sphere of social media and internet art. As the arenas for (self-)representation expand, so therefore does our definition of reenactment extend past the physicality of the body. Our research plans to draw together traditional definitions with contemporary interpretations of reenactment as applied performance, to investigate how an expanded approach can broaden our understanding of its effects.

[1] Jeremy Deller, The Battle of Orgreave, Documentary film, directed by Mike Figgis (2001; London: ArtAngel Media) online video, accessed November 26, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ncrWxnxLjg.
[2] Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells. London & New York: Verso, 2012, 35.
[3] ibid.
[4] Claire Bishop, “The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents,” Artforum (February 2006): 178.
[5] Nato Thompson, “Living as Form,” in Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991-2011, edited by Nato Thompson, New York: Creative Time Books, 2012, 19.
[6] Tim Prentki, Skype conversation with the authors, November 21, 2017.
[7] Jennifer Allen, “‘Einmal ist Keinmal:’ Observations on Reenactment,” in Life, Once More: Forms of Reenactment in Contemporary Art, edited by Sven Lütticken, Rotterdam: Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art, 2005, 181.
[8] Louis van den Hengel, “Archives of Affect: Performance, Reenactment, and the Becoming of Memory,” in Materializing Memory in Art and Popular Culture, edited by Lászlo Munteán, Liedeke Plate and Anneke Smelik, New York: Routledge, 2017, 127.

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Case Studies 

To be or not to be.
​We will be.

​Theatre makers from Amsterdam theatre group DeGasten worked together with a group of refugees and asylum seekers to devise a performance which was staged in December. The actors are survivors of trauma and had been using mental health services for post-traumatic stress disorder, and mental health professionals had suggested the project for certain patients on a individual basis. The piece wove together monologues, dance, and one-on-one storytelling described as “sharing stones and flowers” which mirrors a technique used in Narrative Exposure Therapy, whereby survivors of trauma create an autobiographical narrative using physical objects to represent both positive and traumatic events in their lives. This can be seen as reenactment because the sharing of both positive and traumatic testimonies utilises the body and voice as a medium for reproducing the past (Jennifer Allen’s definition of reenactment).

We’re here because we’re here. 

Contemporary art project we’re here because we’re here by Jeremy Deller, where 2 thousand  male volunteers appeared dressed as WWI soldiers in silent groups around the UK in train stations, shopping malls and public spaces, to mark 100 years since the Battle of the Somme. Part of 14-18 NOW, the UK’s official arts programme marking the centenary of the First World War, the 2016 project attempted to reinvent (or reinvigorate) traditional commemoration which includes Remembrance Day’s two minutes of silence annually reenacted by the British public, which is increasingly further from the experience of lived trauma that it addresses. The project spread online with the hashtag WeAreHere given out by the performers on cards.

Aiweiwei reenacts the image of alan kurdi's death

Alan Kurdi was the Syrian toddler who drowned off the coast of Turkey on September 2nd 2015, shortly after increased reports of migrants and refugees attempting to cross the mediterranean sea. The image went viral online and came, for many, to encapsulate the entire tragedy of the so-called ‘migrant crisis’. A year later Ai Weiwei released a controversial image of himself also laying face-down on a beach after spending several months
working in Greece to receive those arriving on boats.

#Metoo

An online movement that became viral in October 2017 used to help demonstrate the widespread prevalence of sexual assault and harassment to women.  The phrase was actually first 2006 when Tamara Burke created the Metoo movement to raise awareness of the same issues. This sharing of testimonies on online platforms is a reenactment as the stories and experiences are re-lived and re-framed. The act of re-telling them is not only a way in which the trauma can be processed but this conversation between past and present gives the chance for the individuals to take ownership their stories and their affects, and transform them into political and social tools for activism and empowerment.