Fill/Flash/Memory: A History of Flash Mobs

Abstract

This essay offers a genealogy/history of flash mobs, a form of performance that emerged on the streets of New York City in 2003. Through the construction of both a comparative analysis with the traditional archive, as well as a performative genealogy based upon the work of Michel Foucault and Joseph Roach, I reveal a network of specific practices and behaviors linking flash mobs to the historical avant-garde and other less-acclaimed sites of performance, as well as examining the particular characteristics of flash mobs that make them unique performance events.

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