Perform, Citizen! On the Resource of Visibility in Performative Practice Between Invitation and Imperative

Abstract

‘I did not choose this theatre course. I do not want to go on stage’. Leyla, a 13-year-old student with whom I was working in my artistic research project School of Girls I, said this when we were preparing a public presentation of our research about what it means to be a female citizen—in the sense of being an active member—of our postmigrant (The term ‘postmigrant’, originally deriving from American cultural and literature studies, was brought into the German discussion by Sṃhermin Langhoff, director of the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin. The prefix ‘post’ does not name an end of migration, but marks cultural and social transformation, and negotiation processes that occur after migration has become characteristic for [German] society as a whole. [Foroutan et al., Deutschland postmigrantisch 1: Gesellschaft, Religion, Identität: Erste Ergebnisse. BIM, Berlin, 2014; Widmann: Was heißt postmigrantisch?, Berliner Zeitung. http://www.berliner-zeitung.de/naika-foroutan-was-heisst-postmigrantisch%2D%2D487520 , Accessed 19 Dec 2016, 2014]) society. I was disappointed, irritated, disempowered. Actually, my project was about inviting the 12 co-researching girls to take the stage, so becoming visible and audible as citizens in public. I noticed that I presupposed performing on stage would be a desirable moment of agency and would form an emancipatory approach to my research setup. However, Leyla’ s statement made me rethink the relation between visibility, performance, agency and citizenship.

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