Performing Ice

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

   PDF

2. Performing Ice: Histories, Theories, Contexts

   • Elizabeth Leane, Carolyn Philpott, Matt Delbridge

   Pages 1-25

3. Staging the Construction of Place in Two Antarctic Plays

   • Hanne E. F. Nielsen

   Pages 27-53

4. Figures in a Landscape

   • Douglas Quin

   Pages 55-86

5. Mixing Ice: DJ Spooky’s Musical Portraits of the Arctic and Antarctic

   • Carolyn Philpott

   Pages 87-112

6. One Year Performance 1921–22, or Two Men in a Boat

   • Mike Pearson

   Pages 113-129

7. The Eco-Cruelty of the Great Finnish Famine of 1695–97: Artaud’s Anarchic Ethics at the Climax of the Little Ice Age

   • Riku Roihankorpi

   Pages 131-152

8. Immersion: The Aquatic Ice Body

   • Tace Kelly, Kit Wise

   Pages 153-170

9. Performing Sovereignty over an Ice Continent

   • Elizabeth Leane, Julia Jabour

   Pages 171-193

10. The Gigaton Ice Theatre: Performing Ecoactivism in Antarctica

    • Leslie Carol Roberts

    Pages 195-212

11. Hiking Beyond Roads and Internet: Weather, Landscapes and Performance North of the Arctic Circle

    • Willmar Sauter

    Pages 213-229

12. Back Matter

    Pages 231-238

    PDF

In the Anthropocene, icy environments have taken on a new centrality and emotional valency. This book examines the diverse ways in which ice and humans have performed with and alongside each other over the last few centuries, so as to better understand our entangled futures. Icescapes – glaciers, bergs, floes, ice shelves – are places of paradox. Solid and weighty, they are nonetheless always on the move, unstable, untrustworthy, liable to collapse, overturn, or melt. Icescapes have featured – indeed, starred – in conventional theatrical performances since at least the eighteenth century. More recently, the performing arts – site-specific or otherwise – have provoked a different set of considerations of human interactions with these non-human objects, particularly as concerns over anthropogenic warming have mounted. The performances analysed in the book range from the theatrical to the everyday, from the historical to the contemporary, from low-latitude events in interior spaces to embodied encounters with the frozen environment.

• Nature
• Space
• Scenography
• Musicology
• Performance art
• Anthropocene
• Ice
• Icescape
• Landscape
• Scandinavia

“Performing Ice skillfully curates a compelling series of conversations that offer rich insights into manifold relationships between ice and performance across time, space, and disciplines. … Performing Ice makes original and valuable contributions to humanities-related polar research and to global theatre and performance studies, presenting fresh arguments and an inspiring array of entry points for future study.” (Diana Looser, Theatre Journal, Vol. 74 (2), June, 2022)

• Conservatorium of Music and Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia

  Carolyn Philpott

• School of Humanities, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia

  Elizabeth Leane

• School of Communications and Creative Arts, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

  Matt Delbridge

Carolyn Philpott is Senior Lecturer in Musicology and Associate Head – Research at the University of Tasmania’s School of Creative Arts and Media, Australia, as well as Adjunct Senior Researcher at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, Australia. She has published widely on music and place in journals and books in the fields of musicology and Antarctic studies.

Elizabeth Leane is Professor of English (School of Humanities) and Associate Dean – Research (College of Arts, Law, and Education) at the University of Tasmania, Australia. Her books include Antarctica in Fiction (2012), South Pole: Nature and Culture (2016), and the co-edited collection Anthropocene Antarctica (2019).

Matt Delbridge is Professor of Performance Studies and Head of School, Communication and Creative Arts, at Deakin University, Australia, and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Creative Media, City University Hong Kong, Hong Kong.He is the author of Motion Capture in Performance (2015).

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