Abstract:

In his book Bergson and Durational Performance (Re)Ma(r)king Time, the author James Layton explores Bergson’s philosophy of duration in relation to performance and by making connections with Bergson’s duration to concepts by Abraham Maslow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Victor Turner, suggests a new interpretation of Bergson’s duration in relation to what these other theorists have formulated, respectively, self-actualization, flow, and communitas. What Layton argues, with three performances as case studies approached from an autoethnographic perspective, is that performances lasting beyond smooth consumption in our socially accelerated world can facilitate the Bergsonian duration experience, that durational performance can act in opposition to social acceleration, thus emancipate us from the shackles of always “being now”, free us from networked time and by allowing us to decelerate, Layton suggests that durational performances might enable better attunement to our inner rhythms as human beings.

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