Abstract
The following is a refined adaptation of the original thesis abstract from the Master of Arts dissertation titled Remembering Repertoires: Exploring Performance as a Social Innovation Technology, authored by the founder of Studio Nucifera.
Remembering Repertoires
Exploring Performance as a Social Innovation technology
This thesis interrogates the transformative potential of performance rituals in reconfiguring social space and collective memory. It argues that curated performance interventions—strategically framed through minimal curatorial praxis—can mediate encounters with the past while fostering communal bonds and enabling participants to assert agency over their present and future. Drawing on the dynamic tension between Derrida’s concept of the Archive and Taylor’s notion of the Repertoire, the study explores how these dual modes of memory transmission underpin the capacity of performance to serve as an applied technology for Social Innovation.
Employing an integrated methodology that combines Case Study analysis, Practice as Research, and Grounded Theory, the research examines two interrelated bodies of work. On one hand, the Clanwilliam Arts Project serves as a community-based case study, illustrating how performance disrupts established social and spatial orders to build collective cohesion. On the other, the author’s own practice—exemplified by projects such as ATOM—demonstrates how iterative, immersive interventions can refine performance’s role in engendering social change.
The findings indicate that when performance is engaged as both a medium and a mediator of memory, and when curatorial strategies are used to maintain an optimal balance of framing, it emerges as a potent tool for social innovation. This work contributes to a nuanced understanding of how performance can be re-envisioned as a technology for creating sustainable, socially cohesive futures within culturally diverse contexts.
Keywords
performance research; social innovation; practice as research; curatorial praxis; collective memory; immersive performance; performance interventions; humanities research
References and Bibliography
- Derrida, J. (1998) Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Translated by E. Prenowitz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Rossouw, T. (2019) Remembering Repertoires: Exploring Performance as a Social Innovation Technology. Faculty of Humanities, Department of Drama, University of Cape Town. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/30523 (Accessed: 18 February 2025)
- Taylor, D. (2003) The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. USA: Duke University Press.
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