Performing Ends

Performing Ends is a four-year international research project funded by FWO. By analysing the work of various contemporary performance makers in The Americas, Europe, and Southeast Asia, the project investigates how after the post-dramatic and posthumanist waves, we can now speak of a ‘posthumous’ tendency in the performing arts as a response to unfolding ecological, political, and technological ends. The project takes its cue from recent theatre and performance scholarship, which has placed ‘end’ as a key theme in contemporary theatre responding to multiple crises. It seeks to push the artistic and theoretical posthumanist perspectives that might still harbour “remnants of humanism” towards the “posthumous” in which human beings are decentred. The posthumous implies a perspective on our time as one “after extinction”, in the literal sense of extinction of humans and more than human beings, but also of cultural and symbolic orders.

  • We are currently looking for a doctoral researcher to be part of this project. The fully-funded position is supported by a grant from FWO, will be full-time, and based at the University of Antwerp. For more details about the role and the application process, see here.

  • Our first activities will take place during the first half of 2024. Watch this space.