OUR STUDIES SHOW

OUR STUDIES SHOW is collective philosophy as theatre and theatre as collective philosophy.

SIGN UP HERE FOR 1 OR MORE SESSIONS IN-PERSON ONLY:

SESSION 1: Monday, November 18, 6-9pm, Center for Performance Research, Brooklyn, NY
SESSION 2: Monday, December 2, 2pm-5pm, CUNY Graduate Center, NYC
SESSION 3: Monday, December 9, 6-9pm, Center for Performance Research, Brooklyn, NY
–SESSIONS in January 2025 in Kumasi, Ghana–
SESSION 6: Sunday, April 27, 2-5pm, Brick AUX, Brooklyn, NY
SESSION 7: Sunday, May 4, 2-5pm, online (Zoom)

OUR STUDIES SHOW is a performance project that understands political philosophy as a social practice, done by and for the people. The project is a sequence of thinktank sessions. These are in-person gatherings, through which “laypeople” and “philosophers” dig deeply into metaphysical and conceptual problems at the roots of political philosophy and its connections with philosophy of mind, mounting inquiries (such as) into “the nature of human nature,” and what can be meant by “self-determination.” Together, participants in each thinktank undertake processes of debating, deliberating, and spacing out “logical spaces” (such as decision-trees) for shared inquiry. The series of thinktank sessions will result in a public performance work “reporting” on what our “auto-research” has shown, performed by PPL, the opera and performance art collective. OUR STUDIES SHOW stages processes of collective thinking and communicating about primary philosophical problems, experimenting with ways of performing inquiry together across social fields. Considering ourselves (our body-minds and experiences) to be legitimate empirical case studies (e.g. “instances of humanity”) and our intuitions and ideas to be important philosophical positions, we practice thinking together in ways that take responsibility for affect, social equity, compassionate communication, care, aesthetics, cognitive difference, and good relations . By staging these practices of doing-thinking together, OUR STUDIES SHOW demands “radical” new forms of both theatre and philosophy. Read a longer article about Collective Philosophy HERE.

This current phase of the project (Fall 2024-Spring 2025) is supported by a Fellowship awarded by Social Practices CUNY (SPCUNY) .

SESSIONS: January 2025, Kumasi, Ghana (as part of PIAR, PerfocraZe artist-in-residency. Residency and travel expenses funded by the Rosette C. Lamont Fellowship of the CUNY Graduate Center)

Please contact me if you would like to host a session! eneff@gradcenter.cuny.edu