We-dentity
Designing the Body of Research - research components
In this updated blog following our second tutorial, I am setting out my thinking about the research for my MA Performance Practices. I’ve included all the elements recommended in our Designing the Body of Research module.
This initial research proposal is built on my artistic practice over the last few years and on the first-year modules of the course, recent performances, together with tutorials and conversations with fellow students.
My practice has taken a leap forward as a result of the MA, and year 2 of the course is an exciting opportunity to go into some depth. I welcome feedback as I start this next part of the journey.
Question
• In what ways can the embodiment of multiple alter-egos operate as a collective performance making method?
Aim
• This is the current aim of my research proposal:
• To shift fixed notions of identity by examining co-existence and co-creation within a community* of alter-egos and investigate the performative potential of standing in the spaces between them.
• *community / cohort /system – please note I have more work to do on getting the right word. The word community is fine for now, but it might change due to the meanings and associations it carries. Nuances are important. Working this out is included in my objectives below.
Urgency
• Personal – Through my artistic practice I want to challenge fixed societal norms as an older feminist woman. I describe myself as a de-disciplined artist because I see the process of recognising and rejecting society’s norms as foundational. I am inviting audiences to see me as other/s by embodying my four alter-egos and through that to explore different ways of being. I aim to do this in an entangled and relational way that unfixes expectations reflects my lived experience and increases my agency – working with the alter-egos collectively and with an audience. I hope it is a way that changes expectations, both my own and others’ expectations of me.
• Society – As Byung Chul-Han (Burnout Society, 2015) argues contemporary society, driven by neoliberalism and a focus on the individual, creates an emphasis on self-optimization, achievement, and constant productivity that is isolating. It separates us from others, from the others within and from our communities. Han advocates for a shift towards community, shared experiences, and a deeper sense of belonging. I agree with this analysis and believe that this research and its aim of shifting fixed notions of identity and offering ways of multiplicity, can support more “we” in society and less I.
• I consider that in order for society to survive and thrive – in the context of neo-liberalism and turbo capitalism – there is a need to actively expand notions of identity, build more collective ways of being, fluidity and flexibility. The need to do this has grown through the experience of my practice.
• Field – I “suspect” there’s a gap in the performance studies field about communities of alter-egos, how they operate, shape and influence each other and to what end? For me, this is still in the “suspect” stage, although:
• Ai searches (Claude / perplexity /ChatGPT) with my question and aim say this is a gap (I have included more information at the end of the blog) – I am not relying on this information. I have found from insta an artist in the UK who is doing a PHD around later-ego’s (yet to be published), @JennaFox – she will speak to me after PHD is submitted. I have also found a scholar a book on: An Introduction to Phenomenology and the Self/s – T. J. Bacon (2024) I will include this in my field / references (haven’t got hold of the book yet – but have approached them to make contact, as they might be a mentor?) I have found lots of artists with multiple alter-egos but none writing about the embodiment of them collectively.
Contribution
• Provide a case study of one artist’s use of a community or cohort of alter-egos, offering new insights into the relationship between identity, body, and performance .
• Ways of understanding and approaching alter-ego communities and considerations of their role / application in performance?
Objectives – I have not currently included a timetable but will align these objectives with the Yr2 timetable.
• Carry out a topic-based literature review for artistically and theoretically relevant references related to alter-egos, identity construction and with a particular focus on notions of alter-ego communities in contemporary performance practice. T
• Clarify terms and definitions – terms to be more theoretically defined include Self, self-states, alter-egos, identity, intersubjectivity, thirdness, liminality, alter-ego community / cohort or system - particularly clarifying the use of the word “community” in respect of alter-egos. This will include sociological, philosophical and psychological references from other disciplines - neuroscience.
• Set out my principles for embodiment, to describe for example how am I activating this group of alter-egos as a “community”, who has authorship, (and on what), how I – as the artist hold it, confirming their status as constructed identities, how I actually embody them, what is their freedom of space to operate with them.
• Set out how these principles will guide the practice led research, through a series of improvised experiments. Also how I will assess the embodied and psychological responses to the improvised experiments that explore the question.
• Clarify improvised scores for the experiments, based on guidelines above.
• Carry out practice as research - conduct a series of practice-based improvised experiments (during the allocated time period) designed to test different approaches to alter-ego interactions and transitions, capturing challenges and insights that illuminate the question.
• Document the physical, emotional, psychological and perceptual changes that occur during the embodiment process (based on the experiments above) I will use the methods of reflective journalling and video documentation.
• Analyse how the alter-ego transitions and engagements reshape bodily awareness and contribute to new understandings of shifting fixed notions of the self, communities of alter-egos, and affect identity.
• Write up findings and develop approach to exposition of artistic research.
Field - Theory
Where is your work landing this the landscape? How do you relate to it?
1. Philip Bromberg – coming from the field of identity theory, Bromberg’s psycho-analytical multiplicity theory argues that the healthy self isn’t a singular cohesive entity and that the capacity of different self-states to recognise and maintain identities is important.
· I am using this psychological theory as a foundational building block and starting position with which I broadly agree. This ability to hold multiple entities (of cognition, behaviour and affect ) and sometimes conflicting self-states simultaneously focuses on coherence and tolerance of internal complexity. For me it is about making room for subjective realities that are not fully contained by the current self, enabling fluidity and multiplicity of identity. His theory explores temporarily /occasionally disassociated, and the human ability to negotiate change and continuity at the same time. In my research I’m not interested in circumstances where multiple self-states are organised around trauma / become pathological. -
· I am also using Bromberg’s theory of standing in the spaces as a dramaturgical metaphor, which I understand as the embodied, relational, and temporal inhabiting of entities that shape meaning and identity in performance / on “stage” / or in my case in the public space. It differs Bromberg’s psychoanalytic use which is more about internal multiplicity and mainly in a therapeutic context, ) but there is a clear conceptual connection for me. (This work from 1999 Standing in the Spaces, also suggests to me techniques that could be translated from psychotherapy to performance art – e.g. presence, attention, and the embodied negotiation of space and time as part of the dramaturgy.
2. Jessica Benjamin builds on Bromberg’s (2012) work but with a focus more on relationality.
· She defines intersubjectivity as a mutual recognition process where each subject experiences the other as a “like subject” with a distinct, separate centre of feeling and perception. This mutual recognition is a two-way, reciprocal interaction—what she terms a “two-way street”. (Like Barad – we develop ourselves with others who recognise our subjectivity.) Thirdness, in Benjamin’s theory, is not just an external third party or abstract concept but a psychic capacity or mental space that allows subjects to hold the tension between sameness and difference, connection and separateness.
· I am interested in the way she thinks about thirdness as a shared, co-created intersubjective space where participants surrender their rigid positions and engage in mutual recognition without domination or submission. I think I need both Bromberg and Benjamin here. Benjamin looks at gender in thirdness and power dynamics which is very interesting to me. Her idea of a productive tension between recognition and assertion identifies a paradox of wanting to be recognised seen by those the selves are trying to be distinct from Benjamin’s theory addresses impasses where one subject dominates or objectifies another. In my performance research it might translate into seeing if there are moments where alter-egos might enact power struggles or binary oppositions (e.g., masculine/feminine, self/other).
· There are some criticisms of her work that I am keen to explore further, e.g. some by feminists who say there is an over-emphasis on relationality, and harmony and that it misses some of the structural conditions present and the subversive potential of unrecognizable selves ( interesting to me.) I will do some more digging on this and feel it’s important to keep Butler in my field because of their extensive work on gender performativity. I’m also using Benjamin both metaphorically and psychologically.
3. Judith Butler – their seminal ideas on Performative Acts and Gender Construction form a basis for my inquiry.
· They argue that because gender is performed and repeated, not stable, or innate, there is the possibility of variation, the ability to perform differently. The important aspect of the theory for me is not whether to repeat gender but how to repeat it in.
· For me - The how to perform gender question is a both a personal and universal one, personal in the micro details of everyday life, and universal in the exploring of the challenges and pressures individuals face in conforming to or resisting gender norms. This speaks both to my motivation for the research, challenging norms, but also relates to the “how-ness” in my work. I’m inhabiting four female alter-egos, how do they destabilise gender and how do we – the community of alter-egos speaks to this.
Other
· Victor Turner – liminality. Victor Turner’s concept of liminality refers to a transitional, in-between phase during rituals where normal social structures dissolve, allowing for transformation and the emergence of new identities or social orders – important to the wider motivation for my practice. I’m connecting "standing in the space" and liminality in that both involve occupying a threshold or "betwixt and between" condition. Turner also emphasized the creative potential of liminal states, which parallels Bromberg’s idea. As above with the tensions of the third space, I’m sure how I land with his ideas of communitas. I am interested in how the engagement of alter-egos works; they don’t necessarily need to be a positive “community” or have an outcome.
· Thomas Metzinger - The Ego tunnel – the neuro-science perspective on the self – I am keen to add in how my research on alter-egos sits with neuroscience analysis of Phenomenal Self Models. I have just started reading this (Thanks for the reference Astarti).
Field – Artists – what am I taking from each of them? Which other artists have touched the topic? Successfully or not
· Joan Jonas – I am including visual art Jonas’s work because of the way she uses multiple alter-egos, places and histories engage in a distinctive poetic language, over decades and her use of performance and live drawing that entangles many elements. She is a key influence of mine, her practice makes extensive use of key operations to create complex, multi-dimensional experiences that intertwine identity ( including various alter-egos), storytelling and myth. She does this using a variety of media: live performance, drawing, installation, video, sound, and photography to create dense, textured environments. I am using many of the same media to explore similar concepts e.g. drawing live, photography, sound, objects – to explore gender and fluidity through my alter-egos.
· Sin Wai Kin – gender performativity and multiplicity – they inhabit multiple characters, many from Cantonese opera mixed with western drag. Sin Wai Kin is for part of my field as an artist working with multiplicity in relation to their alter-egos and characters. Their works challenge binaries of many kinds, particularly gender. It involves assembling distinct archetypes into a fluid collective, using traditional opera roles as a framework to expose and subvert societal binaries.
· Similar in concept around gender and challenging norms, their work is different. Through performative makeup, costume, inter-character dynamics, and speculative storytelling, they create complex theatrical systems (different media too mainly film – so mediated embodiment?) their multiplicity, challenges fixed identities, the interesting part for me is how they invite audiences to reconsider the nature of self and reality.
· Lynne Hershman Leeson – She also uses multiplicity in a different way, again with similar alter-ego concepts, ‘m interested in her work with her alter ego Roberta Breitmore who is inhabited by many other artists and members of the public over the years. I’m keen to explore other artists inhabiting my alter-egos to give a new perspective. That will be part of the on-going research.
· Other contrasting approaches: Nicole Daniels – provides a contrasting approach, she has a wide range of alter-egos (more than 20) and uses different methods (some alter-egos focus on societal roles, other times she uses dolls as alter-egos) – and Jenna Fox PHD on alter-ego spaces.
· Please note this is not a definitive list – I intend to research more over the summer.
Research methods
• Employ practice-based improvised experiments – studio-based practice led research.
• Develop scores – in improvisation (after the specialisations in October)
• Conduct sets of improvisation and using the (methodology)
• Reflective journalling and performance documentation – this is new and worked well for me in the residency. Practice led writing, field notes, audio and video – about the standing in between. Performance documents.
• Peer exchange and dialogue – collaboration with other artists.
• Note: I am looking at how for example, I manage the improvisation and exiting… how is exit being used. As above in the objectives, I haven’t got the framework yet so am not exactly sure about how to capture / systematize information about the alter-ego transition and engagement.
What are my questions about where next? My current state of not knowing:
· Terms to be more defined: Self, self-states, alter-egos, identity, intersubjectivity, thirdness, liminality, alter-ego community / cohort or system?
· Phenomenology – how do I know what these transitions and engagements are? I want to analyse the Being of the performance artist in the process of performative action, where the material is their own, “lived body” as in (Merleau-Ponty 2002), focusing on how their presence is perceived, produced and experienced through spectator, space, and artist. I am only just getting started with this.
· Scores for performance experiments – I want to do more -pre-research and experimentation on this. My DRA performance was the first time I experimented with the community of later-egos in public. There was a lot of learning, but it still feels very early.
· Other related concepts and practical ways for transitions between alter-egos e.g. types of transitions, components, purposes, and outcomes of different types of transitions.
· Also curious about the spaces in which these community engagements might happen. Also how the Japanese concept of Ma fits with this? Using spatial/temporal or (for me) relational pauses to create meaningful relational dynamics between alter-egos?
Ethics
• Self-care – psychological well-being? – I am now working with a drama psychotherapist in a specific way to support me through the research. They are helping me as a facilitative guide to how I meet the work and how it meets me, in an embodied way. They are sharing Dialectical Behavioural Tools and supporting with me notes and reflection questions.
• Theoretical choices - Benjamin highlights the mutual recognition and surrender between distinct selves, which is crucial for avoiding reductive binaries and fostering ethical, transformative performance relationships.
• Other artists I might invite to inhabit the alter-egos – I’ll liaise with the drama therapist on this.
As above….More info on… Is this a gap in the field?
Ai searches - here’s what I have found through searching for similar aims and questions:
Direct Alter-Ego Performance Research:
Valérie Rousseau's exhibition catalogue "When the Curtain Never Comes Down: Performance Art and the Alter Ego" at the American Folk Art Museum When the Curtain Never Comes Down: Performance Art and the Alter Ego examines alter-ego practices, though primarily in self-taught and visual art. I looked at this for Bodies in Performance Module, it has is interesting in its scope and methods but does include collective alter-egos of one artist.
Lynn Hershman Leeson's performance art work with alter-egos The 'alter ego' in Lynn Hershman Leeson's performance art, particularly her exploration of human-technology interaction through constructed identities. I have included this in my field.
Foundational Performance Studies Scholars:
Diana Taylor - Her work on performance and cultural memory, particularly around embodied knowledge and collective identity construction.
Judith Butler - Though not exclusively performance studies, her work on gender performativity is foundational to identity performance research
Related Collective/Community Performance Work:
Adrian Piper's conceptual performance work investigating identity as "a fluctuating notion, one which can only exist in dialogue between artist and audience," this artist’s work looks at race and is relevant as the alter-egos are in the public space.
Significant Research Gaps
Your specific research question appears to address a notable gap in the field. Most existing work focuses on:
Single artist alter-ego practices
Community performance without the alter-ego framework
Identity performance in general rather than multiple alter-ego embodiment
The concept of multiple alter-egos operating as a collective methodology for shifting fixed identity notions is underexplored. There is some related work on "Collective Embodiment and Communal Feeling" in performance for social change Dissertation or Thesis | Collective Embodiment and Communal Feeling: A Critical Somatics Approach to Performance for Social Change | ID: g732dm18s | Carolina Digital Repository, but this doesn't specifically address the alter-ego multiplicity you're investigating.
Recommended Academic Databases for Further Research:
Performance Studies International archives
TDR (The Drama Review) - the leading performance studies journal
Theatre Journal and Theatre Topics
Women & Performance journal
Dissertation databases through ProQuest
Your research appears to be pioneering in examining how communities of alter-egos can function as co-creative methodologies, particularly the performative potential of existing "between" these identities. This represents a significant contribution to both performance studies and identity theory.
Claude ai 22/06/25
Similar results from Perplexity