SFB 447:  Performing Culture

• Subject Area: Humanities
• Term: from 1999 to 2010
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5482988

The concept of performativity names that dimension of art and culture which includes the activities of production and action and the ways in which they take place. Where cultures happen, performativity becomes emblematic of their constitution, organisation and reflection. When cultural studies focuses on performativity, its gaze can shift to the processes of exchange, the changes and the dynamics that make up actors and cultural events. Art and culture are no longer reduced to material artefacts (such as monuments or pictures) or texts. In this way, the explanatory metaphor that predominated into the 1980s - "culture as text" - is significantly expanded to "culture as performance". This framework offers an altered perspective on familiar thematic complexes, such as mise en scène, play/game, masquerade, or the spectacular, and redirects attention to the materiality, mediality, and interactive relations of cultural acts. In theorising the performative, we aim to build up a stock of theoretical models capable of describing and analysing a range of different performative phenomena. These theories of the performative form an important building block for a heuristics of cultural studies. They point to pivotal features of contemporary culture, while also revealing its historical dimension.
Among our questions are the following: How may the relationship of performativity and textuality be described? What part does performativity play in the formation and questioning of meaning and significance? How do particular media influence performative processes, and to what extent are media performatively constituted? What is performativity’s role in the constitution and disruption of identities?
Our central thesis is that these questions bear special relevance for the radical changes in communication that marked the Middle Ages, the early modern and the modern period. The inclusion of a historical perspective prompts reflection on "performative turns" - whether, and in what form, textual cultural practices and performative procedures since the Middle Ages have complemented, changed, or replaced each other.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres

Completed projects

• A01 - Repräsentation und Kinästetik II - Deixis und Lage (Project Head Wenzel, Horst )
• A02 - Emotions in Medieval Literature (Project Head Kasten, Ingrid )
• A03 - Transformation of knowledge and certainty in the context of early modern laughter (Project Head Röcke, Werner )
• A04 - Dialogizität und Performanz: Die Theatralisierung kultureller Medien im frühneuzeitlichen England (Project Head Pfister, Manfred )
• A05 - Differences and Interferences: Dialogue in Relation to Other Genres of Theoretical Discourse in the Renaissance (Project Head Hempfer, Klaus W. )
• A06 - Theatrum Scientiarum - Performativity of Knowledge as Agent of Cultural Change (Project Head Schramm, Helmar )
• A07 - Ritual and Risk. The Performativity of Play between Cultural Anthropology, Religion and Art (Project Head Schlesier, Renate )
• A08 - The Performativity of Man's Images: Registration, Shaping and Incorporation as Photographic Strategies (Project Head Krüger, Klaus )
• A09 - Performativity in Cultural Encounters: Early Modern Anglo-Ottoman Relations (Project Head Schülting, Sabine )
• B01 - Aesthetic of the performative (Project Head Fischer-Lichte, Erika )
• B02 - Klangaktionen als Ereignisformen in der experimentellen Musik (Project Head Riethmüller, Albrecht )
• B3 - Inszenierung des Performativen in der zeitgenössischen Kunst (Project Head Gaehtgens, Thomas W. )
• B04 - Precarity of sexual and gender identities: everyday practice and symbolic forms (Project Heads Fischer-Lichte, Erika ;  Mattenklott, Gert )
• B05 - The production of the Social in Rituals and Ritualizations. Educational Gestures in School, Family, Peer Culture and Media (Project Head Wulf, Christoph )
• B06 - Plays and Games as Performance of Society. Change of Practices of Rule Following in Play and Work (Project Head Gebauer, Gunter )
• B07 - Built order and space producing actions. Historical arrangements of objects, bodies, and movement in architectural and topographical spaces (Project Head Böhme, Hartmut )
• B08 - From performance to competence: Studies in grammaticalization and verbal aggression. (Project Head König, Ekkehard )
• B09 - The performance of language as violence: why words hurt (Project Head Krämer, Sybille )
• B10 - Voices as Paradigms of the Performative (Project Head Kolesch, Doris )
• B11 - Synaesthetic Effects: Montage as Synchronization (Project Head Koch, Gertrud )
• B12 - The Virtuoso's Stage: Performance at the Limit (Project Head Brandstetter, Gabriele )
• B13 - Today's Parade: Military Music in Germany (Project Head Riethmüller, Albrecht )
• B14 - Notation and Performance in Music Theatre: Dynamizing vs. Stabilizing. Processes in 19th-Century and Present-Day Performances (Project Head Risi, Clemens )
• Z - Central Administration (Project Head Fischer-Lichte, Erika )

• Applicant Institution: Freie Universität Berlin
• Participating University: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
• Spokesperson: Professorin Dr. Erika Fischer-Lichte