Movement Research announces Issue 55 of its publication, the Movement Research Performance Journal. The first issue produced by new co-Editors-in-Chief mayfield brooks and Joshua Lubin-Levy, this issue continues the MRPJ’s legacy of experimenting with approaches that engage contemporary choreography and performance through the medium of print, including poem, prose, image, interview and a wide range of other formats.
But how do you make a journal dedicated to, but in the absence of, live performance? In asking this question, we’re not concerned to preserve a fetishistic idea of liveness and in-person gatherings—rather, we’re haunted by a strong ambivalence towards the many ways arts institutions swiftly adapted to the new online environment, adhering to that old adage “the show must go on.’’ In the wake of global Black Lives Matter uprisings in response to George Floyd’s murder and the gross disparities exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic the show cannot go on. In producing this journal, the editorial team spent many meetings wondering how we had ever performed under those conditions and institutions in the first place? How do we resist the push to reopen? How is it possible to acknowledge parts of our lives that are in disrepair? Can the forced delay also function as a strategy of resistance? Is it possible to refuse explanatory narratives, narrative structures, chronologies, and to embrace decomposition, decay, and the repair made possible in coming undone? “no before no after” was conceived with these, and many other, questions in mind.
Issue #55 is the first in a two-part project titled “no before no after” conceived by the journal’s new co-Editors-in-Chief mayfield brooks and Joshua Lubin-Levy.
