OUR STUDIES SHOW stages collective philosophizing/performance philosophy. Considering our inhabitation of our own body-minds as legitimate empirical study (e.g. “instances of human being/thinking”) and our intuitions, experiences, and ideas as important philosophical contributions, we practice deep thought together through a series of in-person gatherings. We (those assembled) will dig deeply into metaphysical and conceptual problems, such as “the nature of cognition,” and what can be meant by “self-determination” and "collective conscioiusness." philos = love.
"Theoretical dramaturgies" = scores for thinking together, logical spaces, rituals, formal and informal practices, public and private processes, theoretical composition
Tattoos/drawings for tattoos = mark-making/boundaries of the body/mind-body relations, physical intimacy of language/isographic resonance
Conceived and staged by Esther Neff as part of their Faculty Fellowship through SPCUNY: https://socialpracticecuny.org/portfolio-item/our-studies-show/
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 4-6, Kumasi, Ghana at PiAR
SESSION 7: Sunday, March 9, 2-5pm, Brick AUX, Brooklyn, NY
SESSION 8: Sunday, April 6, 2-5pm, online
INDEPENDENT STUDY SESSIONS: talk/tattoo (handpoke or machine) by appointment (priority to disabled or low mobility folks and those experiencing high social anxiety due to political targeting) spring-summer 2025
The project is a sequence of thinktank-style scenarios, set up as performance philosophy. Together, participants undertake dramaturgical processes of debating, deliberating, deciding, and sketching out “logical spaces” (such as decision-trees) and "rituals" for shared inquiry. OUR STUDIES SHOW is constituted by processes of collectively articulating the problems that matter to us, and experimenting with ways of performing inquiry together in temporary, specific, and “set aside” contexts that can deliberately center affect, social equity, compassionate communication, care, aesthetics, cognitive difference, and good relations. By staging practices of doing-thinking together, OUR STUDIES SHOW demands “radical” new forms of both artistic performance and philosophy, intervening in and re-making the means through which truths are determined by power.