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Discussion Group: 'The Body in Performance’
‘You’re the snake charmer, baby. And you’re also the snake.’ So sings Laurie Anderson in “Closed Circuits” (1984). Music is often considered incorporeal – described in terms like “transcendent” and “ethereal” – yet it is produced by bodies and received by them. In this session, we will discuss the gendered associations of composition and performance, the performing bodies of artists such as Laurie Anderson and Yoko Ono, and the (im)possibilities of being both snake charmer and snake.
Readings:
Susan McClary’s sixth chapter ‘This Is Not a Story My People Tell: Musical Time and Space According to Laurie Anderson’ from Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (2002)
Vera Mackie’s chapter ‘Instructing, Constructing, Deconstructing: The Embodied and Disembodied Performances of Yoko Ono’ from Rethinking Japanese Modernism (2012).
Date:
5 February 2026, 15:00
Venue:
Radcliffe Observatory
Venue Details:
Room 00.056 (ground floor), Schwarzman Centre, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG
Speaker:
Discussion Group
Part of:
Body in History Network
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Members of the University only
Editor:
Belinda Clark
