Free Admission, no registration required
Convenors: Charlotte Bigg, Rafael Mandressi and Marie Thébaud-Sorge

Abstract:
Performance and re-enactment have been employed as a method of research in the history of science for several decades. This workshop aims to take stock of this work and to reflect upon the value and challenges of these approaches today, for instance in relation to historians’ renewed interest in materiality and sensuality. The workshop also seeks to replace this work and thinking within broader contexts: – the long history of performing knowledge as part, e.g. of teaching and popularization, but also accross the sciences: not all sciences stress the value or necessity of replicating experiments or observations, for instance. – how does history of science and technology compare with other fields such as archeology, anthropology or theatre and performance studies that each understand and use performance in slightly different manners; what can historians learn from other approaches?

Speakers:
-Ludovic Coupaye (UCL, London) (Tbc) (Historiography of performing techniques in anthropology) – Sarah Dellmann (Uni Utrecht) What we learned from “creative re-use” activities in the A Million Pictures project (paper) – Stephen Johnson (Museum of the history of science, Oxford): The museum as performance: re-engaging research with the display of science (short paper-round table) – Sigrid Leyssen (Paris, CAK): On Action Perspectives and Re-Animation. Exploring Ways to study the history of perception (paper+experiments) – Rafael Mandressi (CAK, Paris): Tango à Paris (début Xxes.)
Melissa van Drie (Cambridge): (tbc) Refaçonner l’oreille, prendre en main la voix (paper)
+ Experiments with phonograph with Dr. Aleks Kolkowski (tbc)
Simon Werrett (UCL London): Fireworks Fit For A Queen? Restaging Early Modern Fireworks for TV
-Erika Wicky (Uni Liège) : The Olfactory Art in the Age of Reproduction (short paper +experiences)