Here is a brief abstract about my current practice-based PhD research project funded by the University of Aberystwyth. My supervisors for this project are Prof. Adrian Kear and Dr. Andrew Filmer.

‘On Being Audience’ (working title)

Participation is often understood through its relation to the realm of the visual, in particular via discourses of relational and dialogical aesthetics. Outside of the visual, what other sensorial perceptive modes might help to articulate the experience of being together? If, as Jean-Luc Nancy states, ‘the visual is tendentially mimetic, and the sonorous tendentially methexic (that is, having to do with participation, sharing, or contagion) ’ (2007, p.10) what kind of participatory relationship can come into being through the sonorous? Drawing on moments from the performances of Societas Raeffaello Sanzio, Rotozaza and Roger Bernat (amongst others) this PhD enquiry brings into dialogue Jacques Rancière and Claire Bishop on aesthetics, Nicolas Bourriaud on relational aesthetics with philosophical considerations of listening (Nancy) and the Adriana Cavarero on the voice. It focuses on modalities of speech, the voice, listening and hearing as specific modes of participation. Furthermore, through practice, it will consider how the co-creation of meaning can occur within performance that goes beyond and challenges those found within the everyday in order to reflect on how we come into being both as singular and plural.

Faculty profile page: http://www.aber.ac.uk/en/tfts/study-with-us/phd/phd-students/rebecca-collins/