Toxic Climates: Earth, people, movement, media

Abstract

performancephilosophy/toxic-climates 253 PERFORMANCE PHILOSOPHY VOL 5 (2) (2020) Acts of citizenship [Nørrebro Station, Copenhagen] The first scene is set at Nørrebro Station in Copenhagen, an urban everyday setting and a place of mobility in which diverse groups of people pass each other. In this mobile environment, the speaker addresses definitions of citizenship as more than peoples' acts but also how they are being acted upon. This in particular refers to how Nation states increasingly act upon mobile citizens, refugees and the increasing number of urban minorities being discriminated against and made invisible in urban public spaces. While this is the written discourse of the text, the posture of the speaker and her lack of acts and gestures towards the citizens passing by her point to the alienated position of the academic. As the speaker is doubled behind her and then suddenly disappears, an instant of manipulation and interference is articulated, and the scene ends with an off-screen voice, presumably the photographer or director of the film, giving the speaker instructions on to how to exit the scene. Both incidents work to further the sensation of alienation and split between words and acts.As noted by political theorist Engin Isin, the making of a people consists of historically invented descriptions through which people constitute themselves as acting beings. These descriptions provide the ways of acting and being in the world. They are not only descriptions in which people will act, but also how people will be acted upon. "Today, mobile peoples are a norm rather than an exception" Isin states -and perhaps always so. Taking off from this notion of the mobile peoples, we explore acts of citizenship as a plethora of practices performed beyond and across mental and geographical borders. We wish to regard human life in its own value, not as a face and identity defined by nation states, borders, institutions or disciplines. PERFORMANCE PHILOSOPHY VOL 5 (2) (2020) BiographiesMichael Haldrup, Professor (WSR) in Visual Culture and Performance Design, Roskilde University. Numerous publications on visual methodologies, mobilities and performance among others the co-authored books Tourism, Performance and the Everyday (Routledge 2010) and Performing Tourist Places (Ashgate 2003). Recent work includes research on materiality and visual culture as well as cultural institutions and citizenship (see www.ourmuseum.dk). Visiting Scholar at Centre for Mobilities Research, Lancaster University, 2007. Currently working on various "speculative" approaches to performance and design including the project on Queering Mythographies (with D.