Where does it come from? Collaborative emergence in creative work practices

Post-anthropocentric Rehearsal Studies. A conceptual framework to account for the social and material mediations in performance-making

“…Tracing the network of interactions that constitute the rehearsal of a theatrical play, we reveal the distributed nature of the creative processes to account for the emergence of a specific scene. As we have argued elsewhere (Parolin & Pellegrinelli 2020a;2020b), this also demonstrates that creativity is not the gift of an individual, commonly regarded as the playwright, the director, or a singularly significant professional actor, but rather emerges from situated interactions (between humans, nonhumans and things) in the rehearsal room. Drawing on theoretical perspectives from the 'New Sociology of Art', we show how a play emerges in a situated and distributed way through the contributions of human and non-human actors.…”

“…He is dismissive of the dominant tradition that regards art as some special activity and instead considers it as based on professional work practices. His work demystified the ideology of the creative genius and grounded the artistic phenomenon as a fundamentally social 1 This resonates with our background and the purpose of giving account to social and material work practices in creative processes and arts, in particular, in design Parolin 2010a;2010b;Parolin & Mattozzi 2012;2013, 2020 and theatre (Parolin & Pellegrinelli 2020a, 2020b. Indeed, we share a similar research interest in the rehearsal as particular work practices that occur in a specific place and time to stage a new play.…”

“…Federica introduces new improvised lines, emphasising the contrast between the mother's speech and the images of embroidery, affirming the illiteracy of the mother, who is unable to read what Alfonsina has written in her embroideries. This small improvisation created an unexpected creative emergence(Parolin & Pellegrinelli 2020b) that was recognised as comical by the collective who expressed their appreciation. Chiara's clapping, the collective laughter, and Michele's replication of the same phrase proposed by Federica, all contributed to the inclusion of Federica's addition to the scene.…”

Bodies Translating Bodies

“…Equally, if we named them 'sensory' , 'sensitive' or 'affective' practices, we would have lost the Science & Technology Studies XX(X) relation with poiesis; if we named them 'making' practices we would have lost, at least partially, the relevance of aisthesis. Likewise, if we named them 'creative' practices, we would have opened our reflection to the many issues related to creativity (Farias and Wilkie, 2016a;Parolin and Pellegrinelli, 2020 a;2020b), that are not analytically relevant for the practices we are concerned with, which do not necessarily need to be creative, in the sense of producing something new -whatever 'new' can mean.…”