(Syn)aesthetics : Redefining Visceral Performance

A timely book that identifies the practice of '(syn)aesthetics' in artistic style and audience response, which helps to articulate the power of experiential practice in the arts. This exciting new approach includes interviews with leading practitioners in of theatre, dance, site-specific work, live art and technological performance practice.

(Syn)aesthetics: Redefining Visceral Performance, now in paperback, offers a new, original theory that describes a range of performance work whilst simultaneously providing a critical discourse for appreciating and analyzing such work. encompassing bodies, space, the written and spoken word and new technologies in performance. Featuring a new Preface which helps to orient readers through the theoretical work in the first part of the book and the original interviews in the second part, the book offers a new way of thinking and talking about experiential practice in the interdisciplinary arts. This exciting approach incorporates original interviews with leading practitioners in the field of theatre, dance, immersive practice and site-sympathetic work, live art and technological performance practice including Punchdrunk, Shunt, Graeae, Bodies In Flight, Curious, Akram Khan, Naomi Wallace, Kwame-Kwei-Armah, Marisa Carnesky, Linda Bassett and Jo McInnes. These discussions explore the links between theory and practice by clarifying how (syn)aesthetics works across diverse artistic events. Machon engages a unique and sensual approach to thinking/producing/writing/receiving, which celebrates the continuum of experience that underpins (syn)aesthetic practice and appreciation. (Syn)aesthetics is an empowering new tool for students and practitioners of performance, especially those wary of or inhibited by traditional academic discourse, and provides a critical vocabulary which can be used to describe cutting-edge, visceral and experimental performance practice.