Performativity at present is understood as any kind of process, behavior or activism in the social space generally: as a result, what in the years of the performative turn was considered to be the breakthrough to emancipation, became commonplace. Present application of the word “performance” does not differentiate between methods and genres, randomly converging versatile performative and activist practices in contemporary culture, theatre, dance, art and social activism. Numerous representatives of the studies in anthropology or the newest tendencies in theatre insist on the unimportance of such a division, implying general space for political activity and radical artistic behavior and asserting there is no difference between art performance, contemporary theatrical practices or social agencies. Contemporary art as the institute on its part did not tend to integrate these new performative practices, having its own lexicons of performativity. However, the situation has recently changed; the art performativity is rather importing the lexicons of performing arts than referring to the conceptual constraints of its performance heritage.

Meanwhile, parallel to such indistinction, the studies of the ontology of performativity, as well as various methodologies of performing demonstrate the explicit anthropological rupture between concrete modes of performativity. The question to investigate then is what the social and institutional demands for such indistinction are and whether this indistinction lubricates, or on the contrary articulates the political and horizons of contemporaneity.

Biography
Keti Chukhrov (Higher School of Economics, Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies) – ScD in philosophy (RSUH), associate professor at the Department of Cultural Theory at the HSE, visiting professor at the European University at St. Petersburg. Head of the theory department at NCCA (Moscow).

Her research interests are the ontology of performing, comparative epistemologies of socialism and capitalism, art-systems and post-human studies. She authored numerous texts on art theory, cultural politics, and philosophy, published in Afterall, Moscow Art Magazine, Artforum, Brumaria, Documenta magazines, e-flux journal, Voprosi Philosophii, Problemi, Stasis, etc. Book-length publications include: To Be – To Perform. ‘Theatre’ in Philosophical Criticism of Art (2011); Pound &£ (1999), and a volume of dramatic writing: Just Humans (2010).