Performative Topologies – small gestures from within

ABSTRACT Performative Topologies is part of Performative Diagrammatics, my ongoing artistic investigation of knowing and its relations to movement. In this report, I first lay out how the overarching framework, Performative Diagrammatics, draws on the interpreting mind of an ‘artist as reader’ to trace semantic, grammatical, and diagrammatic, abductive operations. I am interested in showing how a broader awareness of such operations can elicit regard for epistemic diversity. I then describe a Performative Topologies workshop held as part of an exhibition in Berlin. Developed with volunteers in Chicago and Weimar, Performative Topologies evolves through two successive circuits. The first circuit generates movement sequences through scripted, verbal prompts. The second circuit twins this emergent choreography with a feedback projection, topologically modified 360-degree video streaming in real time. As participants perform, an externalized, diagrammatic space emerges as participants enter a double consciousness, performing personal epistemes while contributing to a polyrhythmic, joint choreography. Such a diagrammatic space is one of great, symbolic possibility towards reconstructed relationships among individuals and their environments. Understood topologically, it is invariant and continuous. Because it cannot be cut, it does not require mending. It contains a vision of situated criticality built around endless modes of knowing.