Amateur Science in Activist Performance: Towards a Slow Science

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Notes

1. Key press coverage 3 June 2011–31 March 2012 is listed on the blog set up by supporters of Van Dyck, ‘Press and Debates’, Three Rotten Potatoes <https://threerottenpotatoes.wordpress.com/independent-science-2/press-debates/> [accessed 3 December 2015].

2. A petition was launched in support of Van Dyck on ‘Reinstate Her Now’, Three Rotten Potatoes <https://threerottenpotatoes.wordpress.com/reinstate-her-now/> [accessed 3 December 2015].

3. ‘BASF Decides to Stop GM Potato Research in Europe’, Field Liberation Movement, 30 January 2013 <http://www.fieldliberation.org/en/2013/01/30/basf-decides-to-stop-gmo-potato-project/> [accessed 19 November 2015].

4. The FLM are registered on Twitter as @patatistas <https://twitter.com/patatistas> [accessed 3 December 2015].

5. Isabelle Stengers, ‘“Another Science Is Possible!”: A Plea for Slow Science’, paper presented at the Inaugural Lecture Chair Willy Calewaert, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 13 December 2011.

6. Ibid., p. 2.

7. Sally Shuttleworth and Sally Frampton, ‘Constructing Scientific Communities: Citizen Science’, The Lancet, 385.9987 (2015), 2568.

8. See, for example, Rick Bonney, Caren B. Cooper, Janis Dickinson, Steve Kelling, Tina Phillips, Kenneth V. Rosenberg, and Jennifer Shirk, ‘Citizen Science: A Developing Tool for Expanding Science Knowledge and Scientific Literacy’, BioScience, 59.11 (2009), 977–84.

9. An awareness of these limitations is leading to a new wave of ‘extreme citizen science’; see Katherine Rowland, ‘Citizen Science Goes Extreme’, Nature News, 17 February 2012 <http://www.nature.com/news/citizen-science-goes-extreme-1.10054> [accessed 3 December 2015].

10. Rick Bonney, Jennifer L. Shirk, Tina B. Phillips, Andrea Wiggins, Heidi L. Ballard, Abraham J. Miller-Rushing, and Julia K. Parrish, ‘Next Steps for Citizen Science’, Science, 343.6178 (2014), 1436–37.

11. Patricia T. Clough, The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social (Durham, NC: Duke, 2007), p. 29.

12. Patricia T. Clough, ‘The Affective Turn: Political Economy, Biomedia, and Bodies’, in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. by Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (Durham, NC: Duke, 2010), pp. 206–28 (p. 207).

13. Brian Wynne, ‘Misunderstood Misunderstanding: Social Identities and Public Uptake of Science’, Public Understanding of Science: An International Journal of Research in the Public Dimensions of Science and Technology, 1.3 (1992), 281–304; Brian Wynne, ‘Public Engagement as a Means of Restoring Public Trust in Science – Hitting the Notes, but Missing the Music?’, Community Genetics, 9.3 (2006), 211–20.

14. Charles Thorpe and Jane Gregory, ‘Producing the Post-Fordist Public: The Political Economy of Public Engagement with Science’, Science as Culture, 19.3 (2010), 273–301 (p. 296).

15. Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926), pp. 276–77.

16. Nicholas Ridout, Passionate Amateurs: Theatre, Communism, and Love (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013), p. 29.

17. Ibid., p. 15.

18. Ibid., p. 17.

19. Ibid., p. 47.

20. Indian activist Vandana Shiva linked the struggle of the Belgian activists with Indian cotton farmers in a statement of support ‘Vandana Shiva Supports Field Liberation Movement: “Stay Strong!”’, 18 September 2013 <https://vimeo.com/75279203> [accessed 20 November 2015].

21. Rosalind Gill and Andy Pratt, ‘In the Social Factory? Immaterial Labour, Precariousness and Cultural Work’, Theory, Culture & Society, 25.7–8 (2008), 1–30 (p. 3).

22. Sheila Jasanoff, ‘The Idiom of Co-Production’, in States of Knowledge: The Co-Production of Science and Social Order, ed. by Sheila Jasanoff (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 1–12 (p. 2).

23. Baz Kershaw, Theatre Ecology: Environments and Performance Events (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

24. David Román, Acts of Intervention: Performance, Gay Culture, and AIDS (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998).

25. Critical Art Ensemble, ‘Critical Art Ensemble’ <http://www.critical-art.net/> [accessed 20 November 2015].

26. Compass collaborators include the artist Claire Pentecost who has characterised her work as that of a ‘public amateur’. See Compass <http://midwestcompass.org/>; and Claire Pentecost <http://www.publicamateur.org/> [accessed 3 December 2015].

27. Platform, ‘About Us’, Platform London <http://platformlondon.org/about-us/> [accessed 20 November 2015].

28. Natalie Jeremijenko, ‘Amateurity and Biotechnology’, in Creative Biotechnology: A User’s Manual, ed. by Natalie Jeremijenko and Eugene Thacker (Newcastle: Locus+, 2004), pp. 3–20 (p. 8). See <http://www.locusplus.org.uk/projects/2803~Creative+Biotechnology%3A+a+user’s+manual> [accessed 29 March 2016].

29. Deborah B. Gould, Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP’s Fight against AIDS (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), p. 403.

30. Tokyo Electric Power Company, Fuku 1 Live, 28 August 2011 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3g8L_7cTkM> [accessed 20 November 2015].

31. ‘Fukushima Daiichi Mystery Man Steps Forward’, Tokyo Times, 8 September 2011 <http://www.tokyotimes.com/fukushima-daiichi-mystery-man-steps-forward/> [accessed 20 November 2015].

32. Anonymous, ‘About the Pointing a Finger toward Fukuichi Live Cam’, 8 September 2011 <http://pointatfuku1cam.nobody.jp/index.html> [accessed 20 November 2015].

33. Vito Acconci, Centers, Internet Archive <https://archive.org/details/ubu-acconci_centers> [accessed 20 November 2015].

34. ‘Kota Takeuchi’, Snow Contemporary <http://snowcontemporary.com/en/artists/takeuchi_kota_cv.html> [accessed 20 November 2015].

35. Edan Corkill, ‘Are We Pointing at the Right Guy?’, Japan Times, 8 March 2012 <http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2012/03/08/arts/are-we-pointing-at-the-right-guy-2/#.Vk8eSHbNyM_> [accessed 20 November 2015].

36. Anonymous, ‘About the Pointing a Finger toward Fukuichi Live Cam’.

37. Rosalind Krauss, ‘Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism’, October, 1 (1976), 50–64 (p. 50).

38. The clean-up and decommissioning of Fukushima is estimated to take about 40 years due to contaminated water. See, for example, Justin McCurry, ‘Fukushima £11bn Cleanup Progresses, but There Is No Cause for Optimism’, Guardian, 13 November 2014 <http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/13/fukushima-11bn-cleanup-will-take-another-40-years> [accessed 20 November 2015].

39. Despite the actual or perceived risks of working in or near the plant, many workers were being paid less than other similar labourers in nearby areas outside the contaminated zone. See Justin McCurry, ‘Fukushima Fallout Continues: Now Cleanup Workers Claim Unpaid Wages’, Guardian, 9 September 2014 <http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/09/fukushima-daiichi-operators-face-court-for-unpaid-wages> [accessed 20 November 2015].

40. Justin McCurry, ‘Life as a Fukushima Clean-up Worker – Radiation, Exhaustion, Public Criticism’, Guardian, 6 March 2013 <http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/mar/06/fukushima-clean-up-radiation-public-criticism> [accessed 20 November 2015].

41. A diagram of this tautology can be found on the website, ‘About the Pointing a Finger toward Fukuichi Live Cam’.

42. Corkill, ‘Are We Pointing at the Right Guy?’.

43. Anonymous, ‘About the Pointing a Finger toward Fukuichi Live Cam’.

44. Ibid.

45. See, for example, the film by Julia Leser and Clarissa Seidel, Radioactivists: Protest in Japan since Fukushima, 2011 <http://radioactivists.org/> [accessed 20 November 2015].

46. The performance has predominantly been performed in domestic bedrooms; the first performances were in his own flat. Sometimes, where this has not been possible, other spaces have been transformed temporarily to stand in for a bedroom.

47. See Jenny Hughes, Performance in a Time of Terror: Critical Mimesis and the Age of Uncertainty (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), pp. 140–42.

48. Nikolas Rose, The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 221.

49. Unusual or notable examples of these are published in research journals such as the Journal of Medical Case Reports <http://jmedicalcasereports.biomedcentral.com/about> [accessed 29 March 2016].

50. Arthur Frank, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness and Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), p. 137.

51. Ibid., p. 140.

52. James Leadbitter, unpublished interview with the author, 23 July 2014.

53. Leadbitter’s critical perspective is echoed within medical literature; see, for example, Delese Wear and Mark G. Kuczewski, ‘The Professionalism Movement: Can We Pause?’, American Journal of Bioethics, 4.2 (2004), 1–10.

54. See, for example, Paul Lewis, Rob Evans, and Martin Wainwright, ‘Second Police Officer to Infiltrate Environmental Activists Unmasked’, Guardian, 12 January 2011 <http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jan/12/second-undercover-police-officer-unmasked> [accessed 20 November 2015].

55. See, for example, Paul Lewis and Marc Vallée, ‘Caught on Film and Stored on Database: How Police Keep Tabs on Activists’, Guardian, 6 March 2009 <http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/mar/06/police-surveillance-database-activists-intelligence> [accessed 29 March 2016].

56. Jenny Hughes writes persuasively about the use of covert performance in terrorism and counter-insurgency in Performance in a Time of Terror: Critical Mimesis and the Age of Uncertainty (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), pp. 59–90.

57. James Leadbitter, Mental, unpublished script.

58. John Ballatt and Penelope Campling have proposed the notion of ‘intelligent kindness’ as integral to necessary NHS reform in Intelligent Kindness: Reforming the Culture of Healthcare (London: Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2011).

59. James Leadbitter, ‘“How Do We Imagine Something Other than What There Is?”: An Interview with the Vacuum Cleaner’, Contemporary Theatre Review Interventions, July 2015 <http://www.contemporarytheatrereview.org/2015/the-vacuum-cleaner-interview/> [accessed 20 November 2015].

60. Ibid.

61. Nel Noddings, ‘The Caring Relation’, in The Maternal Factor: Two Paths to Morality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), pp. 33–66.

62. The song written by Gene McFadden and John Whitehead is associated with black utopianism from the 1970s after the civil rights movement, reflected here in the constructive (rather than entirely critical/oppositional) tone of Leadbitter’s piece. See, for example, Jeffrey Allen Tucker, ‘Waking up to the Sound’, American Literary History, 27.3 (2015), 599–613.

63. Stengers, ‘“Another Science Is Possible!”’.

64. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, pp. 276–77.

65. Stengers, ‘“Another Science Is Possible!”’, p. 10.

66. Paolo Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude (Los Angeles: Semiotext, 2004), p. 61.