Pandemic performance portals

ABSTRACT

This collaborative co-authored article argues that performance is a portal that can connect ‘infinite' and ‘far’ communities, and that portals can invite a sense of world-building through digital connections. For two months, a gold shipping container in Glasgow connected to other portals in Iraq, Rwanda, Mexico City, Palestine and Uganda for intimate performance encounters. Using performances created for the Climate Portals festival at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland during COP26 in November 2021, this article considers performance as a portal that provokes reconsiderations of space, place, and time.

KEYWORDS:

• Pandemic
• portal
• COP26
• performance
• climate crisis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 A collaboration between the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Shared_Studios, Scottish Ballet and HarrisonParrot funded by the British Council.