2022/04/18 by Ben Spatz, Spatz, Ben, Nazlıhan Eda Erçin +3
Arts and Humanities · #Biblical Studies and Interpretation #Critical Autoethnography #Embodied Research #Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies #Interdisciplinary Voice #Jewish Studies #Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis #Performer Training #Postdramatic Theater #Psychophysical Performance
paper · doi:10.48807/2020.0039
openalex publication_date 2022/04/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01
“Judaica: An Embodied Laboratory for Songwork” was a two-year research project that explored the construction of identity through the act of singing. The heart of the project was a six-month laboratory period in which the three of us worked closely together, on a full-time basis, as skilled performance practitioners investigating the cultural and epistemic potential of songs. In response to critical work in the humanities and social sciences calling for greater recognition of embodied knowledge and practice in emerging research paradigms, the Judaica project implemented a new type of laboratory, in which interactions of technique, identity, and place gave rise to new forms of knowledge. Drawing on critical theories of identity, as well as studies of laboratory research in the sciences, the project offers a model for the post-technoscientific laboratory as a “place of making” in which bodies, songs, actions, objects, and concepts come together in unexpected and generative ways. Among the key discoveries of the project was a new method for sustained, experimental, embodied practice, grounded in critical theories of gender and racial identity, as well as a new approach to the editing and co-authorship of video works generated through this process. These video materials are both data for cultural researchers and research outcomes in their own right. Keywords: Embodied Research, Practice Research, Artistic Research, Interdisciplinary Voice, Critical Race Theory, New Materialism, Performer Training, Postdramatic Theater, Critical Autoethnography, Extended Voice, Song and Singing, Jerzy Grotowski, Psychophysical Performance, Experimental Theater, Dance and Somatics, Visual Anthropology, Transmedia Studies