Methuen Drama Avatars, Activism and Postdigital Performance: Precarious Intermedial Identities

In the context of the postdigital age, where technology is increasingly part of our social and political world, Avatars, Activism and Postdigital Performance traces how identity can be created, developed, hijacked, manipulated, sabotaged and explored through performance in postdigital cultures. Considering how technology is reshaping performance, this timely collection reveals how we engage in performance practices through expanded notions of intermediality, knotted networks and layering. This book examines the artist as activist and producer of avatars, and how digital doubles, artificial intelligence and semi-automated politics are problematizing and expanding our discussions of identity. Using a range of examples in theatre, film and internet-based performance practices, chapters examine the uncertain boundaries of networked ‘informational selves’ in mediatized cultures, the impacts of machine algorithms, apps and the consequences of digital legacies. Case studies include James Cameron’s Avatar, Blast Theory’s Karen, Ontroerend Goed’s A Game of You, Randy Rainbow’s online videos, Sisters Grimm’s Calpurnia Descending, Dead Centre’s Lippy and Chekhov’s First Play and Jo Scott’s practice-as-research in ‘place-mixing’. This is an incisive study for scholars, students and practitioners interested in the wider conversations around identity-formation in postdigital cultures.