ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the political potential of the ‘pause’ in performance through reflecting on the performance work Standing Bird, which premiered at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) in 2012. Drawing on Jill Dolan’s concept of the ‘utopian performative moment’, the chapter questions what it means to make truly political performance for spectators in the ‘globalising West’, and considers how a ‘situated performative’ – which engages the real alongside the imagined – can engender the political ‘re-’ by opening up different ways of responding to the world.
