THIS IS NOT A PERFORMANCE OR A LECTURE!  
June 2011

Radar presented two days of discussion and new commissions that began a dialogue about the intersection between performance and visual practice.   In recent years the division between the two has become increasingly blurred, breaking down some of the often imaginary differences between them.

One area of increasing interest to practitioners working in both fields has been the performance lecture.  Even though formally quite limited they offer unique and complex possibilities and challenges. 

Radar present seven new commissions responding to this format.  They inhabited spaces across the campus purposefully meandering from performance to lecture and back again, testing what might constitute a performance lecture rather than demonstrating a unified approach. As works combined explanation with a more overtly fictional narrative, moving between the theatrical and instructional,  exchanging an authorative voice with one that is more unreliable, the programme challenged traditional notions of those particular forms of imparting either knowledge or entertainment.