Final Report Summary - IPCWPPB (Indigeneity in the Contemporary World: Performance, Politics and Belonging) This broad-reaching project, the first of its kind in contemporary cultural studies, examined film, theatre, dance, music and festival events to determine what kind of political, aesthetic, and affective work indigenous performance does in our complex, globalising world. Professor Helen Gilbert led a core team of internationally recruited early-career researchers to deliver a multifaceted, interdisciplinary account of the subject, in dialogue with a range of indigenous collaborators. Research focused on performance works from Australia, the Americas, the Pacific and South Africa, while also addressing the transnational circulation of indigenous works in European cultural circuits. As well as convening several international research events fostering cutting-edge analysis in the field, team members travelled to many countries to access remote repositories, document performances in the making and interview artists, cultural leaders and audiences. Outputs from the project include a rich variety of written, oral, digital and video publications along with a highly successful public exhibition staged in 2013 in London and subsequently adapted for an interactive online platform.Project work was organized under four interdisciplinary themes: ‘Commodity and Spectacle’, ‘Reconciliation and Social Cohesion’, ‘Heritage and Material Culture’ and ‘Mobility and Belonging’. These themes guided analysis of the ways in which indigenous aesthetics, values, knowledges and practices are transmitted, through performance, across place and time, and how creatively embodied art-forms contribute to broader cultural dialogues. Across the many different regions and performance genres studied, researchers found a strong common interest in issues pertaining to social justice and postcolonial restitution, sovereignty, representation, identity politics, cultural regeneration, environmental sustainability and the circulation (locally and globally) of indigenous arts and artefacts. Digital media technologies have been widely integrated into the indigenous repertoires examined and contribute to transnational dialogues and sharing of arts practices, often with activist agendas. In tracing such developments, the research team built a vast international network of scholars, performance-makers and cultural commentators, who contributed to and benefited from the project. Future research capacity in this field has also been enhanced by the compilation of several rigorously edited book and journal publications and, importantly, by the creation of unique resources made available as open-access research tools. Among these are 10 edited videos of varying lengths, which bring indigenous voices into the sphere of scholarly debate in creative and compelling ways. Practice-led research emerged as an additional project highlight, leading to a powerful performance intervention in London and popular experiments with multisensory and interactive exhibition installations.As well as conducting research at the frontiers of transnational performance studies, team members acted as advisors, translators, collaborators and facilitators for cultural events in Britain and abroad. Among the main beneficiaries of these knowledge transfer activities were organizing bodies that present indigenous arts to the public through multi-arts festivals, museums and galleries, or through international film festivals, notably in France, Colombia, USA and Ecuador. Audiences engaged enthusiastically with the project’s research at workshops, discussions, performances and the 17-day exhibition, EcoCentrix, which was short-listed for a UK public engagement award and named among the 5 best free things to do in London. In essence, the project achieved its overarching aim in both scientific and cultural realms: to sharpen understanding of a wide range of indigenous performances, not as anthropological curiosities but as contemporary expressive arts offering new perspectives on crucial debates of our times.
