Scenographic contraptions: A manifestation for a post-representational performance design method

Design is too often considered superfluous to performances – aesthetic, technological and everyday – and yet, as a sensorially orchestrated phenomena, such invention can make discursively manifest the varying excesses of our time. As cups’ excess runneth over, the superfluous-as-design performs its superfluidity; overflowing the edges and slipping between the cracks to expose fissures and faults as possibilities; forcing open new spaces. In greeting this abundance with high-water boots, we asked how conditions of super-flu(id)ity in the social, political, environmental and/or other realms permeate our theorizing and practicing of performance design. A dozen responses to the performance+design working group’s call were selected, and these designers, theorists, pedagogues and provocateurs will share manifestos + manifestations of their research and projects in the curated Superflu(id)ity session the first day of the PSI#23 conference in Hamburg.