This research stream delves into the ways in which performance-based works created during the period under analysis resonate in forms of remembrance and so-called reenactment.
Grounded on recent material resonances engaged with the performative, it prompts an analysis of what remains beyond inscriptional forms, performance remnants, documentary and the documental. While we recognise representational inscriptions as “a performance of duration,” as Rebecca Schneider puts it, here we are also committed to envisaging reenactments as “re-turns:”1 reanimations that, echoing the past, seek to take another turn and not so much return to spacetiming configurations that have long passed.
In this case, and owing to the Deleuzian roots of RESONANCE, our understanding of reenactment lends itself to a paradigm of repetition through difference. Re-turning therefore emerges as method and form: method inasmuch as it is operated in recovering the gestures, movements, and other ways of doing that remain vibrant-and-yet-hidden from the histories of performance-based works from this period; form in the sense that recent reenactments have been delivering newly-casted configurations of some performance-based works created in Portugal in the 1970s with a distinctively different approach to their originary spacio-temporal imprints.
For example, while it is clear that Brecht’s Die Mutter is distinctively translated in today’s politico-affective contexts – charged with the vertiginous advances of the techno-capitalist apparatus and social upheaval – to draw out particular past renditions of the same play in similarly specific times can seem impossible when resorting solely to the archive. Indeed, this approach is especially relevant when investigating novel ways to transmit and document these performances due to the particular investment these reenactments have on embodied knowledge – or what Diana Taylor calls “the repertoire” – as their preferential register.2
Ultimately, what gets uncovered by doing?
What role does play have in the remembrance of these works?
And, in which ways can a focus on the repertoire and processes of embodied transmission implicate novel forms of accessing non-inscribable domains for these performances?
RESONANCE’s research team will seek to collaborate with artistic collectives and efforts to explore the potential of reenactment and/or investigate past reenactments of selected case-studies. Attempting to answer the questions raised by this research stream can additionally prompt new perspectives when unpacking the Goodmanian distinction and its vicissitudes (see Intersecting analytical dichotomies), support discussions around how the history of these works has been, and can be, made (see Inscribing histories, researching historiographies) and lead to the development of new methodologies for the transmission of time- and site-specific performance-based works (see Imagining transmission otherwise).
All members of the research team are involved in this research stream. Click here to see the research outputs associated with this stream.
How to cite this resource: RESONANCE project team (2026). “About the RESONANCE project: Research Streams,” in RESONANCE: Epistemologies for the Documentation of Affect and Becoming in Cultural Manifestations in Performance (1969-1979). Available at https://resonance.fcsh.unl.pt/research-streams/performative-resonances/ Contributions (by alphabetic order of last name): First draft write-up: Ana Bigotte Vieira, Hélia Marçal, Ana Pais Review and final draft write-up: Ana Bigotte Vieira, Afonso Dias Ramos, Joana Lia Ferreira, Rita Macedo, Filipa Magalhães, Hélia Marçal, Ana Pais; Last review: 16 October 2026
The content on this website is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license. This means anyone can use this information with appropriate attribution. Under this license, attribution includes giving appropriate credit, providing a link to the license (see above), and indicating whether changes were made. The RESONANCE project is supported by the Programa Regional Lisboa 2030, Portugal 2030 and the European Union (LISBOA2030-FEDER-00914500). This work is also co-funded by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the references 2023.17624.ICDT (https://doi.org/10.54499/2023.17624.ICDT). In addition, this work is funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, FCT, I.P., under the FCT-Tenure programme 2023.11076.TENURE.147, 2023.11076.TENURE.195, 2023.11076.TENURE.193, and in the context of the Concurso Estímulo ao Emprego Científico Individual, with the reference 10.54499/2022.03775.CEECIND/CP1725/CT0045. The research centres associated to this project are funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, FCT, I.P.: UID/00417/2025 (https://doi.org/10.54499/UID/00417/2025), UID/00693/2025 (https://doi.org/10.54499/UID/00693/2025), and LA/P/0132/2020 (DOI 10.54499/LA/P/0132/2020). IHA, IHC, CESEM, ICNOVA, and IFILNOVA are funded by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the projects UID/00417/2025 (DO: doi.org/10.54499/UID/00417/2025), UID/04209/2025 (DOI: https///doi.org/10.54499/uID/04209/2025). UID/00693/2025 (DOl: https://doi.org/10.54499/UID/00693/2025), UID/05021/2025 (DOl: https//doi.org/10.54499/UID/05021/2025), UID/00183/2025 (DO: https://doi.org/10.54499/UID/00183/2025), ond LA/P/0132/2020 (DOI: doi.org/10.54499/LA/P/0132/2020)