I’m introducing students to different models of devised performance – and, in passing, described Clay Shirky’s hierarchy of participation: starting with sharing, and moving in increasing complexity through co-operation and collaboration to collective action.
Since that lecture, I’ve been thinking about the value of recognising the link beween these different kinds of participation – that co-operation, for example, is often dependent on sharing, or that collective action may demand very specific modes of co-operation. Consequently, it may be productive to think of interactive and improvisational performance as creating opportunities (or demands) for participants to shift between overlapping, complimentary registers of action that aren’t bound to a simple hierarchy of sophistication. Accordingly, we might think about the terms for participation as being highly contextual.1
Part of the value of that kind thinking is the way in which it allows us to recognise that – for example – sharing might not be simple or straightforward; that disclosure of even seemingly mundane ideas, thoughts and gestures are shaped by cultural norms and relationships of power. Similarly, particular contexts might make co-operation easier (or, at least, more desirable) than independent action – all of which has consequences for performance which engages with ideas of designed experience.
- In fairness, I’d note that much of Shirky’s discussion in Here Comes Everybody recognises the specific conditions in which different projects have found success. [↩]
