Participatory Presence in Aesthetic Experiences of Performance

Authors

Sophie Morrissey, University of MemphisFollow
Shaun Gallagher, University of Memphis; SOLA, University of WollongongFollow

Abstract

In the context of the performing arts, presence can generally be thought of as an experienced connection between performer and audience that heightens the affective impact of the performance. Explorations of how presence is experienced during live performance contribute to our understanding of the relation of presence to participants’ overall aesthetic experience and participation in the performance. However, they also reveal the complex phenomenology of presence and the challenge of offering a unified framework that can account for its various phenomenal manifestations. In this article, we conceive of presence as a recursive dynamical feedback loop that emerges through and modulates the unfolding of audience-performer-environment interactions. We use the term participatory presence to denote the interdependent relation of presence to participation. To develop an account of participatory presence, we draw on 4E approaches to cognition, which combine embodied, enactive, embedded, and extended accounts of cognition and can be expanded to include the 4As: affect, agency, affordance, and autonomy. Although recent 4E4A approaches to aesthetics offer new methods for understanding aesthetic experiences of live performance, the notion of presence remains underdeveloped. Our aim is to illuminate the operation of participatory presence in the aesthetic experience of performance. We argue that participatory presence is a processual registration of one’s engagement with the specific performance situation characterized by modulations of the 4As. It is this moment-to-moment registration that emerges through and modulates one’s participation in a recursive, looping fashion. Furthermore, we offer a general account of presence experiences as processual, intensive, layered, and intersubjectively mediated that, we argue, can contribute to our understanding of different experiences of participatory presence.

Recommended Citation

Morrissey, S., & Gallagher, S. (2025). Participatory Presence in Aesthetic Experiences of Performance. Duquesne Studies in Phenomenology, 5 (1). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/dsp/vol5/iss1/7