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The book launch 'The Poetics of Performance Diagrams', 2024, author Andrej Mirčev, is part of the program within the artistic-scientific research symposium "Construction of Perspective 2026: DANCE IN TEXT - ARCHIVES, CRITIQUES AND THE FUTURE", Zagreb 15-16. April 2026

This Element considers the concept of performance diagrams and shows their historical, epistemic and aesthetic functions in theatre and dance. In three sections, the author surveys the architectural model of theatre by Vitruvius, the woodcut of Marlow's Doctor Faustus, Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne-Atlas, the spells and drawings of Antonin Artaud, the performance Paradise Now (the Living Theatre) and the choreography I am 1984 (Barbara Matijević). Demonstrating that diagrams can be applied to multiply dramaturgical trajectories, the text reviews their relevance for performance-making, analysis and documentation. The author argues that diagrams provide new tools for theory, practice and archiving, while at the same time enabling reflection on the intersections between poetics and politics. Focusing on the potentiality of diagrams to cut through representation and dichotomies, this Element affirms the visual, corporeal and spatial dimensions of performance-making. In doing so, it elucidates the significance of diagrammatic thinking for performance studies.

Andrej Mirčev (PhD.) is a performance scholar, dramaturge and visual artist. Close associate of kuda.org, program advisor and co-editor of workshops. His interdisciplinary artistic and discursive practices engages in possibilities of a critical-dialectical and intercultural dialogue between theory/practice, and his research interests include spatial theory, intermediality, performance and archives, critical theory and pedagogies. Latest publications include: Left Performance Histories (2018, co-ed.), Red People: Everything Divided (2019, co-author), volume on „Police“, Maska, Journal of performing arts (2022) and volume „On Diagrams & the Diagrammatic“, Performance Research Journal (2022). Mirčev is a former research fellow of the International Research Center „Interweaving Performance Cultures“ in Berlin. He taught at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen, University of Arts and Design (HfG) in Karlsruhe and at the Institute for Theatre Studies, FU Berlin. Mirčev is guest professor at the University of Arts (UdK) Berlin.

• Published: June 2024
• ISBN: 9781009446228