The Long Run: Contemporary Performance Practice and Endurance Running

'As a body-cultural phenomena running has eluded serious study in the humanities...' John Bale, Running Cultures, Routledge, 2004, p1

For 12 years my practice, located in the field of contemporary performance, has focused on ideas of travel, journey and context, often operating across extended timeframes; elements of duration and physical 'endurance' have been central to my work. My other areas of enquiry include performance for public space, the social impact of context-specific performance, and performance and narrative. My practice can be framed as a body-cultural enquiry: the deployment of the human body (often the performer's own) as a catalyst for - and site of - cultural phenomena. Performance art, live art, and specific parts of theatrical, visual and textual practice - contexts my work operates across - can be framed as body-cultural enquiries.

Through critical examination of my own practice and substantial exposure to the broader field, I have identified a key problematic that has been widely overlooked, perhaps due its apparent utilitarian yet complex nature. As a mode of practical enquiry that deploys the human body as its central site of investigation, the field is yet to undertake serious investigation into an activity that - many argue - defines both the cultural history and the present physical form of the human body: running, more specifically endurance running. The relevance of this problematic is thrown into sharp relief by the neighbouring fields of contemporary biology and anthropology, which for two decades have engaged in research on endurance running, resulting in a near complete rewriting of the socio-cultural place of running and the history of the human body; an event to which body-cultural enquiries in the arts are yet to seriously respond.

'Endurance Running Hypothesis', as proposed by Bramble and Lieberman (University of Utah and Harvard University respectively), frames human survival and the evolution of the human body as products of our ability to run considerable distances, typically between twenty and three hundred miles. The hypothesis is linked to persistence hunting, in which prey is exhausted by being outrun. This is how the light Homo sapiens survived when the heavier Neanderthals did not. We are human, the hypothesis implies, because we ran, and we continue to inhabit the bodies of endurance runners.

A critical question for contemporary performance practice emerges from this hypothesis: how does a body-based field of cultural enquiry, especially one such as mine that specifically approaches ideas of endurance and travel, respond to this framing of the human body as an endurance running body? The question is not whether endurance running can be discussed in terms of being 'art', rather what knowledge can be gained by using endurance running as a mode and site of performance-based research.

The programme takes my practical investigations as a model and operates across the schools of Arts and Humanities, Biomedical and Health Sciences, and Physical Sciences and Engineering at King's College London. Mentored by Professor of Theatre Alan Read the fellowship will establish creative dialogue between the specialisms of performance studies, literature, biology, biomechanical engineering and anatomical studies. Practical exploration will produce three professional performance outcomes. Discursive and analytical enquiries will inform and review the research through two papers and a seminar series located at the Anatomy Theatre & Museum - a live and 'digital' space for interdisciplinary performance research at King's. The programme's objective is to create a body of practical research on endurance running as a mode and site of performance enquiry that not only contributes to contemporary performance practice's study of endurance, but impacts across the public realm and related academic fields in the arts, humanities and sciences, establishing a performance paradigm of running.

The research will be beneficial to the following 4 key contexts:

1.National and international artists, professionals, professional bodies and academics in the field of contemporary performance practice/research (including performance art, live art and specific parts of theatrical, textual and visual arts practice). These include, but are not limited to:

Professionals and professional bodies:
The Live Art Development Agency, UK
FADO - Performance Art Centre, CA
Louise Jefferies, The Barbican, UK
New Work Network, UK
Kristy Edmonds, Park Avenue Armory, US
Sven Åge Birkeland, BIT Teatergarasjen, NO
Chuck Helm, The Wexner Centre for the Arts, US

Artists:
Essi Kausalainen, FI
Ivana Muller, HR
Bak Truppen, NO
Adele Prince, UK
Martin O'Brien, UK
Anti Laitinen, FI
Stephine Nadeau, US
Gwendoline Robin, BE
Augusto Corrieri, IT/UK
Search Party, UK
Martin Creed, UK
Franko B, UK
Panther, AU
Regin Igloria, US

2.Academics involved in research on Endurance Running Hypothesis, biomechanical engineering and anatomical studies
3.Academics involved in literary/cultural study
4.The general public

Artists, academics, professionals and professional bodies in the field of contemporary performance practice will benefit from research on the body's relationship to 'endurance'. Although endurance - and duration - are both central areas in much body-based practice/research very little emphasis has been placed on our physical relationship to such activities, and no work, to date, has taken place on Endurance Running Hypothesis's reframing of the human body as a running body. Academics in the field of literary/cultural practice and those in biomechanical and anatomical research will benefit from a unique dialogue with a practising artist - creating a valuable investigation into the cultural agency of endurance running.

All beneficiaries, including the general public, will encounter the research through attending - or by accessing documentation of - three performance outcomes and by attending - or by accessing online - a series of four seminars. The performance works will take place in public space, engendering public discussion on endurance, journey and travel, health and fitness and the socio-cultural place of endurance running. A seminar and performance event will take place during London's hosting of the Olympic marathon, capitalising on interest in endurance running and ideas of running as public urban spectacle.

The fellowship will be launched at an evening seminar in King's Anatomy & Theatre Museum. All outcome events - the seminar series and performance works - will be open to academics, related professionals and the general public. Outcomes will be widely publicised; print and e-flyers will be circulated; national media (including specialist running publications and websites) will be notified as will all related e-lists and discussion groups; all national and international beneficiaries listed here will be notified and invited.

The academic community and the general public will be further engaged through the publication of two research papers; extracts from these are expected to appear in popular running magazines, widening public awareness of the programme. The programme's website will be extensively networked across all relevant academic, performance-based and public/running contexts. The site will carry live broadcast and recorded documentation of both the research processes and its outcomes.

I have a proven track record of delivering performance outcomes and related activities to a wide national and international audience. Past performances works, similar in size and scope to those proposed here, have received live audiences of over 10,000 people per project and have been widely covered by national and international media alongside academic publications/journals and conferences.