On Editing: Special Issue of Performance Research

This special single topic issue of Performance Research was, on my invitation, edited in collaboration with Dr. William H. Sherman of the University of Maryland. As well as editing the issue, we jointly wrote the editorial introduction, ‘Enter Editor’, providing the theoretical context for the issue and questioning the role of the editor. My conceptual framework in putting together this project was to focus on editing as an historically located artistic and scholarly practice and to bring together contributions from a range of artists and scholars addressing editing as an interventionist art and cultural practice. The issue aimed to set an agenda for considering the meaning and practices of editing within the expanded field of art and writing, reassessing the relationship of new technologies to the legacy of print culture, and giving new perspectives on the changing economics and politics of publishing in the field of textual and visual performance - including intellectual property and censorship. The collaborative work of editing this issue was also curatorial and drew on areas of expertise that we each have within our congruent fields, commissioning a lexicon of visual/textual editing terms and soliciting material from leading figures in the fields of art, performance and textual studies, including W. B. Worthen, Johanna Drucker, Philip Zarilli, Stephen Orgel, and artist Tom Phillips, whose work we used for the cover. The result of this research process was a wide ranging intellectual and artistic conversation amongst thinkers and practitioners that connects traditions of textual editing to thinking within art and performance practice about intervention, appropriation, authorship and collaboration.