| Popis |
In recent years, various forms of small-scale, intimate interactive, participatory, and immersive performances have increasingly emerged, centred around shared spectators’ activities such as communal eating, walking, dancing, or creative collaboration. Between 2019 and 2024, as I attended such performances, I repeatedly observed myself acting with increased consideration toward other participants: ensuring everyone crossed safely at pedestrian crossings, pouring tea for others while pouring for myself, including a participant in conversation who stood by isolated, or accepting an invitation for a group activity with previously unknown participants after the performance ended. From my observations, other participants behaved similarly – at least in terms of sharing food or drink and demonstrating mindfulness toward others. In addition to these immediate interactions, new social bonds were formed – some temporary (such as walking together to the subway after the end of the performance), and others more enduring, including connections with the performers. Just as the concept of “social learning” is developed in cognitive sciences (BANDURA 1977), I propose to consider the notion of “prosocial learning” in the context of these performances – a process in which individuals, through performatively framed synchronised activities, learn or perhaps rather cultivate prosocial behaviour in forms such as cooperation, empathy, and sharing, abilities which are increasingly eroded by the prevailing mechanisms of advanced neoliberal capitalism. Drawing on recent findings of cognitive-religious research (LANG et al. 2017), I propose that the tendency toward prosocial behaviour in such performances may be reinforced by the release of beta-endorphins associated with synchronisation. This “prosocial perspective” expands the current discourse on participatory performances, which are often viewed as narcissistically self-centred and reproducing the ethos of neoliberalism (ALSTON 2012, 2013; ZAIONTZ 2014). The paper does not aim to refute this perspective but demonstrates that the mechanisms of audience engagement in contemporary performances may be more complex. It aims to show that a primary focus on individual experience does not necessarily imply narcissism; instead, it explores how intimacy and personal involvement may foster openness to others rather than self-absorption.
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