Hunger Journals

Spatula&Barcode collaborated with Jazmin Badong Llana to curate concurrent volumes of two journals on the theme of hunger.  Global Performance Studies Vol. 6 No. 1-2 (online, open access) and Performance Research Volume 28 Issue 7 (in print and online with restrictions LINK) were released in 2024. The 29 contributions are based in or writing about events in eighteen countries on six continents. You will find a complete listing of essays and authors at this link.

How does performance studies understand hunger, as somatic experience, performative agency and socially produced cruelty? How can a performance approach help understand voluntary self-starvation and related phenomena? How can it critically engage with artistic representations of hunger? What creative interventions can be made in how hunger appears? Can it be engaged or deployed as well as represented? What can the arts contribute to hunger action?

Following the online Performance Studies international conference # 27: Hunger, based in Manila, Philippines in July 2022, Performance Research and Global Performance Studies agreed to publish concurrent issues on the same theme. The two issues share introductory material and thematic organization; the main content is distinct yet conceptually connected. Both issues contain sections on Context, Hunger Action, Self-Starvation, Representing Hunger, and Creative Interventions. Contents include material developed from conference presentations as well as substantial new work responding to the joint editors’ call for submissions.