Laura Bissell
Biographic Data
| ID | 217150 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Laura Bissell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Laura |
| FAMILY NAME | Bissell |
| SIGNATURE | BISSELL L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Royal Conservatoire of Scotland |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6959-0545 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Postdigital Learning Journeys
Across contexts and history, the pursuit of knowledge has often overlapped with the undertaking of travel. For centuries, pilgrims have made their way to Badrinath, Lumbini, Mecca, and other places of religious note, demonstrating devotion while participating in journeys of personal exploration. Travelling also holds the promise of cultural enlightenment, for instance as wealthy young British men embarked on the Grand Tour across Europe during th…
Matrescence and creative practice: Interviews with mother/artists
Matrescence and media
Pandemic performance portals
This collaborative co-authored article argues that performance is a portal that can connect ‘infinite' and ‘far’ communities, and that portals can invite a sense of world-building through digital connections. For two months, a gold shipping container in Glasgow connected to other portals in Iraq, Rwanda, Mexico City, Palestine and Uganda for intimate performance encounters. Using performances created for the Climate Portals festival at the Royal …
My Diary Diary
This project uses diary writing as a methodology for undertaking research into 11 diaries of women writers. Part autoethnography, part critical discussion, my diary diary charts a month of reading diaries, reading about diaries and keeping a diary every working day. The curated journals are read in relation to each other to try to understand legacies of how the diary form has allowed them to write themselves while also contributing to wider knowl…
Performing Processions: Premonitions and palimpsests
This article explores the performative aspects of processions, drawing on the author's own practice-based research. It examines how processions can evoke a sense of premonition and act as palimpsests, layering past and present experiences. The author discusses the concept of 'walking-thinking' and how it relates to the embodied experience of moving through space. The article also considers the role of processions in creating temporary communities…
Performance research and pedagogy: Inviting in the unknown
This article explores how practice as research can be a process of inviting in the unknown. In the context of student learning on the Contemporary Performance Practice programme at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, the authors (research-led tutors on the programme) explore performance research and pedagogy, emphasising knowledge as an ongoing, open and embodied process that students can explore and create through their own artistic practices a…
Shorelines: Choreographies of Remembrance and Forgetting
Using oceanographer Rachel Carson's study The Edge of the Sea (1955) to contextualise tidal spaces, this chapter discusses how constantly shifting and eroding coastlines act as a site for writing, re-writing and performing acts of cultural and personal memory. It also considers the ecological impact of human activity on tidal spaces and their more-than-human inhabitants. 14-18 NOW's Pages of the Sea, directed by Danny Boyle, invited communities a…
Tidal spaces: Choreographies of Remembrance and Forgetting
This article explores the potential of tidal spaces to perform acts of remembrance and forgetting. Using oceanographer Rachel Carson's The Edge of the Sea to contextualise tidal spaces, this analysis will discuss how constantly shifting and eroding coastlines act as a site for writing, rewriting and performing acts of cultural and personal memory. The concept of tidal choreographies will be introduced via two contemporary works performed on shore…
Training Artists in Times of Crisis
This article is co-authored by lecturers on the Contemporary Performance Practice BA (Hons) Programme (CPP) at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) and offers a response as to how to train artists in this current moment of ecological, political, social and health crises. The CPP programme aims to develop socially engaged artists who contribute to the world as performance-makers, educators, advocates and active citizens. In these months where…
Tide Times: Responding to Cramond
This article explores site-responsiveness in the context of a collaborative work, Tide Times, by Laura Bissell (writer) and Timothy Cooper (electroacoustic composer) created for the island of Cramond. In this co-written submission we examine the ways in which the work responded to our experience of exploring the tidal island on the East Coast of Scotland during five visits between April and August 2018. Contextualising Tide Times through Ingold’s…
Swim Pretty: Aquatic Spectacles and the Performance of Race, Gender, and Nature by Jennifer A. Kokai
Reviewed by: Swim Pretty: Aquatic Spectacles and the Performance of Race, Gender, and Nature by Jennifer A. Kokai Laura Bissell SWIM PRETTY: AQUATIC SPECTACLES AND THE PERFORMANCE OF RACE, GENDER, AND NATURE. By Jennifer A. Kokai. Theater in the Americas series. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2017; pp. 256. In the late 1930s, female performers of the Aquacade in New York—having been hired only after their legs had been measured t…
Regular Routes: Deep Mapping a Performative Counterpractice for the Daily Commute 1
This article offers a textual “deep map” of a series of experimental commutes undertaken in the west of Scotland in 2014. Recent developments in the field of transport studies have reconceived travel time as a far richer cultural experience than in previously utilitarian and economic approaches to the “problem” of commuting. Understanding their own commutes in these terms—as spaces of creativity, productivity and transformation—the authors trace …
Reflections on a mobile train conference from Helsinki to Rovaniemi
This is an account of Laura Bissell and David Overend’s experience of attending a ‘mobile train conference’, which explored ideas around theatre and nomadism en route from the Finnish capital, Helsinki, to the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi. The account of the journey, which took place on 8 April 2014, reflects on the opportunities, affordances and limitations of mobilising knowledge exchange in this way. Drawing on Michel De Certeau’s brief …
Deviant Practices: Technological Re-codings of the City through Radical Play
By critically analysing recent explorations into walking the city as a creative and politicised practice, this paper illustrates how mobile devices can be used as tools for radical play and to encourage subversive use of public spaces. Building on Henri Lefebrve’s Writings on Cities (1993) and The Urban Revolution , (2003) this paper will offer new types of technologised mapping as a politicised performative practice that enacts participants ‘rig…
The female cyborg as grotesque in performance
This article analyses Julia Bardsley's performance Aftermaths: A Tear in the Meat of Vision as an example of contemporary performance that makes the connection between historical female hybrids and current ones. By using Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the grotesque and feminist responses to this, alongside ideas expounded in Donna Haraway's ‘Cyborg manifesto’, this article explores the similarities between female bodies that have been rendered hybri…
Amorphous Bodies: The Uncanny in Performance
Reflections on a mobile train conference from Helsinki to Rovaniemi
This is an account of Laura Bissell and David Overend’s experience of attending a ‘mobile train conference’, which explored ideas around theatre and nomadism en route from the Finnish capital, Helsinki, to the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi. The account of the journey, which took place on 8 April 2014, reflects on the opportunities, affordances and limitations of mobilising knowledge exchange in this way. Drawing on Michel De Certeau’s brief …
My Diary Diary
This project uses diary writing as a methodology for undertaking research into 11 diaries of women writers. Part autoethnography, part critical discussion, my diary diary charts a month of reading diaries, reading about diaries and keeping a diary every working day. The curated journals are read in relation to each other to try to understand legacies of how the diary form has allowed them to write themselves while also contributing to wider knowl…
Tidal spaces: Choreographies of Remembrance and Forgetting
This article explores the potential of tidal spaces to perform acts of remembrance and forgetting. Using oceanographer Rachel Carson's The Edge of the Sea to contextualise tidal spaces, this analysis will discuss how constantly shifting and eroding coastlines act as a site for writing, rewriting and performing acts of cultural and personal memory. The concept of tidal choreographies will be introduced via two contemporary works performed on shore…
Regular Routes: Deep Mapping a Performative Counterpractice for the Daily Commute 1
This article offers a textual “deep map” of a series of experimental commutes undertaken in the west of Scotland in 2014. Recent developments in the field of transport studies have reconceived travel time as a far richer cultural experience than in previously utilitarian and economic approaches to the “problem” of commuting. Understanding their own commutes in these terms—as spaces of creativity, productivity and transformation—the authors trace …
Amorphous Bodies: The Uncanny in Performance
Deviant Practices: Technological Re-codings of the City through Radical Play
By critically analysing recent explorations into walking the city as a creative and politicised practice, this paper illustrates how mobile devices can be used as tools for radical play and to encourage subversive use of public spaces. Building on Henri Lefebrve’s Writings on Cities (1993) and The Urban Revolution , (2003) this paper will offer new types of technologised mapping as a politicised performative practice that enacts participants ‘rig…
The female cyborg as grotesque in performance
This article analyses Julia Bardsley's performance Aftermaths: A Tear in the Meat of Vision as an example of contemporary performance that makes the connection between historical female hybrids and current ones. By using Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the grotesque and feminist responses to this, alongside ideas expounded in Donna Haraway's ‘Cyborg manifesto’, this article explores the similarities between female bodies that have been rendered hybri…
Regular Routes: Deep Mapping a Performative Counterpractice for the Daily Commute 1
This article offers a textual “deep map” of a series of experimental commutes undertaken in the west of Scotland in 2014. Recent developments in the field of transport studies have reconceived travel time as a far richer cultural experience than in previously utilitarian and economic approaches to the “problem” of commuting. Understanding their own commutes in these terms—as spaces of creativity, productivity and transformation—the authors trace …
Reflections on a mobile train conference from Helsinki to Rovaniemi
This is an account of Laura Bissell and David Overend’s experience of attending a ‘mobile train conference’, which explored ideas around theatre and nomadism en route from the Finnish capital, Helsinki, to the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi. The account of the journey, which took place on 8 April 2014, reflects on the opportunities, affordances and limitations of mobilising knowledge exchange in this way. Drawing on Michel De Certeau’s brief …
Tide Times: Responding to Cramond
This article explores site-responsiveness in the context of a collaborative work, Tide Times, by Laura Bissell (writer) and Timothy Cooper (electroacoustic composer) created for the island of Cramond. In this co-written submission we examine the ways in which the work responded to our experience of exploring the tidal island on the East Coast of Scotland during five visits between April and August 2018. Contextualising Tide Times through Ingold’s…
Swim Pretty: Aquatic Spectacles and the Performance of Race, Gender, and Nature by Jennifer A. Kokai
Reviewed by: Swim Pretty: Aquatic Spectacles and the Performance of Race, Gender, and Nature by Jennifer A. Kokai Laura Bissell SWIM PRETTY: AQUATIC SPECTACLES AND THE PERFORMANCE OF RACE, GENDER, AND NATURE. By Jennifer A. Kokai. Theater in the Americas series. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2017; pp. 256. In the late 1930s, female performers of the Aquacade in New York—having been hired only after their legs had been measured t…
Training Artists in Times of Crisis
This article is co-authored by lecturers on the Contemporary Performance Practice BA (Hons) Programme (CPP) at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) and offers a response as to how to train artists in this current moment of ecological, political, social and health crises. The CPP programme aims to develop socially engaged artists who contribute to the world as performance-makers, educators, advocates and active citizens. In these months where…
Tidal spaces: Choreographies of Remembrance and Forgetting
This article explores the potential of tidal spaces to perform acts of remembrance and forgetting. Using oceanographer Rachel Carson's The Edge of the Sea to contextualise tidal spaces, this analysis will discuss how constantly shifting and eroding coastlines act as a site for writing, rewriting and performing acts of cultural and personal memory. The concept of tidal choreographies will be introduced via two contemporary works performed on shore…
Performance research and pedagogy: Inviting in the unknown
This article explores how practice as research can be a process of inviting in the unknown. In the context of student learning on the Contemporary Performance Practice programme at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, the authors (research-led tutors on the programme) explore performance research and pedagogy, emphasising knowledge as an ongoing, open and embodied process that students can explore and create through their own artistic practices a…
Shorelines: Choreographies of Remembrance and Forgetting
Using oceanographer Rachel Carson's study The Edge of the Sea (1955) to contextualise tidal spaces, this chapter discusses how constantly shifting and eroding coastlines act as a site for writing, re-writing and performing acts of cultural and personal memory. It also considers the ecological impact of human activity on tidal spaces and their more-than-human inhabitants. 14-18 NOW's Pages of the Sea, directed by Danny Boyle, invited communities a…
My Diary Diary
This project uses diary writing as a methodology for undertaking research into 11 diaries of women writers. Part autoethnography, part critical discussion, my diary diary charts a month of reading diaries, reading about diaries and keeping a diary every working day. The curated journals are read in relation to each other to try to understand legacies of how the diary form has allowed them to write themselves while also contributing to wider knowl…
Performing Processions: Premonitions and palimpsests
This article explores the performative aspects of processions, drawing on the author's own practice-based research. It examines how processions can evoke a sense of premonition and act as palimpsests, layering past and present experiences. The author discusses the concept of 'walking-thinking' and how it relates to the embodied experience of moving through space. The article also considers the role of processions in creating temporary communities…
Pandemic performance portals
This collaborative co-authored article argues that performance is a portal that can connect ‘infinite' and ‘far’ communities, and that portals can invite a sense of world-building through digital connections. For two months, a gold shipping container in Glasgow connected to other portals in Iraq, Rwanda, Mexico City, Palestine and Uganda for intimate performance encounters. Using performances created for the Climate Portals festival at the Royal …
Postdigital Learning Journeys
Across contexts and history, the pursuit of knowledge has often overlapped with the undertaking of travel. For centuries, pilgrims have made their way to Badrinath, Lumbini, Mecca, and other places of religious note, demonstrating devotion while participating in journeys of personal exploration. Travelling also holds the promise of cultural enlightenment, for instance as wealthy young British men embarked on the Grand Tour across Europe during th…
Matrescence and creative practice: Interviews with mother/artists
Matrescence and media
Art (12 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Aesthetics (7 works) · Visual arts (7 works) · History (6 works) · Geographies of human-animal interactions (5 works) · Theatre and Performance Studies (5 works) · Media studies (4 works) · Archaeology (3 works)