Transmission in Motion

Seminar Blogs

“Retraced, Redrawn, Retold” – Floor Mijland

With his steady narration, Mike Pearson (Professor Emeritus of Performance Studies at Aberystwyth University) transports us back in time, to the streets of Cardiff in June 1919. Accompanied by images of street corners, houses, men, families, we are emerged in the mayhem that took place over the course of four days and nights. We hear…

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“Cultural Forgetfulness” – Daniël Everts

In my recent academic endeavors, I have been focussing on memory on a cultural level. Primarily, I have been interested in the way some memories are given precedence over other memories in digital social media. However, when performance studies scholar Mike Pearson of Aberystwyth University spoke of his contribution in re-creating a particularly dark moment…

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“Expanding and Enacting Historiographies” – Hannah Harder

A professor of performance studies, Mike Pearson developed the theater piece Wild Scenes at Cardiff in 2019, a dynamic performance of a local history. This project brings the audience through the four days of the Cardiff race riots, describing the broad movements of the events and the actors involved. Certainly a weighty task, Pearson describes…

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“What Do We Need History For?” – Hymke Theunissen

On the 16th of December, I was not sitting in my living room and watching my laptop screen. I was not aware of the time or what I was going to make for dinner. Mentally, I was walking somewhere in Cardiff in 1919. I was surrounded by characters of a story formed by the voice…

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“Live-tweeting the Cardiff Riots of 1919” – Polyniki Katrantsioti

An important factor concerning the work of Kyle Legall, Cardiff 1919: Riots Redrawn is that they were never extensively covered in history, despite the fact that they had a detrimental effect on the Welsh population. To further reinforce this lack of historical appreciation comes the fact that the Cardiff Riots are not taught in schools,…

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“Cardiff 1919: Reconstructing Memory” – Soyun Jang

Mike Pearson, Professor Emeritus of Performance Studies at Aberystwyth University, has been working with National Theatre Wales and a number of artists to record the race riot that startled Cardiff for four days and night in mid-June 1919 – an event described as a “violent mayhem that left three dead, many in hospital, and buildings…

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“Branching Storytelling and Speculative Realism” – Liang Yue

After watching the registration of Estado Vegetal, the voice of the plant still lingered in my head. The “I can’t move” expression and the resonant voice subtly contrasts the plant’s two properties: still and kinetic. Manuela Infante, the scriptwriter and director of this show, shared her exploration of branching storytelling strategy and speculative realism during…

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