Performance as a representation of Science, Technology and the Universe

Here we refer to performance in its wider definition in order to include theatre, film, performance art, political speeches, extreme sports, etc. Historically, human societies have enacted their relation to the universe in a myriad of ways, and this speaks of the necessity to account for extraterrestrial space in performance as a way to understand our place and agency with respect to the universe, and as a consequence to ruling epistemologies and technological breakthroughs and innovations. For example, not long after the publication of Copernicus’s De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543), dramatic authors like Calderon de la Barca, or even Shakespeare, started to include references to the debate about astrology that dominated in the scientific conversations of the time. There is also a rich history of what nowadays perhaps would be called lecture performances in which astronomers and others perform ways of understanding how it is ‘out there’, as well as a rich history of apparatuses like planetariums and orreries performing such understanding.