Praise
“The book’s findings suggest novel approaches to resilience that will be valuable to colleagues across the globe.” Austin Feldbaum, director, New Orleans Hazard Mitigation Office
“an essential resource for artists, cultural practitioners, and arts leaders seeking to engage with the ways performance not only sculpts discourse but also co-designs civic spaces.” Lauren Turner Hines, founder and executive director, André Cailloux Center for Performing Arts and Cultural Justice
“The authors insist that New Orleans is never ‘done,’ and they elaborate methodologies in these pages that will have lasting import for future work in and beyond this particular location.” Sean Metzger, author of The Chinese Atlantic: Seascapes and the Theatricality of Globalization
Overview
This month, we published Performing New Orleans: Rethinking Resilience in Art and Everyday Life with LSU Press. We’re really excited this book is out, it’s allowed us to share ideas we’ve been developing in our ongoing work on the city since 2017.
Performing New Orleans examines the value of arts and culture in managing complex urban challenges, offering new perspectives on how artistic and everyday performances can be pivotal modes of practicing resilience. Through an exploration of understudied forms of performance in New Orleans, we highlight the centrality of the city’s arts ecosystems as a vital aspect of its ability to “perform” resiliency.
Performing New Orleans resists conventional definitions of arts practice; instead, it uses a diverse array of case studies to illustrate what arts practices are, what they do, and how they can enhance our understanding of people, place, and resilience. The case studies in this volume range from playing in the streets to painting murals; from tourist flourishes to the performative effect of infrastructure projects; from the design and leadership of arts centers to the unfolding of festivals, theater performances, art installations, and even public health messaging. We also review, critique, and rethink resilience theory and the often problematic idea of “being resilient.”
We bring together ideas from art and architecture, cultural geography, hazard mitigation, resilience theory, sustainability, theater, and water management to explore “performances” of the city to radically expand our understanding of urban adaptability. Performing New Orleans argues that a truly resilient city is one that recognizes arts and culture professionals as crucial, critical innovators.
We are delighted that Joycelyn Reynolds, President and CEO of Arts New Orleans, the city’s officially designated arts agency, is contributing a foreward to this book. ANO supports artists, culture bearers, arts practices, and culture in the city. Their work includes grant-making, and supporting public art and events here. The organisation does excellent work embedding arts and culture as pivotal in all areas of policy, planning, and placemaking.