Paper: Experiences with Creative Re-Use at Performing and Knowing

Performance and re-enactment have been employed as a method of research in the history of science for several decades. The workshop Performing and Knowing – Experimental and Sensory Approaches organised by Charlotte Bigg, Rafael Mandressi and Marie Thébaud-Sorger as a collaboration of the Centre Alexandre Koyré and Maison Française d’Oxford, aims to take stock of this work and to reflect upon the value and challenges of these approaches today, in particular relation to historians’ renewed interest in materiality and sensuality.
The workshop also seeks to replace this work and thinking within broader contexts. The long history of performing knowledge as part, e.g. of teaching and popularization, but also across the sciences: not all sciences stress the value or necessity of replicating experiments or observations. How does history of science and technology further compare with other fields such as archaeology, anthropology or theatre and performance studies that each understand and use performance in slightly different manners; what can historians learn from other approaches? Sarah Dellmann from the Research Team Utrecht will present reflections from the Creative Re-Use projects that were part of the Million Pictures Project.