Introductioǹ`On the horizon, then, at the further edge of the possible, it is a matter of producing the space of the human species ö the collective (generic) work of the species ö on the model of what used to be called`art'; indeed, it is still so called, but art no longer has any meaning at the level of an`object' isolated by and for the individual. '' Lefebvre (1991, page 401) The set of papers in this special issue are all concerned in one way or another with the notion of performance, a notion whose hold is becoming general across much of the social sciences and humanitiesöfrom anthropology (for example, Farnell, 1999) to architecture (Davidson, 1998) and from history (Green, 1997) to the history of science (Gouk, 1996). In the past, performance tended to be associated with the theatre and theatricality. Yet, though theatre and theatricality still play a part in the study of performance, modern performance studies are founded in two developments. Theoretically, they arise from the meeting between those working in the performing arts and in the social sciences, especially anthropology and sociology, in the 1960s and 1970s. Practically, they can be found in the diaspora of performance out of the theatre in the same period, leading to the formation of many new artistic genres (many of which, significantly, move away from the traditional authority of the text). (1) In turn, these theoretical and practical pushes have now made performance into a central motif in the social sciences and humanities. In this introductory paper, we will argue that what we can see as a result is not one single motif but rather four different apprehensions of performance, apprehensions which clearly need to be explicated separately. This is not to say that these different apprehensions do not have elements in common. They do. They share, for example, a general and generalised discontent with the per-forms that went before, an interest in embodiment, and an attempt to unlock and animate new (human and nonhuman) potentialities. Above all, we argue, they want Abstract. In this introductory paper ö which follows the course of the papers included in this special issue ö we argue that there are currently four main apprehensions of performance. The first of those apprehensions is provided by the work of Judith Butler on performativity. We then move to a second apprehension ö the rather more general notion of performance found in nonrepresentational theory, using as an example the work of Gilles Deleuze. The third apprehension of performance is that taken from work found in the discipline of performance itself. Then, the fourth apprehension concerns the reworking of academic practices as performative.(1) Of course, there are many precursors to performance from before the 1960s and 1970s, many of which have been drawn into the tradition.

The theatre of repetition is opposed to the theatre of representation, just as movement is opposed to the concept and to representation which refers it back to the concept. In the theatre of repetition, we experience pure forces, dynamic lines in space which act without intermediary upon the spirit, and link it directly with nature and history, with a language which speaks before words, with gestures which develop before organised bodies, with masks before faces, with spectres and phantoms before characters.'' Deleuze (1994a, page 10) Introduction:``The theatre of repetition'' Heisenberg Why did I come? And once again I go through that evening in 1941. I crunch over the familiar gravel, and tug at the familiar bell-pull. What's in my head? Fear, certainly, and the absurd and horrible importance of someone bearing bad news. But ... yes ... something else as well. I can almost see its face. Something good. Something bright and eager and hopeful. Bohr I open the door ... Heisenberg And there he is. I see his eyes light up at the sight of me. Bohr He's smiling his wary schoolboy smile. Heisenberg Suddenly I'm free of all the dark tangled currents in the water. Margrethe Look at them. Father and son still. Just for a moment. Even now we are all dead. Bohr For a moment, yes, it's the twenties again. Heisenberg And we shall speak to each other and understand each other in the way we did before. Margrethe And from these two heads the future will emerge. Which cities will be destroyed, and which survive. Who will die, and who will live. Which world will go down to obliteration, and which will triumph. Bohr Come in, come in ...

I would like to call an event the face to face with nothingness. This sounds like death. Things are not so simple. There are many events whose occurrence doesn't offer any matter to be confronted, many happenings inside of which nothingness remains hidden and imperceptible, events without barricades. They come to us concealed under the appearance of everyday occurrences. To become sensitive to their quality as actual events, to become competent in listening to their sound underneath silence or noise, to become open to`It happens that' rather than tò What happens', requires at the very least a high degree of refinement in the perception of small differences.'' Jean-Francois Lyotard (1991, page 18)Introduction: high degrees of refinement in the perception of small differences This paper is about attending to that part of the world full of occurrences that have little tangible presence in that they are not immediately shared and therefore have to be re-presenced to be communicated. These subsequent re-presentations are fraught with difficulties most apparent in their seeming inadequacy; problematizing representation is, however, the challenge, the solution, towards an engaging reinterpretation of the world. The imperceptibles elided by representation include emotions, passions, and desires, and immaterial matters of spirit, belief, and faithöall forces that move beyond our familiar, (because) denoted, world. These are not light matters for they forge the weight of our meaningful relation with the world. This underplotted, underplotting rhythm to our lives has had recent academic acknowledgers: in geography (Anderson

In this article we make a case for a renewed emphasis upon some of the generic, albeit often tacit, spaces of practice that we share across our sub–disciplinary boundaries. In this we seek to emphasize the ways in which everyday actions make up the grander facades of institutional agendas, empirical projects and disciplinary schools of thought. To achieve this we trace the performance of disciplinary contours and identities across three important sites: the field, the body and the act of dissemination. There are, we will argue, significant commonalities that bind us as disciplinary practitioners in terms of how we perform within and across these sites, and indeed, how we join them up through our practices.

This article examines the relationship between landscapes and the performative materialities of habit in relation to non-representational theory. Materially, landscapes already pre-occupy us insofar as the material world is seen to afford action that is already thought practical intelligence: from how you tacitly know how much clearance to give your step as you walk onto the pavement, to learning to drive a car without needing to concentrate too hard on precisely what it is that you are doing. Where the human is already established in phenomenological thought, habit gives us an ontology whereby this is not the assumed starting point. Material affordances only address half the matter, given that the occupation of being in a landscape is now seen to be much more explicitly constitutive of what it means to be human in the first place. This article, then, addresses the new directions for cultural geography present in recent work on habit within the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Ravaisson. It does this by considering this interface between, on the one hand, the biological rewiring of bodies re-engineered in the lived and habit spaces of immediate occupation of landscaped activity and, on the other hand, that of cultural preoccupations disposing subjective formations in situ within landscapes. In this, it makes use of a workshop event from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded network Living in a Material World and the context of training at the British Army Ministry of Defence (MoD) site at Mynydd Epynt, Wales.