A newly published book exploring how art can actively engage citizens in cultural and pedagogical discussions includes a chapter on the UpStage-based cyberformance project We have a situation!

Written by Helen Varley Jamieson, the chapter We have a Situation! Cyberformance and Civic Engagement in Post-Democracy documents the project, specifically focusing on the “situation” in Rio de Janeiro in 2015 (which looked at water pollution in the context of the build-up to the olympics), and examines how cyberformance can promote proto-political engagement and post-democratic citizen activism.

The book, Convergence of Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Global Civic Engagement, is edited by Ryan Shin, who participated in the 121212 UpStage Festival of Cyberformance in the Second Life performance Moving Mountains. One of his collaborators in this performance, Karen T. Keifer-Boyd, has contributed the chapter FemTechNet Distributed Open Collaborative Course: Performing Difference, Exquisite Engendering, and Feminist Mapping.

Further information including the full list of chapters and links to chapter abstracts is available here, where you can also order copies of the hardback or E-book. It’s possible to purchase PDF copies of individual chapters, which is good as the book is very expensive; actually the individual chapters will still be too expensive for most independent artists. Our excitement about the book is tempered by the knowledge that it will be inaccessible to many interested people. Anybody with university connections might like to ask their library to order the book, so that the valuable research within it can at least be available within universities!