International Forum on Artistic Research
17th Conference of the Society for Artistic Research (SAR)
Submission Number: 167
Submission ID: 219
Submission UUID: d8d5d0b5-4c02-44e9-992b-1d41c1700042

Created: Wed, 25 Feb 2026 - 16:40
Completed: Fri, 27 Feb 2026 - 16:36
Changed: Wed, 13 May 2026 - 08:26

Remote IP address: 87.66.96.173
Submitted by: Anonymous
Language: English

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Given name Francesca
Surname Hawker
Email francesca.hawker@luca-arts.be
I understand that by submitting this form, I consent to the use of my data for the purposes of the 2026 Forum on Artistic Research'. Yes
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Title Talking Outside The Boundaries
Format Performance
Main language English
Abstract A lecture performance from a peripheral ‘fan’ or ‘fantasist’ position, in relation to the live art scene centred in New York between the late 1950s and 1970s. I explore the creative potential of this orientation and the feelings of embarrassment, inferiority, and pleasure it generates. I work atop feminist strategies of re-contextualisation developed from within and after the aforementioned scene by figures like Yvonne Rainer, Kathy Acker, and Marie de Brugerolle.

The form that defined this scene was the ‘Happening’, coined by Allen Kaprow, who also claimed, “the history of art is not in books but in gossip” (Post-Performance Future Method, 2024). Though presumably this statement was meant to valorise the ephemeral and anti-canonical, it is through gossip that the scene he helped found is now arguably the least ‘endangered conceptual world’ imaginable, thanks to the mythologisation of its leading figures. My gossip-heavy presentation highlights its ambiguous status: as a countercultural tactic and as a mechanism that maintains American anglophone cultural hegemony.

I weave together my imperfect historical knowledge with anecdotes in which I try to consummate my yearning by travelling to the US. I draw on Argentinian artist Oscar Masotta’s text I Committed a Happening (1966), reflecting on his first-hand experiences of happenings, and his own produced in Argentina’s repressive political climate. I consider how Masotta and I each metabolise conflicting desires for another scene—mine from boredom, his from political necessity.

My methodology stems from the ‘talk poems’ of David Antin, culturally adjacent to Kaprow, in which he discussed a range of subjects in front of live audiences, thereby bringing “a private occasion to a public place” (Talking at the Boundaries, 1976). Unlike Antin, I record the text and receive it via headphones. By inevitably revealing its artifice, I perform a re-animation of a ‘dead’ scene into a ‘living’ present through language.
Image FrancescaHawker_Image_AlexMuller.JPG
Short biographies of the presenter(s)
  • Francesca Hawker (born 1992, UK) is an artist and performer living in Brussels. She works across the fields of performance, poetry, installation, music and self-publishing. She often works collaboratively within the “slapstick of ordinary relation”, defined by Lauren Berlant as a way of “trying to stay in the same enough conversation in order to build something together that neither of us could build by ourselves." She is currently a PhD candidate and teacher at LUCA School of Arts in Gent, where she is researching the role played by embarrassment in performance frameworks.
Previous presentations or iterations of the research
Additional information I was invited by Alicja Melzacka to interpret and perform her exhibition text for the exhibition HOLE, 8'30" (https://sb34.org/HOLE-8-30
) by Steve Van den Bosch and Marc Behrens at SB34 Concorde, Brussels, 2025. In conversation with Alicja, I developed a performance framework in which I would recite parts of the text by reading a printout, and other parts I would appear to speak spontaneously, but with a recorded audio version feeding me lines via a Bluetooth headset. Following on from this performance, I will adapt this method to the conference setting and perform my lecture in a similar manner.
Spatial and technical requirements The lecture performance would work in any spatial layout in which rows of chairs (or a standing audience) face a microphone + stand. I can supply my own headphones and would therefore only need access to a microphone, microphone stand and PA system.
Potential risks or ethical concerns
Create a user account for SAR 2026 No