Performance as necrowriting : necropolitics, resonances and artistic research in the haunted Mediterranean – a Sardinian genealogy

english

2026

volume 14, issue 1

artistic research   attunement   Haunted Mediterranean   Maria Lai   necrochoreographies   necropolitics   performance epistemology   transcorporeality

Slovenski gledališki inštitut (SLOGI)
(Obvezni izvod spletne publikacije)

This article reflects on performance artistic research as a critical tool for investigating the contemporary Mediterranean from a situated perspective in Sardinia, understood both as a geographical territory and as an epistemic field in dialogue with the Global South. Through the lenses of necropolitics, neomaterialism, transcorporeality and performance epistemology, the article examines how artistic practices can activate relational, affective and critical forms of knowledge in territories marked by extractivism, ecological violence, militarisation, depopulation and erased histories. Following a genealogical trajectory that begins with Maria Lai’s Legarsi alla montagna, the article analyses CAMPOSUD and Andreco’s Parade for the River Tirso, Valentina Medda’s The Last Lamentation and Nicola Di Croce’s Attuning to / Resonating with (Sulcis). These case studies are read as practices that move beyond site-specificity toward forms of attunement, listening, participation and intra-action with territories, waters, ghosts and more-than-human agencies. The author argues that, in the haunted Mediterranean, performance does not simply represent necropolitical landscapes but produces conditions through which the dead, the silenced, the nonhuman and the contaminated may become perceptible, opening towards what she calls epistemic disarmament.

31.08.2026