Open formats

In contrast with more conventional approaches to the uses of theatre for the public engagement with science and technology (e.g. pedagogical approaches to science communication), contemporary forms of participatory, community, interactive or digital theatre have also served as relevant arenas for projects searching to activate publics through agonistic and complex encounters with contemporary technoscientific issues. This was the case of Enacting Innovation, a performance that crystallises a dialogue between social scientists and theatre professionals working in the vicinity of STS in which that seek to 'stage complexity' and the paradoxes of otherwise repetitive innovation scripts.

Meetings are, together with papers and books, perhaps the quintessential mechanism for the circulation of academic knowledge. And yet, despite their relevance, we usually resort to the most conventional formats: paper presentations, round tables, etc. Nevertheless, anthropology has recently recognised the need to explore other ways of sharing our knowledge and thinking together. We strongly believe that formats to share and think together should be considered as part and parcel of a discussion on ethnographic experimentation. We argue for the need to document these ‘experiments in meeting’ so that they may travel, be learnt and reproduced elsewhere.