In this wide-ranging interview with the Marxist feminist activist and theorist Silvia Federici, Arlen Austin asks Federici about the genesis of her book Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (2004), what it means to acknowledge and feel the trace of the past in the present, and the importance of aesthetic forms such as music and theatre to feminist social movements.

Engaging with contemporary lines of inquiry into the “liveness” of matter unearths where and how those lines, or turns of thought, intersect with the field of performance studies.

Freud's “riddle” that women are, themselves, “the problem” takes on new significance in thinking back through the “remimetic” strategies and tactics of mid-century feminist performance art. What sorts of “problems” arise with the stellar success of women artists in the 2000s, and the new status of “global art star” for artists such as Marina Abramović and Cindy Sherman? What may have been left out of the picture? Perhaps the recent “living archive” re.act.feminism installation by curators Bettina Knaup and Beatrice Stammer may provide some clues.

Precarity has become a byword for life in late and later capitalism. How do we pay attention to precarity—economic precarity, neoliberal precarity—through a close reading of the performing body? Does the place of the arts in global capitalism, and the particular relations implied by “affective labor” and “creative capital,” mean that we are working and living in the affect factory? What can theatre and performance tell us about this condition?

Reading the zombie marches of the Occupy Wall Street movement beside a 2011 production of Ibsen's play John Gabriel Borkman raises questions about theatrical labor in neoliberal capitalism. What happens when “dead labor” plays live onstage? Or when live protest actions are played across the living dead? Perhaps the answers can be found in considering economic precarity and precarity in/as performance together.

The Critical Acts Ensemble, CAE for short, is a tightly knit group of artists exploring intersection between art, technology, critical theory, and political activism. We have given CAE a big chunk of space to present and explain their work. Added to that is a critical essay by TDR Contributing Editor Rebecca Schneider.

The Critical Acts Ensemble, CAE for short, is a tightly knit group of artists exploring intersection between art, technology, critical theory, and political activism. We have given CAE a big chunk of space to present and explain their work. Added to that is a critical essay by TDR Contributing Editor Rebecca Schneider.