Paper short abstract:

This paper introduces the work of Red Earth arts group and, with reference to past and future performance projects responding to and taking place in Neolithic landscapes, explores performance as a valuable experiential methodology for exploring liminality.

Paper long abstract:

This paper proposes that as a phenomenological exercise, site-specific performance in the landscape (created in direct response to place) is an unconventional yet valuable vehicle for interpreting the Neolithic mindset and its implied acknowledgement of liminality within the context of the constructed Neolithic landscape. Performance of this nature enables us, through experiential immersion, to directly access a liminalised landscape and a mindset potentially acknowledged by our prehistoric ancestors.

By default, performance creates liminal space: in one form or another it imposes on or responds to a space. We enter a meta-reality within a meta-landscape, a temporary mythological precinct, a boundary zone between the mundane and the epic.

Contemporary performative events can effectively transport us psychologically and emotionally, inducing a liminal state by the amplification of atmosphere and resonance of a particular place. Landscape becomes the protagonist, where sound, vision and action combine to manifest an immersive experience, where we can explore 'being' in a liminal zone.

This is arguably leftfield phenomenology: the performance experience takes us not just to the landscape, but also into it. Aural and visual stimuli enhance our sensory experience and induce a sense of heightened presence: a ritual in which all action has meaning and significance and is interconnected with an intensified landscape.

We suggest there is value in the non-rational yet highly provocative site-responsive performative experience as a counterpoint to classical, intellectualised reconstructions of the Neolithic world, helping us to better contemplate, if not actually understand the Neolithic mindset and its relationship with landscape.