Speculating on the ‘Feminist Performance Score’: Pauline Oliveros, Womens Work and Karen Barad

Abstract

This text charts the emergence of a neologism, the ‘feminist performance score’. This term arose through repeated work with, and discussion of, Pauline Oliveros’s 1970 text score To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe, In Recognition of their Desperation, focusing on the relationship between the individual and the group that emerges from Oliveros’ interest in Solanas: in turn mirrored in the ‘formal duality’ of textual instructional scores more widely, as printed score and iterative live performance. The text re-introduces the Womens Work (1975–78) score magazine project co-edited by Alison Knowles and Annea Lockwood, considering the score collection itself as a feminist project. The concluding section sets the aesthetic of textual instructional performance scores, always already speculative, as speculatively feminist, through contemporary feminist new materialism, and in particular the work of Karen Barad.