Amateur science in activist performance: towards a slow science

This article explores what potential activist performance might offer emergent practices of slow science. I argue that the amateur has a central role in the practice of slow science, as theorised by Isabelle Stengers, and that amateur science might offer a slow, critical counterpoint to the dominant, fast discourse of ‘public engagement’ and related notions of ‘citizen science’. The article explores how particular discursive, visual and gestural vocabularies generated through performance might contribute to the development of amateur science, articulate shared experiential knowledge and constitute new collectives and solidarities across cultural, national and disciplinary boundaries. I attempt to locate amateur science in performance as a coherent political aesthetic within the practices of two solo performers: the UK-based artist-activist, James Leadbitter, also known as the vacuum cleaner, and the Japanese artist-activist, Kota Takeuchi.