Cancelled Time: COVID-19 and the Power of Time in Performance and Politics

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected contemporary performing arts in several ways, not least in the form of mass cancellations of performances and production processes in many countries around the world in the year 2020. In this article, I propose to view the interruption of performative processes as the event of a time of cancellation: the transition of unrealised futures into the past, where they persist as past futures and reservoirs of what could have been. The time of cancellation from performance is juxtaposed with the cancellation of time from the politics or anti-politics of proto-fascism during the pandemic. Proto-fascist tendencies are analysed in terms of their desire for a suicidal state which signifies the will for total sovereignty over life and death and time in the moment of self-destruction. In proposing to view the time of cancellation and the cancellation of time as a political constellation of cancelled time, I argue for the politicisation of past futures from performance as a counter-measure to the destruction of the future in proto-fascism