"The main loss in this situation is a loss of human communication and of identity. A loss of human behavior."
Stephen Barber has published many books on urban cultures in relation to performance, film, photography and digital art; his most recent book (2012) is on the personal archive of the moving-image pioneer Eadweard Muybridge.
The London Times called Barber’s books ‘brilliant, profound and provocative,’ and The Independent described him as a ‘writer of real distinction.’ The short video by Thomas Martius documents the work of Stephen Barber as a Fellow at the International Research Center “Interweaving Performance Cultures.” It provides insight into his extensive primary research into Muybridge’s personal archive. With the work of Eadweard Muybridge, Barber raises questions that reconceptualize the dynamics of corporeal and urban forms. His focus is on the conjunction of performance and film within exterior spaces, the origins of cinema, and its early prefiguring of the digital world. Thomas Martius’s short video is a dense insight into this researcher’s practice as well as an artistic reflection on the contemporary visual culture itself. 
The socio-political changes in Northern Africa and the Middle East since 2011 have resonated with an ongoing and wide-spread perception of crisis in Europe, begging the questions: What kind of society do we want to live in? What kind of conditions are necessary for this society to emerge? In 2013, twelve Egyptian and European artists, architects, and cultural workers from the fields of choreography, architecture, and theater addressed these questions in and for Berlin, Vienna, and Cairo. They worked to build spaces that might respond to the needs and questions of the local, cultural, and social contexts in which they were involved. 
On stage, we see a private room: a rug, a chair, a table with personal items … on the floor, a TV set and a stereo. Diyaa Yamout seems to have gone out briefly to fetch cigarettes or to meet friends. He should be coming back any minute … Or someone else should be coming … After all, someone has to come. But no one does. 
This paper discusses the idea of new media dramaturgy in connection to dumb type performances and outlines some of the notions that apply to the concept of interweaving performance cultures and new media. In this context, it explores dumb type's pioneering suite of multimedia performances pH, S/N, OR and Memorandum as the basis for an emergent transformation in performance towards the development of new forms. 
In 2013, a group of Egyptian and European artists from the fields of choreography, architecture and theatre set out to explore questions such as: What kind of society do we want to live in? What are the conditions we need to create for our lives? The group tried to address these challenges through building spatial structures in Berlin, Vienna and Cairo. The video A Future Archeology captures reflections and impressions from their first extensive research and working period at Uferstudio 14 in March 2013 in Berlin. 
In June 2014, Stephen Barber and Rustom Bharucha met for a conversation on Bharucha's latest book Terror and Performance. In this talk, Bharucha and Barber explored the key notions of the book as well as the process of writing itself. Listen to the entire conversation here. 