Performing collective action for cultural urban regeneration projects. Early notes from a Barad and Schechner diffractive analysis

General introduction to frame the context of the proposed research: The article identifies an interdisciplinary posture as a useful key to reading the development of complex organizational systems in the context of culturally based urban regeneration. In questioning the concept of performativity, the article recognizes two approaches: the first, by Karen Barad ‘Agential realism’, relevant to the New Materialism current and the second, by Richard Schechner, within Performance Studies. Objectives of the proposed research: The reflection matured following a study of practices of self-organization and activism in urban commons with evidence on organizational capacities examined in dynamic-evolutionary terms (Metzger 2015). From this analysis, it was possible to state that an organizational model of complex systems can be composed of a range of actors participating in a urban regeneration process. The theoretical model for the analysis of these phenomena has action (i.e. intra-action and responsibility) at its center; understood here, as the development of a process. Hence the need to conduct a study of collective action from the concept of performativity. If for Barad (2017), performativity is diffractive processing, in which one does not observe facts, but phenomena in which one is enmeshed; Schechner (2017), defines performativity with something difficult to define that is merged with an act or activity. Results of the proposed policy/project/research: The results highlight two conclusions: on the methodological side, looking at the interdisciplinary reading key as an essential analytical tool for complex organisational systems; while, the theory is enriched by focusing on the organisational variable for the study of urban regeneration projects.