This panel addresses methodological and theoretical questions concerning the meanings of performances. On the one hand, we ask how we can account for the significance of performances as modes of political and social engagement. On the other hand, we criticize the tendency of ‘culturalizing’ performative practices, thereby blinding out their political dimensions and ignoring the ways in which they are linked to the dynamics of social transformation. In order to avoid the drawbacks of an essentialized understanding of performance we want to analyse how performative creativity and imagination can underpin political claims or hopes, enhance social senses of belonging and create space for shared experiences. Therefore it is important to highlight the complex and often ambivalent ways in which performances produce meaning. Apart from explicit and implicit phrasings in for instance lyrics, speeches or parodies, performative practices also include a-semantic modes of experience and perceptions of reality. We invite empirical and conceptual work illustrating this multi-layered ‘signifying’ through performances.