Category Archives: Site-specific

Book Publication and Launch – Radical Space: Exploring Politics and Practice

Publications, Site-specific

Dance colleagues interested in space, place, power relations and politics might be interested in this new publication, details below:

Debra Benita Shaw and Maggie Humm are pleased to announce the publication of their edited volume Radical Space: Exploring politics and practice (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2016). This is the second publication in the Radical Cultural Studies series edited by members of the Centre for Cultural Studies Research at the University of East London. With contributions from Debra Benita Shaw; Maggie Humm; Joanna Rajkowska; Connell Vaughan; Zlatan Krajina; Victoria Hunter; Carl Lavery; Lee Hassall; Deborah Dixon; Carina Fearnley; Mark Pendleton; Brian Burke-Gaffney; Matt Fish; Angie Voela; Dimitris Papadopoulos; Rob Coley; Kat Deerfield
The book can be purchased from the at 30% discount using the code MAR1630.

LONDON LAUNCH

Thursday, April 28th, 2016, 6.30pm

Open School East

The Rose Lipman Building

43 De Beauvoir Road

London, N1 5SQ

All welcome

Call for Papers: body ^ space ^ object ^ memory ^ identity Symposium May 20th 2016, Coventry University

Conference Call, Conferences, Site-specific

body ^ space ^ object ^ memory ^ identity Symposium May 20th 2016, Coventry University

Call for papers

 

Following on from last year’s Memory ^ sentiment ^ body ^ space ^ object, this year’s event builds on the collaboration between the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE) and researchers in the School of Art and Design, and invites contributions from scholars and practitioners from across the arts and humanities. This one-day symposium will address how performers, artists and designers suggest the relationship of individuals to their surroundings.

 

Rituals of the everyday, of memory, of making things special, and of moving through space and leaving traces are all important factors in being human and developing a sense of self. Many artists, designers and performers have considered these aspects, and it is how these have been addressed that the symposium will explore.

 

There will be six strands, the parameters of which are suggested below, and it is proposed that a publication will follow. We invite contributions of papers and mixed-mode presentations Standard paper submissions should be no longer than 20 minutes. Panels that present up to three papers on a single theme are also welcomed. Mixed-mode or performative presentations will be considered but should be ‘self contained’ in terms of technical needs and be easy to set up and take down.

 

Please send a 300-word abstract in English, either as Word or PDF attachment, and include a short biographical note and institutional affiliation – if relevant – by Friday 26th February, to Lily Hayward-Smith –, making clear which strand is being addressed. Please ensure you also make clear what mode of presentation you are proposing and outline clearly any space or technical requirements. The Symposium will take place in a studio space and seminar rooms.  We will notify you by mid March whether or not your proposal has been accepted.

 

 

The (Moving) Body as Archive

Lead: Marie-Louise Crawley

C-DaRE

This strand will investigate definitions of the (moving) body as archival or exhibited object. In what ways might we consider the moving body as a ‘non-material museum’ (Lista 2014)? How might these considerations affect the relationship of the body to other material, archival objects?

 

Objects of Mourning

Lead: Rob Tovey

School of Art and Design

This strand considers objects of mourning, engaging specifically with their materiality and aesthetic nuance, their historical context and their affect as memory catalyst, monument or emotional balm. These objects will be framed in spatial and somatic practices, with an emphasis on ritual, performance and the social gesture, highlighting ideas of loss, legacy, healing, guilt and status.

 

Domestic Objects of Identity

Lead: Imogen Racz

School of Art and Design

This strand will consider post-war sculptural and object-based practices that are concerned with identity making within the home through suggesting interactions between a subject and their domestic spaces and objects. Papers might address, but are not limited to how artists have addressed ideas of collections, display, taste and/or memory.

 

Absence and Presence

Lead: Graham Chorlton

School of Art and Design

This strand will consider work that deals with or invokes feelings of absence and/or presence, particularly within the realm of painting practice. How have/do artists achieve such work through use of image, abstraction, light, composition, the behaviour of paint.

 

Objects of transformation

Lead: Sarah Whatley

C-DaRE

This strand will examine ‘transformation’ as a creative and aesthetic strategy:  How do conventions of performance and arts practice participate in artistic alteration of objects? How does the artist transform the everyday/found object? How does live work transform through the digital? How does an art form transform when taken into a new context or environment?

 

The production of the Social in Contemporary Choreographic and Performance Practices: The Materiality of the Immaterial

Lead: Katerina Paramana

C-DaRE

This strand will consider how contemporary performance works produce social relations, affecting in a material manner the way we live and act in the world, and how we relate to others. What kind of social relations do contemporary works of performance produce and how do these compare to the production of the social in neoliberal capitalism?

Call for Papers – PSi #22 Performance Climates

Conference Call, Conferences, Site-specific

6-9 July 2016 at the University of Melbourne, Australia

www .psi2016.com

  • Climates in, of, and for performance
  • The performativity of climates
  • Performance and climate change

    Climates of many scales and durations testify to the irreducible complexity of the modern world. Diffuse in structure and unpredictable in their effects, they are both the general conditions in which events take place, and the ambience produced as a result. Performance Climates invites participants to explore the qualities and component parts of these intricate, elusive, yet all-encompassing phenomena.

    Performance events have long served as potent sites for the creation of atmospheres and affects. Today, performance arts and inter-disciplinary scholarship are increasingly reflecting on the climactic conditions within which societies function, and under which life can best flourish. Activism, art-science collaborations and new theatre aesthetics provide provocative means of interpreting and acting upon such circumstances. And innovative research methodologies and new conceptual paradigms offer ways of re-thinking this radically inter-connected world across many scales of human and non-human activity.

    It is in this context that research into performance intersects with climate change. A fact of life for increasing numbers of people, animals and other organisms, there is widespread agreement that action is required to mitigate its effects. Creative responses are needed in many domains: from governance and policy, through technology and economics, to daily life and the ways people interact with each other and the world around them. Cultural practice is integral to all these domains. And as artists and scholars work to apprehend the scale and complexity of the problem, performing arts practice and performance interpretation more broadly conceived have distinctive contributions to make to this project.

    Taking place a year after PSi explored a radical model of distributed conferencing (www.fluidstates.org), Performance Climates will invite consideration of all these issues, along with the question of whether Performance Studies is adapting appropriately to new conditions, institutional frameworks, and localized challenges, while undergoing its own global transformations. These issues are intensified by the location of the conference in Australia, where debates over biodiversity and energy use, and land custodianship and resource extraction, are politically fraught and bear directly on the country’s populations.

    We therefore invite papers and performative presentations exploring how performance creates, illuminates, and participates in climates of all scales and compositions. Four themed days will then structure and focus the conference as follows:

    Day 1: Weather and Events Day 2: Land and Durations Day 3: Habitat and Environments Day 4: Atmosphere and Affects

    Keynote speakers:
    Richard Frankland, Bruno Latour, Rebecca Schneider, Peta Tait

    Submission deadline 1 December 2015. See psi2016.com for details.

Book Launch / Celebration: Moving Sites: Investigating Site-Specific Dance Performance

Book launch, Publications, Site-specific

You are warmly invited to a book launch / celebration for my recently published edited volume, Moving Sites: Investigating Site-Specific Dance Performance (Routledge 2015) on: Weds 25th November 2015, 5.15 – 6.30 p.m.

Venue: Trinity Laban, Creekside Deptford.

The event will be chaired by Dr. Jonathan Clark and will include a presentation from myself and from Rachel and Alice Sara (‘Between Dance and Architecture’ chapter co-authors).

If any of you are in London and are free to attend the event that it would be wonderful to see you, there will be wine and nibbles following the presentations and an opportunity to mingle and finally get to meet each other.

Please email [email protected] if you wish to attend.