Some of you with an interest in performance, politics, or performative politics may be interested to find out about the keynote talks at the upcoming Artaud Forum 3 (Theatre and Resonant Politics) at Brunel University, 23-24 March. We have two scholars speaking about the intersections of the political and the performative:

Jon McKenzie (University of Wisconsin-Madison): Remediating Performances: Strange Politics of Higher Education

"In 1969, English professors at the University of Wisconsin declared that freshman writing courses were no longer needed—and summarily fired hundreds of teaching assistants who had connected their classes to contemporary political events. Decades later—and months before the start of Occupy Wall Street—teaching assistants led the 2011 Madison Uprising against the abolishment of collective bargaining, a protest staged by 100,000 students and teachers, police and firefighters, parents and children. Though the state capitol was surrounded and occupied for weeks, the US national media—and the National Democratic Party—largely ignored this uprising, and Republican Governor Scott Walker succeeded in abolishing collective bargaining, effectively ending the nation’s oldest teaching assistants union. Many histories connect and disconnect these events. This presentation explores one: the strange politics of higher education, specialized research, and scholarly communication."

Jon McKenzie is Director of DesignLab, a digital composition center, and Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, where he teaches courses in performance theory and new media. He is the author of Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance (Routledge 2001) and such articles as “Global Feeling: (Almost) All You Need is Love,” “Performance and Globalization,” and “Towards a Sociopoetics of Interface Design.” He is also co-editor of Contesting Performance: Global Sites of Research (Palgrave 2011). McKenzie has also produced a number of experimental video essays, including The Revelations of Dr. Kx4l3ndj3r (2012) and This Vile Display (2006), and gives workshops on performative scholarship and smart media. His work has been translated into a half-dozen languages.

Sophie Nield (Royal Holloway, University of London): Resonance and Representation: Playing the People in the Public Sphere

"Inspired by Egypt's Tahrir Square protests, which took place in Cairo as part of the' Arab Spring', by resurgent student activism and occupations protesting changes to university funding regimes, and by the Spanish anti-austerity movement, a group of anti-cuts protestors set up camp on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral in the City of London on 15 October 2011. This action was one of hundreds of similar protests staged simultaneously across the world, as 2010 and 2011 saw unprecedented levels of mass, continuing and widespread occupation of public space, in what became known as the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement, or, simply, 'Occupy'. Drawing on recent commentary by Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky and others, and addressing concerns arising from the fields of performance, geo-politics and protest, this talk will read into those gatherings questions of resonance and representation, asking - what is at stake for the public in the new public sphere? Who shapes the dramaturgies of theatrical resistance? And are we, the people, playing, or being played?"

Sophie Nield teaches theatre and film at Royal Holloway, University of London. She writes on questions of space, theatricality and representation in political life and the law, and on the performance of ‘borders’ of various kinds: the US/Mexico border; the former site of the Berlin Wall; the problem of the corpse in representation. She also has research interests in film (particularly Expressionism, Noir and paranoia film) and nineteenth century stage-craft. She  is a member of the Board of Directors of  Performance Studies international, and sits on the Executive Committee of the Theatre and Performance Research Association.

Full schedule is available at: http://people.brunel.ac.uk/dap/artaudforum.html

And registration is open at: http://artaudforum3.eventbrite.com/

Prices are: