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Dear all,
Please see below a CFP for a conference on innovative contemporary
performance practices in Europe.

Best wishes,

Siobhán.
**
*Pushing Form:***

*Innovation and Interconnection
in Contemporary European Performance***

*
25 - 27 April 2014*

*Moore Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway*

Keynote: Dr Milija Gluhovic, University of Warwick



European and Western performance discourse historically has often presumed
a hegemonic and majority white field of practice despite an increasingly
diverse European population. How does the present reality of European
theatre and performance challenge traditional assumptions? And how
specifically does formal innovation provide the space for critiques of
power and hierarchy that may rework the concept of “Europe” as
realizedthrough performance? How have artists responded through form
to
neoliberalism and globalization in the wake of the most recent world
economic crisis and how does their specifically European context set the
terms of this response?



This conference queries what it means to define the field of European
performance. As such, we invite submissions that will consider key debates
in terminology surrounding innovative emerging work, seeking also to build
on older genealogies of practice in Europe and beyond. For the purposes of
this conference, we will use “European performance” to designate work that
happens within the continent as opposed to the European Union exclusively,
although these differential power dynamics will be crucial to our inquiry.



The spread of Live Art has put pressure on the institutional theatre as the
primary cultural site for performance in many European nations. Yet,
discussions about the usefulness and limits of postdramatic as an umbrella
term for interdisciplinary work that resists overdetermining dramatic
literature might seem to characterize this moment in European theatre and
performance studies. Meanwhile, experimental performance methodologies
including devising, site-specific approaches, performance art and new media
are increasingly taught within universities, signaling an integration of
knowledge that may confirm the field of the “contemporary” through
institutional status, but suggests that these practices may no longer be
the cutting edge. By considering macro-European trends in relationship to
national case studies, “Pushing Form” will explore the meaning of
“contemporary,” “European” and “performance” in relation to each other. We
hope to map not only the current field, but what may lie just beyond it.

Presentations might address topics including but not limited to:
• Trends in experimental contemporary performance from a national and/or
international perspective. For example, how has Live Art transformed in its
journeys across Europe from its origins in the UK?
• Theoretical debates: The postdramatic and beyond?
• The relationship between theatre and performance practices more broadly
as sites of innovation
• The status of written drama in the 21st century
• Arts infrastructure and funding post-economic crisis
• The ways in which language and visual aesthetics in performance relate to
making and disseminating work through European networks
• The politics of arts festivals and touring
• The impact of territorial disputes, ethnic conflicts and migration on,
not only national, but European identities more broadly
• The role of theatre and performance in culture schemes for the European
Union
• Hierarchies of prestige within and outside the European Union
• Linkages between European performance and other world trends including
individual or networked relationships between European artists and
companies and other international colleagues

Abstracts (max 500 words) outlining proposed presentations can be submitted
as email attachments to each of the conference organizers on or before 1
February 2014:

Dr Charlotte McIvor, NUI, Galway: [log in to unmask]

Dr Siobhán O'Gorman, Trinity College Dublin: [log in to unmask]

Dr Miriam Haughton, University of Ulster: [log in to unmask]



For further information and updates, please consult our website:
http://www.conference.ie/Conferences/index.asp?Conference=245

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