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Externalities:
performance and more (Friday 10th December 2021, University of Portsmouth)
This
one-day symposium invites a range of researchers in theatre, performance, art,
music, philosophy and politics, to consider how performance exceeds itself
through externalities, or unplanned effects. The term 'externality' can be used
to describe ecological impacts of economic systems or a particular version of
subject-object relationships in both material and non-material contexts. In
relation to performance, an externality might be defined as the onset of
abundance.
Externalities
challenge human mastery by pointing out epistemic limits, but at the same time
reveal connections between otherwise disconnected realms of experience, such as
the aesthetic and political. Performativity, for example, is a producer of
externality as action is institutionalised, and yet externalities are not
causally determined.
Might
the externality then be a way to understand the material interconnectedness of
performance without resorting to instrumentalism or other kinds of analytical
hermeneutics? Instead of narrowly defining externality in relation to
performance, this symposium invites debate to think between and across multiple
ways of understanding what is more than; the irreducible externalities of
performance. This could entail but is not limited to:
-
Performances that bring about surprising socio-political situations
- More-than-human
performance
- Ecological
realities and costs of performance
- Political/legal
incursions on theatre/academia
- Mediation
and commodification
- Thresholds
of spatio-temporal systems
-
Identity and character
-
Representation and facticity
-
Spillage, leakage, floods
-
Collectivity and affect
-
Blockchain technology
-
Applications of systems, networks and meshworks
The
goal of the symposium is to share different ways of considering that which is
around performance, and to see if externality might be a way of thinking about
theatre in relation to what apparently exceeds it.
Proposals
are welcome for traditional 20 minute presentations, 10 minute provocations, or
panels of speakers as well as other modes of exchange, such as dialogues and
debates.
Please send proposals of 300 words to [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask], and [log in to unmask] by 1st
October 2021, and feel free to get in touch with any enquiries.