Apologies for crossposting
Performance, Place, Possibility: Performance in Contemporary Urban Contexts
University of Leeds, Friday 4th April 2014
CALL FOR PAPERS AND PRESENTATIONS
Deadline for proposals: 24th January 2014
Symposium organisers:
Dr Joslin McKinney, Associate Professor in Scenography, School of
Performance and Cultural Industries, University of Leeds
Dr Martin Zebracki, Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Critical Human
Geography, School of Geography, University of Leeds
The School of Performance & Cultural Industries, University of Leeds (PCI)
invites contributions to a one-day symposium exploring practices and
potentials of performance in contemporary urban contexts, on Friday 4th
April 2014. This is designed to coincide with Ludus Festival Leeds, see
http://ludusfestival.org. This is a biennial festival of performance
curated by PCI in partnership with leading performance venues in the city.
The aim is that the festival and symposium enrich one another.
Inaugurated in 2012, Ludus aims to engage visitors to and residents of
Leeds in a range of opportunities to play, through engaging with
performance presented on the city¹s stages and in its streets and sites.
Ludus aims to curate performance solo and ensemble work, dance, music
addressing the experience of people from all demographics, including work
by and for young people and the disabled. In 2014, the emphasis will be on
specific sites, looking beyond the physical boundaries of theatre and
performance venues and towards other spaces in the city and
marginal(ised) spaces in particular.
As Jen Harvie has noted, theatre and performance ³bring people together in
live, shared encounters and offer people opportunities performatively to
influence urban life² (Harvie 2009: 7). Meanwhile, performance offers a
non-representational approach to engaging with ³mundane everyday practices
that shape the conduct of human beings towards others and themselves in
particular sites² (Thrift 1997: 142). In this symposium, we want to
consider the intersections of performance and the embodied practice of
urban life and, further, reflect on the potentials of and the challenges
for performance which seek to engage with diverse experiences of the city.
We invite scholars, researchers, artists and activists from across
disciplines to join in debate on the ways in which the relationships
between performance and place impact on audiences, communities, citizens
and the city. We welcome contributions that include theoretical,
methodological, empirical or artistic work, or they can be a combination
thereof.
Topics could include, but are not limited to, the following:
€ The performance of place and space in contemporary urban culture
€ Performance as urban intervention
€ Participatory and/or interactive performance
€ Performance and a Œglobal sense of place¹ (Massey 1991)
€ Embodiment, affect and the experience of place
€ Located and site-specific performance in the city
€ Urban walking as performance
€ Performance and urban social change
€ Performance, identity and urban cultures
€ Performative urban cultural practices beyond theatre and performance
€ The body as site of performativity research
Classic references:
Harvie, J. 2009 Theatre & the City, Palgrave
Massey, D. 1991 ŒA global sense of place¹ Marxism Today (38) 24-29
Thrift, N. 1997 ŒThe still point: resistance, embodiment and dance¹ in
Pile, S. and Keith, M. (eds) Geographies of Resistance, Routledge, 124-151
Deadline for proposals: 24th January 2014. Please send your proposal as a
Word document to [log in to unmask] AND [log in to unmask]
You may propose either:
A 10-minute intervention: 200-word abstract, plus your name and
affiliation and 50-word biography
or
A 20-minute paper: 350-word abstract, plus your name and affiliation and
50-word biography
Where appropriate, we encourage you to show artwork as part of your
interventions and papers.
There will also be a small display area with a plasma screen where
presenters can share additional material. Please let us know if you have
video or digital slides you would wish to show.
Key dates:
24th January 2014: deadline for proposals; symposium registration opens
14th February 2014: organisers communicate decisions of the review panel
21st March 2014: registration deadline for participants
31st March 6th April 2014: Ludus Festival Leeds
4th April 2014: symposium at the University of Leeds
Please visit the Ludus Festival Leeds website at http://ludusfestival.org
with more information on this symposium and the Ludus programme of
performances and events
--
Dr M.M. (Martin) Zebracki
Lecturer in Critical Human Geography
School of Geography
University of Leeds
University Road
Leeds LS2 9JT
United Kingdom
www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/people/m.zebracki
www.zebracki.org
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