How performance thinks - symposium April 13-14

Three topics that dominated the discourse: Justice / Careness / Enigma

How Performance Thinks
An international, two-day conference co-organized by
the PSi Performance and Philosophy working group
and Kingston University’s practice.research.unit

April 13th-14th 2012

The London Studio Centre, London
Online registration: http://howperformancethinks.eventbrite.com/
£42 waged / £22 unwaged for the 2 days
[NB. No one day rate is available]

With plenary speakers:

Vida Midgelow
Joe Kelleher
and
Freddie Rokem

A work-in-progress showing of a new performance by

Every House Has a Door
(Lin Hixson, Matthew Goulish, Bryan Saner, Stephen Fiehn, and Tim Kinsella)

And presentations by:

Stephen Bottoms / Jennifer Duffy / Thomas Richards / Simon Jones / Tender Buttons Theatre Company / Joana Craveiro / Broderick Chow / Esa Kirkkopelto / Theron Schmidt / Julie Solovyeva / Tero Nauha / Stefanie Sachsenmaier / Kelina Gotman / Josefine Wikstrom / Augusto Corrieri / Moritz Gansen and Elisabeth Schilling / Charlie Saffrey / Katja Hillevara / Jessica Walker / Joa Hug / Bernadette Anzengruber / Stefanie Husel / Elena Cologni / Rosanna Irvine / Shaun May / Peter Boenisch / Rebecca Hillman / Joao Florencio / Nik Wakefield / Gabriella Calchi-Novati / Alice Lagaay / Franziska Schroeder / Shimon Levy / Simon Bowes / Helmar Schramm / Mark Greenwood / Michelle Graves / Sophia New and Siegmar Zacharias / David Levin / Rebecca Groves / Noyale Colin


Notes to come....

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS - On Collaboration SYMPOSIUM 4 May 2012, Middlesex University, Trent Park

The Performing Arts Department at Middlesex University will be hosting a
one-day symposium on collaboration in performance practice, with a
specific focus on the notions of 'memory', 'place' and 'time'
in performance-making. The event will take place on 4 May 2012 at Trent
Park Campus, North London, and will mark a farewell to the location
before the department will relocate to Hendon Campus in summer 2012.
The call for contributions is open to practitioners, academics and PhD
students wishing to present research papers, discussion panels or short
demonstrations of instances of relevant performance practice in the form
of lecture demonstrations and practice demonstrations.
The symposium specifically focuses on collaborative practice in
performance-making and the issues of 'memory', 'place' and
'time'. Questions of interest include, but are not limited to the
following:

•       What forms or modes of collaboration can be identified in
performance-making?  In what ways is 'the collaborative' at stake in
solo performance-making? •       How do compositional techniques
operate in solo and collaborative modes of performance? •       How can
collaboration be theorised?
•       How is personal or collective memory negotiated in
collaborative contexts? •       In what ways can technology impact on
collaboration?
•       How are 'place' and 'time' integral to
performance-making processes? •       How do performers draw upon and
conceive of memory in performance-making? •       How is collaborative
practice taught in HE? What models of practice to we offer and what are
the continued values we identify in teaching collaborative
performance-making?

In order to apply to contribute to the symposium, please send a 250-300
word abstract and a short outline of the nature of your proposed
contribution to s.sachsenmaier@mdx.ac.uk and noyalecolin@yahoo.co.uk.
Please also attach a short biography. Deadline 21 March 2012. All
contributors will be notified by end of March. Location details of Trent
Park campus: http://www.mdx.ac.uk/aboutus/Location/trent-park/index.aspx
Further details of the symposium will be announced soon.

Best wishes,

‘Tout fait’: Bergson, time, and choreographic being-made

‘Tout fait’: Bergson, time, and choreographic being-made

A mixed mode presentation, incorporating performative elements, will explore the relationship between Bergsonian thought and the readymade – or tout fait – with a focus on the impact of technology on contemporary perceptions of time. The implications of such impacts for collaborative choreographic practices will be considered.

Presented at the College of Arts Association Centenary Annual Conference

24 February 2012, Los Angeles, USA

Representing the Human Paper Abstract

Bodies in Motion: working through plurality

This collaborative paper aims to address questions regarding the notion of plurality as experienced in the performer body. Through practice and writing we attempt to account for such a body, and address wider questions regarding the body and identity in performance.

As professional performance-makers working independently through practice-as-research (in a doctoral context at Middlesex University) we have undertaken an on-going collaboration based on our mutual concern for the process of embodying our research. This article aims to frame certain tendencies, which occur when working with others in the studio. The set of conditions for this on-going project has provided a good terrain to break down some of the mechanisms of performance making, and therefore allowed us to illuminate some aspects of contemporary performance making.

Drawing on philosophical approach to performance making including William James‘ Radical Empiricism, we discuss in detail our shared practice, and attempt to find strategies that will allow us to examine the shifting tension between our sense of the monadic ‘I’ and the idea of the distributed self that Brian Rotman describes in Becoming Beside Ourselves: The Alphabet, Ghosts, and Distributed Human Being (2008).