Call for participation: TaPRA Performance and New Technologies Working Group
Re-envisaging Performance and ‘New’ Technologies: Evolving contexts,
Emerging Practices, Current Challenges, New Directions
10th Annual TaPRA Conference, hosted by Royal Holloway
http://tapra.org/news-calls/working-groups/performance-and-new-technologies/call-for-participation-tapra-performance-and-new-technologies-working-group/
Call deadline: 30 April 2014
The Performance and New Technologies Working Group invites contributors
to reconsider performance and ‘new’ technologies by reflecting on
current contexts, practices, and theories. The aim of the 2014 call is
to examine how this area of practice and research has evolved, to
appraise its current significance and envisage future directions. This
investigation and self-reflection is framed by rapid, latter-day
socio-technical developments such as social networking, internet of
things, cloud computing, and augmented reality, and their transformative
impact on the cultural landscapes of today.
Interplays between performance/theatre and technology date back to the
origins of theatre history (Reilly 2013). Nevertheless, their recent
negotiations and ‘entanglements’ (Salter 2010) are marked by an era
where humanist notions of materiality, embodiment and alterity are being
reconfigured giving rise to major socio-cultural shifts as well as
ontologically novel performance paradigms (Giannachi 2004, Broadhurst
2011, Dixon 2007, Causey 2006, Chatzichristodoulou, Jefferies and
Zerihan 2009, among others). These developments reshape the ways we make
and experience theatre and performance and pose questions that
problematise the particular research area, specifically:
What is new about ‘new’ technologies in theatre and performance? Which
are the new performance practices, methodological approaches, and
theoretical paradigms? How does the terrain of performance and
technology cross over, inform, and challenge other areas of enquiry in
theatre and performance studies?
What is at stake for theatre and performance once it becomes
repositioned as less of a “human-centered affair” (Salter, 2010: xxvii)?
How does it engage with machines, objects, matter and ‘actors’ (Latour
1987) rather than ‘props’ subservient to human creativity? Finally,
self-reflexively for the Working Group itself – does performance and
‘new’ technologies continue to constitute a distinct field of practice
and research?
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