Call for Participation – TaPRA – 2013
University of Glasgow and The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS)
4th- 6th September 2013
Performance and the Body Working Group
and
Performance and New Technologies Working
Group
Title: Embodied Engagement: Participatory And Immersive Performance
The Performance and the Body and Performance and New Technologies Working
Groups are joining forces this year to explore different bodily, aesthetic,
political, ethical and economical aspects of participation in the current
performance milieu. In a performance context where hierarchies of participation
are being reconfigured and traditional authorial claims are under stress, new
articulations of spectator/performer reciprocity can no longer be disregarded.
Focusing on audience experience, we intend to examine possibilities of
participant (spectators and performers) agency and empowerment within different
modes of performance transaction.
According to Adrian Heathfield, contemporary performance has shifted
aesthetically from 'the optic to the haptic, from the distant to the immersive,
from the static relation to the interactive'. The dialogue between the two
Working Groups aims to explore the productive tensions between bodies and
technologies in the development of this shift. The contested term 'immersive'
is a rich, under-theorized concept which pulls in and works across distinct
constituencies of performance. It calls upon diverse technologies to create its
performance environments and promote active bodily engagement. Immersion both
as an artistic intention and a perceived process is identified with concepts of
viscerality, authenticity and immediacy. Yet the question remains as to how
effective immersion can be in engaging audiences mentally, emotionally and
corporeally.
Proposals do not need to address both issues of bodies and technologies, but
might consider the following issues, though these are not exclusive:
* The bodily risk of participation;
* Immersive practices as a democratisation of performance;
* Spectator’s authority, authorship and agency in immersive performances;
* Discomfort and fear: the ethics of enforced participation;
* Sensory inscribed experiences: synaesthetic experiments of flesh;
* Soundscapes: the corporeality of immersion;
* Ethics of immersion in locative games, mobile interfaces, social media
platforms;
* Mapping and constructing hybrid, artificial and mixed-media spaces;
* Temporalities of immersion;
* Embodiment/Disembodiment: game space and everyday life;
* Cognitive engagement: willing suspension of disbelief in performance;
* ‘Passive’ and ‘active’ audiences;
* Political contexts of participatory work;
* Empathy and audience engagement;
* Intentionality and sensual experience;
Proposals
Please send a 300 word proposal, a short biographical statement, and an outline
of technical requirements by 29th April 2013 to the working groups convenors.
Proposals, if accepted, may be directed into a range of presentational formats:
traditional panels (with 20 minute papers); pre-circulated papers that form the
basis for a short presentation and discussion; or, where appropriate,
performance-based panels. While we welcome statements of preference, final
decisions will be made by the working groups convenors and will be indicated at
the time of acceptance.
We welcome alternative, practice-as-research or performative proposals that
engage rigorously with the theme, but these must be achievable with limited
resources and within a 20-30 minute time period.
Please send your proposals to the convenors of both Working Groups but indicate
which group you are a member of or which you would identify with:
The convenors of the Performance and the Body Working Group are James Frieze:
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> and Lib Taylor:
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
The convenors of the New Technologies Working Group are Martin Blain:
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>, Maria Chatzichristodoulou:
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> and
Eirini Nedelkopoulou:
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Working Group Management
We will have at least one Working Group session where the two Working Groups
work independently of each other.
The two Working Groups also warmly welcome participants who do not wish to
present a paper this year.
Only one proposal may be submitted for the TaPRA 2013 Conference. It is not
permitted to submit proposals to several working groups, whether these are the
same or different proposals. All presenters must be TaPRA members, i.e. you
need to register for the conference in order to present your paper. This
includes presentations given by Skype or other media broadcast. If your paper
has been accepted, yet you have not registered for the Conference by the
registration deadline of 2 August 2013, we will deem you no longer intend to
participate and present at TaPRA 2013.
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