Limen: Call for Papers

[Phil Morle]

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LIMEN:
an electronic journal dedicated to the performance paradigm
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CALL FOR PAPERS
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Editor: David George [george at central.murdoch.edu.au]
Managing Editor: Phil Morle [pmorle at central.murdoch.edu.au]
Advisory Editors: Eugenio Barba, Herbert Blau, Juli Burk,
Tony Goode, Michael Heim, David Hughes, Jaron Lanier,
Xavier Leret, Carol Martin, Alistair Martin-Smith,
Peggy Phelan, Jean-Marie Pradier, Mike Vanden-Heuvel,
David Williams.
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"Bravo! Your vision statement is the perfect expression
of what it is necessary to do." Jean-Marie Pradier -
University of Paris 8
 
Contents of this posting:
1) Limen: Call for Papers
2) Limen: Vision Statement
 
Apologies for cross-posting.
Additional information available from:
http://humpc61.murdoch.edu.au/~kaos/limen/limenhome.html
 
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1) Limen: Call for Papers
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The launch edition of LIMEN has the following theme:
 
"Performance and ..."
 
The slogan is tactical: it is to begin one of the tasks we
set ourselves: relocate Performance from the
periphery to occupy a central role in our thinking:
performance as paradigm.
 
Already in 1981, Bonnie Marranca could write: "The
concept of "performance" increasingly dominates American
culture as a way of viewing everyday activity. It is, for example,
encouraged as a therapeutic technique, and used to describe
sexual activity, the operation of a car, a politician s form,
business management style..." (Theatrewritings, Performing
Arts Journal Publications, New York, 1984, p. 135.)
 
Since then, use of the term has grown in popularity at
a rate and extent which signals some deeply-felt
contemporary affinity with the concept and its
implications. Schechner especially has mapped out its
terrain, extending it from play, dance, concerts, TV,
circus and carnival to include press conferences,
political terrorism, rituals, sport, and concluding:
"Performance is no longer easy to define or locate: the
concept and structure has spread all over the place."
(General Introduction to the Performance Studies
Series: cf. The End of Humanism (New York, 1984);
Performance Theory (New York, 1988), By Means of
Performance (Cambridge, 1990), The Future of Ritual
(London and New York, 1993). The term is now
regularly used - as a criterion of evaluation, as a
category of contemporary research and post-modern
"theatre" and, even more profoundly, as a discourse,
an emerging paradigm.
 
In an essay to be published in the first issue of the
new C.P.R./Routledge Performance Research Journal,
David George has attempted therefore to map out a
"performance epistemology" - an account of
Performance as an epistemological system based on
key notions of Temporality, Particularity, Singularity,
Liminality, and the centrality of Experience as the
cognitive gateway.
 
>From such a perspective, the world itself appears
differently, and all phenomena are seen as
performances.
 
What we would like is to dedicate the first issue of
LIMEN to further such explorations: the
re-evaluation of any phenomenon as a performative
event.
 
Suggestions already made have included Performance
and Sport, Performance and Fashion, and so on but
we would welcome wider investigations into
Performance and the neurological system,
Performance and Cyberspace (yes, let s colonise; for
all too long, performance - as a branch of "theatre" -
has been appropriated by others)
 
We would prefer if contributions were already
formatted in hypermedia format although standard
ASCII text papers are also welcomed. LIMEN will be
published in a format that will allow for VRML,
JAVA, Macromedia Director and HTML
documents. In fact we have purchased a Silicon
Graphics just for the job.
 
We also need book and hypermedia reviewers.
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Deadline for all submissions: 31 January 1996.
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Please send your enquiries, synopses, drafts,
proposals, suggestions to Phil Morle [Managing Editor]
or David George [Editor].
 
LIMEN
School of Humanities
Murdoch University
South Street
MURDOCH
Western Australia
6150
Telephone: ++ 619 360 6248
Facsimile: ++ 619 360 6367
Email: pmorle at central.murdoch.edu.au
 
LIMEN is published by the Centre of Theatre Practice / Kaos
Theatre and Murdoch University.
 
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2) Limen: Vision Statement
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"Performance" as a major challenge and alternative to
Modernist Logocentric thinking and a focus of
interdisciplinary research no longer needs legitimizing
as such. We are all familiar now with attacks on the
primacy of "text" in Western thinking, and on the way
that performance has expanded from its old sense of
simply the theatrical realisation of a text to its new
status as a spectrum of events, of which theatre is only
one. Already, contributions to the investigation and
definition of "performance" have been made by
psychologists, physicists, cognitive scientists as well as
sociologists, anthropologists... the list can be extended
almost indefinitely.
 
But certain dangers and misconceptions still
undermine this enterprise:
 
*slippage back into "theatre";
*a reductionist methodology trapped in a
 "hermeneutic circle;"
*residual cultural arrogance unaware of the
 contributions which have already been made
 not to mention those still latent in
 non-European cultures;
*a continuing resistance by "the profession" to
 "theory," let alone philosophy;
*the continuing division between the "sciences"
 and the "soft" disciplines;
*a lack of precision in terminology;
*a real fear that the new electronic media are a
 threat to the vitality of live performance...
 
Hence the need for a new Journal.
 
LIMEN is dedicated to:
 
*a philosophical investigation of Performance as
 an epistemological system;
*research into the precise meaning of key terms
 such as "event," "process," "experience" (not
 to mention" liminality"...);
*research into the nature and significance of
 performance time, space, person, object, etc;
*cross-cultural research to identify the nature of
 "performance cultures," "performance
 psychology," "the performing body,"
 "archaeology," "anthropology"...;cognitive,
 "chaotic" and other overlapping paradigms;
*cyberspace as a new frontier for performing...
 
In other words, a "Performocentric" alternative to the
old Logocentric paradigm...
 
This Journal is not intended to replace or duplicate
existing - hard copy - journals. Rather it is intended to
complement them: contributions are solicited from
authors who wish to use this medium to test out an
idea, prior to hard-copy publication. To this end, a
panel of "peer group assessors" is being put in place
with a view to publishing both the "article" itself and
informed responses to its arguments, so that what the
author receives is what we believe readers also want:
both a provocative contribution to the field and initial
parameters for its evaluation and further discussion.
 
In addition, LIMEN will seek to put together in an
easily accessible format selected past papers in the
field to produce an archive of research.
 
LIMEN is currently in the planning stage; an editorial
panel is being assembled and scholars are invited to
express interest in joining the editorial board and/or
the peer group panels now. In addition, potential
authors are invited to submit drafts of proposed
contributions - in text, hypertext or other electronic
media...
 
LIMEN is published by the Centre of Theatre
Practice / Kaos Theatre and Murdoch University.