Envisioning the Practice: Montr=?Windows-1252?Q?=E9al_?=International Symposium On Curation the Performing Arts

[Allana Lindgren]

Envisioning the Practice: Montréal International Symposium On Curation the Performing Arts

A seminal event in the field of the performing arts, conceived by the Montréal Association of Arts Curators and hosted by the PHI Centre and the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), will be held in Montréal (Canada) on April 10-13, 2014.

Over the last 20 years, there have been numerous events, publications and graduate university programs dedicated to examining the role and deepening the knowledge base of professional curators in the visual arts. However, curators of the performing arts – who variously call themselves presenters, programmers, artistic directors, producers, diffuseurs, cultural agents and more -- have been missing from these developments. In recent years there has been considerable momentum generating through formal and informal conversations on the subject of curating in the performing arts, aiming to flesh out issues about the practice. A first collection of texts, for instance, “Curating Performing Arts” was edited and published in 2010 by Frakcija Performing Arts Journal #55 in Croatia. Two exploratory meetings of artists and arts presenters were organized in North America and Europe:  “The Culture of Curation” in Toronto, Canada in 2010 by the Canadian Association of Performing Arts Presenters, and “Beyond Curating: strategies of knowledge transfer in dance, performance and visual arts” held in Essen, Germany in 2011 by Tanzplan Essen. 

As well as these specific conferences and publication, over the years an increasing number of international performing arts marketplace events have included conferences, round tables and discussion opportunities that sometimes move towards consideration of the vocation of the performing arts presenters. A premier graduate programme Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) at Wesleyan University (U.S.A.) began in 2011. 

Building on these previous advancements, “Envisioning the Practice: Montréal International Symposium on Curating the Performing Arts” strives to create further parameters and grounds on which to foster theories about the practice of curating the performing arts. This symposium seeks to bring together recent discourses on curating the performing arts (dance/movement, music/sound, theatre/text-based, interdisciplinary, media arts and emergent practices) in order to enrich, structure and theorize possibilities of curating in the field, with an interest in “best practices”.  

To identify shared critical curatorial methods among practitioners, artists and institutions and to devise new territories for expanding the practice, the symposium will present current research and critical thinking on topics related to curating the performing arts. 

Curators (institutional, independent, artist-curators, critic-curators, among others), artists, artistic directors, programmers, presenters, producers, scholars, art administrators, art historians, art critics, independent scholars and graduate students are invited to submit proposals that consider, but are not restricted to, the following topics:

• Defining the practice as a field of inquiry and knowledge
• Naming, imagining parameters for the role and the field
• (Re)creating typologies of emergent forms and genres
• Historical, philosophical, sociological, anthropological and political perspectives 
• The performing arts as “event”: function and meaning
• Describing the work of curation, the role of curator
• Distinguishing the work of the curator and that of the dramaturg and community/audience development person (médiateur culturel)
• Becoming a performing arts curator, finding/creating employment
• On working inside and outside of venues and institutions
• Strategies for conceptualizing a scholarly program of study
• Best practices/ethics, possible models, utopias
• The curatorial statement of belief, articulating the practice
• Engaging audiences to embrace new and hybrid forms of viewing and participation
• Documenting and archiving performances
• Past experiences, current trends, and insights 

Each paper will be allocated 20 minutes and organized into panels of three speakers, with a moderator to encourage discussion and exchange. Papers should focus on the presentation of research and findings, and critical papers that expand on personal experience and case studies are also welcome.

Presentations that incorporate performance and unusual formats are encouraged but should be presented as a paper-recital or paper-demonstration. The languages of the abstracts and presentations may be in English and/or French, and there will be simultaneous translation available in these languages. 

Outcomes of the symposium
The publication of proceedings of all presentations in their original language, to which all are invited to contribute, will be followed by a peer-reviewed anthology in book form comprised of selected speakers´ contributions in the form of academic texts and visual essays, to be translated into both French and English.
In addition to the book publication, other outcomes include: critical reviews of this academic book, partnerships with special issues of journals and magazines, archival video documentation, interactive website/blog/social networking site to support continued dialogue.

“Envisioning the Practice: Montréal International Symposium on Curating the Performing Arts” aims to advance critical thinking, current research, and offer a live and published site for further reflection, imagining and advancing the field.


Dena Davida, Dominique Fontaine, Jane Gabriels
Co-founders Arts Curators Association of Québec
www.acaq.ca  (in January 2013)
acaq2012 at gmail.com

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Dr. Allana C. Lindgren
Associate Professor
Department of Theatre
University of Victoria
PO Box 1700, STN CSC
Victoria, British Columbia
CANADA   V8W 2Y2
Phone: 250.721.8005
Email: aclind at uvic.ca
Web: http://finearts.uvic.ca/theatre/