CFP - Performance and Interdisciplinarity Conference (University of Malta)

[Stefan Aquilina]

Call for Papers:

 *Performance*

*and Interdisciplinarity *

​

A conference at the University of Malta,

hosted by the School of Performing Arts



20/21 March 2015





The School of Performing Arts (University of Malta) will be holding its
annual conference on the following theme: *Performance and
Interdisciplinarity*. The focus of the conference will be on
interdisciplinarity in performance and the performing arts, and how this
connects to other disciplines from Science and the Humanities.


Interdisciplinary research and practices answer to what Richard Schechner
calls the phenomenon of ‘blurry boundaries’, where the decidedly premodern
approach of distilling fine categories and certainties has given way to
ideas of continuum across different fields. Performance is charged with
interdisciplinarity to become a paradigm and concretisation of such
discourses. The conference will take as a point of departure the eight
overlapping performance categories elaborated by Schechner: everyday life,
the arts, sports, business, technology, sex, ritual, and play. The
performing arts themselves are a space where these categories are combined
in an endless stream of permutations. These may range from the ways that
theatre, dance, and music draw material from but also impinge upon everyday
life; to training in performance and in sports; the drive for ‘efficacy’
and ‘efficiency’ that is shared with business; and the ever-increasing use
of the performing arts as an area for technological innovation.  The idea
that the performing arts appertain to the fields of the Humanities also
needs to be taken into consideration, due to the strong ties that theatre,
dance, and music have with the disciplines of philosophy, history, critical
theory, sociology, politics, and others.

The conference *Performance and Interdisciplinarity *aims to contribute to
these (and other) discourses on interdisciplinarity, within the practices
and theorizations of both performance in general as well as the performing
arts in particular. The conference also attaches importance to establishing
links with other disciplines such as Digital Technology and Digital Gaming,
Cognitive Science, the Creative and Tourism Industries, Critical Theory,
History and Historiography, the Fine Arts, and Philosophy.


Proposals along these lines are therefore welcome, and may include
discussions on such topics as:

·         interdisciplinary performance and research;

·         interdisciplinarity in the performing arts;

·         links between performance and other disciplines, including but
not  restricted to those listed above;

·         difficulties of interdisciplinarity, e.g. what Mieke Bal refers
to as ‘vague objects of enquiry and muddled methodology’.



Proposals (maximum 250 words) are hereby invited, and they should be
submitted to Dr Stefan Aquilina on stefan.aquilina at um.edu.mt by the 21
January 2015. Presentations by two or more presenters, sharing a common
theme or interdisciplinary approach, are particularly welcome.



The Conference will feature Dr Laura Cull (University of Surrey) as Keynote
Speaker.
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