CFP: ASTR Performance as Research Working Group

[Bruce Barton]

Post-thematic Returns to the Fundamentals: Performance as Research and  
Practice Based Research

Conveners: Daniel Mroz (University of Ottawa) and Kris Salata (Florida  
State University)

The Performance as Research Working Group engages with scholarship  
that is both grounded in praxis and informed by theory. The Working  
Group invites artists, scholars and artist-scholars to participate in  
an interdisciplinary dialogue focused on the epistemological and  
methodological questions raised by research involving live, aesthetic  
and artistic performance. We are interested in scholarship that takes  
artistic praxis as its object and which acknowledges the essential  
differences between empirical knowledge and its scholarly articulation.

Over the last seven years the Performance as Research Working Groups  
assembled at ASTR have involved scholars and artists with diverse  
investments in relation to performance practice and its discursive  
formulation. Our approach has always involved a cross-disciplinary  
analysis of the centrality of embodied experience in both the creation  
and reception of performance, as well as the challenges  
(methodological, theoretical, rhetorical) attendant on the process of  
its articulation. We continue to focus on the experiential not only as  
a dimension that bridges the concerns of theorists and practitioners,  
but also because it is a pragmatic tool for investigating the limits  
and conventions of scholarly discourse.

Co-conveners Kris Salata and Daniel Mroz along with regular  
participant Bruce Barton are editing a book bringing together the  
ideas and inquiries that the Working Group has generated since its  
inception. This year?s session will be organized around the topics  
that have been raised regularly over the last seven sessions, with the  
structure of this eventual volume in mind.

Proposals need not be limited to these topics, but will likely fall  
into one of the following areas:

?    History and historiography of praxis-based research,
?    Methodologies,
?    Writing by artists that deals with practice from a first person  
perspective,
?    Work dealing with the use of artistic procedures as part of  
academic, pedagogical and institutional activities,
?    Work investigating the relationships between independent artistic  
practice and the academy.
?    Writing that researches the work of the artist from a scholarly,  
third person perspective.

The conference working session will be preceded by the exchange of  
papers (and other documentation if applicable) and substantive  
dialogue between the group members prior to the actual conference,  
responding to one another?s contributions. During the pre-conference  
discussion we will select the key issues on which the group will focus  
at the conference.

Proposals should not exceed 300 words and be accompanied by a short  
bio. Please email proposals by June 1, 2014 to the conveners: Daniel  
Mroz, University of Ottawa, dmroz at uottawa.ca and Kris Salata, Florida  
State University, ksalata at fsu.edu.

Selected participants will be notified in late June, 2014. We will  
initiate email discussion on the basis of proposals on August 1, 2014,  
with an initial draft of a paper no longer than 10 pages to be  
circulated no later than September 15, 2014.

Bruce Barton, PhD
brucewbarton.com
Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, University of  
Toronto / http://dramacentre.utoronto.ca
Program Director, Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies, U of T  
Mississauga / https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/english-drama/programs/drama
Artistic Director, Vertical City Performance /  
http://brucewbarton.com/vertical-city / verticalciity at brucewbarton.com