[Candrama] Hybrid Practices: Annual Conference at the University of Malta (13, 14, 15 March)

[Stefan Aquilina]

*Hybrid Practices: Methodologies, Histories, and Performance*

Annual Conference hosted by the School of Performing Arts at the University
of Malta

*13, 14, 15 March 2019*

*Keynote Speakers*
Anne Bogart (Co-founder and Artistic Director – SITI Company)
Nicola Dibben (Department of Music, University of Sheffield)
Royona Mitra (Dance and Theatre, Brunel University London)

*Convenors*
Frank Camilleri (University of Malta)
Paul Allain (University of Kent)


The sixth Annual Conference of the School of Performing Arts (University of
Malta) considers hybridity in relation to performance, in particular the
making, reception, and study of performance as practices emergent from
heterogeneous sources.

In its most fundamental sense, hybridity refers to mixture and fusion, of
species, races, plants, or cultures. The contemporary application of the
term can be traced across various disciplines, from biology and chemistry,
to linguistics, politics, racial theory, and popular culture. Developed
from its roots as a biological term, hybridity is invoked in discourses
about identity, multiculturalism, and globalisation.

The conference explores hybridity in an expanded sense that marks the
coming together of performer and environment, materials and practitioners
(including directors, designers, and technicians), performance and
reception, event and analysis. Hybridity, therefore, as encounter, fusion,
or grafting that informs and forms performance: as compositional and
production strategy, as ensemble and assembly, as inter- and
intradisciplinary endeavour, as inter- and intracultural phenomenon.

We call for presentations that investigate the ways in which performance
and its study is bound up with questions of environment, encounter, and
evolution that the concept of hybridity entails. We welcome case studies
and conceptualisations that address these issues, whether or not they come
from the performing arts. We are particularly interested in hybridity as it
cuts across various aspects of performance, including the methodologies and
processes that go into its production as well as the historical (analytical
and archival) accounts of performance.

Presentation topics might include, but are in no way limited to, issues and
themes of hybridity in relation to practice, methodology, technology,
spaces/sites, and fluid identities. For example:

•    the hybridisation of physical and digital elements in performance
(intermediality, multimedia, mixed media, MOOCs, use of mobile apps)
•    inter/multicultural performance
•    analytical frameworks like postcolonialism, postphenomenology,
sociomaterialism, and interdisciplinarity in performance
•    historiography and ethnography as hybrid and evolving practices that
involve diverse methodologies and technologies from various sources
•    training processes and compositional strategies like devising,
choreography, and ensemble work
•    practice as research case studies and applied performance as hybrid
methodologies and practices
•    issues related to genre, including performance art, ‘total theatre’,
opera, and other forms like music theatre, mime, and dance that can be
conceived in hybrid terms

Abstracts of a maximum of 300 words should be submitted in Word doc by *17
December 2018* to the conference convenors, Prof. Frank Camilleri
(University of Malta) and Prof. Paul Allain (University of Kent), on this
address: p21.spa at um.edu.mt. Acceptance will be confirmed in early January
2019. If an official invitation is required earlier for research funding
purposes, please contact the convenors and ensure that you submit your
abstract as early as possible. Abstracts should also include a brief
bionote and any technical equipment you might need. Primarily, the
conference will take the form of conventional 15-/20-minute presentations,
but presenters wishing to suggest other forms are also encouraged to
contact the conference convenors.

*

The conference is organised under the auspices of *Performance 21:
Twenty-First Century Studies in Performance* – one of the research
groupings within the School of Performing Arts
<https://www.um.edu.mt/performingarts/researchgroups>. P21 is committed to
studying the twenty-first century through performance, to seeking new means
and new meanings in the dynamic collisions of twenty-first-century
practices, technologies, and theories, with the emerging knowledge
benefiting practitioners and scholars across its transdisciplinary
boundaries.

The conference is supported by the European Theatre Research Network (ETRN
<https://www.kent.ac.uk/arts/research/centres/etrn/index.html>) of the
School of Arts at the University of Kent (UK).

Dr Stefan Aquilina

Director of Research & Internationalisation, School of Performing Arts
Senior Lecturer, Department of Theatre Studies
University of Malta

Tel: 00356 2340 2989

Director of CTATT Research Project
www.ctatt.org

Latest Publication: *Interdisciplinarity in the Performing Arts:
Contemporary Perspectives *(Co-edited Book Publication, Malta University
Press)

For more information visit:
https://www.um.edu.mt/performingarts/publications/form
And: *Stanislavsky in the World: The System and its Transformations across
Continents *(Co-edited Book Publication, Bloomsbury)

For more information visit:
http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/stanislavsky-in-the-world-9781472587886
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