CALL FOR PROPOSALS
PERFORMANCE RESEARCH 17.4 (AUGUST 2012):
‘ON ECOLOGY’
PROPOSAL DEADLINE: 1st OCTOBER 2011 (see below for details)
Issue Editors: Stephen Bottoms, Aaron Franks, Paula Kramer
How do we live on earth?
Over the last several years, a broad and growing range of theatre events
and performance processes have sought to re-imagine – in varying ways –
the question of our relationship, as humans, with the non-human
environment. These range from site-specific engagements with particular
localities to mainstage plays about climate change, from activist protest
inter-ventions to experiments with sustainable staging, from environmental
dance practices to performative philosophising around concepts of process
and relationality. These develop-ments (and more) have been complemented
by a performative turn in geographical thinking, which has brought renewed
attention to the material body and its lived experience of space and
place. Similarly, where the social and natural sciences meet, a growing
self-reflexivity about ‘the performance of science’ has become evident.
But in what ways, and to what extent, do these various practices and
concerns intersect? Is it possible to trace the outlines of a growing
ecological consciousness and connectivity in performance studies and its
related contexts? Or are we, instead, looking at a disparate range of
activities and discourses that remain largely isolated from each other?
Are these various developments testament merely to a vague sense of
concern about ‘the environment’, as a threatened backdrop to our human
drama? Or are we developing a potentially more progressive sense of
being-in and of the natural world? What might be our toeholds and launch
pads – metaphorical and earthly beginning points – for what cultural
geographer David Crouch calls simply ‘holding on and going further’?
“[We need] to bridge the great wellsprings of human understanding –
including the natural and social sciences, philosophy, religion and the
creative arts – to ‘re-imagine’ how we live on earth.”
– Matthew Nisbet et al, “4 Cultures: New Synergies for Engaging Society on
Climate Change (2010)
On Ecology will begin a mapping – or, if you prefer, a rhizomatic
entangling – of these various questions and strands of praxis. The
objective will be to cherish the diversity of different approaches while
also apprehending their relatedness – to seek integration without capture;
holism without monism. We are therefore seeking proposals that respond to,
but are not limited by, the terms of this call.
Indicative themes include:
. In what ways are experimental engagements between (for example) form and
content, dramaturgy and site, performer and spectator, serving to develop
environmentally attuned performance modes?
. What are the sites, locations or ‘habitats’ of ecological performance,
and how are they being moved through, lived in, materialised,
historicised? To what extent can ongoing processes of environmental change
be comprehended, and engaged with, through performative framing an
intervention?
. What constitutes ‘best practice’ in terms of theatre / dance /
performance that seeks to reduce its environmental footprint and render
itself sustainable? And to what extent should sustainability be conceived
not only in terms of pragmatic, material solutions, but in terms of
performative critique of our unsustainable addictions to capitalism and
consumerism?
. What role does the notion of agency play in this field of acting with,
and being acted-upon by, the non-human environment? How might concepts
such as Bateson’s ‘ecology of mind’ or the ‘flat ontology’ of Deleuze or
DeLanda manifest themselves in embodied performance experiences – for
performers, witnesses, participants, and perhaps other in/organic actors?
. An increasing and uneasy awareness of collective human endangerment of
our shared eco-system has prompted cultural responses ranging from
scepticism to despair. Critical thinking, wary of propaganda from either
direction, may risk becoming a prolonged ‘deliberation on mourning’
(Rancière, 2004:9). But might our uncertainties and ambivalences also
provide the raw materials we need to reimagine the future – using the
lived, sited, awkwardly material facts of performance as our medium?
. Some geologists have dubbed the current era the ‘Anthropocene’ – a label
that could be read either as scientific hubris or as an appropriate
reflection on human impacts within the in/organic world. To what extent
can – or should – performance question its familiar status as an
inherently ‘anthropo-scenic’, human-centred medium?
On Ecology extends, in part, from the deliberations of the UK-based
research network project ‘Reflecting on Environmental Change through
Site-Based Performance’ (funded by the Arts and Humanities Research
Council, 2010-11). See www.performancefootprint.co.uk for details. The
network engaged with a wide range of practitioners including PLATFORM
London, NVA, Dead Good Guides, Fevered Sleep, Julie Laffin, Dee Heddon,
Baz Kershaw, Mike Pearson, Phil Smith, and others. It is hoped that this
edition of Performance Research will extend the nationally-focused scope
of the network, to embrace a truly global, cross-cultural range of
perspectives and practices, both ‘major’ and ‘minor’.
The format of Performance Research allows for artists’ pages and other
visual representations alongside articles, interviews, documents or
reviews. Proposals are invited from all disciplinary viewpoints, and from
artists and writers, theorists and fieldworkers.
SCHEDULE
. Proposals: 1st October 2011
. First drafts: 4th January 2012
. Publication date: August 2012
ALL proposals, submissions and general enquiries should be sent direct to:
Becci Curtis: rec12@aber.ac.uk
Issue-related enquiries should be directed to the issue editors:
Stephen Bottoms: S.J.Bottoms@leeds.ac.uk
Aaron Franks: afranks.ges.gla@gmail.com
Paula Kramer: kramerp@uni.coventry.ac.uk
GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSIONS
Proposals will be accepted by e-mail (MS-Word or RTF). Proposals should
not exceed one A4 side. Please DO NOT send images electronically without
prior agreement.
Please note that submission of a proposal will be taken to imply that it
presents original, unpublished work not under consideration for
publication elsewhere. By submitting a manuscript, the author(s) agree
that the exclusive rights to reproduce and distribute the article have
been given to Performance Research.
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