- interdisciplinary
- audiovisual body
- cross-cultural
- decolonial body
- embodiment
- methodology
- post-body
- practice research
- soma
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Carnival and Cultural Appropriation
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Carnival and Power
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Carnival and Violence
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Carnival and Gender
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Carnival and Transformation
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Carnival and Transgression
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Queering Carnival
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Carnival and Public Spheres of Performance
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Sites of Carnival
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(Un)Masking
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Carnival and Ritual
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Ecologies of Carnival
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Economies of Carnival
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Carnival and Cultural Imaginaries
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Carnival and Material Cultures
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Carnival and (Screen) Media
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Carnival and Global (Dis-) Connections
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Carnival and Religion
- Institutional Frameworks. In addition to the epistemo-ontological issues raised by embodied research, there are a host of practical and strategic concerns. Recognizing that vast amounts of embodied expertise and innovation are currently housed within professional organizations — such as those of martial arts, yoga, bodywork, mindfulness, and expressive arts therapies — the WG will consider strategies for development new institutional frameworks that bridge academia and professional practice through engagements with key concerns like rigor, authenticity, lineage, archive, and commerce.
- Interdisciplinary Connections. Moving outwards from its core focus, the WG will examine the role of embodied research in the context of interdisciplinary projects that draw on scholarship in performance philosophy, theatre historiography, anthropology and sociology of the body, cognitive studies, gender and sexuality studies, critical race and (dis)ability studies, studies of religion, war, medicine, and other fields in which the body is foregrounded conceptually. Members will share and examine cases studies as well as developing new models for interdisciplinary collaboration.
- Multimedia Publications. The WG will explore traditional and alternative modes of publication for embodied research, including print and online articles and books, multimedia web platforms, and video essays. It will explore and experiment with the media and formats in which embodied research can be shared and archived across time and space, engaging with current debates around performance documentation and the challenges of archiving of embodied knowledge. Members will incorporate elements of practical skill-sharing into their IFTR presentations, learning together how to make use of emerging publication tools and media to articulate their embodied research.
Embodied Research
This WG aims to establish an international platform through which to share innovative and traditionally informed approaches to the methodological, epistemological, and ontological questions provoked by embodied research. These include some of the deepest assumptions that underpin scholarship in theatre and performance studies, such as the distinctions between theory and practice, subject and object, body and mind, techne and episteme.
KEYWORDS
Email: erwg.iftr@gmail.com
Convenors: Elizabeth De Roza; Melina Scialom
IFTR Annual Conference 2025
University of the Cologne
Cologne, Germany
09 – 13 June 2025
Performing Carnival: Ekstasis | Subversion | Metamorphosis.
https://iftr.org/conference/call-for-papers
Embodied Research Working Group (ERWG) — Call for Proposals
The IFTR Embodied Research Working Group invites papers and other contributions that explore the rich interweavings of carnival and its ekstasis, subversions and metamorphosis with embodiment and embodied practice and research in theatre, dance and performance. For 2025, the working group is particularly interested in the embodied (the body's) affordances of the carnivalesque in all of its performance(s) including the social and political dimensions and the historical and cultural contexts.
Carnival is a phenomenon with a strong link to the body. Emerging from either the trans-formations of self into otherness or on the others that dress the self, Bakhtin remembers that carnival and its embodiments are an opportunity to challenge and subvert norms and conventions. In such events, the performative body has a unique stance. The carnivalesque grants the individual the permission to, through their bodies, ask questions and suggest realities beyond the norm(al)s. In such situations, embodiment can be an opportunity to dissolve boundaries and inscribed marks and thus threaten normative or dualist concepts and practices that have been entrenched in societal living. Carnival can assist in the performance of the (im)possible, the questioning of the (un)truths, the disclosure of norm(al)s. Carnivals offer the space-time of play and ritual that create possibilities for body-transformations, body-metaphorization, body-transgression, body-decolonization, body-(de)mystification, among multiple (in)imaginable embodiments. In such situations, what does the body do to en-act such otherness or contrarily, what does the otherness do to ekstasiate, subvert and metamorph the body?
Embodiment is at the roots of carnival. A range of embodied features permeate the carnivalesque event. Ekstasis; Subversion; Metamorphosis are all concepts that transverse embodiment and operate directly on individual and collective embodiment. How do they operate within bodies, inside, outside or through carnival borders?
The ERWG is not only interested in the carnivalesque operations of the body and self but is also interested in articulating the reflections, impacts, consequences and residues that the carnivalesque leaves on the bodies. What does carnival do (or can do) to bodies? How can we look at carnival and its residual matter that remains embodied and can be inherited or passed down generationally as cultural artifacts or marks.
Alongside the conference’s CFP that outlines the possible associations of theatre and carnival, the working group is interested in carnival embodiments that emerge from within and outside of the body. From this perspective we ask - what are relationships between embodiment and the main key points offered by the IFTR 2025 CFP:
For the 2025 meeting of the ERWG we invite participants to address the theme of the conference in relation to embodiment and embodied practices. We also invite presentations that are not related to the theme of the conference but articulate embodiment in diverse manners. As in previous years, we welcome proposals for presentation and exchange through a wide range of forms: written, danced, sung, performed, audio-visual, imagined, embodied.
Abstracts of between 200 and 250 words are invited for this conference from scholars, teachers, researchers, artists, and students of theatre arts, theatre studies, performance studies, and other related disciplines.
MISSION STATEMENT
The Embodied Research Working Group supports individual and collaborative research projects in which embodied practice is an explicit and essential part of the methodology. While embodiment has been a major interest for theatre and other scholars across several decades at least, the claim that embodied practice can constitute a mode or method of academic research is relatively new and in some contexts is still considered controversial. This WG aims to establish an international platform through which to share innovative and traditionally informed approaches to the methodological, epistemological, and ontological questions provoked by embodied research. These include some of the deepest assumptions that underpin scholarship in theatre and performance studies, such as the distinctions between theory and practice, subject and object, body and mind, techne and episteme.
The founding members of the proposed WG bring to the collective table a set of articulated research practices based on a conception of theatre as a privileged site for understanding and innovating embodiment and embodied practice. Recent IFTR conferences have involved significant discussion of embodiment, embodied practice, and embodied research as these relate to diverse theoretical and historiographical methods. The new WG will create a context at IFTR in which embodied knowledge and research are foregrounded as legitimate contributors to the field. The WG will support IFTR’s institutional goals by developing interdisciplinary and intercultural connections that place performing arts in dynamic contact with physical culture, health and healing, and the embodied practices of everyday life. By modelling new modes of assessment and legitimization for these expanded fields of knowledge, the WG will strive to make embodied research more legible within IFTR and in broader academic and social contexts. Our emphasis on sharing methods for embodied research will be realized through an experimental approach to knowledge exchange that combines written papers, practical workshops and demonstrations, and audiovisual media.
The new WG will organize its activities according to the following thematic strands:
Taken together, these strategies and activities will intervene in current epistemological and ontological debates and contribute to the development of new research methodologies based in embodied practice. Over time, the WG aims to effectively expand and legitimize embodied research within and beyond the context of theatre and performance studies.
The first official meeting of ERWG was held at the University of São Paulo in July 2017.
Completed Publications
CONVENERS
Elizabeth de Roza
Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts
derozaelizabeth@gmail.com
Melina Scialom
Federal University of Bahia, Brazil
melinascialom@gmail.com
Ben Spatz
University of Huddersfield, United Kingdom
b.spatz@hud.ac.uk