IFTR’s Theatre & Architecture Working Group invite you to join us in Manila, Philippines, for the annual conference, 15 – 19 July 2024: SPATIAL EMERGENCIES & EMERGENT SPATIALITIES

IFTR 2024 - Our States of Emergency: Theatres and Performances of Tragedy hosted by the University of the Philippines Diliman Manila


SPATIAL EMERGENCIES & EMERGENT SPATIALITIES

The human condition appears to inhabit a constant state of emergency as we live in a precarious world pushed to its limit by climate catastrophe, mass migration and unruly pandemics that threaten established borders and the territories they contain. What spatialities and unexpected spatial agents emerge from these conditions that continuously challenge the mythical idea of equilibrium and deny the power and performativity of a more-than-human condition? 

 

Taking into account the connection between emergency (requiring immediate attention) and emergent (a process of becoming), this call deepens our working group’s ongoing questioning of where and how performance ‘takes place’. Since 2021 the T&A working group has focused thematically on the social and geopolitical nature of performing grounds – public, cultural and intermedial – towards a published anthology that engages with the spatial politics of assembly and decolonising globalised cultural landscapes. 

 

Theatre as ‘built form’ (space in action) is designed to house theatre as ‘art form’ (action in space). Yet, responding to crisis and conflict in a highly mediated world, the dynamics and criticality of live performance is increasingly at odds with architecture’s notions of fixity, stability and property. By acknowledging the states of exception that calamitous historic, contemporary and ongoing events elicit, what new spatial settings are emerging  that unsettle or reinforce architecture’s role to provide security and continuity within the turmoil? Are these spatialities as mobile, dispersed, irrational, fragile, fluctuating and unpredictable as crises themselves or culturally calibrated safe havens and therefore durational spaces of exception?

 

Natural, built and virtual performance spaces continue to serve and proliferate Western knowledge systems, binary thinking, and colonial legacies responsible for the conditions that dominate and threaten our cultural landscapes. As such, it seems more urgent than ever to critically engage with, and contest, the necessary and entangled relationship between space and performance, between site and action, between performance environments and environmental performativity. What emergent spatialities and spatial emergencies are transforming how we gather, exchange, recover, and perform diverse cultures? 

 

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, architecture and design, and other related disciplines.

TAWG suggests the following topics for 12 minute paper presentations or 6 minute flash talks (including any diversions, intersections or combinations thereof): 

 

• theatres of war
• performance and public space
• diverse, divergent and vulnerable infrastructures
• more-than-human and ecologies under threat 
• interspecies and posthuman performance spatialities
• property and (de)territorialisation
• spatial dramaturgies of the virtual and real
• intermedial spatialities 
• post-truth and placemaking 
• uncanny and supernatural architectures 
• spatial democracies and social justice 
• challenging spatial narratives of conflict and crisis
• decolonising the stage 
• spatialities for remembering
• unsettling spatialities
• emergent performance environments and environmental performances
• eco-architecture, eco-scenographies and climate emergency
• accommodating communities under threat
• performance spaces in states of emergency
• performance grounds and cultural crisis 
• emergent performance grounds and digital unrest
• emergent performance grounds and social instability 
• urgencies of queer spatialities and performance spaces 
• performance spaces, trauma and memory
• architectures of disorder 
• performances of discontinuity
• spaces of failure 
• spaces of rupture
• performance space and the strategies of emergency prevention 
• emergent performance space as a response to crisis
• performance space as place for recovery 
• emergencies of performance/performing/performative spaces

Key Dates
Deadline for Abstracts submitted to Cambridge Core: 2 February 2024. Please note that you will have to be a member of the IFTR to submit an abstract. To join the IFTR or renew your membership, please visit the Cambridge Core membership page.

Acceptance of proposals: 15 March 2024
Confirmation of participation: 1 April 2024
IFTR conference dates: 15-19 July 2024

Additional Theatre & Architecture Working Group social gathering dates: July 13 & 14th, 20th

IMPORTANT NOTE: All abstracts must be submitted to Cambridge Core. On the Abstract Submission page, please make sure to check the box for Theatre & Architecture Working Group. Please do not send abstracts to the organizers. You will have to be a member of the IFTR to submit an abstract. To join the IFTR or renew your membership please visit the Cambridge Core membership page.

For more details about the IFTR 2024 call and program in Manila: https://iftr.org/conference

With very best wishes,
Shauna, Višnja, & Dorita (Co-convenors, T&A working group)