IFTR’s Theatre & Architecture Working Group invite you to join us at PQ2023, for a symposium on PERFORMANCE GROUNDS: UNSETTLING CULTURAL LANDSCAPES & THE SPATIAL POLITICS OF ASSEMBLY

IFTR’S THEATRE & ARCHITECTURE WORKING GROUP INVITE YOU TO JOIN US AT

PQ2023: PRAGUE QUADRENNIAL OF PERFORMANCE DESIGN & SPACE

 

 

 

SYMPOSIUM IN ARCHITECTURE SECTION: ACTS OF ASSEMBLY

15^th June 2023: 10am-5pm (Prague, Czech Republic)

 

PERFORMANCE GROUNDS: UNSETTLING CULTURAL LANDSCAPES & THE SPATIAL POLITICS OF ASSEMBLY

 

Performing and performance space generally involves an event of ‘taking place’… but where, what, and whose place? What does it mean to design and construct performance space 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? It seems more urgent than ever to critically reconsider the necessary and entangled relationship between space and performance, constructions of which tend to reinforce the narratives of discovery, conquest and occupation. Within indigenous epistemologies, virtual narratives and spatial dramaturgies lie possibilities to rethink our relationship to the cultural landscapes we share, as well as how we gather, exchange, and perform diverse cultures. How can interrogating, reimagining and unsettling familiar acts of assembly shape new performance spaces?

This forum considers how the post-pandemic world will treat performance spaces as platforms enabling communication and encounter, while investigating newly emerging spaces and their effects on global-centrism and diverse community assemblies and assemblages.

TAWG (Theatre & Architecture Working Group) for IFTR (International Federation of Theatre Research) will be meeting during the Prague Quadrennial in Czechia (8-18 June 2023). We call for 200-word abstracts with key image for timed FLASHTALKS (6-minute audiovisual presentations) in response to the theme of ACTS OF ASSEMBLY in line with a proposed future publication. A maximum of 18 proposals will be selected for presentation at PQ with the possibility of others to be posted online.

 

TAWG suggests the following topics (including any diversions, intersections or combinations thereof):

·         new grounds for performance

·         cultural theatre space

·         critical spatial practice

·         performing futurity

·         unhousing and rehousing the playhouse

·         unsettling settlement

·         challenging spatial narratives

·         decolonising the stage

·         ecoarchitecture and ecoscenographies

·         accommodating diverse communities

·         recalibrating performance climates

·         diverse and divergent infrastructures

·         housing the more-than-human

·         interspecies performance space

·         property and (de)territorialisation

·         intersecting spatial dramaturgies of the virtual and real

·         Intermedial spatialities

·         architecture as object-performance

·         post-truth and placemaking

·         un-canny and super-natural architectures

·         spatial democracies and social justice

·         sites for re-membering

·         performing otherwise

·         performative urbanism, suburbanism and ruralism... and beyond

·         performance environments and environmental performances

·         ownership and governance of cultural space

 

Key Dates

Queries welcome: theatreandarchitecture@gmail.com

Deadline for Abstracts: 15. February 2023

Acceptance of proposals: 22. March 2023

Confirmation of participation: 1. April 2023