Performance as Research

CALL FOR PAPERS

PERFORMANCE AS RESEARCH WORKING GROUP OF THE IFTR
BARCELONA, 2013

Migrating Practices/Practices of Migration

For the 2013 meeting of the Performance as Research Working Group of the IFTR, we send out a call for papers and workshops that will respond to the conference theme, "Re-routing Performance", from a specifically PaR perspective. We are particularly interested in papers/workshops/presentational material that will engage with one or more of the following foci:

• The routes along which our creative research practices migrate. We are thinking here of Whitehead's idea of "routes of inheritance" for example. If PaR is an event, an ongoing process of becoming, constantly shifting, where is it traveling from and where is it heading to and through what/where does it travel to get there. And is this not hopelessly too linear, and the routes far more circuitous?

• The routes our practices follow through the bodymind. We are thinking here of neural pathways and impulses that travel through muscles and flesh and resonate in bones and cavities, and the ways in which thoughts infiltrate our bodies through practice and the reception of practice.

• The routes along which energies, impulses and ideas migrate between performers and audiences.

• The ways in which performance practices engage with a changing world in which any sense of rootedness is constantly challenged by an overriding impulse or need to move, travel or flee. In a world in which staying put, in one place, for the majority of one's life is less obvious than it might have been in the past, how do performance practices change as a result of this new reality, or comment on, engage with this new reality? What can we learn by looking back at our own routes and migrations as artists and as researchers?

• The kinds of migrations, re-routings and displacements that take place when performance practice is transformed into research? And the migrations and transformations included in processes where research findings are embodied in performance practices?

• The ways in which PaR as a methodology has migrated around the world and taken various names and shapes like practice-led research, practice-based research, artistic research, adapting to various surroundings even spreading out as a field?

SUBMISSION, PARTICIPATION AND PUBLICATION

The PAR working group at any conference is strictly limited to 25 participants.
You can participate in the WG as a presenter or observer. Please mark your preferred role clearly on your abstract submission.
To participate as a presenter, please send an abstract of (maximum) 250 words via the Barcelona conference website http://www.firt2013barcelona.org/call-for-papers/.

by 31 January 2013. Please copy your abstract to Mark Fleishman ( This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ). The process for accepting abstracts will be competitive. A sub-group consisting of the Working Group convenors Anna Birch and Mark Fleishman, will review all abstracts and make selections. A maximum of 15 presentations will be selected.

To participate as an observer, please submit a short letter of motivation by 31 January 2013, directly to Mark Fleishman ( This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ), indicating why you would like to be an observer and not a participant and what your interest in the topic is. A maximum of 10 observers will be selected. It is expected that observers will be registered for the conference and will be presenting in the general programme.

The presenters chosen will write a 3000 word paper. The papers will be made available to all group members, before the conference. The concept 'paper' should be understood as including a range of styles and formats from the more traditional academic writing to performance writing to theorised, media-rich formats. All finalized papers must be submitted by 14 June 2013 and any papers submitted after this date will be excluded from the Working Group.

During the conference each presenter will be expected to work together with other
presenters to deliver a workshop that explores the theme(s) of their writing (not a presentation that re-iterates the writing, but rather, a series of embodied activities that complement the writing and ground its content in felt experience). Presenters will be grouped together by the convenors and will be asked to communicate with each other by email to plan their workshop in advance of the conference.

In addition, as was the case last year, we will be proposing a panel from the working group to the main conference program. There is no separate call for the panel. The panel will be based on the general working group call above. If you wish to be considered for the panel rather than for presentation in the working group sessions please indicate this clearly in your abstract submission.

Observers will not do a presentation as such but will be expected to read all of the papers produced by the presenters and will participate in the workshop activities and discussions.

We are proud of our commitment to enabling younger and less experienced PaR
artist-scholars to engage with the PaR community, and will reserve up to 10 places at the Barcelona meeting for attendees who have not worked with us before. These people may elect to submit a paper/workshop or propose attendance as an observer. Applicants who wish to be considered for one of these 10 places should submit a brief CV and statement of interest in Performance as Research along with their abstract to Mark Fleishman ( This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ) by 31 January 2011. They should also follow the instructions regarding submission through the conference website above.

The Performance as Research Working Group investigates creative-academic issues raised by performance as research across the performance media. It aims to investigate methods of performance as research and, in particular, to explore approaches to developing such methods through reflexive (and, where appropriate, participatory) performative presentations. Relevant issues in this investigation include knowledge types, aesthetic values, contextual responsiveness, practice/theory problematics and training methods. For the purposes of the Group, 'performance' is understood to include a range of media, from theatre through dance to film/video/television, and interlocking research interests, from aesthetic through thematic to contextual.

A number of key issues drive the Group, including the following:

The Nature of Performance as Research

What field(s) of activity does 'performance as research' describe? The working group investigates a range of performance as research activities in international higher education institutions.

The Significance of Performance

What knowledge(s) can performance generate and to what extent are knowledge and understanding increased by performance as research? How can the knowledge and experience of practitioners be integrated into university-based research cultures? We are developing a diverse range of case studies to produce knowledges surrounding notions of value. Our aim is to define the objectives, methodologies, procedures and focus of performance within its disciplinary and institutional context as well as to interrogate the appropriateness and effectiveness of the research methods.

Dissemination Issues

What are appropriate modalities through which to communicate about and in terms of performance? The performance as research group will consult on and realize a series of creative projects to advance potential uses of digital technologies for documentation and dissemination.

Institutional and Academic Frameworks

What is the meaning and standing of a qualification in performance research? What are the implications of developing bodies of practice and theory specific to performance as research?

Publications

Coming Soon

New Members

The group is open to new members, though there will be a maximum of 25 members in each year, with a potential turnover allocation of 5 to 8 new places. Membership in each year to be selected on the basis of submissions to produce a complementary mix of media, research interests and geographical spread, plus a consistency of core participants from year to year. In addition, there will be a small number of places for observer respondents in each year.

Conveners

Anna Birch,  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow, Scotland 

Mark Fleishman, Head of Drama, University of Cape Town:  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , (convenor for the next conference)

Next meeting: Barcelona 2013.

Last meeting: Santiago 2012.