04 Jul 2014

Research Centre S:PAM - Studies of Performing Arts & Media - Call for proposals: Does it matter?

Following contemporary philosophers such as Giorgio Agamben, Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour or Bernard Stiegler, amongst others, we have entered the post- human era. The anthropocentric age is over. As humans, we need to think of ourselves as a geophysical force that is part of a larger constellation. Instead of trusting our so-called common sense, a capacity that supposedly distinguishes us from animals and objects, we need to cultivate our desire to connect, with other beings as well as with the so-called non-human.

Posthumanist thought also affects the notion of 'the human' in contemporary performing arts. Do human bodies still matter on the contemporary stage? Do they matter only insofar as they are connected to objects or technologies? Are acting and dancing bodies to be considered mere actants in an interconnected collective? Are they merely pop-up bodies in a desert of the real? Do only bodies matter (Butler), or does 'it' matter as well?

In this international conference, we take as a point of departure a posthumanist perspective on the performing arts. We aim at adopting the notion of a community as an entangling mesh of interdependent objects, technologies and beings as the basic constellation of a performance context. The encounters at stake in a performance are hence not only encounters between the people involved (performers as well as spectators); they are considered as encounters between composite bodies, consisting of so-called human as well as non-human composites. We therefore propose to expand the Spinozist notion of composite bodies as ever-shifting constellations of bodies acting upon one another to non-human and technological composite.

The international conference Composite Bodies and Posthuman Prototypes in Contemporary Performing Arts is an initiative of the research centre S:PAM (Studies of Performing Arts and Media) at Ghent University.

The conference will be organized in collaboration with Vooruit Arts Centre and CAMPO and will be part of the international performing arts festival Possible Futures. Providing a well-equipped conference venue, Vooruit Arts Centre and CAMPO host a wide ranging performing arts and discursive program. Composite Bodies and Posthuman Prototypes aims to combine scholarly and artistic insights in a three-day program consisting of plenary lectures, research presentations, discussions, workshops, as well as artists statements and performances.