CFP Embodied Research Working Group IFTR 2022

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Melina Scialom

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Dec 20, 2021, 8:54:21 PM12/20/21

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IFTR WORLD CONGRESS

20. - 24. JUNE 2022

REYKJAVIK, ICELAND

Shifting Centres (In the Middle of Nowhere)

Submission deadline 31st January 2022

<<< in person/presential attendance >>>

Embodied Research Working Group

Many embodied practitioners today believe that there are strong material, affective, cultural and political connections between body-based, somatic, and corporeal practices and the living ecologies that are currently under threat of extinction across the earth. The Covid-19 pandemics has shifted some of these connections, especially because it distanced bodies, prohibited gatherings and shifted group embodied practices into online screen interactions. With this new shift onto screen and online space, we ask what is this online body? How can we, as embodied practitioners/researchers, sustain our practices within a changing cultural and ecological landscape and further the somatic, and cultural-political rigor of critical embodied research?

When in dialogue with the conference's 2022 theme we think of the embodied stakes that the notion of centre might raise. How has post-colonialism and colonialism shifted the notions of centre, marginal and othering? What can we offer, as embodied practitioners, to the urgent call to decolonize contemporary society and its (dis)embodied practices? How can we draw on diverse cultural resources without appropriating the living property of those who live under ongoing colonisation, especially when our own forms of practice research, artistic research, and embodied research are materially supported by neocolonial and neoliberal institutions that claim the centre in both arts and academic sectors? How does the notion of centre operate in a range of embodied practices as well as cosmological perspectives of bodies in/and/with the environment?

We invite scholar-artists, research-practitioners, and embodied researchers working at the edges and interstices of conventional academic disciplines to demonstrate and catalyze the ethics, politics, and somatics of embodiment for theatre and performance. We welcome practical and audiovisual contributions as well as conventional analytical papers that reveal the importance of embodied practice and embodied research to the environment, sustainability, and politics. Recognizing the cost and privilege of academic conference attendance itself, we also welcome proposals that speak on behalf of multiple human and nonhuman constituencies, recognizing that an individual who makes the trip to Reykjavik may represent much wider and more diverse ecologies.

ABOUT ERWG: The Embodied Research Working Group (ERWG) is a growing network of researchers working with and through embodiment to explore new models and processes for engaged scholarship. In addition to meeting annually at the IFTR conference, we maintain a digital platform for conversations that range from reading groups on the rigor of practice and decolonizing embodiment to the cross-pollination of performer training lineages and the development of new relationships between academic and nonprofit/charity institutions. This year we invite proposals that engage with the concept and practice of ecology from diverse embodied perspectives.

PLEASE NOTE: The format of ERWG conference sessions is a matter of ongoing experimentation. We are in the process of testing new methods for embodied knowledge exchange including digital correspondence, collaboratively planned workshops, and structured improvisational encounters. The participants selected for the 2022 meeting will have multiple opportunities to share their research and this will count as a conference presentation for all official purposes (e.g., funding). They will also happen in person in Reykjavik, Iceland. However, you will not necessarily have the conventional opportunity to read a paper or give a prepared talk during the sessions. Please take this into account when submitting your proposal.

TO APPLY: Proposals must be submitted through the IFTR registration process (see links below) by the conference deadline. Each proposal should be no more than 500 words, including a brief biographical statement and links to relevant audiovisual materials where possible. Please explain how your work contributes to at least one of ERWG’s main strands of activity: interdisciplinary connections, institutional frameworks, and/or multimedia publications. (You can find out more about these on the ERWG homepage, linked below.) Priority will be given to participants of previous ERWG gatherings, but spaces will also be reserved for new members, especially from the conference region. Please contact the conveners with any questions.

Conveners:

Ben Spatz

b.s...@hud.ac.uk

University of Huddersfield, UK

Elizabeth de Roza

derozae...@gmail.com

The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts

Melina Scialom
melina...@gmail.com

Federal University of Bahia, Brazil

Useful links:

ERWG homepage

https://www.iftr.org/working-groups/embodied-research