PERFORMING THE WORLD 2012 Call for Papers

PERFORMING THE WORLD 2012 The sev­enth Per­form­ing the World (PTW) con­fer­ence will be held in New York City, Thurs­day, Octo­ber 4 through Sun­day Octo­ber 7, 2012. Inter­na­tional, cross-disciplinary, con­ver­sa­tional, expe­ri­en­tial, and practical-critical, PTW has come over the decade to play an increas­ingly impor­tant role in sup­port­ing and expand­ing “the per­for­mance turn” around the world. If you prac­tice and/or study per­for­mance as a means of indi­vid­ual, com­mu­nity and world trans­for­ma­tion (or want to), PTW is for you.
The theme of the last PTW, held in 2010 and attended by over 500 peo­ple from dozens of coun­tries, was, “Can Per­for­mance Change the World?” The depth of the chal­lenges fac­ing human­ity two short years later have led the con­ven­ers of Per­form­ing the World to recast the ques­tion for the 2012 con­fer­ence as, “Can Per­for­mance Save the World?”
Dead­locked gov­ern­ments, pro­tracted wars, dys­func­tional edu­ca­tion sys­tems, and a deep­en­ing global eco­nomic cri­sis with no appar­ent solu­tion have become the norm. At the same time, the activ­ity of per­for­mance (and play­ing and pre­tend­ing and cre­at­ing…), as an alter­na­tive to the cog­ni­tive– and/or faith-based “solu­tions” of tra­di­tional ide­ol­ogy, con­tin­ues to spread both at the grass­roots and in the uni­ver­sity, with the non-ideological, impro­visatory move­ments strug­gling to embody this trend. PTW is look­ing for pro­pos­als, be they for pan­els, work­shops, per­for­mances, demon­stra­tions, instal­la­tions, etc., that address this ques­tion, “Can per­for­mance save the world?” from a mul­ti­tude of per­spec­tives, includ­ing but not lim­ited to:
• Does per­for­mance con­tribute to peo­ple seeing/being in the world in new ways?
• Can we per­form our way to end­ing poverty?
• Per­for­mance and com­mu­nity build­ing and sus­tain­abil­ity
• The inter­face of the­atre per­for­mance and per­for­mance in daily life
• Per­for­mance and learn­ing
• Per­for­mance and youth devel­op­ment, in school and out
• Per­for­mance and the Elderly
• Per­for­mance, play and ther­a­peu­tics
• The rela­tion­ship of per­for­mance to phys­i­cal and emo­tional heal­ing
• Health and the per­for­mance of med­i­cine (East and West)
• New model of com­mu­nity health and human rights
• What is cre­ative con­ver­sa­tion and how can it take place in polar­ized (and vio­lent) envi­ron­ments?
• The role of the­atre and per­for­mance in war and con­flict zones
• What is play and its role in human cre­ativ­ity and devel­op­ment?
• The social con­text of cre­ativ­ity
• When “rea­son­ing” and “argu­ment” fail, what then?
• Per­for­mance and the cre­ation of his­tory
• Does know­ing get in the way of per­form­ing?
• The role of cognition/reflection in per­for­mance
• The per­for­mance of lan­guage and the lan­guage of per­for­mance
• Per­for­mance and orga­ni­za­tional cul­ture
• The role of per­for­mance in pol­i­tics and rev­o­lu­tion

Source : Call for Papers Portal