[csaa-forum] CFP - Performing Global Crises

[Performance Real]

Performing Global Crises

An interdisciplinary conference hosted by The Performance of the Real
Research Theme at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

30th November - 2nd December 2022


Crisis has characterised contemporary lives in many ways – as we witness,
experience, perform, and respond to entangled health, political, social,
and environmental disasters. For example, in the past few years, the
Covid-19 pandemic has affected virtually every area of our lives.
Individual, local, national, and global responses have been played out and
performed in the media, on social media, and in embodied social landscapes.
Scientists have become the new celebrities, and politicians have risen and
fallen according to their Covid management performances. The virus itself
has also performed, taking on different guises as it mutates to extend its
life and efficacy. Zoom and other similar platforms have become the new
mode of communication for many, generating new forms of visibility,
intimate digital surveillance, and networked sociality. Many people have
been marginalised or further marginalised by the pandemic, by inequalities
in access to digital technologies as well as health technologies. At the
same time there has never been a time when communication, miscommunication,
disinformation – about vaccines, mandates, and more – have been so fraught
and politicised. As all-encompassing as the pandemic has seemed at times,
it has been eclipsed in some respects, more recently, by public attention
to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is emerging as the most visible
war in history. With visibility comes multiple modes of performance and
performativity, including competing deep fakes, and another arena for the
performance of global leaders, politicians, and the public. Meanwhile, the
slow violence of Climate Change continues to devastate communities,
nations, and species. The Climate itself, specific ecosystems and
landscapes, and non-human creatures, have been acting as key performers in
diverse scientific, popular, and media-scapes, garnering global attention
as harbingers for a harrowing future, even amidst those who doubt its
existence.


This conference will explore the way that these multi-layered global crises
have been and continue to be performed, contested, and mediated across all
strata of communication and society.


We encourage contributions relating (but not limited) to the following
topics and issues connected to the performance and performativity of
crises:

   -


   - The Climate Emergency and public performances of responsibility
   - Protest action and the performance of dissent
   - Digital technologies of visibility and surveillance
   - News, information, and the politics of truth
   - Precarity, marginalization, and inequality in times of crises
   - Art, literature, and creativity for wellbeing and resilience amidst
   crises
   - Leadership, celebrity, and the public performance of power and trust
   amidst crises
   - Public communication of science (virology, climatology, etc.)
   - Spectacularisation of war, violence, and the military
   - Participatory/symbolic performances of political relations: allyship,
   solidarity, fear, or threat
   - Decolonisation and indigeneity in responses to crises
   - Empathy, care, and witnessing: mediated responses to the suffering of
   others
   - Gendered experiences of/in crises: labour, feminism, care ethics
   - Politicised bodies/selves: intersectional views of gender, disability,
   race, and the good life
   - Racialised and spatialised performances - mapping and tracing crises
   through bodies
   - Multispecies, posthuman, and more-than-human worlds: living with
   ‘others’ through crises
   - Wellbeing and affect amidst crises: hypervigilance, anxiety, apathy,
   compassion fatigue
   - Social imaginations of the future: hope, optimism, connection and
   connectivity, the utopian/dystopian, apocalyptic visions, and ‘doom’


   -


   Conference and Paper Format:

   This will be a hybrid conference that allows people placed in Aotearoa
   New Zealand and nearby to attend in person, and for internationals - if
   they cannot travel - to attend online via Zoom.

   In addition to conventional 20-minute papers, we also invite
   presentations with a performance or creative or workshop component.
   -


   Submitting an Abstract:

   Please submit a 200-250 word abstract of your contribution and a
   100-word biography for each presenter by 16 September 2022. Please send
   us your abstract as a Word document. Use your surname in the document
   title. Please clearly indicate the title of your presentation, the nature
   and timing of your presentation e.g. 20 minute spoken paper with
   Powerpoint, as well as your full name (first name, surname) and
   institutional affiliation (if relevant). Please send your abstracts or any
   enquiries to the Theme administrator at performance.real at otago.ac.nz.

   Accepted delegates must confirm their attendance by completing
   registration and payment by October 31, 2022.
   -


   Travel bursaries for Postgraduate Students:

   There are also a limited number of small travel bursaries available for
   attending the conference. Please contact the Theme administrator at
   performance.real at otago.ac.nz for more details.

   ________________________________________________________________________________

   About the Performance of the Real Research Theme

   The Performance of the Real is a University of Otago funded
   interdisciplinary Research Theme. The project investigates what it is about
   representations and performances of the real that make them particularly
   compelling and pervasive in our current age. At its core is the study of
   how performance/performativity, in its many cultural, aesthetic, political
   and social forms and discourses, represents, critiques, stages, and
   constructs/reconstructs the real, as well as the ethical, social, and
   form-related issues involved in such acts.

   Website: http://www.otago.ac.nz/performance-of-the-real
   -

   Journal: http://www.performancereal.org
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