CFP: Performing the Matrix: Mediating Cultural Performances (Germany) (5/15/05; 7/30/05-8/4/05)

IPP PERFORMANCE AND MEDIA STUDIES

Call for papers for the Conference:

Performing the Matrix - Mediating Cultural Performances

Johannes-Gutenberg Universit=E4t Mainz, 30 July - 4 August 2005

While matrix is a well established concept within different scholarly
fields, it has recently become a popular catchword through the
homonymous Wachowski brothers' film. As both a traditional concept and a
popular phenomenon, "matrix" can take on a new value when reconsidered
in the light of performance studies. Contemporary debates and
discussions on cultural performances necessarily reflect on the medial
preconditions of these performative activities themselves. A
behind-the-scenes look at theatre, ritual, sports, events will reveal a
productive mediating structure metaphorically described as "matrix".
This mediating structure and its materializations are fundamentally
reshaping modern culture. Accordingly 'politics of visibility', 'media
networking', 'telepresence' and 'liveness' are considered to be
understood as performances of the matrix. If so, how does this
understanding of cultural performances 'as always already mediatized'
influence contemporary concepts of performance and media?

The conference title "Performing the Matrix - Mediating Cultural
Performances" not only refers to the International Postgraduate
Programme "Performance and Media Studies", it also reflects our desire
to come to terms with a telematic future through investigation of
today's concepts of media and performance theory. If mediatization is a
structure that conditions different materializations and modes of
communication, the analysis of this matrix apparently will have to focus
on the interplays and interrelations that generate it. Thus the
conference will be less concerned with media specificity (e.g. of TV,
theatre, film) or the categorical differentiation of analogue and
digital media, of reference versus simulation etc, but rather with
processes and effects of the media-matrix.

The mediatized structure of performance deeply affects the methods of
cultural and textual analysis in so far as the conduct of research could
be considered as a process of mediatization and performance itself.
Images seem to resist description, audio-visual documents in performing
arts and hypermedia call for a reading of traces rather than an
examination of static objects. Writing about performance and
mediatization resembles a dramatic scenario of self-reflexivity (e.g.
through performative writing, performance as research) instead of
following formal logic. The conference sets out to discuss this double
exposure of thematic and methodological issues within the field of
performance and media studies.

The conference will be structured in three different sections in which
we will discuss the theoretical approaches in performance analysis, the
methodology of performance and media studies and the interrelation of
cultural performance and politics. Each section will be concerned in its
own way with questions of narration and navigation, resistance and
effectiveness and the performance of the matrix. Papers are accepted for
following sections:

Section A: Contemporary Approaches to the Theories of Performativity
                and Media

Section B: Mediated Narrative - Telling (hi)stories

Section C: Politics of Performance - Performance of Politics

Deadline for abstracts: 15 May 2005

Invited Speakers

Prof. Dr. Philip Auslander (USA)

Prof. Dr. Christopher Balme (Netherlands)

Prof. Dr. David Levin (USA)

Prof. Dr. Freddie Rokem (Israel)

For further information please go to www.performedia.uni-mainz.de

Johannes Gutenberg-Universit=E4t Mainz
IPP Performance and Media Studies
Birgit Walkenhorst, M.A. (Programm-Koordination)

Welder Weg 18
55099 Mainz
Tel.:+49/6131/3925507
<mailto:walkenho_at_uni-mainz.de> walkenho_at_uni-mainz.de
<mailto:walkenho_at_uni-mainz.de>
www.performedia.uni-mainz.de <http://www.performedia.uni-mainz.de/>

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Received on Sun Apr 03 2005 - 15:42:07 EDT