*EXTENDED DEADLINE* Illusions IN/OUTSIDE the Theatre. Intermedial Performance from Renaissance until Today

deadline for submissions: 
July 16, 2023
full name / name of organization: 
Faculty of Humanities of the Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun (Poland)

 

Illusions IN/OUTSIDE the Theatre
Intermedial Performance from Renaissance until Today
International Scholarly Conference
09/13-14/2023

Faculty of Humanities of the Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun (Poland)
Collegium Maius, Fosa Staromiejska 3 (Torun, Poland)

Contemporary studies on the relationships between theater, other media, and cultural performances cover a broad range of approaches, techniques, and strategies. The intermedial aspects of performing arts are certainly part of the international researchers' efforts to consider the multilayered history, theory, and practice of theater, performance, and media. We encourage questions about the effects of ‘old’ and ‘new’ media technologies on illusions, spectacles, and experiences.

The conference encourages researchers to follow media-archaeological approaches, such as those that we can find in the book of our keynote speaker, Prof. Erkki Huhtamo—Illusions in Motion: Media Archaeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles. The practice of media archaeology proposed in the book, which has also been developed over the years by other prominent researchers (such as Thomas Elsaesser and Siegfried Zielinski), draws attention to the cognitive and critical dimensions of media culture. In the introduction to the book, Prof. Huhtamo writes:

Media archaeology corrects our understanding of the past by excavating lacunas in shared knowledge. It reassesses existing media-historical narratives that are biased because of their ideological and historiographical presuppositions, or insufficient evidence (p. xviii).

The author also emphasizes the performative aspects of the coexistence and interaction between audiovisual technologies and humans. He strongly emphasizes the human dimension of the mediasphere, which concerns humans who concoct media spectacles with other humans in mind and their interactions–collective and individual, conscious and unconscious that mold the media (p. 17). We hope this approach can inspire performing arts researchers to analyze media-related spectacles over not decades but centuries.

The conference aims to become a platform for dialogue among international scholars and practitioners on the ancient (often forgotten) and contemporary relationships between media and performance, with a focus on the following suggested research areas:

1. Media technologies before the industrial revolution and the expansion of electronic media in the mid-19th century (such as mechanical theater, shadow theater, automata, magic lantern, Bänkelsang, and Javanese wayang bèbèr) in the context of other media and performing arts, including theater.

2. The impact of media technologies on theater and performing arts in the 19th century, which was known as the ‘age of theater’ (according to Peter W. Marx's formula). A critical media and performance history.

3. 16th-19th-century theater as a laboratory of illusionary practices (such as artists Philip James de Loutherbourg, Louis Jacques Daguerre, or Antonio Sacchetti in Poland).

4. Intermediality of popular performances (such as vaudeville, variété, burlesque, circus, and prestidigitation).

5. Theories of intermedial, multimedia, and digital performance. Contemporary transformations in culture, science, and technology. Revisions of theoretical explanations of
experience, space, and time categories in the intermedial performing arts.

6. Critical issues of dominant narratives in the history of media related to the performing arts. Forgotten or abandoned variants of stage technology development, including projects, concepts, and ideas that were never realized.

7. Contemporary reconstructions of old media technologies (such as magic lantern, mechanical theater, and moving panorama) from the perspective of Performance as Research (PaR).

8. Theoretical approaches on intermedia, multimedia, and digital performances. Critical issues on linear, teleological narrations in performance and media history. Transformations of illusions, space, and time.

9. Aesthetic and ideological consequences of the use of audiovisual technologies in theater and performing arts. Analysis (or revisions) of well-described issues and phenomena. Such as the Phelan-Auslander debate or the video, AR, and VR for performing arts (the individual artistic strategies–especially, Central European–such as Frank Castorf, Krystian Lupa, Łukasz Twarkowski, Krzysztof Garbaczewski, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Bohdan Mazurek).

10. Transformations of the intermediality discourse in the performing arts. Connections between the intermediality of the second half of the 20th century, previous periods, and contemporary.

The languages of the conference will be English and Polish. The duration of conference presentations should not exceed twenty minutes. The conference organizers aim to publish selected papers in the peer-reviewed conference proceedings.

Keynote speakers

Prof. Erkki Huhtamo
University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)
Departments of Design Media Arts, and Film, Television, and Digital Media

A pioneer of media archaeology, the author of key articles and books for this approach, including Media Archaeology. Approaches, Applications, and Implications (ed. with Prof. Jussi Parikka, University of California Press, 2011) and the comprehensive monograph Illusions in Motion. Media Archaeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles (The MIT Press, 2013). Collector of unique old artifacts of media culture. Curator of media art exhibitions, and juries and participant in festivals, including Siggraph and Ars Electronica.

Prof. dr Peter W. Marx
University of Cologne
Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Institute of Media Culture and Theatre

The Director of the Institute for Media Culture and Theatre at the University of Cologne is also the Director of the Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung in Schloss Wahn, which is an archive of theatrical artifacts, scenographic designs, puppets, photographs, prints, and theater reviews. The collection, which includes a unique assortment of pre-cinema optical toys, magic lanterns, and other audiovisual apparatus, is part of Werner Nekes' vast collection. His interests lie in the history of theatre and performance in the 19th and 20th centuries. He has coedited the volume A Cultural History of Theatre in the Age of Empire (Bloomsbury, 2019). He is also interested in contemporary German theatre, particularly political theatre, and the reception of Hamlet in Germany. Moreover, he studies metropolitan and media cultures and has developed the concept of critical media history.

Submissions
Abstracts (300 words) and biographical notes including the author's affiliation and email address should be sent to: illusionsinoutside@gmail.com

Deadline: 06/25/2023

Acceptance: July 2023

Conference fee
Academic staff: 400 PLN/90 EUR/100 USD
PhD candidates, artists, professionals: 200 PLN/45 EUR/50 USD

The conference organizing team
Prof. Artur Duda, Dr. Marzenna Wisniewska; Dr. Jakub Kleczek; MA and PhD candidate,
Klaudia Hartung-Wojciak (Institute of Cultural Studies, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland)

Contact
Jakub Kleczek and Klaudia Hartung-Wojciak, e-mail: illusionsinoutside@gmail.com

The conference will be hosted by the Faculty of Humanities, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun (Poland).