C PRACSIS International Conference February 1 & 2, 2011 Contextualising the 'Contemporary' in Culture

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The Centre for Performance Research and Cultural Studies in South Asia C PRACSIS
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C PRACSIS International Conference
in association with
The University of Madras
February 1 & 2, 2011
Tholakappiar Campus (Main Campus), Madras University, Chepauk, Chennai, India

Contextualising the 'Contemporary' in Culture

'Contemporary' is widely perceived as a pre-given conceptual category. The paradigm shift effected by 'contemporary' intellectual introgressions and art practices has evinced that the notion of contemporaneity is a contested domain. The 'Contemporary' is formulated and perpetuated through the sedimentation of multifarious dynamics of culture, history, power, geography, movements, politics, and epistemes.
The international conference, Contextualizing the 'Contemporary' in Culture inquires into the evolution and sustenance of 'the contemporary' in Art, Performance, Film, Music, Architecture, Media and Lifestyle. This conference attempts to explore the notion through the broad frameworks of:
1. Metro-scapes: City and Imagination
2. Peripheral Aesthetics: The rise of the suburban and the new
3. The liminal space: Small town/rural
4. The shifting pedagogies
5. Art preservation, transmission and dissemination
6. Managing 'the contemporary'
7. Histories and the future: Defining 'the contemporary'
8. Digital imagination
9. Virtuality of the contemporary
10. The popular versus the contemporary
C PRACSIS attempts to raise questions regarding these areas — questions not being confined to disciplinary boundaries — with an international conference to be convened at Chennai, India entitled "Contextualising the 'Contemporary' in Culture" On February 1 & 2, 2011 at the Tholakappiar Campus (Main Campus), Madras University, Chepauk under the auspices of the University of Madras.