[ecrea] cfp - Creative Practice Research in the Age of Neo-Liberal Hopelessness

*CALL FOR PAPERS - CALL FOR PAPERS - Creative Practice Research in the 
Age of Neo-Liberal Hopelessness*


We are reminding you of our conference to take place between 10-12^th 
 May 2018 focusing on the importance of practice research in generating 
knowledge. *The deadline for submissions is 20^th  March* at midnight 
and we invite all academics, artists and creative people to join us. We 
will look at the links between practice and theory – and theory and 
practice.

The conference will take place at our Luton campus which as you know is 
22 short minutes from London. Our keynote speakers are Professor 
*Catherine Grant*, Birkbeck, University of London, who has moved from 
the traditional scholarship to video essay making, and Professor *Thomas 
Elsaesser,* Columbia University, who after a life time of acclaimed 
books and papers, has turned his hand to making of a personal 
documentary featuring his family’s archive. In the spirit of 
transdisciplinarity, we have also invited the newly elected Chair of 
TAPRA (the Theatre and Performance Research Association), Professor 
*Roberta Mock*, who will talk about her practice research as a stand up 
comedian, and a performer involved now in film too. We have quite 
amazing theorists and practitioners coming already and bringing forth 
their films, their radical writing, their political thinking, their 
video essays and academic papers.

Why did they decide include practice in their work? What have they 
learnt that they can share?  Can a theorist analyse practice and how? 
Can a practitioner generate theories and how? What is the relationship 
between traditional knowledge and artistic research and professional 
practice? To what extent can creative practice research tap into areas 
of experience unavailable to traditional patriarchal scholarship?  Do 
first person narratives unveil profound knowledge even though they are 
deeply subjective? In film, can practice research move beyond a narrow 
discussion of the filmmaking practices into discussion on philosophy, 
ethics and gender?  What do we learn through creative practice research 
that we cannot get at through ordinary routes? What is the relationship 
between ‘high’ theory and practice then? We will be hoping to tackle 
these and other questions.

I will be screening my feature film /Escape /made in a collaborative 
partnership in Zimbabwe and sharing with the participants what I have 
learnt from the process.//

Whilst being aware of the pressures of forthcoming REF which defines 
research as any pursuit which is, ‘a process of investigation leading to 
new insights, effectively shared’ (http://futurepracticeresearch.org 
<http://futurepracticeresearch.org/>), we are also hoping that the 
conference will open a space for a generative dialogue about the 
importance of creative practices as a site of progress and resistance.

We also want to consider the importance of individual reflection 
vis-à-vis the work one creates, echoing the feminist poet Adrienne 
Rich’s thought on the personal and creative work:

We are, I am, you are

by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this 
scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do 
not appear.

/From Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971–1972 /

Theorists and practitioners from all  fields and disciplines are 
welcome.  We invite individual papers of about 20 minutes, 
pre-constituted panels of 3 members plus a respondent as well as 
workshops and other forms of screenings and performance.

We will kick off in the evening of Thursday 10^th  of May with the 
screening of *Professor Elsaesser’s* film and then carry on Friday 11^th 
  and Saturday 12^th  May.

We invite filmmakers, writers, scholars, practitioner scholars as well 
as theorists and performers to have a couple of days of remembering why 
creativity matters even in today’s grim climate.  The conference fee is 
£140 to include coffee breaks, lunches and a wine reception. PhD 
students register at £75 with the proof of their status. Please email me 
at the above address or at (agnieszka.piotrowska /at/ beds.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(agnieszka.piotrowska /at/ beds.ac.uk)> or  contact my wonderful PhD 
student Priyanka Verma on (priyanka.verma /at/ study.beds.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(priyanka.verma /at/ study.beds.ac.uk)>  before *20th March 2018.*


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