[ecrea] cfp - 'Sportif au lit': Athleticism and its Discontents

*'Sportif au lit': Athleticism and its Discontents*

*Colloquium: April 1-3, 2016     |      The Wedding Space, Berlin*

*Deadline for papers and other work: March 1, 2016*

In “Literature and Life,” Gilles Deleuze refers to Henri Michaux's
“Athlete in bed” poem to explain what he means when he calls literature
athletic. Bedridden due to chronic illness, Michaux could barely walk,
but in his dreams he is an olympic skater, a diver, a swimmer, skilled
almost beyond imagination. As soon as he closes his eyes, he is an
extraordinary athlete. Deleuze describes literature as athletic by means
of flight and defection-- a 'minor' athleticism that flirts with madness
in order to uproot dominance and oppression. In other places, like his
book on painter Francis Bacon, Deleuze has borrowed the term “affective
athleticism” from Antonin Artaud to articulate the intense disfiguration
that attempts to manifest in painting. In his own manifestos on theater,
Artaud calls on a cruel yet healing athleticism to revolutionize
performance practice (Butoh theater is the most direct expression to
date of this performance theory). Athleticism, then, invokes an
intersection of desire, delusion, disfigurement, eroticism, illness,
health, minority, impossibility, paradox, performance, and the uprooting
of fascist ideology and form.

What does it mean that Deleuze invokes, on one hand, a
bedroom-as-sickroom scene, and on the other, a healing yet devastating
method for performance, to explain how literature as athleticism can
subvert fascist tendencies? How can we think of athleticism, gymnastics,
twists, turns, knots, duration, expression, and living practice in ways
that engage with but challenge what by now is a fairly established set
of texts? What is the relationship between athleticism, text, and
embodiment, given Artaud's 1938 move away from script and existing
literature? How does affect theory, from Artaud to the present, produce
tools to (re)think the bedroom, in all its shades and tenses, from
sleepy to insomniac, from erotic to normative, even pedestrian? What is
athleticism, and what do we need it to be or become in order to subvert
ever-pervasive hegemonic forms?

We invite papers, performances, workshops, installations, manifestoes,
and other hysterical instantiations and exorcisms of these and related
questions. Please send abstracts (200-300 words) to:

Sarah Mann-O’Donnell: (angelskinned /at/ mac.com) <mailto:(angelskinned /at/ mac.com)>

Sheena Calvert: (sheena.calvert /at/ btinternet.com)
<mailto:(sheena.calvert /at/ btinternet.com)>

We welcome work from diverse disciplines, including but by no means
limited to: anthropology, art and art theory, black studies,
community-building, comparative studies, creative writing, disability
studies, dance, gender and sexuality studies, geography, history, legal
studies, literary studies, media studies, musicology, philosophy,
political theory and science, political activism, sociology, trans
studies, and translation studies.

This colloquium is not university-affiliated, and takes place in a space
that engages with academia, but along minor paths of flight and
defection. The event is co-directed by Sheena Calvert and Sarah
Mann-O'Donnell, as part of Dr. Calvert's collaborative residency at The
Wedding Space.

*The Wedding Space, Berlin is a project for creative research and
collaboration, in memory of Alfred Mann.*

***theweddingspaceberlin.wordpress.com
<http://theweddingspaceberlin.wordpress.com>*

*facebook.com/theweddingspaceberlin
<http://facebook.com/theweddingspaceberlin> *



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