[Commlist] CFP - Performing Global Crises

Performing Global Crises

An interdisciplinary conference hosted by The Performance of the Real 
Research Theme at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

30th November - 2nd December 2022


Crisis has characterised contemporary lives in many ways – as we 
witness, experience, perform, and respond to entangled health, 
political, social, and environmental disasters. For example, in the past 
few years, the Covid-19 pandemic has affected virtually every area of 
our lives. Individual, local, national, and global responses have been 
played out and performed in the media, on social media, and in embodied 
social landscapes. Scientists have become the new celebrities, and 
politicians have risen and fallen according to their Covid management 
performances. The virus itself has also performed, taking on different 
guises as it mutates to extend its life and efficacy. Zoom and other 
similar platforms have become the new mode of communication for many, 
generating new forms of visibility, intimate digital surveillance, and 
networked sociality. Many people have been marginalised or further 
marginalised by the pandemic, by inequalities in access to digital 
technologies as well as health technologies. At the same time there has 
never been a time when communication, miscommunication, disinformation – 
about vaccines, mandates, and more – have been so fraught and 
politicised. As all-encompassing as the pandemic has seemed at times, it 
has been eclipsed in some respects, more recently, by public attention 
to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is emerging as the most 
visible war in history. With visibility comes multiple modes of 
performance and performativity, including competing deep fakes, and 
another arena for the performance of global leaders, politicians, and 
the public. Meanwhile, the slow violence of Climate Change continues to 
devastate communities, nations, and species. The Climate itself, 
specific ecosystems and landscapes, and non-human creatures, have been 
acting as key performers in diverse scientific, popular, and 
media-scapes, garnering global attention as harbingers for a harrowing 
future, even amidst those who doubt its existence.


This conference will explore the way that these multi-layered global 
crises have been and continue to be performed, contested, and mediated 
across all strata of communication and society.


We encourage contributions relating (but not limited) to the following 
topics and issues connected to the performance and performativity of crises:

  *


      * The Climate Emergency and public performances of responsibility
      * Protest action and the performance of dissent
      * Digital technologies of visibility and surveillance
      * News, information, and the politics of truth
      * Precarity, marginalization, and inequality in times of crises
      * Art, literature, and creativity for wellbeing and resilience
        amidst crises
      * Leadership, celebrity, and the public performance of power and
        trust amidst crises
      * Public communication of science (virology, climatology, etc.)
      * Spectacularisation of war, violence, and the military
      * Participatory/symbolic performances of political relations:
        allyship, solidarity, fear, or threat
      * Decolonisation and indigeneity in responses to crises
      * Empathy, care, and witnessing: mediated responses to the
        suffering of others
      * Gendered experiences of/in crises: labour, feminism, care ethics
      * Politicised bodies/selves: intersectional views of gender,
        disability, race, and the good life
      * Racialised and spatialised performances - mapping and tracing
        crises through bodies
      * Multispecies, posthuman, and more-than-human worlds: living with
        ‘others’ through crises
      * Wellbeing and affect amidst crises: hypervigilance, anxiety,
        apathy, compassion fatigue
      * Social imaginations of the future: hope, optimism, connection
        and connectivity, theutopian/dystopian, apocalyptic visions, and
        ‘doom’
  *


    Conference and Paper Format:

    This will be a hybrid conference that allows people placed in
    Aotearoa New Zealand and nearby to attend in person, and for
    internationals - if they cannot travel - to attend online via Zoom.

    In addition to conventional 20-minute papers, we also invite
    presentations with a performance or creative or workshop component.

  *


    Submitting an Abstract:

    Please submit a 200-250 word abstract of your contribution and a
    100-word biography for each presenter by 16 September 2022. Please
    send us your abstract as a Word document. Use your surname in the
    document title. Please clearly indicate the title of your
    presentation, the nature and timing of your presentation e.g. 20
    minute spoken paper with Powerpoint, as well as your full name
    (first name, surname) and institutional affiliation (if relevant).
    Please send your abstracts or any enquiries to the Theme
    administrator at (performance.real /at/ otago.ac.nz)
    <mailto:(performance.real /at/ otago.ac.nz)>.

    Accepted delegates must confirm their attendance by completing
    registration and payment by October 31, 2022.

  *


    Travel bursaries for Postgraduate Students:

    There are also a limited number of small travel bursaries available
    for attending the conference. Please contact the Theme administrator
    at (performance.real /at/ otago.ac.nz)
    <mailto:(performance.real /at/ otago.ac.nz)> for more details.


________________________________________________________________________________


    About the Performance of the Real Research Theme

    The Performance of the Real is a University of Otago funded
    interdisciplinary Research Theme. The project investigates what it
    is about representations and performances of the real that make them
    particularly compelling and pervasive in our current age. At its
    core is the study of how performance/performativity, in its many
    cultural, aesthetic, political and social forms and discourses,
    represents, critiques, stages, and constructs/reconstructs the real,
    as well as the ethical, social, and form-related issues involved in
    such acts.

    Website: http://www.otago.ac.nz/performance-of-the-real
    <http://www.otago.ac.nz/performance-of-the-real>

  *

    Journal: http://www.performancereal.org
    <http://www.performancereal.org>

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