Call for Proposals: Community/Performance

Community/Performance (4th-6th June 2004) seeks to bring together scholars and practitioners of participatory art, community performance, performance theory and related fields.

The three-day event will take place on the green campus of Bryant College, Rhode Island, which lends itself both to the installation for temporary outdoor art works, to the presentation of computer-based/new media works, and to traditional stage-based performances and workshops.

Themes and Questions:

• What is the efficacy of arts interventions in building communities?
• What are the present and future roles of the arts in our social projects?
• Are there separate aesthetics of community arts?
• What are the relations between performance theory and practice?
• What communities are being served/serve themselves?
• What factors hinder or further collaboration, dissemination, organization, and sharing?
• What are the relationships between activism and action, between performance and the performative, between the artistic and art?
• What are the practices of transformation and transgression in our contemporary cultural scene?
• What are the shapes, the smells, the scenes, the people and the places of politics?

As part of Community/Performance, the national organization ACN/Arts Culture Nature will sponsor a number of panels and workshops that address in particular art and ecology issues.

Community/Performance will bring together artists, scholars, activists and community workers from the US and beyond. Community/Performance will provide a venue to share experiences, to celebrate our diversity, and to discuss our agendas.

Formats:

• Individual 20 min paper proposals that address issues of community art, participatory art, minority-culture and aesthetics, arts-in- education practices, e-communities, landscape and art, environmental art, performances of the everyday, popular culture and performance, etc. Please send a 300-500 word proposal, and biography.
• Roundtables of four participants discussing a specific topic relation to practice, theory, or organization. Please send a 500 word proposal, with details of all participants.
• Short performance pieces: 300 word proposal, biography and additional information: please state length, required technical support if appropriate, number of participants, etc.
• Workshops: 300 word proposal, biography and additional information: please state time required (up to 1.5 hours), requirements, min/max number of participants, etc.
• Material for media room: videos, internet sites, CD ROMs, DVDs, fine art, poster presentations: 100-300 word proposal or viewing copy, biography
• Material for outdoor exhibition: 100-300 word proposal or viewing copy, biography

  Contact:

  Please send all queries and proposals by November 1st, 2003, to the conference director, via the email address below. Alternative email: aerfen@aol.com.

  If you prefer snail-mail: the address is provided below.

  A volume of selected papers from this conference is planned for publication.

  General Information:

  Conference costs will be kept low to allow wide participation, with costs, including meals, under $80 for students and non-funded participants. A number of low-cost housing options on campus will be available.

  At this time, there are no funds available to support participants' travels or to provide honoraria, but we will help participants to raise funds by providing letters of invitation.

  Bryant College is located in Northern Rhode Island, one hour's drive away from Boston, and three hours from New York City.