Performance Studies International Conference #11

"Becoming Uncomfortable"

To be held at Brown University o Providence,
Rhode Island, USA o March 30-April 3, 2005

A conference toward performance/studies: modes of thinking, physical
methodologies, spatial thoughts, sound disturbances, and knowing bodies.

We acknowledge that the conference title understates, closets,
titillates, misarticulates, sneaks-up upon, middle-classifies, play-
acts, and jumps track. We also hope that it incites action, direction,
thought, movement, and choice. For us, when we started planning, the
title referred to the necessary discomfort in building a performance, a
life, a discipline, a world. Newer, darker meanings have since accrued.

Ports of passage:

Insular Danger Worry Idea Panoptic Citizen Nation's Hood Skin Flesh
Bone A(cute) Dissonance... Gender Desire Pain Play Terror Space
Photography Torture Raced Limits Queers Embedded Active Distance
BioCulture Abducted Neuroscience Aesthetic Ordinance Border
Scholarship Amos and Fluxus Comfort Zoned History Currents...
Impossible Performance Blank Spots UnSafes Whatever Being

We invite you to historicize, contemporize, embody, celebrate, or
challenge our title. We will do our best to provide structures and
spaces to test out, play with, perform, and transform your ideas.

1) We seek to set up alternative modes of participation that will allow
for the development of ideas and projects through workgroups of like-
minded (or not so like-minded) scholars and artists working off of
specific themes. Please submit curatorial proposals for six to nine
hours time focusing on guided events, joint methodological journeys,
workshopped objects, etc. The six to nine hours' may be continuous or
may extend over three days (or be in scattered spurts); you tell us
what might be best.

Examples: midnight to 6 a.m., Thurs/Fri/Sat a.m or p.m for two or three
hours per day. In 500 words or less (or else), let us know what you
would like to do and with whom/how many you would like to do it. State
if it would remain insular or open up to an audience. We offer: black
boxes, white boxes, lecture halls, seminar rooms, dance floors,
corridors, open spaces, monuments, riverbanks, highway bridges, and
what you are imagining (so let us know). Deadline for curators is
August 15. We'll get back to you by September 1.

2) We also issue an open call for panels and for individual
presentations that might be parts of panels. These might include
performances, visual displays, and publishable and unpublishable
papers. We encourage you to go beyond the demands of print culture in
presentation. We offer smart classrooms (PowerPoint, video, DVD,
sound), stages, seminar rooms, video feeds, etc. Please explain what
you have in mind in 500 words or less. Deadline for panels and related
presentations and papers is October 1. Notification by November 15.

3) We plan to feature separate performances, media displays, and
installations that will be of general interest to those attending. We
invite your suggestions and proposals. Budgetary support for such
presentations will be minimal, at best, but let us know what you would
need to bring your work here. Deadline is September 15. Notification by
November 1.

4) We wish to provide times and spaces to meet informally with
performers and with scholars. Let us know, for example, if you would
like the opportunity to discuss your recent publications and
performances as part of a book fair, a roundtable discussion, or in
other venues.

5) We plan to sportively create cabaret-like spaces/events for
performative responses, "slam scholarship," mini-performances,
unexpected groupings, etc. We invite your suggestions for such events
by October 1.

If you need letters immediately stating our acceptance of your
participation at the conference in order to start applications for
funding, visas, etc., please note this with your proposal. Such letters
can be provided.

Proposals, suggestions, and requests:
e-mail: Ken Prestininzi, conference co-ordinator, PSibrown.edu
fax: attention John Emigh or Ken Prestininzi in USA, (1) 401-863-7529

write: John Emigh, conference director or Ken Prestininzi, conference
co-ordinator, Brown University Box 1897, Providence, RI 02912, USA
website (under construction)
www.brown.edu/Department/Theatre_Speech_Dance/

Summary of deadlines: Curated events, August 15th, Performances,
Installations, etc. September 15th, Panels and Presentations: October
1st, Suggestions for cabaret like events and "slam scholarship":
October 1st