CALL FOR PAPERS - EXTENSION OF SUBMISSION DATE

Transversalities:
crossing disciplines, cultures and identities

Departments of Film, Theatre & Television
and Fine Art, University of Reading.

Keynote speakers
Confirmed
Philip Auslander
(School of Literature, Communication, and Culture. Georgia Institute of
Technology)
(Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture, 1999; From Acting to
Performance: Essays in Modernism and PostModernism 1997; Presence and
Resistance: Postmodernism and Cultural Politics in Contemporary American
Performance, 1992)

Jean Fisher
(freelance writer on contemporary art practice and multicultural debate;
former editor Third Text).
Over here : international perspectives on art and culture 2004; Electronic
shadows : the art of Tina Keane 2003; Vampire in the text : narratives of
contemporary art, 2003

Bryan Reynolds
(University of California, Irvine.)
Performing Transversally: Reimaginging Shakespeare and the Critical Future
(2003), Becoming Criminal: Transversal Performance and Cultural Dissidence in
Early Modern England (2002), Playwright and founder of the Transversal Theatre
Company.

Invited Performer
Aaron Williamson
(Freelancer performance artist, choreographer and writer)
Current work: Wild Boy, The Showroom, 44 Bonner Road, London, from 20 April -
29 May 2005

To be confirmed
Valie Export
(Film-maker, multi-media and performance artist)
Body Politics (1974); Delta: Ein Stuck (Delta: A Piece) (1977); Hyperbulie
(Hyperbole) (1973); Unsichtbare Gegner (Invisible Adversaries) (1976);
Menschenfrauen (Womankind) (1980); Die Praxis der Liebe (The Practice of Love)
(1984)

Tom Morris
(Associate Director of the National Theatre, previously Director of Battersea
Arts Centre, London)
developed exciting new projects at both BAC and the NT including Jerry
Springer - the Opera

The Conference
'...rather than the diagonal, one should have to speak of the transversal:
everything that takes the subject - in all the sense of the word - from an odd
angle, and traverses it. Instead of interdisciplinarity, I would speak of
transdisciplinarity, placing the accent on the trans- - or better yet, on
transit, on translation, or even on trance, but not on transcendence (Hubert
Damisch)'

Transversality describes the key impulse in recent artistic practice in which
dance, film, music, theatre, painting, sculpture, performance, television,
text, theatre, video have all contested the boundaries of their disciplines
and their relations with each other in playful and controversial ways.
Transversality across cultural and academic contexts enables creative and
productive dynamic exchanges. Fine Art and Film, Theatre & Television at
Reading are co-hosting a three-day conference and inviting contributions from
across the humanities to ask four key questions:

... What are the histories of transversality in the arts?
... How does political agency figure in transversal work?
... How might identity formations be deconstructed by transversing
disciplines, cultures and artistic practices?
... What are the effects of transversing the actual and the virtual?

We welcome 300 word abstracts for papers and performances in one of the
following formats:
... 20 minute plenary papers to be presented in chaired panel sessions
... Demonstrations, performances, screenings or installations which can be
presented as part of the conference proceedings.
... 2 hour workshops in which a limited number of participants (maximum 15)
will work with the practitioner proposing the workshop.
... Seminar sessions where pre-circulated academic papers will be debated.
Proposals for seminars should address one of the following topics:
camp as cultural strategy;
action and image, image and text;
cross cultural performativity (to be chaired by Jean Fisher)
transversal theory (to be chaired by Bryan Reynolds).

Conference date: 16-18 September 2005.
Venue: Bulmershe Court, University of Reading.
Submission Deadline: extended to Friday 20 May, 2005.

Email abstracts and queries to: Lib Taylor l.j.taylorreading.ac.uk (Film,
Theatre & Television) or Roger Cook r.j.r.cookreading.ac.uk (Fine Art).

Lib Taylor
Head of Department
Department of Film, Theatre & Television
The University of Reading
Bulmershe Court
Reading RG6 1HY

Telephone:
Direct Line 0118 378 5877
Department Office 0118 378 8878
e-mail: l.j.taylorreading.ac.uk