Staging the Modern Interior
The Dorich House Annual Conference #10.

Thursday May 15th - Friday May 16th 2008

Hosted by the Modern Interiors Research Centre (MIRC), Kingston University,
London

Call for Papers - Deadline for submissions: Wednesday 2 January 2008

The focus of this year's conference will be the long-standing role of the
interior as a stage. Linked to Pierre Bourdieu's notion of the habitus in
which class distinctions are created, and Judith Butler’s concept of
performativity through which gender is constructed, the interior can be seen
as a place in which identities are formed and performed. This view is
reinforced by literary historians such as Victoria Rosner and Diana Fuss who
have stressed the role of interiority in the construction of modern
self-identities. While this definition of the interior can, on one level, be
applied to any and every inside space, it is highlighted in environments
created specifically for performance - theatre sets, film sets and
television sets among them. The conference will address the "theatrical" or
the "dramatic" interior both in general terms and in relation to specific
spaces created for performances.

Papers are invited from a variety of perspectives and topics could include
for example:-
- Performance and particular spaces, including the hotel lobby and
restaurant, church and office
- Set design for the costume drama: tensions between historical accuracy
and narrative fictions
- The filmic space, on screen and in the cinema
- Set design at home, constructing identity in the context of the
interior
- The changing role of art director and set designer in the production
hierarchy
- Emulating set design in public and private spaces
- Whose space is it? Recreating the everyday in set design.
- Ephemeral spaces and the lifecycle of the prop
- Set design in the digital age

Abstracts of 300 words, with brief cv should be submitted to
b.martinkingston.ac.uk or to Brenda Martin, Dorich House Museum, Kingston
University, Kingston Vale, London SW15 3RN by Wednesday 2 January 2008.

Conference website: www.kingston.ac.uk/design/MIRC. Conference conveners:
Professor Penny Sparke, Dr Trevor Keeble, Brenda Martin, Professor Anne
Wealleans, The Modern Interiors Research Centre (MIRC), Kingston University.