[KineJapan] CFP: Asian performance art and documentation

[Eija Niskanen]

Though performance art -.centered, maybe this will interest some of you.

Call for Papers and Presentations
International Symposium
Shifting Dialogues III:
Documenting Asian Art and Performance: Embodied Knowledge, Virtuality & the
Archive
December 3-5, 2014 University of the Arts, Helsinki
The Asian Art and Performance Consortium (AAPC) of the Academy of Fine Arts
(Kuva) and the Finnish Theatre Academy (Teak) of the University of the Arts
Helsinki will jointly host a symposium focused on documenting and archiving
Asian and trans-cultural performance and fine arts.
Documentation preserves traditional and contemporary forms, and it
establishes a body of knowledge for future scholars and the local
communities of practitioners. Yet documentation and mediation also tends to
spectacularize and reify performance and art traditions, and it can also
lead to their de-contextualization and expropriation. Public memory, now
primarily held “in-state” as silicon-based documents in archives, libraries
and museums, is at times in conflict with historical memory held by
audiences who were present at particular events. In the case of ephemeral
art forms, or practices of daily life, these disparities and the problems
of mediation are of particular importance. These disparities and resource
sharing across cultures form the areas of focus of this symposium.
In Asian performance, transferring knowledge bodily from teacher to
students, from one generation to another is a common practice. Thus the
performer’s body and oral transmission function both as repertoire of
embodied practices, and as an ephemeral archive that preserves, modifies
and transmits those practices from one generation to another. Different
iconographic materials, including temple reliefs and canonical treatises,
have also preserved ephemeral traditions through centuries. Filmed and
electronic documentation of the traditions has further increased the amount
of available data.
The research under this topic will focus on the relationship of cultural
artefacts to memory, discrimination, censorship and social agreements
around memorialization and the construction of Asian ‘canons’.
We will also ask:
 What is the impact of media on art and performance works documented, and
how does documentation change the significance or reception of significant
cultural artefacts?
 How do we avoid the performance documentary becoming the site where
“mediocrity can play a hero's part?” as Marx put it. Are some performances
undeservedly preserved when they would be better off decaying naturally in
the audience’s collective mind? Are we surrounding ourselves by the mixed
remnants of past failures and successes, leading to a loss of the ability
to accurately assess the quality of ephemeral acts?
 Can archival procedures be more productively and strategically designed
as an active cultural
construction, rather than assumed to function as a passive repository for
technical recall or socialmemory?
Issues that can be raised at the symposium include embodied, iconographic
and electronic transfer ofperformance traditions in Asia related to live
performance and traditional pedagogies, as well as the useof moving image,
photography, web-based presence and new media, historical and theoretical
writings,the construction of archives, museums and libraries.
This is the third and final symposium organized under the Shifting
Dialogues – Asian Performance andFine Arts research project, funded by the
Academy of Finland in 2011-2014. The symposium is free ofcharge.
Presentations reflecting practice-based artistic research are encouraged.
DEADLINE for proposals is 2 May, 2014. Decisions will be confirmed by 20
May 2014.
For the purpose of creating an interactive symposium, with a high level of
response and discussion of all presentations, we have set a deadline for
completed papers: 24 November 2014.
TO SUBMIT proposals please provide the following by the deadline to
teak.aapc at uniarts.fi
- abstract of 250 words with low resolution images or directions to on-line
video as needed
- short bio of 150 words
- attached cv
- mode of presentation and any special technical or space requirements
We regret that we are unable to provide scholarships for presenters.
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