Call for Presentations - International Seminar Modes of Production - Performing Arts and the Ecological Transition
After an encouraging launch in the end of 2021, we are now organizing a second International Seminar, this time a face-to-face meeting in Coimbra: one and a half days with presentations, debates and performances. Modes of Production – Performing Arts and the Ecological Transition signals the culmination of the GREENARTS project and will thus present its main results and host a series of discussions fully dedicated to the critical junction between the arts, cultural policy, and the ecological emergency.
The sense of urgency around ecological perils is growing unmistakably in the culture and creative sectors, including in the performing arts. The burgeoning mobilisation of the fields of theatre, dance and performance materializes in a constantly expanding proliferation of manifestos, artistic and institutional projects, policy initiatives, publications, and practical tools. This effervescence is driven by the steadily alarming warnings from scientists and activists, but it is also, importantly, akin to the sector’s heightened self-awareness. Artists, producers, and arts managers are more and more self-conscious about the environmental footprint of their own activities and increasingly invested in attuning themselves with the planetary emergency and its resulting inequalities. Importantly, they are also acutely aware of the overarching political implications of the ‘green transition’, and vigilant of the contradictions that such transformations entail when associated with specific geographical and historical circumstances (Rodrigues, 2024). Indeed, ecological distress is already impacting artistic and curatorial decisions, as well as challenging production, touring and management models (Janssens & Fraioli 2022; VoC, 2023; Vries 2021). Modes of Production – Performing Arts and the Ecological Transition argues that the environmental emergency can rightly be seen as a major disorganiser of the modi operandi of the arts and culture field, insofar it questions the assumptions of cultural policies, the underpinnings of funding mechanisms, and the routines of creating, producing, managing, distributing, and experiencing art (Rodrigues, Oliveira and Ventura, 2024). At the same time, the widening demand for sustainability dramatically exposes the arts and culture’s overreliance on expansionist and productivist processes (Rodrigues, 2024) within a growth-oriented capitalist paradigm (Dragisevic Sesic, 2021).
Modes of Production – Performing Arts and the Ecological Transition will reflect and debate these issues, paying attention to formats, materials, processes, contexts and decisions. Proposals for communications will be subject to peer-review before selection and organized in two strands: a) Artistic Practices, Eco-dramaturgy and Ecocriticism and b) Arts Management and Cultural Policies for Sustainability.
More information on abstract submission here