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Call for Papers: Sculpture & Performance
Call for Papers: Sculpture & Performance
Henry Moore Institute and Tate Liverpool
Thursday 25 and Friday 26 March 2010
This two-day conference will explore the complex relationship between sculpture and performance over the last century and into the present. Much research has been carried out on performance and live art more generally in recent decades, but this conference intends to look at the subject through our understandings of sculpture today. It will explore why sculptors turn to performance and performers to sculpture - why one needs the other - and will look at how this relationship is often either a constructive or destructive one. We are familiar with the idea - much circulated in the 1960s - that live performance offered a critical rejection of sculpture, contesting the values of figurative representation and commemoration, but there is a much richer terrain of dialogue and exchange to be considered both before and after this influential decade. Indeed the expansion of what sculpture has come to mean today is partially indebted to the impact of ‘performance art’. This conference aims to reflect this, looking at the longer histories of their inter-connections.
We are interested in receiving proposals for papers that explore all aspects of the sculpture/performance relationship, including:
- how artists perform with sculptures
- how artists perform as sculptures
- how the artist’s body is used as a material
- the roles of costumes and masks
- the roles of ritual, scripts and narratives
- the use of ‘sets of instructions’ to be carried out by viewers
- the use of props and other performative objects
- the role of the trace, remnant or souvenir object
- the roles of puppets and other performing objects
- the design and use of sets, stages and structures
- the role of photography, film and other audio-visual recording technologies
- the role of the audience in the work
- the place of ‘sculpture’ within the various terms of ‘performance’ in different languages and traditions
Please send 300 word proposals for papers and a short CV to Kirstie Gregory (kirstie@henry-moore.ac.uk).
The deadline is Monday 5th October 2009. If you would like to discuss your proposal before submitting, please email your enquiries to Dr Jon Wood (jonw@henry-moore.ac.uk).
Event details
- SCULPTURE & PERFORMANCE
- Location: Tate Liverpool
- Date: Thursday, 25th March 2010 - Friday, 26th March 2010
This two-day conference will explore the complex relationship between sculpture and performance over the last century and into the present. Much research has been carried out on performance and live art more generally in recent decades, but this conference intends to look at the subject through our understandings of sculpture today. It will explore why sculptors turn to performance and performers to sculpture - why one needs the other - and will look at how this relationship is often either a constructive or destructive one.