Forum Open!

Objects of Engagement was a day that brought together emerging scholars, practitioners, artists and academics around the issue of objects and how they engage (or disengage) with human consciousness in diverse ways.

From puppets to bodies... self as object to self in object... Grotowski to Kantor... from encountering the fan of the Noh to engaging with a dinner table, a cabinet, a street bench... from performing cancer... to performing identity... the day culminated in a dialogue where the notion of materiality proved to be a significant point for articulating a critical discourse on performance, self and other. The vibrant day demonstrated that the issue of objects crosses boundaries, disciplines, and directions. It opens a wide platform inclusive of different voices and experiences shared between artists and academics...

This open forum is an invitation to extend this valuable dialogue beyond the conference, using this space to keep our engagement going and to share thoughts, reflections, moments of inspirations or just to say hello! With some enthusiasm the initiative may develop into an interesting and useful tool.

If you wish to contribute to this forum please send us an email to objects.of.engagement@gmail.com and we will add you as an author to it, which will allow you to add your posts.
Or you can simply add a comment on an existing post.

Finally... watch this space! Because we will be adding material to it regularly...

Hope to hear from you soon.
The Organising Team

Journal Publication

Objects of Engagement will form the starting-point for the Autumn 2008 issue of Platform, a postgraduate eJournal of Theatre and Performing Arts. Conference participants and delegates are invited to submit papers for this issue. For further details, see: http://www.rhul.ac.uk/drama/platform/

Conference Photos

Conference Photo

Participating Scholars and Practitioners on June 12th Conference

Keynote Speakers:

• Professor Richard Gough: Professor in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at University of Wales, Aberystwyth; Artistic Director of the Centre for Performance Research (CPR) and general editor and co-founder of Performance Research journal.

• Professor Pete Brooks: Principal Lecturer and Course Director, MA Performance Design and Practice at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, Artistic Associate Imitating the Dog, Founder Member of Impact Theatre Co-operative and Insomniac Productions.

Paper Presentations:

BERNADETTE CRONIN (University of Exeter)
The Cabinet of Curiosities

JENNY LAWSON (University of Leeds)
Dinner Table Engagement

BRYCE LEASE (University of Kent at Canterbury)
Self as Object or Grotowski’s Perversion

SOZITA GOUDOUNA (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Objecthood: From Deepest Stasis to Duration

CLARE DUFFY (Glasgow University)
Local Reality Expo on Hope Street

RICHARD ALLEN (Aberystwyth University)
Towards a Theatre of Objects: Theatre-Machines and the Violence of Transformation

PAUL PIRIS (Central School of Speech and Drama)
Subject-Object relationship between Performers and Puppets: The Role of the Gaze

NESREEN HUSSEIN (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Material Bodies… Bodied Material: A Case of Subversion

Performance Demonstrations:

GRANT TYLER PETERSON (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Performing Cancer

STEPHANIA MYLONA (University of Surrey)
Contraction: breaking the object-inverting the concept

DIEGO PELLECCHIA (Royal Holloway, University of London)
The Fan of Noh Theatre: Object of Encounter

Workshops:


PABLO PAKULA (ACCIDENTAL COLLECTIVE)Object/Subject: The workshop will investigate ways in which we ascribe meaning and importance to certain objects, and why they become repositories for our personal and collective memories/histories. How do we make these emotional connections? How can they be explored as the stimulus for performance? What happens when they are playfully subverted? What is the potential in exploiting the friction between reality/biography and lies/imagination? What are the implications for the audience?
Please note that participants in this workshop are asked to bring two objects, one which has some degree of personal significance, and one which does not.

LOTOS COLLECTIVE – Live Art performance company
Assumed History, Invented Identities. Invented Histories, Assumed Identity: The workshop will explore object-based dramaturgy, reimagining a collection of objects into a new mythos, unlocking untold narratives and functions and developing an improvised performance around an assumed/invented identity with an assumed/invented object. The workshop will take the form of a practical performance-based workshop in which three characters, Rag, Bone and the Archivist will facilitate and interact with the participants or Archive Assistants. http://www.lotoscollective.org.uk/

CHRIS CRICKMAY and ELLEN KILSGAARD
Objects: The workshops will address one’s own flow of attention as source and guide to movement improvisation and work with a world of objects. The question is how to maintain a state of deep concentration in the body, whilst simultaneously connecting (in an imaginative and feeling way) with the objects, spaces, and other ingredients that constitute one’s surroundings; also how to approach working with chosen everyday objects ‘in their own right’, liberating them from their familiar use and identity and allowing a rich field of sensation and association to build up around them.

Original CFP

Objects of Engagement looks at performance and non-performance strategies that seek engagement with particular objects/bodies/spaces. The conference hopes to explore the various modes of interaction
between human consciousness and inert matter, and the shifting boundaries of subject-object relationship. It examines the object and its status within diverse cultural, historical and social contexts and explores the various roles that artefacts and objects play in shaping our understanding of performance. The event invites emerging scholars and practitioners from various disciplines to come together, share their research, and raise questions regarding our relationship to the materiality of our world.

The conference will include presentations of 20-minute papers; 30-minute practice demonstrations and up to 45-minute workshops, with the aim of opening up wider dialogue within a multidisciplinary framework.

Topics include, but are not limited to:
• Object, body, space, time
• Objects and perception
• Objects and the archive
• Objects and the community
• Object/performer/spectator
• Objects as weapons
• Objects and ritual
• Objects and the earth
• Objects and reception
• Fetishised objects
• Familiar objects
• Functional objects
• Sacred objects
• Transitory objects
• Broken Objects
• Recycled Objects