Freie Universität Berlin - Institut für Theaterwissenschaft
Hörsaal, Grunewaldstr. 35, 12165 Berlin

 

The interweaving of ‘new dramaturgy’ (Kerkhoven) and new media have changed practices and ideas in performance and lie at the centre of an emergent new paradigm that we call new media dramaturgy or NMD. NMD calls for a different and interwoven approach to understanding composition and representation in performance and in the ways that these performances engage with aspects of politics, society, culture, ideas of belonging, of place and time and, and with the reality of intercultural, imbricated forms of globality.

The growth of NMD has been so rapid that our capacity for critical reflection is underdeveloped. What elements are important to the appearance of radical new means of composition and to what ends? Is there an enduring legacy or trace of a new media performance vocabulary?

This symposium will address these questions in relation the influential and globally significant work of dumb type, whose performances from the mid-1980s until the early 2000s offer an important historical record of the progression of NMD; a progression wherein performance is seen to undergo dramatic transformations: shifts from representation to sensuality, from semiotic abstraction into intermediality, from singularity into a multiplication of performance imagery, and from the perspective of viewing to experience of immersion.

PROGRAM

Tuesday, 2 April 2013

6.00 p.m. Screening of the performance S/N (Japan, 1994)
followed by welcome drinks

Wednesday, 3 April 2013

9.00 a.m. Welcome
Erika Fischer-Lichte, Director of the International Research Center “Interweaving Performance Cultures”

9.15 a.m.–10.45 a.m. Panel #1
Peter Eckersall: Dumb Type and the Birth of New Media Dramaturgy
Sara Jansen: Dumb Type as Dance: Reflections on the Politics of Movement
Edward Scheer: Immersion Media Performance (via Skype at 10.15 a.m.)
Chair: Barbara Geilhorn

Coffee break

11.15 a.m.–12.30 p.m. Artist talk
Toru Koyamada: Reflections on Working with Dumb Type and Being an Artist in Japan now (including Q&A)
Chair: Miya Yoshida

Lunch break

2.00 p.m.–3.30 p.m. Panel #2
Fran Lloyd: Interweaving Performance Cultures: Bodies that Matter, S/N and Activism
Stephen Barber: Corporeal Projections and Ocular Demands: Lovers
Shintaro Fujii: Turning Catastrophe into Art: On Dumb Type, S/N and Tadasu Takamine, Cool Japan
Chair: Katherine Mezur

Coffee break

4.00 p.m.–4.30 p.m. Studio Performance
by Takao Kawaguchi

Short break

4.45 p.m.–6.30 p.m. Panel #3
Shinya Yamaki: LIFE with ART Project: “The Art of Intervention” Joint Research: Considering the Performance S/N by Dumb Type (40 minutes, translated by Wim Lunsing)
Hidenaga Otori: The Historical Position of Dumb Type: The Birth and the End of the Politics of Japanese Theater (60 minutes)
Chair: Shintaro Fujii

7.00 p.m. Dinner   

Thursday, 4 April 2013

9.00 a.m.–10.30 a.m. Panel #4
Keiko Takeda: On the Issue of Foucault’s “subjection” in S/N
Wim Lunsing: The Creation of S/N in the Context of the Debate about Sexuality in Early 1990s Japan
Katherine Mezur: Dumb Type’s Wonder Women: Corporeal Precarity and Medial Terror
Chair: Helena Grehan

Coffee break

11.00 a.m.–12.00 noon Artist talk
Takao Kawaguchi: My Perfect Life – A Talk about the Performance Series ‘A perfect Life’ Continuing since 2008 (including Q&A)
Chair: Sara Jansen

12.00 noon–1.00 p.m. Panel #5
Marlon Barrios Solano: Social Remix: Meta-Media Dynamics within Hybrid Knowledge Landscapes (dance-tech projects)
Andreas Regelsberger: Re-thinking the Audience: Dumb Type, New Media, New Dramaturgy and the Spectator (via Skype at 12.30 a.m.)
Chair: Fran Lloyd

Lunch break

2.00 p.m.–3.45 p.m. Provocations and responses followed by roundtable discussion
With Helena Grehan, Maaike Bleeker, Barbara Geilhorn, Miya Yoshida and Shinya Takahashi
Chair: Peter Eckersall

3.45 p.m.–4.00 p.m. Closing

The Symposium is initiated by Peter Eckersall, Associate Professor of Theatre Studies, University of Melbourne and current Fellow of the International Research Center "Interweaving Performance Cultures" and organised in cooperation with Performance Studies international (PSi), the International Research Centre "Interweaving Performance Cultures", Freie Universität Berlin, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, and the Australian Research Council.  

You can download the program here.