CFP: GSA 2022 – Conference Panel Series: Christoph Schlingensief’s Artistic Constellations, Houston, TX
Conference date: September 15th – 18th, 2022
Abstracts due: March 4th, 2022
This panel series will address questions raised during the last GSA concerning Christoph Schlingensief’s work in the context of larger constellations of human and non-human influences. Who were the artists Schlingensief was inspired by? What forms did collaborations with Schlingensief take? What was the role of his artistic team and what were its contributions? What role did audiences play for the success of Schlingensief’s performances? How does Schlingensief’s oeuvre live on? How is it documented and made accessible for audiences today?
We can further think about Schlingensief’s artistic constellations not only with regard to human interlocutors but also in terms of the spaces (both virtual and physical) his performances occupied and the objects that created them. For example: what role did the public sphere play for Schlingensief? What impact did intermedial constellations have and how did his work engage with different modes of perception?
Papers can address a single work, focus on individual Schlingensief collaborators, or investigate his influences and collaborators with regard to larger aesthetic trajectories or traditions.
We also intend to organize a roundtable discussion on the question of how to conduct research on Schlingensief specifically and contemporary German theatre and performance in general. What are fruitful ways to engage with Schlingensief, whose work is available to us mainly through documented media today? How can we carry our interest in Schlingensief further by expanding our inquiry to his artistic network? And in general, what questions and pitfalls arise when thinking and writing about contemporary performance?
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- Schlingensief’s influences and inspirations
- Schlingensief’s collaborators and their contributions
- Schlingensief’s engagement with his audiences
- Schlingensief’s legacy
- Documentation of Schlingensief’s work
- Intermedial connections in Schlingensief’s work
- Schlingensief’s performance spaces across genres
- Schlingensief and the public sphere
- Approaches to research on Schlingensief’s work and his artistic network today
- Thinking and writing about contemporary theatre and performance in more general terms
Please send a 350-500 word abstract and a short CV (up to 150 words) to Maria Fink (finkm@iu.edu) and Dr. Jack Davis (jackdavis@truman.edu) by March 4th, 2022.
Maria Fink