Call for Proposals for an Issue of Performance Research: On Medicine
Call for Proposals for an Issue of Performance Research:
On Medicine
Performance Research 19.4 (August 2014) 'On Medicine'
Proposal Deadline: 20 January 2014
Issue Editors:
Martin O'Brien (University of Reading) and Gianna
Bouchard (Anglia Ruskin University)
The aim of this issue of Performance Research is to
explore the complex
and vibrant relationship between medicine and
performance. Through a
necessarily interdisciplinary approach, it seeks to
interrogate various
modes of performance practice that engage with the
histories, practices
and discourse of medicine. In reflecting on medical
contexts and
approaches, this issue will address the potential of
performance to
intervene in and extend vital debates around medical
knowledge and
practice, to enhance its understanding and to offer a
site of resistance
and challenge to its influence and dominance.
There is a growing body of work emerging that is
concerned with the
interface between art and science, but this issue of
Performance
Research specifically seeks to deepen understandings
about the
connections, dialogues and dissonances between
performance and medicine.
'On Medicine' will attempt to examine these points of
intersection
through an address to specific themes, which are: the
medicalized body;
biopolitics and ethics; and the histories and practices
of medicine.
Key themes and questions
The Medicalized Body:
In what ways have performance practices used the
medicalization of the
body in order to examine subjectivity, personal agency
and embodied
knowledge in relation to biomedicine?
How have medical practices been appropriated for performance?
In what ways have performance practices managed to
challenge and resist
ideologies and representations of illness and disability?
Biopolitics and Ethics:
How have artistic practices intervened in dominant
ideological
constructions and bio-ethical debates within the
discourses of medicine
and the body?
By what means does contemporary performance expose the
politics of
health and illness?
Histories and Practices of Medicine:
What new perspectives can be offered on the presentation
and
understanding of the body in performance when considered
in relation to
the history and practices of medicine?
What are the intersections between discourses and
practices within
medical and art histories, particularly in relation to
the ways in which
bodies have been represented and displayed?
In what ways have concerns such as subjectivity,
representation,
identity and body knowledge been examined through
performance?
Possible topics include:
Art and illness
Autopathography and illness narratives
Wounds, injuries and scars
Biopolitics
Histories of medical display and exhibition
Current medical practice and performance
Health, the athletic body and well-being
Medical instruments and technologies
Medicalized pain and suffering in performance
Surgery, body-alteration and -modification in performance
Healing or treating the body in or through performance
Temporalities of illness and endurance
Disability
Use of biomedical practices in art
Ageing
Medical imaging and representation
'On Medicine' invites artists, practitioners and
theorists to submit
proposals for critical articles, documents, interviews,
artist's pages
or other forms of contribution that explore medical
practices and
histories in relation to the contexts and discourses of
performance,
performance-making and artwork.
SCHEDULE
Proposals: 20 January 2014
First drafts:
March 2014
Publication date: August 2014
ALL proposals, submissions and general enquiries should
be sent direct
to:
Rosa Bekkenkamp
Issue-related enquiries should be directed to the issue
editors:
Gianna Bouchard:
Martin O'Brien:
General Guidelines for Submissions
Proposals will be accepted by e-mail (MS-Word or RTF).
Proposals should
not exceed one A4 side. Please DO NOT send images
electronically without
prior agreement.
Please note that submission of a proposal will be taken
to imply that it
presents original, unpublished work not under
consideration for
publication elsewhere. By submitting a manuscript, the
author(s)
agree(s) that the exclusive rights to reproduce and
distribute the
article have been given to Performance Research.