8.-11. November 2018
Institute for Media and Culture Studies at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
Theatre and Technology – the 14th Congress of the Society for Theatre Studies wants to re-examine the theatre, its history, theory and aesthetics with regard to its technological condition. Keynotes and lectures on eight subject areas will be accompanied by discussions, workshops and performative formats.
The history, theory and aesthetics of the theatre are deeply interwoven with the question of technology and with developments in (media) technology, yet this connection appears as an uncertainty relation: The technical conditionality of the theatre frequently takes a back seat to questions of artistic organization and aesthetics. This congress dedicates itself to the relationship between theatre and technology – the impact and continuity of techniques, practices and objects – with regard to the technological condition. Analogous to the painter-paintbrush concept, it must be asked what technology is doing with the theatre and vice versa. How do the concepts of theatre, knowledge and subjectivity change with this perspective? How do the descriptions of the respective 'Theatralitätsgefüge' [theatrical framework] (Rudolf Münz) change if we do not take empirical technology histories of separation and otherness as a basis but rather observe them in their entanglement and situational conditionality? Thus a revision of the relationship between theatre and technology brings up specific questions about the ways of creating, the (artistic) producing as well as the relationship between nature and culture. Furthermore in this perspectivation, questions as to the theory of body, sex and gender, and/or cyborg theories can also be newly outlined, and Western conceptions of technology and their colonial interrelations critically interrogated.
Contributions to the following sections may be submitted:
- Theatre and technique/technology with respect to its technological condition
- Techniques of the Body
- Spatial Technologies / Processes of Positioning
- (Re-)Production Techniques
- Dramaturgy and / as Technology
- Decolonizing technology
- Theatre of (technical) objects
- Pop Techniques and Technologies
