December 5–6, 2014
Lyman Hall
This interdisciplinary symposium brought together diverse scholars and artists for a series of events and conversations exploring the nature of thinking and its limitations in relation to performance and performative behavior. What are the limits of representation, articulability, and abstraction? Is there potential for the transcendence of these limits through creative/performative means, through the making concrete of abstractions? These questions were explored in various formats, including lectures, seminars, and performances.
The symposium was organized by the Brown Performance Philosophy Group and was sponsored by the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, the Cogut Center for the Humanities, the Music Department, the Department of German Studies, the Department of Modern Culture and Media, the Classics Department, the Comparative Literature Department, and the Philosophy Department at Brown University.
The schedule of the symposium was as follows:
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5
10-10.15am Welcome (Spencer Golub & Ioana Jucan)
10.15-11.25 Still Here, or Nothing Works: Political uses of contemplation
A presentation on performance and theology by Erik Ehn (playwright; Professor, Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, Brown University)
11.35 – 12.35 The disintegration of love, work, and play
An interactive workshop by Kali Quinn (theatre practitioner; faculty in Theatre and Performance Studies at Brown University)
12.35-1.45 Lunch
1.45-3.10pm The Performative Identities of Functional Objects
A hands-on workshop on critical design led by Ian Gonsher (artist, designer, educator; faculty in the School of Engineering at Brown)
3.25-4.35 On the Shore Dimly Seen: dead reckoning through an infinite play
A performance/lecture by Gregory Whitehead (writer, radiomaker, and audio artist; Desperado Philosophy project)
4.50-6.10 Incapacity: Wittgenstein, Anxiety, and Performance Behavior
A seminar around the recently published performance philosophy book of the same title by Spencer Golub
6.30 – 7.45 Irrevocable Loss
A performance by Alphonso Lingis (philosopher, writer, translator; Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University)
8pm Book party around Incapacity: Wittgenstein, Anxiety, and Performance Behavior by Spencer Golub
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6
9.30-10.25am Panel 1: Scenes of Philosophical Limitations
Ryan Hartigan, “Notes on Falling Leaves: People of the Land, Lies, and Legality”
Philomena Bradford (Theatre Arts and Performance Studies; Brown University)
10.35-11.30 Panel 2: Writing/Performing Architecture Philosophically
Jungmin Lee (Film and Visual Studies; Harvard University), “Iterations of Projection and Volume: From Moholy-Nagy to Barba in Theatre Architecture”
Julieta Cardenas, Immaterial Architecture
11.40-12.40 Artist Talk by Daniel Peltz (Associate Professor, Film/Animation/Video Department, RISD, performance artist)
12.40-1.50 Lunch
1.50-3.10 The Usual Subject Meets the Unusual Object
A lecture by Spencer Golub (Professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, Slavic Studies, and Comparative Literature, Brown University)
3.25-4.35 This Crime Has a Name
A performance by Thalia Field (writer, Professor of Literary Arts, Brown University)
4.45-5.55 Doing Philosophy with the Third Ear
A lecture by Scott Brewer (Professor of Law, Harvard Law School)
6.10-7.15pm O Diogenes! An apostrophe for an object-oriented cynicism
A lecture by Will Daddario (core convener of the Performance Philosophy research network; Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts at Illinois State University)
7.15pm Dinner
8.30 Love Triangle
A performance by the Listening LabOratory performance group written and directed by Ioana Jucan; performed by Philomena Bradford, Chris Mulligan, Ioana Jucan
9.30 Concluding Discussion
