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Performing The new Europe - Toronto Nov. 2009

 

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE:

AFTER THE WALL WAS OVER: PERFORMING THE NEW EUROPE

Subject to many doubts, the theatre decided to listen just for now. There could be heard tick-tock, tick-tock...and all of a sudden behind the blue moon went off first one alarm, then a second and a third till ever more alarms went off …and money started to run into the cash box. It was an overflow of something.

Slowly to the degree of the sun shining straight into the face of Diagones he woke up and started to peek out of his barrel and shouted something incomprehensible at the two. It seems he wanted to tell them not to upstage him. He does not like that shadows are cast into his face before high noon. Sun-bathing on stage it might be called as variation to the blues behind the moon.

All what seemed to be missing is a fine tune. Here at Toronto University, the theatre seemed to be looking around for some musician but instead the stage was set for an entire program to unfold during these unusual November days in 2009.

Strange was only that twenty years later no one seem to remember in this digital age how the fall of the wall would look like in black and white. For everyone turned to colour and this on both sides of many more invisible borders derived from where the concrete wall once stood till the woodpeckers of time came to flourish in November 1989.

 

HF Toronto 20th of November 2009

 

Concept for *AFTER THE WALL WAS OVER: PERFORMING THE NEW EUROPE* - Pia Kleber

This conference, taking place on the twentieth anniversary of major changes in Europe, is envisioned as an international and interdisciplinary forum on cultural changes in and challenges to Europe as a new, reconfigured cultural community since the crumbling of the division between what were once “Western” and “Eastern” Europe. Although focused primarily on performing arts, it will gather those specialists in literature, theatre, visual arts, film, mass media, architecture, urban planning, political science, history, and economics who can enrich the discussion on performance. All these specialists will be asked to address the major concern of this meeting, that is, the response of the performing arts to the cultural and social challenges posed by the systemic transformations in the former “Eastern Europe”, by the enlargement, integration, and the redefinition of the European Union, by identity and memory politics in individual countries and in the region.

In its discussion of theatre, playwriting, performing arts, television, video, and visual arts (installations, for example), the conference puts particular emphasis on two central players in the transformation of Europe: on Germany and Poland. Poland initiated these transformations with the Solidarity movement in 1980-1981 and with the 1989 Round Table agreement that set an example for dismantling communism in the Soviet block. With the fall of the Wall and the subsequent reunification of Germany, the most recognizable symbols of the real end of the cold war and of the whole concept of Eastern Europe entered the symbolic cultural market and further changed the map of Europe. The reconfiguration of the Polish-German relations has shifted dominant paradigms and has become a distinct marker of the reintegration of Europe.

In addition to panels, round tables, and open floor discussions, the conference will also showcase theatre performances, art exhibitions, and film screenings from the new Europe.

Each panel and round table will include 20-minut papers or 10-15-minute presentations of historians, economists, artists, and scholars in the performing arts, theatre, visual arts, and media, and will center on a particular aspect of the remaking of Europe and on the relationships of performing arts to these changes.

We envision the following frameworks/panels for the conference presentations:

  1. Political Frameworks
  2. Memory Politics
  3. Political Engagement
  4. Gender Politics
  5. National/European Discourses
  6. Cultural Practices and Frameworks
  7. Identity Politics
  8. Cultural Diversity
  9. Migration/Emigration/Exile
  10. Institutional Frameworks

To take place November 18-22, 2009 at the University of Toronto, Munk Centre, 1 Devonshire Place,Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3K7, Canada

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