Aim: To showcase interesting ongoing research and share ideas in a fun/ engaging/ creative/ hip/ cool manner and show what our generation thinks about Performance Studies
Goal: Submission of a video of no more than 2 minutes (i.e. pack your thoughts in and pitch them fast!)
Format: HD/ 720p (can be shot with iPhones, iPads, Samsungs, digital cameras… whatever you can get your hands on)
First Round Due Date: 1st December 2015
To be uploaded to our Vimeo account (login details to follow)
Some basic prompts for the video:
- Share your research project and tell us why it’s an important direction for Performance Studies to steer towards.
- Pick a keyword/ keyphrase and talk about why we should pay attention to this strand of research (e.g. the Melbourne PSi organisers have selected “Climate Change” as an important theme this year for our annual conference: what other major themes do you see as possible new directions?)
- What is Performance Studies to you? What drives you as a performance scholar? How do you see yourself as part of a new generation to come?
- What place does Performance Studies have in your geographical region and what does it offer for Global Performance Studies?
The main idea is we want to collect thoughts oriented towards the future of the field. The listed prompts are only there as guidelines. It’s up to you how you would like to phrase the prompt to help whoever is presenting communicate his/her ideas clearly and in an interesting manner. It could be more formal like a mini-lecture but it could also be super fun: done through stop-motion video, with memes (Judith Butler explained with cats), with dress-up (wear a Foucault jumper), slip in intertextual references to performances, etc. Use props, books, quotes, or any other devices you see fit.
Who should be on this video?
Interview/ collect responses from junior researchers or young artists (advanced Masters, PhDs, post-docs, researchers who have completed their PhDs no more than 3 years ago).
You can also get in front of the camera to present your work/ thoughts! In fact, this is recommended for the first round so you would know how it feels to create this video presentation! It would be helpful to have this experience for making videos of other people in future rounds. In this way we can also introduce ourselves to the Futurist team through the videos we make.
You can organise an small get-together (depending on how much time you have!) to gather several scholars to shoot a series of videos.
Some samples for shaping the style of videos:
- Mini-lectures/ Answering a specific question: https://www.youtube.com/user/bigthink
- Non-verbal communication supported with subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dance+your+phd
- Fun aesthetics: https://www.youtube.com/user/pbsideachannel
- MOMA Modern Art & Ideas series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfYVzk0sNiGEUapzxvW8wuXj7YQmcJ1gk
In this very first round, let’s aim for something relatively simple, so we first get a sense of what everyone has come up with, and worry about video-editing later. We will have to streamline the aesthetic somewhat and bring them together as a coherent series before they are put online. (Perhaps it can simply be achieved with adding a logo in the beginning.) We also want to find out what prompts can gather better/ more interesting responses. The videos will be displayed online and perhaps also as an installation at the Melbourne conference. So keep that in mind and we can experiment in the next few months! Feel free to be creative!
Looking forward to your submissions from different parts of the world!
PSi Future Advisory Board 