Dearest PRS group members,
I hope this email find you well!
We had a very inspiring, shifting, informative, sharing of research projects this year in Shanghai. New friendships and research projects have started and hopefully will continue to spark potential exchanges in the future.
This was for me and David Mason our first year of convenorship of the group and we are pleased with all the conversations we had that allowed us to form a vision for the next three years with precise and realistic objectives.
The main feature of our plan is to contribute to the “permanent decolonization of thought,” as anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro suggests in his book Cannibal Metaphisics (2009), by allowing a plurality of ontologies to contribute to the project of understanding the world and its materialities – tangible and intangible. In our context this entails holding an inclusive space for academic enquiry wherein the interrelation between performance, religion, and spirituality can be explored, tested, and interrogated from a plurality of onto-epistemological perspectives – we are referring here to Karen Barad’s interpretation of the term as articulated in the book Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (2007).
Toward this vision we have three main objectives:
· The establishment of an ongoing, online bibliography that should include thinkers and practitioners exploring practices within and outside the boundaries of established creeds. We are still thinking on how to organize it—whether to follow a simple alphabetic order or to structure it by themes or topics. Please start sending bibliographic information to David at this email MasonD@rhodes.edu.
· The publication of an edited volume exploring from a multi-perspective range of lenses performances and theatrical practices where aesthetic and religious/spiritual experiences intersect each other. We are interested in challenging binary thinking without excluding it and this may entail the art of balancing paradoxical juxtapositions. Nonetheless, we are aware that there are certain ontologies that, having been excluded from the main narration of the world, should be given voice and we are determined to do so. We are now developing a first, more detailed description that will be part of the call for next year’s IFTR conference.
· The starting of a newsletterto be shared among members three times a year—roughly, September, January, and May. This newsletter will provide information about opportunities, events, networks, and more related to our field of enquiry. We have a truly international group and we have the opportunity to share a lot of information with each from all over the world. The first newsletter will be out in January, so please start sending information. It will include the following lists:
• member news: notices of what you are doing, your recent accomplishments, accolades you have received, projects in which you are involved, etc.
• locations of interest: and information on how to access them
• events:performances, rituals, ceremonies, and other happenings around the world and how to take part
• residencies:available for artists and scholars working in our field
• networks:information about relevant networks
• opportunities: anyone who would like to volunteer to host members of the group in case of an event happening close by
• others: any other information not included in the list above
Please start sending information to my email battiss@hope.ac.uk.
Ero Tzampazi continues as the group’s online technology manager. For any matters related to the group’s web site, Facebook group, email list, etc., please contact Ero at this email tsampaziargyro@hotmail.com.
Last, all the people included in this email have attended the group meeting at least once since its inception, however things and interests might have changed. Therefore, if you do not wish to be part of the group’s mailing list any longer please send us an email and we will make sure that you will not receive further messages from us.
We wish you an inspiring night or day depending on which part of the planet you live,
All the best,
Silvia and David