A prestigious international conference on „Performativity and Creativity in Modern Cultures“ is going to be held at CUFA on 22-24 November 2019.
Performativity and creativity have often been used vaguely in a number of discourses in cultural studies, economics, political ideologies or advertising. The purpose of this conference is to explore the force of these concepts in pragmatic approaches to cultures and closely related industrial production (“creative industries”), in technological developments connected with performing arts and cultural communication, as well as in commercial entertainment.
In recent approaches, the understanding of performativity has transcended its original linguistic dimensions (Austin, Searle) and their deconstructionist critique (Derrida, Hillis Miller). In our view, it can be better described by studying notions like “fiction”, “play” (Iser), “gender” (Butler), “technology” (Foucault) or “social roles” (Goffman, Ross and Nisbett).
Similarly, creativity is no longer linked with the evolution of closed autopoietic systems (Niklas Luhmann). The conference offers to re-assess the existing notions of autopoiesis in view of the concepts of the virtual/actual (Deleuze, Buci-Glucksman), interface/interfaciality (Latour), media technologies and mediation (in broadest terms, including conflict resolution). It also invites interdisciplinary approaches inspired by the psychology of creativity (Csikszentmihályi), the philosophy, history, as well as the psychological and anthropological aspects of play (Huizinga, Sutton-Smith, Caillois and others).
Performativity and creativity will not be discussed separately, but as two interdependent faculties and agencies. The conference will explore them in diverse theoretical contexts, as well as historically – in the main phases of modernity, including the Early Modern period, Romanticism and its aftermaths, Modernism and avant-garde movements and the present time. Apart from developing and interconnecting the theories of fiction, play, media, political and aesthetic ideologies, as well as the notions of avant-garde and the post-modern, the conference aims to contribute to the exploration of recent socio-economic phenomena, such as the “creative industries”, and trace their historical dimensions. The conference is closely linked to the research in the European Regional Development Fund Project “Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World” (No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734).
Professor Martin Procházka, Charles University, Prague
Professor Pavel Drábek, University of Hull
Co-convenors
Keynote Speakers
Professor Tracy C. Davis, Northwestern University
Professor Andreas Mahler, Freie Universitaet Berlin
Freddie Rokem, University of Tel Aviv
