Call for Papers International Seminar Modes of Production: Performing Arts and the Ecological Transition

I.

Modes of Production – Performing Arts in Transition is a Research & Development platform that intercrosses the field of artistic studies with the hybrid field of arts management and creative production. Based at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of the University of Coimbra (CEIS20-UC), it is the result of a partnership with the Artistic Studies Programme at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, the Post- Graduate Diploma in Cultural Management and Sustainability and the Teatro Acade?mico de Gil Vicente (TAGV-UC). Its initiatives and studies are carried out in permanent and updated articulation with practitioners and institutions in the arts and cultural sector. It analyses the modes of production and management models of arts and cultural projects and organizations in the face of several contemporary transformations, namely those that are raised by the demands of fair practices and social and environmental sustainability. It hosts the scientific FCT-funded GREENARTS project, which pays attention to the implications of the ecological imperative upon the arts and culture.

After an encouraging launch in the end of 2021 – which resulted in an edited volume soon to be published by transcript - we are now organizing a second International Seminar, this time a face-to-face meeting in Coimbra: one and a half days with presentations, debates and performances. Modes of Production – Performing Arts and the Ecological Transition signals the culmination of the GREENARTS project and will thus present its main results and host a series of discussions fully dedicated to the critical junction between the arts, cultural policy, and the ecological emergency.

II.

The sense of urgency around ecological perils is growing unmistakably in the culture and creative sectors, including in the performing arts. The burgeoning mobilisation of the fields of theatre, dance and performance materializes in a constantly expanding proliferation of manifestos, artistic and institutional projects, policy initiatives, publications, and practical tools. This effervescence is driven by the steadily alarming warnings from scientists and activists, but it is also, importantly, akin to the sector’s heightened self-awareness. Artists, producers, and arts managers are more and more self-conscious about the environmental footprint of their own activities and increasingly invested in attuning themselves with the planetary emergency and its resulting inequalities. Importantly, they are also acutely aware of the overarching political implications of the ‘green transition’, and vigilant of the contradictions that such transformations entail when associated with specific geographical and historical circumstances (Rodrigues, 2024). Indeed, ecological distress is already impacting artistic and curatorial decisions, as well as challenging production, touring and management models (Janssens & Fraioli 2022; VoC, 2023; Vries 2021). Modes of Production – Performing Arts and the Ecological Transition argues that the environmental emergency can rightly be seen as a major disorganiser of the modi operandi of the arts and culture field, insofar it questions the assumptions of cultural policies, the underpinnings of funding mechanisms, and the routines of creating, producing, managing, distributing, and experiencing art (Rodrigues, Oliveira and Ventura, 2024). At the same time, the widening demand for sustainability dramatically exposes the arts and culture’s overreliance on expansionist and productivist processes (Rodrigues, 2024) within a growth-oriented capitalist paradigm (Dragisevic Sesic, 2021).