Launched in 2013, and hailed as the largest geo-economics initiative in history, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has largely been discussed as a consciously designed geo-political and economic project. However, it is also an initiative, a statement of intention, a performance of China on the global stage, and a kind of ‘development theater.’ In this one week summer school for postgraduate students we ask: what does it mean to ‘revive’ and perform Silk Roads for the twenty-first century, and how is this geopolitical chronotype productive for politics and theatre and performance studies? We shall examine the performances of state actors who, typically co-produce the ways in which China is now projecting itself as a benevolent new development actor. But we shall also consider the counter performances that the BRI sparks: performances of acquiescence (from business elites and supportive local groups) as well as performances of resistance (from labor organizers, environmentalists, and anti-corruption campaigners). We shall discuss Belt and Road as a site of cultural production and cultural politics and the ways theatre and performance artists, visual artists, musicians, and filmmakers from the countries along the New Silk Road routes and corridors (Western Europe, the Balkans, Central and South-East Asia, Middle East, Africa, etc.) engage, critique and represent the underbelly of the contemporary silk roads – contemporary linkages between the circulations of peoples and desires, the global spread of the capitalist market and economic globalization, and the human and environmental catastrophes they unleash. Focusing on selected cities along the New Silk Roads (Venice, Trieste, Belgrade, Athens . . .) we shall also examine the contested nature of BRI-driven, infrastructural, material restructuring of urban space and its effects on the contours of lives, places, and socio-natures. Through talks, workshops, and demonstrations the participants will be exposed to a variety of disciplinary approaches and ways in which they could be combined to build a new critical framework to understand the New Silk Roads performatively as a relational and intersectional critical concept and practice. The summer school will also explore historical and art historical dimensions of the silk roads and the Venetian links to them through site visits within the lagoon city.

Venue: The Centro Culturale Don Orione Artigianelli, Zattere, Dorsoduro, 909/A. The venue is in the centre of Venice near the Academia Bridge. See: https://donorione-venezia.it/home-en

 https://donorione-venezia.it/conference-centreprogr

UP-TO-DATE SCHEDULE AND MORE DETAILS: Performance and Politics on the New Silk Roads (warwick.ac.uk)