Performance and Politics on the New Silk Roads - Call for Applications
The Summer School of the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Warwick
Performance and Politics on the New Silk Roads - Call for Applications
Venice June 27 – July 1 2022
Venue: The Centro Culturale Don Orione Artigianelli, Venice
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
Schedule
Monday, June 27
New and Old Silk Road Imaginaries and Realities
18.00 -18.30 Registration
18.30-20.30
Welcome and presentation of summer school: MILIJA GLUHOVIC
Keynote 1
JULIA C. STRAUSS, Belt and Road: New and Old Imaginaries of Connections
Tuesday, June 28
Theatre, Performance and Politics along New Silk Roads
9.30-11.30
Seminar
SILVIJA JESTROVIC / MARCUS TAN / MILIJA GLUHOVIC, Theatre and Performance on the New Silk Roads
11.30-11.45 Coffee break
11.45-13.00 Seminar with participants I
13.00- 14.30 Lunch
14.30- 16.00
Seminar
JULIA C. STRAUSS, Belt and Road Initiative and Environmental Issues
Wednesday, June 29
Cultural Politics and Diplomacy along New Silk Roads
Keynote 2
TIM WINTER, University of Western Australia, Topic TBC
11.00 -11.15 Coffee break
11.15 - 13.00 Seminar with participants II
13.15-15.00 Lunch
15.00-18.00
Workshop
Venice and New Silk Roads – Performative investigation through Venice
Convened by MARK FLEISHMAN
Thursday, June 30
Venice and East-West Encounters from the Renaissance to the present
9.30am -13.00 Venice and silk roads site visits with LOUISE BOURDUA / LUCA MOLA
13.15pm -14.30 Lunch
14.30-15:30pm
Workshop
Venice and New Silk Roads – Performative investigation through Venice
convened by MARK FLEISHMAN
15.30-15.45 Coffee break
15.45-17.30
Keynote 3
ANNE DUNLOP, Mongol Eurasia in Fourteenth-Century Veneto
Friday, July 1
New Silk Roads and Interdisciplinary Methodologies
9.00-10.30
Seminar
BHAVNA DAVE, BRI in Central Asia: Performance, Protests, Spectacles, Effects
10.30-10.45 Coffee break
10.45-12.45
Seminar
Performance and Politics along New Silk Roads: Interdisciplinary Methodologies and Interventions
SILVIJA JESTROVIC/ MARK FLEISHMAN / MARCUS TAN / BHAVNA DAVE / MILIJA GLUHOVIC
12:45-13:00
Closing Remarks
SILVIJA JESTROVIC
SUMMER SCHOOL FACULTY AND GUESTS
Professor Louise Bourdua, History of Art, University of Warwick
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/scapvc/arthistory/staff/lb
Dr Bhavna Dave, SOAS, University of London
https://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff36175.php
Professor Anne Dunlop, Herald Chair of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/profile/746793-anne-dunlop
Professor Mark Fleishman, CTDPS, University of Cape Town
http://www.ctdps.uct.ac.za/CTDPS/staff/MarkFleishman
Dr Milija Gluhovic, Theatre Studies, University of Warwick, https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/scapvc/theatre/staff/dr_milija_gluhovic
Professor Silvija Jestrovic, Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Warwick,
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/scapvc/theatre/staff/silvija_jestrovic/
Dr Luca Mola, Department of History, University of Warwick, https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/people/staff_index/lmola/
Professor Julia C Strauss, SOAS, University of London, https://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff36176.php
Dr Marcus Cheng Chye Tan, Visual and Performing Arts, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, https://dr.ntu.edu.sg/cris/rp/rp01583
Professor Tim Winter, School of Social Sciences, University of Western Australia https://uwa.academia.edu/TimWinter
HOW TO APPLY
Applicants must submit the following materials (in English) by May 31, 2022:
- a CV (1 page max. Including a list of publications (if any)
- a covering letter explaining how participation in the Summer School will benefit your research and stating financial needs (500 words max.)
- One letter of recommendation
Please send these materials to m.gluhovic@warwick.ac.ukLink opens in a new window and s.jestrovic@warwick.ac.ukLink opens in a new window
Applicants accepted in the program will be notified by June 1, 2022, via email. They must confirm their participation by June 5, 2022. Registration fee are also due by June 5, 2022. For further information please write to m.gluhovic@warwick.ac.ukLink opens in a new window and s.jestrovic@warwick.ac.ukLink opens in a new window
£100 Registration Fee (including lunches and entry tickets for museums)
EXEMPTIONS AND BURSARIES:
The IAS is offering the following bursaries:
10 bursaries covering accommodation (based on 2 persons sharing a room)
If you are not able to access funds to attend, we offer a limited amount of accommodation bursaries based on financial need and merit of the application. Please indicate in your letter if you would need a bursary, provide a rationale for your request specifying if your attendance is contingent on receiving a grant.
Selected students are required to confirm their registration by paying fees and emailing their receipt to m.gluhovic@warwick.ac.uk and s.jestrovic@warwick.ac.uk
ABSTRACTS:
Keynote 1
Belt and Road: New and Old Imaginaries of Connections
Julia C Strauss, SOAS
This first session will revolve around a general lecture that lay out the Chinese “official” rhetoric and imaginary of its BRI (Belt-and-Road Initiative). Focusing on China’s claims to be a benevolent actor that establishes connection and uses its surplus to aid its neighbors near and far, it sketches the ways in which “connectivity” is performed, and then the ways in which the actors it wishes to draw in to its claims engage in performances of acquiescence through mirroring and repetition of key phrases, or (more rarely) performances of resistance.
Keynote 2
The Silk Road: connecting histories and futures
Tim Winter
Today the Silk Road is rapidly becoming one of the key geocultural and geostrategic concepts of the twenty-first century. A narrative of connected histories, it now operates as a platform for international trade, diplomacy, infrastructure development and digital connectivity. Identified by two principal routes - maritime and overland, the Silk Road stretches across the Indian Ocean and Eurasian landmass; regions that will be of paramount importance in an increasingly multi-polar world.
In the Silk Road-Belt and Road nexus an architecture of cooperation has emerged that utilises discourses of civilisational dialogue, shared heritage, and a language of South South cooperation built around solidarity and mutual-understanding.
This presentation asks how we should make sense of such developments and modes of connectivity. Moving beyond increasingly tired accounts of soft power, the talk argues China’s Silk Road internationalism carries world ordering implications.
Keynote 3
Mongol Eurasia in Fourteenth-Century Veneto
Professor Anne Dunlop, Herald Chair of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne
Abstract details tbc.
SEMINAR ABSTRACTS
Belt and Road Initiative and Environmental Issues
Julia C. Strauss, SOAS, University of London
This session will be geared to a more specific topic within BRI: Chinese claims to be promoting a modern, environmentally conscious, “green BRI” that is part of its wider commitment to “Ecological Civilization”. This session will trace the ways in which Ecological Civilization frame claims within BRI to its “greenness”, and the ways in which these claims run up against commercial and structural realities (as well as the claims of local environmental groups).
Asian Interculturalism, Chinese Internationalism and Southeast Asia’s Politicisms
Marcus Tan, Nanyang Technological University Singapore
In 1997, Ong Keng Sen’s Lear premiered in Tokyo to critical acclaim. A groundbreaking intercultural production that saw the interplay and juxtaposition of heterogenous Asian performance traditions, Lear marked a turn towards an ‘Asian Interculturalism’ and heralded increasing attention to how Asia performed inter-culture (and Shakespeare). Prescience or serendipity, Lear was also a political performative of China’s ascendancy and the state of regional politics in Southeast Asia today vis-à-vis the former’s economic influence. This radical re-visioning of Shakespeare’s King Lear becomes a tale of patricide where the Older Daughter (a composite of Goneril and Regan), performed in the style of jingju, murders the Old Man (Lear) who is performed in Noh; Cordelia (the Younger Daughter) is presented as an androgynous Lakon Fai Nai dancer and the Retainer practices Pancak Silat.
The political-economic ties Southeast Asian countries have with China today are metaphorically captured in the relationship between the Older Daughter and the Younger Daughter, and the former’s Retainer. While not intended to be a performance analysis of Lear or a deep political examination of China’s presence in Southeast Asia, I will draw parallels between Ong’s Lear and contemporary history to expand considerations of China’s regional influence in light of the Belt-and-Road initiative. The lecture will further evidence China’s geocultural power (Winter 2018) as seen in the establishment of China Cultural Centers in Laos, angon, Phnom Penh, Hanoi and Singapore, and the appropriation and sanctioning of performance forms and their programmatic dissemination in the region. This will then be followed by a survey of the precarious political positions and perceptions of various Southeast Asian countries with the ongoing developments of the BRI and accompanying tensions in the South China Sea.
BRI in Central Asia: Performance, Protests, Spectacles, Effects
Dr Bhavna Dave, SOAS, University of London
BRI tends to be viewed by the governments and populations in Central Asian states in terms of infrastructural connectivity projects initiated by China. These in turn continue to produce debates and contestations over the tangible benefits as well as harms that China-led projects and investments bring to them. Such cost-benefit centred approaches fail to take note of the performative aspects of BRI, particularly how the elites and populations of the Central Asian states deploy the discourse and rhetoric of the various actors that represent China, and how these acts and enactments shape the materialization of these projects.
The lecture will centre on the performances of acquiescence and resistance at the level of the elites and the populations. I will first look at the performance of acquiescence on the part of the elite level - the signaling of deference, friendship and cooperation with China and then the performances of resistance by some key societal actors through focus on a particular site or sector in Kazakhstan and another in Kyrgyzstan. I could look into projects/activism linked to ‘green energy’ and ‘environmental protection’ in both states. These can then tie in with how a popular discourse is emerging around the issues of sovereignty – control of resources, care for environment and local communities – and how (if…) this is challenging the official discourse on sovereignty and development. And finally, also point to how this popular discourse is seeking to put pressures on their ruling elites to juggle the various performances – display solidarity with their own populations and also display deference and partnership with China.