York’s Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, in the School of Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD), will host its first Digital Grad Student Conference March 26 and 27.
The conference was originally scheduled to take place in March 2020, and has been reimagined for current times. In this new virtual format, conference participants and attendees will be able to maintain connection through shared academic discourse and artistic engagement. This online format also allows graduate students from around the world to participate in this conference.
Titled “Imagining Differently: Research-Creation Practices in Urgent Times,” the conference will explore interdisciplinary, theoretical, epistemological and methodological approaches to research-creation. Conference participants will join from all over the world, and presentations will take a variety of formats. In addition to more traditional paper presentations, presenters will offer performances, short films, interactive and mixed-media presentations.
A highlight of the event will be keynote speaker Natalie Loveless, an associate professor in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Alberta, and director of the Research-Creation and Social Justice CoLABoratory. Loveless’s keynote address will take place online on March 26 at 12 p.m., EST.
To conclude the first day of conference activities, there will be a screening of the morning I died I flew over the tobacco fields… at 6 p.m. This piece, based on a short story by Lynn Hutchinson Lee, was originally devised as a theatrical performance and was scheduled to be staged at York last March, but was cancelled due to the pandemic. This creative work has been adapted into an “audiovisual ethnobricolage” which combines a remix of text, image, physical theatre, photography and soundscape. There will be a brief talk-back with the creative team following the screening.
Admission to this online presentation is free, but RSVPs are required to receive the Zoom link. RSVP to https://forms.gle/fQ6RUzq183Bkx6hx6.