PerformanceStudies.Org

Wednesday, 14 June, 2006

Preface:
This blog is intended to serve three main goals: 1) it is designed to be a first hand account of the conference for those who are unable to attend; 2) with the multitude of talks, panels and performances to attend, this blog can offer an alternate viewpoint from which other delegates can engage with the conference; and 3) it is after all merely a record of how I personally engaged with PSi#12 and the things I thought and the questions that were raised for me. Please feel free to post your own blog/viewpoint (click on “submit writing” “contact us” in the left column) and also to make comments.
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Upon arrival to Queen Mary University of London, which was easy to reach from the Mile End train station, I checked into my accommodation and proceeded to register for the conference. Registration was held at the People’s Palace. I would come to find out that the building, as the rest of Queen Mary was established as a place for the people
to have a concert hall, picture galleries, botanic gardens, and more. So it is in the spirit of philanthropy and community that the twelfth Performance Studies international conference is convened at Queen Mary in the East End of London.

On my way to registration I saw Mathew Goulish of Goat Island and Guillermo Gomez-Peña. It was a nice treat, because I had met and worked with both of them, but it had been almost three years since I had seen either of them.

Upon receiving my registration materials I then headed toward the Bar Med where the opening reception would be held. On my way, I ran into Moss, whom I had worked with during Guillermo’s 2003 workshop in Aberystwyth. It was good to see her again and to catch up with what she had been doing. I then spent the evening meeting other early-arriving participants such as a woman from Greece who will be presenting a paper entitled, “Performance as a Practice of Survival, Queer World-making and Freedom”; a woman from Australia whose paper is on “Traumatic Performance: Sexual Assault, Women and the Courtroom”; a man from Greece who will be hosting a discussion with his colleagues on their project “Citizenship Test”; a woman who will be performing an untitled piece based on thirty of the articles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; three lovely ladies from Trinity University; and a stateless man and an Egyptian woman with whom I had a thought provoking conversation.

Seeing so many old friends and meeting so many new and fascinating people was truly a wonderful start to a much anticipated gathering.