EKM Teaduskirjastus

9th annual conference of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian Studies

Perception and Performativity in Arts and Culture in the Age of Technological Change

Koostaja: Hedi-Liis Toome, Piret Voolaid

ISBN: 978-9949-677-38-2 (print); 978-9949-677-39-9 (pdf)

Ilmumisaeg: 2019

Dear participant,
On behalf of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian Studies we warmly welcome you in Tartu. We hope that your stay in Tartu will be a success and that you will take back with you many inspiring ideas and colourful memories.
The process of digitalisation in contemporary society is inevitable. However, digital should not be reduced to computer technology, because it embraces a wider set of sociocultural phenomena. Even the performing arts and cultural performances characterised by happening ‘here and now’ cannot escape the reality of this situation because digitalisation refers not only to specific technologies but also to specific ways of communication and the sociocultural contexts in which live performances take place. Research on how digitalisation changes all walks of our everyday life, from culture to politics, is still breaking new grounds.
Hans Thies Lehmann has warned that mediated perceptions have led to the erosion of the act of communication because there is no experience of a connection among the individual images received and no connection between the receiving and sending of signs (Lehmann 2006, 184). Live performances might avoid or overcome the erosion of communication, yet not necessarily. Nevertheless, also in mediated performances, an emancipated spectator or emancipated community might play the role of an active interpreter, developing their own translations (Rancière 2009: 22), even out of dispersed images.
A perspective on how digitalisation has affected performativity, performance, and perception in arts and culture in general is the main focus of the conference. More research is needed into the effects of the new mediated reality on arts and culture. The conference presentations are related to interdisciplinary research areas (e.g. theatre, literary, film and art studies, musicology, folkloristics, ethnology, philosophy, linguistics, etc.) that tackle the issues concerning perception and performativity.
The presentations handle different aspects:
performativity and authenticity;
functions and values of live performances;
performativity and perception of cultural performances;
relationships between performativity and technology;
change of perception due to technological developments;
audiences and reception of technological and digital arts;
audiences and reception of arts in the age of technological change;
historical perspectives on how technology influences the perception and performativity of arts;
performativity of the ‘post-digital’ performance.
https://www.folklore.ee/CEES/2019/performance/