For this issue of About Performance, we invite submissions dealing with aesthetic and social performance practices in contexts where the fields of arts and health collide or coalesce.
Artists and healers have long had an interest in each other’s affairs—the connections run as wide as the figure of the shaman across so many of the world’s cultures and at least as far back as Aristotle when he cites the medicinal effect of certain melodies as an analogue to the cathartic effect of tragedy. Today, increasingly, we see health professionals turning towards performance-makers and other creative artists for support with a myriad of tasks. Broadly speaking, the agenda here is one of ‘re-humanising’ the practice of healthcare, of re-evaluating skills and recommitting to values that seem under threat in many health systems. At the same time, many artists, including artist-patients, as well as scholars in health humanities and related disciplines, would want to extend this agenda to include a more rigorous critique of the underlying factors that place at risk a society’s capacity to care.
Authors may wish to consider, but need not be restricted to, questions such as the following:
- Innovation and risk in arts-in-health practice
- Art or instrument?
- Affect, Embodiment and Agency
- Questions of culture
Guest editors Dr Paul Dwyer (paul.dwyer@sydney.edu.au) and James Dalton (james.r.dalton@sydney.edu.au) invite authors to submit an article proposal/abstract (200-300 words) by 15 December 2018.
See the full Call for Papers for more information and details of submission here.
About Performance is published by Sydney University Press and the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Sydney. For more information, including the contents of previous issues, please go to: https://sydney.edu.au/arts/performance/research/publications.shtml/.