2001 PSi7 "Translation, Transition, Transformation"

University of Mainz, Germany

Conference is advertised as focusing on "exploring questions of translation and transformation between languages, performance traditions and modes of perception." "For the first time, the conference will take place outside the anglophone world and the organizers wish to focus attention on the issue of language and cultural exchange."

Ute Ritschel (organizer, along with Christopher Balme of the University of Mainz): This was "a big conference of ca. 400 participants, from all continents."

"We offered a translation for all key note speakers in French-German-English. But it was impossible to translate all papers, which were more than 200!!! The costs of translation are immensely high….One other idea we had in the international committee was to invite participants of one country specially to feature their ideas on performance studies and give them a chance to come to a PSi conference.

We invited a group of Arabic scholars and performers and paid for them everything, which was quite a substantial part of our budget. … [Another important project was] to have a number of "artist panels", where artists from different countries were able to present their work as a lecture. … Also we had our own performance programme - if I remember right we had over 40 performances and performance lectures during the conference, many of them in a public area, so the participants of PSi were able to see them all."

A "food and performance" event is held, ARTtafel, featuring the German artist Regina Frank.

Peggy Phelan is elected second president of PSi. With her, the administrative base moves back to the US, first to NYU and then in 2002, to Stanford University.