The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics and Concordia University  invite scholars, activists, and artists of all disciplines to examine the practical, ethical, aesthetic, theatrical, and performative dimensions of manifests and manifestations throughout the Americas at the ninth Encuentro, to be held in Montréal, Québec, June 21-28, 2014.

MANIFEST!

Choreographing Social Movements in the Americas

Participation in Hemi Encuentros is by application only, and the application deadline for our 2014 Encuentro has passed (October 2013). If you have any questions concerning the Encuentro, please write us at: [email protected]

How are performances mobilized and syncretized in civic, community, and cultural contexts to create manifold forms of political expression? How do public, theatrical events produce ‘evidence’ that manifests ideas otherwise invisible, hidden, or unspeakable? What new manifestations, manifestos, festivals, and manifs emerge via our changing visions of political spaces, intellectual arenas, and the everyday street? The 2014 Encuentro invites artists, activists, and scholars to engage with and investigate the aesthetic, social, and choreographic techniques that transform political ideas into collective images, through actions, embodied utterances, and ways of being.

Such questions resonate in the host city of Montréal, where la manifestation has a rich and ongoing history. We invite your manifestations, provocations, and proposals for work group participation, roundtables, exhibits, urban interventions, workshops, and performances.

Among others, the term MANIFEST! contains the following potential valences:

MANIFEST

The published list of a ship’s, train’s, or airplane’s cargo or its passengers, as in the inventory of a slave ship; synonym for the verbs to show, to appear, or to publish, manifestar; as a noun, synonym for evidence, appearance; as an adjective, clearly revealed to the eye, mind, or judgment; open to view or comprehension.

MANIFESTO

A written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer; a political, religious, or artistic statement proclaiming a cause, position or stake in a conflict; a genre of public speech—manifeste in French, manifiesto, in Spanish—associated with radical social movements and aesthetic vanguards.

MANIF

Short for manifestation, the French language word for street demonstration.

FEST

Short for festival, and with strong referential affinities to fiesta or festa, denoting celebration and ritual performance in Spanish and Portuguese.

MANIFEST DESTINY

A racialized ideological trope coined and disseminated in the mid-nineteenth century to encourage and justify the white settlement of the entire North American continent, and the subjugation or extermination of the native peoples therein through colonization, relocation and genocide.

MANIFESTATION

The incorporation of a spirit, such as an orisha or the Holy Spirit, in the body of a medium.

MANI-

Prefix referencing the Latin root word for “hand,” as in manual, manicure, manipulation.