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| 2005 Annual General Meeting Minutes |
| 2006 Annual General Meeting Minutes |
| 2007 Annual General Meeting Minutes |
| Former Presidents |
| How PSi Thinks |
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2006 ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING MINUTES |
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18th June 2006 – 9am-10.30am Queen Mary, University of London 1. Text of President’s report by Adrian Heathfield Welcome to this the Annual General Meeting of PSi. This is an organisational meeting whose purpose is to review the activities of the last year; reflect on this conference; what we might learn from it for our future planning; take a look at those future plans, particularly the upcoming conferences. For those of you who are new to PSi, this is the twelfth conference, and the ninth birthday of the organization itself. PSi grew from the energies and concerns of those engaged in performance studies programmes at New York University, Northwestern University, and at the Centre for Performance Research in Aberystwyth, Wales. Since its early days PSi has grown in stature and scope becoming an increasingly diverse and highly international assembly. The organization still holds to the lowercase ‘i’ in its name, as it is wary of grand global claims and wants to signify that what constitutes an international remains an open question. The last few years have seen the conferences moving from New Zealand to Singapore, to Providence Rhode Island and now to London. And coming years will see us travelling to new destinations around the globe. As we reconstitute ourselves in different places the membership of PSi changes radically from year to year, but it is a membership that is becoming increasingly international, increasingly culturally diverse. It is also the case that as we look harder at our relation to cultural practice and the cultural sector PSi becomes more culturally engaged. This is especially the case after this conference which will see an increase in the number of artists and activists who are members of the organisation. We are fortunate to receive financial support for the presidency and office of PSi from Nottingham Trent University and I’d like to thank Branislava Kuburovic, Rachel Zerihan, and Vlatka Horvat at NTU for their work on specific initiatives for the organisation throughout the year, and particularly Stuart Simpson and Rebecca Carrington for their administration of the membership and website. 1.2: The past year I am going to briefly outline some of the things we have been doing as an organisation over the last year before we move on to the presentation of future plans. This has been a period of considerable change as a result of the continuing growth of performance studies as an international field and the expansion of our membership and organisational work. Growing from our earlier event in Singapore we have supported a regional conference event, Panic Buttons in Kuala Lumpur, dealing with questions of performance in states of crisis, and directly linked to PSi #12 and the theme of human rights. We now imagine that in the future outside of American and British locations and beside the very large annual conferences there will be a growing number of smaller regional initiatives at different times of year. This is a way for us to reflect and include particular communities of interest and particular research interests / questions. We welcome proposals you might have for events in specific localities that might benefit from our support. We have also initiated and sustained a series of open working groups on particular research areas. These are sustained networks of research collaboration that can take any form or shape, can be practice or theory based, or can move between the two. The groups convene at annual conferences or elsewhere where they can. In the last year we have concentrated on upgrading our internet presence and information services: so you’ll see that we have re-designed our website, launched new web-based editorial initiatives that seek to define key debates, paradigms and questions for the field, provided a set of links resources on archives, journals, and key organisations in the field. This set of initiatives is expanding and we would really welcome your suggestions to improve it, and your participation in terms of submitting material. We have also produced a new email digest that gives a more or less weekly summary of significant international activities. I’d like to thank Patrick Anderson and Paul Rae particularly for his tireless work in this area. This year we have supported the attendance of three speakers at the London conference through the Dwight Conquergood Award, the scheme we established in honour of our former Vice-President, a founding figure in the field. The award is designed to financially support attendance at PSi for artists, activists, grad students or emergent scholars whose work around cultural performance in some way carries a connection to Dwight’s own practice – work in and around disenfranchisement, exclusion and social agency. I am pleased to announce that the winner of this year’s award was Maryrose Casey with Honourable mentions awarded to Karen C. Faith and Robert Garot. As you can see there has been a considerable amount of growth in the structures of the organisation, but we are an organisation that comparatively charges very little for membership and registration at its annual conference and consequently one that runs on a tiny budget, considerable institutional support and a huge amount of free labour and tremendous good will. We very much need your participation and support to keep the organisation robust and running. This coming year will be my last year as President of PSi and at the next annual conference we will need to have found not only a new President but the structures and finances that can support the existing activities and new initiatives for the organisation. Sadly this year we are also losing from the board three extraordinary women who have been a vital part of the organisation of PSi over the last twelve years. I’d like to thank our retiring Vice Presidents Laurie Beth Clark and Ute Ritschel. Laurie Beth has been a huge source of inspiration, energy and strategic planning for PSi, Ute as well as contributing extraordinary natural events and site specific initiatives has been central to building our links in Europe and keeping us all happy and hopeful and Sharon Mazer as International Committee Officer has been a powerful and tireless advocate for the organisation, for its international diversity and outlook. So I’d like you to join us in thanking these three extraordinary women. With these questions of the future of the organisation in mind I am going to hand over briefly to Paul who will discuss changes to the board, Peta who will discuss the search for a new President and Jon who will discuss our fundraising initiative.
This year we instituted an open nominations process for the positions of Vice President, International Committee Chair and Independent Scholar’s Chair. We were also open to general enquiries regarding participation as a general Board Member. In total, we received ten nominations, from Australia, the UK, the US, Canada, France and Denmark. Nominees were asked to submit a CV and a 500 word statement outlining their intentions for the position. These were circulated to the Board in advance of the conference. The Board deliberated over the nominees, discussing the nominations extensively and then, in accordance with the Bylaws, a secret ballot was conducted. Although there are no official criteria for selection, those used by the Board in this particular instance included the following: • Increasing diversity so as better to represent the geographic and disciplinary make-up of the organization The results are as follows: A decision on the Independent Scholar’s position was postponed, pending clarification on a number of points in the nominee’s statement. It was decided by the Board that the position for Vice President not be filled, pending clarification of the VP’s role, in relation to that of the President. Instead, a new call for nominations for both President and Vice President would go out around January. The nominations process was conducted within the framework of the existing by-laws. However, that process has thrown up some anomalies that we would like address, alongside a desire to make the process as open and transparent as possible. Since by-laws can only be changed at a meeting of the membership, it is our intention to consider further changes to the nominations process, with a view to putting them to the membership at the AGM in New York in 2007. 3. Notification of search for new President by Peta Tait The bad news: Our valued President Adrian Heathfield informed the PSi Board at the AGM that he would stepping down in the course of the next year. The Board members were reluctant to receive this news, and all stated their appreciation of Adrian’s committed effort in facilitating communication, and representing the organization and enhancing its reputation. The Board sincerely thanked (and thank) him for his excellent work with the continuing of the activities of the organization including PSi conferences. During his time as President, the organization has gained strength with growing interest in performance studies internationally, and particularly through his efforts on their behalf of young practitioner-scholars. His time as President has seen a successful expansion for the organization. The good news: The Board began a process of finding the next President with an initial announcement to those attending the AGM in London, and in requesting a general expression of interest. Board members Professor Peta Tait, John Emigh and Freddie Rokem are facilitating this process (c/- P.Tait@latrobe.edu.au). 4. Details of new initiative to seek financing for PSi by Jon McKenzie While one of PSi’s strengths is its international character, from a funding point of view its “enrollingment” means that it is hard to build a sustained membership, or to grow its income. Indeed, the mobility of the conference creates its own financial challenges, and the vast majority of funds raised go into conference organization. It is therefore proposed that a fundraising committee be convened, to find ways of creating financial stability for PSi. Institutions, individuals, organizations and sugar daddies and mommies are encouraged to come forward, either to join the committee, contribute fundraising ideas, or indeed to contribute funds themselves. To express an interest, please contact John McKenze at: jonm@uwm.edu 5. Details of forthcoming annual conferences Following a review of the proposals for the next three conferences by the Board, details were given by representatives of those conferences. 5.1: New York (2007) José Muñoz from New York University gave an overview of the New York conference. Please see Appendix B for more details. 5.2: Copenhagen (2008) Rune Gade and Gunhild Borggeen from the University of Copenhagen gave an overview of the 2008 conference. Please see Appendix C for more details. 5.3: Sydney (2009) Gay McAuley from the University of Sydney made some initial comments on the 2009 conference, details of which remain to be confirmed. The next three conferences of PSi are now in place. 6. Sub-committee reports A number of PSi sub-committees met over the course of the conference, and their representatives reported back as follows: 6.1: Undergraduate Performance Studies Committee: report by John Bell At the PSi conference in London this June the Undergraduate Performance Studies Committee meeting consisted of Yuichiro Takahashi (Dokkyo University) and myself. Considering the fact that only two of us constituted the meeting group, we decided to be pro-active in soliciting interest in undergraduate performance studies by creating a newsletter to be posted on the PSi website. (For Yuichiro’s report, please refer to Appendix D.) As chair of the subcommittee, and recognizing that I have only one more year to be part of the PSi board, I have the following thoughts: 1. Yuichiro would be a fine candidate for the PSi board, and a find candidate to take over the Undergraduate Performance Studies Committee. 2. Clearly the subcommittee has not defined itself and/or its mission in a way that has caught the interest of large numbers of PSi members. I’m not sure why this might be the case. When the subcommittee was established at a PSi conference at NYU a few years ago, a group of a dozen or more professors and students took part. I think we have not articulated a clear set of concerns that would intrigue our colleagues. 3. Possible options for the future: since the primary interest of the subcommittee is the pedagogy of performance studies (as reflected in Yuichiro’s questionnaire below, Appendix D), I think of the following: a) Perhaps the name of the subcommittee should be changed to “Performance Studies Pedagogy Subcommittee” to make that focus clearer, and to also include the pedagogy of graduate studies of performance as well as undergraduate studies. b) I think it would be good for the subcommittee to propose or otherwise support the inclusion of panel discussions on performance studies pedagogy as part of our PSi conferences. The subject is one that, to me, seems central to our thinking and practice of performance studies in academia. Thanks for your attention! John Bell 6.2: Report of the Graduate Committee by Monica Stufft and Lara Shalson At the AGM we talked about our goals for the graduate student subcommittee and its life at conferences and beyond. A listserve especially for graduate students, a directory, as well as a resource listing on the PSi web page for grads were some ideas expressed by those at the subcommittee meeting and which we are in the process of pursuing. In terms of life at the conference, the graduate students were generally very pleased with their level of involvement in PSi but they did express an interest in having more "professional development" panels aimed especially at graduate students and others in the early stages of their careers. We would love to hear from any graduate students interested in being involved or from any who may have additional suggestions. 7. Open Discussion 7.1: Lee Weng Choy thanked Nick Ridout of Queen Mary for coming to the ‘Panic Buttons’ event in Kuala Lumpur. 7.2: Heike Roms thanked Adrian for his hard work as President, and went on to raise two questions: Adrian: This is quite difficult. The old separated structure for membership and conference fees led to extremely complex financial agreements and calculations between PSi and conference hosts and so we abandoned that system. Since the vast majority of PSi membership comes from the conference a simpler structure has been put in place, where PSi simply takes a small cut of conference income for membership, roughly equivalent to its old membership income. This also allows conference organisers to have clear budgets and financial targets. Yuichiro Takahashi: If you separate the membership and conference fee, this would make the membership more stable. Adrian: Although there is a core group of returning members, the PSi membership changes radically from year to year because of its international movement. Separating membership would not only make conference financing complex but would also necessitate PSi running an annual membership drive. This is currently beyond our administrative capacities. 7.2.2: Is it possible to separate the Presidency and the organisation’s administrative base? It seems to be particularly difficult to find an individual who also brings such resources with them. Adrian: It may be possible – but at present, the administration has to be supported by universities. The organisation’s income from membership is not sufficient to support or even partly support an administrative post. A university gains kudos from hosting the PSi Presidency and this is some incentive for universities to support a Presidential office. John Bell: Are there examples of this system elsewhere? John Emigh: The forerunner of ATHE (ATA) broke up because the administrative structure became disengaged from the organisation. Adrian Heathfield: This may in fact create a greater degree of uniformity in the organisation and its conferences: one of the strengths of PSi is that each conference is so different and there are no rigid structures. Jill Lane: ASTR: hires a professional administrator on a part time basis. She has no relationship to any institution, but it means that the administration runs much more smoothly. Josh: Certain administrative tasks can be separated out. For instance, website management is best kept in house, because it builds prestige, while other tasks are better outsourced. Adrian Heathfield: True: the PSi website is hosted independently, and this is liberating – working with institutions can often slow things down, and particularly in relation to websites you encounter additional levels of control. 7.3: Gay McAuley expressed gratitude for the greater degree of transparency evident in Paul Rae’s report on Board nominations, but also requested more in the future. Adrian Heathfield: Yes, this is something the Board is looking at: how to democratise and make more transparent its processes. Paul Rae: Also agreed, but reiterated that the Board’s value lay in each member being committed to the organisation for a period of at least three years. Given the annual turnover of memberships that a peripatetic conference brings about, this represents an important stabilising mechanism. 7.4: A participant: Can we have the AGM on a different day/at a different time? 7.4.1: A participant: This was her first PSi conference, and coming to the AGM at the end of the conference caused her to realise that she had been missing out on the organisational aspect. At future conferences, it would be good to have some welcoming event where people from the Board meet and greet first-time conference goer at the beginning. 7.5: An ATHE Pre-Conference Announcement was made by Jennifer Parker-Starbuck and Josh Abrams APPENDIX A. Present at the meeting [apologies for any spelling errors – typed up from hand-written names]: PSi Board Members Adrian Heathfield - President PSi Members Gwendolyn Alker APPENDIX B PSi #13 Happening/Performance/Event 8th – 11th November 2007 New York University PSi #13, Happening/Performance/Event will look to both performance studies’ history and futurity. The invocation of Happening harkens to the performance practices that emerged from the late 1950’s. That mode of Avante-Garde performance and the critical approach developed by Michael Kirby for describing it are key sites for the origins of Performance Studies. The event has been theorized as an occurrence that is ultimately an interruption that represents the not-yet-imagined new. This conference seeks papers, panels, and performances that consider the happening and the event, and their key relationship to the field of performance studies. Proposals might include: - The relationship between performance and futurity. The conference will be staged in the middle of New York City’s PERFORMA Biennial. PERFORMA is a non-profit interdisciplinary arts organization committed to the research, development, and presentation of performance by visual artists from around the world. The organization is directed by the Performance historian and curator RoseLee Goldberg and mounted the first Performa Exhibition in 2005, a major new Biennial of Visual Art and Performance. PSi #13 will be developed in collaboration with PERFORMA, sitting inside its schedule and aside its numerous performance events across the city of New York. The conference will be hosted by New York University’s Department of Performance Studies and the conference hub will be the newly renovated departmental facilities. Due to a limited amount of space, please note that this year’s conference will have fewer concurrent panels than in years past. Paper and presentation proposals: Proposals for papers and presentations should include a 250-word abstract including your name, affiliation, mailing address, and email address. In addition, please indicate, in advance, what your spatial and technical (including details such as formats and regions of media, laptop set up, etc.) Full-length papers will not be accepted. Panel proposals: All panel proposals should include a 300-word rationale. If you have constituted the members of your panel (usually three speakers), you should include participants' names and contact information. Proposals should be sent to psinternational13@nyu.edu and are due no later than February 1, 2007. APPENDIX C PSi # 14 conference in Copenhagen, August 20-24, 2008 INTERREGNUM: In Between States The PSi conference #14 in 2008 takes place at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. It will represent the collaboration of several institutions in the Øresund region, including the cities Copenhagen and Roskilde in Denmark, and Malmö and Lund in Sweden. PSi conference #14 will seek to expand the field of Performance Studies by including performance and performativity in relationship with visual arts. This interregional and interdisciplinary focus will be captured and developed throughout the conference under the theme of INTERREGNUM. INTERREGNUM is a term designating the exception, traditionally the period in between monarchs, but in a wider sense any state of disorder and discontinuity. INTERREGNUM thus does not only apply to a temporal break, but also to spatial in betweens or terrain vagues as well as to social and psychological states of exception. As a metaphor INTERREGNUM further refers to that which is in between disciplines, that which is interdisciplinary, postdisciplinary or simply ‘undisciplinary’ To investigate INTERREGNUM of our present condition is to ask not about the fixed state of affairs but about the gaps between. INTERREGNUM as a concept will guide the PSi conference and focus attention on the brief moment of instability or surplus that exists between two sets of conditions. We ask what shapes the transition from one phase to another, what initiates a change in perspective and perception. The Organising Committee is a collaboration between University of Copenhagen and five institutions in the region: KIT (Copenhagen International Theatre) and Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen; Roskilde University in the city of Roskilde, Denmark; Lund University in the city of Lund in Sweden, and Malmö Art Academy in the city of Malmö, Sweden. A large number of cultural institutions in the region will be invited to join the conference with various types of artistic as well as academic activities. The city of Copenhagen offers many theatrical venues, museums, exhibition venues and other institutions that will be engaged in activities related to the PSi conference. The same goes for the city of Roskilde, 40 km west of Copenhagen, as well as the cities Malmö and Lund in Sweden. University of Copenhagen Amager Campus is located on the island Amager, which is linked to the city center of Copenhagen with bridges. The campus area is within walking distance of the city center, and there is public transportation (metro and bus). There are several types of accommodation in the area, including two hostels close to the campus as well as more exclusive hotels. There is easy access from Copenhagen Airport Kastrup. For more information contact Conference Directors: APPENDIX D Yuichiro Takahashi’s Undergrad Committee Report and Questionnaire. PSi Undergraduate Subcommittee Inaugurates a Newsletter At the recent PSi #12 Conference at Queen Mary, University of London, the Undergraduate Subcommittee discussed the ways in which we could maintain ongoing dialogues among those who are engaged in teaching performance studies to undergraduates. Currently, we meet once a year at the annual conference; people come and go, and opinions are exchanged, but unfortunately, there are no follow-ups to the valuable discussions we have. The committee has agreed that we should start creating a site at which more vigorous and in-depth discussions can continue. We have decided to begin our work with a simple form of an e-newsletter published on PSi website. And for the first issue, we have decided to hear from those engaged in teaching undergraduates. Some of us work in full-fledged undergraduate performance studies departments. Others of us work in performance studies which are incorporated in an interdisciplinary department. And there are still others of us who work alone in a department not necessarily related to performance studies. We would like to hear about the diversity of approaches that you take in teaching performance studies to undergraduate students. We would also like to hear about the difficulties and challenges that you face. We are hoping that key pedagogical issues will emerge through the publication of newsletters, which can be discussed in future PSi panels and working groups, and in journals and books elsewhere. IF YOU ARE TEACHING UNDERGRADUATES, WE WOULD LIKE TO HEAR WHAT YOUR OBJECTIVES ARE, WHAT YOU DO TO ACHIEVE THOSE OBJECTIVES, AND THE CONCERNS THAT YOU HAVE REGARDING THE CLASSROOM AND/OR IN YOUR INSTITUTIONS. Please submit your voices in a short essay form. The following are some of the questions that we think are relevant. But this is not a questionnaire. You don’t have to answer all of them. Or you may wish to discuss other issues that are more pressing to you. Choose the writing style that you feel most comfortable with. Also welcome are submissions from those who are not directly engaged in teaching undergraduates. SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 31 OCTOBER, 2006 Questions for Undergraduate Performance Studies Committee survey: - In what context do you teach performance studies at your institution? If you are not part of a Performance Studies Department, to which discipline(s) are you affiliated? - What texts do you find most helpful for teaching performance studies? What texts do you think find not so helpful? Why? - What other sources (digital, video, web-based, etc.) do you find most useful in teaching performance studies? - In your classes do you combine the study of performance with performance practices themselves? If so, how do you do this? - How do you generate student interest in performance studies issues? - How do you approach the multi-faceted roots of performance studies in your classes (i.e., the connections to anthropology, sociology, speech communication, theater, and other disciplines)? - How do you deal with the interdisciplinary aspects of performance studies, in terms of the dynamics of your institution? - Who else is part of your performance studies community at your institution? Do others teach in the field, or are you the sole teacher of performance studies? - What kinds of projects do you wish this subcommittee to develop in future? |
University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7HS, UK. Tel: +44 (0)24 7652 3020 - Email: psiadmin@warwick.ac.uk