PRESS RELEASE
EXPLORING THE BORDERLANDS: between performance arts, political theater and academic research.
Vienna – Birmingham
40 Participants from the fields of performance arts, political theater and academic research will meet for a two-day conference at the University of Birmingham, to explore the borderlands between performance arts, political theater and academic research.
The Conference, to be held on Thursday 17th & Friday 18th January 2019 at the Edgbaston Conference Center of the University of Birmingham, will include theoretical and practical plenary sessions as well as small group work, and focus on a project under development: IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, a docu-dance-theater production which aims to shed light on the experiences of Children Born of War.
Heading and hosting this Conference are Prof. Sabine Lee of University of Birmingham (UK) and Darrel Toulon of the alpha group (Austria), who have invited academics from the Universities of Birmingham, Durham, Graz, Leipzig, Vienna and Zürich, as well as directors, writers and presenters from the alpha group (Austria), Cardboard Citizens (UK), and Paradise is Here (Switzerland), among other independent personalities working in international performance spaces, to share their working experiences of working with a view to facilitating a rich and multi-voiced exploration of the nature of collaborations between academic researchers and performance.
Joining the researchers and artistic teams will be representatives and activists of the Association for Forgotten Children Born of War (Bosnia and Herzegovina), as well as some of these children themselves who will contribute to discussions about the boundaries between facts, fiction, testimony and authenticity in art, and the social and emotional aspects and responsibilities inherent to participatory artistic projects. Among those NGOs represented are Peace Research Institute Oslo PRIO (Norway), Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on Consequences of War (Austria),and the Association for Helping Victims and Survivors of Sexual Violence in War (Bosnia and Herzegovina).
The Programme will include plenary Panel Discussions, Key-Note presentations, provocations, interventions, and participative sessions facilitating intersectoral and interdisciplinary communications with the aim of identifying opportunities and challenges of knowledge translation by bringing together the perspectives of academics, artists, producers, and those considering the impacts of creative and cultural transmissions.
The Conference is jointly organized by University of Birmingham (UK), Children Born of War Innovative Training Network, and the alpha group (Austria), with support from AVL List Cultural Foundation (Austria), and the Austrian Cultural Forum London.
This project has also received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 642571.
Sabine Lee
Professor of Modern History at the University of Birmingham. Sabine’s current research is mainly concerned with the social consequences of war. A focus has been gender-based violence in war and children born of war, that is children fathered by foreign soldiers and born to local mothers in conflict and post-conflict situations. She is currently coordinator of CHIBOW,an international interdisciplinary and intersectoral network on Children Born of War and PI on an AHRC-funded network and research project on peacekeeper fathered children in Haiti. She has published widely in the social consequences of conflict. Her most recent book Children Born of War in the 20thCentury (Manchester University Press, 2017) focusses on the experiences of children fathered by foreign soldiers and born to local mothers in diverse 20thcentury conflicts.
Darrel Toulon
Founding Artistic Director of the alpha group. Darrel attended the United World of the Atlantic and Central School of Ballet in London. From 2001 until 2015 Ballet Director at Opera Graz, creating dance and interdisciplinary works for Opera Graz, National Theater Maribor, Slovak Dance Theater, National Ballet Pristina, Zurich University of the Arts, and Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna. Lecturer for Musik Dramatische Analyse at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz and currently teaches Classical Ballet for Contemporary Dancers at Bruckner University in Linz. Awarded the Austrian Dance Productions Special Prize in 2002, and the Goldene Ehrenzeichen des Landes Steiermarkin 2016.
Academics from
Durham University (UK),
Karl-Franzen’s-University Graz (Austria)
University of Birmingham (UK)
University of Graz(Austria)
University of Leipzig (Germany)
University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna
University of Vienna (Austria)
Zurich University of Arts ZHdK. (Slovenia)
Artistic Practitioners from
AVL Cultural Foundation (Austria)
Cardboard Citizens Theatre Company (UK)
Cultura i Conflicte (Spain)
Director Vardo Films (UK, Norway, India)
Hamakom Theater Vienna (Austria).
Paradise is Here (Switzerland)
Saxon State Officefor the Performing Arts Dresden LDKS (Germany)
the alpha group (Austria)
NGO and other
Association for Forgotten Children of War (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Association for Helping Victims and Survivors of Sexual Violence in War,(Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Austrian UNESCO Commission (Austria)
Children Born of War Innovative Training Network CHIBOW
Inkontra (Austria)
Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on Consequences of War, (Austria)
Peace Research Institute Oslo PRIO (Norway)
