Performing the Future

Under the motto “Performing the Future,” the conference has two goals: first, the theory developed thus far in the area of research on performativity will be examined with an eye to the possibilities of further development; second, the production of the future will be studied as a specific dimension of the effect of performance.

If performative processes produce anything, overwhelmingly they do so in a dual sense: not only active production but also letting things happen. Again and again, performative processes feature unplanned, unforeseen elements, which seem to escape the individuals’ control and powers of disposal. Wherein lies the transformative power, the specific energeia of the performative, and how can it be more precisely described and grasped?

Which aspects and factors can establish a new direction for performative processes and take them in unplanned, perhaps even unsuspected directions? Furthermore, structures of globalization are just as inherent here as the constants of the dominant pictures of the world that should be called into question.

With
Judith Butler, Jacques Attali, Johannes Fabian, Bruce Kapferer, George E. Marcus, Gottfried Boehm (tbc), Jon McKenzie (tbc), José Esteban Muñoz, Hans-Jorg Rheinberger, Irit Rogoff, Elaine Scarry

In collaboration with the interdisciplinary research project „Kulturen des Performativen“ , Freie Universität Berlin.