Advisory board
Internal scientific committee: Johan Braeckman, Helena De Preester, Rudi Laermans, Marc Leman, Frederik Le Roy, Katharina Pewny, Aneta Stojnic, Jean-Paul Van Bendegem
International scientific committee: Maaike Bleeker, Laura Cull, Marina Gržinić, Marie Kruger, Bojana Kunst, Kim Vincs.
Organising committee
Christel Stalpaert, Laura Karreman, Kristof van Baarle and Pieter Vermeulen.
Research Centre S:PAM – Studies of Performing Arts & Media / Department of Art, Music and Theatre Studies, Ghent University, Belgium
Christel Stalpaert is Professor Theatre, Performance and Media Studies at Ghent University (Belgium) where she is director of the research centres S:PAM (Studies in Performing Arts and Media) and PEPPER (Philosophy, Ethology, Politics and performance). Her main areas of research are the performing arts, dance and the new media at the meeting-point of philosophy. She has contributed to many journals such as Performance Research, Text & Performance Quarterly, Contemporary Theatre Review and Dance Research Journal and edited works such as Deleuze revisited: Contemporary Performing Arts and the Ruin of Representation (2003), No Beauty for Me There Where Human Life is Rare: on Jan Lauwers’ Theatre Work with Needcompany (2007) and Bastard or Playmate? Adapting Theatre, Mutating Media and the Contemporary Performing Arts (2012). She is editor in chief of Documenta, Studies in Performing Arts and Film (Academia Press Ghent) and member of the editorial board of Theater Topics (Amsterdam University Press). She is currently finishing her book on Performing Violent Conflicts and Traumas. Towards an Embodied Poetics of Failure.
Laura Karreman is a PhD fellow of Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) under the supervision of Christel Stalpaert at the research centre Studies of Performing Arts & Media (S:PAM) at Ghent University, Belgium. She is working on a research project that examines the impact of digital technologies like motion capture on practices of dance transmission. As part of this project she also studied the ‘culture of transmission’ of the performance Rosas danst Rosas over several generations of dancers at the Belgian dance company Rosas. She has presented papers at several international conferences such as Performance Studies international, IFTR and SIBMAS, and she participated in the Mellon Dance Studies Summer Seminar at Stanford University. Laura received a Research MA degree in Art Studies at the University of Amsterdam, where she wrote a thesis on the use of body metaphors in performance, and a BA Theatre, Film and Television studies at Utrecht University. She worked as a dramaturg and researcher in the Dutch art field and she was performing arts advisor for the Amsterdam Art Fund. She taught at the honours programme of ArtEZ Institute for the Arts in Arnhem and was research and teaching assistant at the Theatre Studies department of Utrecht University.
Kristof van Baarle holds MA degrees from Ghent University (Art studies) and the University of Antwerp (Theatre Studies). Since 2013 he is a research scholar at Ghent University with a Ph. D. fellowship of the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO). His research focusses on critical posthumanism, Giorgio Agamben and Kris Verdonck. A fundamental repositioning of the human and a search in different ways to deal with the performativity of objects in the performing arts are two key research lines in his work, within the frame of an ontological-epistemological posthumanism drawing on Giorgio Agamben. Kristof has published about these topics in several journals (DOCUMENTA, Performance Research, Etcetera …) and book chapters. He also works as a dramaturge for Kris Verdonck/ A Two Dogs Company and is an editor of the Belgian theatre journal Etcetera.
Pieter Vermeulen (BE, 1983) is an independent curator and researcher. He studied Philosophy and Cultural Studies and held a position of guest professor in Philosophy and Philosophy of Art at University College Ghent – Faculty of Music and Faculty of Fine Arts (KASK). He is currently course director & lecturer at the Master of Research in Art & Design at St Lucas University College in Antwerp (BE), research assistant at Ghent University (S:PAM – Studies in Performing Arts & Media) and freelance curator and art critic. As both a curator and theorist, Pieter set up exhibition projects such as Fantastic Illusions. Die Sehnsucht im Bild zu Sein (MOCA Shanghai/Buda Kortrijk, 2009), Resonance (Bund18/World Expo 2010 – Belgian Pavilion, Shanghai), Uncommonplaces (Extra City Antwerp, 2011), Façades (BE-PART Waregem, 2012), Perpetual Travellers (SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, 2013), Wild Horses & Trojan Dreams (Marres House for Contemporary Culture, Maastricht, 2013), The Ship of Fools (Museum of Post-Digital Cultures, 2014) and The Cloud of Unknowing (La Cambre, Brussels, 2015). He participated in ICI’s Curatorial Intensive in New York City (2010) and was a curatorial resident at Vessel in Italy (2011). He moderated and co-/organized different international conferences and has articles published in many exhibition catalogues. Pieter is also active as a curator for De Nieuwe Opdrachtgevers (The New Patrons), providing professional guidance for public art commissions, as a co-founder & curator of POPPOSITIONS (off-fair Art Brussels since 2012), co-founder of the BORG biennial (Antwerp), as an editor for the contemporary art magazine ‘this is tomorrow’ (Belgium) and a regular contributor for several magazines.