August 21, 2025, Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal – Flux Festival will co-present an academic conference with the The International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation entitled ‘Performance, Place and Politics: The cultural and activist role of venues and art-spaces’ in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal on October 3-5, 2025. Proposals for the conference are currently being accepted.
Description:
Venues and art-spaces, particularly those that foreground the improvisatory, have a long history as equally serving as sites for community activism, the creation of political solidarities, and the enactment of art-actions with intended political impacts. Such spaces face many challenges, both old and new. The pandemic and simultaneous rise of digital/virtual forms of content creation and dissemination have resulted in fewer artists and audiences attending live events in physical venues. The global rise of conservatism has resulted in both decreased funding for the arts, and increased scrutiny and policing of spaces which code as progressive. At the same time art spaces and venues sometimes suffer from a narrow vision of who constitutes “their” community, even when they consciously wish otherwise.
Audiences for “creative music” skew largely toward being white, male, college educated and cis-gendered, while performances explicitly targeting other communities, may equally discover that their audiences manifest different, but equally homogeneous, identities. While there continues to be good reasons to have artistic spaces that confer a sense of ownership and safety for communities traditionally excluded from mainstream cultural spaces, there is also the danger that the political potentials of cultural spaces are equally diminished by such homogeneity. How can we diversify audiences, not just stages? How can cultural spaces effectively advance causes of social justice? What forms of solidarity across borders of identity and ideology might be needed to collectively push-back against the regressive political forces seemingly on the rise globally? How can networks of progressive cultural spaces be created, sustained and grown even when they each individually may have precise and localised social and political commitments, interests and mandates? At a moment of time when it seems clear that broad and maximally inclusive networks of solidarity are needed to fight against regressive and pernicious political agents and movements, what role can creative spaces play, and how can they contribute to such networks? How can networks of care be created by and for such spaces, so that they can act effectively as agents for positive social change? What tools, both old and emerging, can and should such spaces employ to maximize their transformative potential? To what degree are these local-specific, or transferable to other sites? How can improvisational methods, techniques and theories perhaps aid in achieving these goals, or how might versions of the improvisatory perhaps sediment existing silos and forms of exclusion?
This event will feature a roundtable discussion by an international panel of cultural/political actors representing a wide diversity of venues and spaces, along with events going into greater depth concerning the actions of these organizations. We invite contributions on this broad theme. We also wish to consider improvisational studies as an academic discipline with its varied sites and audiences from a similar perspective. Who are we reaching, who are we excluding? What are the obstacles to garnering a larger and more diverse and inclusive “audience” for scholarship and teaching in this field? What can, and should, we do to make improvisational studies a more welcoming and relevant discipline? How can improvisational studies move from theorizing change to activating it?
Applications:
The Deadline for applications is Aug. 25, 2025. Please send a brief description of your proposed contribution (one page). If a “traditional” talk lecture, it can be the form of an abstract. Please make clear how long a time slot you desire/need. Giving a range is best (e.g. I would like 30 min, but I can do it in 15 or more). If you are proposing a panel, please supply a description and list of panelists. If you are proposing something more practice based, in addition to describing the project, please list all technical needs you might have (AV, room size, etc.)
Please supply cv’s (or equivalent) for all participants. Please include links to any documentation it would be helpful to view.
These materials should be sent to: Please put in subject heading “performance place and politics”.