CONVENERS
Rachel Bowditch (MA/PhD) is Associate Professor at Arizona State University. She focuses on festivals, utopia, and experimental performance. Her book On the Edge of Utopia: Performance and Ritual at Burning Man was published as part of the Enactments Series (Seagull Press/University of Chicago Press). Her second book Performing Utopia will be out in 2016. rachelbowditch.com; vesselproject.org
Zeca Ligiéro has a PhD in Performance Studies from NYU and two post-doctorate degrees from Yale University and Paris 8. He is tenured professor at Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro and coordinates the Núcleo de Estudos das Performances Afro-Ameríndias. He has directed works including Povo de Rua and Desabrigo, by Antonio Fraga. He is author of Initiation into Candomblé: Introduction to African-Brazilian Religion and Augusto Boal: Arte, Pedagogia e Política, among many others.
Milla Riggio, James J. Goodwin Professor of English at Trinity College received her Ph.D. from Harvard University. She is focused on Trinidad Carnival and culture. Among her edited books and monographs are Ta`ziyeh: Ritual and Drama in Iran; The Play of Wisdom: Its Text and Contexts and Teaching Shakespeare through Performance. She has also written on Hindu Ramleela performances in Trinidad.
Paolo Vignolo, associate professor at the National University of Colombia, works on public history and memory studies. Both his publications and his artistic projects focus on: 1) poetics, politics and practices of play and festive performance and 2) cultural heritage, cultural rights and cultural agents. unal.academia.edu/PaoloVignolo
LOCATIONS
7/18 – 7/20: H301, Tecnoaulas FEN
7/22: B24 FAU
DESCRIPTIONS
Excess is a crucial aspect of many carnivals and popular fiestas in the Americas. The etymology of the term (from the latin ex “outside” + cedere “to go, to cede”) reminds us of its intimate relationship with the eccentric, in so far as it evokes a longing to go beyond that transcends, disturbs and exceeds the individual subject and social norms. At the same time, this takes us to the question—crucial for every festive practice—of the handling of excess. The potlatch and the sacred debauchery, the rituals of giving and receiving, the clashes between moral economies and capitalist expansion, the cycles of prosperity and destitution, the diasporic wanderings of ancestral traditions—, all account for the aporia of carnival/fiesta, where excess is also the government of excess, exuberance tests its limits, and the extravagant is at the heart of the familiar.
We are interested in proposals that question the excessive character of carnival aesthetics and economies—, seeking the creases, the gray zones, the porous and unsettled borders that allow for alterations and alternatives, dissidences and subversions, which to radically question the anthropological gaze of an homo economicus obsessed with accumulation and scarcity, and the social outlook of a status quo based on the laws of supply and demand.