“DOUBLE DIALOGUES”
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
WHY DO THINGS BREAK?
NEW YORK CITY
April 20 – 22, 2017
CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS
We invite you to consider: why do things break, fall apart, fall down, disintegrate, splinter, corrode,
degenerate, or devolve?
Think: break out, break into, break up, break around, break from, break down.
Think: families, relationships, institutions, communities, buildings, walls and boundaries.
Think: ideological contexts – political, economic, religious, ethical, intellectual, historical, social,
sexual, artistic movements or revolutions.
Think: settler histories, decolonization, indigenous cultures, and/or diasporic alliances.
This conference is open to academics and artists to present within one artform or discipline alone,
or across several artforms and disciplines, either alone or in collaboration with colleagues. For
instance, you may wish to present a paper alone or with others, or a paper in dialogue with a work
of art. You might simply read a poem or display still or moving visual images or perform a
theatrical monologue. Or you might work collaboratively in multiple artforms, for example, by
reading a poem related to ‘Why Do Things Break?’ accompanied by a dance or by still or moving
images; a performance or enactment accompanied by music or lighting or installation; or even a
scene from a play pitted against a short story or a director’s running commentary.
Background Note:
In October 2016, Double Dialogues (http://www.doubledialgues.com) in conjunction with the J.M.
Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, The University of Adelaide, celebrated twenty years of
Double Dialogues with an event at the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice on “Creativity:
Why Do Things Break?” The 2017 event is an extension of this earlier event and is being held at a
New York City venue designed to attract international participation.
WHERE:
WHEN:
THE NATIONAL OPERA CENTER, 330 7th AVENUE, NEW YORK
THURSDAY TO SATURDAY, 20, 21, 22 APRIL 2017
SUBMISSIONS: Due 15 March, 2017
Please provide:
[1] A 250-word (maximum) overview/abstract of your proposed presentation. The maximum time
limit is 20 minutes, but shorter presentations are also possible.
[2] Brief bio-data (about 75 words).
[3] Please send your overview/abstract to [email protected]
If you wish to discuss your presentation further, please contact Dr Paul Monaghan
([email protected]) or Dr Pavlina Radia ([email protected]).
REGISTRATION:
$US 220.00 (individual presentation)
$US 330.00 (group presentation)
REGISTRATION DUE:
17 March 2017 [Payment details provided to successful applicants]
Ideas for Embracing the Theme of
‘Why Do Things Break?’
In writing or presenting a paper or creative piece, you may be engaging directly or indirectly with
the creative process itself, as Ted Hughes does in “The Thought Fox” (available at
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/thought-fox). Discussions may probe the following kinds of
questions, for example:
* Why do artforms change or break in the arts across time?
* To what extent do shifts in subject-matter break and restructure creative techniques?
* What is the role of thought and feeling in shaping/breaking/dissolving artistic forms?
* How does the subversion of prevailing artistic ideals or standards shape / break / dissolve artistic
practice?
* What about the act of breaking? Do we make broken things or are they just broken? And who is
the ‘we’ that makes and breaks?
* What forces drive the world’s relentless breaking? What makes us broken and what breaks the
things we make?
* Why do civilizations and Empires break?
How others have considered the question ‘Why do things break?’
* “The shell must break before the bird can fly.” [Alfred Tennyson]
* “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” [W. B. Yeats]
*“I broke something today and I realized I should break something once a week…to
remind me how fragile life is.” [Andy Warhol]
* “Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.”
[Horace Mann]
*”Everything breaks, everything is joined anew.” [Friedrich Nietzsche]
* “Principle of asignifying rupture:…A rhizome may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will
start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines.” [Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari]
* “Since the Second World War wars of independence and struggles for decolonization by former
parts of European empires have shown us that attempts to break free can involve enormous
violence: physical, social, economic, cultural and psychological.” [Linda Tuhiwai Smith]
* “Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be breakthrough.” [R.D. Laing]
* “A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of…art provided you had mastered them
first.” [Reinhold Niebuhr]
* “Easy to break the mirror; less easy to see oneself.” [Charles de Leusse]
* “When the frames of war break up or break open, when the trace of lives is apprehended at the
margin of what appears or as riddling its surface, then frames unwittingly establish a grievable
population despite a prevalent interdiction, and there emerges the possibility of a critical outrage,
war stands the chance of missing its mark.” [Judith Butler]
Publication
Double Dialogues conferences are typically followed by contributions to our two online journals,
Double Dialogues and In/Stead, and a thematic book of essays.
Convenors
Emerita Prof Ann McCulloch, Executive Editor: Double Dialogues, Deakin University
Kari Lyon, New York Co-Convenor
Drs Paul Monaghan & Pavlina Radia, North American Co-Convenors, Nipissing University
Dr R.A. Goodrich, Co-Editor & Co-Convenor, University of Melbourne
Dr Tony Hood: Co-Editor & Project and Web Producer
Dr Dominique Hecq, Co-Editor, Independent Scholar and Writer
Prof. Jennifer Rutherford, Director, J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, The University of
Adelaide