GHostings 11 and 12 - Call for submissions

GHost-dance: ghosts as cultural and political movement

GHost Hostings 11 and 12 a call for submissions

Call for papers, presentations, performance and dance for an interdisciplinary seminar and performance event – the so-called 'GHost Hostings'.   Hostings 11 and 12 take the GHost project's research in a new direction. 

Deadline for submissions – March 16th

The Hostings are supported by the Centre for Performance at CSM, University of the Arts.

Venue:  CSM, University of the Arts, Granary Building, 1 Granary Square, London, N1C 4AA

Dates:        17th April, 6pm - 9pm – LVMH Lecture Theatre

                   21st May, 6pm – 9pm – Studio Theatre (dance and performance space)

“Standing on the hill where so many people were buried in a common grave, standing there in that cold darkness under the stars, I felt tears running down my face. I can’t describe what I felt. I heard the voices of the long-dead ghost dancers crying out to us.”

(Leonard Crow Dog, during the American Indian Movement’s occupation of Wounded Knee, 1973).

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, self proclaimed prophet Wovoka, of the Paiute people, became the figure-head for the Ghost Dance - a religious movement adopted by a significant number of the Native American Nations. Central to this belief was a communal ritualised dance, inducing a trance state, in which it was believed the souls of the dead and living would be reunited and their land returned to them. In the 1970s the Ghost Dance was revived as part of the Red Power Movement, with the activists group AIM (American Indian Movement) at its forefront, fighting for Native American civil rights. The ghost in the Ghost Dance was a revitalising force for a people whose land and loved ones had been taken from them and who were facing cultural genocide.

The Spiritualist movement in nineteenth century U.S.A provided a forum in which women, whose role in society was very much surpressed, could give voice to their opinions in a public arena. Appeals for women’s emancipation and the abolition of slavery could be expressed under the guise of a ghost voice, allegedly channelled through the medium.

At the same time in Europe, in the opening sentences of Marx and Engle’s Communist Manifesto, “A Spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of Communism.” Communism could be said to have been conceptualised as a powerful ghostly presence, waiting to materialise and take shape within the living as a force for revolutionary change.

GHost is seeking proposals for thirty minute papers, performances, performative presentations, contemporary or traditional dance and ritual performance encompassing all disciplines and fields of interest.

Submissions may address, but not be restricted to, one or more of the following:

·Ghosts as a political or cultural voice within marginalised or disenfranchised communities.

·The embodying of ghosts within ritual and performance to instigate socio-cultural or political change.

·Ghosts as a healing and unifying presence within marginalised cultural groups or genders.

·The appropriation of the ghost-dance, and other forms of spirit–possession, within contemporary art.

·The ghost narrative as a political device within rhetoric, writing, film, visual art or popular culture (fiction and non-fiction).

Please send a (working) title and an abstract of approximately 300 - 400 words, a brief biography and, if applicable, a couple of photographs or links to film clips documenting your performance or dance.

Please send submissions to Sarah Sparkes and Aldworth Howard at:

ghost.hostings@gmail.com

www.ghosthostings.co.uk

www.host-a-ghost.blogspot.com