PS.CONFERENCE 2014 | Introduction by Cosmin Costinas and Ana Janevski

Para Site is proud to present Is the Living Body the Last Thing Left Alive? The new performance turn, its histories and its institutions. The 2014 edition of Para Site’s International Conference is a major international forum discussing the renewed encounter between dance and performance and the institutions of global contemporary art, marking one of the most significant set of developments in the art field over the last decade.

The past twenty years have seen contemporary dance emerging as a new field of discourse and thinking. While writing within and about these developments is still in its infancy, this scene has produced some of the most powerful works of our times, reflecting the major intellectual directions and the changes in the world over these decades. More recently, dance and performance have entered the institutional realm of contemporary art, with more artists working in and around these disciplines, and with more museums, art centers and biennials considering how to deepen their commitments to performance. While these are global phenomena, the resources needed to mobilize such processes (and the sheer budgets for many dance productions) mean that they are primarily visible in the centers of cultural power around the world. However, a loosely related history of performance art as a category of visual art has been written for a longer period of time, and it is composed of multiple, fragmentary and geographically dispersed stories, many of them marking older turning points in their respective contexts, be it around the 1950s in Japan, 1960s and 1970s throughout Latin America and Eastern Europe, 1980s in China, or the 1990s in parts of South East Asia and Eastern Europe. This conference attempts to look at these interconnected stories, and in the process to point out and to extend the boundaries of what is possible in the paradigm of art and performance today.

The conference is free of charge to the public. Live streaming is available at Para Site’s website.

Is the Living Body the Last Thing Left Alive? is co-conceived by Cosmin Costinas and Ana Janevski.

The International Conference 2014 is a Para Site project, co-presented by Asia Society Hong Kong Center.

Sponsored by Orientations Magazine

Para Site 隆重呈獻2014年國際研討會「Is the Living Body the Last Thing Left Alive? The new performance turn, its histories and its institutions」（歷劫餘生唯人體？行為藝術的新轉化、歷史及相關機構）。是次研討會是一個重要的國際論壇，討論過去十年間藝術界其中一個最顯著的發展：舞蹈、行為藝術和全球當代藝術機構的再度相遇。

過去二十年，當代舞蹈明顯成為一個新興的討論話題和思考領域。儘管相關發展的論著仍然處於萌芽階段，這個現象已孕育出好些當代最有力量的作品，這些作品有力地反映著數十年來知識產權的主要方向以及世上種種變遷。近年，舞蹈和行為藝術已經進入當代藝術的體制領域，更多藝術家以此為創作媒介，也有更多博物館、藝術中心和雙年展正思考如何更重視行為藝術。以上種種都是全球現象，而推動這些進程所需的資源（以及不少舞蹈演出的經費預算）就意味著它們在全球文化權力中心引人注目。可是，長久以來，行為藝術的歷史一直被人以「勉強稱為視覺藝術」的分類來紀錄，史料由無數分散各地的零碎故事組成，不少故事均在其地理背境裡標誌著一些較舊的轉捩點，例如五十年代的日本、六十至七十年來的拉丁美洲和東歐，八十年代的中國，或九十年來的東南亞和東歐的某些地方等。是次研討會嘗試探索這些相互關聯的故事，指出並延伸今天藝術和行為藝術展演形式的規限和可能性。

研討會免費入場，並備即時網上直播。

本研討會由 Cosmin Costinas 及 Ana Janevski 共同構思。

國際研討會2014是 Para Site 項目之一，與亞洲協會香港中心合辦。

本研討會由 Orientations Magazine 慷慨贊助。