About Conference

Performance and performativity are central to how communities stage, sustain, and see their worlds. They work as vessels that allow the fashioning of identities and the rites that forge arenas for memory, negotiation, and transformation. Often described as an elusive spectre, indigeneity provides one crucial lens for understanding the twin dynamics of these concepts. Conventionally, indigeneity has been understood as the historical identity of communities rooted in specific geographies and as guardians of knowledge systems that contest dominant discourses. More recent scholarship instead emphasises indigeneity as fluid and performative. As Taiaiake Alf red and Jeff Corntassel observe, “being Indigenous means thinking, speaking and acting with the conscious intent of regenerating one’s indigeneity”. Approaching performances of indigeneity from this perspective opens up various forms of indigenous self-representation, including music, dance, rituals and drama, and visual arts.

At the same time, performance and performativity extend well beyond Indigenous contexts. They shape popular cinema, sports, heritage tourism, museum practices, digital media, and everyday acts of social belonging. These varied practices showcase how cultural memory is continuously rehearsed, revealing the braided narratives of politics, aesthetics and identity. Here, performance functions – as Helen Gilbert reminds us – as an “analytical tool” for understanding the evolution of cultural identities across centuries. This conference seeks to foster interdisciplinary dialogue between performance as embodied practice and performativity as a broader cultural process. It aims to map new approaches to cultural memory across Indigenous and nonIndigenous worlds, while also providing a platform for networking among scholars, artists and practitioners. With the objective of exploring how Indigenous or non-Indigenous worlds are “performed,” and how performances and performativity serve as key modes for navigating identity, belonging, and resistance, the conference welcomes submissions for paper presentations for the following two tracks: