ICTS26: Memory, Archives, and Local Mythologies in the Age of Artistic Hybridization
Call for Participation
The 27th International Conference of Theatre Studies, University of Arts Târgu Mureș
"Memory, Archives, and Local Mythologies in the Age of Artistic Hybridization"
While the performing arts have always contributed to the the transmission and reinterpretation of the collective memory and the community mythologies, contemporary performative practices invite us to reconsider this function in the context of increasingly artistic language hybridization. The integration of archival materials, testimonies, and body experiences into intermedial devices and other cutting-edge stage formulas raises new questions regarding the relationship between the shared past and its stage adaptation, the tension between the authentic and the fictional, and the role of the performance in shaping, negotiating or challenging cultural identities.
Thus, memory is no merely a displayed content, nor is the archive simply a repository of traces of the past. Images, sounds, gestures, bodies, individual or collective experiences become the material for dramaturgical, musical or choreographic compositions. In turn, the representation can produce new forms of documentation, testimony and collective memory to the point where the artistic gesture influences the perception of the reality it evokes. In this regard, the conference invites the artists and researchers in theatre, music and other art fields to consider the following questions: Is the encounter between different artistic languages merely a way of representing the past, or does it transform the process through which it is remembered and reinterpreted? What does an archive recording become when sampled or quoted into a composition or into an intermedial performance? How might a fictional production acquire the authority of a collective memory and contribute to the formation of new local mythologies? How do opera and musical theatre draw and reshape the local mythologies and what strategies make this process possible? How are such mythologies reinvented in the context of festivals, cultural tourism and heritage policies and where is the line drawn between revitalization and folklorisation? What happens to the myth in the multicultural spaces, where the shared geography carries different stories for each community and how can the stage become a place of encounter or confrontation? Finally, does the art of today still contribute to the re-sacralisation of myth or to its critical demythologisation?
The conference will take place on-site and online at the University of Arts Târgu Mureș on December 10-11, 2026. The working languages are Romanian, Hungarian, English and Frech. Papers selected through peer review will be published in the Symbolon journal (symbolon.ro), indexed in several academic databases, including ERIH PLUS.
Specialists, doctoral researchers and arts practitioners and invited submit their proposals by November, 30, 2026 by using the Registration From https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScHetFyxAR6Qp2sARqBg-e6RWs93ML2n1GEiV572ADx6zSl2Q/viewform , which will include the paper title, the abstract and a short bio in English.
Additional information can be requested via email at conference@uat.ro
Website: http://uartpress.ro/journals/index.php/symbolon/pages/ICTS26
