Studies in Performing Arts & Media (S:PAM)

Research tracks

S:PAM (Studies in Performing Arts & Media) is an interdisciplinary research centre at Ghent University, led by professors Christel Stalpaert and Bram Van Oostveldt. It gathers researchers from various fields of study dealing with the topic of theatre, performance, dance and media art.

S:PAM conducts and stimulates state of the art research from a historical, intermedial and crosscultural perspective. It seeks to explore new methodologies and research interests in the study of historical and contemporary Performing Arts & Media, questioning their societal, cultural and artistic impact. S:PAM includes and combines theoretical and practice-based research. It is firmly embedded in the lively performing arts scene in Flanders and beyond. 

Research at S:PAM is clustered around four main focuses: Technologies, Ecologies, Histories, and Practices. 

Ecologies

Etymologically, the term ecology combines the Greek words oikos, meaning house or dwelling place, and lógos, meaning reason, or study. This research track connects environmental thinking with notions of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’. It connects the environmental with a reflection on the psychic production of subjectivity and on social relations. As such, gender and postcolonial perspectives are an inherent part of this ecological research track. Main research questions in this research track are: What is the place of performing arts & media in our current changing society? How do performances deal with the complexity of current ecological challenges, such as migration and climate change?

 

The ongoing research in this cluster deals with the following topics:

  • Trauma narration
  • Migration
  • Ecocriticism and ecoperformances 
  • Activism and resistance

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Histories

This research track explores new directions in historical research and historiographies to expand our knowledge of the history of the performing arts in the West and beyond. It looks at the interconnections of the performing arts with the visual arts and visual culture, contextualizing them within larger intellectual, socio-political and intercultural contexts. Main points of interest are the European performing arts in the early modern period (until 1800) and their relation to the visual arts and their theoretical reflection (poetics, rhetoric and aesthetics). For the modern period (from 1800 onwards) we focus on their interaction with new media (photography, cinema, audiovisual media, etc) as part of innovative artistic processes in the historical avant-garde and in popular culture. Given the current interest in gender and postcolonialism S:PAM encourages research in how the early modern and modern performing arts & media contributed to the construction of gender roles and stereotypical images of the Non-West.

 

The ongoing research in this cluster deals with the following topics:

  • Performing arts and visual culture
  • Performing Arts and Early Modern Historical concepts
  • Spectacle and popular culture
  • (Historical) Dramaturgies 

 

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Affiliated Research:

Technologies

The development of photography and cinema has marked an era of technical reproduction and has consequently challenged formerly accepted artistic criteria. S:PAM not only investigates the impact of modern and new media on the performing arts, but considers it one of its core challenges to study the intermedial and interartistic consequences of these new procedures. Key questions deal with how different media may or may not transform each other, how the invention of new technologies influences our visual culture and our conception of the body, and how performances stage these media. 

The ongoing research in this cluster deals with the following topics:

  • Visual Strategies of Media-Archeology
  • Posthumanism
  • Critique on Occularcentrism
  • Sound and Silence
  • Social Media Stages

     

    Ongoing Research Projects:

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    Completed Research Projects:

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    Practices

    This research track explores an experimental, dramaturgical or documentary perspective on creative processes. Such a phenomenological or speculative approach leads not only to a reflection on one’s place in a creative process, but also on one’s place in an academic field. As such, notions of ‘researcher-as-dramaturg’, ‘dramaturg-as-researcher’ and ‘practice as research’ are studied. 

    The notion of practice as research was developed from 2012 onwards, when, the first PhDs in the Arts were awarded as a result of the institutional collaboration between Ghent University and KASK & Conservatory. In a PhD in the Arts, an artist or designer develops and expands upon a research project within one’s own artistic practice. 

    The ongoing research in this cluster deals with the following topics:

    • practice as research
    • dramaturgies

     

      Ongoing (Post)doctoral Research:

        Completed (Post)doctoral Research: