Welcome messages
It is my pleasure to invite you to attend Encuentro, the 8th edition of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics’ festival, which Concordia University will host June 21 to 28, 2014.
As Canada’s leading arts university, we are the first Canadian institution to host this international event — part academic conference, part performance festival. And the theme of this year’s event — Manifest! Choreographing Social Movement in America — is appropriate for Concordia, where much of our research and creative practice focuses on how political ideas are transformed into artistic performances and real-world action.
Encuentro is a wonderful opportunity to showcase the creativity and work of Concordia researchers, professors and students. I encourage you to seek encounters with the 700 delegates during their week in Montreal, in the festival’s working groups, exhibitions and public performances.
Thank you to the organizing committees, including those at Concordia, for their hard work to make this conference a reality.
I wish everyone involved with the conference great success.
Alan Shepard
President
Concordia University
I am pleased to announce that Concordia University will host the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics’ Encuentro conference in June of 2014. The 8th edition of this biennial event marks the first time that a Canadian university will play host to the Encuentro, and only the second time it will be held outside of Latin America since its inception in 2000.
Why is Concordia hosting this prestigious event? Montreal is a cultural hub in the Americas, one of the world's great creative cities, and Concordia is major contributor to that success and reputation. Not only are Concordia faculty and students vital players in Montreal’s arts community, but our performance studies and creative practices, including our engagement with First Nations populations also make this partnership with the Hemispheric Institute a natural fit.
In the spirit of collaboration, Concordia is partnering with the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba to bring researchers and graduate students from across the country to Montreal for this event.
We look forward to welcoming Encuentro delegates to our campus next summer so that they can discover the energy, creativity and dynamism of our city and campus.
Graham Carr
Vice President, Research and Graduate Studies – Concordia University
I am pleased to announce that Concordia will be the first Canadian university to host the Encuentro – a biennial gathering of international artists, activists and scholars, founded and organized by the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, based at New York University.
Each Encuentro consists of a weeklong series of intimate meetings – work groups, workshops, performances, keynotes, and round table discussions – that focus on building north-south connections. The theme of the 2014 Encuentro, MANIFEST! Choreographing Social Movements in the Americas, will afford performance researchers from across a broad spectrum of Concordia’s academic programs in fine arts and the humanities, as well as from across the Montreal and Canadian university communities, a chance to come together and exchange ideas, strategies, and art works created across the spheres of academia, the arts, and activist communities by colleagues from across the Americas.
Concordia is now an institutional member of the Hemispheric Institute, and the results of this partnership will last far beyond June 2014. Encuentro 2014 is also the first project to receive major support from the Canadian Consortium for Performance and Politics in the Americas, a new partnership of researchers and collaborating artists from across the nation, based at the University of Manitoba. The Consortium’s first declared long-term project will be the building of an online, accessible, and permanent digital video archive of Canadian performance, sure to be a valuable tool for future performance researchers.
Although Encuentros are primarily not public events, we will be offering the public multiple windows into the gathering. Members of the Concordia community and the greater Montreal area are invited to a performance of “Gemelos,” a haunting, theatrically novel story of endurance in the face of want and neglect, from the Chilean troupe Compañía Teatro Cinema (Théâtre Outremont, June 20), as well as to art exhibitions on campus and screenings by Concordia’s own Cinema Politica. Watch this space for a schedule of open events and exhibitions taking place during the Encuentro, June 21 to 28, 2014.
Mark Sussman
Associate Dean, Academic and Student Affairs, Faculty of Fine Arts – Concordia University
