Addiction and Performance: the New Normal?

Liverpool Hope University is organising an joint conference with Kingston University, to explore the connections between addiction and performance.

The conference, which takes place at Kingston University from 4th-5th April, brings together world-leading research and cutting-edge arts practice, in an interdisciplinary, international conference that explores the connections between addiction and performance.

This conference aims to explore questions such as why drugs, addicts, and addictions appear so frequently in performance? Why are substances, users and dependency employed as devices in different kinds of narratives, across eras, genres and art forms, borders and identities? How do such works use representation to trouble the problematic term 'addiction' and its negative associations with mental illness, criminality, and disorder?

By bringing together leading researchers with performers, applied theatre practitioners, and therapeutic professionals working with arts-based treatments, this conference articulates vital, new strategies capable of investigating and tackling this multifaceted field.

Addiction is ubiquitous in culture, from novels to newspapers, and relevant at every level of decision-making from the geopolitical to the individual. The number of UK gambling addicts has almost reached 500,000; there are over a million hospitalisations due to alcohol misuse every year – and the numbers are rising. It could even be argued that addiction has become a paradigm.

For more information click the link below:
http://fass.kingston.ac.uk/activities/item.php?updatenum=1930