23-24 October 2025
School of Education
Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo
Viana do Castelo, Portugal

Convenor: Frederico Dinis (ESE-IPVC, ID+)

The Performativity(ies) of Memory(ies) Interdisciplinary Conference invites artists, researchers, and academics from around the world to engage in a critical dialogue on the intersections between performativity and memory. The event is organized by the School of Education of the Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo and the Research Institute for Design Media and Culture (ID+), in cooperation with the Polytechnic University of Cávado and Ave.

This year’s edition will feature keynote lectures by Eleni Ikoniadou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece), Laura Castro (Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Portugal), Leonor Areal (NOVA University, Portugal), and Sarah Bay-Cheng (University of Toronto, Canada). Complementing the talks, the conference will also present artistic performances by cody.xv and Patrícia Oliveira, alongside paper sessions from 70 authors representing 25 countries.

Since J.L. Austin’s landmark William James Lectures in 1955, the concept of performativity has shaped critical thinking across diverse fields, from linguistics and philosophy to theatre, gender studies, and media studies. Today, in the era of new media, performativity emerges in hybrid and often unexpected forms, inviting fresh theoretical and artistic perspectives.

Memory, likewise, remains a central concern in the study of how individuals and communities shape their identities. From collective memory (Halbwachs) to memory theatres (Banu), embodied memory (Taylor), and memory as an ongoing performative act (Schneider), theories of memory have explored the fluid space between past and present, private and public, individual and collective. Through artistic and cultural practices, memory takes on performative force—producing presences, amplifying emotions, and creating new materialities through both embodied encounters and technological mediation.

The Performativity(ies) of Memory(ies) Interdisciplinary Conference will address memory in contemporary creation through three key dimensions:

• Memory and the creative process: how memory shapes and is shaped by artistic research.
• Memory as a space in construction: bodies, texts, sounds, images, and narratives as sites of memory-making.
• The politics of memory: how contemporary societies and artistic practices negotiate remembrance and forgetting.

By bringing together an international community of scholars and artists, the conference aims to foster interdisciplinary debate and to highlight creative approaches that draw research and memory into dialogue.

More info: https://pmic2025.wordpress.com/