International Symposium of Estudis Escènics: "I’m Playing! Formats, Devices and Apparatuses of Interaction (in Relational Theatre)" (report)

Abstract

This a report full of holes and voids, but also of squares.

A priori, the choice of this format is due to the will to leave a written account in chronological order of “what happened” during the three days of October 2020 in the symposium I’m playing!, the third of the journal Estudis Escènics. It features a whole spectrum, ranging from the most recorded transcription to the summarised document and the periphrasis, the imprint, the trace or the mark.

Nevertheless, if you continue reading, you will soon realise that “one thing are the ideas and another what happens.” The jumping dynamic of I’m playing!, with simultaneous events (for the sake of the programme) or overlapped events (for contingency), meant, for participants, a choice: yes or no. The situated reading of these pages involves dialoguing with the person writing this article, who participated in the symposium in three different ways: as a rapporteur, a lecturer, and, always and above all, a spectator. This explains why the documentary nature of this report is eclectic and can be understood as a non-ruled guide — or a summary of twenty thousand words — to be read in issue 46 of the journal of the Institut del Teatre. Some of the holes or events that have not been recorded here can be covered with articles that the authors of the lectures, presentations or devices have contributed to the journal, although perhaps deviated (or corrected, or nuanced) in relation to what was heard and seen in October 2020 in the venues of the Auditorium, the Teatre Estudi or on the streets of Montjuïc (from the Atrium of the Institute to the Teatre Grec). Anyone who had the privilege to be there then and of reading the issue now will possibly resort to memory to apply criteria or rigour and faithfulness concerning the event and its record. And this is how it must be.

Moreover, here you will find small “squares”, tentative formatted encyclopaedic openings as footnotes with the aim of contextually framing the enunciation of the symposium and those who participated in it, and also of broadening the referents contributed. This, along with all the foregoing, provides to the whole of the last issue of the journal a logic of hypertext — ergo, relational — completely coherent with the focus of the symposium.