OPTM Call for Papers

When Johannes Comenius died in 1670 in Amsterdam, he left behind a comprehensive, revolutionary humanistic work, with which he sought to champion for world peace through education. His text Orbis sensualium pictus: The visible world (1658) is the first European school text book, a teaching tool replete with pictures and texts, which aimed at employing sensual, pictorial observation to arrive at an understanding concepts and thus to an extensive system of knowledge.#01 At the end of the Thirty Years' War, Comenius sought to counter the old theological moral systems with a new order of universal world knowledge laid down his Didactica Magna. (1657) #02 One century later his didactical ideas can be found in a proposal of Georg Crhistoph Lichtenberg for an "Orbis pictus for German dramatists, novelists and actors" (1780). #03 At roughly the same time, the figure of Theatrum Mundi began to acquire an enormous heuristic energy as a metaphor for viewing the world, for the world as stage, for the art of viewing. It was a metaphor that underlined the endeavour of that period to conceive the world (Schramm 1996). #04 The bracketing of the modern topoi of Orbis Pictus and that of Theatrum Mundi informs the thematic scope of the conference by way of offering a historical perspective on the interrelation between world, picture and theatre under the present conditions of globalisation. This invites debating the question of the relevance of these two concepts in describing a culture of knowledge that places picture and text in a new mutual relationship, particularly against the backdrop of the global effects of digitised mass media. Of particular significance here is an analysis of the function and the aesthetics of theatre as signs of global knowledge cultures between the past and the future. How does theatre picture the world? How did it do so in the past? What does theatre have to offer in terms of a picture critique? And what is the relationship between theatre and world vision or worldview? Do metaphors of world theatre also encompass world pictures? Does globalisation put us in the process of shifting from the representation of the world)to the creation of world? (Nancy 2003) #05 These questions become all the more pertinent, if globalisation is not only understood as a product of the neo-liberal world economy, but as a process that pervades and fundamentally alters all areas of human coexistence. The pervasive course of "world interlinking" calls for a renewed look at the "world arena" under its changing conditions (Sloterdijk 2005 #06 , 1999 #07 ). Research in theatricality has important tools to offer in the analysis of this area (Schramm, Münz, Fischer-Lichte, Kotte). These studies have shown the extent to which the metaphor of theatre operates on the margins between describing the world (an aesthetic venture) and finding insights into the world (an epistemological project). In this sense the concept of theatricality has gained the rank of an interdisciplinary discursive element that has far-reaching implications for other arts, social fields and disciplines. The reference to the old concept of Theatrum Mundi in the conference title therefore not only invites a discussion and foregrounding of the relationship between world theatre and world knowledge in the past and in the present (Zimmermann 2001) #08 . Moreover, a third dimension is introduced into this structure of ambivalence, namely: the picture. The recent developments in pictorial research only serve to highlight the relevance of pictures. Despite our knowledge culture being strongly determined by the order of the written word since the beginning of the Modern era, pictures are increasingly gaining a new value as a category of knowledge, particularly reinforced by the technical possibilities of dissemination offered by digital media (Bredekamp 2006 #09 ; 2004) #10 . Simultaneously, the power of images is often experienced as threatening. Pictures are often denigrated as mere substitutes for reality (copies, reproductions or simulacra) or they are believed to be living beings (Mitchell 2005) #11 . In this context, the conference seeks to critically question and assess the cultural pessimism stemming from the fear of images. One of the key aims of this gathering of scholars is to discuss the possibilities of an 'enlightened' engagement and relationship to pictures. All in all, "the knowledge of globalisation" along with "the globalisation of knowledge" (Appadurai 2001) #12 constitutes a hitherto unresolved challenge. The conference sets out to question how contemporary theatre responds to this challenge. Contributions offering historical, systematic or cultural analyses of this complex of themes are invited.