The annual conference hosted by the doctoral schools of the George Enescu National University of Arts in Iași aims to provide participants with a platform for debate on the themes and methods of artistic research, as well as the possibility of a beneficial exchange of ideas for all those involved: doctoral students, PhD supervisors or professionals from the field. The general concept of the conference finds its expression in themes specific to the three fields Visual Arts, Music and Theatre and Performing Arts, with presentations and debates taking place both in the plenary session and in the three sections. The conference papers will be published in a volume in Romanian and English and will be indexed BDI.

Visual Arts Conference

Translation and transposition in artistic and curatorial research

Coordinator: Cristian Nae

“Transposition”, understood as a method of scaling an image and reproducing it in another place (usually parietal) represents a fundamental technique in mural art, being present in artistic practice since ancient times. Meanwhile, the mobility of the image has become a constant of modern art, facilitated by the exhibition complex of the 20th century, which allowed the presentation of art in increasingly distant cultural and political contexts and geographical spaces. It has also been used extensively by artists since the historical avant-gardes, becoming a fundamental working strategy that encouraged movement between artistic mediums (photography, painting, sculpture, drawing, video art) as well as popular culture (advertising, cinema, entertainment magazines, pop music, TV shows, video games and social media) and high-art. Often, this transfer took place in both directions, and the images intertwined and intersected more and more like a dense network, imperfectly rendered by the term “transmediality”.

Lately, the term “transposition” has gained more and more traction in the theory of contemporary artistic research, denoting the semantic effects of these transpositions and intermediate mobilizations of images, which rely on their recontextualization and association in new constellations of associations and meanings. On the other hand, crossing several cultural contexts assumed the increasingly pronounced involvement of translation theory in the analysis of cultural exchanges, being intensively used by postcolonial art theory and history.

Bringing these two terms together, with an undeniable influence in theorizing the contemporary artistic phenomenon, this year’s doctoral school conference proposes a broad discussion on their use, effects, benefits and limits in doctoral artistic and curatorial research.

• The circulation of motives, themes and images in Medieval, Modern and Contemporary Art
• Remix and cultural hybridization in visual arts
• Translating, understanding and misinterpreting “the other” in visual arts
• Adaptations and transference of images across media in visual arts through technologies of mass-reproduction
• Performative reenactments, site-specific adaptations and other forms of artistic transposition
• Transpositions of images from literature and cinema to visual arts
• Transpositions of artistic ideas into different materialities
• Exhibitions and curatorial practices as examples of transpositionality
• Visual translations of religious texts for illiterate audiences during the Middle Ages

Theatre and Performing Arts Conference

Research, coordination, evaluation in the doctoral field. Ethical perspectives

Coordinator: Călin Ciobotari

Within the field of Romanian artistic research, particularly in theatre research, the ethical filter is rarely theorized and assumed as a component of the very act of research. Do Romanian researchers in the field of theatre, whether they are doctoral students or PhD supervisors, possess an ethical consciousness of research that will constantly guide them in everything they undertake? How does this consciousness manifest itself and on what concrete levels of research does it act?

What type of ethical challenges are Doctoral Theatre Schools in Romania facing today? Is the issue of plagiarism the only really important issue in the spectrum of doctoral ethics, as, explicitly or implicitly, has been suggested in recent years, or is it just one of the multiple risks of “leaving the ethical field” that members of a Doctoral School face?

What are the current benchmarks of PhD supervisors in terms of coordinating and evaluating research in the field of theatre, whether theoretical or practical? What is the profile of the ideal supervisor and what are the ethical principles aimed at making coordination an academic activity of excellence? Does the concept of “mentoring” imply particular ethical issues? What are the expectations of doctoral students in relation to their supervising professors and what personal definitions do the doctoral students give to the act of coordination?

What are the ethical challenges involved in evaluating artistic research? Where do the boundaries of objectivity in evaluation end and subjective relativities begin? How do we balance the rigors of a scale with our own opinions, convictions, artistic creeds? How willing are we to self-evaluate, and what ethical principles should accompany the act of self-evaluation?

The conference Research, coordination, evaluation in the doctoral field. Ethical perspectives, organized by the Doctoral School of Theatre within IOSUD-UNAGE Iași during November 2^nd-3^rd, 2023, aims to provide a framework for reflection on questions such as the above and emphasize the importance of the ethical background of research, coordination and evaluation at the doctoral level.

The presentations will be held in Romanian. The format of the conference will be hybrid (online and on-site). Following a peer review process, the conference texts written in English will be published in a volume indexed in international databases.

Music Conference

The actuality of music research – disciplinary connections

Coordinator: Laura Otilia Vasiliu

Connecting music research with the cultural directions affirmed in the humanities and information technology is a necessity of the moment. Never before has musicology, implicitly open to sister disciplines since its foundation, penetrated so deeply into the area of interdisciplinarity. Even super-specialized musicians, partially accessible in the cultural environment, take into account complementary thematic areas, with an inspiring, argumentative or applicative role. The democratization of access to information in the Internet age creates the new paradigm of knowledge and research, one of the benefits being the possibility of investigating various subjects, even from the perspective of a non-specialist in the respective fields. Interest in related disciplinary areas, such as history, politics, psychology, culture industry, sound technology, literature and art, amplifies the cultural access of established musical subjects: historiography, theory and analysis, stylistics of performance and composition, aesthetics and criticism, etc. Interdisciplinarity can be one of the ways to reintegrate music studies into the area of perception of the intellectual environment and a possible answer to the challenges of music pedagogy.

We are launching this research and debate topic within the International Conference of Doctoral Schools of the George Enescu National University of Arts, also proposing several subordinate topics:

• The tendency of the context vs the meaning of the work;
• Aesthetics vs the psychology of creation (composition / interpretation);
• Dramaturgy, metaphor and image in the musical act (composition / interpretation/ criticism);
• The benefits and avatars of technology. Scientific documentation in the digital stage;
• Disciplinary connections in music pedagogy.

Admin information

The conference – organized by peer review system – will be held at the George Enescu National University of Arts Iasi on November 2^nd– 3^rd, 2023 both online and on site and will include a plenary session and three sections (Music, Visual Arts, Theatre and Performing Arts).

PhD students in Arts, PhD supervisors and professionals from the artistic field in Romania and abroad are welcome to participate. Papers can be submitted in both English or Romanian.

The conference papers, verified through the peer review system, will be published in a bilingual volume (Romanian and English) and BDI indexed.

Participants are invited to observe the schedule below:

• October 2^nd, 2023 – deadline for submitting the abstract (300 words) and a short biograhy (300 words) in English or Romanian;
• October 16^th, 2023 – the result of the abstracts’ evaluation will be announced.

Except for keynote speakers, the authors of the papers must deliver presentations that aren’t longer than 20 minutes, followed by a 10-minute Q&A session.

You can contact us by email:

• General information: conferinta@unage.ro
• Music section: conferinta.muzica@unage.ro
• Theatre and performing arts section: conferinta.teatru@unage.ro
• Visual Arts section: conferinta.artevizuale@unage.ro

For the publication of papers:

• 13^th November 2023– deadline for submitting the full text in Romanian for publication
• 20^th November 2023– announcing the results obtained by peer review

The scientific council:

The conference is organized within the CNFIS-FDI-2023-0019 ”DOCTART.NET – a network of artistic research laboratories of the doctoral schools within UNAGE Iasi”.