The Center for Improvised Arts, Performance and Research, which is sponsored by the Agosto Foundation, invites proposals for papers and presentations at Improvising Across Borders (IAB 2014), an inter-disciplinary festival and symposium on improvisation, which will be held July 17-19, 2014 at The New Town Hall, Prague, Czech Republic.

The symposium will include paper and panel sessions, workshops, sound and text installations, dance, film, and concerts. The keynote address is by distinguished composer and scholar, George E. Lewis (Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music, Columbia University). Workshops and performances by International artists will include: Pauline Oliveros, George E. Lewis, Iva Bittová, Markus Popp, Joëlle Léandre, and others.

We invite proposals that address any aspect of improvisational practice, especially how improvisation informs and shapes perceptions of creativity. Possible topics include:

• The future of improvised practices
• What happens when people improvise?
• How do non-artists improvise?
• Does technology improvise?
• The improvising body
• How art and ideas improvise
• How improvised practices communicate between disciplines
• Cultural location and cross-cultural and cross-genre trends in current “musicing”
• Notions of Afro-centricity and Euro-centricity in improvisation
• The impact of improvisation on various music genres
• The politics of reception
• Theorizing the social and political implications of improvised traditions
• The role of gender and body
• Alternative spaces and the relationship of improvisation to current changes in music, or other, pedagogies

We seek presentations also about (but not limited to) notions of performance improvisation, as well as the theoretical, technological, and cultural contexts and frameworks for improvised practices. We are interested in creating a dynamic exchange between multiple disciplines and welcome proposals from a diverse group of scholars, practitioners, technologists, composers, visual artists, filmmakers, and cultural theorists.

Proposals should be 250 words at a minimum, with a maximum of 500 words. We encourage presentations in a variety of mediums (i.e., not just traditional paper submissions). Individual paper presentations will be allotted 15 minutes. Length of workshops and panel discussions will be determined once all proposals have been reviewed. Deadline for proposals: February 6, 2014. Notification: week of February 28th, 2014.

For more information on the conference, committee, and how to submit your proposal, please see the full call for papers

The conference website can be found here.