There has been a resurgence of studies and theories on space, spatiality and place in academia as well as in society in the wake of the emergence of space as a major theoretical and philosophical concern for artists, theorists, geographers, scenographers, anthropologists, and philosophers. From installation art to theorizing poetry or to philosophical speculations, space became a crucial tool for analyzing processes at micro and macro levels. While time, temporality and historicity marked the modernist ethos, space and spatiality predicated the postmodern. The significance of the spatial looms large in all deliberations of humanities, social sciences and performing arts in the last few decades.

The awareness that space is inherently political, that space holds within it the kernel of historical changes, that space even dictates everyday life catapulted spatial studies to the forefront. Architecture, urban studies, international relations, environmental studies and global studies cannot ignore the theoretical role of space in shaping identities, communities, politics and economies. Frederic Jameson's insistence on the new spatiality implicit in the postmodern, Foucault's reflections on the 'other spaces' and heterotopia and Laclau's thrust on the spatial as a differentiator in the conceptualizing of social relationships are examples of the seminality of the spatial. The claim that space and spatiality are social and cultural productions is evident in the approaches of major theorists of space like Henri Lefebvre, Edward Soja, Doreen Massey, David Harvey and Manuel Castells. Lefebvre privileged the lived practices, symbolic meanings and significations of spaces over the mere geometry of space. Doreen Massey went on to the extent of asserting that the focus must be on 'time-space' or 'space-time' and that space and time are integral to the understanding of one another; distinct but co-implicated. Michel de Certeau distinguished spaces from places by identifying the narrative acts which transform places. De Certeau goes on to argue that space is a "practised place" exactly the manner in which walkers transform the paths defined by urban planners. Richard Schechener, in his explorations of performance, establishes the view that performance practices configure spaces into places by engaging them performatively and indulging theatrically by creating designs, sculptures, the performance space into a place. The process of performatively engaging spaces has intense philosophical associations with De Certeau's narrative acts. The circular relationship between spaces and performance, spaces defining performance and vice versa is also crucial in processual thinking. The proposed conference attempts to interrogate issues, themes, and concepts connected to these arenas. This conference is an attempt to map the various theoretical contours of the role space, spatiality and performance plays in contemporary academic and artistic practices.

The following are some of the themes and keywords that are relevant to the conference but not restricted to these.