The FIDENAResearchCentre would have celebrated its premiere at this year’s FIDENA. The idea was to create a space for exchange and to facilitate the engagement with contemporary discourses on puppetry arts.

To this end, the FIDENAResearchteam, formed by students of theatre studies and German studies at the Ruhr-University Bochum, designed a scientific framework programme, which unfortunately could not be presented in the originally planned form due to the measures taken to contain the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Nevertheless, the FIDENAResearchteam would like to implement its goals: to dare research, to initiate discussions and above all to seek exchange – and to do so digitally!

The FIDENA should have taken place under the motto “Contrast Programme”. Inspired by this motto, the FIDENAResearchCentre will devote itself in various formats to the question of dual structures, contrasts and convergences that are inscribed in puppetry arts because of its aesthetic characteristics.

Contemporary productions and performances of puppetry arts reflect various discourses that could be summarised under the term contrasts: Open, hybrid ways of playing, mixing of figure forms and different arts, man-machine relations, analogue-digital, animate-inanimate (animism debate), rational-irrational, fiction-reality, female-male (gender debate), light-dark contrasts, nature-culture, visual arts-performing arts, comic-tragic, etc.

We would like to invite you to join us in setting impulses of an emerging science. For the FIDENAResearchCentre, the online presence of which can be found on the website of the German Forum for Figure Theatre and Puppetry (www.fidena.de), we are looking for texts and video contributions that deal with the above-mentioned topics and process them in for example an essayistic, scientific or artistic contribution. The published contributions should offer new ideas for theoretical and artistic engagement with puppetry arts and encourage further research and discussion.

The following formal requirements apply to the contributions:

• Length of text contributions: 14.000 characters (including spaces), length of video contributions max. 10 minutes.
• A short academic or artistic curriculum vitae as continuous text (max. 2.000 characters) is to be submitted with the contribution to introduce the contributors on the portal.
• Contributions can be submitted until 17.08.2020 max. by e-mail to doku@fidena.de.
• Larger file formats can be submitted via digital transfer services or after consultation. Publication will take place in mid-September following a review and selection of the submissions.
• The contributions can be submitted in German or English.