Call for Papers Art and Science: Thinking Outside the Box Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (AMU) November 18–20, 2025

To mark the 80th anniversary of its founding, the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (AMU) invites proposals for an international and interdisciplinary conference titled Art and Science: Thinking Outside the Box, to be held on November 18–20, 2025. This conference builds upon the questions raised at AMU’s 60th anniversary conference, Where Does Art End and Science Begin – And Vice Versa? held in 2005. Part of the event will be dedicated to the memory of Prof. Jaroslav Vostrý (1931–2025), playwright, art theorist, pedagogue, and former rector of AMU, who played a key role in opening the university to this line of research and to the dialogue between the arts and the sciences.

The conference will explore mutual resonances, tensions, and intersections between the arts, with a particular focus on audiovisual arts, photography, music, dance, and performance disciplines, sciences and humanities. Central to the event is the idea that both art and science conduct research and both participate in the generation of epistémé, albeit through different methods, forms of thinking, and means of expression. Each employs its own epistemological framework and its own way of articulating questions and engaging with the world. While science privileges logic, empiricism, and analytical frameworks, art engages embodied perception, intuition, and affective or imaginative experience. Yet both are deeply intellectual endeavors, offering different pathways to understanding the world and the human condition.

The event aims to foster open and productive dialogue between communities that may share a common interest in inquiry, yet often “speak different languages”. By coming together in a shared space, we hope to not only compare methods and outcomes, but to explore what it means to think – creatively, critically, and rigorously – across boundaries and outside the box.

We believe that recognizing these parallel modes of inquiry invites important questions:

• How do artistic and scientific methodologies intersect?
• What happens when we examine the arts through the lens of science, or vice versa?
• Can collaboration across these domains open new pathways for discovery and reflection?

We welcome contributions that engage with these relationships from theoretical, scientific, historical, and practice-based perspectives. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Collaborative or interdisciplinary research between artists, scientists and researchers
• Scientific or scholarly approaches to studying artistic practices, perception, or reception
• Artistic interpretations or interpellations of scientific themes, or scientific analysis of artistic processes
• The role of imagination, intuition, and interpretation in both artistic and scientific work
• The transformation of the arts through technological and scientific innovation
• The reception and function of the arts in relation to scientific discourse (historical or contemporary)
• The role of artistic research in knowledge production

We encourage submissions from artists, scientists, and researchers across all career stages, including doctoral candidates, early-career researchers, and established academics. Collaborative proposals that bridge artistic and scientific expertise are especially welcome.

One of the keynote lectures will be delivered by internationally acclaimed theatre director Thomas Ostermeier, who will speak on the topic Theatre and Sociology. The conference will culminate in a ceremonial conferral of an honorary doctorate of AMU to Thomas Ostermeier on November 20, 2025, to which all conference participants are cordially invited.

The conference will be held in English. Please submit an abstract of approximately 300 words, along with a short bio (maximum 150 words) to jitka.goriaux@damu.cz and veronika.klusakova@famu.cz by June 30, 2025. Notification of acceptance will be sent by July 31, 2025. The submission details for the edited papers will be communicated in due time.

We look forward to welcoming you to Prague for an event that offers a space for dynamic exchange across disciplines, methods, and modes of knowledge.